by Jean Ure
“How did they find out?” wailed Honey. “How d—”
“Sh!”
Jade’ s parents today issued the following appeal: “Please, Jade, wherever you are, please, please get in touch with us!”
It was Mum. Mum, on the television, just as I’d imagined her! And Dad, as well, standing there with his arm round her.
“Why have th—”
“Quiet!”
Dad was saying something. I snatched at the remote and bumped up the volume.
“Just come home to us, Jade. That’s all we ask. Nobody’s going to be cross with you…we just need to have you back.”
He wasn’t pleading, cos Dad wouldn’t. But he wanted me back!
“I thought Darcy said they wouldn’t bother,” wailed Honey.
“Well, that’s it,” I said. “They have. That’s our cover blown! They’ll find us now, for sure.”
“I’m not going back,” said Honey.
“We don’t have any choice!”
“I do, I’m sixteen. I’m not going!”
“They’ll find you.”
“I don’t care! They can’t force me. You go. I’m staying!”
“Honey, you can’t stay here,” I said. “It’s horrible!”
A slow flush spread across her face. “I don’t think it’s horrible. I’m happy! I’ve never been happy like this before. Running away is the best thing I ever did. I am not going back again, not ever!”
I didn’t know what to say; I wasn’t used to Honey taking a stand against me. I made one last attempt.
“If it’s the money you’re bothered about—”
“It’s not!”
“I mean the money you took from your mum…I’m sure she wouldn’t really do you for stealing. She’d just be so relieved to have you back!”
“She wouldn’t,” said Honey. “She doesn’t want me back.”
“Of course she does! She’s your mum.”
“She wasn’t on the television. She didn’t ask me to get in touch.”
“Well–no. But she probably would have, if they’d given her the chance. They probably only had room for two people, and you know my dad, he’s really pushy!”
Honey just looked at me. I knew I hadn’t convinced her; I hadn’t even convinced myself.
“Suppose she had asked you?” I said. “Would you go back then?”
Honey hesitated. Then she said, “No.”
“Not even though she’s your mum?”
“Mums don’t always love their kids,” said Honey. “I’ll love mine, when I have some. I won’t care if they’re a bit slow. I’ll always love them! But you can’t go back when you’re not wanted. It’s all right!” she said. “You don’t have to be sad for me.”
How could I help it?
“You go back,” said Honey, “cos you don’t like it here.”
I didn’t; I hated it. “I’ll tell her you’re OK,” I said. “I’ll tell her you just want to stay where you are.”
“You won’t give them this address?”
“I won’t if they don’t ask. But I think they might make me.”
“Maybe if you just turned up,” said Honey, “like not actually ringing them first…maybe they’d be so pleased to see you they wouldn’t bother about me.”
Somewhat doubtfully I said that I could always try.
“Please! I really don’t want them knowing where I am,” said Honey.
I promised that I would do my best. “I’ll just turn up on the doorstep.”
Once I’d made the decision, I couldn’t wait to go. I’d have left right there and then but Joe put his foot down. He said it was too late for me to be travelling all the way up to Birmingham on my own.
“You wait till morning,” he said, “then I’ll put you on the train myself. Make sure you’re safe.”
He and Honey both went with me to Euston the next morning. The old lady was left in charge. She looked daggers at me as I came downstairs with my rucksack.
“Always knew you weren’t sixteen,” she said. “Could have caused my Joe a lot of grief, you could! You get yourself back home and stay there. You’re nothing but a troublemaker!”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to be.”
“Didn’t think, did you? It’s all me me me with your sort.”
It was Joe who came to my rescue. He said, “Nan, let her be. She’s going back, there’s no harm done.”
At the last minute, as I was about to get on the train, Honey flung her arms round me and whispered, “I’m going to miss you so much!”
“Me, too,” I said. “I’m going to miss you! Are you really sure you know what you’re doing? It’s not too late to change your mind! We could get the next train, go and buy another ticket—”
But she wouldn’t. In this really grown-up voice she said, “I do know what I’m doing…honestly!”
