An Amicabubble Breakup

by Dillie Dorian

  We nattered companionably as we headed for my house. Mum had promised her special shepherd’s pie, and she always cooked extra mince for the next day so I knew they’d be welcome. It was so much easier being around Dani, Rindi and Fern than the rest of our friends. I sort of wished we could peel off into our own little clique, but Chan would never have it.

  When we reached the kitchen, Mum was sat at the table with Lemmy, cordless phone by her side, looking weary. “Do you know where Zak’s got to?”

  “Nope, haven’t seen him. Why?”

  “Kitty came home with Emily again today, and Zak never even popped in after school. It’s getting to tea time and he won’t answer his phone.”

  “Probably switched off,” I pointed out, thinking of how embarrassed he was at the monophonic Blue Danube ringtone his simple mobile had shipped with. Harry hadn’t quite trusted him with an expensive model, but he couldn’t risk Zak getting out of contact. I chucked Lemmy under the chin in passing, and opened the cupboard to snack my mates. “He’ll call back.”

  “I hope so,” said Mum, rocking Lemmy so he gurgled slightly and gave us a possibly-wind smile. “Uh, Harley – you’ll spoil your tea.”

  “I’ve barely eaten, honest,” I promised. I pulled out the jumbo pack of crisps and handed a packet out each – plain for Fern, prawn cocktail for Rindi and cheese and onion for Dani – before grabbing the last salt and vinegar packet for myself.

  “Don’t touch my tomato sauce ones!” Charlie warned from the doorway.

  “I thought you were at Devon’s,” said Mum, startled.

  “Just nipping in to get High School Musical.”

  “Have you heard from Zak?” Mum asked, desperately.

  “Nah, sorry.” Charlie shrugged and went into the living room, returning with the DVD. He possessively grabbed all the tomato sauce crisps from me just in case.

  There was an awkward silence.

  Dani, taking after her mum, started on about her placement again. “There’s these people who were complaining because they bought a house that they think is haunted! They were saying about this weird breeze in the dining room and these cat’s eyes in the bathroom mirror and all, and they were sat in front of my mum, telling her all this. I was tidying up the desk and accidentally knocked over the paper clip tin and they looked well freaked out. So then my mum said I should just go on the internet after that and I-”

  She was interrupted by the tinkling off the cordless. Mum fumbled to pick it up on the second ring. “Hello?”

  I stood stock still. My friends stopped fidgeting.

  Mum wobbled on the line. “Yes…… oh he is, is he? Well, he’s supposed to be here…… Oh, Hugh, I know… I know that…… Of course they need to be separated sometimes…… No, I’m not saying… Well, Charlie’s being a brat, yes…… No, Harry can deal with him, thank you…… I see…… Alright, since it’s Friday…… Send my love. OK… OK, bye!”

  We all looked expectantly. Dani, Rindi and Fern were trying not to look so expectant, but I could tell that they were. Even Lemmy seemed to look up at Mum with interest, and he was barely capable of controlling his neck.

  “Zak’s safe. He’s at the Godfreys’,” sighed Mum, sounding close to tears. “Hugh just got in from work, and he’d… brought a bag. With all his night stuff and memory cards and one of my scarves. Well, I’m glad he had the sense not to run away proper, but this is horrible.”

  “You don’t have to let him sleep over,” I pointed out. “Why don’t you make him come home right now?”

  “No, no… I won’t spoil his fun,” she blubbed. “I’m sure he’ll see sense with time. You girls go and have your crisps and I’ll get the tea on.”

  #13 An Amicabubble Breakup

  Woke up.

  For once, the house wasn’t full of yellings. No moans of “Don’t open the curtains yet; I need my beauty sleep!” from Charlie, and no “Hurry up in the loo!” yet either. It was true that those two had always been the main cause of morning noise in the Hartley household, right from a very young age – and this particular Saturday, instead of enjoying the peace I was disturbed by the relative silence.

  I tuned my ears in deeper.

