by Jean Ure
I admit that it is, but am doubtful whether I will have sufficient willpower to resist the temptation. Petal assures me that either she or Pip will always be there to watch over me. I say, “But you can’t always be there!”
“We can for the holidays,” said Petal. “By the time we go back to school you’ll have developed all new habits and will be safe to be left on your own.”
She gives me her promise. So does Pip. I begin to feel a bit more optimistic. I almost begin to feel happy. It is good to have a brother and sister to look after you! I tell Pip that in return me and Petal will help him behave more like a normal ten year old and less like a poor little boy genius with the weight of the world on his shoulders. And then I say, “But what about you?” looking rather hard at Petal.
Petal says I don’t have to worry about her.
“I’ll be so busy watching out for you and Pip I won’t have time to think about myself. In any case,” she adds, “I’m through with boys.”
Oh, ho ho! She needn’t think I believe that. Not for one moment!
When Mum gets home, about an hour later, we’re all sitting in a row on the sofa, watching telly. A thing we never do! Not all in a row. But it’s like we suddenly have this need to stay close. Mum is in one of her brisk moods. I mean, brisker-even-than-usual moods. She cries, “Come on, you lot! Have you eaten? Let’s go up the road, I can’t be bothered to cook.”
When does she ever? Cook, I mean.
“Well, come on!” Mum snaps off the television. She doesn’t bother asking us what we’re watching, or whether we want to go on watching. We probably don’t – I’m not even sure we know what channel we’re on. But that is Mum for you.
She hustles us out of the house. I exchange nervous glances with Petal. Well, my glance is nervous; Petal’s is reassuring. She clamps her arm through mine and hisses, “Stand firm. We’re with you!”
One of the waiters, Angelo (who is rather divine and has a bit of a thing about Petal) shows us to our usual table, the big round one in the corner. He then rushes off to the kitchen, where we hear him calling out to Dad.
“Eh! Franco!” (Dad’s name in Italian.) “Your famiglia is here!”
Dad bustles out to see us, in his chef’s apron and hat. Beaming, he says that he has just prepared some fresh pasta. One of his specials. I gulp. I adore Dad’s pastas! Petal squeezes my hand.
“We’ll just have salads,” she says.
“What?” Dad looks from me to Petal in bewilderment. Obviously can’t believe he’s heard right. “Pumpkin’s not having salad!”
“She is,” says Petal. “We both are.”
“Rubbish!” says Dad. “You can eat like a rabbit if you want. I’m not having Pumpkin infected by the bug!”
Earnestly, I say that it’s not a bug. “It’s healthy eating!”
It’s a bit of a feeble protest, but I can’t leave it all to Petal. Pip obviously feels the same, because he pipes up in support.
“Give us salad! We want salad!” And then he adds, “Green.”
“Green for him, mixed for us,” says Petal.
Poor Dad is looking more and more confused. Even Mum seems to realise that something isn’t quite as it should be. Little Podgy Plumpkin eating salad! Since when?
“Now, look,” says Dad, “this is ridiculous! You can’t just eat a few lettuce leaves, young lady. You’ll have a nice plate of pasta, with salad on the side. Right?” And he turns away, as if the matter is now settled. Which, if it had been me on my own, with Petal making eyes at the waiters and Pip solving puzzles in his head, it probably would have been. I would never find the strength to hold out against Dad! But Petal has a lot of what I would call backbone. She definitely has a stubborn streak. Luckily for me!
“Dad,” she says, “we’re having salads. We don’t want pasta.”
Mum suddenly wakes up and rushes in to Dad’s support. “Pasta’s good for you!”
“Now and again,” says Petal. “Not every day. Not in the quantities Dad dishes it up!”
“Not with that horrid red sauce,” says Pip. “Ugh! Glug”
Not really very helpful, but at least he is trying.
“Maybe tomorrow,” says Petal. “Tomorrow she can have pasta… but just a small helping.”
Oh, dear! It is so embarrassing. I feel that everyone in the restaurant is watching us, waiting to see what will happen.
Somewhat crossly, Mum says to Petal, “You’ve become very bossy all of a sudden!”
“One of us has to be,” says Petal.
Dad now decides that the time has come to make a stand.
“See here,” he says, “I won’t have you bullying your sister! You keep your food fads to yourself. Plumpkin’s got more sense. She’s a foodie, aren’t you, poppet? Same as her dad!”
“Not any more,” says Petal.
“No!” Pip bangs triumphantly on the table with the salt cellar. “Not any more! This is the start of a new regime!” He uses words like that. I suppose it’s what comes of being a boy genius. “We’re in charge now!”
