by Candy Harper
‘Right.’ Always with the Marmite. I’m not saying it’s not a tasty treat on toast, but it’s not what I’d grab in an emergency.
‘I started thinking that if something terrible happened there are a few things that I’d want to make sure I had.’
‘I see, so what have you packed in your emergency bag?’
‘Marmite.’
‘Obviously. What else?’
‘A mini vacuum cleaner. Because there won’t be any power for the big one, will there? And a zombie mask – so I can blend in.’
‘What if it’s vampires not zombies?’
‘I’ve got two Tic Tacs I can tape to the zombie mask mouth for fangs.’
‘Have you got some sort of locust costume?’
‘I decided locusts are probably scared of zombies.’
‘Uh huh.’ I was starting to wish I had some chocolate to get me through this conversation. ‘What else?’
‘A bass recorder.’
‘A recorder? One of those instruments that they made us squeak out Hot Cross Buns on at primary school?’
‘Yep, but a bass one.’
I snorted. ‘Because an ordinary one wouldn’t do?’
‘Well, you can knock someone out with one of the little ordinary ones, but, as I’m sure you know, it’s much quicker and less tiring to the arm muscles if you use a big bass one.’
I thought we should move on from my familiarity with the relative effectiveness of various instruments as weapons so I said, ‘Is that it?’
‘Finger paints, salad tongs and a chocolate Santa.’
‘Sounds great.’
‘Yep, I’m pretty pleased.’
There was a pause where I could almost feel Lily’s satisfaction radiating down the line. She’s clearly going to sleep well tonight.
‘Hey Lils,’ I said. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you about Angharad. Is she really okay about doing this Green Schools thing by herself?’ Normally, Ang is so timid about talking to people she doesn’t know well.
‘I think so. Now we’re getting a bit older she’s trying hard to build up her confidence. She doesn’t want her shyness to hold her back.’
I hadn’t realised that Ang had been thinking about all this. ‘So you don’t think we should do Green Schools?’
‘Nah. We love Ang so much that we always want to help her and look after her but I reckon the best thing we can do is to let her have the opportunity to stand on her own two feet.’
This was a good point but I was so surprised that Lily had made a good point that it took me several seconds to get my mouth to say, ‘Good point.’
‘Mmm, that’s why I didn’t go to France. She was scared to go without me but I wanted her to know that she can do anything she wants.’
Wow. Lily had taken my breath away. First zombie death by bass recorder and then this remarkably insightful and kind attitude towards Angharad. ‘Lily, how do you manage to be both loopy and brilliantly perceptive at the same time?’
‘Dunno,’ she said. ‘Maybe it’s all the Marmite I eat.’
MONDAY 4TH JUNE
I love half term. I even like waking up at the normal time just so I can enjoy going back to sleep. I think they should give us quarter terms too.
Good job I’ve been getting plenty of sleep though, since Granny kept me up late last night. After dinner she announced, ‘I’ve got to make some tissue paper flowers for the carnival float. I need them for tomorrow.’
Mum stared at her, but Granny went on unabashed. ‘I expect you’d all like to help?’
Mum stopped staring and started clearing away dishes. Sam and I looked at our plates and Dad actually got under the table and started scraping up that sticky green stuff that’s been there all week.
‘Come on! Who will help?’
‘Why haven’t you mentioned this before?’ Mum asked.
I shot Granny an almost sympathetic look, this is the kind of shrieky response I get when I politely ask for art supplies for a project on Mexico a full twelve hours before it’s due in.
‘I’ve been busy,’ Granny said. ‘But I must get them done tonight because I promised, and if I don’t come up with the goods I’ll never hear the end of it from Mrs Moore.’
Mum tutted. ‘The children have been lounging around the house all day. You could have got them helping then. It will be Sam’s bedtime soon.’
Granny shook her head. ‘I couldn’t fit it in earlier, I had a lunch date.’
‘Some things are more important than romance,’ Dad said from under the table.
