The Mixed-Up Summer of Lily McLean

by Lindsay Littleson

  “Lily!” shouts my gran. “Come when you’re called!”

  I amble casually through to the living room, where Gran is standing, the image of a cartoon battleaxe, face grim and arms folded round her large chest, glaring at the clothes draped over the chairs and at the toys scattered on the carpet. Bronx and Hudson sit awestruck on the couch, silent for the first time today. Thank goodness they’re dressed at least. Gran is a frightening sight when she is preparing for battle.

  “You girls should be more help to your mother,” she snaps, as Jenna slouches in behind me. “Look at the state of this place. It’s a disgrace!”

  Mum flushes crimson but says nothing.

  I pick up a small jumper and fold it neatly, then run over and hug my gran around her ample middle.

  “I am so excited about going to Millport, Gran!” I say, with rather sickly enthusiasm. Sure enough, when I turn around, Jenna is sticking her fingers down her throat and pretending to vomit.

  “You’ll need a swimming costume and some decent summer clothes,” says Gran, looking disparagingly at my grey joggers and hoodie. “You can’t come with me looking like that.”

  “She looks fine to me,” blurts Mum, and Jenna snorts rudely.

  “She really doesn’t, Mum,” she says witheringly.

  You can all stop talking about me now, I think fiercely, but say nothing as usual.

  “Doesn’t the child have clean clothes to wear, at least?” asks Gran, turning on Mum.

  “Of course she does,” replies Mum, which is an absolutely made-up fiction. Virtually every bit of clothing I own is in the dirty laundry bin.

  The growing tension between Mum and Gran is making me a bit anxious. What’s wrong with me today? I’m not usually such a drip. I think Mum realises, because she puts her hand on my shoulder and squeezes gently.

  “Lily can wear that lovely pink swimming costume… the one you bought for Jenna a couple of years ago. Jenna’s grown out of it now. And we’ve already arranged a shopping trip to buy more summer clothes, haven’t we, Lily? We’re getting the train into Glasgow next Saturday,” she adds.

  This is all news to me, but I nod and smile in agreement, pleased at the thought of a trip into town with Mum. But inwardly I’m groaning at the thought of yet another of Jenna’s pink cast-offs. I’m sure that awful swimsuit has ruffles too.

  Jenna looks outraged that Mum and I have planned a shopping trip without her, but she can hardly complain that she isn’t being included in a trip to buy clothes for a holiday on which she is refusing to come.

  I smile innocently at her and she glares back icily. If looks could kill, I’d be on a mortuary slab.

  Gran nods and smiles and I know she’s just getting started. She starts to unbutton her beige raincoat. My gran always wears a coat, even on the warmest of days.

  “That’s great, Claire. I would like to help pay for the clothes, as I want Lily to look really smart on this holiday.”

  Gran says this while looking me up and down in a way that suggests I look the exact opposite of smart at the moment. I can feel my face blushing fiery red as Jenna grins meanly.

  “And Jenna can babysit for the wee ones when you go into Glasgow,” Gran adds spitefully. “I’ve got a coffee morning at my church next Saturday.”

  “But I’ve got plans for Saturday,” Jenna yammers, the grin on her face dissolving instantly. “Jess and I are going—”

  “You’ll need to cancel your plans. You’re babysitting,” snaps Gran.

  Gran dumps her shiny handbag on the floor and plonks her big behind down on the couch between a startled Bronx and Hudson, who have to leap out the way to avoid being squashed.

  “Make me a cup of tea, Jenna,” she barks. “Lily and I have our holiday plans to discuss. And I’d like a chocolate biscuit with my tea.”

  Jenna flounces out, looking torn between fury and relief at having to leave the room. She must have been worried that Gran would drag her unwillingly to Millport or roar at her for being an ungrateful brat. But Gran seems relatively resigned. Maybe she is secretly relieved, like I am.

  “You need a bath and hair wash, madam,” says Gran to me firmly. “A lady’s hair is her crowning glory, you know.”

  She turns to Mum and shoos her, as if she were an annoying insect.

  “Off you go to work, Claire. I’ll take over here. And why are you letting the baby sleep at this time of day, for heaven’s sake?”