  There was the rasp of Kitty’s brush trying to un-knot her hair quite near to me as I got dressed. That was about it…

  At breakfast, Kitty and Charlie and Aimee and Mum and Harry were all sat at the table, eyeing Zak’s seat with considerable mixed emotions. Kitty stared dolefully at the empty chair as if it would make him come home. Mum was teary-eyed as she held Lemmy and probably thought about when Zak was that small. Harry stroked Mum’s arm protectively, promising to take the weekend off so he could be there for her. Aimee sat with a raised eyebrow, stirring her cereal awkwardly and looking exhausted. Charlie frowned as if he resented Zak still “coming first” even in his obvious absence. I stuck some bread in the toaster and looked for the marmalade.

  Devon rapped cheerfully on the kitchen window, having come through the gap in the garden fence. Harry breathed in sharply, clearly annoyed. Devon paused to cameraphone the flowerbeds she’d helped plant, and I went to the door to let her in. She and Charlie looked at each other and blushed.

  “Where’s-?”

  “Zak?”

  “Um… I was going to say ‘Where’s this live?’” she wavered, thrusting a DVD box at me. (The dreaded High School Musical.) “But yeah, where is Zak?”

  “Still at Andy’s,” I informed her, noticing how dry my mouth was. “It’s early yet.”

  I looked at Charlie. Usually he’d be in tears if he thought something like this was his fault, if he thought he was to blame. He wasn’t. He took the DVD from me in silence, and kept his glare trained on the floor all the way out of the kitchen.

  On his return, he slipped on his trainers that had been lying by the back door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Out. Dunno where, seeing as he’s at Andy’s.”

  “Couldn’t you spend the day with us?” asked Dev. “I know you’re upset about Zak, but-”

  Charlie looked more serious than ever. “I am not upset about Zak.”

  “Harley,” said Devon, desperately. “Think of something. What shall we do?”

  I sighed, wishing my family wasn’t so far beyond help, as I wiped milk from Kitty’s face where it was about to drip onto her Bratz T-shirt.

  “I was thinking…” I lied, attempting to pretend that I had indeed been thinking, rather than suffering thinker’s block. I had no idea where up or down was anymore, and I felt frazzled from worry that if we didn’t somehow earn Zak back, he might slip away from Hugh’s one night and disappear for real.

  So, due to my lack of spatial awareness and heaps of apprehension, Kitty’s inability to create her own daytime activities and lack of sleep the night before, what did my stupid brainbox say was the perfect feel-good activity on this fetid little Saturday?

  Yeah, we all snuggled down in the living room and slid Charlie’s High School Musical DVD into the player – boy were we going to need a great deal of dithery pop songs and artificial smiles to get ourselves past this one.

  * * *

  When I ventured into the kitchen for a snack that evening, Mum was still sat at the round table.

  “Mum, is he still not answering? The battery has to be dead.”

  She jolted at the word “dead”.

  “I’m sure he’ll be fine,” I reassured her, emptying the bedroom bin that I’d brought down with me into the kitchen one. “What’s for tea tonight?”

  “I’m not sure whose turn it is,” said Mum, blankly. We’d recently started a new rota for which of us should cook on Saturdays to give her a rest, and I’d forgotten. “If it’s Charlie, you’ll have to get him back from next door.”

  I peered at the chart. “It’s Zak’s turn, actually.”

  Mum sighed. “Is there any chance you could take his turn, Harley? I don’t want anything personally, but it would be a real help…”

  “Of course
,” I said. I hunted in the freezer for hopefully-frozen kiddie foods that I could stick in to cook and forget about. I found turkey shapes and giggled to myself at what Kitty had said the other day. Mum looked at me oddly, and I decided to let her in on it. “Me and Kitty were having a joke about whether chickens have nuggets. I was just reminded of that.”

  “You were all that innocent once,” said Mum, fondly, as I fiddled with the oven. “I remember taking you and Shelley and Charlie shoe shopping when you were just starting school, and you were only interested in the ones for the little tiny babies, putting them on your doll and insisting that the shop assistant measured her feet and that you got a serving number from the ticket machine. Then Charlie kept complaining that all the shoes were horrible and why couldn’t he wear his new wellies. And Shelley really wanted these sweet little pink buckle-ups, but the school said you all had to wear black shoes and she got really upset, and then Zak was fussing, and we had to rush and get you all the first things that fitted so that we could leave, and Shelley was in such a state that I went back the next day and bought her the pink ones as well, for out of school…”

  I grinned. “I bet we were a handful.”