Granny eyed Dad’s backend. ‘Well, we all know that’s your attitude.’
Mum scowled. ‘Insulting my husband isn’t going to make me more likely to help you out of the mess you’ve got yourself into.’
That sentence sounded familiar. Except when I hear it she says ‘insulting your father’. I was actually starting to feel quite sorry for Granny so I said, ‘I’ll help.’
Dad backed out from under the table. ‘Marvellous. That’s that solved then. What a great opportunity for Faith to improve her, er, helping skills. I expect you’ll want to work out here in the kitchen. The light’s very poor in the sitting room. We’ll just shut ourselves in there with the TV and the scotch and keep out of your way.’
And they were gone. All three of them skedaddled off without a backward glance. In the hallway I heard Mum say, ‘There’s nothing wrong with the light in here, is there?
And Dad said, ‘There will be when I get the bulb out.’
That was the last we heard from that shirker.
As the only responsible, kind-hearted member of my family I pushed Granny out of my favourite chair and said, ‘Right then, let’s get started. How many flowers have we got to do?’
‘Five hundred.’
‘Good grief! Couldn’t you have enlisted your army of gentlemen friends to help?’
She smiled. ‘Who do you think made the first five hundred?’
Which just goes to show that she’s not as helpless as Mum makes out.
‘This is what you do, Faith.’ And she showed me how to pleat the tissue paper, trim the ends and tie it in the middle. ‘Then you fluff it out and . . . ta dah!’
It really was quite a sweet little flower. We only needed 499 more.
So we folded and snipped and fluffed and folded some more. It was quite fun to begin with. Then the hand cramp set in. I started getting a bit sloppy with the scissors.
‘Steady on!’ Granny snapped when one of my petals ended up a bit spiky. ‘We want blossoms not cactuses.’
‘It’s cacti,’ I said.
‘Actually it can be either, but we want neither. You’d better stop and make the tea.’
Honestly, you do one extremely large favour for the woman and she just wants more, more, more.
I made the cup of tea anyway. To Granny’s credit she didn’t even pause to sip, she said, ‘Fetch me a straw!’ and with that she managed to drink tea and carry on with the flower folding. She’s quite stubborn when she wants to be.
I found that by putting two whole biscuits in my mouth at the same time I could keep snipping and take on vital sugar at the same time.
Granny eyed at the biscuit plate. ‘Feed me a biscuit,’ she said.
‘Granny,’ I said, spraying a fair amount of bourbon crumbs in her direction. ‘I know you’re getting on and obviously you’ve got some sort of false teeth issues that I can’t even bring myself to think about too much, but I’m pretty sure that you can still manage a bit of biscuit crunching. Suck it if you have to, just don’t make any slurpy noises. I get enough of that from Megs and Cameron.’
‘I don’t need you to chew it for me, I’m not a baby bird.’
She’s not a baby anything.
‘I just want you to put it in my mouth. My hands are busy.’
It was true, even being a bossy old witch wasn’t slowing her production line.
Anyway, I poked a biscuit into her mouth and managed to avoid getting any granny dribble on
me.
On and on we went. Granny babbled on about what a smug-chops Mrs Moore is and I really did want to help Granny get one over on her, but my fingers were getting stiff and slowing me down.
At ten o’clock I stopped to count. I was a good deal more depressed when I found out how many more we had to go.
Mum appeared in the doorway. ‘Gosh, you’ve done well,’ she said. ‘Are you nearly there?’
‘No!’ Granny and I barked together.
Mum looked at her watch. ‘You might have to finish in the morning.’
‘I’ve got to deliver them at eight,’ Granny said waving the scissors about as if I’ve got eyes to spare.
‘Oh. Well, I do think it’s time Faith went to bed,’ Mum said.
To be honest I was ready to put my head down on the piles of flowers, but I kept on chopping. ‘I can’t go to bed,’ I said. ‘She hasn’t finished.’
‘That’s your grandmother’s problem. She shouldn’t have left her homework to the last minute.’