  Five minutes later, Mum leaves for work, her eyes flashing with annoyance and her mouth full of bitter words which will spill out later when Gran isn’t around.

  As soon as Mum has slammed the door behind her, Gran sets us all to work. Sunday evening is its usual whirl of tidying, cleaning and washing. I don’t complain. In fact I relish those Sunday nights. They restore some order to our lives and ensure that, at least on a Monday morning, we all look clean and respectable.

  “You girls need to help your mother more,” Gran complains repeatedly, and while Jenna stuffs her fingers in her ears, I’m listening guiltily.

  It’s not that I don’t want to be helpful. I know Mum is tired when she gets home from cleaning other people’s houses. I know she needs help to keep this house looking nice. It’s just that housework is so dull and repetitive. You can spend ages making a room all tidy, clean and vacuumed and then a few minutes later Bronx and Hudson will have scattered action figures, lego blocks and biscuit crumbs over every surface. All your hard work is ruined and you are back to square one.

  Sometimes – ok, most of the time – I’d rather read a book or listen to the radio. But on Sunday nights, I’m happy to put in the effort and even Jenna, who usually grudges every moment spent away from her precious laptop, scrubs the kitchen floor and washes down the tiles in the bathroom without an excessive amount of moaning.

  “Well done, girls,” says Gran, when we collapse in a heap on the couch. She is bashing our clothes into submission with an iron, thumping it against the board as she turns tangled heaps of laundry into neat, organised piles.

  “Now, doesn’t it feel good knowing you’ll be nice and smart for school tomorrow?” she asks nobody in particular. “Go and pack your bags and lay out your uniforms. Lily, you get Bronx organised for the morning.”

  Gran runs a bath for us all using some of Mum’s Christmas bubble bath. Jenna gets the water first because she is oldest and grumpiest. I am bitterly jealous of all the frothy, fluffy mango-scented bubbles. It looks bliss.

  “Get out of here,” snarls Jenna, pushing past me into the bathroom and shoving me towards the door. “Give me peace.”

  I wonder if she and I will ever be friends again, or if we will be at each other’s throats forever. I miss the big sister I had before she metamorphosed into a monster. Even if she was a werewolf like the ones in her stupid vampire books, then at least she would be normal for most of the time, and we’d only live in terror of her when there was a full moon.

  “Lily, get in that bath and give yourself a good scrub!” yells Gran, ten minutes later.

  The water is a bit lukewarm and scummy with shampoo and soap by the time I get in. But lying back in the deep water is peaceful and relaxing. Gran has brought some coconut shampoo from her own house and I use it to wash my hair. When it’s washed and blow-dried, my wispy gingery hair will look all glossy, light and fluffy. I will be able to toss it carelessly from side to side like those daft girls in the shampoo adverts.

  Eventually, I drag myself out of the bath, dry myself on a damp towel and look in the bathroom mirror. That’s better. My face is flushed and pink and I look almost pretty, though my nose is still too long and my face is thin and pointy. My eyes are an odd, light-grey colour, like beach pebbles.

  “Lily?” says the voice, right into my ear. “Is that you, Lily?”

  I whirl around, trying to catch the voice in the act. I think I catch a glimpse of a vague, shadowy outline of a person, but can’t be sure.

  “Who are you?” I whisper. But nobody answers. The only sounds a
re the dripping tap and the distant whirring of the washing machine.

  Chapter 5

  Reasons not to get involved in school sports:

  I haven’t got a competitive bone in my body.

  Being all hot and sweaty doesn’t appeal when there may be no clean shirts in the house until Gran sorts stuff at the weekend.

  I’m always one of the last to get chosen when they pick teams in gym lessons (unless Rowan is doing the picking). Why would I want more of that in my own time?

  When I meet Rowan and David at the school gate on Monday morning, I can tell they’ve been plotting. David smiles at me and I know by his look that Rowan has told him I was upset on the beach yesterday. He is sorry for me, and there is nothing I hate more than being pitied. Rowan’s brown curls are tied back in a red ribbon and she is neat and pretty in the same school uniform that makes me look like a World War Two evacuee.

