I moved toward her and hugged her tightly, surprising her and myself. “I’ve missed this,” she said into my shoulder, her voice muffled by my hair. For the first time in ages, I felt like me.
“Thank you for being my friend,” I said. “Even though I didn’t make it easy.” I pulled away after a while, and pointed up at the balloon. “So. Where’d you get this classy gift from?” Darcy didn’t reply, and when I looked at her for some sort of response, I saw that her face was wet with tears.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“What’s happening?” my grandmother asked, throwing the door to the front-front room open. She looked at Darcy in horror.
“I just—I’ve just missed her!” Darcy sobbed.
“Oh, there there, dear!” my grandmother said, pulling Darcy into her bosom and patting her on the back gently. I wished she’d consistently extend the same comfort to me when I was upset.
“Come on, let’s all go in here,” I said, and we walked into the front-front room, my balloon blithering along the doorframe as I pulled it in behind me.
“Okay, please can we do the candles now? I had to blow them out once already,” Diana snapped, pulling a lighter out of her pocket and lighting the candles.
“And why do you have that?” Maggie asked, cocking her head, her wig going left as her head went right.
“It’s, er, Kadija’s, she left it in my bag, Haaaaaappy Birthdaaaaay . . .” Diana began to sing, nervous eyes on her mum, who stared back at her, neither of them dropping a note. I looked down at the cake and blew the candles out.
“Did you make a wish?” my mum said quietly, her voice cracking halfway through the question.
“No. No point,” I said, continuing to look at the cake. “I haven’t believed in wishes since I was a child.”
My grandmother bustled into the kitchen for her best china plates (“It’s because we have a white visitor,” Maggie sighed), and Diana started to cut the cake into huge slices. “Shall we say grace?” Maggie asked, gesturing to the cake. Diana looked at me.
“Oh, aren’t you going to open your present?” Maggie asked, pointing at the gift bag. I picked it up and pulled out a little wrapped present.
“It’s nothing big, just a little lavender oil that I bought from Holland and Barrett. I thought you could drop some around your room, help you to relax,” she said, smiling.
“Thanks,” I said, putting the wrapped object back in the bag.
“Should we maybe go for a walk, or sit in the garden or something?” I asked Darcy, tying the balloon’s ribbon to my wrist.
“I haven’t had a chance to talk to you,” my mum interjected quietly. “Or to meet your friend properly.” She looked at Darcy and smiled, then looked back at the floor.
“I’m Darcy! Queenie and I have worked together for three and a bit years now, I think? She does the listings, I’m picture editor.”
“Oh, that’s lovely. And what does a picture editor do?”
“Basically, when we’re running an article in the magazine or online, I have to find the right picture, make sure we’re allowed to use it, that sort of thing.”
“That sounds very hard! I couldn’t do that!” my mum cooed.
“Sure you could, Mum,” I said, trying out my newfound forgiveness. “You could do anything.”
“That’s not true, Queenie,” she said, looking down at her hands and smiling. “I’m not like you.”
“I’ve got a question for you, Sylvie.” Darcy jumped in. “Why did you name Queenie, Queenie?”
“That’s an easy question, Darcy.” My mum looked up at us and settled back into the armchair. She was so small that it almost swallowed her whole. “When I was growing up, I always used to wish I could be a princess. It sounds silly, but because Maggie was in the room next to my mum and dad so they could keep an eye on her, my bedroom was almost at the very top of the house, underneath the attic; it was a huge, beautiful Victorian house that my dad bought when he first came ove—”
“The haunted attic room,” I told Darcy.
“The only thing it was haunted by was my dad, moaning at me about the water rates.” My mum laughed. “We were the first black people on our street, you know? My dad literally worked night and day to afford it. Anyway, I’m drifting away from what I was saying, sorry!” She looked back down at her hands. “I used to stare out of the window and pretend that someone was going to come and rescue me.” She paused and looked up again, her eyes bright. “I grew out of that, the looking out of the window thing, when I was a teenager”—she giggled—“but I was still obsessed with princesses. In all of the stories I used to read, they were so beautiful and perfect, and so delicate, and, well, when I met Queenie’s dad, he was my prince.”
“Mum—” I interjected. “He was married.”
“Well, I didn’t know that at the time. And, well, to me, he’d come to rescue me. He was so handsome, this man with beautiful dark skin. I thought he was so cool! He was in the music scene, he had a house full of records, he used to take me to all these concerts! And he had this gold tooth that flashed whenever he smiled. He was so charming.”
“FYI, Darcy, he really isn’t charming.”
They both ignored my remark, lost in the story. “. . . and when I was pregnant, I thought, This is it, this is it, she’s here. The princess I’d been dreaming about was here. That was going to be her name, I’d decided. I didn’t mind that it might have been tacky.”
“I would have minded,” I said.
“At least you weren’t called Diana!” my cousin shouted from the hallway as she walked past the front-front room.
“Ah, yes. Queenie’s grandmother gave Diana her name. She was obsessed with the royal family.” My mum laughed gently. “Still is. Anyway, when my little girl was born, I put my finger in her tiny hand, and she opened her eyes and squeezed it so tightly. And I looked at her, and I realized that she was more powerful than any delicate princess I’d read about. I’d just given birth to a queen. A girl who would grow up to be strong and brave. So I called her Queenie.”
How could I have been so selfish, how couldn’t I have seen? This tiny, meek woman being swallowed by an armchair was the same woman who’d started to raise me, the woman who’d been so obsessed with me that we wore matching outfits until I was eight, who always told me that I was strong enough to be a queen. She’d been so mentally and physically battered by men that she couldn’t find her voice anymore. But she was still my mum.
I looked over at Darcy, whose eyes were wet with tears. “Oh, come on, no more crying,” I said, pulling her up, knowing that if she started crying, I’d be next.
I led her through the kitchen, where Maggie was quizzing “Diana” about the lighter, and out into the garden.
We sat on the grass for about three seconds before my grandmother practically sprinted out with a blanket, shrieking about Darcy’s white skirt getting dirty.
“How are you doing, though?” Darcy asked, letting her bare legs stray from the blanket so that she could scrunch blades of grass between her toes.
“It’s up and down. That’s the only way I can put it.” I shrugged. “No day is ever all good, or all bad. I don’t feel quite myself yet. I know I’m not doing a very good job of explaining myself. Sorry.”
“You don’t need to explain anything to me. We can talk about something else, if you like,” Darcy said brightly. “Have you read anything good lately?”
“I think I need to explain it to myself, if anything,” I said. “You know how someone might be, like, ‘how are you, on a scale of one to ten, one being the worst, and ten being absolutely elated?’ Well, at the moment I’m operating on a ‘how are you out of five?’ flex. I feel like I’m living a half-life at the moment.”
I fiddled with the knot of the balloon ribbon on my wrist. “I live here, sleeping in a room full of crucifixes and Bibles. I don’t see anyone but my family because seeing my friends reminds me that I’m not how I used to be. I haven’t had sex for ages—”