All the Fun of the Fair: A hilarious, brilliantly original coming-of-age story that will capture your heart

by Caroline Hulse

  I let her hug me, my eyes and nose burning with tears. So much feeling bubbled up – in my chest, my throat. I shrugged out of Grandma’s hug and ran into the garden.

  ‘Fiona!’

  But I couldn’t let her look at me.

  I ran into the garden shed with the spiders and the earwigs. I slammed the door, and locked myself in with the key.

  Half an hour later, Grandma was still trying to coax me out of the shed.

  And now there was whispering outside. Mum and Dad were back from the shops.

  I definitely wasn’t coming out now.

  ‘Fiona.’ Grandma’s voice was soft. ‘What’s all this commotion for, darling? My train goes at one – I can’t stay an extra night because I’m on the till at the charity shop tomorrow. Surely you want to say goodbye?’

  I hugged my legs tighter to my chest.

  ‘Goodbye, then. I love you, darling.’

  ‘FIONA LARSON, GET OUT HERE AND SAY GOODBYE TO YOUR GRANDMA! NOW!’

  If I wasn’t coming out for Grandma, there was no way I was coming out for Mum.

  ‘Right, well. Your father’s staying in the house,’ Grandma said, ‘while your mum drives me to the station. I hope you feel better soon. I’m sorry we didn’t get to say goodbye. I love you so much, darling.’

  It might be hard to understand for someone who’s not bad themselves.

  But when someone says they love you and you know you’ve been bad, it hurts. And you have to do something to make the hurt stop.

  After I heard the car start up and leave, and I was sure Dad was back in the house, I got the big saw off the hook in the shed. I held the saw with both hands and looked at it, feeling its weight.

  I headed out of the shed and towards the swing.

  It took longer than you’d think.

  The metal handle cut into my hands. I had to keep putting the saw down to take a rest. My arms burned everywhere – my elbows, my fingers, my underarms. I had to lean on the saw, pushing it down to get through the wood. My T-shirt stuck to my back in the sunshine. My fringe stuck to my face.

  Eventually, the wood broke in two.

  I put the saw back on its hook in the shed. I shut the door, but didn’t lock it. I sat down, cross-legged, and waited.

  I bit my thumbnail at the side. I bit too far down, so it bled.

  I tensed at the sound of the car in the drive.

  ‘Where is she?’ Mum’s voice. ‘She’d better be out of that shed.’

  I took a deep breath and stared at the door. At the padlock, hanging down and open, where I’d left it.

  ‘What the—’

  I bit my other thumbnail and tore a piece off with my teeth. Pain rushed in.

  I looked at the blood pooling at the bottom of my nail, overflowing the white half-moon at the base. White blood cells. Platelets. Plasma.

  ‘FIONA LARSON!’

  One big pool of O positive.

  Mum threw the shed door open. She stood there, shaking.

  I stayed cross-legged on the shed floor. I stared at a dusty rake.

  ‘Please tell me you haven’t destroyed the swing. The swing. And that you haven’t been playing with a saw.’

  I stared at the rake. The plastic was rubbing away at the handle, leaving green bits that bobbled and peeled.

  She pulled on my arm. ‘Get up!’

  I tried to pull my arm back, but she was too strong. She lifted me to my feet and half dragged me outside, my feet skittering along.

  Pieces of hair fell out of her clip and into her face.

  ‘Look at it!’

  We both looked at the swing. At the metal frame. At the seat, which hung in two pieces from the chains, the two chunks of wood turning slowly.

  She shook my arm. ‘Look what you’ve done!’

  I looked down at the grass.

  ‘Your grandma says I should try to understand that you find Danielle’s birthday hard, but she didn’t see this, did she?’ Mum still hadn’t clipped her hair back, so it all hung in her face. ‘No other kids go around sawing up swings, do they? Who else does this? No one.’

  I looked at my thumb. O positive. Plasma. Platelets.

  ‘Look at it. How does that make you feel?’

  She put her hand on my head and turned it. I looked at the two bits of wood dangling from the chains.

