Something Secret

by Gwyneth Rees

  Mum had been in a good mood for the whole of the past week. Not even the traffic jam out in the car park which had blocked our way to the bottle bank and nearly resulted in us slamming into the back of the brand-new BMW in front had ruffled her for more than a few minutes. Now she was gliding up and down the aisles with our trolley, lifting things from the shelves without consulting her list, nodding whenever I said, ‘Can we have these?’ and not even looking to see what the ‘these’ was.

  ‘These sausages are the kind Janice is taking to the sausage sizzle,’ I said, thrusting them hopefully into Mum’s hand.

  ‘Low fat. Very good. Much better for her arteries than the others.’ She handed them back to me. ‘I want you to stand in that queue and ask for four rashers of bacon – you know the kind Rory likes. I’m going to find the porridge oats. I’ll be back in a minute.’

  I scowled. Whenever Mum needs anything that involves queuing, she always sends me to do it. And she’s never back in a minute. She’s always back just as I’m getting served, by which time she’s been round half the rest of the shop buying everything she wants and nothing that I want.

  ‘Can’t I go and get the porridge oats?’

  ‘Darling, you’re a much better queuer than I am. Hurry up, before it gets any bigger.’

  I watched her disappear off in the direction of the cereals. Hamish was on night shift at Casualty this week, which meant he’d been finishing at eight o’clock in the morning and coming round to our house for his breakfast. Mum had started setting her alarm for seven instead of eight so that she was ready by the time he arrived. She’d been in such a good mood every morning that I’d begun to wish Hamish could be on night shift permanently, especially since it meant he had to be at work at eight o’clock in the evenings, after which I had Mum all to myself. She’d even started practising my Scottish dancing with me again before I went to bed, though she was so rusty she could hardly keep up with any of the steps.

  I was doing a lot of practising at the moment, because my dance teacher wanted me to enter my first competition in two weeks’ time. I needed to ask Mum to find my birth certificate because I had to have proof of my age. I also had to get her to buy me a kilt. So far I hadn’t needed one, because at practice we just wore black leotards and tights. I wanted a new pair of black pumps too. The ones I had were all scuffed and smelly.

  Mum’s right about me getting less impatient standing in queues than she does. Whereas she’s always sighing, fidgeting, checking her watch and muttering, ‘This is ridiculous,’ I tend to get completely distracted looking to see what other people have got in their trolleys. Everyone else’s trolleys are always far more exciting than ours, chiefly because Mum is really mean about buying in anything that’s bad for you. We’re never allowed to have more than one packet of biscuits in the house at any one time and I bet you’ve never seen anyone push a trolley so fast past the confectionery shelves as she does. (Whenever I complain, Mum says I get more than my full entitlement of rubbish to eat at Janice’s house as it is.)

  Janice had told me yesterday that her mum was going to buy her a big packet of marshmallows so that we could wrap them in foil and roast them over the fire at the sausage sizzle. It sounded really good fun.

  ‘Helen’s not very pleased about you coming to Guides with us,’ Janice had added. ‘She thinks you’ll take me away from her. She says I’m the only friend she’s got at Guides.’

  That figured. I couldn’t imagine people waiting in queues to be friends with Helen.

  ‘Yes, luv?’

  I jumped. Like I said, it’s amazing how quickly a queue can go down when you’re busy daydreaming.

  ‘Perfect timing!’ Mum appeared at my side as the lady behind the counter was slicing Rory’s bacon. ‘Now all we need to do is find a checkout.’

  Usually Mum gets just as impatient in the checkout queue as she does in any other queue and spends the whole time remembering different things she’s forgotten and rushing off to fetch them. Today though, she stayed put.

  ‘I’ve got something to ask you,’ she said as I tried to balance on the base of the trolley without tipping it up. ‘It’s to do with Hamish.’

  Something inside me went tight. I don’t know what I expected her to say. That Hamish was moving in with us? That they were going to get married? I didn’t feel ready for either of those things. Not yet.

  ‘We want to go to Venice,’ she said in a rush. ‘It’s meant to be really nice at this time of year so we thought we might go the week after next. What do you think?’

