‘No thanks. Anyway, you don’t know it’s going to be a girl. It could be a boy. A boy like Zen,’ I said.
My dad doesn’t go a bundle on Zen either. I’m glad. I don’t see why Zen and Crystal get to have my dad all the time just because they haven’t got one of their own. (Carrie said their dad couldn’t face commitment. He probably took one look at Zen and scarpered.)
‘Twin Zens,’ I added triumphantly.
But Carrie shook her head.
‘No. I had a scan. In case it was twins again. And it’s just one baby. A little girl.’
‘Oh.’ I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
There was this great long silence. Carrie looked at me. Then she looked at Dad. He didn’t do anything. So Carrie came and put her arm round me.
‘What shall we call your little sister, Andy?’ she said.
Dad brightened up. ‘Yes, Andy. How about you choosing a name for her?’
Carrie looked a bit worried, but she nodded.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll choose her name.’
They’re going to have to let me choose it now. They practically promised. And I’m going to pick the worst name ever.
I used to have this Great-Great-Auntie Ethel who smelt of wee-wee and shouted at everyone. She took one look at me and said ‘Who’s that great gawky child with enormous feet? Let’s hope she’s got brains because she’s certainly no beauty.’
I’ve got brains all right. My little step-sister-to-be is going to be called Ethel.
AILEEN WAS ALWAYS my best friend right from the time we were in the first year at Infant school. Her mum and my mum were friends too and Aileen’s mum would drive us all home after school. Sometimes we’d go back to Aileen’s and her mum would make hot chocolate with marshmallows and Aileen and I would play with her Barbie dolls. Sometimes Aileen and her mum would come back to Mulberry Cottage with us and we’d have fruit juice – once we had mulberry juice – and Aileen and I would play Sylvanian families.
Then we got old enough to do things without our mums and so we’d go to the park and play on the swings and we’d go down to the corner shop to buy crisps and Coke and we’d creep through a hole in the fence on this bit of wasteland and play games in the bushes.
We had such a great time. But now it’s all different. When we left Mulberry Cottage, I couldn’t go on playing with Aileen after school every day. My mum’s new house with the baboon is miles and miles away. My dad’s flat with Carrie is even further away in the opposite direction. Mum did let me have Aileen round to tea one time, but Katie kept hanging round us and we didn’t have anywhere private to play so we just ended up listening to Paula’s records. We couldn’t be secret and special the way we used to be.
I still see Aileen every day at school but it’s not the same. Aileen’s mum gives a lift home to Fiona now. Aileen and Fiona play together after school. We go round in this sort of threesome at playtime. Aileen keeps insisting she’s still my friend but when we have to join up with a partner in class now she always goes with Fiona.
I COME HOME from school by myself now. There isn’t anyone to give me a lift. I have to walk down Seymore Road and round Larkspur Lane and up Victoria Street into the town. I go to the bus station and then, when I’m staying with Mum, I get a 29 as far as The Cricketers pub and then I have a ten-minute walk. I have to get two buses when I’m at my dad’s, a 62 and a 144 and then I have a fifteen-minute walk even after the two bus rides. I’m exhausted when I get back, I’m telling you.
I’d go crazy if I didn’t have Radish to talk to on the way. Once or twice just at first I got lost and forgot the way and got that horrible hot swirly feeling in my stomach. I had to clutch Radish tight to stop myself crying. Then I calmed down and asked a safe-looking lady with children to show me the way to the bus station.
Then another time my purse must have fallen out of my coat pocket because when I was queuing up for the bus I went to get my money out ready and my purse had gone. I thought for a moment I’d lost Radish too but then I found her clinging to the pocket lining. She made me feel a bit better but I still didn’t know what to do.
I could simply have told the bus driver I’d lost my purse but I was scared he’d get cross. He was one of those big fat men with a frowny face.
But I didn’t have to ask him in the end because an old lady had been watching me frantically searching my pockets.
‘What’s up, dear? Lost your bus fare? Here, don’t you fret, I’ll pay your fare today.’
I was very grateful and asked Mum for extra bus fare the next day to pay her back. Mum got ever so fussed when she found out what had happened.
