The Strawberry Sisters

by Candy Harper

  Older titles by Candy Harper

  Have A Little Faith

  Keep the Faith

  First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Simon and Schuster UK Ltd

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © 2015 Candida Harper

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

  No reproduction without permission.

  All rights reserved.

  The right of Candida Harper to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  1st Floor

  222 Gray’s Inn Road

  London WC1X 8HB

  Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney

  Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  PB ISBN: 978-1-4711-2417-4

  EBook ISBN: 978-1-4711-2418-1

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  www.simonandschuster.co.uk

  www.simonandschuster.com.au

  For my parents, who’ve got five ‘little treasures’ of their own

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  There’s way too much talking about knickers in my house. I’m pretty sure that other people’s families talk about pizza for tea and what they did at school. In my family, it seems like someone is talking about knickers every other day.

  My biggest sister, Amelia, goes on about how her knickers are too babyish for a nearly-fourteen-year-old. My little sister, Lucy, likes to keep us updated about who in Year Two has wet their knickers, and my next sister up, Chloe, is always putting knickers on her head. Which I think is a little worrying for a twelve-year-old, but then Chloe will put anything on her head. Except shampoo.

  Today’s knicker chat started when everybody was supposed to be dressed and ready to go.

  ‘I can’t find any pants!’ Lucy shouted.

  Mum came out of the bathroom, brushing her teeth with one hand and putting on mascara with the other. ‘There must be some somewhere,’ she said, spraying toothpaste over Chloe who was sitting in the middle of the landing, eating a sausage. I don’t know where she found the sausage. I only got cornflakes for breakfast.

  Mum climbed over Chloe and went into the bedroom I share with Lucy and Chloe. She reached for the handle on Lucy’s drawer.

  ‘No!’ Lucy shouted. ‘Don’t go in there! It’s got secret things in!’

  ‘I’m not trying to uncover your secrets. I just want to find you some knickers.’ Mum swallowed her toothpaste. ‘But Lucy, it had better not be the kind of secret that starts to smell funny after a few days.’ She turned to me. ‘Ella, you haven’t got any of Lucy’s knickers in your drawer, have you?’

  I shook my head. ‘None of Lucy’s and none of mine. Chloe hasn’t got any either.’

  Chloe put the last of the sausage in her mouth. ‘Can’t we just wear yesterday’s?’ she asked.

  ‘No!’ Mum snapped. ‘Honestly, I spend enough of my life doing the washing; how can all of your underwear suddenly disappear?’

  ‘It goes to the same place that all the hairbrushes, scissors and batteries do in this house,’ Amelia said from her bedroom doorway.

  She was looking so smug that I guessed she’d got a nice fresh pair of knickers on underneath her black jeans.

  ‘Amelia, have you got clean pants? Could you spare a few pairs for your sisters?’

  I don’t know why Mum even bothered to ask. I can’t remember the last time Amelia said yes to anything. Amelia looked at Mum with one cross eye. (The other one is hidden under her new fringe. I haven’t seen it in months. Amelia’s auburn hair is super smooth and shiny so she can make it sweep across one eye. I couldn’t do that. My hair sticks up all over the place. And it’s more what you would call carroty than auburn.)

  ‘What happened to the system?’ Mum asked us. ‘I thought we agreed that when clean washing comes in from hanging on the line it goes in the basket under the stairs and then everyone is responsible for putting their own things away.’

  ‘The basket isn’t there any more,’ I said.

  ‘Lucy used it to bobsleigh down the stairs,’ Amelia added.

  Lucy stuck her tongue out at Amelia. ‘I only did that after Chloe kept a hedgehog in it! A hedgehog is worse than bobsleighing.’

  Mum sighed. ‘Ella, go and look on the sofa. I think there was some clean washing abandoned there. If you’d all just put things away tidily, this wouldn’t happen.’

  ‘What’s the point of putting things in drawers?’ Chloe asked as I whizzed down the stairs. ‘We’d just have to take them back out again. In fact, I don’t even know why we bother taking things off in the first place.’

  ‘So we don’t end up smelling like you,’ Amelia said, screwing up her nose.

  On the sofa, I discovered two plates and Lucy’s coat. Under the cushions were five pens, a satsuma (so old it had dried out and become more like a small brown rock), my missing homework and about a loaf’s worth of crumbs. Finally, jammed between the sofa and the wall, I found a tangle of clean socks like a nest of snakes and five scrunched-up pairs of knickers. ‘Found some!’ I shouted and carried them back upstairs. There were three pairs of Mum’s, one of mine and one of Chloe’s. I grabbed the ones that belonged to me and threw Chloe’s pair at her.

  ‘Don’t need them,’ she said. ‘I improvised and used my bikini bottoms.’ She flashed me her behind; it was covered in shiny red fabric with little anchors on.

  Seeing as we were running out of options, I offered Mum’s knickers to Lucy.

  ‘I can’t wear them! They’re big old lady pants. I’m seven. I need knickers that say seven on them.’

  ‘At the moment, all the knickers for seven-year-olds seem to be under your bed,’ Mum said, getting up off her hands and knees. ‘We’ll talk about why all the teaspoons are keeping them company later.’

