by Simon Mason
‘Mum always knows what's going on,’ Will agreed.
‘Mum wouldn't have been distracted by a conversation,’ Lucy said.
‘Or crying.’
‘Mum would have seen her feet by now,’ Lucy said. ‘And she'd be cross,’ she added.
Will sighed. ‘That's the good thing about Dad,’ he said. ‘Luckily for us.’
‘Do you think Dad will ever see his feet, Will?’ Lucy asked.
Will thought for a minute. ‘I don't think so,’ he said. ‘He's too unobservant. He doesn't notice what's going on around him.’
And, thinking about that, they both fell asleep.
They were woken suddenly by shouting. Someone outside their room was groaning, and someone else was calling, ‘What's going on? Are you all right?’ And everything was confused.
It was dark, and Will and Lucy opened their eyes and looked into the blackness, and listened.
One of the voices was Mum's and one of them was Dad's. Mum's was the one shouting, ‘Are you all right?’ And Dad's was the one going, ‘Aaah, ngh, oof.’
For a moment, Will and Lucy were frightened. There were running footsteps on the stairs, and their bedroom door was pulled open. Mum stood there in the sudden bright light wearing skinny pink pyjamas, saying quickly, ‘Dad's fallen down the stairs!’
There was a lot of bustling about, and questions being shouted, and Will and Lucy putting on their dressing gowns in a big rush, and Mum telling them not to be upset, and Dad groaning. Everyone was pale and tight-faced, especially Dad.
‘What happened?’ Will said.
‘He was coming to bed in the dark,’ Mum said, ‘and he missed the step and fell downstairs. He's done something to his foot.’
Dad lay on the stairs, nodding and groaning. Will went over and gave him a hug, and Lucy held his hand. Dad gave a bent and painful grin.
‘He might have broken a toe,’ Mum said. ‘I know it's late, but we're all going to have to go to the hospital.’
Very slowly they helped Dad downstairs and into the car. Sometimes he pretended he was OK and didn't need help at all, and sometimes he did a jerky dance and roared with pain, and eventually they got him into the front passenger seat, and he lay there panting and smiling bravely.
It was strange driving through the streets in the middle of the night. Streetlights made quiet patterns over the road, and there was a washy sound different from the usual noise of traffic.
At the hospital they helped Dad to Accident and Emergency, and waited in the lounge until a doctor was available.
Dad kept wincing and grimacing.
‘Don't worry, Dad,’ Will said. ‘It's only pain.’
‘Not bad pain,’ Lucy said comfortingly.
‘It is bad, actually,’ Dad said.
‘Poor Dad,’ Mum said. ‘He's being very brave.’ And Dad put on a brave look.
Will and Lucy weren't feeling tired any more. They were feeling worried and sad and somehow excited all at the same time. They had never been in a hospital at night before, and they sat in the lounge holding Dad's hands and looking round at everything.
A nurse came to talk to them, and went away again.
Half an hour later, Dad's name was called, and they helped Dad down a corridor and into a room where the doctor was waiting.
The doctor was a large smiling man with a hairy face, and to everyone's surprise he turned out to be one of Dad's friends. As soon as they realized this, they started laughing.
‘This is Alan,’ Dad said. ‘We play football together every Thursday night.’
‘Doesn't look like you'll be playing for a while,’ Alan said. ‘What happened? Sliding tackle? Overhead bicycle kick?’
‘Fell down the stairs,’ Dad said.
Alan nodded. ‘That'll do it. Poor you. Well, we'd better have a look at it.’
Dad lay on a special bed, and Alan took off his shoe and looked at his stockinged foot. The big toe stuck out at a right angle.
‘Almost certainly broken,’ Alan said. ‘I'm going to take your sock off now. It may hurt a bit.’
Dad nodded and gripped the sides of the bed.
Slowly Alan peeled off the sock, and everyone stood quietly looking at Dad's foot. Or not at his foot. At five purple sparkly toes and two green and red Chinese dragon transfers.
There was a moment of stunned silence. Alan raised his eyebrows, and Mum blinked and Dad's mouth fell open. And the children said together, ‘I did that.’
