‘That’s your opinion but you’re just a silly little girl,’ says Big Mouth.
‘I’ll tell Daddy you said that,’ says Sweetie.
‘Tell away, darling. See if I care,’ she says.
She’s so sure of herself. She doesn’t even flatter Dad when she’s with him. She just shrugs when he asks her to help us find new clothes, and says, ‘I don’t know what little kids like. You kit them out. It was your idea to have them with us for the weekend.’
Dad calls an assistant over quickly and Lizzi wanders off humming, messing around with the clothes on the rails, not the slightest bit interested.
Sweetie perks up now and starts to organize a new top and trousers and frilly nightie for herself, and then decides she simply has to have some little suede boots with heels. They don’t make them as small as Sweetie’s size but she wants them anyway, saying she’ll stuff socks in the toes.
I know what I want too. It’s easy: a new black T-shirt, black jeans and even new lacy mittens because the first ones are starting to tear. I’d like black pyjamas too but I can’t find any. I have to make do with navy blue.
Ace is much more difficult to please. The assistant tries hard with him, offering him army khaki or bright scarlet, but he’s not interested in ordinary clothes. He wants a Tigerman costume and we can’t find one anywhere. He starts crying and he won’t stop.
‘For God’s sake, Ace, what’s the matter with you?’ Dad shouts.
He picks out a T-shirt, shorts and pyjamas for Ace, not bothering to let him choose. Ace is in despair. I pick him up and he sobs into my neck. I have a sudden idea.
‘Dad, can we go to the toy department?’
‘The toy department? You kids, you’re always after something. Aren’t you getting a bit old for toys, Sunset?’
‘It’s not for me, Dad. I’ve thought of something we could get Ace. I promise it’s only little, not at all expensive.’
‘Ace doesn’t deserve anything – he’s acting like a spoiled brat,’ says Dad, but he gives in.
Lizzi huffs and sighs when he says we’re going to the toy department, but she acts like she loves it when we get there. She and Dad muck around with the teddies, making them bob about and talk to each other. It is seriously embarrassing, but I ignore them and search hard, holding Sweetie’s hand and lumbering Ace along on my hip. Then I find what I’m looking for: face paints!
‘Here you are, Ace, this will do the trick!’ I say.
He stops grizzling to peer at the tin. ‘That’s make-up!’ he says. ‘That’s not for boys.’
‘No, no, it’s magic sticks of paint for your face. I’m going to paint you. I’m going to use the orange stick and the black stick, with maybe the pink stick for the nose – and guess who you’ll be?’
Ace shuffles uncertainly. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Of course you know. You’ll be Tigerman!’ I look at Sweetie. ‘And I’ll paint you too, with blue shadow for your eyes and red lipstick, and you’ll be a fairy-tale princess.’
I take them back to Dad, both smiling. I want him to say, ‘Thank you so much for calming them down, Sunset. You’re so good with your brother and sister. What would I do without you?’ But surprise surprise, he just smiles back at us and buys the face paints, saying mildly, ‘What do you want them for?’
So I start to tell him, and he nods a bit, but I know he’s not really listening, and then he’s distracted anyway because two silly grannies start squealing and blushing like schoolgirls, begging him for his autograph. Big Mouth laughs at them, raising her eyebrows at us. She’s more interested in the face paints.
‘Oh, cool! I love face paints! I used to run the face-paint stall at my school fête. I love doing it. Wait till we get back to the hotel, you three, and I’ll make you all up.’
‘They’re my face paints. I want to do it,’ I say childishly.
She shrugs. ‘OK. No probs. You do it, Sunset.’
So when we get to Dad’s hotel suite (which is huge, like an apartment, with so many flowers and ornaments and fancy bits I’m terrified Ace will knock them all over), I have a go at painting Ace’s face like a tiger. It’s much more difficult than I thought. I can’t get the stripes to go right and he doesn’t look fierce enough.
‘You’re Tigerman now, Ace. Oh goodness, I’m scared of you!’ I say nevertheless, but he scowls at himself in the mirror, not convinced.
I try with Sweetie too, but the colours are too strong and she doesn’t look like a fairy princess at all. She looks like a pantomime dame. Her chin quivers when she sees herself.
‘Maybe it was a silly idea,’ I mutter. ‘I’ll wash it all off.’
