Strawberry Sisters

by Candy Harper

  Mum clearly thought that was the end of the matter and she went off to make our tea, but Lucy carried on moaning and groaning until it was time to eat. Then she went suspiciously quiet and I knew that she was plotting something. Mum can say what she likes about Lucy needing to treat her friends kindly, but I remember the last time Lucy fell out with one of them: there were lots of tears, a number of hidden lunch boxes and one very traumatised pet goldfish.

  Later on, when I was doing the washing-up with Mum, I realised that in all the Lucy dramatics no one had shown any interest in Mum’s day. Out of everyone in my family, my mum particularly deserves me being a bit more considerate; she’s always thinking of other people.

  ‘How was your day?’ I asked her.

  ‘Oh, you know, lots of noisy children. I always enjoy hearing what they’ve been up to over their holidays.’

  ‘Really?’ I pulled a face. I don’t know how Mum can bear teaching Year Twos all day. ‘Surely they do the same thing at home as they do at school: run around in circles, shouting.’

  Mum laughed. ‘They do all sorts. Georgia told me today that she helped her mum clear up “all the feathers”, then I found out that the feathers had come out of a cushion Georgia was using to “sledge” down the stairs.’

  I crossed my eyes. I’d been feeling sorry for myself because Lauren wasn’t at school, but at least I didn’t have to rely on seven-year-olds for entertainment.

  Mum handed me a plate to dry. ‘Then we did Picasso-style painting this afternoon; that’s always nice. Even Shane Bolton can do that and it’s so important to catch Shane doing something well occasionally.’

  She smiled at me, but I thought it looked a bit like one of those smiles that I have to do when I open presents from Granny so I said, ‘Are you sure you’re all right? You seem a bit . . .’ I’m not always very good at telling how other people are feeling so I tried, ‘stressed?’

  ‘Not stressed; in fact, for once, I feel like I’m on top of everything work-wise. I just . . .’ She trailed off.

  ‘Just what?’

  Mum rinsed out the dishcloth. ‘I’ve been thinking that maybe it would be nice to have something other than work to occupy me.’

  ‘What sort of thing?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I should take an evening class.’

  I can’t think why anyone would want to do any more lessons than they absolutely have to, but I know that my mum works really hard and I’m always telling her she should do more fun stuff. ‘That’s a good idea. I could babysit,’ I offered.

  Mum laughed.

  ‘What? I already look after Chloe and Ella when we come home from school until you get back.’

  ‘That’s different. It’s only for an hour and Lucy’s not there.’

  It’s true that the best people to look after Lucy would be two bouncers and a lion tamer, but I was pretty sure that I could manage. I chewed my lip. I was trying hard to be helpful and Mum didn’t even seem to want my help.

  ‘You’re always saying that I should be more responsible,’ I said. ‘This would be an excellent way to show you that I can be.’

  Mum looked sceptical. ‘I’m not sure you’re quite mature enough yet, sweetheart.’

  ‘But I want to do it!’ I said. Then I realised that that probably didn’t sound very mature. ‘I mean, I’d really like you to be able to go to an evening class.’

  Mum patted my hand. ‘That’s very thoughtful. But I could always choose a class on a Wednesday night; that way you girls would be at your dad’s and we wouldn’t need a babysitter. Maybe I’ll pick up a prospectus from the learning centre.’

  Ella spent the evening with her coloured pens and a lot of Post-it notes. I guessed she was taking her new role as tutor group captain seriously; they were going to be super organised from now on. Chloe was busy messaging people about the exciting opportunity to run around getting muddy while chasing a funny-shaped ball. I wanted to speak to Lauren about our chances of getting another solo in the carol concert this year. Last year, we were the only people chosen from Year Eight and it was amazing. We had to go to all these special rehearsals with the older soloists and even the singers from Years Twelve and Thirteen started saying hello to us when they saw us around school. The best thing was that our music teacher, Mr Garcia, gave us individual tuition and I know that my singing improved loads.

