‘Dad.’
‘You’re still doing that creepy voice again, Darcy.’
‘I’m not.’
‘You are, but anyway, what do you want?’
‘Can I come to work with you one day?’
‘Bored, are you?’
‘No, not bored, just so interested in what the absolute king of my life does all day.’
‘Well, put it this way, I’d MUCH rather be at home with you lot enjoying our lovely new house than at work.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. You don’t want to come to the workshop. It’s cold. Sawdust gets all in your eyes.’
‘I think I do want to come.’
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Why can’t you just think about it now?’
‘I need to talk to my colleagues.’
‘But you’re the boss.’
‘Sort of. John is the main boss.’
‘No he’s not. Mum told me already that you’re the one that does all the work and John Pincher just gets all the money.’
‘Oh, did she now?’ Dad laughs.
‘Mum says he’s hardly ever even there, and even when he does come in he’s just a nuisance and gets in everybody’s way because he doesn’t know what he’s doing.’
‘And what makes you think a gobby little girl barging about the place won’t get in anybody’s way?’
‘I loved it last time.’
‘That was a quick visit, not all day.’
‘Oh, Dad, please?’
Dad goes back to his paper. Lamb-Beth, my beauty lamb, is flopped across his lap, sleeping so wonderfully cutely.
‘It’s not fair on Hector and Poppy if I just take you.’
‘Take them another day.’
‘I can’t, monkey, it’s not safe! I work around lots of machinery – look how many scraps I get myself into.’ He holds his hands up. They are covered in tiny bloody nips.
‘Dad, you get splinters. I think I can handle a splinter.’
Dad looks at me, trying to work me out as though he is some knight here to judge if I am ready to join his round table or something.
‘OK. OK. You can come.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Really. But don’t get too excited. It really isn’t that fun.’
‘Can I bring Lamb-Beth?’
‘Don’t push it.’
Oh, sick. Will is going to go absolutely mental when I tell him when he gets home. That I did a day’s actual GRAFT! Like a builder person! Absolutely brilliant. This is going to be the best day of my entire life.
‘Errr. What are you doing?’ Poppy catches me in the kitchen leaning over the breadboard.
‘Making sandwiches.’
‘That looks like a packed lunch to me.’
‘Well, so what if it is?’
‘Who is it a packed lunch for?’
‘Me.’
She comes over and spies my creations. Cheese, pickle, salad.
‘They are DAD flavours!’ She glares. ‘Where you going?’
‘To work.’
‘With who?’
‘None of your beeswax.’
‘NOT WITH DAD?’
‘I’m not saying I am but I’m not saying I’m not.’
‘Oh, my actual days, no you are NOT!’
‘Oh yes I am.’
‘No!’
‘Yes!’
‘No!’
‘Yes!’
‘But we aren’t allowed in Dad’s workshop because he says it’s dangerous, all saws and stuff.’
‘Well, I’m old enough now, Poppy. I know that’s not really that nice for you to hear but I’ve waited my time; a couple more years to go and maybe you’ll be able to come to be making visits to Dad’s work too.’
‘I can’t believe this.’
‘Believe it, Poppy. It’s very, very real.’
‘Why would Dad be taking YOU and not me?’
‘Who knows?’ I dab a crumb of cheese off the side and pop it in my mouth. ‘Maybe . . . I’m just Dad’s favourite?’
HA! Suck on THAT sweetie of own medicine, Poppy Burdock!
But the smile is quite swiftly wiped from my actual face because Poppy screams her spoiled head off and cries her stupid sorry eyes out.
Cut to me and my best friend, Dad, AND tagalong Poppy, leaving the house for a day at Dad’s work.
‘Shotgun front seat!’ I push Poppy out of the way.
‘It’s my turn.’
‘I think we all know that you have scraped your way on to this trip. Now get in the back.’
I’ve worn overalls. OK. They are denim and they also might be dungarees that are slightly (OK, a LOT) a bit tight and is making my fat bulge a bit around my arms, but they look fine, with a bright yellow T-shirt underneath and Dr Martens lace-up boots.
‘You look like a minion,’ Poppy smirks.