‘Have a wash in my big bath,’ says Dad.
It’s an enormous bath made of blue marble. The water comes out of the silver dolphin taps already blue too! There are all sorts of soaps and shampoos and bubblebaths. I wish I could lie back in the bath all by myself and pretend to be a movie star, but I’m stuck with Sweetie and Ace. I don’t even take all my clothes off to get in the bath because I’m worried Dad or Big Mouth will come in. Sweetie and Ace strip off and splash around and pretend to swim and cheer up considerably. I’m anxious when a lot of the face paint is wiped off on the snowy white towels, but Big Mouth Liz shrugs again when she sees.
‘We’ll get housekeeping to bring us more,’ she says.
She’s eyeing up her face in the mirror, putting on more lipstick. I bet she gets that all over the towels too.
‘Could you do my face so it looks properly like a princess?’ Sweetie asks her.
I’m taken aback by her betrayal. Liz paints her a beautiful princess face, with little blue and lilac flowers on her cheeks, silver stars round her eyes, and a tiny blue butterfly shimmering on her forehead. Sweetie is delighted, running around in just a towel to show Dad. He bows to her and acts as if he’s blinded by her beauty. Then it’s Ace’s turn. Big Mouth turns him into a magnificent Tigerman. She can do all the stripes the right way. She can even manage whiskers, and she makes him look comically fierce. I remember how she held Ace in her arms at the premiere of Milky Star. It’s only a few weeks ago but it seems like years now, so much has happened since.
It’s all Big Mouth’s fault that our family’s been ripped apart and made so unhappy. I think about Mum at home and how miserable she’ll be. She’ll drink much too much and I won’t be there to help her up to bed.
I glare at Lizzi when she asks me if I’d like my face painted too. ‘No, thank you,’ I say coldly – though I’d actually love to see what I look like with flowers and stars and butterflies on my face.
‘OK, I’ll make your dad up then,’ she says.
I think Dad will make a fuss but he sits obediently on the bathroom stool and lets her paint his face. He’s actually chuckling, enjoying himself. She turns him into a vampire, making his face very white, with dark rings round his eyes and blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. He looks pretty scary, and Sweetie and Ace squeal in delighted horror. Dad chases them round the suite pretending he’s going to bite them, and they charge about, shrieking.
‘Dad, Dad, you’re getting them too excited,’ I say. ‘They won’t settle at bedtime.’
Big Mouth looks at me. ‘How old are you, Sunset, seventy? Why can’t you lighten up and let everyone have a bit of fun?’
She’s not the one who gets woken up in the middle of the night with Ace screaming that the vampire’s going to get him and bite him to bits. I have to rush Sweetie to the toilet too because she feels sick. Dad ordered room service for our dinner and let us choose anything we wanted. Sweetie chose three puddings – Ice-cream Delight, Chocolate Heaven and Lemon Yum-yum. They’re not at all delightful or heavenly or yummy when they splash into the toilet. Sweetie needs a lot of mopping up and cuddling afterwards.
None of us sleep properly after that. We huddle up together in this king-size bed in the second bedroom. The pillows are too fat and the sheets are too tight and the room is too hot. We turn and fidget and fuss in our un
familiar new nightclothes. Eventually I lie on my back and put my arms round both of them and they go to sleep at last. I stay wide awake, getting pins and needles in both arms. I try to pass the time by writing a song in my head, but I’m too tired and uncomfortable and feeling pretty sick myself. I ordered a salad thing from room service because I wanted to seem sophisticated. It came with black olives and terribly smelly fishy things that looked like worms. When I eventually fall asleep I dream about them wriggling inside my tummy.
We wake up late, but Dad and Big Mouth are not up yet, sleeping on and on and on, their bedroom door firmly closed. I take Sweetie and Ace to the bathroom and we all get washed and put on our new clothes. We forgot to buy any underwear or socks, so we have to make do with yesterday’s.
We go into the great big living room and I work out how to switch on the huge television so we’re OK for a while, but we’re all getting very hungry now, especially Sweetie, who lost all her puddings. I don’t quite dare order room service, but I find a big fridge full of drinks and snacks, so we have a very odd breakfast of Coke and peanuts and Pringles and chocolate. Sweetie feels a bit sick again afterwards, and the Coke makes Ace burp a lot. He keeps on doing it just to be annoying.
