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THINGS I HAVE TRIED FOR ACNE
1 Good Old Soap And Water. This was Gram’s first suggestion. ‘It worked for me,’ she said. And I had to stop myself from saying, ‘Yeah, but that was back in the Dark Ages of the twentieth century.’ Besides, the Good Old Soap And Water treatment comes from the idea that people get spots because they don’t clean their faces, and that’s not true.
2 Cleansers And Wipes. They just mean that my spots are shining out like beacons from a really clean face. I sometimes wonder if it actually makes them worse.
3 Cutting Out Fats. That was a horrible month. This theory is based on the fact that my skin is sometimes quite oily (and there’s an understatement to frame and hang on your wall). So if I didn’t eat butter, or cheese, or milk, or fried stuff, or salad dressings, or – as it turned out – anything delicious at all, then my face wouldn’t be greasy. Didn’t work. And I was hungry.
4 Garlic And Honey. Every morning, chop up three cloves of garlic and mix with a large spoonful of runny honey. Gross. And ineffective.
5 Spot Cream. This involved rubbing a cream into my face at night. Oddly, it’s quite an oily cream, which you’d think would make it worse, but it didn’t. Nor did it make it any better.
6 Good Old Fresh Air. Another one of Gram’s. Goes with Good Old Soap And Water. The only one to benefit from this was Lady, who for about a month got extra walks, until I noticed that my face was no different. Sorry, Lady.
7 Homeopathy. There are about five homeopathic medicines in Holland & Barrett that say they work for acne. None of them worked for me.
8 Nettle Tea. Tastes as bad as it sounds. Worse, actually.
9 Vitamin B5. All over the internet as the ‘miracle cure’. Next.
10 Antibiotics. This was what Dr Kemp finally recommended on my second visit, after showing him the list above. One Septrin tablet daily for a grand result of … no difference at all.
11 The Latest One: Dr Chang His Skin So Clear. An internet purchase. Gram said it looked dodgy and refused to buy it for me so I had to resort to subterfuge. Dr Chang, like Elliot Boyd, plays a big role in how I came to turn invisible.
Gram tells me that Mum had acne when she was my age yet she grew up to be ‘such a beautiful young lady’.
She was. In the picture in my room she has shortish, reddy-blonde hair and these massive, slightly sad eyes. It sometimes makes me think that she knew she would die young, but then I look at other pictures where she’s laughing and I think she wasn’t really sad at all. Just – I don’t know – a bit … manic?
I hardly remember her, in case you’re wondering if I’m upset about it. She died when I was three. Cancer.
My dad had already left by then. Gone, disappeared. ‘And jolly good riddance too’ was Gram’s verdict. She can hardly bear to say his name (which is Richard, though to me he looks more like a Rick) and the only picture I have of him is a grainy snap taken shortly after I was born, with Mum holding me, and Dad next to her, smiling. He’s skinny, with a beard, hair longer than Mum’s, and dark glasses on, like some sort of rock star.
‘He turned up at the hospital drunk,’ said Gram during one of our (very) occasional conversations about it. ‘It was his usual state.’
Mum and Dad were not married when I was born, but got married later. I took Mum’s last name, Leatherhead, which is Gram’s too. It’s there on my birth certificate:
Birthday: 29 July
Birthplace: St Mary’s Hospital, London
Mother’s name: Lisa Anne Leatherhead
Occupation: teacher
Father’s name: Richard Michael Malcolm
Occupation: student
And so on.
I’ll give you the brief version. It’s pretty much all I have ever had anyway. Gram is not keen to talk about it because I think it upsets her too much.
Gram moved to London when she was little, and she grew up there. She and Grampa split up some time in the 1980s. He now lives in Scotland with his second wife (Morag? Can’t remember). Mum was twenty-three when she had me. She and Dad weren’t planning a family, Gram says – I just kind of happened.
My dad disappeared when I was little. It wasn’t a disappearance that involved the police or anything. There was no mystery. He just ‘left the scene’ and was most recently heard of in Australia, according to Gram.
The last time we talked about him was a few weeks ago.