  ‘Why don’t you put on your bikini bottoms like Chloe?’ I suggested to Lucy.

  ‘OK. Are we going swimming?’

  ‘No, we’re going to the hospital,’ I said.

  ‘Have they got a swimming pool?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I’m not wearing my bikini.’

  ‘We’re going to miss visiting hours at this rate,’ Mum said and she banged on the bathroom door, which Amelia had just locked behind her.

  ‘I don’t know why we’re bothering,’ Ameli
a’s muffled voice said through the door. ‘I’ve got enough crybaby, bare-bum sisters around here. I don’t need to meet another one.’

  Everyone went quiet.

  Mum took a deep breath. ‘Lucy, put your pyjama shorts on under your skirt. I’ll buy everyone new knickers when I’m in town tomorrow and these ones had better be looked after.’

  Lucy squealed. ‘I want hearts on mine! No, kittens! No, racing cars! Kittens in racing cars!’

  Amelia opened the bathroom door. ‘I don’t want anything frilly. In fact, don’t buy me anything from the children’s department at all.’

  ‘Can you get me those ones with the flap at the back?’ Chloe asked. ‘Like in the olden days when they kept their underwear on all winter?’

  My sisters all had loads to say about new knickers.

  But nobody wanted to talk about my dad’s new baby.

  My nana always said that if your basket seems heavy you should remember that’s because it’s full of berries. That was kind of a joke because our surname is Strawberry. But basically it means try to ignore the bad stuff and look on the bright side. For example, I try to forget about how much people laugh when they see my red hair and hear my name is Strawberry; instead, I concentrate on being happy that I’m not my Year Six teacher. Her name is Mrs Bottomley.

  When my parents first got divorced, everything was difficult. My mum was all quiet and sad, and Amelia was always telling us how horrible things were. I remembered what my nana said about berries and I tried my best to think about bright sides. It was hard, but it helped a little bit.

  But now there is a definite bright side to my dad having a new girlfriend, Suvi, and that is that I’ve got a new sister. The bright side of sisters is that – even though sometimes they’re annoying and put cream cheese in your bed – they are always your sister and that means they’re always on your team. So it was weird that Dad had this new family, but now we had another sister and I was glad about that.

  When we finally made it to the hospital, we all bundled out of the car, but Mum stopped outside the main entrance. Since my parents split up (one year, four months and sixteen days ago), there are lots of places that my mum doesn’t come inside. Like Granny’s house, and my dad’s new house where he lives with Suvi, and the leisure centre where Dad takes us swimming. Instead, she just drops us outside. It seemed like the hospital was Dad’s too.

  ‘He should be here,’ Mum said.

  Amelia nodded. ‘He’s so unreliable.’

  Chloe pulled a face at Amelia. ‘Maybe Dad’s waiting for us inside.’

  Mum looked at her phone. ‘He said he’d meet us here. Lucy, what are you doing?’

  People always think Lucy is adorable because she’s tiny and has reddy-gold curls, but if you watch her for two minutes you can see that, even though she looks like an angel, she isn’t one. At this moment, she was scratching under her arm with one hand and had the other one stuck up her skirt.

  ‘I can’t help it,’ she said. ‘These shorts are making my bottom wiggle.’

  ‘You look like you’re trying not to pee,’ Chloe said.

  ‘You don’t pee with your bottom! Your bottom is for p—’

  ‘Your bottom will be kicked if you don’t stop embarrassing me,’ Amelia said. She pulled her black hat further down and held her book up over her face. I think she was pretending she wasn’t with us.

  ‘There he is,’ Mum said.

  I could see Dad through the big glass windows, making his way between people in the crowded reception area. He’s really tall, like me, and his legs extend in these long, smooth strides that make him look like a dancer or an athlete when he walks. Not like me.

  Mum pushed her bag up her arm. There was a long trail of tissue paper and the sleeve of a cardigan hanging out of it. ‘Your dad said he’d drop you back at the house. I’ll see you all later.’

  ‘Aren’t you coming in?’ I asked. I knew she wasn’t, but sometimes you have to ask a lot of questions to get even a little bit of the real answer.

  Mum shook her head.

  Amelia scowled. ‘Can’t I come home with you?’

  ‘No, your dad wants you all here. Anyway, I’m not going straight home. I’ve got some things to do.’

  ‘I’ve got things to do!’ Amelia snapped.

  ‘Yeah, she needs to lie on the sofa, eating crisps and telling us how stupid we are,’ Chloe said.

  Chloe and Amelia always say rude things to each other. It used to make them both laugh, but now it just makes them cross. The rude things haven’t changed, but maybe Amelia and Chloe have.

  Amelia opened her mouth to say something mean back, but then Dad came out of the double doors. ‘Hello, girls!’

  Chloe threw herself on him.

  ‘Louise,’ Dad said, looking at Mum and ruffling Chloe’s messy ginger hair. ‘Thanks for bringing them.’

  Mum smiled with her mouth, but not the rest of her. ‘How’s baby?’

