by Jean Ure
“Can’t manage to stay in one place for more than five minutes.”
Cal’s fan was one of my most treasured possessions. I knew if I gave it to Sammy it would only get broken. But what else did I have? She’d always fancied my music box that played Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, but last time I’d tried playing it there’d been a lot of hiccupping and wheezing so it was obviously going wrong. And my glass ball with the snowstorm inside it was scratched, and the little china donkey with the straw hat had a chip out of one of his ears, and really just about everything I owned seemed to be broken, or battered, or not properly working. All I had was my Spanish fan.
I heaved a big trembly sigh. I wanted Sammy to be happy, but I desperately didn’t want to part with my fan! On the other hand, I couldn’t bear the thought of her little face, all innocent and beaming, expecting presents, and there not being any. It seemed I didn’t really have any choice. It was the fan or nothing.
I checked that Sammy was still safely in front of the television and went through to the kitchen. While I was wrapping her present, Tizz appeared.
“Where have you been?” I said.
“Just up the road.”
“What for?”
“What’s it to you?” said Tizz. “I s’ppose I can go up the road if I want?”
“If I was going up the road,” I said, “I’d tell you what I was going there for.”
“Why?” Tizz said aggressively.
“Cos I wouldn’t want you to be worried,” I said.
“Like you didn’t want us to be worried when you got home later, buying all those rotten vegetables and spending all our money and we didn’t even know where you were.”
I felt my cheeks burst into flame. How mean she was! Keeping on about my vegetables.
“That was a sudden decision,” I mumbled.
“Yeah. Same here,” said Tizz. Her eyes narrowed. “Where’d you get that wrapping paper? Did you buy it?”
I said, “No, I did not! It’s what was left over at Christmas.”
“I want some!”
Tizz made a snatch at it. I whisked it out of her reach.
“What d’you want it for?”
“Got something for Sammy.”
“What?”
“Nothing to do with you. Gimme some wrapping paper!”
“Not until you tell me what you’ve got.”
Slyly, testing my reaction, Tizz put her hand in her pocket and pulled out a big butterfly hair slide. I looked at her, horrified.
“Where did that come from?”
Tizz stamped a foot. “Stop interrogating me!”
I was so surprised she knew such a word that just for a moment it threw me.
“Going on at me all the time. Anyone’d think I was a criminal!”
“But you didn’t have any money,” I said
“That’s what you think,” said Tizz.
“Are you saying you had some you didn’t tell us about?”
“Might be.”
I didn’t believe her. “You stole it,” I said, “didn’t you?”
“Did not!”
I felt sure that she had. But what could I say? I’d stolen pink wafers. And a sandwich.
Without Mum, this whole family was going to pieces.
“Are you going to me give some of that paper?” said Tizz.
I let her have it. There didn’t seem any reason not to. I was every bit as bad as she was.
“Thank you,” said Tizz. “Now I can wrap my present. I got a card, as well.” She waved it at me. “A proper one!”
“Maybe tomorrow,” I said, “you’ll get a KitKat.”
“Yeah.” Tizz nodded. “I might just do that.”
Next morning was Sammy’s birthday, so we gave her her presents before we went to school. She insisted on wearing her butterfly hair clip straightaway, and begged me to let her take my fan – her fan – with her to show her friends. I hadn’t the heart to say no, though I couldn’t help wondering whether she would bring it back in one piece.
“When you get home,” I promised her, “we’ve got a special birthday tea for you.”
“Will Mum be here?” said Sammy.
“Well… she might,” I said. “But you mustn’t be disappointed if she isn’t. Wherever she is, I’m sure she’ll be thinking of you.”
“She might even ring,” said Tizz. “We might get back and find a birthday message.”
Oh, I did wish she hadn’t said that! Sammy’s face immediately lit up. She raced across to the phone.
“Make sure the machine’s switched on!”
“It’s on,” I said. “We’ll check for messages when we get back.”
