by Cath Howe
Everyone stood admiring my feet. I pointed my toes. She had chosen me.
“Anyway, Mum’s buying me some new ones,” Lydia added.
“Oh, right.”
Everyone seemed to melt away after that.
I didn’t care if Lydia was getting new shoes. Nobody had ever given me anything so beautiful. Could I actually walk home in them? I wondered.
When I collected my phone from the office at the end of the day, I seemed to be floating in pink shoe land. Mum had told me to walk back on my own today. I was already at the school gates and heading home with a great big smile on my face when a voice beside me said, “I knew you’d love them!”
It was Lydia again.
“Isn’t anyone meeting you?” I asked.
But Lydia was sliding her arm through mine. “I told Mum I was walking back with my new friend. You can show me your house. I like learning where people live. I keep it all stored inside my head. Come on!”
So, Lydia walked home with me. The shoes went on feeling like tiny cheese graters round the edges of my big toes but I didn’t care. Lydia told me about her sister being a champion swimmer and always being dragged along to watch, and her mum being a buyer for a big shop, and in no time at all we were at my front door. Lydia stopped talking and looked up at my house. I wasn’t sure what to do. But when I had rung the bell, Lydia said, “Well, go on then, ask me in, Ella!” just as Mum opened the door, so, of course, I did.
We had juice and biscuits and Mum smiled and said, “See you girls in a while,” and “How lovely to have a friend over.”
“I have to see your room,” Lydia said, leaping up. “Come on.” I followed her out and up the stairs. “It’s so yellow,” she said, throwing herself down on my bed. “It’s a lovely little room. Haven’t you got a TV?” She walked around staring at everything and asking about my eczema creams and the pictures on my pinboard. She pointed to one of Grandma and Grandad, and I told her Grandad died last year. Then she cuddled my giant furry ladybird that Grace gave me. “It’s like a big tummy!” She laughed. I took a photo of her holding it and she made me sit down next to her while I was still smiling and said, “You really love the shoes, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said, because it was true.
She picked up the framed photo by my bed, from more than a year ago, when our family were still together. Mum, Dad, me and Jack all hugging and grinning in a café in Spain. “It’s just you and your mum and your brother living here, isn’t it?”
A hot pang of worry shot through me. My room seemed to shrink; Lydia and the ladybird were taking up the whole bed.
“Ella,” she said, her voice soft beside me, “best friends tell each other everything.”
“Do they?” My voice sounded all wobbly.
“You know they do, Ella. Look, how can I help you if you don’t tell me? Think how much you like the shoes. I haven’t given shoes to anyone else. That makes me your very special friend, Ella.” She patted my arm. “If it’s easier, you can not look at me. You’ll feel better, you know, when you tell me.”
In a flash the twisting panic in my stomach was back.
“It’s your dad, isn’t it?” I heard Lydia say. “Is this him?”
She was pointing at the photo. There was Dad all suntanned right in the middle with his arms round me and Jack. “He looks really nice.” She stroked my arm.
A gate seemed to open inside me. “Mum doesn’t want us to talk about him. I said I wouldn’t.” Tears started to drip. I watched them fall onto my lap and disappear into my trousers… little dark spots. “Mum’ll be so cross,” I heard myself say.
“This is what friends are for.” Lydia snuggled up to me. “So, where is he?”
She was waiting, staring. The secret began coming from my mouth. “Dad… he’s gone away.”
“Has he? Aw…”
“For three years…”
“Three years! Mmm. Where then? Is he working… He’s not, is he?”
“No… he’s… he’s, he’s in a… a… prison.”
Lydia let out a really big sigh. “Did he do a bad thing?”
Words poured out. “He took some money and then he lied about it.”
Lydia patted my arm. “Never mind,” she said. “My dad goes away for work and Mum says it’s easier without him. She says she’s too busy to sort him out.”
All at once, Lydia was standing again. “I should go. Well done.” She sounded like a teacher. “Well done, Ella. We won’t tell the others about your secret. Whenever you want to talk about it, you’ve got me.”