“That’s right” says Petal. “We’ve taken over.”
“Taken over what?” says Mum.
“Well, Pump’s intake, for one thing,” says Petal. “We’re monitoring it.”
“What for?” Mum now seems every bit as bewildered as Dad. “She’s not fat! In fact—” She narrows her eyes, studying me across the table. It’s like she’s seeing me for the first time. I want to dive beneath the red check tablecloth and hide. I feel like some kind of exhibit. “Have you lost weight?” says Mum.
Petal rolls her eyes. I mean, she hadn’t noticed either, until today, but then she is only my sister. Pip, growing excited, bangs again with the salt cellar and cries, “Hooray! Mum gets a gold star!”
By now, you can see that both Mum and Dad are completely at a loss. They haven’t the faintest idea what’s going on! Petal, taking pity on them, says kindly that there’s no need for them to worry.
“Just leave it to us. We’re quite capable of looking after ourselves.”
There’s a silence; then Dad shakes his head, as if it’s all just got too much, and goes trundling back to the kitchen to prepare one plate of pasta and three salads. Poor Dad! He can’t work out what’s hit him.
“There you are,” says Petal. She nods at me, and pats my hand. “That was quite painless, wasn’t it?”
Pip yells, “Kids unite!” and beats a tattoo with his knife and fork. Almost like a normal ten year old! Maybe there is hope for us all.
Mum is still studying me with this puzzled expression on her face, like she’s trying to decide whether I’ve always looked like I do now, or whether her eyes are deceiving her.
“I hope you’re not getting anorexic,” she says.
“Mum, she is not getting anorexic,” says Petal. “She might have been – but we’ve put a stop to it. Now she’s going to eat sensibly. Aren’t you?”
I nod, meekly.
“We’re going to help her,” says Petal.
Mum says, “But—” And then she stops, puts both hands on top of her head and closes her eyes. “All right,” she says. “We’re obviously going to have to talk.”
“We can,” says Petal, “if you like. There are certainly things to talk about.”
“That,” says Mum, “is becoming painfully clear.”
Poor Mum! I’ve never seen her so… chastened, I think, is the word. Like when someone tells you off and you know that you’ve deserved it. Not that anyone has told Mum off! But she seems to be having guilt feelings, as if maybe she hasn’t been a proper mum. I feel like telling her that it’s not her fault. I like having a mum who’s a high flyer! I’m proud of her! She can’t be expected to go out every day doing an important job like hers and take notice of all the little banal things going on around her. How was she to know I wasn’t eating properly? Or that Petal was tearing herself to pieces over ratlike Andy, and Pip wearing his brain to a frazzle?
Petal, kindly, says, “Don’t wor
ry! It’ll all get sorted out.”
Mum just gives her this look. The sort of look I imagine a plant might give before you brutally wrench it out of the earth.
“I don’t know,” she says, wearily. “I just don’t know!”
It’s Dad who brings out our salads. (Angelo’s standing at the kitchen door, grinning.) Being Dad, of course, he can’t just do plain salad. On mine and Petal’s he’s added new potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, slices of salami (on mine, not Petal’s) and a sprinkling of parmesan. Humbly he asks if that is all right.
“Everything except the salami,” says Petal. “She can’t have that.”
Dad opens his mouth to protest, but Petal cuts firmly over the top of him.
“You don’t want to eat animal,” she says. “Do you?”
I don’t particularly want to eat animals; but I do like salami!
“Do you?” says Petal.
I go, “W—”
“Apart from anything else,” says my remorseless sister, “such as for instance being disgusting and cruel and utterly repulsive, it is chock full of fat.”
Pip goes, “Ugh!”
“Yes. Ugh!” says Petal.
Very meekly, Dad removes the salami from my plate and puts it into his mouth. Someone in the restaurant starts a round of applause. Angelo, over by the kitchen door, thrusts a clenched fist into the air. We watch, as Dad chews and swallows.
“Is that better?” he says.
“Yes! Thank you.” Petal gives him one of her dazzling smiles (the ones she uses to get gorge males). “That is healthy!”
In weak tones, quite unlike her normal up-front self, Mum says, “Why do I get the feeling we’re being ganged up against?”
“Because you are!” squeals Pip. “We’re the Gang of Three and we are YEWnited!”
It’s funny, we’ve never been that close, the three of us. We’ve all tended to do our own thing, go our separate ways. Now, suddenly, we’re like a proper family. We’re all going to pull together! It makes me feel warm and safe. I’m so glad I have a brother and sister! I haven’t always been. There have been times when I would cheerfully have drowned them both in buckets of water. I expect there may be more times like that in the future. But just right now, I love them both to bits!