  I frowned. ‘Venice like in that film we saw the other night?’ It had been a very slushy TV movie where the couple in it had kept snogging a lot in different gondolas.

  Mum smiled. ‘Venice like in Italy, Laura.’ She said it as if she thought I didn’t know Venice was a real place as well as being a place on the television.

  I felt cross with her for making fun of me. ‘I don’t want to go to Venice!’ I snapped. ‘I’ll miss too much school.’

  ‘Well, actually . . .’ She flushed. ‘You see, we sort of thought that while we were in Venice, you could stay with Marla. You could go to school from her house.’

  I just stood there staring at her. I think I even forgot where I was for a moment or two. The supermarket and all the masses of people at the checkouts with all their masses of shopping seemed to exist at a huge distance away from me, as though nothing outside me was real at all. When Mum touched my arm, I jumped. That was real.

  ‘It’s just for a week, Laura. You don’t mind too much, do you? You know what a good time you always have at Marla’s.’

  Something strange was happening inside me, as though everything soft was becoming hard. I stood absolutely still. Even my throat felt solid, like it had completely frozen up. I knew that if I opened my mouth nothing would come out and I wanted something to come out. I wanted something really savage and hurtful to come out, something that would make her feel as horrible as I felt right now.

  ‘All right?’ The checkout lady was waiting for us to put up our stuff. Mum began hurriedly to scoop things out of our trolley. I stood by stiffly, my arms folded. The minute the trolley was out of the way I slipped through to the other side of the till and ran out to the car park.

  I was leaning against the bonnet of our car, trying to stop trembling, when Mum caught up with me.

  ‘Laura, how DARE you run off like that!’ She was furious. ‘Open the boot!’ She flung the car keys at me. They landed on the ground. I stared down at them. I felt weird. I felt as though Mum had changed, as if she had nothing to do with me at all.

  ‘Pick up the keys,’ she hissed.

  And suddenly the numbness was gone and I was feeling angry, more angry than I’d felt in a long time. ‘You love HIM more than you love me!’ I bent down, lifted the keys and hurled them back at her. ‘Go away with him!’ I yelled. ‘I don’t care!’

  She made to grab me, letting go of our trolley so that it ran into the side of the car next to ours. Swearing, she retrieved it, opened up the boot, and started to hurl our bags of shopping inside. Then she charged across the car park and crashed the empty trolley into the trolley bay.

  I fled to the opposite side of the car as she returned. She looked fit to murder someone. I watched nervously as she unlocked the driver’s door and got in.

  I suddenly had a terrible panic that she was going to drive off and leave me there. ‘Mum, I’m sorry’ I shouted at her through the glass.

  She leaned across and unlocked the back passenger door. After I’d climbed in, she swivelled round to glare at me.

  ‘So am I,’ she replied tersely. ‘Listen, Laura. I love you and Hamish in completely different ways. Do you understand that?’

  I didn’t understand. In fact, her saying that made me more furious than you can possibly imagine. I didn’t care what way she loved him. I just cared that she didn’t love him as much as she loved me. I mean, what if she had to choose between him and me? I pressed my lips together, tightly.
It had happened to Dad, hadn’t it? He’d had to choose. And he hadn’t chosen me.

  Chapter Twelve

  I didn’t remember about my birth certificate until the day before Mum and Hamish were due to go to Venice. We’d got the kilt sorted out. Mum had taken my waist measurement and the length measurement – I thought it was going to be too short, but Hamish insisted that kilts were meant to fall exactly to your knee and no more – and got Granny to send one down from Scotland. My Highland Dancing competition was the next weekend which meant Mum wasn’t going to be there for it. She said she’d have made Venice a different weekend if she’d known and that it was my own fault for forgetting to tell her before they booked their flight. Mum had completely lost patience with all my complaining. They’d compromised by only going for a long weekend instead of the whole week and I should be satisfied with that, she said, and that it was high time I learned that the world didn’t revolve around me.