‘I’m bored,’ he says. ‘I’m going to wake Daddy.’
‘No. You can’t. You know you can’t wake him in the mornings. Besides, she’ll be there.’
‘I don’t like her,’ says Sweetie.
‘You did yesterday when she painted your face.’
‘No I didn’t! I was just pretending because I wanted to look pretty. I don’t really like her one bit,’ she says.
‘I don’t like her either,’ says Ace. ‘Mum’s much nicer. Why does Dad like her better than Mum?’
‘Oh, you’re too little to understand these things,’ I say, though I don’t really understand why either.
When Dad and Big Mouth get up at long, long, long last, we have a room service breakfast with them, though it’s more or less lunch time now. Dad says he wants to take us all out. Ace asks to go to the zoo to see the tigers, even though he’s been to the zoo and seen for himself that there aren’t any tigers there.
‘I know another zoo – a good zoo, specially for children,’ says Big Mouth. ‘There aren’t any tigers – there are mostly little furry animals like monkeys – but you can get right up close to the meerkats. You know what meerkats are, Ace?’ She does a sudden amazing meerkat impression, sticking her neck right up and quivering her nose, looking so comically like a meerkat that we all burst out laughing.
So we decide to go to this zoo in Battersea Park. Dad keeps on ruffling Big Mouth’s hair, pretending to feed her titbits and calling her ‘my little meerkat’ – which is totally sickening. But she’s right, the zoo is lovely, and we can wriggle down a tunnel and put our heads up right inside the meerkat enclosure. Their little beady eyes stare back at us as if we’re the funny animals.
Ace likes the pot-bellied pigs too, though I have to hang onto him hard to stop him hurtling over the fence to get in with them. Sweetie likes the yellow squirrel monkeys. I prefer the little mice, who have their own big mouse house with proper furniture. I wonder about Wardrobe City and think how incredible it would be if I had real mice running round all its rooms, standing at the stove, jumping on the sofa, curling up on the bed. I wonder if I could secretly get just two little mice, though maybe not a boy and a girl because then they’d mate and there’d be lots of babies.
I look at Dad and Big Mouth. He’s walking with his arm round her, cuddling her close. What if they have a baby? When Big Mouth stops and bends over the fence to stroke a big white rabbit (showing a great deal of her legs), I tug Dad’s hand, pulling him a few paces away.
‘Dad – Dad, can I ask you something?’
‘What’s that, darling?’ says Dad. He’s acting very relaxed and smiley – lots of people are recognizing him and he grins and nods all the time.
‘Dad, do you love Lizzi?’
He looks at me in sudden surprise. ‘Did your mum tell you to ask me that?’
‘No!’
Dad laughs. ‘Well, it’s her favourite question too.’ He waves in a courtly fashion to a bald grand-dad who gives him an eager thumbs-up sign and plays an air-guitar in homage.
‘So – do you?’
Dad sighs a little. ‘I don’t know. Give me a break, Sunset.’
‘But I need to know, Dad. Are you really in love with her and planning to stay with her for ever – or are you going to come back to us?’
‘I tell you, I don’t know. I just want to have a bit of fun, for God’s sake. Is that too much to ask? Your mum’s doing my head in, Sunset. She does her nut if I so much as twitch when a pretty woman walks by. I can’t stay cooped up at home for ever. I’m used to walking on the wild side, being on the road, a different gig every night . . .’
I stare at Dad. He hasn’t done a tour for donkey’s years. He hasn’t had a new album to promote. So what is he going on about? He’s playing pretend games with Lizzi, kidding himself he’s young again. It’s like he’s stepped into his own Wardrobe City.
Dad puts out his hand gently and touches my mouth.
‘What? Was I showing my teeth?’ I ask anxiously.
‘No, no, kiddo, you were nibbling your lip. Don’t worry so about your wretched teeth, Sunset. Your mum’s just got a hang-up about them. I used to have exactly the same gnashers till I had them fixed.’
I stop. ‘Dad – Destiny, this girl who could be your daughter, remember – she’s got funny teeth too.’
But I’ve lost him now.
‘Give it a rest, girl. I can’t cope with any more daughters, real or imagined.’