Back at home the Quigleys sat in their kitchen drinking hot chocolate. It was four o'clock in the morning, and they felt very sleepy. Dad had a bulky white cast on his foot, and he sat with it up on a chair.
‘No, I wasn't worried,’ Mum was saying. ‘If he'd been wearing nail polish for a long time I'd have noticed.’
Lucy was examining Dad's cast. ‘Why did you choose white?’ she asked. ‘You could have chosen a different colour.’
‘Like pink,’ Will said. ‘It would have gone with your toenails.’
Dad yawned. ‘At least you both admitted doing it,’ he said. ‘It's not often you agree on anything.’
‘Thank you,’ Will said, yawning too. ‘Even though it was really Lucy who did it,’ he added.
‘No, you did the tattoos,’ Lucy said sleepily.
‘The tattoos were just extra.’
‘Dragon tattoos are never just extra.’
Even though they were so sleepy, they began to bicker. They bickered slowly between yawns all the way upstairs and into bed, and as they fell asleep they were still murmuring, ‘You're going to get into trouble’ and ‘I don't think those dragons will ever wear off.’
Mum stood in the doorway watching them, and Dad stood looking at his foot.
‘Do you really think the white cast
doesn't go with the purple nail polish?’ he asked anxiously.
‘Don't worry,’ Mum said. ‘I've got lots of other colours you can choose from.’
Lucy's Big Day
Lucy's Big Day
Lucy's birthday was coming up, and she was going to have a party. The Quigleys had a meeting about it in their back room.
‘I don't know what sort of party I want,’ Lucy said. ‘But I want it to be perfect.’ She only had one birthday a year so she thought this was fair.
‘We want it to be perfect too,’ Mum said. ‘We do,’ Dad said.
Only Will disagreed. He said, ‘Perhaps it could go a bit wrong. That would be cool.’ Will was in that sort of mood.
They began to talk about the party. It was hard choosing because Lucy wanted it to be different from all her friends’ parties.
‘What about a swimming party?’ Mum asked.
‘Inez had a swimming party.’
‘Or a trip to the cinema?’
‘Ellie went to the cinema.’
Mum and Dad suggested over twenty different sorts of party, including a pyjama party, a fancy-dress party, a sleepover party, a visit-to-a-museum party, a climbing-wall party, a funfair party, a trip-to-London party, a bowling party, a picnic party and a going-to-a-show-and-meeting-the-cast-for-tea-afterwards party, but Lucy's friends had done them all already.
‘What about a luxury trip to EuroDisney just for the family?’ Will suggested.
Dad and Will had an argument. Dad said Will was not taking things seriously, and Will said he was taking things very seriously, in fact more seriously than anyone else, otherwise why was he the only person suggesting expensive things, and Dad said he bet Lucy didn't think Will was taking things seriously. And Lucy seriously told them both to shut up.
Then they started again.
‘All we have to do is think of the perfect party,’ Mum said. ‘How hard can that be?’
They thought hard. Will thought so hard he fell off his chair, and was told to sit still and not fidget, and for a while it looked like Dad and Will were going to have another argument.
‘What about this?’ Mum said at last. ‘A traditional party at home. With games like Pass the Parcel and Mus
ical Chairs, and dancing competitions, and some magic, and a treasure hunt, and a really wonderful tea with all your favourites like chessboard sandwiches and cheese straws and ice-cream clowns and gingerbread aliens and refrigerator cake. A traditional party is the one sort of party that none of your friends have had.’
This sounded good. Perhaps not perfect, but definitely good. Lucy said she'd think about it, and the ext day she said all right.
When Lucy's friends got their invitations, they thought it sounded good too. Perhaps not perfect, but definitely good. Most of them had never been to a traditional party before and were excited and confused at the same time. ‘What happens at a traditional party?’ they asked.
At home Lucy asked Mum to remind her what happened, and Mum described some of the games, like Make Them Laugh and the Memory Game. Will had agreed to do some magic, she said. ‘And Dad's thinking up some extra surprises.’