We’ve always had tea, Gram and I, when I come in from school, ever since I was about seven. I know: most seven-year-olds are drinking juice or milk, but not me. Tea and cake, or biscuits. And none of your mugs: it’s all in a proper teapot, with china cups and saucers, plus a sugar bowl even though neither of us takes sugar. It’s just for show. I didn’t really like tea at first. It was too hot. I love it now, though.
In school, we had been talking about careers in Mr Parker’s PSHE lesson. I was at the back, keeping quiet as per, when the talk came round to what people’s parents did and how people sometimes follow their parents’ careers. All I knew about my dad was that he had been ‘a student’, according to my birth certificate.
I had been planning this for a day or two, how to bring it up. I asked Gram as she poured the tea why Dad had disappeared as a lead-in to what he had been studying.
Instead of answering me directly, she said, ‘Your father led a very wild life, Ethel.’
I nodded, without really understanding.
‘He drank heavily. Took far too many risks. I believe he wanted to live without responsibility.’
‘Wh … why?’
‘I really do not know, darling. I suppose it comes down to weakness of spirit. He was weak and irresponsible. Some men are not equipped to handle the demands of fatherhood,’ said Gram. Her glasses had slid down her nose and she looked at me over the top of them as she spoke. ‘I think perhaps your father was one of those.’
It was the nearest she ever got to saying something kind about him. It was rare for her to mention him without also using the words ‘drunk’ and ‘childish’. Her shoulders always stiffen, and her lips go tight, and you can tell that she’d rather talk about anything other than my dad.
We never got as far as what he was studying, because Gram changed the subject by telling me how she had told off a young man that morning who had his feet up on the seats of the Metro.
So anyway, now it’s just Gram and me, back where Gram was born, on the blustery north-east coast in a town called Whitley Bay. According to Gram, though, we don’t live in Whitley Bay – we live in Monkseaton, which is a slightly posher bit that most people would say started at least three or four streets further west. I still think of it as Whitley Bay. So now we happily live in the same house, but apparently in different towns.
Well, I say just Gram and me. There’s Great-gran too, who is Gram’s mum. She’s not exactly here very much. She’s very nearly 100, and ‘away with the fairies’, says Gram, but not in a mean way. She had a stroke years ago, which is when your brain bleeds; there were ‘complications’, and she never properly recovered.
Great-gran lives in a home in Tynemouth, about two miles away. She doesn’t ever say much. The last time I visited her, my spots were really bad, and she lifted up her tiny hand from under her shawl and stroked my face. Then she opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out.
I sometimes wonder what would have happened if she had said something. Would it have changed what happened next?
He was with me. Again. Making three times that week.
This was just a couple of days before I turned invisible, so we’re nearly back to that.
‘Awright, Effow?’ he said. ‘You headin’ home? I’ll walk wif you, eh?’
It’s not like he gave me any choice, appearing just as I was shutting my locker as if he’d been lying in wait.
(I’ve looked up ‘bumptious’ by the way. It means ‘full of yourself’ and that’s a good description of Elliot Boyd. There are plenty of other things that annoy me. ‘Effel’ is one, or as he says it, ‘Effow’. I know it’s just his accent, but, stuck as I am with a name from 100 years ago, it would be nice to have it at least pronounced properly.)
So we walked home, Elliot Boyd keeping up a near-constant commentary on his current favourite topic: Whitley Bay lighthouse. At least it was a change from him trying to show me card tricks, which was last month’s obsession.
The lighthouse is there at the end of the beach. It doesn’t do anything, apart from appear on postcards. It doesn’t light up or anything, and this fact really bugs Elliot Boyd. (And only him, so far as I can tell.)
I have learnt – without ever even wanting to know:
1 It was built in eighteen-something-or-other, but there’s been a lighthouse there for ever, practically.
2 It was once the brightest lighthouse in Britain. I suppose that is sort of interesting.
3 You can get up to the top via a back door that’s never locked.
There’s something a bit touching about his enthusiasm. It’s probably because he’s not from around here. For everyone else, it’s just the disused lighthouse at the end of the beach, you know? It’s just kind of … there.
For Elliot Boyd, though, it’s a way of getting people to like him. I have a feeling he just pretends not to care what people think, and secretly cares a lot, and he hopes that taking an interest in something so local could be his way.
