Fortune Cookie

by Cathy Cassidy

  Mum sighs. ‘You were listening? I was going to tell you, Jake. In my own time. Can we keep this quiet for a little while, for the sake of the girls?’

  My eyes slide over to my little sisters, who have abandoned the TV now to act out some kind of flood disaster game with the broken Barbie dolls. It makes my gut twist to know that my carelessness has wrecked everything for them.

  ‘What will happen?’ I ask quietly. ‘Will we squash in with Gran for a while? Look for a new flat? Or find some scaffy B&B?’

  Mum rolls her eyes. ‘None of those things, Jake,’ she says, and casually drops a bombshell even bigger than the great bathtub tsumani. ‘You see, I’ve met a man. A very nice man, a kind man – someone I’d like to be a part of my life. Our lives. So this seems like fate, in a way. We’ll be moving in with him.’

  I just about choke on my cornflakes.

  Mum flicks on her smartphone and shows me pictures of the new boyfriend; he is thin and tanned and beardy, with long dreadlocks tied back in a ponytail and a T-shirt that says Free Tibet. I always thought Tibet was a country, not some kind of supermarket special deal.

  I cringe at the very sight of him.

  ‘No way,’ I say. ‘Mum, he’s a full-on weirdo!’

  ‘He’s no such thing,’ Mum insists. ‘He’s gentle and kind and open-minded enough to take on a new relationship with a single mother of three. That’s quite something.’

  I look across the living room to where Isla and Maisie are digging up a wilting potted plant to bury a Barbie doll. The beardy guy has no clue what he is signing up for.

  ‘He’s Lou Parker’s brother’s friend,’ Mum goes on, naming an old friend of hers with pink dip-dyed hair and multiply pierced ears. ‘I met him at one of her parties years ago. Then last month when I went on that weekend reflexology course, he was there too, teaching t’ai chi. It was just like we were fated to meet again!’

  It’s not fate as far as I am concerned, more of a sick joke, but I keep my mouth shut. Mum is a great believer in fate, along with fortune cookies, horoscopes, yoga and herbal remedies. When I got nits back in Year Four she slathered my head with so much tea tree oil I smelled like Vicks VapoRub for months, and nobody would sit near me in class. No wonder the nits kept away.

  ‘Who is this creep?’ I ask. ‘What’s his name?’

  Mum shakes her head. ‘He’s not a creep, Jake! He’s called Pete Shedden, but everybody calls him Sheddie. He’s great; you’ll like him.’

  ‘Sheddie?’ I echo. ‘Sheddie! Seriously? That’s not a real name!’

  ‘It’s a nickname,’ Mum repeats patiently. ‘I told you. Just give this a chance!’

  I don’t want to give any chances at all to a weedy beardy guy who seems to be named after a garden hut. A chance like that could mess with everything. In all of my life, I can’t remember staying anywhere for more than a couple of years. Even when Mum was with Rick, we moved all the time because he was never able to hold down a job for long.

  Past homes I have known: Gran’s house in Bethnal Green, when I was really little; a bedsit two streets from Gran’s when she and Mum fell out; a bunch of different flats and terraced houses when we lived with Rick in Manchester; and now a poky flat over a restaurant in Chinatown.

  I do not want to pack up and start from scratch again, playing happy families with some long-haired crusty with the worst nickname in the world. This has disaster written all over it.

  My sisters appear, distracted at last from their Barbie burial by the sound of raised voices and the fizz of panic in the air. They crowd on to the sofa, pressing themselves close to Mum, eyeing me anxiously.

  ‘Are we moving?’ Isla wants to know.

  ‘Well, the flat’s not at its best right now,’ Mum says, trying to be bright and breezy. ‘So, yes, I think it could be a good time to move. We’ll be heading for the Midlands, a town called Millford. There’s a big rambling house on the edge of a park, with a garden and everything!’

  A wave of hurt and anger rolls through me. She has it all planned out; we get no say at all.

  ‘Will we have our own rooms?’ Maisie asks.

  Mum frowns. ‘I’m not exactly sure if we’ll be in the house, to begin with anyway.’

  My eyes open wide. ‘Not in the house?’ I repeat. ‘Huh? Where else would we be? In a tent in the garden?’

  Mum looks awkward. ‘It’s a yurt, actually,’ she says, and I start to laugh because I cannot believe my mum can even think about dragging us halfway across the country to live in a yurt in some miserable north-of-nowhere dump. Then I remember that we are being evicted, and that it’s all my fault and I stop laughing.