We did, but of course there weren’t any. I hadn’t really expected there to be.
“She probably hasn’t been able to recharge her phone,” I said. “Did you remember to bring your fan home?”
“Got it in my bag,” said Sammy.
“Shall we put it somewhere safe?”
“No!” She snatched up her bag and held it very tightly. I knew then, for sure, that she’d had an accident. But it was her birthday, so I wasn’t going to embarrass her. I gave her a little push.
“Go and watch some telly while we get your tea.”
The tea, when we set it out on the table, didn’t look anywhere near as impressive as I’d hoped. We had:
1 cheese sandwich
1 egg and cress sandwich (brought back by me that same day)
1 Strawberry Frootie
1 Strawberry yogurt (also brought back by me)
1 small pink cake
1 bar of KitKat (supplied by Tizz)
1 packet of crisps (also supplied by Tizz)
I didn’t ask Tizz where she’d got the KitKat and the crisps; it seemed safer not to know. I used the last of the orange squash and stuck six matchsticks into the pink cake. I hadn’t been able to find any candles, but I thought perhaps matchsticks would do just as well.
We let Sammy eat as much as she wanted, which was practically everything. Me and Tizz shared the egg and cress sandwich and the yogurt and one finger of KitKat. Sammy kept saying “Share’s fair!” and pushing stuff at us, but even Tizz nobly waved it away.
“You’re the birthday girl,” she said.
After we’d sung Happy Birthday and Sammy had blown out the matchsticks and given me and Tizz a tiny nibble of cake each, we watched some of her favourite DVDs including an especially yucky one about a family of squirrels. A daddy squirrel, a mummy squirrel, and a tiny little baby squirrel called Sam. It made me and Tizz want to throw up, but Sammy loved it to bits. She kept squealing happily and clapping her hands every time anyone said her name.
“Sam!”
“Yeah, but it’s a boy,” said Tizz.
She just had to, didn’t she? Just couldn’t resist. Sammy went all quiet after that. She sat on the sofa, cuddled up next to me, sucking her thumb. She’d been doing a lot of thumb sucking, just lately. It was like she’d gone back tobabyhood. But I didn’t try and stop her; it would have seemed unkind.
When we went to bed – I’d given up the battle of trying to make her go at her usual time – she refused to get into her bunk and clambered in again with me.
It was a horrible night. I was so hungry I found it difficult to sleep. I had to keep resisting the urge to go and raid the cupboard. We didn’t have much left in there, and I really really didn’t want to start stealing again. It not only made me feel bad, it frightened me that I might get caught.
I woke up next morning with a feeling of deep despair. It was like I’d pinned everything on to Sammy’s birthday. Giving her a good time, making her happy. That had been my one aim. Now that it was over, there didn’t seem to be anything left. I couldn’t go on fighting!
I wondered if that was how Mum felt when she fell into one of her depressions. Suddenly I could understand how she just wanted to curl up in bed and sleep. I so didn’t want to have to get up and go to school.
And then I turned over and felt
my nightie clinging to me, all cold and clammy. I peeled back the duvet and sure enough, there was a damp patch. Wetting the bed was something Sammy hadn’t done since she was tiny.
I got her up and dried her off, hoping Tizz wouldn’t notice and make one of her tactless remarks, but of course she demanded to know why I was stripping my bed.
“Time it got changed,” I said.
“What about mine?” said Tizz. “Why aren’t you changing mine?”
“If you want it changed, do it yourself!” I snapped. I wasn’t in any mood to put up with her and her selfishness.
I staggered off to the washing machine only to discover that we were out of washing powder. We were almost out of washing-up liquid, too. We were almost out of everything. It was scary. I squeezed in what little washing-up liquid there was just as Tizz appeared, sullenly dragging her sheet.
“You might have brought Sammy’s,” I said.
Tizz said, “Why?”
“Cos hers needs changing just as much as ours!”