I may be wrong, of course.
He may be:
a) Just a tiresome nerd. Or
b) trying to hide something behind his constant blethering. I have noticed that he never talks about himself or his parents: it’s always about some thing. I could be wrong. It’s just a hunch. I’m going to test it soon: ask him something about his family and see how he reacts.
Anyway, I’d kind of switched off and I was just letting him chunter on because there was a shop coming up on the right that I’d had my eye on for a couple of weeks.
Whitley Road is a long strip of half-empty coffee shops, charity shops, nail bars (‘rather common’, according to Gram) and – next door to each other – two tanning salons, Geordie Bronze and the Whitley Bay Tanning Salon, which wins the prize for the least imaginative shop name on the street.
It was the window of Geordie Bronze that I was looking at. There was a huge handwritten sign saying, CLOSING-DOWN SALE, and if shops could smile there would definitely have been a smug one all over the face of its next-door competitor.
I just didn’t have the heart to tell Elliot Boyd to shut up/go away/stop bothering me about the lighthouse and some plan he’d got, but I was wishing he’d give it a rest.
Who. Cares?
‘Honestly, Effow, it wouldn’t be ’ard! Get a few of us togevver, make a little campaign website, an’ that. Call it “Light The Light” – you know, like in the song?’
He started singing. In the street, and not under his breath either.
‘Light up the light, I need your love tonight! Dee dee something something … love tonight!’
People turned to look.
‘It’s a landmark, innit? It should be shinin’ out – a beacon to the world. Otherwise what’s the point of havin’ it there? …’
On and on he went. He’d done this ‘Lighthouse Facts’ thing at school during form time a few days ago. No one had paid much attention. The general opinion was that he is/was nuts.
Most of the lights were off inside Geordie Bronze, but there was a woman sitting at a reception desk reading a magazine.
‘I’m going in here,’ I said and I moved to go in. ‘You don’t have to wait.’
‘Ah, I’m all right, fanks, Eff. I’ll just wait here for you. It’s … you know, it’s a girls’ place, you know?’
I knew what he meant. Tanning salons, like nail bars and hairdressers, are not the natural habitat of a teenage boy.
As for me, talking to strangers is one of the things that Gram thinks is really important. She has never said that she considers shyness ‘common’, because she’s not that mad, but she definitely thinks it’s ‘not to be indulged’.
‘Anyone above the age of ten,’ she told me on my tenth birthday, ‘should have learned to hold their head up and speak clearly, and if you do that you are equal to anyone.’
So, I straightened my back and pushed the door, which tinkled a bell as I walked in, making the girl at the desk look up from her magazine.
She had extra-blonde hair extensions and she was chewing gum. She had on a white(ish) tunic that buttoned down one side, like dental hygienists wear, and its colour made her tanned face seem even darker.
I smiled and approached her desk.
‘Hello,’ I said.
(Incidentally, Gram always recommends ‘How do you do?’ on first encounters, but she’s in her sixties and I’m not.)
According to a badge on her tunic she was called Linda. Linda nodded in acknowledgement and stopped chewing for a second.
‘I see you’re selling off your equipment,’ I continued.
She nodded. ‘Aye.’
A short conversation followed, during which I managed to learn that three all-over, walk-in tanning cubicles were being sold off because Geordie Bronze had fought a ‘price war’ with the salon next door and lost. Geordie Bronze had gone out of business, or something like that anyway.
The cubicles could be mine for ‘two grand each’. Two thousand pounds.
‘I see,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’ I turned to leave.
‘Hang on, pet,’ said Linda. ‘Is it for yourself, like?’
‘Umm … yeah?’
‘Is it for the …?’ And she made a sort of circular motion with her hand round her face, meaning, ‘Is it for my spots?’
I nodded, while thinking, What a cheek!
She gave a little half-smile, and it was only then that I noticed that, beneath her thick make-up and tan, her cheeks were pitted like the skin of a grapefruit.
Acne scars.
‘Aw, pet. You’ve gorrit bad, haven’t you? I had that when I was about your age.’ She paused, then looked again, head cocked on one side, and added, ‘Mind you … not quite as bad as that.’