‘Poor old Andy. You must have been so worried. Oh dear, I do hate it that you have to come home by yourself now.’
Mum can’t come and meet me because she works nine to five in a chemist’s shop now to help pay the bills. I wish she’d chosen a more exciting shop, like a cake shop or a toy shop or a pet shop. You can’t get very excited when she brings home half-price loo rolls and stale cough sweets.
‘I’ve been coming home from school by myself since I was six years old, Auntie Carol,’ said Katie smugly.
‘That doesn’t count. Your stupid old school is just down the road. A baby of six months could crawl it,’ I said.
‘I wish you’d swop to Katie’s school, Andy,’ said Mum. ‘It would be so much more sensible.’
‘But if I went to Katie’s school then it would take me hours and hours to get there when I’m staying at Dad’s,’ I said.
‘Well. All this to-ing and fro-ing is getting ridiculous anyway,’ said Mum. ‘You’re getting worn out, Andy. I’m thinking about you, darling. It would be so much better if you settled down in one place for a while and went to the local school.’
‘That’s what Dad says. He wants me to settle down with him. And go to Zen and Crystal’s school,’ I said.
I’m not going to go to any other old school. I like my school. Even though it isn’t really the same any more. Aileen isn’t the same. The teachers aren’t even the same. They made a bit of a fuss of me at first when Mum and Dad split up but now they often get cross with me. I forget to do things or I lose my books or I don’t listen in lessons.
‘If you’d only try to concentrate, Andrea,’ they say.
I am concentrating, but it’s not often on lessons nowadays.
There’s only one good thing about all these boring journeys to and from school. I’ve discovered another mulberry tree. It’s in a garden in Larkspur Lane so I get to see it whether I’m living at my mum’s or living at my dad’s. It’s not as nice as our mulberry tree at Mulberry Cottage of course. It’s very old and knarled and bent over, but it still grows lots of mulberries.
I watched them ripening from red to purple to bright black and brimming with juice. No-one seemed to be picking them. The grass grew lavishly and the flowers were in tangled clumps and the creepers were crawling all over everywhere. Perhaps no-one was living there any more.
I peered over the high fence every day, trying to see the house, though it was hidden by another tree. I never heard a radio or saw a deckchair out in the garden. I started to lean right over the gate, peering in. Sometimes I got Radish out so she could peer too.
The garden would be fairyland for Radish. She could trek through the grass playing Jungle Explorers, swinging on the creepers like a tiny Tarzan. And she could eat mulberries . . .
My mouth watered as I looked at those great big berries. One day I could stand it no longer. I got my leg up over the gate, I jumped down into the garden, I ran through the long grass, I reached the mulberry tree, I snatched a handful of berries and then rushed back. I scratched my hand on the tree and banged my shin badly climbing back over the gate but I had the mulberries safe in my hand. I crammed them into my mouth and the juice spurted over my tongue and I closed my eyes because it was just just just like being back at Mulberry Cottage.
I still stop at the mulberry garden every day. And mostly I slip inside.
>
I wish I was
in Mulberry Cottage
with Mum and Dad
and Radish.
THAT’S A HAIKU. We did Haikus in English. When the teacher said that we were going to learn about Haikus we all got excited because we thought it was going to be like Kung Fu. But Haikus are little Japanese poems. She read us some and there was one about a garden in the moonlight with a willow and wild berries. I started listening properly. I decided I liked Haikus a lot.
In my dreams
I am as small as my rabbit
and I am safe
at home.
That’s another Haiku.
I live with Mum
I live with Dad
I live with Radish
Can’t we join up?
And another.
I ALWAYS SEEM to be getting ill nowadays. I get these headaches or sometimes they’re tummy-aches or other times it’s an ache all over and I’m either much too hot or so cold I’m shivering. It’s always worse on Fridays. That’s changeover day.
A few Fridays ago I had a bit of a sniffle on Friday morning. I burrowed right under the bedclothes till I got boiling hot and sweaty and then I called Mum, sounding all sad and sore and pathetic.