‘What sort of surprises?’ Lucy asked suspiciously. ‘I only want really good party surprises, I don't want ordinary surprises like Dad falling downstairs again.’
Mum said Dad was thinking of some really good party surprises.
That evening, after Will and Lucy had gone to bed, Mum and Dad sat in the front room talking about the surprises.
‘Lucy's worried,’ Mum said. ‘Are you sure this is going to work?’
Dad said he was sure. He said he'd found the right costumes and tried them on. It was true that in one of them he couldn't see, and the other made it hard for him to breathe. ‘But they both fit,’ he said. ‘And that's the main thing.’
Upstairs in bed, Lucy and Will were talking about the party as well.
‘What sort of magic are you going to do, Will?’ Lucy asked.
Will didn't answer for a while. Then, in a strange, whiskery voice, he said, ‘You know not who you ask. I am not Will. I am the Great Conjurina, Mage of the Land of Wigs and Novelties. Anyway, magicians never talk about their tricks,’ he added.
‘You have to talk to me, because it's my party,’ Lucy said. ‘What trick are you doing?’
‘I thought I'd do the egg one.’
‘Not the egg one, Will! You always break the egg.’
‘I've been practising.’
Lucy lay in bed, trying hard not to think badly about her party. She had a horrible feeling it wasn't going to be perfect. It was a sad, anxious feeling, a bit like finishing a packet of sweets and realizing there are none left.
In the week before her party, Lucy often had the feeling. She told Mum about it.
‘I can't stop thinking my party's going to go wrong.’
Mum said that all she needed to do was tell herself it was going to be fine, and her sad thoughts would disappear. But Mum must have made a mistake because although Lucy repeated to herself six times every bedtime that her party was going to be perfect, when she woke in the morning she still had the anxious feeling in her tummy.
Sometimes she had an even worse thought. She told Dad about it.
‘What happens if my feeling makes the party go wrong?’
But Dad just looked at her funny.
As soon as she woke on the morning of her party, Lucy could feel it in her tummy, the anxious feeling. It hadn't gone away. In fact, it had got worse, and now it was a bit like feeling sick. No one else seemed to care. Mainly Mum and Dad were too busy, they kept going secretly into other rooms, where she heard them laughing and whispering to each other. When they spoke to her, they simply told her everything was going well.
‘See for yourself. It's a lovely day. All the balloons are up, the refrigerator cake's turned out well. Even Will looks smart. Sort of.’
But Lucy's feeling made her see different things. Usually she wouldn't have noticed that her pink party tights were wrinkly from the wash, or the decorations in the front room weren't straight, or her party shoes were scuffed at the toes. Today, she noticed.
She went to find Dad, who was in the kitchen washing cake dough off his elbows. Will came in wearing a large silky moustache made the night before from a goatskin purse. He got half a dozen eggs from the fridge, grinned, dropped an egg on the floor, and left without clearing it up.
Lucy looked so sad that Dad stopped picking bits of cake off the window and tried to comfort her. He said it was normal to feel anxious about parties.
‘Everyone feels anxious. But really, everything's going to turn out fine.’
Lucy knew this was wrong, though. Lots of things don't turn out fine. She left Dad and went to find Mum.
Mum tried to comfort her. She admitted that sometimes things go wrong, but said that things can go right too, if you give them a chance.
‘How do you give them a chance?’ Lucy asked.
Mum said, ‘By not getting cross with them straightaway. Do you know what I mean? Sometimes things don't go right at first but, if you give them a chance, they go right in the end.’
Lucy thought about this. ‘Rubbish,’ she said at last.
And Lucy was proved right almost at once, because when Mum helped her get changed into her party clothes, things that went wrong at first carried on going wrong afterwards. For instance, at first Lucy's tights were all wrinkly (‘don't worry, the wrinkles will soon come out'), and then they itched (‘never mind, the itching will soon stop'), and after that they kept slipping down (‘yes, but they don't slip down much'). It was the same with her skirt. There was a stain on it to begin with, and after Mum had cleaned it there was a wet patch.