Gee, thanks. She beckoned me to follow her to the back of the shop, where she pulled a sheet off a long, white sunbed, and lifted the lid.
I’m guessing you’ve seen a sunbed before? You lie on it, and then pull the lid down, and you’re sort of encased in this giant sandwich toaster. Brilliant UV tubes come on above you and below you and, well, that’s about it.
‘It’s knackered an’ old,’ said Linda, rubbing at a scratch on the lid. ‘But it still works. We’re just norrallowed to use it commercially any more. New regulations. We cannit sell it, neither. It’s gonna go to the dump tomorrow.’
Long story short, she let me have it for free (I know, right!), and five minutes later, me and Elliot Boyd were carrying it up Whitley Road, one end each.
Halfway home, we stopped for a rest. He was panting much more than me.
‘I’ve never ’ad a suntan,’ he said. ‘Never even been abroad.’
If he was hinting that he’d like to come and use it, then I was going to pretend that I hadn’t understood. Even he wouldn’t be crass enough to ask directly.
‘I was just wonderin’, seeing as I’m helping you home with it, if I could come and use it sometime?’
Hmm. Subtle. I found myself totally unable to say no. It would have been kind of rude, and he was so pleased, he babbled on – suggesting when he could come round, and saying how tanned he’d be – and I just switched off, heaving the thing along the pavement.
Fifteen sweaty minutes after that, I’d cleared a space in the garage. I propped the sunbed upright and covered it with the sheet, it kind of blended in with the old wardrobe, a pile of boxes and other garage junk destined for a church bazaar.
Gram and Lady were out. And it’s not like we ever use the garage for anything other than storing stuff.
In fact, given that Gram hardly ever even goes in the garage, I thought I might just be able to get away with not telling her at all. The very last thing I wanted was her forbidding me to use the sunbed, either because it’s ‘common’ or unsafe, or uses too much electricity, or … I dunno. Gram’s odd sometimes. You can never tell.
Boyd was red-faced and sweating.
‘You’ll get a nice tan,’ he said.
He was kind of making conversation and it was nice of him to help me carry it, so I said, ‘Yes. Erm … thanks for the, you know …’
There was one of those awkward silences before I said, ‘Soooo, erm … I’d better, you know … erm …’
And he said, ‘OK, erm … I’ll be … you know … erm … See you.’
That was it. He was off.
By the time Gram let herself in the front door, I was trying not to gag as I forced down my daily dose of some Dr Chang His Skin So Clear (it had been three weeks with no sign of improvement).
‘Hi, Gram!’ I said when she came into the kitchen.
Gram looked at me with an expression that could easily have been suspicion. Was I being a bit too enthusiastic?
But perhaps I was overthinking stuff.
Later on, I remembered Elliot Boyd’s round, sweaty face and it occurred to me that I was very close to him and he didn’t smell.
The next day, Saturday, I was dying to try out the sunbed, naturally, but I couldn’t do it because it was Great-gran’s hundredth birthday and there was a bit of a party on in her care home.
I say ‘party’ like it was going to be a wild affair, but of course it wasn’t, seeing as me and Gram are about the only family Great-gran has. There was a cake, a few people from church, the other residents and the staff of Priory View, and that’s about it.
Great-gran has been in this home as long as I can remember. Apparently, when Gram first moved back to the north-east, Great-gran was still living in a big old house in Culvercot on her own. Great-grandad had died years ago, and then Great-gran fell over in her kitchen. (Gram always says ‘she had a fall’, which I think is odd. I never ‘have a fall’. If I ever fall over, I just ‘fall over’.)
The house was sold and turned into flats and Gram moved here. The home overlooks a little beach and the ruined old monastery on the clifftop.
It’s very quiet, and very warm. As soon as you go in the big front door, the cold seafront breeze outside is swapped for a hot, stuffy blanket of air that manages to smell both super-clean and a bit dirty at the same time. The clean smells are disinfectant and wood polish and air freshener; the less-clean ones smell of school dinners and other stuff that I can’t identify, and probably don’t want to.