‘I look practical, actually, and as though I make stuff out of wood.’
‘You can’t even walk in them. Look. They are so tight. Like you’re going to burst out of the seams. You’ve had those dungarees since you were my age.’ What a toad!
‘They are OVERALLS!’
‘Whatevs.’
I put the carrier bag of lunch down by my feet. It’s bulging full of delicious snacks and sandwiches prepared by me. Even though all the sandwiches had to go in an old bread bag because we never have clingfilm or foil or sandwich boxes at ours. We just aren’t that organized family.
Dad takes us to the CAFE first. It looks like the word café but you have to say it like this – ‘CAFF’ – otherwise people laugh at you. Cafés are luxurious posh places with croissants and hummus and frothy coffee that let babies and prams in and do pesto on toasted paninis. CAFFs are full of bacon sandwiches and coffee made from powder with cheap plastic seats that are joineded to the table.
‘Right, what do you girls want?’
‘There’s too many choices of the same thing, just in different orders.’
‘OK, have a think.’ Dad walks up to the man behind the counter. ‘I’ll get a Full English breakfast please.’
‘Me too,’ Poppy quickly blurts.
SO ANNOYING. It’s meant to be me and Dad getting the same thing. Why does she have to get all involved and copy? I can’t have the same as her now or else it will look as though I’ve copied her and like I don’t have a regular at the local CAFF, which I absolutely must have if me and Dad are going to continue this routine. I feel pressure. I can’t be dramatic. I just have to hold it down and restrain myself like a composed ballet dancer or a chick in a kimono. Dad’s got his money in his hand waiting to pay, the man behind the till is smiling, his pen anxiously hovering, waiting to write my order down. All right, all right . . .
‘Summer holidays, is it?’ He smiles at my dad; he has a gold tooth.
‘Yes.’ Dad grins. ‘It’s take your girls to work day apparently.’
‘Hah! I always have my lot in here! They eat me out of the business. Course, they’re all on holiday right now!’
JEALOUS! I wish Will was back from his. He’d know just what to order at the CAFF.
I still can’t choose.
‘Sure you are gonna be able to handle a Full English breakfast?’ the man asks Poppy.
‘Yes, I think I will do actually,’ Poppy snaps back like a smartypants and the man laughs.
‘Ha-ha! Cheeky one here!’
Oh, SHOVE OFF, Poppy.
‘Come on, Darcy, what would you like?’
‘I’ll get some beans . . . in a bowl . . . please.’
‘With . . . toast?’
No. That’s so boring. I can’t get toast. Toast is for normal days. Not days like today that are exciting and in CAFFs.
‘With . . .’ My eyes scatter across the words of greasy gloopy ingredients before they settle on ‘garlic bread’.
Dad looks at me funny. ‘Sure that’s all you want, D?’
‘I’m sure,’ I say, but the word is not sure at all.
The
CAFF man laughs. ‘So two Full English and a bowl of beans with a side of garlic bread.’
I must have missed the all-important memo that told us that Full English breakfast came with chips. CHIPS. Actually allowed to be having chips at breakfast. I want to cry when Dad and Poppy’s mound of food comes. All brown juicy plump sausages and slobbery fatty bacon. Beans spilling everywhere and sunshine eggs, all shiny and white with glossy yellow mirrors in the middle. Hash browns look all crispy and yum and there’s toast too. Heaps of buttered triangles and a piece of fried too. And mountains of hot chips.
‘And the beans and garlic bread.’
Which comes exactly as it reads. A bowl of soupy beans with a layer of bean skin across the top, and four horse-ear-shaped slices of obviously once frozed garlic bread, for dipping, I guess.
DE-PRESS-ING. I feel my hands stick to the sticky, grease-slicken table.
‘OOooo!’ Poppy says, being all so showy-offy. ‘Look at all this.’
‘Lubbly jubbly!’ Dad says, sipping his tea, rubbing his hands together nicely. ‘Don’t tell Mum I come here, will you? It’s just a special occasion, cos I got my girls with me.’
Even though we are pretty sure Dad comes here every day!