Mum felt my forehead and gave me a worried cuddle. I knew Katie would tease me later about being a baby but I didn’t care. Mum always makes far more fuss of me on Fridays. I clung to her and said I felt really lousy.
‘I think you’ve got flu,’ said Mum. ‘Oh dear. Well, you certainly can’t do that awful journey to school, not in this state. You’d better stay in bed.’
‘All by myself?’ I said, hunching up as small as I could.
Mum hesitated. ‘Maybe I’d better stay off work.’
‘Oh Mum, would you?’ I said.
‘They won’t like it. But it can’t be helped. You’re really not at all well, pet. You’d better stay in bed all weekend.’
‘What, at Dad’s?’
‘No, you’ll have to stay put here. You’re not up to travelling,’ said Mum firmly.
I started to feel really sick then. I wanted to stay with Mum and have her making a big fuss of me – but I still wanted to go to Dad’s too.
But I made the most of that Friday all the same. Katie flounced off, forbidding me in a whisper to touch any of her videos or records – ‘Or I’ll get you later.’
I can beat her in a straight fight but she’s got all sorts of devious hateful ways of hurting me. She hides my stuff. She scribbles inside my schoolbooks. Once I found poor Radish floating miserably down the loo and I just know Katie threw her there. She had to spend the night in a bowl of disinfectant and she didn’t lose the smell for days and days, so that whenever I cuddled her close my eyes stung.
But I didn’t need to play Katie’s records or videos or touch any of her boring junk. Mum came and sat on the edge of my bed and she read the paper and I read one of my old baby books and then when I started to act a bit droopy Mum read some more books aloud to me. She fixed me a lovely lunch, tomato soup and a soft white roll and then she made me a special bowl of green jelly. She even let me pretend it was lettuce-flavoured so that Radish could wade through this wonderland and get her paws all sticky.
We all had a nap after lunch and when I woke up Mum lent me her white lace hankie and I played Brides with Radish. I said I was starting to feel a lot better and suggested I could get up, but Mum wouldn’t hear of it. And then the others came home from school and the baboon came back from his work and then about seven o’clock I heard the car toot outside. It was Dad come to pick me up.
I tried jumping out of bed then but Mum hauled me straight back. She went to speak to Dad. Only they didn’t do much speaking. They were shouting in less than a minute. Then Dad stormed right into the house and up the stairs to see me. Un-Uncle Bill said he had no right to come barging in and Dad said he had every right if his daughter was ill. Dad gave me a great big hug but then he held me at arm’s length and looked at me.
‘You seem fine to me. Maybe you’ve got a cold, but everyone’s got the sniffles just now. Come on, Andy, get dressed and we’ll get cracking,’ said Dad.
I started to do as I was told, but Mum started shouting that it would be madness taking me out into the cold air when I had flu and that I was to get back into bed this instant.
I stood in my pyjamas shivering in the middle of Katie’s bedroom, not knowing what to do. Mum won that battle in the end. Dad stormed out and I was so scared he was blaming me that I started crying. Mum bundled me back to bed, insisting that it was wicked for Dad to get me in such a state.
I had to stay in bed most of that weekend and it stopped being a treat and started to get really boring. I didn’t have Mum to myself because all the others were around. And then on Sunday Katie insisted she’d caught my ‘flu’ and she stayed in bed too. She didn’t want my mum nursing her. She just wanted her dad.
So the baboon sat her on his lap and called her his poor little princess and other sickening stuff. He nipped out to the off-licence at lunchtime and bought her a huge box of chocolates. Katie wouldn’t eat any of Mum’s chicken and roast potatoes and peas but she hogged almost that whole box of chocolates to herself.
I hated seeing her all cuddled up with the baboon. It made me miss my dad even more. I couldn’t wait till the next Friday so I could see him again. But then he was all huffy with me for ages, acting like it was my fault I’d stayed on at Mum’s.
‘You can’t kid me, Andy. You were play-acting,’ he said crossly, and when I tried to get on his lap he tipped me off and said I was behaving like a big baby.