Along the thickly carpeted corridor is Great-gran’s room. The door was half open. From inside I could hear the cheery Geordie nurse talking to her loudly.
‘There you are, Lizzie, sweetheart. You’re gerrin’ some visitors now, you lucky birthday girl. No misbehavin’ now, eh? Ah’ve got me eye on yuh!’
The nurse winked at us as she left the room, and once again, I found myself baffled as to why they talk to her like that. I wanted to follow the nurse and say, ‘She’s a hundred! Why are you talking to her like she’s six?’
But of course, I never do.
Great-gran’s name is Mrs Elizabeth C. Freeman. Gram told the staff that she was never called Lizzie, and would prefer to be called Mrs Freeman but I think they thought she was being snooty.
I know I shouldn’t dislike going to see Great-gran, but I do. It’s not her. Great-gran is a sweet and harmless old lady. No: what I dislike is me. I hate the fact that I find going to see her a chore, that I get bored, that I feel uncomfortable.
What’s worse is that that day should have felt special. One hundred years old? That’s pretty awesome. I was wishing I felt more stoked about it.
Then Gram started talking. It’s nearly always a monologue, because Great-gran so seldom responds, preferring instead to look out of her window and nod, a little half-smile sometimes appearing. Sometimes she even falls asleep. She looked tiny in the big armchair, propped up with cushions, her little head with wispy white hair emerging from a woollen blanket.
‘So, Mum, how have you been keeping? Have you been out for your walk today? It’s some blustery weather out there today, isn’t it, Ethel?’
‘Yes, very windy.’
Usually I’m not required to say much, and I just sit in the chair by the window, looking at the waves and watching the minutes tick by on the clock next to her bed. I’ll chip in a comment now and then, and sometimes I’ll sit next to Great-gran and hold her thin hand, which I think she likes because she responds with a weak squeeze.
That’s basically how it went this time too, except at the end when something weird happened.
After a few minutes of talking, Gram said something about heating up the sausage rolls and she left to go and talk to the kitchen staff.
That’s when Great-gran turned to me and for a moment her watery, grey eyes seemed to sharpen and she was really looking at me carefully. At first I thought she was looking at my spots and I shifted my position ready to move away, but she gripped my hand a little tighter so that I stayed, and I realised she wasn’t studying my skin. Instead she was looking right into my eyes, and she startled me by coming out with a whole sentence.
‘How old are you, hinny?’
(Hinny is Great-gran’s name for me. It’s an ancient Geordie term of affection. I reckon Great-gran is the only person left alive who uses it. She never calls me Ethel. Only hinny.)
The words came out as a very quiet croak – the first that Great-gran had spoken to us all morning.
‘I’m nearly thirteen, Great-gran.’
She gave a tiny nod. Gram had come back into the room, but Great-gran hadn’t seen her.
Great-gran said, ‘Tiger.’
Just that: ‘tiger’.
And then, with a huge effort, she said, ‘Pss-kat.’
I leant in a bit and said, ‘What was that?’
Again, slightly more distinctly: ‘Tiger. Pussycat.’
She pointed to me and gave a weak smile.
I looked up at Gram, and her face had gone white. I mean really – the colour had drained from her face. And then, as if she’d caught herself out, she went super-loud, super-energetic, and all ‘Right, the party is about to begin. Let’s sort you out, shall we, Mum? I’ve told them we don’t want the sausage rolls straight away …’ And so on. A long monologue of busyness that was obviously meant to distract from what Great-gran had just said.
I had no idea what it was all about. None at all. Tiger? Had she said ‘pussycat’? Or something else? Thing is, Great-gran is a hundred and not everything works like it should, but she’s not actually senile.
She turned her head to Gram. Her eyes still hadn’t lost their intensity and, for just a moment, it was like looking at a person half her age.
‘Thirteen,’ she repeated. There was something about all this that I wasn’t getting, but I’d have let it all go if Gram hadn’t suddenly come over all brisk and matter-of-fact.
‘Yes, isn’t she growing up fast, Mum?’ said Gram with a little forced laugh. ‘How quickly it all happens, eh? Goodness, look at the time! We’d better get into the sitting room. People will be waiting.’