  ‘Is it a holiday?’ Isla is asking. ‘Because if it is, I would rather go to the Costa del Sol. Evie Flucker went there at half-term and they stayed in a big hotel with a swimming pool. She got this cool stuffed donkey wearing a sunhat as a souvenir. I think that might be better than camping –’

  ‘It’s not a holiday,’ Maisie cuts in. ‘It’s forever, isn’t it, Mum? It might actually be the perfect time to get a dog. A labradoodle? Because they are very cute, and I have always wanted a pet.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ Mum says. ‘I think there are chickens, and Sheddie grows his own vegetables so we will be practically self-sufficient.’

  ‘Chickens?’ Maisie echoes.

  ‘Vegetables?’ Isla chimes in.

  You have to remember that they have spent the last two years living above The Paper Dragon. Their idea of home-grown food is sweet and sour pork and egg-fried rice eaten lukewarm out of silver foil boxes.

  Isla frowns. ‘Who is Sheddie?’ she asks.

  Mum actually blushes and starts explaining that Sheddie is a nice man, a t’ai chi instructor and youth worker who makes willow sculptures in his spare time.

  ‘Yes, but who is he?’ my littlest sister presses. ‘Is he your boyfriend?’

  ‘I suppose he is,’ Mum admits. ‘You’ll like him, Isla. You all will! He is coming to stay for a few days, so you can get to know him, and then we can all go to Millford together!’

  This isn’t just a whirlwind romance; it’s practically a tornado. Mum is thinking on her feet, making the best of a disastrous situation, but there’s no way on earth she’d be considering a move like this if we weren’t being evicted. And I for one do not want to be pulled from the wreckage of yesterday’s flood by a dreadlocked crusty called Sheddie. It feels dodgy, dangerous; like jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

  ‘And we’re moving a week on Saturday?’ I check.

  ‘It’ll give us time to pack,’ Mum says. ‘This is all for the best, Jake; please try to understand!’

  But I don’t understand anything, except that life is turning upside down again, and somehow it’s all my fault. Anger boils up inside me, a bubbling soup of fury; I have messed up yet again and this time, finally, I have ruined everything. We’re evicted, homeless; doomed to live in a scabby tent with some hopeless hippy – and who do I have to blame for it all? Me, me, me.

  I’m on my feet, swearing under my breath as I storm out of the room, slamming the door so hard it almost comes off its hinges. Literally. I don’t even care – the rest of the flat is falling to bits, so what does a bit more damage matter? A few flakes of plaster flutter down around my head like fake snowflakes as I climb up the ladder to the top bunk, the only place I can get any privacy in this stupid place. If I think this is bad, what will a yurt be like?

  I fling myself down on the mattress, blinking back angry tears; I won’t cry, I won’t. Instead, I clench my hands so hard the fingernails dig into my palms, drawing blood. How come some people are so unlucky? It’s the story of my life. At school, Harry and Mitch are the troublemakers, the stirrers, but I’m the one who lands myself in trouble, over and over again. I’m either in the wrong place at the wrong time, or I can’t resist the temptation to open my mouth and say something smart. Neither trait is anything to be proud of.

  My flaws have caught up with me big style, and my mum and si
sters are paying the price for them this time, not just me. If only I had a wad of money to help fix the damage I’ve caused; I bet Mr Zhao wouldn’t be turfing us out then. The guilt curdles into anger again, a toxic, choking anger that makes me want to yell and roar and break things. I slam one fist against the wall, making the whole bunk – the whole wall – shake.

  No plaster falls down on my head this time, but a couple of drawing pins come loose and the train ticket to Somerset and the fortune cookie prediction from our first day in Chinatown drift down softly on to the faded duvet.

  Soon life will become more interesting, it says.

  It seems like a sign.

  5

  So, yeah. This is how I come to be walking the streets of London at 4 a.m. in the morning, carrying a rucksack and the weight of the world on my shoulders. I am fourteen years old and I have a train ticket to Somerset and a letter from a mad girl who says she is my half-sister. I also have a gutful of guilt and plenty of determination to fix things, sort things, put things right. I just haven’t worked out how. Not yet, not exactly; but I will. I have the start of an idea.