I didn’t like getting on the train without Honey. Whenever I’d pictured this moment, I’d always pictured us going back together; picking up where we’d left off. Now I was leaving her behind–except that in an odd sort of way, it felt more like Honey was leaving me behind.
“Don’t forget,” said Joe, “any problems, you go straight to social services. Any signs of violence…you know what I’m talking about.”
“If you’re talking about my dad,” I said, “he’s never hit me my whole life!”
Dad kept his word: he didn’t get mad at me. There was a moment when I thought he might be going to. It was after I’d walked into the shop and Mum had cried “Jade!” and hurled herself at me. We’d hugged and kissed, and Mum had wept, and so had I, a little bit. Well, quite a lot, actually. I was just so glad to be home!
There were customers in the shop, and they were all nodding and smiling, cos everyone knows everyone else’s business in Steeple Norton. They’d all have known that me and Honey had run away.
Dad said, “Come into the back,” and that was when I thought he was going to get mad at me. His face had that look that it got, with his lips all turned in and his eyes narrowed to slits. But Mum said, “Alec?” in this tone that was like half pleading and half a warning, and I could see that he was struggling.
I said, “Dad, I’m sorry!” and quite suddenly he relaxed. All the crossness went out of him and he did something he’d almost never done before, he put his arms round me and crushed me, really tight, against him.
“Don’t ever do that to us again,” he said. “These have been the worst ten days of my life!”
Afterwards, we had this long talk, just Dad and me. Dad said that we were both going to have to try a great deal harder from now on.
“Both of us,” he said. “Not just you–not just me. Both of us. Right?”
I said, “Right.”
He admitted that maybe in the past he’d been a bit too harsh. I muttered that I’d sometimes done things on purpose to upset him.
Dad said, “Well, I’m a grown-up and you’re not a child any more, so we surely ought to be able to work out some way of getting along together. What do you think?”
I thought that this was the first time I could remember Dad ever asking me my opinion. About anything.
“Your mother and I love you very much,” he said. “If you ran away on purpose to upset us, you certainly succeeded.”
I said again that I was sorry.
“That makes two of us,” said Dad. “How about we kiss and make up?”
Dad’s not very good at kissing; he’s not at all a physical sort of person. It was a bit awkward, and even embarrassing, to be honest. But all the resentment I’d been building up over the years just melted away, cos I knew what an effort it was for him.
Mum told me later that she was so relieved me and Dad had been able to talk at last. She said, “Your going off like that was a total nightmare, but if it brings you and your dad a bit closer then it won’t have been all bad.”
Over a year has passed since I ran away. I’ve let my hair grow back, much to Mum and Dad’s relief.
They really hated it, all chopped off. Mum said, “I nearly passed out when I saw what you’d done to yourself!” Personally I thought it was pretty cool, and so did most of my mates, but I reckoned I’d caused Mum and Dad enough grief. It’s no big deal, having ordinary boring hair, if that’s what it takes to make them happy.
Me and Dad still have our spats, I guess we always will. We are very different kinds of people. Sometimes even now Dad will put his foot down, with a great SMASH, so that if I were a poor little butterfly creature I would be utterly crushed and humiliated. As I am not a butterfly, but more of a fighting type, I tend to stick up for myself, and that can lead to trouble. But nothing like as serious as it used to be. It’s Kirsty, these days, who sends Dad into apoplexy. She’s suddenly become a rebellious teenager, always answering back and trying to have her own way. So much for little Miss Goody Two-Shoes! I just sit there and enjoy it.
I had to tell them where Honey was, of course; I knew that I would. I did point out that she was sixteen.
“If she doesn’t want to come back, she doesn’t have to. She can do what she likes!”
But apparently that wasn’t quite right. She was old enough to leave school–just–but she couldn’t stay away from home unless her Mum agreed. She also had to be in what they called “a safe environment”. Mum rather anxiously asked me, “Is it a safe environment?” I knew she was thinking about me rather than about Honey. I told her that it was. I said, “It’s mainly just boring.”
