One More Little Problem

by Vanessa Curtis

  Other than Fran, Rice Krispies might be my only friends in the world.

  That’s one heck of a sad thought.

  I’ve got nearly three weeks of summer holiday left. My father is still unemployed and depressed, my ex-best friend is being much nicer to me but we’ve still got a long way to go, the love of my life has reappeared and then faded out of my life again and my Antichrist friend, Caro, is in Somerset, where I’d like to be too if only I didn’t have Dad to look after and about a million bits of homework.

  I feel sad and tired and deflated.

  ‘I can’t see an end to this,’ I say out loud just as Dad comes in through the open kitchen door.

  ‘End to what?’ says Dad in a high posh fashion-editor sort of a voice.

  The smell of Chanel perfume floods the kitchen.

  I’m up out of my chair before you can say ‘Slovenia’.

  Heather’s beaming from ear to ear.

  ‘Surprised?’ she says.

  ‘Yes, very!’ I say.

  Dad is still down the bottom of the garden.

  He’s going to be even more surprised. And bowled over by pathetic old-person love, I expect.

  ‘Why have you come back so early?’ I say.

  Heather’s tipping out bottles of perfume and packets of chocolate from duty-free bags all over the kitchen table.

  ‘Oh, you know,’ she says. ‘Too much champagne wrecks the complexion, kiddo. Remember that.’

  Heather’s a terrible liar.

  ‘You know something, don’t you?’

  Heather stops squirting herself from bottles and tries to put on an innocent expression but it doesn’t work.

  ‘OK,’ she says. ‘Your friend Fran rang me up. She’s a good kid, you know. She was really worried about your OCD.’

  I let these words sink in. Fran. Fran was worried about me. Just like the old Fran before all the doubts got in the way.

  I realise something at that moment.

  I realise that just because you fall out with your best friend and you feel like killing each other, it doesn’t mean that some small seed of that friendship won’t somehow survive and start to grow all over again.

  I smile a real smile for the first time in ages.

  I’m going to give Marky’s telephone number to Fran as a thank you.

  ‘She told me,’ says Heather in a more stern tone of voice, ‘that your dad stopped going to his new job. Is this true?’

  I shift about in my chair and look out at Dad.

  ‘Erm, yes, sort of, a bit,’ I say.

  Heather is aghast.

  ‘You poor, poor child!’ she says. ‘You’re far too young to be worrying about all this stuff! Honestly, Zelah, I feel awful!’

  I tell Heather about Caro’s moment of vegetable-rage and she gasps and looks shocked and covers her mouth and then tries not to laugh.

  ‘Oh Zelah,’ she says. ‘What a summer holiday you’ve had! Or not had, to be more precise.’

  ‘There’s more,’ I say.

  I relate the tragic tale of how I met up with Sol outside Topshop.

  Heather’s eyes grow as big as beetroots as I move on to the bit about not being able to hold his hand.

  ‘I should have been here for you,’ she says. ‘I could have given you some moral support or got you a fabulous deal on a designer dress.’

  Then she presents me with a weird stuffed Slovenian teddy bear and marches off down the garden towards Dad with a purposeful glint in her eye.

  It’s the final week of my holidays and at last it feels like I am doing what I’m supposed to be doing.

  A Big Fat Nothing.

  And guess what?

  I’ve just logged on all reluctant and sad and I’ve got an email from Sol!

  This is what it says:

  Dear Zelah, hope you’re OK. It was fun seeing you again the other day even though I could see it was a bit stressful for you. Sorry about that. But maybe we could meet up in town again some day? Love, Sol. P.S. You looked kind of hot.

  Now I’m in a dilemma. I don’t know whether he means ‘hot’ as in sexy or ‘hot’ as in I was all flushed and bothered because I wasn’t expecting him to turn up or try to hold my hand.

  Hmm. But at least the email doesn’t tell me to get lost.

  Things are better at home too.

  Heather’s taken control of Dad. He’s got another interview lined up and this time she’s determined that he will get the job and stay in it. For a Very Long Time.

  So I haven’t got too much to worry about.

  Even my rituals have got a bit better now. I’ve cut down my jumps again to fifteen and I’ve reduced the number of times I scrub my face and hands to twenty.