  But when I rang Lauren to chat about it she didn’t answer. Or call me back. Which was weird because normally, even if she’s busy when I ring, she gets back to me really soon. Or at least she used to; when I thought about it, I realised that, over the last two weeks, I hadn’t spoken to Lauren as much as I usually do. I wondered about going round to see her, but it was getting late.

  When I went to bed, as I walked past Lucy and Ella’s bedroom, I could see a lump under Lucy’s duvet and the faint light of a torch glowing beneath the covers. Before she’d been sent to bed by Mum, I’d heard Ella trying to advise Lucy to be less bossy with her friends, but Lucy interrupted her to say that she could sort her own friends out, and I was pretty sure that now she was working on some terrible scheme to get back at them.

  It seemed like everyone had big ideas about what they were going to do at school this term. If only Lauren would hurry up and get better then we could get on with our own brilliant plans.

  The next day, Lauren still wasn’t back at school and I had to spend lunchtime with Milly and Jasveen, who are my next-best-friends after Lauren. Which is fine, except when they have their own private jokes. Normally, I don’t care because when they start sniggering and wiggling their eyebrows, I look at Lauren and Lauren looks at me and we both know what we’re thinking. Other people’s private jokes are much more annoying when you haven’t got anyone to agree with you about just how annoying they are.

  Because it was Wednesday I couldn’t even pop round to see Lauren; on Wednesday nights, and every other weekend, we stay at our dad’s house. When my parents first got divorced and I was mad at my dad, I found it hard to spend time with him and his girlfriend, Suvi. Then they had a baby, Kirsti, and I felt even crosser with both of them. I spent quite a long time being cross actually, but, since I’ve had that big chat with my mum, I know that my parents just didn’t want to be married any more and it was nobody’s fault. Not even Suvi’s. And I do believe that. So, even though Suvi still isn’t exactly my favourite person, I’m trying harder not to be mad at her. At least you always know where you stand with Suvi. She’s always cool and calm. I used to call her the Ice Queen.

  But today, when we arrived at Dad’s house and Suvi opened the door, she didn’t look at all like an ice queen. Her usually smooth white-blonde hair was tangled and her pale cheeks were flushed.

  ‘Hello, girls. Did you all have a good day?’ She wasn’t actually looking at us when she said it, so I could tell she wasn’t really interested, and I just said, ‘Revolting’, without going into details.

  We all trooped into the kitchen. Ella got out her maths textbook and Chloe started rifling through the cutlery drawer.

  ‘Is Kirsti awake yet?’ Lucy asked, crawling out from under the table and making me jump. On Wednesdays, Lucy doesn’t have to go to After School Club because Suvi is on maternity leave and she picks Lucy up from school at the normal finishing time. Lucy loves it because she gets to spend as much time as possible with baby Kirsti. But she’s not too keen on Kirsti sleeping. Lucy thinks people should be available to her twenty-four hours a day.

  Suvi ran a hand across her face. ‘Kirsti’s still having her nap.’

  ‘Can I wake her up?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘No!’ Suvi never snaps, but that was the closest to snapping I’d ever heard her get. She put a hand on Lucy’s arm. ‘I promise you can play with her soon, Lucy, but Kirsti’s not sleeping so well at night. I think she needs this nap now.’

  ‘You seem tired,’ Ella said to Suvi. ‘Shall I make you a cup of peppermint tea?’

  I looked at Suvi again. She was a bit red around the eyes. I hadn’t n
oticed. It’s funny how the kind of person you are affects what you can see. When Suvi first opened the door, I’d thought she looked like a woman who needed to brush her hair, but Ella saw someone who needed looking after. While Ella fussed over Suvi and got her to put her feet up in the sitting room with her cup of manky peppermint tea, and Lucy went to wait outside Kirsti’s bedroom door, I plonked myself down beside Chloe, who was getting aggressive with a bunch of bananas.

  ‘Why are you squashing those bananas with a potato masher?’ I asked.

  ‘Because it’s quicker than a fork.’

  ‘Yeah, but what are the bananas for?’