‘Is she always this unsupportive?’ Granny asked.
‘It’s not her fault,’ I said. ‘She doesn’t understand our creative clocks.’
Mum tsked. ‘Creative clocks? More like last minute loonies.’
Granny sat up tall. ‘I’ll make sure that Faith has adequate rest.’
‘Fine.’ Mum shut the door while muttering to herself.
‘Adequate rest?’ I asked Granny.
‘You don’t need more than two or three hours do you? If I had your young body I could run the country and still have time for caravan holidays and jazzercise.’
In the end we actually finished just after midnight.
‘Phew!’ I said. ‘Next time you’ve got a project on you can leave me out of it. Unless it’s some sort of cake eating marathon. I could really help you shine there.’
‘Don’t tell your mother how late we stayed up.’ Granny pulled me to my feet. ‘Thank you, Faith. I could never have got them all done without you. In fact, while we’ve been working, I’ve been thinking . . .’ she twisted her mouth in an effort to get the words out. ‘You’re not a complete disappointment to me.’
I raised my eyebrows. ‘Thank you Granny, and I’ll take this opportunity to tell you that your nightmarish behaviour is not entirely unremitting. Overall, you’re not a bad old bag of bones.’ I yawned. ‘Now that we’ve opened our hearts I think we’d better get to bed before Mum grounds us both.’
TUESDAY 5TH JUNE
Granny has been swanning about with a smug look on her face. Mrs Moore was late to the float decorating session and when she did get there she hadn’t made as many flowers as Granny. We got to hear all the smart remarks she made about Mrs Moore not keeping her promises. She’s actually quite funny when she’s being mean.
She must be picking up a few hints from me.
WEDS 6TH JUNE
I went into town with the girls to meet up with the boys. Ethan was in really good form; taking the mickey out of everyone. In fact, I was pretty funny myself. At one point, I did my best impression of Icky and Ethan gave me a high five. I couldn’t help thinking about what it would be like if we were going out, and cracking jokes together. We’d have a great time. Shame he’s got someone else to do a double act with. Although, I couldn’t help noticing that Dawn wasn’t with him.
Later, while we were sat by the fountain having a milkshake, Westy shuffled over and sat down next to me. I haven’t had a good chat with him in ages. Looking at him with his two milkshakes and a four pack of muffins, I felt really sad that things have been weird so I said, ‘All right, Westy?’ and I really meant it.
He nodded and I thought he meant it too. I wanted to say something about everything that had happened, but I didn’t want to make him uncomfortable so I just said, ‘Everything . . . all right then?’
‘Yeah, yeah, I mean . . . you know how sometimes things are a bit not all right, but then you stop being dopey and it’s all all right again?’
I sort of understood. ‘Uh huh.’
Westy put down his snack and ran his crumby hands through his hair. ‘So . . . yeah, I’m all right. Are you all right?’
‘I am,’ I smiled. ‘I feel more all right knowing you’re all right, because you know I think you’re great, don’t you?’
Then he gave me a bear hug that has probably displaced a number of my internal organs.
THURSDAY 7TH JUNE
Granny has been locked in my room all day working on her costume for the carnival.
There are some things that I enjoy about the carnival (candyfloss, the floats that throw out sweets, the fairground rides) and there are other things I don’t enjoy. Mostly, Granny’s carnival costume. Every year, she manages to choose an incredibly inappropriate outfit. I’ve suggested over and over again that she really embraces the carnival spirit and goes for one of those costumes that completely covers you – like a tree. Or the back end of a horse, but she always ignores my good advice in favour of more spangly options. I don’t like to think about what she’s going to come up with this year.
It can’t possibly be worse than the time she was on an Arabian Nights float and went as a belly dancer.
FRIDAY 8TH JUNE
You’d expect a witty, intelligent, attractive girl like me to have plenty of invitations on a Friday night, wouldn’t you? Actually, I only had one, it was from Granny. She said, ‘You’ve got a face like a spanked behind. Why don’t you pretend to be a normal person instead of a teenager and make some polite conversation? If you’re good I’ll let you help me sort my pills out.’