  “Hi Lily,” she says cheerfully. “Are you feeling better?”

  “I’m fine thanks,” I reply. ‘Fine’ is one of my most overused words. I hide the truth with ‘fine’ all the time. “So, another week in the hellhole,” I say cheerfully, as I let go of Bronx’s hand and let him loose to run wild in the playground. Hudson has already bounded ahead, having sighted his friends from afar. “I can’t believe the weekend’s over already.”

  Rowan and David both know that I’m havering. I love school. My keenness to be involved in nearly all things school-related is legendary. No wonder Jenna thinks I’m a creep. My jobs at school include being on the pupil council and eco committee, running the Fairtrade shop, litter picking, being a lunch buddy to the wee ones and a wet play monitor when it rains. The only thing I draw the line at is sport. Yes, I would rather pick up empty juice cartons and half-eaten sandwiches than be hit in the face by a netball any day. Rowan plays after-school netball and badminton but I refuse point blank to get involved.

  “David and I have a plan,” says Rowan, grabbing my arm and grinning. She clearly can’t wait to tell me about it.

  “School breaks up at twelve o’clock on Friday the 26th June. Yes?”

  “Yes. Great work, Sherlock,” I say.

  “You’ll still be in Millport. So, David and I are going to talk our parents into spending Friday afternoon on Cumbrae. We can all meet up at the Garrison, have a picnic and cycle round the island. It will be great!”

  David nods his head in such enthusiastic agreement that his NHS wire glasses slide from his nose, and he has to push them back on, blinking furiously. “We can bring a picnic, or maybe get lunch in the Fintry Bay café,” he says, his face crinkling with the effort of making such a big decision.

  David is like a miniature mad professor, with his wild sticky-out hair, round glasses and permanent worried frown. He has been our friend since Primary 3, which was the year he realised that he was never going to fit in with the boys in the class. David hates football and has no interest at all in video games. Back then, all he wanted to talk about was dinosaurs. Now it’s Star Wars.

  “I think definitely a picnic. We can bring a rug and have it on the beach. With lashings of ginger beer!” giggles Rowan. “It’ll be like the Famous Five.”

  “Yeah, except there’s only three of us,” I smile back. “I don’t want my gran and your dog coming along to make five. Finn would snaffle all the picnic and my gran would nag for Scotland about our table manners.”

  David shudders – whether at the thought of the dog (he’s allergic) or my gran’s nagging, I’m not sure.

  “Enid Blyton stories are full of negative gender stereotypes,” he says pompously. I expect he got that from his mum. She is always coming out with that sort of thing.

  “But George in the Famous Five was a fantastic role model for girls,” replies Rowan coolly, “back when we were all expected to be good little housekeepers.”

  Rowan always has a smart answer. Not sarky; genuinely smart. Just then the school bell rings and saves David from having to discuss a subject he is clueless about.

  We run to get into the long straggling line of other Primary 7s. All the boys look tall and skinny next to wee David and they ignore him when he joins the line. They think he’s weird, and aren’t always very kind to him, but David isn’t that bothered. He says all the other boys in the class are Neanderthals or neds, or both.

  My hair feels as light and bouncy as I’d hoped and my uniform is clean and crisp. I feel good about myself for a change, and secretly thrilled that Rowan and David are going to join me at the end of my holiday. And I love that neither of them has freaked about me going away on the last week of term – maybe because we all know we’ll be at high school together anyway. They are my best friends in the world, and I don’t ever want to lose them. There are plenty of girls in the class who would steal Rowan from me if they could.

  “Hi Rowan!” shouts Georgia, her friend from the netball club. “You should see the dress Jade’s bought to wear to the Leavers’ Dance!”

  “Come round after school and have a look,” twitters Jade. “See what you think.”

  “It’s stunning!” shrieks Georgia. “You two are going to look gorgeous and I’m going to look a complete state.”

  I sigh. Somebody compliment her quickly, or she’ll shrivel up and die. Rowan and Jade oblige and tell her she is going to look totally beautiful. Her dress is blue satin with spaghetti straps, in case you’re interested. No, me neither.