  Chloe didn’t stop mashing. ‘I’ll think of something.’

  There’s not much point talking to Chloe when she’s in a bashing or smashing mood: it’s best to move all your valuables to a safe distance and let her get on with it. So I put my phone on a high shelf and opened up the fridge to see if Suvi had anything to eat that hadn’t had all the sugar and flavour squeezed out of it, but Chloe let out a gusty sigh and said, ‘Aren’t you even going to ask me about my day?’

  ‘I asked you about your day when we were walking home from school. You said you didn’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘When someone says that, you’re supposed to gently persuade them to tell you what’s wrong.’

  We looked at each other. Gentle persuasion is not my strong point.

  ‘Oh, all right, I’ll just tell you,’ Chloe huffed. ‘Something absolutely disgusting has happened.’

  Now alarm bells were ringing in my brain because I know from experience that it takes a lot for Chloe to say that something is disgusting. When we found a dead seagull in the garden that had started to decompose, Chloe said it was ‘cool’. So it had to be something pretty rank for Chloe to say it was disgusting. I was going to tell Chloe that, thanks to her, I had enough revolting images in my mind to last me a lifetime, but then I noticed that she was gripping the masher so hard that her knuckles were white. So I gave in and said, ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘That man came into school today to talk about the rugby youth squad.’

  ‘Is that all? Well, physical exercise is fairly disgusting, but I thought you liked all that running about and sweating? You’ve certainly got the legs to be a rugby player. And the ears.’

  ‘Thanks. But that’s not it. They said . . . they said . . . you’re not going to believe it . . . they said that it’s a boys-only squad.’

  It’s funny being a sister. Chloe is annoying and loud and smelly and I don’t give a monkey’s who’s allowed on some silly squad, but I still found myself saying, ‘That’s so unfair!’ And I really meant it.

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘And what did the man say?’

  She switched the masher to her left hand and went on crushing the already pulpy bananas. ‘He said that rugby was more of a boys’ sport so they’d set the squad up specifically for them and didn’t the school have a girls’ team I could join?’

  ‘Patronising pig!’

  ‘That’s what I said. Only I couldn’t think of the word patronising so I just called him a pig.’

  I laughed. ‘Not to his face?’

  ‘Not exactly to his face. I mean, he was still at the front of the sports hall with Mr Evans and everyone was shuffling about, getting ready to go to the next lesson, so he didn’t hear me.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘But Mrs Henderson did.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘So I had to spend my lunch break tidying the equipment cupboard.’

  I shook my head. I can’t stand Mrs Henderson; she’s always shouting at me to get moving, or to stop standing in the middle of the field like a daydreaming daisy and chase after the ball, but you’d think she’d be more sympathetic to a sports freak like Chloe.

  ‘I’m sorry, Clo, that’s really rough. I don’t know why they always put idiots in charge of things.’

  She nodded grimly and peeled another banana.

  Suvi perked up a bit after her tea and, by the time Dad came home from work, she’d got us all making banana bread with Chloe’s thrashed bananas while Kirsti watched from her bouncy chair.

  ‘Something smells good,’ Dad said. He made his way across the kitchen, kissing everyone as he went. For a long time, I was so mad with him about the divorce and for how little time he was spending with us that I wouldn’t let him hug or kiss me, but, after he apologised about all of that, things have been a lot better. He really has changed the way he acts. And I have a bit too. Part of me just wanted to be angry forever because I needed my parents, and Suvi, to know that I don’t think it’s fair on the kids when parents get divorced. But actually it’s quite tiring being angry all the time and I sort of missed my dad, so I decided that I just have to be realistic about my parents: they live in different houses, but they’re both still my parents and I can still ask them for help and chat to them and get annoyed with them and do all the normal stuff.

  So these days I let Dad kiss me. As long as no one I know is watching.

  Chloe flung her arms round Dad. She’s never been cross with him. In fact, Chloe isn’t usually cross with anyone. But this rugby thing must have really upset her because she started telling him the whole story right from the beginning. He listened carefully. Which is one of the good changes that he’s made. Not long ago, whenever you were telling my dad something, he’d have one eye on his phone.