  I am wearing the soy-sauce jeans and I’ve packed cheese sandwiches, a packet of crisps, spare socks, a change of T-shirt. In my pocket the train ticket and the fortune cookie prediction sit alongside the princely sum of £9.52, which is my entire life savings.

  It’s time to take a risk of my own.

  It’s a Saturday, but the tubes aren’t running yet, so I walk towards the nearest overground station. I pass homeless people sleeping in doorways, in sleeping bags beneath polythene sheets. My heart thumps; I need to find a solution to this mess, and fast, or it could be us out on the streets.

  It turns out that trains to Exeter don’t leave from Charing Cross; I need to go to Waterloo, so I head on over the bridge, the Thames glinting pink and gold as I pass above it. Once there, I discover that my ticket isn’t valid until after nine, so I buy a hot chocolate from a mobile coffee stall that’s just opening up, then sit for a while and work on my plan.

  I am running away from the mess I’ve made, leaving behind the chaos of life as I know it. It sounds like a coward’s way out, but it isn’t really. I will give myself a week to find an answer, to save my family from eviction and disaster. I am not a runaway; I’m on a mission.

  The message I scrawled on the window of The Paper Dragon before I left was an apology to Mr Zhao. I don’t think it’s fair that Mum, Isla and Maisie should be punished for my mistake, and with me out of the picture maybe things can settle down again, go back to normal. Maybe Mum won’t feel like she has to hook up with that creep Sheddie to get us out of trouble.

  I am not stupid; I know my apology won’t undo the damage, but I have a plan for that too. It’s a mad plan, and it might not work, but it has to be worth a try.

  I am going to find my dad. It’s not because I have a dad-shaped hole in my life, or because I need to meet him, shake him by the hand, bond with him and hear his side of the story. It’s not even so I can tell him I’m doing fine without him.

  It’s way more mercenary than that; I want his money.

  The way I see it, my dad owes me – big time. He hasn’t been around to see me grow up; not one visit, not one card, not even a phone call to check in from time to time. I could be sick in hospital with some life-threatening disease and he wouldn’t know; I could be a juvenile delinquent, a criminal in the making. Actually, scrap that, it’s a little too close to the truth.

  What I’m saying is: he has never given me anything, not one thing, my whole entire life. I know Mum doesn’t get maintenance money; if she did, it would have kept us out of poverty, kept Mum from working the night shift at the supermarket in Manchester, stopped her working a seven-day week at The Paper Dragon. If my dad had put his hand in his pocket and coughed up some maintenance, we’d have had the money to repair the broken washing machine or the cash for a launderette wash. I wouldn’t have had to kneel on the floor washing my favourite jeans in the bath. And while I’m being honest, let’s be clear on this; when I say ‘favourite’, I mean ‘only’.

  I am not under any illusion that my dad is a great bloke. I think he’s a loser, but from what Honey says he is a loser with money.

  I have never taken a thing from him, but now I need his help. I want him to pay for the repairs to the ceiling at The Paper Dragon and the bathroom floor in the flat. This would rescue Mr Zhao from certain ruin, maybe save us from eviction. It might save us from a grim future as yurt-dwelling hippies too – surely my dad would help us find a decent flat, one where there’s no mould on the walls.

  If I’m lucky, my new half-sisters will help me make contact with him, help me to appeal to him for help. It’s a half-baked plan, but it’s better than no plan at all.

  In the meantime, I have somewhere to lie low for a while and get to know my new sisters. I admit it, I’m curious. Four half-sisters who share my DNA, my colouring, my looks; what else might they share? Will they understand me, like me, see a potential in me instead of just a talent for wrecking everything I touch?

  I can hope, I guess.

  Finally, I make it on to a train, and soon I am speeding out of London, eating cheese sandwiches to celebrate my escape from angry landlords, t’ai chi and dreadlocks.

  It’s kind of exhilarating.

  I take out my mobile and text Maisie. I saved my Paper Dragon wages from the Easter holidays to buy my cheapo pay-as-you-go mobile, and Maisie’s phone is an ancient hand-me-down from Gran, only to be used in emergencies. This feels like an emergency to me.

  You OK? I ask. Don’t show anyone this text. Let me know when you’re alone and I’ll try to call you.

  Minutes later, a reply bleeps through.

  Can you call now? Please? I’ve locked myself in the bathroom with the taps running.

  I press CALL in a panic, and seconds later the call connects.