It didn't get any better when Dad did her hair. For some reason it was always Dad's job to do Lucy's hair. He did it every morning. He could do bunches, plaits and messy pony-tails. But he couldn't do French plaits, which is what Lucy wanted for her birthday party.
‘That's not a French plait,’ Lucy said after half an hour.
‘It nearly is,’ Dad said, examining it. ‘It's a French splat.’
It was typical of Mum and Dad that they kept telling her things were fine when she could see they weren't. By the time her friends were due to arrive, Lucy was very sad. She stood in the hall on her own, waiting for the first knock on the door, and feeling a bit sick. If Mum and Dad were right, this was the moment when everything turned out fine. She crossed her fingers and had a go at crossing her toes.
Inez and Mary called Moo were the first to arrive, and Moo was wearing exactly the same skirt as Lucy, only without a wet patch. Ellie arrived, and Lottie, and Freya with her little sister, Grubby Gabby. Gilly came with Emmy, and Megan came with Sonya, and Charlotte came on her own. Everyone had brought a present for Lucy and by now she had nine identical sets of scented gel pens. A lot more people arrived in a clump, and they all crowded into the front room, where the party was going to begin with a story read by Mum.
‘What's the story about?’ Inez asked.
‘It's called Dotty Comes to the Party,’ Mum said, positioning herself on the sofa with some sheets of paper. ‘Is everyone here now?’
‘Pokehead and Tim aren't.’
‘We'll wait then.’
Lucy didn't want to wait. Having to wait seemed too much like things going wrong. But Mum said she had to be patient.
‘Don't worry,’ Mum said. ‘It won't spoil anything. They'll be here any second.’
Meanwhile, crouching behind the sofa in a full-length Dalmatian dog outfit, Dad shifted weight and groaned to himself. He hadn't realized there would be so little room. He was doubled-up, with the large blunt snout of his enormous dog-head crushed against his black-spotted legs. He was very hot. The dog costume was made of thick fake fur and smelled of the hundreds of other Dads who had worn it before him.
The plan was this. Mum would read a story about Dotty the Dalmatian coming to Lucy's party, and when it got to the bit where Dotty arrived, Dad would leap out surprisingly from behind the sofa with a bag of Mars Bars. Waiting patiently for his cue, he heard Mum say that she would wait for Pokehead and Tim, and groaned again. He thought if they didn't come soon he would have lost the use of his legs.
T
wenty minutes later, all the children were bored and fidgety. Everyone kept asking Lucy why the party hadn't started, even though they all knew. Lucy kept asking Mum why Dad couldn't play some games with them, and Mum kept saying Dad was busy. Even after Tim and Pokehead arrived there was a delay while they argued about who had lost the scented gel pens which they had meant to bring as a present.
‘It doesn't matter!’ Lucy said crossly. ‘I just want the party to start now!’
At last, Mum began to read. In the story, Dotty the Dalmatian was trying to get to Lucy's party, but he was lost. He bumped into strange people, who gave him directions, but he kept getting things wrong, and the children had to shout out when he made mistakes. In the story it took him a long time to get to the right street, and, after that, a long time to get to the right house.
‘But finally,’ Mum said, ‘he made it. And there was a knock on the door.’ Here, to everyone's surprise, there was a real knock, which sounded as if it came from behind the sofa. All the children in the room fell silent.
‘And then,’ Mum said dramatically, ‘Dotty appeared!’
Nothing happened.
Mum said again, a bit louder, ‘Dotty appeared!’
Without warning, a misshapen creature with an over-large head lurched from behind the sofa with a bellow of pain, and staggered forward making a noise like someone eating something revolting. There was general uproar in the Quigleys’ front room, with children screaming and running to hide and falling over. Mary called Moo was knocked to the ground, Pokehead spat her chewing gum the length of the room, and Grubby Gabby wet herself in terror. No one quite knew what was happening until at last the creature pulled off its own head, and Dad stood there, sweating and saying sorry and grimacing with pain.
Even Lucy hadn't expected things to go wrong this badly. For half an hour the party was totally forgotten while Grubby Gabby was taken home and Moo treated for bruising where she'd been trampled by other children.