Clean Break

by Wilson, Jacqueline

  Gran came bursting into the kitchen, disturbed from her nap.

  ‘What’s going on? Oh, for God’s sake, you’ve been sick all over my best china!’

  ‘Who’s been sick?’ said Mum, coming in too. Vita and Maxie followed her.

  ‘Em’s been sick,’ said Gran. ‘I told you not to make a pig of yourself, Emily.’

  ‘Yuck!’ said Vita.

  ‘It smells!’ said Maxie.

  ‘You two, out of here,’ said Mum. ‘Go into the living room with your gran. I’ll clear it all up.’

  ‘Maybe you’ll listen to me when I tell you that child should stop stuffing herself. God, what a mess! It’s even splashed on the curtains!’ Gran was nearly in tears herself.

  ‘I’ll wash everything. Just leave us alone, please,’ said Dad.

  He said it very quietly, but Gran stopped fussing and dragged Vita and Maxie out of the kitchen.

  ‘Oh, Em,’ said Mum, dabbing at me with a tea towel. ‘We’d better pull these things off and stick you straight in the bath. Couldn’t you have run to the toilet if you were going to be so sick?’

  ‘It wasn’t her fault,’ said Dad. He was so grey-white he looked like he might be sick himself.

  ‘What do you mean? What’s going on?’ said Mum, trying to hitch my sweater over my head.

  ‘Don’t tell her, Dad!’ I said through layers of soggy wool.

  If he kept quiet then maybe it wouldn’t be real.

  ‘I was planning on telling you anyway, but I was leaving it till after Christmas. I’m so sorry. I just hate myself for doing this to you. I didn’t mean it to happen.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ said Mum, letting go of me.

  Dad took a deep breath. ‘I’ve met someone else, Julie.’

  Mum scarcely blinked. ‘Yes. Well. That’s nothing new,’ she said.

  ‘But this time, well, I love her. I’m sorry, I don’t want to hurt you, but this is it, the real thing. It’s never been this way before.’

  ‘You don’t want to hurt me and yet you’re telling me you love someone else?’ said Mum, her face crumpling.

  ‘Oh, Mum, don’t cry,’ I begged. I wanted to put my arms round her but I was so wet and disgusting I couldn’t touch her.

  ‘Go and get in the bath, Em,’ Dad said. ‘Your mum and I need to talk.’

  ‘I need to talk too,’ I said. ‘You love us, Dad – Mum and me and Vita and Maxie.’

  ‘Of course I love you, darling. I shall come and visit you lots, but I can’t help it. I have to go.’

  ‘You can’t do this to me! You can’t, you can’t!’ Mum started sobbing, swaying on her silver sandals.

  Dad tried to put his arm round her but she started hitting him.

  ‘Don’t, Mum, don’t, Dad!’ I shouted.

  I couldn’t believe this was happening. I kept shutting my eyes and opening them, hoping that I was dreaming. If only I could open my eyes determinedly enough I’d get back to our magical Christmas Day.

  Gran came back in the kitchen and she started shouting too. Then she was propelling me out of the room, dragging me upstairs to the bathroom, stripping the rest of my clothes off and dunking me in the bath like a baby. She soaped me so hard it felt like she was slapping me.

  Vita and Maxie kept tapping on the bathroom door, crying to be let in.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Gran, shampooing my hair because some of it had dangled in the sick. Her nails dug right into my scalp.

  I didn’t dare tell her she was hurting me. She seemed so terrifyingly cross with me, as if it was all my fault.

  Maybe it was my fault.

  Vita and Maxie seemed ready to blame me. They came hurtling into the bathroom.

  ‘Mum’s mad at Dad because you were sick everywhere, Em,’ said Vita.

  ‘She’s shouting and shouting. She even shouted at me though I wasn’t sick,’ Maxie wept.

  They didn’t seem to understand what was really going on. They were too little. I wanted to be too little too. Gran was bathing me like a baby. I wanted to be a baby. I wanted her to wrap me in the towel and pick me up and hug me close. She must have made a proper fuss of me when I was a baby – all grans did.

  ‘There, Em, get out the bath. Don’t just stand there looking gormless,’ Gran snapped. ‘Get yourself dry and then get some clean clothes on.’

  She yanked at me so that I nearly overbalanced. My emerald gleamed as I waved my arms in the air.

  ‘Oh, Gran, my ring! I’ve got it all wet and soapy! Oh no, what if I’ve spoiled it!’ I gasped.

  ‘Yes, well, it was ridiculous giving a child your age an emerald ring,’ said Gran. ‘Typical badword Frankie!’

  It was such a bad word that we all stared at her. How dare she call my dad horrible names! I looked at her pale veiny legs showing through her dressing gown.

