Being Lara Read Free

hand as she skipped along and Mum holding on to an almost empty picnic basket, save for one banana and a half-eaten cheese and pickle sandwich. Lara’s eyebrows scrunched as she allowed thoughts of Ryan to form a huge question mark above her head.
    How come they’re your parents?
    Lara looked up at her dad, his mustache curved into a smile. He was thrilled to have finally tanned eight days into the holiday because Mum had been teasing him about his skin throughout. She’d called him pasty earlier and he’d responded with a playful slap on her bum, which had caused a surge of giggles among Lara and her new friends. But, no matter how hard she tried to shoo it away like an errant fly, Ryan’s question stayed with her. And at that moment, thoughts of that “alien” playground incident two years previous drifted back into her present memory—along with that absolute need for a Tiny Tears doll and a dislike of cabbage—threatening to confuse her yet again.
    They’d been back home in Essex a few weeks, with school starting again in the morning, when Mum tucked Lara in bed and read her a story about a beautiful soul-singing princess and the headbanging punk rocker who fell in love and lived happily ever after in a glitter-covered mansion in Surrey. As always after one of her stories, which were never read from a book, Mum kissed Lara on the forehead plus both cheeks and said, “See you in the morning, sweet pea,” right on cue, just as she always did each and every night for as long as Lara could remember. Lara hated the dark and regularly kept the little gray lamp with the adjustable long steel neck beside her bed, switched to “on” for most, if not all, of the night.
    â€œMum…” she said, just as the door was about to be closed.
    Kneeling beside Lara’s bed, Mum pulled back the yellow cover. “What is it?”
    Above Mum’s head and stuck to the wall with Blu-Tack was an old poster from Mum’s singing days; she had a massive blond perm, covered by a huge leather cap fashionably tilted to slightly cover her left eye, and wore an abundance of overpowering blue eye shadow. Mum looked beautiful in that poster and still did now, even if she did sometimes tie her hair up in an elastic band.
    â€œI hope you’re not trying to stay up late, Lara,” she said, fixing the sheet around her shoulders again. It was a trick Lara had tried before, but no, this time there was definitely something on her mind. Something important. This time she needed to know what Ryan had meant and why. Because for the duration of their time in Blackpool and ever since, Lara hadn’t failed to notice stares from strangers as she and her mum and dad browsed shops for souvenirs and ice cream. She had seen how some people seemed to stop midconversation as the three of them walked hand in hand along the busy beachfront, the sun shining down on their faces, seagulls singing around them. Lara also noticed a strangeness occur on home turf, too; in the butchers, the supermarkets, anyplace outside of the sanctuary of their house. Looks, stares, whispers—things she hadn’t noticed before.
    â€œYou’ve got two minutes to ask me this question of yours or else! You have got to get some sleep!”
    Mum’s sweet-smelling lavender perfume instantly surrounded Lara’s nostrils, enveloping her in a warm hug, allowing her to feel secure again and perhaps no longer in need of asking the question.
    Lara yawned heartily. “It’s okay, Mum. I’ll go to sleep now.” She tightly squeezed her eyelids together and thought nothing more, until morning when the thoughts all started up again, this time carefully hidden behind a barrage of questions perhaps not unusual to seven-year-olds.
    â€œHow can pigeons hear without ears?”
    â€œWhere do the stars in the sky live when it’s the afternoon?”
    â€œWhy am I … different?”
    The day