Jane Renshaw - Watch Over Me

Magic.

Then one day the dresses were gone.

Must be Ma or Billy found them.

Next year we stole a wee present for Sarah from Woolworth’s, a box of fruit jellies, and we were that excited counting down the days to her birthday, and even if we didnae get dresses we would get to be in the princess house with the real Vicky and Sarah.

But she never asked us.

We never went in that house again so we didnae.

No reason Sarah Ramsay would ask us again, eh? She wasnae even in Mandy’s class. Sometimes she would say ‘Hi’ in the corridor or in the playground, but we werenae friends or nothing.

Fruit jellies were nice but.

And sometimes still, me or Mandy will go, ‘Mind they dresses?’

I smooth down the skirts of the Elsa and Anna costumes and hang them back in the wardrobe.

I sit on the bed and give Shrek a coorie and imagine Bekki here, all cooried down under the duvet with Shrek. The duvet’s got Anna and Elsa on it. I can never mind which is Anna and which is Elsa, but the frozen one with the blonde hair, her dress, the icy one with sparkly snowflakes and crystals, it covers half the duvet it’s that long.

‘She’ll be back soon,’ I says to Shrek.

Bekki loved her Shrek. She was that funny, all them would come in to see her chubby wee cheek pressed against Shrek’s, beauty and the beast right enough, and Bekki would hold up Shrek for them to kiss, and they’d all do it, even Ryan. Then when they’d gone, I’d sit on the floor and stroke her hair and her wee face and I’d sing that song ‘It Is You’ out the film. I knew all the words so I did. Each verse ended the same way.

It is you I have loved all along .

And I’m wondering if that bitch Ruth, or Flora she’s calling herself now, is putting Bekki to bed and reading her a story like Bekki’s her fucking wean.

Does Bekki still have that lemur?

Is she coorying down with the lemur and that Flora bitch is stroking her hair?

But I cannae think about it.

I cannae think about they fuckers or I’ll go mental so I will.

I put Shrek back on the pillow. The pillow’s baby-blue with a giant white snowflake and ‘Like a snowflake I’m one of a kind’ on it. If Bekki likes all this shite we can take it with us to Spain. Weird but, snowflake bedding and mobiles and that, when it’s thirty fucking degrees.

I go down the stair and get my coat. I leave the heating on low and a light on in the hallway. Then I pick up my bag and lock up and head off down the wee lock-block drive to the street. It’s a cul-de-sac with landscaping and grass and bushes and a blossom tree on the corner that you can see from Bekki’s windae. All the houses in this street are brand new newbuilds, some double-fronted detached like ours and some semidetached, all matching in with white walls and red tiles and wee porches. Dead nice.

I cannae wait, so I cannae, till I’m in the house with Bekki and Carly and Connor. We’re bringing her here when we first get her, and Jed and them will stay at our bit. Then it’s Viva Espana !

I power-walk to the bus stop and when I get there I get out my phone and take a deek at the photies Ryan took last time he was out there. The windaes are in, and the glass doors out to the patio round the pool. Rooms are massive by the way. Ryan’s getting a sound system put in through the whole house, and the heating’s gonnae be remote-controlled.

It’s raining and I’m all bumfled up in a scarf and my big coat and boots. There’s no wee neds at the stop like there would be at our bit, bevvying and yowling and chucking Minstrels at the motors from packets they’ve robbed from the shop. There’s just an old couple with a wee laddie, and they’re reading the timetable up on the shelter and the wee laddie keeps going, ‘What does that say, Nana?’ and when she reads out ‘Bearsden’ he goes, ‘Are there real bears in Bearsden?’ like he’s hoping, and the old guy goes, ‘Aye, Christopher, there’s one there look driving that bus’ and the woman’s like that: ‘Silly Granda.’

Nana smiles at me.

I goes, ‘There was once a bear in Bearsden, but that was hundreds of year ago. The laird’s sons kept a bear cub in a pit.’ I looked it up on the internet in case Bekki asks. The bear died, but I’m no gonnae tell Bekki that bit. I’ve a wee story ready. ‘But that was cruel, eh, and the poor wee bear didnae like it. It wasnae a proper den, it was just a hole in the ground with nothing for the wee cub to coorie down in. He was cauld. The laird’s sons couldnae be doing with him and hardly ever came to play with him any more. They were more interested in drinking fancy wine and that. The bear cub was lonely. He didnae like it in that pit, so he didnae.’

‘Oh, the poor wee bear!’ says Nana. ‘What happened to the poor wee soul?’

Christopher’s looking up at me with big blue eyes. He’s pure gorgeous so he is, with that soft creamy skin bairns have, and I want to pick him up and squeeze him and pinch his wee cheeks.

I give him a big smile.

‘Did he escape?’ he whispers.

‘Oh aye, he escaped all right. He got out the pit one night and ran away, and after lots of adventures he found a nice fisherman with a cottage by the sea who had always wanted a bear for a wee pal, and he lived there in a cosy den lined with wool from the man’s sheep, and he went swimming by the man’s boat when he went out fishing, and just had a rare time altogether.’

‘He lived happily ever after,’ goes Christopher.

Aye, in the version I’m telling Bekki, that’s the happy ever after.

But now I’m thinking: wee fucker, everything’s happy ever after for wee Christopher, eh, and Nana and Granda, off home for tea and fucking crumpets. While my Bekki doesnae even know who the fuck I am. I’m no her nana, I’m just a fucking random.

So aye I shouldnae, but I cannae help it, I goes, ‘He’s happy aye, but then this big fierce mad dug comes along, and it fights the wee bear and gies it rabies so it does, and the bear goes fucking mental.’

Christopher’s wee face!

Nana’s and Granda’s!

‘Fucking mental, and when the nice fisherman comes and goes, “Here, wee bear, let’s us go for a swim, aye?” the bear opens his gub like that!’ I pull back my lips and give Christopher a good long deek at my molars. ‘And he jumps on the man and rips his fucking head off!’

Nana grabs Christopher and wheechs him out the shelter, and Granda hyters after them, but the bus is pulling up. I go and stand at the door but I dinnae get on, I pretend I’m looking in my purse for change, so they have to come back past me. Christopher’s greeting and Nana flings him up the steps and as Granda goes past me he’s like that: ‘ Bitch .’ And then: ‘You need help,’ like that’s me telt.

I goes, ‘ Excuse me ? I think you should maybe watch your language in front of the bairn, aye?’ real loud. As they move on down the bus I goes, ‘You heard that, Driver? You heard that man giving me verbals, calling me a bitch and that, just because I wasnae quick enough looking out my change? That’s sexist. That’s misogynistic so it is. Are you gonnae respect my right to get on a bus without being fucking abused by a sexist prick or are you no?’

The driver sighs and gets out his seat and goes down the bus and says to Granda:

‘Okay sir. Aff .’

And that’s their nice wee day out turned to pish.

The corner shop was literally on a corner, the door across the angle of the block, with fresh fruit and vegetables displayed on stands to either side – although Flora never bought any of them because she worried about them soaking up pollution from the busy road. Inside, though, one whole wall contained shelf after shelf of wonderful old-fashioned sweets in big glass jars, all with natural colours and flavourings.