  ‘She’s gorgeous. Looks just like Suvi.’

  Mum’s forced smile fell off her face.

  ‘She’s managed to avoid my nose anyway.’

  ‘Wish I had,’ Amelia muttered.

  ‘So everything all right then?’ Mum said, half turning to go.

  ‘Yes, brilliant, marvellous.’

  Mum nodded. ‘Bye then, girls. Be good.’

  I wanted to hug Dad, but Chloe still had her arms round him.

  ‘Is the baby tiny?’ I asked. ‘Has she got a name yet? What colour is her hair?’

  ‘Slow down! You can see for yourself in a minute. Amelia, are you coming or do you want to hang about in the car park looking moody all day?’

  Amelia’s eyes were fixed on Mum’s disappearing back. ‘You don’t actually mean staying in the car park is an option, do you? Because if it is I’ll definitely do that.’

  Dad’s lips twitched. I couldn’t tell if it was a nearly-laugh or a nearly-shout, but it turned into A Look. When my dad gives me A Look, it makes me squirm like Lucy wearing pyjama shorts instead of knickers, but Amelia just shrugged and followed slowly. We walked into the hospital and over to a row of lifts.

  Up on the fourth floor we found Suvi holding a very small baby with a fuzz of blonde hair. Nobody said anything.

  ‘Wow,’ Chloe said eventually. ‘Is that a drip in your hand? Does it hurt when they stick it in? Josh Williams in my class had to have a thing in his arm and they stuck it in the wrong place and he had a bruise the size of a cowpat an—’

  ‘This is your new sister,’ Dad interrupted, using the same voice as when he showed us our bedroom in his new house.

  Nobody had liked that much either.

  Amelia looked out of the window.

  ‘She doesn’t look like me,’ Lucy said quietly. ‘Her hair is the wrong colour.’

  I felt sorry for the baby. She seemed like quite a nice baby and when she got a bit bigger I was sure she’d be brilliant. It wasn’t her fault that we were cross with Dad.

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘She’s cute.’ The problem with ‘ahs’ is that they have to just come out. If you do them on purpose, they sound stupid.

  Amelia obviously thought so because she gave me her you-sound-stupid look.

  ‘We’ve decided to call her Kirsti,’ Suvi told us.

  ‘Oh,’ Lucy said. ‘I thought you’d call her a crazy Finnish name, you know, like Suvi.’

  ‘Kirsti is a Finnish name,’ Suvi said.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Chloe asked. ‘Because it sounds completely normal.’

  ‘Can I hold Kirsti?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Dad said.

  ‘Maybe later,’ Suvi said. ‘She’s just got to sleep. And it takes a long time to get her off. She’s a fusser.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Amelia asked. ‘You’ve just met her. You can’t know anything about her.’

  The rest of our visit was Dad oohing and aahing and taking photos to show us how great everything was, and Amelia’s face telling us it wasn’t.

  Later that night, when I
was in bed, I started thinking about Suvi and Kirsti and wondering what the others thought about Dad having a new family. To me it seemed like it had all happened very quickly.

  Chloe and Amelia used to share a bedroom, but, after Mum and Dad split up, they kept falling out so Chloe moved in with me and Lucy. I sleep on the bottom of the bunk beds and Chloe sleeps on top. Lucy was already asleep on the other side of the room so I stretched up a leg in the direction of the top bunk and poked Chloe’s mattress with my foot.

  ‘What?’ she whispered.

  ‘Do you mind that Dad doesn’t live here any more?’ I whispered back.

  ‘We didn’t see him loads when he did live here. He was always at work.’

  ‘But do you wish he still lived here?’

  Because my dad has been gone for less than a year and a half, sometimes, when I wake up in the morning, I think for a moment that I can hear him in the bathroom or running down the stairs.

  ‘He doesn’t live here,’ Chloe said. ‘He’s not going to move back, Ella.’

  She didn’t sound sad.

  ‘Do you like Suvi?’ I asked.

  ‘She isn’t exactly the one I would pick.’

  ‘Who would you pick?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘An ice-cream van driver. A rich one. Who was really good at rugby.’

  ‘I can’t even imagine Suvi eating an ice cream.’

  Suvi mostly seems to eat raw vegetables and things with seeds in.

  Another thing my nana used to say was that when life gives you lemons you should make lemonade. That means doing the best with what you’ve got. But it’s quite hard to think of a bright side to the person who your dad decided to love instead of your mum.

  ‘She is quite tough,’ Chloe said after a while.

  ‘Suvi?’

  ‘Yep. Most people cry when Amelia is mean to them; Suvi hardly notices.’

  Chloe was right. Suvi doesn’t seem to get worked up about anything. Amelia says she’s cold; she calls her the Ice Queen.

  ‘And she’s strong. She does all that yoga and she’s got quite muscly arms. Basically, if we ever get attacked by aliens, I think she’d be a good person to have around.’

  I sighed. Even though I know she’s not trying, sometimes I think Chloe is better at looking on the bright side and making lemonade out of lemons than I am. When life gives her a frosty stepmum, she makes her into a soldier for her army against aliens.