  Georgia and Jade move up so that Rowan can slip into line next to them. She starts giggling and tossing her hair about and I get nervous. “Don’t do that, Rowan,” I murmur to myself, “it looks dumb and you are a zillion miles from dumb.”

  I’m on my own waiting in line for Mrs McKenzie, and as always when I’m alone, my anxiety about the voice creeps up on me. Why won’t the voice leave me alone? All it’s doing is asking stupid questions. It doesn’t even seem sure about what it’s saying half the time. Either I’m being haunted by the world’s dumbest ghost or I’m going senile, like old Mrs Simpson at number 45, who thinks aliens are hiding in her dustbin.

  “Lily, hurry up!” calls David. “You’re holding up the line!”

  I don’t know why I keep calling the voice ‘it’ when I know it’s a girl. Who could she possibly be? She sounds familiar but the only dead people who might be interested in haunting me are my dad and my grandfather and it’s certainly not one of them.

  “Lily McLean, do you intend to stand out in the playground all morning?” snaps Mrs McKenzie. “Hurry up and get into class!”

  I walk in, still thinking about Dad and Grandpa Jim. Not that I can really remember either of them, and certainly not what they sounded like.

  Sometimes I take Mum’s old photo album down from the shelf, brush off the dust, stare at the photos of my dad and try and conjure up some memories, but I can’t. In one of the photos he’s holding Jenna’s hand and carrying me in a kind of backpack. He’s tall and thin, with fair, receding hair and he is grinning at whoever is taking the photograph. I have wispy hair and a chubby face and I’m scowling. I expect I was hungry. We are on a mountain and it’s a gloriously sunny day.

  Mum says Dad loved hill climbing. He was mad keen on it, along with cycling and water sports – a real fresh air and fitness freak, unlike me. He died in a car accident when I was two, which wasn’t fair on any of us, especially poor Dad.

  Anyway, it isn’t a man who is whispering in my ear, which is a tiny bit of a relief. That would certainly up the freaky factor.

  As Mrs McKenzie takes the register, I relax into the structure and routine of the school day. It’s what I most love about school. It might be dull, but it’s predictable. When things were really awful at home, when my step-dad was at his worst, this school was my safe place. (Our old house in Kelvin Street didn’t have a hall cupboard.)

  “Lily McLean, are you listening to a word I say?”

  I jump as Mrs McKenzie looms suddenly over my desk.

  “I was telling the rest of the class about our school trip to V
ikingar! We are going in the last week of term. Isn’t that exciting? Please return your permission slip ASAP, Lily.”

  She looks at me rather pointedly. Mum is not good at getting round to filling in permission slips, but I am becomingly reasonably expert at doing them myself. Not that there’s much point in filling in this one. I’ll be in Millport. I remember to pull out a crumpled envelope from my school bag and hand it to Mrs McKenzie. She eyes it suspiciously. I wrote it myself last night so I know exactly what it says.

  Dear Mrs McKenzie,

  Please excuse Lily’s absence in the last week of term (22–26 June.) She is travelling to the Isle of Cumbrae with her grandmother, who is very unwell and has made a last request to have a short break on the island. Lily’s gran has very little time left and so we have arranged for Lily to spend some quality time with her. I hope this will not cause too much inconvenience. She will catch up on any missed work.

  Yours sincerely,

  Claire McLean

  I am hoping they believe my letter and give me an authorised absence. Unauthorised absences look bad on my record, and I don’t like to look bad. I’d much rather tell a whopping lie. And the added benefit is that next year I will be in secondary school, so this particular lie is reusable.

  Mrs McKenzie hands the letter back to me. Her penetrating look tells me that she knows perfectly well that I am a liar and a forger of notes.

  “Your mother’s handwriting is so remarkably like your own, Lily,” she says sharply. “Take the letter along to the office, please. I’m sorry about your gran’s illness. She seemed very far from frail when she came up to the school for parent’s evening. And it’s a real shame that you’re going to miss the trip, the Leavers’ Dance and the school service.”

  I feel my face redden and almost snatch the letter out of Mrs McKenzie’s outstretched hand. As I walk along to the school office, I try to work out my feelings. I am really gutted about missing the trip to Vikingar!