Chapter 9
What Friends Are For
Dear Dad,
When you went away you only took a carrier bag. I’ve been wondering if you have enough clothes. Are you cold?
I saw a TV programme with an old prison in it and all the beds were in lines, like a hospital. Is your bed in a line?
Why won’t they let you have the blu-tac? Tell them you really need it. Then, when you put my pictures up by your bed, your friends will say, “Oh, a new picture!”
I could send you a jumper. I know where the post office is. Just tell me.
Love, Ella
When she’d gone, I went back upstairs and wrote to Dad again. I felt as if I had hurt Dad somehow, but it was Mum who would be cross, if she knew. It was Mum who had asked me not to tell anyone. But Lydia seemed to sort of know… didn’t she? She’d worked it out.
In the days after I told Lydia, when we were at school, she would grab me and drag me off to talk just to her. She would ask a whole crowd of little fast questions.
“Does your mum cry?”
“Sometimes.”
“If it was me, I’d cry bucketfuls every day.”
I thought about Mum. “She’s not really that kind of person,” I said.
“Oh well.”
And then, again, “Do you go and visit the secret person?”
“He’s too far away.”
“Do you miss him?”
“He’s my dad.”
I felt important when Lydia asked me things. Lydia could choose from so many people and she was picking me. I was just a bit worried that, as the days passed, I’d told her all the things I knew. And I didn’t really want to talk any more about Dad.
The other thing Lydia talked to me about was Molly Gardener.
“Everyone says Molly’s dad disappeared. Foof!” Lydia popped her cheeks like a bag of crisps exploding and we both collapsed into laughs. “Like a puff of smoke. No more Dad. Like a genie coming out of a bottle, only the other way around. I bet you could find out what really happened to Molly’s dad, Ella.”
I stared at her, my heart hammering. I wondered if Lydia could hear it. No, I thought, I couldn’t. Molly Gardener didn’t talk to me. She didn’t talk to anyone. Anyway, why was Lydia so interested in Molly’s dad?
Lydia’s face was all serious. “I love to know things. It’s so exciting. And you’ve already found out more than anyone. We’ll call it Operation 13… cos that’s her house. You can be my Ella Criminella!”
What a horrible name. I didn’t say anything while Lydia went on grinning at me… Maybe she would forget she’d thought of it.
Later that week, as I was walking out of school, looking for Mum and Jack, I heard a voice calling my name and found Immy standing by the gates. “Do you live near here?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “With my mum and my brother.”
Immy grinned. “I’ve got a brother, Jacob. He’s much older than me. He’s at Mountview School. He’s thirteen. We get the bus together.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Are you pleased with the shoes?”
“Oh yes,” I said. “I love them. It was very kind of Lydia.”
“Have you seen Zombie Laundry? It’s hilarious!” Immy said. “I love stupid films. And adventures. Have you seen Desert Whisper? That is such a great film.”
I shook my head.
“You have to see it.”
I realised Mum
was waving at me through the crowd.
“Well, see you tomorrow then,” Immy called.
“Yes, see you.”
As I walked away from her, I realised Immy never talked to me in that friendly way or came over to chat like that in school. It was odd. She had seemed really pleased to see me just now. In school she was often busy or dashing away. But, more than that, in school she seemed… different. Of course in school she was always with Lydia.
Yes, that was it; if Lydia was there, her friends always wanted to get her attention, to make her laugh. She was always at the centre, wasn’t she?
Every day, Mum seemed to be rushing. In the morning, she dashed to get our packed lunches and shouted at us to hurry up. There were lists everywhere and Mum kept saying we had to get ourselves organised. She said I had to pull my weight and look after Jack. “Don’t make my life harder than it already is.”