‘We won’t tell!’ Poppy shrieks, and she squirts red sauce everywhere.
Oh, she is so disloyal. What a backstabbing little fox. She won’t tell Mum! HA! NOW whose side is she on? Unbelievable.
I dip my garlic bread into my beans, scooping it up like some kind of green-flecked shovel of grease. I look about the caff walls. Builders’ bums creak out of loose worn jeans. Grubby nails eat bacon sandwiches and slurp strong tea from polystyrene cups. Don’t they wash their hands in these places? I think people might be a bit laughing at me in the caff. But I think it’s my outfit. It hurts to sit down. My tummy is all squeezed in tight. I feel sick. I do look like a minion. A try-hard builder. And under the bright neon fluorescent lights I look ever more worserer. My T-shirt is a hideous acid banana yellow. A try-hard, alien, minion builder. Eating garlic bread and beans.
We get to Dad’s workshop. He’s got these other people that work for him. They are not all here today but we know most of them. The radio plays, and because it’s a nice day the shutter is up and sunshine streams in. The light breeze takes turns in scooping up curls of discarded wood; they look like blossom petals. The air smells thick and sandy. The concrete floor is a bed for a hamster. Sawdusty. Like a planet of grated parmesan cheese snow.
‘UH-OH! HERE COMES TROUBLE!’ John Pincher breathes all over us with his coffee breath of mud. ‘I can never get Donald down here! I keep telling him it would be fun, but oh no!’
‘We went to the café and had breakfast,’ Poppy tells him.
‘That place is in my bad books!’ John frowns. ‘Look what they’ve done to me!’ He gives his fat belly a poke and laughs. ‘Right, best be back to work then.’
Dad rolls his eyes at us because we know just as much as Dad does that John Pincher doesn’t know WHAT he’s doing.
Dad gives us each a pair of goggles to wear so we don’t get sawdust in our eyes.
The equipment looks awfully exciting, if you ask me. Big shiny teeth of saws glint at us, drills and other machinery that looks like it could kill you if you wanted it to. The radio is there too, singing pop songs.
‘Dad, can we make a doll’s house?’ Poppy suggests. ‘It takes a long time to make a doll’s house,’ Dad says.
‘Can we make a . . .’ I can’t think of anything . . . All my brain is shouting is STICK, STICK, STICK . . . Who wants to make a stick?
‘Can we make a puzzle?’ Poppy asks.
‘Yeah, we can make a puzzle.’ He smiles. Damn Poppy and all her wood toys that she can immediately think of. ‘Why don’t you sit up here and use some paper to draw out what your puzzle is going to look like?’
We sit with pencils and tracing paper. I feel sick. My dungarees are bursting me in all shut. Bleugh.
‘Hey, sweeties, long time no see!’ It’s Madison. We LOVE Madison. She has long dyed plaits and a pierced nose and drinks ginger tea. And she is so good at cutting and chopping wood and making any magical design you want. My dad says that Madison is the most creative wizard girl he knows and can turn any lump of old wood into anything. A desk. A rocking chair. A lamp. And even though Madison works with wood all day she has the softest, most gentle hands that wouldn’t even bruise a peach. Her fingers, made just entirely for carving, are light and lovely. Her voice is all croaky and lush too and she hums when she makes things. Unfortunately she isn’t wearing dungarees, which makes me think perhaps I got the dungaree/overall look completely wrong.
‘Is it true you have a pet hippo?’ I ask Madison.
‘Ha, did your dad tell you? Well, yes, back home in Tanzania, when I was small, we used to know a hippo – we named her Galaxy. And Galaxy would come chill on our front step. She used to eat yams and drink coffee!’
‘Coffee!’
‘Yup! Buckets of coffee and sacks of yam!’
‘No way!’
‘Yes way. You guys have a lamb, don’t you?’
‘Yep.’
‘See, that’s pretty cool.’
‘I know.’
‘What we doing here then, ladies?’
‘Making puzzles.’
‘Cool! Let me help you.’