He was a bit nicer on Saturday and by Sunday he was OK and he played Snap with me and one evening that week he came home early from work and took me out and bought me an icecream soda . . . but it still wasn’t such a good visit as usual.
Maybe I’d better not get ill again for a while.
I WAS ILL the very next time I went to Dad’s. Not just a little sniffle. I felt a bit shivery and strange on Thursday, but then I generally do at Carrie’s house. She has the basement flat and it’s always got this sour damp smell even though she burns joss sticks all day long. She’s got storage heaters. I don’t know what they store but it’s certainly not heat. I wear a thick cardi even in the summer and by the Autumn I wear two of everything, even two pairs of knickers.
Carrie doesn’t seem to feel the cold herself and floats around in her filmy smocks without a shiver. Zen and Crystal are the same. They wander around stark naked after a bath or play for hours in their pyjamas while I hop about in the Japanese bag absolutely perished.
I told Dad I felt funny but he didn’t take much notice. Carrie tried to put her arm round me to give me a hug.
‘It’s Friday tomorrow, isn’t it. Poor old Andy.’
I wriggled away from her. I don’t like her holding me at the best of times. I especially can’t stand it now, when she’s got this big tummy full of the baby sticking out in front. Zen and Crystal put their hands on her tummy and giggle when they feel the baby moving. It gives me the creeps.
I kept dreaming about the new baby that night. Carrie’s tummy swelled and swelled until she got as big as a whale and couldn’t even waddle around any more. And then the baby was born and it was huge too, even taller than me, with a great big lolling head and beady blue eyes that glared balefully at me. It bawled whenever I got near it so Dad said I’d better keep out of the way. It went on yelling even when I was in the bathroom so Dad said I had to go right out in the freezing cold garden.
I started yelling too then, and Dad got really cross and said I wasn’t setting my little sister Andrea a good example.
‘What do you mean, Andrea? I’m Andrea. The new baby can’t be called Andrea too. I’ve got to give her a name, you said I could. She’s Ethel. I’m calling her Ethel.’
The baby roared and Dad pushed me right out into the road.
‘Don’t be so silly. You’re not Andrea. My baby’s my little girl and she’s called A
ndrea,’ Dad shouted from the house, struggling with the giant baby.
‘I’m your little girl! I’m Andy!’ I screamed as I dodged in and out of the traffic.
Then a car hit me hard in the chest and I opened my eyes and there was Zen sitting on top of me.
‘Wake up, Andy!’ he said, jiggling up and down.
‘You were shouting, Andy,’ Crystal said, bending over me, her long hair tickling my face. ‘Were you having a bad dream?’
‘Mm. Get off me, Zen,’ I said. My voice came out in a queer croak. It hurt a lot. I wasn’t shivery any more. I was boiling hot.
‘Get off her, Zen,’ said Crystal, pushing him. ‘I don’t think you’re very well, Andy.’
‘I don’t think I am either,’ I said, and I started to cry.
‘I’ll get Mum,’ said Crystal.
‘No, get my dad,’ I croaked.
They both came. Carrie sat cross-legged beside me, her tummy huge under her nightie. She sighed sympathetically.
‘Poor little fruitcake, Friday always makes you feel bad, doesn’t it,’ she said. ‘Would you like me to show you the relaxation exercise I do at my childbirth class? It really helps stop you feeling tense.’
‘She’s not feeling tense, she really is ill,’ said Dad, his hand on my forehead. ‘She’s got a fever, feel, Carrie.’
I squirmed away from Carrie’s cool fingers and clutched at Dad.
‘My throat hurts. And my head. And my neck and my arms and my legs. Everywhere hurts. Oh Dad, will you stay off work and look after me?’ I begged.
‘My poor old tuppenny. Yes, you’ve got a nasty sore throat. All right, no school. But Carrie will look after you.’
‘I want you, Dad.’
‘Now you’re being silly,’ said Dad, but he didn’t sound cross. He ruffled my hair and hugged me close. And to my amazement he phoned his office after breakfast and told them he was taking a day’s leave.
‘I can’t help it if it’s not convenient,’ he said. ‘My little girl needs me.’