  ‘That doesn’t seem very fair,’ he said when Chloe got to the end. ‘Why don’t you speak to your PE teacher about it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Suvi said. I hadn’t realised that she was listening, but actually she was staring quite hard at Chloe. ‘Yes,’ she said again. ‘You must speak to this teacher.’

  Chloe shrugged. ‘All right, I’ll give it a go.’

  Our school is very proud of its music. We have two orchestras, four choirs, a jazz group, an African drumming club and free percussion lessons for anyone who can hold a beater. Mr Garcia, the head of music, is really clever and can play any instrument you can think of. He’s even played the piano on some proper musicians’ albums. He does wear horrible patterned jumpers though. Apart from that, I quite like him because he organises lots of music stuff for us to take part in.

  Every year, before Christmas, we have a carol concert. Last year, I sang the first verse of ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ as a solo. I like ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ better than all those jingle-jangle carols. And if you’d ever had to share a bedroom with Chloe after she’s eaten a plate of sprouts for lunch then you’d know that Christmas can be pretty bleak.

  The first meeting about the carol concert was after school on Thursday. Lauren missed it because she still wasn’t back at school, but I called her as soon as it finished.

  ‘Hey, Amelia.’ She sounded groggy. I think I might have woken her up.

  ‘Hey, yourself. How are you? I haven’t heard from you for days. Are you really rough?’

  ‘I’m OK. It’s just the flu or something. I was going to call you, but I’ve been sleeping loads.’

  ‘Sorry you’re so ropey.’

  ‘Who are you calling ropey? I’m sorry you’re so flaky.’

  I laughed. I’d missed chatting to Lauren. ‘I hope you get better soon,’ I said.

  ‘I will,’ she said. ‘What’s happening at school?’

  ‘Well, I’ve just been to the first meeting about the Christmas concert and guess what?’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘No cathedral this year.’

  ‘Oh. Does that mean no concert?’

  ‘Nope, but it does mean that things will be completely different.’

  She made a sort of huh noise, which I took as encouragement to tell her everything I knew. ‘Mr Garcia seems really excited about it. You know how he twitches when he’s conducting? He was doing that just talking to us. I think he’s sick of hymns and carols. So we’re not doing any of them. Instead, it’s going to be Christmas songs.’

  ‘Carols are Christmas songs.’ S
he still sounded half asleep.

  ‘Yes, but we’re not doing churchy ones; we’re doing, you know, pop stuff.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘“All I Want for Christmas”.’

  ‘Sounds a bit cheesy.’

  ‘He’s chosen some good ones, honestly, and there are going to be solos and duets. I thought that you and me c—’

  ‘Amelia? Sorry, my mum’s calling. I’ll phone you at the weekend, OK?’

  And she hung up before I’d finished telling her my ideas about which solos we should try out for. I was a little bit hurt. Normally, Lauren is the one person who’s happy to listen to me going on about singing and performing all day long. But she was ill and tired and her mum is one of those demanding mothers that expect you to actually pay attention to every tiny little thing they say. We’d be able to have a proper talk about the concert when Lauren came back to school.

  ‘You walking home?’ Milly called across the hall to me.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Come on then.’

  I struggled into my coat and we walked out through the gates with the last few stragglers from rehearsal.

  ‘It’s a shame Lauren wasn’t there,’ Milly said. ‘Do you think Mr Garcia will say she can’t be in the concert now she’s missed a rehearsal?’

  Milly’s my friend and I do like her, but she’s got this habit of saying really provocative things. She loves stirring up trouble.

  ‘Of course he won’t. It’s not her fault she’s ill.’

  ‘I suppose it’ll be all right if she comes back soon. She was off a lot last half-term, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Not really,’ I said, although now I thought about it Lauren had missed quite a few days. ‘She had to go to Scotland for her cousin’s wedding and then she had problems with her brace.’