“WELL. I SUPPOSE really that I have reached the end, at least of this particular bit of my life. My struggle with fat!
The struggle goes on, except that I am not obsessed any more. I am trying very hard to eat sensibly. I am determined not to go back to being the human equivalent of a dustbin, and even Dad is beginning to accept that he cannot pile up my plate the way he used to.
We had this long, long talk, Mum and Dad, me and Petal and Pip. Mum said, “I have been such a bad mother!” Dad said, “No, I have!” which made us laugh. Mum then said, in all seriousness, that perhaps she should give up her job; at which we all shouted, “Mum! No!” Dad said maybe he should be the one to give up, but Mum said that wouldn’t be fair. She said he’d already done his stint as a househusband. In the end we unanimously decided to continue just as we were, except that from now on we were all going to sit down, once a week, as a family, and share.
I must say that it has worked quite well. We all gather round the table and say what we’ve been doing. We “air our grievances” and ask if anyone has got any problems they want to discuss. We tell all the good things that have happened, and the bad things, too. I know more about Mum and Dad, and about Pip and Petal, than I ever did before!
Pip still works really hard, but I think, now, it’s because he likes to rather than because he’s under pressure. Petal still obsesses over boys; I can’t see that ever changing! But just recently she seems to have settled down a bit. She’s been going with the same one for almost three months, which is practically a record! I expect sooner or later they will break up, and then we shall have tears, and marathon wailing sessions on her moby, but at least she will be able to tell us about it and we can all sympathise.
As for me… it has not been easy, learning to eat properly. But everyone has helped, and I think that I can almost trust myself. I fear that I shall never be thin as a pin; I just don’t seem to be made that way. I am doing my best to be happy with my body, because after all it is the only one I am ever likely to have. Not that it stops me yearning! I would still rather be slim, slender and sticklike than pudgy, podgy and plump. I would think almost anyone would. I don’t care what people say! But you can’t always be how you would like to be, and I have come to the conclusion that there is simply no point in making yourself miserable over it.
I once read that inside every fat person there is a thin person waiting to get out. But the way I see it, inside every short person there is probably a tall person. And everyone with thin hair would probably die to have thick hair. And those with long droopy faces would just love to have round cheeky faces. And those that are plain would give anything to be beautiful. But that is the way it goes.
As I said at the beginning, dream on!
Actually, I don’t think I did say it, but I could have done. I could have said a lot of things, only it is a bit late now. I have told my story and it is time to finish.
Oh, I made up with Saffy, by the way. I couldn’t stand not being friends with her! She said that she couldn’t stand not being friends with me. I apologised for being so mean and cranky, Saffy apologised for not being more understanding. Now we are closer than ever!
We still go to drama classes because we really do enjoy them. We are working on a musical this term. I have discovered that I can sing! We are still in search of those hunky, sensitive boys… we still live in hope, though Mark has left to go to a full-time drama school in London and gorgeous Gareth has moved away. Boo hoo! Little Miss Twinkle and Zoë are still with us. Unfortunately. But they don’t bug me any more, even though Zoë has taken to calling me Heffelump. I have learnt to ignore her. I just rise above it! A couple of new boys have started taking classes, and we think, me and Saffy, that they may turn out to be quite promising… but actually, at the moment, I am sort of going out with Ben. He may look like a turnip, but he makes me laugh! We have lots of fun together.
I have decided, however, that I don’t want a career in the movies after all. I don’t think I am really cut out for it; I am not show-offy enough. What I am considering at the moment is entering one of the caring professions. Helping people. Saving the rainforests. That sort of thing. I think it is ignoble to just aim for fame or money. Of course, I may change my mind about this. I have changed it several times in the past! But those are my feelings at this moment in time.
Oh, and hey! Guess what? They have done another Ellen book and I am on the cover again! I’m dead proud of it. As soon as it hits the shops I’m going to be out there, making sure it can be seen. If that author doesn’t end up rich as rich can be, it certainly won’t be my fault!
Also by Jean Ure
Lemonade Sky
Love and Kisses
Fortune Cookie
Star Crazy Me!
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
Ice Lolly
Special three-in-one editions
The Tutti-Frutti Collection
The Flower Power Collection
The Friends Forever Collection
And for younger readers
Dazzling Danny
Daisy May
Monster in the Mirror
Copyright
HarperCollins Children’s Books
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2002
Text copyright © Jean Ure 2002
Illustrations by Karen Donnelly 2002
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2011
The author and illustrator assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of the work.
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Source ISBN: 9780007143924
EBook Edition © JUNE 2013 ISBN: 9780007402366
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