Tizz turned and yelled. “SAMMY! Bring your sheet! Don’t see why I should be expected to do everything,” she said.
The nerve of it! Like she’d done anything.
Crossly, I stuffed all three sheets into the machine and slammed the door. When I turned round I found Tizz with a felt tip pen crossing days off on the calendar. She’d marked the following Tuesday with a big red X.
“What’s that for?” I said.
“That’s when Mum’s due back.” Tizz looked at me, challengingly. “Ten days. Right?”
It was like she was daring me to contradict her.
I said, “Oh. Right.”
I wanted to believe it every bit as much as she did. Tuesday was the day when Mum would come back. I reckoned we could just about hold out until then. I wasn’t sure that we’d be able to go on very much longer. If Mum wasn’t back by Tuesday, we’d be forced to give in and tell someone. Probably Her Upstairs. And that would be the end of everything.
At school Nina wanted to know how the birthday tea had gone.
“Did Sammy have a good time? Did you put candles on her cake?”
I said, “No, we put matchsticks,” and Nina giggled, thinking I was being funny. And then she realised that I wasn’t, and she stopped giggling and looked embarrassed, and I wished I hadn’t said it. What did I have to go and tell Nina about the matchsticks for? Now I’d made her feel uncomfortable.
We didn’t talk about Sammy’s birthday any more after that. Instead we talked about how it was going to be the end of term next week, and I asked Nina if she was going away, cos I knew it was what people did in the summer holidays, but that just made her feel even more uncomfortable. She knew I wouldn’t be going anywhere.
“I expect we might go somewhere,” she said. “Maybe. I don’t really know.”
But of course she did. Nina always went away. Last summer she’d gone to Spain for a month. And at Christmas she’d gone skiing. She’d sent me a postcard with a foreign stamp.
“I suppose we might go camping,” she said. “That’s what we sometimes do. Wouldn’t it be fun if you could come with us?”
I said that it would, but at that point two other girls from our class came and sat next to us and started talking, and I was quite relieved. I knew there wasn’t any chance I could ever go off camping with Nina. I thought she probably knew it, too.
When I got home that afternoon I bumped into Her Upstairs angrily stomping up the basement steps.
“Is your mother deliberately avoiding me?” she said.
I said, “No! Of course not.”
“So where is she, then? Why is she never at home?”
“She’s very busy,” I said. “She’s got this friend that’s in hospital. She has to keep visiting her.”
“Oh, really? Well, that’s odd! According to your sister – who, incidentally, has a bit of a mouth on her – she’s out looking for jobs.”
“Yes,” I said, “that as well. She’s visiting her friend in hospital and looking for jobs. That’s why she’s not here.”
Her Upstairs made a noise like “Hrrmf!” Like she didn’t believe me. “And what’s happened to that girl’s face?” she said. She paused, at the top of the steps, and looked down at me. “Has someone been knocking her about?”
“She prob’ly fell over,” I said. “She’s always falling over.”
With that, I scuttled on down the steps as fast as I could and banged at the door. It opened just a crack.
“Oh, it’s you,” said Tizz. “I thought it was her come back.”
I took one look at her and shrieked, “Omigod, what have you done?” One side of her face was all scratched and torn, like a wild cat had landed on her. “What happened?”
“Had a fight,” said Tizz.
My heart plummeted. That was all we needed! Tizz getting into a fight.
“Wasn’t my fault,” muttered Tizz.
I just bet it was! I said, “So whose fault was it?”
“This girl. Alanna Gibbs.”
“Why? What did she do?”
“She said Mum was a benefit scrounge.”
I said, “A what?”
“A benefit scrounge! She said people like her mum that worked really hard have to pay for people like our mum to sit at home and do nothing. Just live on benefits.”
That really took me aback. I said, “She never!”
“She so did.”
“And you went for her?”
“Well, wouldn’t you?” said Tizz.