We begin designing and drawing. Quietly listening to the music and Madison’s soft hum of peaceful concentration. The beautiful silver rings on her fingers are mesmerizing as she works. I want to be here every day, so calm like this, working with Madison in the sunshine, making puzzles all day. Maybe one day I’ll work my way up to not just building puzzles but park benches and stuff. Maybe Madison can be my best friend instead of Dad.
But then the worst thing happens.
It’s definitely not my fault.
It’s the tight minion try-hard builder dungaree overalls mixed with the garlic bread and all the beans being so incredibly squashed and pressed up all bulging against my tummy that did it.
I try to clench up and hold it in. But before I know it . . .
A terrible, terrible SBDfn1 fart sneaks out my bum.
I am literally using all my might to hope it doesn’t smell. But you know, sometimes you just know?
Now, this is a moment when I really could not tell what exactly was going to happen. Was Poppy going to pretend to smell it or not? Chances were she might think the fart belonged to Madison and she certainly wouldn’t want to embarrass her. But then again, if she suspected me then she might bait me up because she wouldn’t want Madison to think the fart belonged to her!
I think Poppy will know the fart is mine anyway, as all farts have their own housy smell. When you know a person you can usually recognize their farts straight away, because you know what that person eats and drinks, plus you can smell the house inside their fart. Sucking up the smell and pumping out a more disgusting version of the same smell. It’s like the farts replicate the familiar smell of a house and puff it out in pieces to always remind you of home. It’s quite sweet really.
Maybe if I edge close enough to the door the smell will waft away with the warm summer breeze?
Maybe the harsh woody smell of sawdust will blend it away, masking it nicely?
Maybe . . . oh no, they’ve just actually smelt it.
Madison politely smiles and twitches her nose. If I wasn’t the person who farted, or if I had but was watching her through a screen, I would never have even noticed she was breathing in a fart; she’s that subtle.
But Poppy is not quite as forgiving.
‘Bleugh, Darcy, Farty Mcfarty-son! What on earth was that?’
‘What?’
‘It smells like you ate a bin.’
‘It wasn’t me.’
‘If it wasn’t you, how did you know to say it wasn’t you?’
‘Whoever smelt it, dealt it.’
‘As if – look, the wind is travelling this way.’
‘Well, maybe it was Joh
n Pincher?’
John does have his bum crack on display as he’s bent over, pretending to be sawing.
‘The fart could have escaped out of the gap?’
‘Hm. Yeah, maybe.’
Madison giggles.
We forget about the fart itself as the lingering smell dissolves. But I can’t help but look at Poppy and think . . . Do I HAVE to love you? I mean, I know you’re my sister and everything, but you are SO annoying.
I have the sweats. My stupid outfit is so tight. But I’m not going to make a deal out of that or anything. A good work person never blames their tools or their costume. So I won’t either. I’m very professional, as you can probably tell.
‘Eat our sandwiches in the sun, shall we?’ Dad suggests at lunch time. I am quite greedy so can’t not have a sandwich even though my whole body feels like an overstuffed teddy bear.
‘Yay!’ Poppy claps, elated. She can’t be hungry either surely after eating her giant king-sized breakfast.
‘I’m changing MY name to Madison,’ says Poppy. ‘When you get a new best friend it’s very nice to take on their name.’
Oh, super. What am I meant to do now she’s taken on Madison’s name already. Take on my best friend Dad’s name? Can you imagine me going about my life?
‘Hi there, nice to meet you, what’s your name?’
‘Oh, you know, just Dad.’
John Pincher tells Dad that he’s just going to meet a client. I think that’s their roles: that John goes out and meets all the rich friends and Dad runs the workshop, making all the rich people’s dreams come to life with wood.
We eat on a patch of grass by Dad’s workshop. Dad has a little pencil behind his ear and all grub on his fingers. It makes me quite proud to see him enjoying my sandwiches.
‘Wow, this is a treat, having a nice lunch made for me.’ He smiles. ‘Cheers, Darcy.’
There are crisps and chocolate and fruit for afters. It would’ve been a mucher more better picnic if I had longer in advance to prepare. I could’ve like gone to the fish-and-chip shop the night before and wrapped them up in birthday-present paper. I suppose the chips would be cold, but who cares, it’s chips.
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