  That made me mad. I knew perfectly well that the world didn’t revolve around me and if I needed any reminding then the photos of Dad with my new baby sister that my stepmother sent with her last email were quite sufficient. (I didn’t tell you that my stepmother sometimes sends me emails, did I? Sometimes when I send one to Dad, I get a reply from her, using ‘we’ all the way through as if they’ve written it together, when in fact I can tell that it’s just from her.)

  Anyway, since complaining to Mum about Venice didn’t work, I started trying to make Hamish feel guilty instead, but that didn’t work either, because Hamish seemed to find my getting cross with him a source of great amusement. It wasn’t horrible amusement. It was more like very fond amusement. All the same, it’s irritating when you’re trying hard to stay angry with a person and you end up laughing with them instead.

  ‘I’ll tell you what. If you’re good, we’ll bring you back some ice cream from Venice,’ he’d tease, pulling a face at me, and I’d want to get cross, but the face he was pulling would be far too funny.

  I didn’t have any problems getting cross with Mum. I’d been feeling permanently angry with her recently, like I couldn’t remember being since just after Dad left. I wasn’t bothering to hide the fact either. The trouble was that even though I felt so angry with her I still didn’t want her to go. Every time I thought of her leaving me to fly away with Hamish I felt like bursting into tears, but there was no way I was going to tell her that.

  Last night when she’d come to kiss me good night, I’d immediately turned over in bed so as not to face her.

  ‘Laura, I’ll only be gone for three days.’ The bed creaked as she sat down on it. Her body, touching my leg, felt warm. I moved my leg.

  ‘Go for three weeks if you want,’ I growled, then the thought of her actually leaving me for three whole weeks made me so furious, I added, ‘Or three years even! I don’t care!’

  I’d lain awake for two hours after she’d gone, working myself up into a complete state. I didn’t need Mum. I didn’t need Dad. I didn’t need anybody except myself. As soon as they left for Venice, I’d tell Marla I wasn’t coming to stay with her after all, and I’d run away instead. I’d hitchhike up to Scotland or something and leave a note telling Mum I didn’t want to see her ever again . . .

  I started to cry at the thought of never seeing Mum ever again. It was all Hamish’s fault. She’d never go away and leave me if it wasn’t for him. I wished he’d fall into a canal in Venice and drown. I wished he’d get food poisoning from a bad ice cream and die.

  I took a deep breath and turned over restlessly in bed. Why did Marla have to take their side too? ‘Come on, Laura. Your mother hasn’t had a proper holiday since your father left.’ And why had I had to snap, ‘So by “proper” you mean without me?’ and ended up having a huge row with Mum and getting sent to my room? I felt as though nobody was on my side, not even Janice, who was so excited about the sausage sizzle she hardly even listened if you tried to talk about anything else.

  I didn’t bother asking Mum if I could go through her things to look for my birth certificate. I knew she’d be mad if she caught me doing it but I didn’t care. I almost wanted her to catch me doing it. I felt like having a fight with her, which was why I wasn’t being particularly quiet as I rummaged through the desk in her bedroom, messing up all the little compartments and not bothering to shut the little drawer in the top properly after I’d raked through that.

  I started to search through the main drawers. The top one was stuffed full of old payslips and bank statements and boring stuff like that. The second drawer was jammed and I had a job to slide it open. The thing that was jamming it was a white plastic bag full of papers or something. I took it out and opened it. It was full of notebooks. They looked quite old. I opened one of them. It was a diary. Mum’s name was written in faded ink on the first page. The date was written there too. I did a quick calculation in my head. Mum must have been ten when she wrote this. I started to feel a bit dizzy. I hadn’t realized Mum had kept her old diaries. I flicked over to where the writing started in this one. It was messy but you could still read it. It turned out to be a pretty boring entry, all about which relatives had come to dinner (it being New Year’s Day) and what food they had had to eat. There was no mention of Kathleen.

  I emptied the bag on to the floor. I could hardly make myself sit still as I arranged all the diaries in chronological order. I took a deep breath as I found the one I wanted, the diary for the year Kathleen had died.