I thought in all honesty that I probably wouldn’t; at least, not physically. All the same, I was sorry I’d automatically assumed that Tizz had been at fault. All she’d been doing was standing up for Mum. It was so unfair to say that Mum was a benefit scrounge! Right up until the end of last year she’d worked every day at Chicken ‘n’ Chips, just down the road. It’s where she’d met Nikki, her so-called friend. She’d only stopped working when Chicken ‘n’ Chips had gone broke and had to close down. If they hadn’t have closed, she’d have still been there. She’d tried to find another job. She’d been for loads of interviews. But she had to tell people she was taking medication, and what she was taking it for, and we thought perhaps it frightened them cos nobody ever offered her anything.
Rather nervously, I asked Tizz if any of the teachers had seen what happened.
“Dunno,” said Tizz. “Don’t care. Not going back.”
What???
“But you’ve got to!” I said.
“If I go back,” said Tizz, “I’ll kill her.”
“But what about Sammy? She needs you to take her in! And bring her home.”
“I’ll take her in,” said Tizz. “I’ll even bring her home. But I am not going back.”
I couldn’t seem to find the energy to argue with her. All I could hope was that she’d simmer down over the weekend and be a bit more reasonable. Otherwise, what could I do? I couldn’t force her to go to school.
“Know what?” I said. “I don’t care. I don’t care about anything any more.”
“Me neither,” said Tizz. “What are we going to eat?”
“Dunno,” I said. “Dunno what there is.”
Tizz opened the cupboard. “Beans. Spaghetti. Soup.”
I shrugged. “Whatever.”
“Else there’s cornflakes,” said Tizz, “’cept we don’t have any milk.”
“What?” That shook me. “No milk?” How could we possibly be out of milk?
“All got drunk,” said Tizz.
“When?”
“I dunno.”
“I mean, when did you find out?”
“Dunno. Last night?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I glared at her, exasperated. “I could have got some on the way home! You’ll have to go up the road.”
“What, now?” said Tizz.
“Yes! We can’t be without milk.”
“Why can’t we?”
“Cos we need it for the cornflakes.”
�
�Why?”
I said, “You want to eat cornflakes dry?”
“Don’t want to eat cornflakes at all,” said Tizz.
“You will when you’re starving,” I said.
I went to the cupboard and groped around for the empty yogurt pot which I’d used for hiding what was left of our emergency fund. To my horror, all it had in it was a 50p piece. Where had the rest of it gone?
And then I looked at Tizz, and I knew. She hadn’t been stealing things, she’d raided the yoghurt pot. Which in a way was just the same as stealing. No wonder she didn’t want me sending her up the road to buy milk! She knew we didn’t have enough money left.
I said, “Tizz, how could you?”
She tossed her head, defiantly. “At least I didn’t spend it on rotting veg! And anyway,” she added, “there’s not long to go.”
She meant that it would soon be Tuesday. The day she had marked on the calendar. The day that Mum was due back. But just because Mum had been away for ten days last time didn’t mean she was only going to be away for ten days this time. She could be anywhere. With anyone. Doing anything.
I tried to imagine how it might have happened. Mum meeting someone. Thinking – as she had thought so many times before – that this was The One. Whizzing off in a whirl of excitement, all else forgotten.
I’d been too young, that first time, for Mum to tell me where she had been, or what she’d been doing. If she even remembered. She’d said once that when she was in one of her Big Happies it was like life was exploding all around her. Like a fireworks display, everything bright and flashing.
Another time she’d said it was like being on a roller coaster, racing along at a thousand miles per hour, totally out of control and not able to get off. Frightening, I’d have thought, but Mum said that while it was actually happening it was exhilarating. You felt on top of the world, capable of anything. But with life rushing past at the speed of light you just couldn’t keep a grip on all the ordinary, everyday things. Not even the things that meant most to you in the whole world, such as your children. They just became a blur, like you were seeing them in the far, dim distance, through a thick mist.