One Friday evening, when Jack and I had been at our new school for three weeks, Mum let a lady in and told us she would be looking after us after school each day. Mrs Reynolds looked like a grandma. She was wide with very white hair and a stick to lean on. She said, “Well, now, tell me about yourself,” and I couldn’t think of anything to say so I told her I was ten and she said, “Just the age where the brain really starts whirring. What’s sixty-five plus seventy-three?”
“I hate maths,” I said.
“I shall regard that as a challenge,” she said.
She had a big bold booming voice and she could easily have told off an army, because when she spoke you had to listen. She leaned her stick against the kitchen top and started emptying the dishwasher.
“I’m so pleased this is all sorted out,” Mum said.
Jack’s bottom lip was out. “Where are you going?” he said to Mum.
“It’s all right, Jack,” Mum said, patting him. “I’ll just be at work, sweetheart. That’s why I’ve found Mrs Reynolds. And I need you both to be really helpful.”
“Call me Sylvia,” Mrs Reynolds said.
“Sylvia will be meeting you from school and making your tea, until I get back,” Mum said. “Will we still have baths?” Jack asked.
He’s always asking silly questions. Sometimes he worries that Mum is going to go away and not come back because that’s what happened with Dad. I don’t worry about that.
Mum sighed. “Of course you’ll still have baths. You’ll still do all the usual things. It’s just that Mrs Reynolds – I mean, Sylvia – will be here looking after you instead of me for a few hours.”
Once Mrs Reynolds had gone and Jack was in bed, Mum came up to my room. She folded up the clothes on my chair then stood watching me taking photos of a squirrel on the tree outside my bedroom window. “Ella,” she said, “you haven’t told anyone about our family… about Dad, have you? It’s just better if we keep things to ourselves.”
I remembered Dad’s face in the local paper, how Mum had cried and held on to me.
I stood there all still and stiff. How could I explain to Mum about Lydia? “I… I…”
Mum came up behind me now and put her arms round me so I could smell her fruit shampoo. I breathed in, staring hard at the tree, its jagged branches.
“This is our chance for a new start, sweetheart,” Mum said, holding me. “I want it to be just us.”
I nodded, turned and held out my phone to show her the photos I’d taken out of my window.
My mouth felt full of words, burning to come out. But I couldn’t say any of them.
There was so much hope in Mum’s voice.
Chapter 10
Shopping Disaster
Dear Dad,
Do you remember when you and me and Jack went on the pedalo boats in Spain on that lake and your phone fell out of your pocket down into the water and you just laughed and said the fish would have to talk to your boss instead of you? It was so sunny and hot. Mum made me wear long sleeves and, when we were on the beach, she said I couldn’t paddle because my feet were bad, and you said, well, you wouldn’t paddle either, but then Jack filled a bucket in the sea and came back all the way with it and said, “Look, it’s all right because I brought the sea to you.”
Do you ever do a thing where you can’t picture someone’s face and you’re really worried you won’t recognise them? As long as I keep looking at the photo of all of us by my bed, I think I can sort of learn you. The best thing would be if you still had that red shirt. I don’t know where your home clothes went. Do you still look the same? You haven’t got a beard, have you?
Love, Ella
The next day was Saturday. Near teatime, Mum sent me to the small Co-op supermarket round the corner.
The doors swished open, and there was Molly Gardener right next to me in the fruit and veg aisle.
Molly’s trolley was almost full. Our eyes met. Molly looked away.
I collected the yoghurts and milk Mum had asked me to get. At the till, Molly was in front of me. I waited, staring at her grubby grey tracksuit, the same one she had been wearing when Mum and I went to her house. Her black curly hair was tied back with a rubber band. She didn’t turn. Could I could ask some questions the way Lydia wanted me to? All the people in the queue would listen. What could I say? Hello Molly, please tell me everything there is to know about you, right now!
I chickened out.
She filled five carrier bags. She’d bought the whole shop!
Molly set off up the street before me. I could see her, head down, loaded up. But then, suddenly, lots of tins and packets fell out of her arms.
