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it.
    ‘What’s this?’ I ask.
    She raises an eyelid at me slowly, choosing her thoughts. The three lemons finally line up in her brain and she looks up triumphantly. ‘I am contemplating Nature,’ she declares.
    ‘Have you made me anything to eat?’
    ‘You’re fourteen, darling, you can cook.’
    ‘Bring back Mia,’ I mutter.
    ‘Pardon?’ she says.
    ‘Aren’t you going to ask me if I won?’ I ask her. I’m standing in front of her in full football kit, caked in mud and she still hasn’t noticed.
    ‘Careful where you step,’ she replies. ‘Those leaves are in a pattern.’
    ‘Well?’
    ‘Did you win?’
    ‘Yes. And I scored two.’
    ‘Well done you. Was your father there?’
    ‘Yes. Flirting rotten with Mikaela’s mum. Who was there as well. Supporting her daughter. Like mums do.’
    ‘Go shower, Adele,’ mum snaps at me. ‘You stink.’
    I walk right through all her leaves which gets her yelling at my back.
    In the shower I’m thinking, I drew the short straw for mums. Everyone says ‘my mum is my best friend, we do our make-up together, we go shopping, we go to concerts, I help her choose her clothes, we go on holiday together, we do our Wii exercises together.’ My mum does none of that. We do nothing together.
    I go downstairs. Mum’s come down and is watching TV. I go to lie on her. She pushes me off, saying she’s too hot. I can smell vodka on her. She thinks vodka has no smell, daft cow.
    ‘You ruined my leaf arrangement,’ she says, slurring.
    ‘It was a pile of mouldy leaves, Mum.’
    ‘They weren’t mouldy, they were green.’
    ‘Right. Whatever.’
    I get up and go into the kitchen and make myself a cup of tea.
    Later that night I’m lying in bed and I think, my mum can dance. It’s not very cool how she dances because her moves come from donkey’s years ago, but she can move. I could teach her enough moves so she wouldn’t embarrass me, then we could go to a concert together. What’s the use though? She would probably say no. Her dancing partners (her partners in everything) are Lady Ganja and MC Vodka. Marcus’s mum is more a mum to me than my own mum. And Mia was. I called Mia ‘Mum’ accidentally once, and Mum went mad. Some days it gets so bad, I want to scream at my mum but nothing comes out of my throat, like my windpipe’s been cut. I just stand there, and she asks, ‘what do you want?’ And I say nothing.

CHAPTER 10
MC BANSHEE & HER GANG OF THIEVES
    I text Mikaela early in the morning, then sneak out of the house before Dad can ask any questions. I know Mum will still be zonked from all her smoking.
    At the Cheadle Park bus stop Mikaela gets on. She’s wearing scruffy jeans. Her hair’s flicked out into a full-on Afro again. She slides in next to me.
    ‘What you laughing for?’ she says.
    ‘No, I love it, Mikay.’
    ‘This fro’s sexy like Beyoncé’s backside. It’s a black thing – you white folk won’t understand.’
    ‘My nana used to say that all the time,’ I say. ‘I be pinned tween her knees, and she sit there twisting her dreads and chewing hair grips between her lips, then sliding dem into mi head, going, “Black be God’s colour. Slide slide. It be the sexiest, beautifullest. Slide Slide. Dopest colour in the rainbow! Slide slide. White people stupid what don’t get that. Slide .”’
    Mikaela laughs. ‘What was that nonsene?’
    ‘It’s how my nana spoke.’
    ‘Your imaginary nana! Who speaks imaginary bad patois!’
    ‘She’s dead now,’ I say.
    Mikaela shakes her head at me and pulls on her headphones, and I think, Why did I just say that? My nana was black, but I never met her. And she must have spoken Italian, not Jamaican. Sometimes I don’t understand myself. I feel bad, like somehow I’ve done my nana wrong by pretending about her.
    The bus fills up with the Saturday crowd of mums with kids, skateboarders and Goths. One guy gets on with a small plastic chair. He’s the Statue guy that stands on Market Street