  ‘Why are the taps running?’ I demand. ‘What’s going on? Be careful, Maisie!’

  ‘So Mum thinks I’m washing, of course,’ she hisses. ‘I’m not going to flood anything. D’you think I’m stupid?’

  ‘No!’ I tell her. ‘Just checking. So, nobody can hear you? Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure,’ she promises. ‘Mum’s hoovering and Isla is watching CBeebies.’

  ‘OK. Don’t tell anyone I’ve called,’ I say. ‘Don’t mention that you saw me leaving. Promise, Maisie? It’s really, really important.’

  ‘I promise,’ she says in a small voice. ‘I won’t. But – oh, Cookie, have you run away for ever and ever?’

  ‘No way!’ I tell her. ‘I’m going to fix everything, OK? For Mr Zhao, for Mum, for all of us. We won’t have to go and live in a tent with Mum’s stupid hippy boyfriend. We can stay where we are, only the flat will be all sorted and nice and the restaurant will be good as new. Or maybe we’ll have a new flat, with a bedroom each. I’m working on it. I’ll be back as soon as I can, and meanwhile, Maisie, you have to cover for me if you can. OK?’

  ‘I already am, Cookie,’ she says. ‘Mr Zhao just hammered on our door to tell Mum you wrote graffiti all over the restaurant window. Mum is not happy. She said something about her new red lipstick.’

  ‘I thought they’d be pleased I didn’t use spray paint,’ I say with a sigh. ‘I wanted him to know I was sorry, that’s all!’

  ‘I think the whole street knows you’re sorry,’ Maisie says. ‘Anyhow, Mum is angry too now; she says you’ve put your foot in it again. She came raging into the bedroom looking for you, but I said you’d gone over to Harry’s.’

  ‘Thanks, Maisie,’ I say. ‘Good save.’

  ‘Will you be back later?’ my little sister asks, plaintive now. ‘Please come back. That horrible hippy man is coming to visit tomorrow, and Mum keeps talking about the yurt-thing.’

  Maisie’s words are starting to break up as the train gathers speed.

  ‘Listen; I won’t be back today, Maisie,’ I reply, trying to talk slowly and clearly. ‘I might be a bit l
onger than that, but don’t worry about the hippy guy or the yurt-thing. I’ll sort all that, OK? Just promise not to tell and keep covering for me, OK? And, Maisie, switch those taps off!’

  I finally lose signal completely; my mobile goes dead, and I just have to hope she’s got the message. I sigh. Even my scrawled apology has been dismissed as graffiti; I can’t get anything right. Still, at least Maisie hasn’t blabbed; she’s actually put Mum off the scent with her story that I’ve gone over to Harry’s. Mum’s clearly not pleased, but she’s probably not surprised either. She’ll assume I’m staying out of the way for Sheddie’s arrival, hiding out at Harry’s for a bit. That’s probably what I would have done, if it weren’t for this magic ticket.

  Once I get a mobile signal again, I ping off a couple of texts to Harry and Mitch to explain what’s going on and ask them to say the right things if Mum happens to call them. Next I text Mum, a brief message telling her I’m staying at Harry’s for a couple of days until Mr Zhao cools down. Don’t worry, I type. I will be back by the end of the week, and maybe things will be looking better by then. Sorry for being such a disaster zone. Love Jake x

  I put away my mobile and stare out of the train window and allow myself to hope that things will work out.

  Fate is all well and good, but it doesn’t mean sitting around on the sidelines while life lurches from bad to worse. You can take control, steer things in a different direction, make a stand when everyone around you is hell-bent on disaster.

  It beats feeling angry and helpless anyhow.

  I am not running away so much as embarking on an adventure to put right some of the world’s wrongs. I am a teenage superhero in slightly stained jeans and a faded T-shirt, seeking justice for all – plus a new ceiling and a patched-up bathroom floor.

  It doesn’t seem like too much to ask.

  6

  It takes ages to get to Exeter, and once I’m there it turns out that I still have miles and miles to travel; I have to take not one but two buses onwards. I manage to get away without paying the fares by sneaking on to the first bus with a student group and then with a family of tourists on the second, but still, I am starting to lose the will to live. Who knows, maybe life in a no-hope Midlands town would be better than life in the wilds of Somerset, because all I can see from the bus window is mile after mile of moorland with the occasional desolate village scattered about just to relieve the boredom. Except that it doesn’t, not quite.