Granny takes a million vitamins and supplements. Every Friday she sorts them all out into a box with little compartments with days of the week on them so that she knows what to take when, and doesn’t get confused. Personally, I think she needs more than a plastic box to stop her doing daft things.
I sat down with only a small amount of groaning and started reading pill bottles to stop myself from strangling Granny with one of Mum’s dreamcatchers.
‘Why do you take all this stuff anyway?’ I asked.
‘Keeps me fit and healthy.’ She beamed at me with her false teeth and her wrinkly face.
‘Whoa, imagine what you’d be like without them. It would be like one of those films when the mummy comes to life and crawls out of the tomb and its face is all mouldy and its arm is hanging off.’
‘Don’t be rude. When you’re my age you’ll count yourself lucky if you’re in such good shape as I am.’
Just to prove Mrs Webber wrong when she says I can’t control my mouth, I didn’t say anything about Granny’s shape. Which is roughly the shape of a pear. One that’s been in the fruit bowl so long that no one wants to eat it, but no one wants to put it in the bin either because they’re worried if they touch it, it might be all mushy on the bottom. That sort of shaped pear.
When we finished our exciting pill-based task I let Granny talk me into playing cards with her. She taught me poker then I taught her Scabby Queen. The best thing about Scabby Queen is that you get to pinch the loser’s hand with your finger nails, which means that even if your opponent is super annoying you can still have a good time.
We’d just opened our third family-sized bag of popcorn when Mum came in.
‘You two look like you’re enjoying yourselves.’
Granny and I scowled at each other.
‘What are you playing?’ Mum asked.
‘Scabby Queen,’ Granny said.
Mum frowned at me. ‘I don’t think you should be playing that violent game with your grandmother.’
‘But she loves violence!’
‘I know. But she’s an old lady and I’m not sure it’s good for her to have you attacking her hands like that.’
‘Don’t be stupid, she hardly even bleeds.’
Granny nodded in agreement, but she didn’t say anything because she was taking advantage of me being distracted by Mum’s wittering and cramming her mouth with more than her fair share of popcorn.
Mum shook her head. ‘I’m not sure that’s a good thing.’
‘I’ll go gently on her.’
Which was a lie. If you show an enemy like Granny a little kindness, they’ll have your head off before you know it.
SATURDAY 9TH JUNE
Today was the carnival. When Granny came downstairs she said, ‘It’s a shame your little French friend doesn’t arrive till next Saturday. I’m sure she would have enjoyed today’s festivities.’
I looked Granny up and down; she was wearing a very small dress and a very big hat. ‘Yes, I’m sure she would have found it all very amusing,’ I said. ‘What are you wearing? Is that your costume?’
‘Of course it’s not my costume!’
‘Oh, silly me, can’t think why I thought you were in fancy dress. Maybe it was those feathers on your head? But I expect I’m a little behind the times. No, wait, I am a teenager and at the forefront of fashion, so I’ll stick with my original thought, what on earth are you wearing?’
Granny struck what she thinks is a model pose. ‘I always look tasteful whether I’m keeping it casual in nautical slacks or dressing up in sequins.’
‘Hmm. You do know that most old ladies’ idea of getting dressed up is a fresh pair of tights and a nice floral top from Marks and Spencer?’
‘Thank you Faith, when I get old, I’ll bear that in mind.’
She stroked the purple velvet of her dangerously short skirt. ‘Anyway, you wouldn’t want me to look dull, would you?’
Which just goes to show that she doesn’t listen to a word I say, because I have asked her repeatedly if she could try looking dull. Like a proper grandma. But I managed to keep my thoughts to myself because I didn’t want her to change her mind about giving me a lift into town. When she dropped me off I said, ‘Good luck with your float.’
‘Thank you Faith, I’m sure our flowers will look marvellous.’
‘Listen, when they’re announcing the winners, just remember one thing will you?’
‘What’s that?’