  ‘Say something.’

  ‘No.’ I ran away and upstairs. I slammed my door and sat on the bed.

  I waited for Mum to stomp after me, but she didn’t. I heard raised voices downstairs. Even though Mum and Dad must be furious with me, they had room to be angry with each other.

  I looked at the blood on my thumbnail.

  I pulled the notepad by the bed closer. I tipped my thumb onto the pad, dripping blood onto the paper.

  I put my first finger into the blood and pressed hard, making a bloody red fingerprint, like on the front of a detective book.

  I stared at it. At my bad blood.

  I took a magnifying glass and looked at the fingerprint. The lines whirled and circled.

  I heard footsteps heading upstairs. Slow and heavy. Dad’s.

  He opened my bedroom door. ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi.’

  He stayed in the doorway. ‘We’re very upset down there.’

  ‘Mum’s angry, not upset.’

  ‘No.’ He sighed. ‘No, she’s not. It might sound like it, but she’s not.’

  ‘She said she was furious.’

  ‘Only because she’s very upset.’

  I looked down at my bloody fingerprint. At the platelets and plasma. The O positive.

  ‘I think you’d better avoid your mother for the rest of the night.’ Dad looked at the piece of paper and back. ‘Is that part of your blood project?’

  I looked down at the fingerprint. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is it your blood?’

  I gave a small nod.

  I felt the mattress move beneath me as he sat on the bed. ‘Where did you get that blood from, Fiona?’

  I turned my hand so he could see my thumb.

  ‘Christ! Did you do that with the saw?’

  ‘I did it with my teeth. On purpose.’

  ‘Don’t move.’

  He hurried out of the room and came back with a box of plasters and cotton wool.

  He sat next to me and wiped my thumb with wet cotton wool. I winced as it stung, but I deserved it.

  Dad pressed a fresh piece of cotton wool against my thumb. He held it there. ‘Why did you ask Grandma about how Danielle died? Why did you try to upset her?’

  ‘I wasn’t trying to upset her. No one ever tells me anything.’

  He took the cotton wool away from my hand and peeled back a plaster. ‘And you must never play with tools.’

  I watched him stick the plaster round my thumb.

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘Do you?’ He pressed the plaster hard into my skin. ‘Because you picked up that saw happily enough.’

  ‘But I didn’t use the electric saw. Just the still one.’

  ‘FIONA!’ Dad let go of my hand. ‘I don’t want you to ever even think about the electric saw.’ He rubbed his hands through his hair. Strands stood up like he’d been rubbing a balloon. ‘I’m going to have to lock the shed and hide the key now, you know? Christ, Fiona, what do you do to us?’

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘Do your friends do things like this? Does Lewis torture his parents this way?’

  I put my blood-printed finger in my mouth and sucked it. My finger tasted of an old penny.

  Dad made his voice softer. ‘Never do that again. Promise me now.’

  ‘I’m positive I won’t play with tools like that again.’

  ‘Take your hand out of your mouth so I can see and say it aga
in. And promise me. Promise me or I tell you, Fiona – you’re never leaving this room for the rest of your life.’

  In the end, I promised. I stayed in my room until after teatime, when I heard the phone ring and the overhead light flashed.

  Mum answered the phone. ‘Hello?’

  I opened the door so I could listen.

  Mum spoke again. ‘That’s good, Mum. No delays?’

  I crept onto the landing.

  ‘Thanks for calling. Tell Kenneth I said hi.’

  I scooped my skirt underneath me. I sat at the top of the stairs, just out of sight, my back to the wall.

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ Mum said. ‘I was going to speak to her about why she asked but then . . . something happened. You don’t want to know. But I handled it badly, of course I did, and—’

  Mum sighed. ‘Not awful awful.’

  I put the end of my thumb in my mouth.

  ‘She sawed the swing in half.’

  I sucked the plaster.

  ‘Sawed it.’