He goes to join Big Mouth, giving her an embarrassing pat on the bottom.
I look round for Sweetie and Ace and can’t see them. We have ten minutes of terror, running round the whole zoo before we find them back by the squirrel monkeys.
‘You two are a pair of monkeys. I need to put you in a cage,’ says Dad, picking them both up and giving them a cuddle.
Big Mouth watches, yawning. I wonder if she’d like to settle down and have children with Dad – or does she just want to have fun too? She’s looking at her watch.
‘Hey, Danny, don’t forget we’re going out tonight. Hadn’t we better take the kids back?’
We’re held up in traffic and don’t get back home till nearly seven. Mum opens the door, her face white, her eyes red.
‘Oh, thank God!’ she cries, and gives us all big hugs and kisses, even me. Then she turns to Dad. ‘How dare you deliberately torture me? You said you’d bring them back this afternoon. I’ve been ready and waiting for them since two o’clock. I’ve been phoning you frantically, leaving so many messages, which you didn’t even have the decency to answer!’
‘Hey, hey, calm down. I had my phone switched off. We were chilling out, enjoying ourselves, weren’t we, kids?’
‘Yes, I want a pot-bellied pig for a pet, Mum!’ says Ace. ‘They make such funny noises. Listen!’ He grunts and snorts with gusto.
‘And I want a squirrel monkey,’ says Sweetie. ‘Oh, Mummy, they’re so sweet and lovely and funny.’
They’re jumping up and down happily telling Mum. They’re too little to see that this is a big mistake. It’s just winding her up terribly – and yet she’s the one we’re going to be left with. Then Dad says goodbye and they both start crying. Ace gets cross and starts trying to kick Dad.
‘You bad bad daddy, you mustn’t go!’ he yells.
Sweetie sobs too, sounding heartbroken. ‘Oh, Daddy, don’t go. Please, please, please don’t go. I love you so much, I need you. Please stay, Daddy, please!’
Dad suddenly seems near tears himself, hugging Sweetie, burying his head in her golden hair, whispering in her ear. I hug him too and he pulls me close.
‘There’s my good brave big girl. I love you, Sunset.’
‘I love you too, Dad.’ I can hardly get the words out because there’s such a lump in my thro
at.
‘Look after your sister and brother for me, won’t you, darling?’
‘Yes, I will, Dad, don’t worry,’ I promise – and then he goes.
It’s so unexpectedly awful waving goodbye to him that I cry a little too. Claudia comes rushing downstairs and puts her arms round us.
‘Look, I’ll thank you to keep out of things, Claudia. They need their mother now,’ says Mum, taking us into the big living room.
Sweetie’s shop is still there, waiting to be carried up to her playroom. Sweetie goes over to it forlornly, still sniffing. She measures out a portion of sweets on her scales. Ace takes a sweet and eats it, then another. The enormous Sweetie doll sits all by herself in an armchair, neglected.
Mum sinks onto the long sofa, her head in her hands, clearly feeling rejected.
‘Oh, Mum, we’ve missed you so,’ I say awkwardly.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Sunset. You’ve all clearly had a wonderful time with your daddy,’ Mum sniffs.
‘Sweetie and Ace liked the zoo – but most of the time they were wretched,’ I say. ‘We none of us slept properly.’
‘I didn’t like my pjs, they were too tight,’ says Ace, eating another sweet.
‘Those clothes you’ve got on are too tight too, darling. Did Dad buy them for you? Honestly, fancy not being able to choose the right size for your own son! I see you’ve got new clothes too, Sweetie. Why didn’t Dad bother to buy you anything, Sunset? Why does he always leave you out?’
‘They are new, Mum. I wanted more of the same,’ I say, but she’s not listening now. She wants to hear about everything we did, demanding a minute-by-minute account.
‘And I suppose she was with you all the time? Do you like her? I bet she’s fun, isn’t she? Did you do lovely things with Lizzi?’
Sweetie puts her thumb in her mouth. Ace eats two sweets. Even they can see this is a leading question.
‘Take your thumb out of your mouth, Sweetie, you’ll ruin your teeth. What about you, Ace? Do you like Daddy’s new friend?’
‘She’s funny when she pretends to be a meerkat,’ says Ace, stuffing a whole handful of sweets into his mouth. ‘But I don’t like her either.’