  So, I’m lying up in my bedroom staring at the ceiling with nothing much to do and the sun’s out and Dad and Heather are chatting away downstairs and I’ve caught up on all my homework and the phone rings and I’m nearest so I pick it up.

  ‘Hi,’ says Caro’s voice. It sounds wary and older.

  ‘Hi,’ I say after a short pause. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Back at Forest Hill,’ says Caro. ‘The Doc drove over and got me from the hospital.’

  I swallow hard. I hope Caro’s not going to lay into me again. Just when everything was calming down and getting better.

  ‘Don’t start,’ I say. ‘I’m not sure I could stand it. I’ve cut down my jumps.’

  ‘Chill, OCD,’ says the familiar voice. ‘You get yourself worked up, don’t you? I’m not ringing to have a go.’

  That takes the wind out of my sails.

  ‘Oh,’ is all I can manage. For a moment I wonder if this is some imposter pretending to be Caro.

  ‘Yeah, I was ringing to say something else,’ says Caro. ‘Bear with me. This is not going to be easy, man.’

  I brace myself for the insult or the revelation or the unwelcome news.

  But it never comes.

  ‘Thanks, Zelah,’ is all that Caro says in a voice I’ve never heard before. ‘Thanks for putting up with me. And say thanks to your dad, and that.’

  There’s a gentle click.

  She’s gone.

  Wow. Caro said something kind! It’s a miracle!

  I look at myself in the mirror. I see a happy sunburned girl with frizzy black hair and red cheeks.

  Maybe the summer just got a whole lot better.

  I’m galloping downstairs after doing only ten jumps on the top step and I’ve just reached the bottom one and am about to do the same and then burst into the kitchen except that Heather and Dad are speaking about something in very low voices and obviously don’t want me to hear, so I stand very still and try to eavesdrop, but I can’t really hear anything although I swear at one point I might have heard the word ‘wedding’ but that can’t be right.

  Heather will never agree to marry Dad.

  Probably just as well.

  I mean – all that worry, and organisation, and stress and planning!

  Heather’s way too busy with work to organise a wedding. And Dad would be useless at anything involving fashion and women and crying.

  So – I wonder who’d have to deal with all that?

  No! They wouldn’t – they couldn’t . . . not after my dreadful summer.

  I shake my head and dismiss the thought.

  I do ten very quiet jumps on the bottom stair.

  Then I go to join my family.

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to Leah Thaxton and the team at Egmont for their enthusiasm on all things Zelah-related. As ever Peter Buckman has remained the eternal optimist and been wonderfully candid and encouraging, so special thanks to him and all at The Ampersand Agency. And writing wouldn’t be possible without the love and support of David, Carol and Tim Curtis, Tim Cowin and my lovely friend Sue Fox.

  Also by Vanessa Curtis:

  ZeLaH

  GReen

  ‘My name is Zelah Green and I’m a cleanaholic.’

  I spend most of my life running away from germs. And dirt
. And people. And I’m just about doing OK and then my stepmother packs me off to some kind of hospital to live with a load of strangers. It’s stuck in the middle of nowhere. Great.

  There’s Alice who’s anorexic. Caro who cuts herself. Silent Sol who has the cutest smile. And then there’s me.

  ‘It’ll be fine, I say to myself. It’s all going to be OK . . .’

  EGMONT PRESS: ETHICAL PUBLISHING

  Egmont Press is about turning writers into successful authors and children into passionate readers – producing books that enrich and entertain. As a responsible children’s publisher, we go even further, considering the world in which our consumers are growing up.

  Safety First

  Naturally, all of our books meet legal safety requirements. But we go further than this; every book with play value is tested to the highest standards – if it fails, it’s back to the drawing-board.

  Made Fairly

  We are working to ensure that the workers involved in our supply chain – the people that make our books – are treated with fairness and respect.

  Responsible Forestry

  We are committed to ensuring all our papers come from environmentally and socially responsible forest sources.

  For more information, please visit our website at

  www.egmont.co.uk/ethical

  Egmont is passionate about helping to preserve the world’s remaining ancient forests. We only use paper from legal and sustainable forest sources, so we know where every single tree comes from that goes into every paper that makes up every book.

  This book is made from paper certified by the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC), an organisation dedicated to promoting responsible management of forest resources. For more information on the FSC, please visit www.fsc.org. To learn more about Egmont’s sustainable paper policy, please visit www.egmont.co.uk/ethical.