From the kitchen, Blue could hear the next-door neighbours’ children playing in the garden. They were bouncing on their trampoline, appearing then disappearing behind the fence, their water pistols squirting in a mid air fight.
‘Which one of you boys forgot to flush the toilet again?’ yelled a very cranky voice. It was Mrs Taylor.
‘It was Ned,’ said Tom.
‘No, it wasn’t. It was Riley,’ said Ned.
‘It wasn’t me. It must have been Tom,’ said Riley.
‘Did not!’ said Tom.
‘Of course it was no one again, was it?’ said Mrs Taylor, clearly irritated. ‘Well, your sister’s just dropped my car keys in the bloody toilet and now I’m going to have to fish them out.’
‘Ooh, ooh, I’ve got my horseshoe magnet. We could tie it on a string, Mummy, and drop it in. It’s super powerful and you don’t have to stick your hand in Riley’s pee,’ said Ned.
‘It wasn’t me!’ said Riley.
‘Ouch!’ yelped Ned.
‘Don’t kick your brother, Riley! Now, where’s that magnet?’
‘Can I do it? Can I? Can I?’ said Tom.
‘No, I want to do it. It’s my magnet!’ said Ned.
‘Well, it’s my pee!’ said Tom.
‘I knew it was you,’ said Ned.
‘You did not, you said it was Riley.’
The Taylors were a very LOUD family. All up, there were three boys, a baby girl called Jeannie and one very barky dog called Moose. Blue’s mother had forbidden her to play with the Taylor children. In fact, she’d built an especially high fence so she didn’t have to look at them.
‘Hideous common people!’ Blue’s mother had shrieked. ‘I might have to listen to them, but I don’t have to look at them! All those children! Big families should be banned! They’re noise pollution! They bring down the whole tone of the neighbourhood. They’re affecting the value of my property. People shouldn’t be allowed to keep breeding if it’s going to affect other people’s house prices. It should be illegal!’
Blue so wished she had a brother or sister to play with, but her mother had categorically ruled out that idea. ‘One is enough!’ she’d said. ‘Your father and I want to travel and read the paper on weekends and have some sort of life for ourselves.’ And after her parents’ idea of a family pet, Blue had felt it best to leave that subject well alone.
It was true, having lots of children was not very civilised. Mrs Taylor sounded permanently exhausted. She was always yelling at her boys to do this or that. ‘Pick up your wet towels! Who left the bloody Lego all over the floor? Your sister will choke on that! Turn off that bloody computer or I’ll throw it out the bloody window! Just you bloody watch me!’
Mrs Taylor was always saying ‘bloody’.
Most days, the Taylors’ place was as noisy as a building site! Crying and fighting and doors being slammed. But to Blue it sounded wonderful. She didn’t mind uncivilised. There was something comfy and snug about all that racket. Whenever she felt lonely or sad, she would sit under the fence and just listen to the demolition derby of their everyday life. Somehow it made her feel less alone.
You see, ever since Blue’s laughter had vanished, so too had all her friends. She felt left out of some cosmic loop of happiness. Blue tried to hide her terrible problem with a spectacular fake laugh: ‘AAR HA HA HARRR!’ But in truth, she sounded more like a slightly snobby pirate than a ten-year-old girl. Slowly but surely, her friends drifted away. Soon, there was no room for her at the library table. Games in the playground were always full up. And kids on the bus preferred to stand rather than sit next to Blue. Blue tried not to sook about it. After all, what good would that do? But it wasn’t always easy.
Blue put the box with the coat outside the front door so she couldn’t see it anymore. She poured herself a glass of milk and sat back down at the long white kitchen bench. It was so long she could barely see the other end. The white bench had arrived with her mother’s ‘white phase’. Blue’s mother was always in a phase. And right now it was white. Everything in the kitchen was white – the bench, the chairs, the walls, the cupboards, the fridge, even the fruit bowl! Sometimes Blue had to feel around just to find the fridge.
Whenever Blue’s mother entered a new phase, she would redecorate the entire house. There was nothing she enjoyed more than poring over paint charts. Since her mother’s white phase began, Blue had discovered just how many shades of white there were. Magnolia white, Coconut Delight white, Chantilly Lace white – Blue couldn’t tell the difference. And she wasn’t fond of white, either. The house felt about as homey as a hospital.
Before her mother’s white phase, it was lavender. And before that, it was beige. You can probably guess what phase she was in when she named her daughter Blue. And after blue, came grey. During her grey phase, Blue’s mother tried to change Blue’s name to ‘Slate’. She thought paint charts were a fabulous place to find unusual names. Before Blue was Blue, her mother called her Magenta. And before that, she was Mahogany, then Gladiola, and then Shimmering Honeydew! In fact, her father still called her ‘Maggie’ – short for Magenta. Which was fair enough, considering that was her name the last time he left on his overseas business trip.
‘Slate is sooo sophisticated and original! I don’t know what I was thinking when I called her Blue. It’s such a downer name,’ her mother had explained to the Registrar-General – the person you need to see when you want to change your child’s name. Luckily for Blue, the Registrar-General disagreed. Since it would have been Blue’s fifth name change, she declared it was no longer in the public interest and refused. Blue wrote a letter to