  ‘I don’t know how else to put it. Sawed it. With an actual saw . . . No, the wooden seat, not the metal bit. Who do you think she is, world’s strongest man? I don’t know how, exactly. She’s got arms like spaghetti.’

  I wrapped my arms round my body.

  ‘Is it, though?’ Mum’s voice went higher. ‘I feel like every age is a difficult age. When do the difficult ages end? How did you manage with me? But I was so much easier.’

  I hugged myself tighter.

  ‘Mum.’ My mum’s voice hardened. ‘That was forty years ago and you know I paid the ice-cream van man back.’

  At that, I raised my head.

  Mum sighed. ‘I know the point you’re making; I just don’t know what I’m meant to do. I’m not as good at this as you. I try so hard.’

  There was a long silence while Grandma talked. I imagined what she was saying. It’s not your fault. Fiona was just born bad.

  ‘I just think – I’m really bad at this,’ Mum said finally.

  I felt myself frown.

  ‘Jonathan can stay calm but I just can’t. Maybe I was never up to doing this again. Maybe I shouldn’t have ever thought I could do this, after everything.’

  I looked at the plaster round my thumbnail.

  Sometimes, I wish I didn’t have spy skills after all.

  I tiptoed into the bedroom and shut the door quietly, so I didn’t have to hear Mum say she wished she hadn’t had me.

  Bad Scar Things I’ve Done New 1996 Summer Term Update – Part 2

  1)Looked up Danielle’s death in the library and phoned Adrian Sykes

  2)Took the polaroid camera to school when Dad told me not to

  3)Accepted a present from a stranger Mum told me to stay away from

  4)Went through Carl’s bins

  5)Lied to everyone about having friends in another school

  6)Lied to everyone about Lewis being my boyfriend

  7)Used fake ID to buy a cigarette

  8)Asked Annette how Danielle died

  9)Asked Grandma how Danielle died. Even though she asked me not to

  10)Sawed up the swing

  11)Didn’t say goodbye to Grandma

  I told you I was the bad one.

  36

  Many great spies end up working alone.

  The Junior Spy’s Secret Handbook™

  Four days till the fair

  I didn’t speak to anyone before school the next morning. As I reached the bottom of the stairs, Mum came out of the kitchen, rearranging the clip in her hair.

  We both looked quickly away.

  I don’t think Mum knows what to say when things like this happen, either.

  Mum crouched in front of the Cupboard of Office Things and opened it. ‘It’s sunny out there,’ she said into the cupboard.

  And before she could say any more to the cupboard about the weather, I picked up my rucksack and hurried out of the door.

  Lewis wasn’t at the lamppost.

  I’d made Mum so cross she was pretending I was invisible and talking into cupboards. And I’d made Lewis so cross that he preferred to have no friends than be friends with me.

  It was fine. It was all fine.

  I had new friends now.

  But at break, I couldn’t find the other girls. I looked and looked, but knew it must be one of those games where I didn’t understand the rules, and I’d ruin the game if I asked.

  So I stood there in our normal spot anyway, watching the boys play football.

  Lewis was playing. I watched him chase after the ball and kick it to Sean. He didn’t do too badly, actually.

  I tried to catch his eye, but he didn’t look over. Even though the only reason he was allowed to play football with the good kids now – with his wrong coat and rucksack, when he wasn’t very good – was because of me.

  I finally found my girl group on the far side of the tennis courts.

  I walked over. ‘Hiya.’ I got out my blood project. ‘Check this out. Actual blood.’

  I got to the right crispy page of my project book and held it open in front of me, like a flasher with his mac.

  The girls all jerked their faces back.

  I frowned. ‘It’s my blood so it’s fine. No one died or anything.’

  Yasmine shook her head while looking at Alison Fisher. ‘Why aren’t you doing photosynthesis, like everyone else?’

  I shoved my project book into my rucksack. I thought desperately.

  ‘I’ve also made a fortune teller.’ I got it out of my secret pocket and slid my fingers and thumbs in.

  The girls looked at the four labels.

  ‘Cape, Boots, Mask, Cuffs,’ Jodie read.