“Oh no!” she moaned. One of her bags must have split. She sank to her knees on the pavement, juggling shopping. A can rolled off the pile of bags and hit the pavement. An old lady dodged it as it rolled into the gutter.
I ran up. “I’ll help you,” I said, bending to grab a pack of yoghurts that was tangled up in the broken bag and pulling a loaf of bread from on top of the pile.
“Thanks,” Molly murmured.
I went on transferring shopping into my bag and picking things up off the ground.
We both stood up. Now we had to walk back to Molly’s house together. She didn’t speak. I didn’t either. “I’m actually helping you,” I wanted to say. “Couldn’t you just … talk to me?”
We went down her path. Now what? She wasn’t exactly going to invite me inside, was she?
She unlocked the door.
“Here you are,” I said, passing her the shopping in the doorway.
I turned to go. “I should get home. My mum’s waiting.”
“No!” Molly gulped a huge breath. “Stay and have some lemonade. Please?”
Molly Gardener was asking me in!
“If you just wait, I’ll open the side gate,” she said in a voice I hadn’t heard before, pleading. “I’ll only be a minute.”
We locked eyes.
“OK,” I said.
She closed the front door.
I texted Mum. Met a school friend in our road. Back in twenty minutes.
I stood, puzzled, staring at all the ‘go away’ stickers… and then went round to the side gate by the road and waited to be let in. Odd Molly Gardener. Why had she suddenly decided to be friendly?
Think how excited Lydia would be! I could imagine her, as if I had a mini Lydia on my shoulder, going, “Wahey. You’re in! I told you, you were clever!”
Molly’s garden wasn’t really a proper garden. It was just the back of a house and a square of tangled weeds and one tree. Then, at the end, there was a long shed. Two glasses of lemonade sat beside a coat laid on the long grass.
I waded over, weeds tickling my legs, pretending this was normal.
“Sit down,” Molly said.
I sat. Now I could hardly see for all the grass towering over me.
“Does my jumper fit you all right?” Molly gazed at the back door of her house, fingering the sides of her glass as if she was talking to the back door really.
Was someone in the kitchen? I craned to see through the windows but it ju
st looked dark in there.
“Yeah.” I sipped my lemonade. My glass didn’t look very clean. It had greasy fingerprints. I looked down into the bubbles. “I’m sorry your shopping broke. They’re not strong, those shop bags,” I said.
Molly nodded.
Silence fell.
There wasn’t anything to do in this garden. You couldn’t play with a ball – you’d just lose it in the long grass.
“Just a minute.” Molly got up, pushed her way down the garden and disappeared inside the shed at the end. She kept going off to places!
She came out of the shed carrying a brush and what looked like a cat, but I realised it was the white rabbit. I stopped myself from saying, “Ooh, I’ve already met him.” Close up, he was creamy white and fat with long limbs and a huge rabbit face with the floppiest long ears.
Molly held him up as if she’d won him. She smiled. I’d never seen her smile before. “This is Nelson.” She sat down on the coat beside me, hauled him on to her knee and began brushing and murmuring to him.
“Oh, you are lucky,” I said. Fur and eczema don’t go together, Mum says. “I’ve never had a pet. My brother would love one. How much does he eat?”
“Oh, Nelson eats loads, don’t you?” Molly kissed him on the nose. “There’s a greengrocer on the main road – he saves the veg trimmings for me.”
“How old is he?”
“Five.”
“He’s really big.”
Molly definitely seemed much happier now Nelson was here.
“You’re gorgeous, aren’t you?” she told the rabbit, as if he might join in talking any minute. But he just wiggled his nose.
Molly glanced at me. “Whenever I can’t sleep, I come down and talk to him. I tell him everything.”
I stared round the garden across the sea of stalks and shaggy heads. I’d never seen a garden with no proper plants and just a dead-looking tree in the middle. How odd – a house with too much in it and a garden with nothing.
Molly hadn’t told me anything useful yet. “Are you…? Are there some more people in your family?” I asked.