  “Of course not!” Mum tutted. “Aimee’s eating out, by the way, so I think you’ve only got Kitty to feed. Don’t mind me.”

  “Oh Mum!” I groaned. “I’ll cook for you, too – Kitty can have these turkey thingies, and I could do you and Harry a packet pasta…?”

  “Yes, OK, you’ve won me over. Pop it in the microwave. And I think Kitty might like sweetcorn with that turkey and a couple of chips.”

  I added chips to the tray and put it in the cooker, before hunting out the sweetcorn. I was thinking – “D’you want Charlie home?”

  “Ask him if he’s eating at Devon’s, will you? I’ll watch the stove…”

  So I popped next door to be let in by Devon’s gran who was carrying a piping hot bowl of spaghetti bolognese without oven gloves, and had a hungry sheepdog lolloping eagerly at her feet. “Is that one more for a meal?”

  I thought about it. “Thank you, but I’ll have to ask.”

  I walked into the dining area, where Devon and Charlie were sat at the table, acting something out with the cutlery:

  “Mr Knife, I’m afraid I’m gonna have to put you in custard-y!” Devon shrieked, making her spoon somehow look angry.

  “Won’t spag bol do?” Charlie groaned, making his knife keel dangerously near to the bit of skin between his thumb and index finger. “I mean, you can’t go to all the length of making custard from powder with that lovely meal just coming…”

  “Not enough coleslaw for you?” Devon giggled, winking at me in acknowledgement.

  “I’m not that bad!” he complained.

  “But you did just eat four bags of ketchup crisps, y’know!” Devon reasoned. “I bet you’ve ruined your dinner!”

  “Here it is,” announced Eileen, placing three bowls of spaghetti bolognese down on the table, and carrying her own into the living room.

  “Looks like you’re eating here,” said Devon.

  I nipped home to tell Mum about the new arrangement before returning to the meal, where Devon and Charlie had kindly waited for me.

  “How’s the girls?” asked Devon, putting her fork into the correct hand.

  “Dani’s just freaked out a couple with a haunted house, Rindi’s got her article published, and Fern’s been making new friends and harnessing toddlers…”

  “Oh, fun…”

  “Yeah, fun.”

  “Charlie embarrassed himself yesterday,” she suddenly burst out, before taking a huge forkful or twisted-up spaghetti.

  “How?”

  Devon pointed at her pouchy hamster cheeks as if to say, “Can’t. It’d be rude.”

  Charlie blushed. “This person came into the shop and I had to serve them, and I said, ‘How can I help you, Sir?’ and he turned out to be a woman. So then I thought I could make it better by pretending I’d been carrying on like that all day, so I called this man ‘Madam’ in front of the woman, but I didn’t know he was the Mayor, and he was in there looking for something for his nephew, and he really didn’t think it was funny…”

  I laughed. “What about you, Devon?”

  “Oh, you know…” she yawned. “Wait, there was one thing!”

  “What was that?”

  “Wacky Macky comes to counselling!”

  “In her job, it wouldn’t surprise me.” I smirked, thinking of how calm the young Mr W seemed, and wondering how long it would last.

  After dinner, we did the washing up and the three of us headed back to ours. When we got to the kitchen, we just caught the end of the conversation Mum and Harry were having with the speakerphone:

  Harry said, “Look, Zak, I’m not your father, so I can’t tell you what’s what.”

  Zak’s voice said, “Did I ask you to?”

  Mum sobbed, “No, but you know we want you here!”

  Zak’s voice said, “Well, I’m really sorry, Mum – but I do want to live with Hugh and there’s nothing you can do…”

  Mum sounded like she was choking on her sadness, “Zak, please don’t make things difficult for us! I thought we were all happy together!”

  And then Zak sounded like he was just really annoyed – “Like I said, I’m sorry, but I think it’s best if Charlie and I have like an amicabubble divorce from each other. We can’t live together and we both know it, and it’s not fair on Lemmy or Kitty or any of you – so this is goodbye from Zak, see you guys around sometime, without Charlie.”