  I went out on to the landing to listen. I could hear Mum and Hamish laughing in the kitchen. Quickly, I slipped back into Mum’s room and closed the door. My heart was beating very fast as I carefully opened the diary at the first page:

  ‘JANUARY 1ST – We weren’t allowed to stay up to see the New Year in last night. Mum says we’ll be old enough next year, Kathleen as well, which I don’t think is fair. How can we both be old enough at the same time? Kathleen was going on and on today about how I’ve eaten all the sweets I got for Christmas. She’s still got half of hers left. I told Kathleen if she didn’t shut up I’d eat the head off her chocolate Santa and she started crying and went running off to Mum like she always does, so I got into trouble. I HATE HER! I wish I didn’t have a sister. I wish—’

  ‘LAURA!’ Mum was yelling to me up the stairs.

  Panicking, I stuffed all the other diaries back into their bag and shoved it back in the drawer. I slipped the one I was reading into my pocket just as Mum pushed open the door.

  ‘What are you doing in here?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What are you doing in my desk?’

  I scrambled to my feet. I’d left the top of the desk open. ‘Looking for my birth certificate,’ I mumbled, avoiding her gaze. ‘I need it for dancing. The competition needs proof of our age.’

  She looked irritated. ‘How utterly ridiculous. I’m hardly going to lie about your age just to have you win a medal in some Highland Dancing competition.’

  ‘You might.’ I stuck out my bottom lip. ‘If you really wanted me to win.’

  She looked even more irritated. ‘You shouldn’t be going through my desk like that anyway. If you want something of mine then you ask me first.’

  ‘It’s not something of yours. It’s my birth certificate, isn’t it?’

  ‘Laura, I’m warning you . . .’ I knew that the only thing stopping her from blowing up at me was that she didn’t want to fall out with me just before going off to Venice.

  ‘Ladies, are you coming?’ Hamish called up the stairs.

  Mum frowned. ‘I came upstairs to ask if you want to go to the park.’ She held up her hand to cancel out my answer before I’d even had a chance to give it. ‘Forget that. I’m not asking. I’m telling. Go and get your coat. Hurry up.’ She stood holding the door open for me.

  In my room, I hid the diary under my mattress. I knew it wasn’t a very original place, but I’d think of somewhere better when I had more time. I really wished I could sit down and read through it straightaway. I wished I knew
the exact date Kathleen had died. At least then I’d be able to turn to the right page immediately without having to read through the whole thing.

  ‘LAURA!’

  ‘Coming!’ I grabbed my coat and raced downstairs to join them.

  The funny thing about that afternoon in the park was that, even though I was dying to get back to Mum’s diary, I quite enjoyed it. We’d taken some bread to feed the ducks, and Hamish and I ended up having a competition to see who could hit the most ducks on the head. (When Mum accused us of being childish I protested that I was a child and Hamish said he felt like a child and did that count?) After we’d walked right round the park we bought ice creams from the shop and when I pointed out to Mum that ice creams had hundreds and hundreds of calories, she just laughed and said that today she didn’t care. That afternoon I almost felt that if Mum and Hamish did stay together, it mightn’t be such a bad thing after all.

  When we got back to the house it was teatime. ‘It’s such a nice day, we could eat outside,’ Hamish suggested. ‘What about a barbecue?’

  Mum and I looked at each other. I could tell she knew that the mention of a barbecue had reminded me about the sausage sizzle. ‘We could have one if you like,’ she answered calmly. ‘Though someone will have to go out and buy something to cook on it.’

  ‘Mrs Bishop has got tonnes of sausages in her freezer for Janice to take to the sausage sizzle,’ I said pointedly to Mum. ‘She’s got marshmallows too.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Mum, please can I join the Guides? I really want to go to the sausage sizzle with Janice. I know you’re worried because of what happened to Kathleen but I’ll be really careful—’

  ‘LAURA!’ Her eyes were nearly bulging out of their sockets. ‘I don’t want you talking about Kathleen any more! I’ve had enough! Do you understand?’

  I didn’t bother to answer. What was the point?

  ‘It’s OK. I don’t want a stupid barbecue anyway’ I snapped. I turned my back on her and left the room.