  ‘It’s about superpowers.’ I looked at the paper. ‘That’s cape as in a superhero’s cape. Definitely not a magician’s cape.’

  Naomi looked at the others. ‘We don’t like superpowers.’

  ‘Don’t like superpowers?’ I dropped the fortune teller against my leg. ‘How does that even work?’

  But the bell rang for the next lesson, so no one even answered.

  School news was the worst yet. The very worst.

  In RE, the school secretary knocked on the door. ‘Can Fiona Larson please come to Mrs Shackleton’s office.’

  There was a ripple of interest round the room.

  What’s she done?

  Who’s she shown her pants to now?

  Miss Jarvis looked at the school secretary in a question.

  With a tiny movement of her mouth, the school secretary made an eek face.

  Miss Jarvis looked at me with actual sadness. ‘Take care, Fiona.’ She waved me off with a pitying smile, like she was sending me to the guillotine.

  I packed up my pencil tin and books, and hurried down the corridor with the school secretary. My legs felt like they were dragging behind my body, and it wasn’t as easy to walk as usual. Everything about me trembled.

  We turned the corner into the staff corridor and I dropped my pencil tin. My stuff scattered everywhere.

  I crouched down, picking up pens and pencils. The school secretary crouched to help.

  I reached under a big metal radiator to get to my protractor. I had to reach through a trailing clump of ruched-up spiderweb to get it, letting the clump flap against my hands. I didn’t even shiver. I barely noticed the webbing – not now. Not now I’d been called into the New Head’s office.

  I stood up, cradling my equipment in my arms. The school secretary handed me some stuff she’d picked up – a pen, a rubber and a pencil sharpener. She looked at my hands and I could tell she noticed they were shaking. She was about to say something, but then didn’t.

  We kept walking. Down the staff corridor, where I wasn’t normally allowed to go. The place wh
ere—

  Too soon, we stopped outside the New Head’s office.

  ‘You can go in,’ the secretary said.

  I looked up at her, my legs trembling even more. Please!

  But she just opened the door.

  I stepped inside. I had no choice.

  The New Head, Mrs Shackleton, looked up from behind the big headmaster’s desk. She stared at me like I’d deliberately kicked her best cat.

  She wasn’t alone.

  Dr Sharma was there, in the chair next to her. And Mrs Vernal, standing behind the desk.

  Both looked at me with that same cat-kicker! expression.

  And I still didn’t know. I’m that stupid – Fiona Larson is so, so stupid – that I still didn’t get it.

  Until I saw it, finally, just there. On the New Head’s desk.

  The ruffled-up copy of Mayfair.

  37

  If you’re afraid, you say your ‘blood runs cold’. It is the release of the body’s ‘fight or flight’ hormones causing a chain reaction that leads to the vasoconstriction of arterioles that causes this unpleasant sensation.

  Fiona Larson, 7E’s Blood Project

  Four days to the fair

  ‘Sit,’ the New Head said.

  I don’t know how I got my legs moving, but I got into that chair somehow.

  The New Head looked from me to Mayfair and back. ‘Look familiar?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘A boy in Year Nine told Mrs Vernal you sold it to him.’

  ‘I’ve never seen it before. Look, whatever Dean Prince says—’

  The three teachers twitched into focus. Birds of prey, spotting a mouse.

  I added in a rush, ‘Or any other Year Nine boy.’

  The New Head stared. ‘How do you know we got this magazine from Dean Prince?’

  ‘It’s just . . . he’s said to me before . . .’ I kicked the table leg. ‘Because he was the kid who bought the Mayfair one.’

  The teachers looked at each other.

  ‘Bought the Mayfair one?’ the New Head repeated.

  Dr Sharma looked from the New Head to me. ‘There were others?’

  Damn it, Fiona! I nodded.

  ‘Were all the magazines . . .’ Dr Sharma closed her eyes and put her finger and thumb to her eyelids. ‘. . . well, I’ll just say it.’ Dr Sharma took her hand away. She opened her eyes. ‘Porn?’