  Amicable? With the level of volume that’d been shaking our foundations, recently? He had to be having a bubble!

  “Zak!” Mum cried, vainly trying to stop him. “Please! Don’t make Charlie the reason you don’t want to be with us; he’s right here!”

  I heard a slight frost down the line, and then, “Goodbye, Mum. I love you…”

  #14 Silence & No Swings

  Sunday provided awkwardness in spades.

  There was Charlie’s refusal to have a nice word to say about Zak in front of Mum, and Devon’s weird habit of almost touching him and then not. Aimee blathered insensitively on the phone to a friend about how much she was looking forward to holding her new baby. Mum cried shamelessly in front of Devon and Ben, worried that Zak would never come back. Kitty needed explaining to firmly that trying not to eat or sleep or go to the loo wasn’t going to bring him back any sooner. All because someone, on Saturday, had dropped the ball and let everyone know that Zak had said he was never, ever, ever coming home.

  I’d been trying to fix Charlie’s selfish attitude. Mum knew – it was Hugh who had told her. But now I felt like a complete flake for giving my little sister so much to worry about, and Harry so much to be wincingly apathetic about. Considering that it was Father’s Day, neither he nor we were winning any awards. I gave him a “Like a Father to Me” card anyway, out of politeness, and signed it from me and Kitty. Charlie was well and truly on his own.

  * * *

  School dragged on Monday.

  Teachers were forcing us all to write a summary of our Work Shadowing, and trust me, if I hadn’t already written an account of it to you, I’d have completely forgotten even the memorable coffee thing…

  After school, I had to pick Kitty up, and I really blessed the valuable forty minutes between my leaving our school and arriving outside the Infants.

  Kitty was in tears when I reached her, lugging her Bratz lunchbox and bookbag stroppily.

  “Kit, what’s up?” I asked.

  “I saw Zak today and he ignored me!”

  “I didn’t see him leave…”

  “Him and his friends climbed over the fence inbetween the playgrounds.”

  Ah, so they’d been skiving?

  “Don’t worry about it; we’ll find a way to get him back,” I promised her. “Now how about we nip over to the park for a little while, cheer you up a bit?”

  She sniffed and nodded, and we mad
e our way to the park. We were going to the further-up one, because it was right near where I thought Zak had to be.

  “There’s the park; we walked right past it,” said Kitty, pointing to the one by the school.

  “No, we’re going to the other one.”

  “Why? This one’s nearer!”

  “No reason,” I said, and we walked in silence while I fumbled in my bag for the odd lolly I might’ve had lying around. (Though not the really odd lolly from under my bed that I may or may not have mentioned before.)

  “That’s the one where the boys do skating,” she protested. “There’s no swings!”

  “This is the park we’re going to.”

  “Why? Mum says we’re not to go there because the big boys go in there and they leave things!”

  I usually would’ve laughed at the innocence involved in that statement, but I was only reminded about Zak and how he liked to hang around in that so-I’d-been-reminded drug-abusing environment. The place where I’d previously caught him smoking…

  The rap I’d got when Kitty tattled had been pretty severe, but it hadn’t broken my not-grounded streak. She, on the other hand, seemed to have been seriously affected by Mum’s well-meaning warnings. The warnings she doled out only to those of us who might actually listen. I’d been one of those children once.

  “Kit, we’ll only be in this playpark for a little bit, and I can assure you that I won’t let you touch anything dangerous,” I told her as we neared it up.

  I glanced towards the huge skate ramps. (OK I was slightly eyeing up a couple of college-aged guys on boards.) It felt nippy once again and Kitty shivered because she’d gone out that morning in nothing but her check dress. We felt robbed of our start of summer.

  We saw no sign of Zak.

  #15 Crush Mats

  I’d been sat at my desk for hours – the twentyish page leaflet about GCSE subjects laid out in front of me. Now that’d I’d completed my three days as an English teacher’s understudy, I was no closer to finding out whether a writing career was for me, and therefore no closer to figuring out my Options.

  Double English, Maths and Double Science were a given. That was already at least ten hours of my week taken up, and out of the remaining subjects nothing was really appealing. Short Course ICT and RS already seemed like too much, and there was no way I could take four hours a week of extra PE.