“But this boy that was there—”
“Joe,” I said. “He’s OK. And anyway, there’s his nan.”
“It hardly sounds ideal,” said Mum.
It hadn’t been for me; but maybe it was for Honey. Her mum came round to talk to me and I told her about Honey being a waitress, and doing some of the cooking, and how she was enjoying it, and her mum said, “Well, it’s probably better for her than living with me. She wasn’t ever happy with me.” I think my mum was quite shocked; but Mum had never really believed me when I said how badly Mrs de Vito used to treat Honey. She always told me that I must be imagining it, or at any rate exaggerating.
In the end, Honey was allowed to stay where she was. We called each other quite a lot during the first few weeks, but as time passed it grew harder and harder to think of things to say.
Honey’s life seemed totally bound up in Soup ’n Sarnies. All she wanted to tell me about were the customers, the new menu, the number of sandwiches she’d made. I tried to be interested, but I really wasn’t. And I don’t think Honey was terribly interested in hearing about my life, either. I’d taken up with Marnie again, I was concentrating on school work, I’d got myself a boyfriend (one that Dad didn’t actually do his nut about, even if he didn’t altogether approve).
And so Honey and I gradually drifted apart, and I didn’t hear anything more until just a few weeks ago when she suddenly turned up, beaming, on the doorstep, with a tiny baby. She and Joe had got married! A year ago I’d have been appalled. Honey and fat slob Joe! In fact he wasn’t fat any more, he’d slimmed right down and actually looked quite presentable. Mum said afterwards that he was a “really nice young man. Not a bit like you described him!” The more I thought about it, the more I realised how snobby I’d been. Joe was the best thing that could ever have happened to Honey. Maybe he wouldn’t win Brain of Britain, but he was kind, and gentle, and he loved her. I oughtn’t to have sneered.
They’d come on a visit to Honey’s mum, to show off the baby. They’ve called her Star, and she’s the sweetest thing! Honey made me hold her, though I didn’t really want to. Just for a second I got quite gooey and thought that I wouldn’t mind having a baby myself. But not for years and years! I have plans. At the moment they don’t extend much beyond getting decent marks in next year’s exams. After that–we shall see.
One thing I am not going to do is end up working in a greasy spoon. I still have a mark on my arm where the beastly coffee machine spat at me. It’s a constant reminder, if ever I’m tempted to listen to music or chat with friends instead of doing my homework. Far more effective than Dad shouting!
Not that he does, any more, it’s Kirsten he shouts at now. I reckon she deserves it; I’m sure I was never as tiresome as she was. There are times I even feel a bit sorry for Dad. I can see that I must have tried his patience. Of course we continue to have our differences, I expect we always will, but we are both doing our best to be civilised.
I’m trying to, like, respect his views, even if I don’t always agree with them; Dad’s trying to accept that I am a person in my own right. I would say that on the whole we are managing quite well.
He certainly isn’t the wicked stepfather I used to make him out to be. He might have these really strange ideas about life and how it should be lived, but he’s my dad, and I do still love him in spite of everything.
And I know that he loves me; he’s just not comfortable showing his feelings. But, hey, we’re all different! It doesn’t mean we can’t get on together. I am becoming seriously tolerant in my old age.
Also by Jean Ure
Over the Moon
Boys Beware
Sugar and Spice
Is Anybody There?
Secret Meeting
Passion Flower
Shrinking Violet
Boys on the Brain
Skinny Melon and Me
Becky Bananas, This is Your Life!
Fruit and Nutcase
The Secret Life of Sally Tomato*
Family Fan Club
and for younger readers
Dazzling Danny
Daisy May
Monster in the Mirror
Copyright
For Sarah Mason and Rachel Woolford
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children's Books in 2007
HarperCollins Children's Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,
77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Text © Jean Ure 2007
Illustrations © Karen Donnelly 2007
The author and illustrator assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work.
Conditions of Sale
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GONE MISSING. Text © Jean Ure 2007. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition June 2009 ISBN 978-0-00-733687-6
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*Also available on tape, read by John Pickard