  ‘It was ridiculous giving an old lady your age a pair of jeans,’ I said.

  Vita and Maxie gasped. I backed away from her rapidly because she looked like she was going to slap me. But she just sighed and shook her head at me, as if she’d simply caught me scratching or picking my nose. I realized she was too concerned with what was happening down in the kitchen to care about me cheeking her.

  Mum was still screaming and sobbing, on and on and on.

  When I was dry and dressed and in clean clothes Gran made Vita and Maxie and me stay shut up in the living room. She put the television volume up until it buzzed whenever anyone talked but we could still hear Mum in the kitchen. I kept switching channels until Gran snatched the remote out of my hand.

  ‘Let’s watch a video. Let’s watch Thomas. Please, please, Thomas!’ Maxie begged.

  He hadn’t watched Thomas the Tank Engine for months and months. He still knew it by heart. We all knew it by heart but we tried to watch it, even Gran. Mum was still shouting. Dad was shouting back now. Vita put her thumb in her mouth and rubbed her nose on Dancer’s fur. Maxie kept his eyes on Thomas but under his breath he muttered, ‘Bad Mummy, bad Daddy.’

  I wished I had a remote for Mum and Dad so I could press their mute button. I kept telling myself that it would somehow be all right. They’d stop shouting and suddenly sigh and fall into each other’s arms. They’d done this enough times in the past so they could do it again. Dad would say he’d been mad to think of leaving us. He’d swear he’d never see this Sarah again. He’d stay with Mum and Vita and Maxie and me and we’d all live happily ever after. I told myself this fairy story over and over, clenching my fists, my emerald ring digging into my skin.

  ‘For pity’s sake, look at you kids! It’s Christmas!’ said Gran.

  She wrapped her dressing gown right round her and marched off to the kitchen, her bedroom slippers thwacking the floor at each step.

  ‘She’s gone to tell them off,’ said Maxie.

  It seemed to work. The shouting stopped. There was a lot of muttering. Then Gran came back into the living room. Dad came with her. His eyes were red as if he’d been crying too, but he was smiling determinedly. He looked like his upturned lips had been stuck on his face by mistake.

  ‘Right, my little lovelies, what do we all want to play, eh?’

  ‘We could play Snap,’ Maxie suggested.

  He was useless at Snap, so slow at recognizing two identical cards that he simply screamed ‘Snap!’ at the top of his voice all the time. Your ears ached when you played Snap with Maxie.

  ‘Snap’s stupid, and Maxie can’t play it properly,’ said Vita. ‘Let’s play Happy Families.’

  Dad winced. Vita wasn’t deliberately getting at him. She liked Happy Families because she loved the pictures of the rabbit and the squirrel and the mouse families.

  ‘Let’s play a Christmas game,’ said Dad. He looked round for Dancer and put his hand up inside her.

  ‘We’ll all dance,’ said Dancer. ‘Let’s play Musical Bumps.’

  Dad shuffled through the CDs until he found an old Children’s Favourites with silly songs about pink toothbrushes and mic
e with clogs and runaway trains.

  ‘Not the red-nosed reindeer song!’ Dancer said, jiggling about on the end of Dad’s arm. ‘OK, let’s get jumping! Watch me pirouette, girls and boys!’

  Dad played the music really loudly. Maxie and Vita started leaping around the living room. I started jumping too. Gran sighed.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Em, do you have to thump like that? You’re rattling all my china figurines in the cabinet.’

  I stopped so abruptly I twisted my ankles.

  ‘No, no, come on, Princess Emerald, you’re light as a fairy,’ Dad said. ‘Let me sweep you up in my arms and we’ll do a merry Christmas jig.’

  ‘Yes, merry Christmas to you too, you dirty heart-breaking swine,’ said Gran, and she ran out of the room.

  Vita and Maxie stood still too.

  ‘No, no, the music’s not stopped yet. Don’t you children know how to play Musical Bumps?’ said Dancer.

  So we jumped and we bumped regardless of Gran’s china. Then Dancer taught us how to play all these old-fashioned party games like Squeak Piggy Squeak and Blind Man’s Buff. Dad used my woollen scarf as a blindfold. Dancer admired the scarf and said she wished she’d had something similar for those cold nights pulling Santa’s sleigh.

  ‘A chic knitted scarf with matching antler-warmers – and woolly patchwork pants would be a great idea too!’ she said.

  We all collapsed in a heap on the carpet and Dad gave Vita and Maxie a cuddle. I wondered if I was too big for a little kid’s cuddle but Dad reached out and pulled me in.

  ‘Dad, you’re not really going to go, are you?’ I whispered right in his ear.

  ‘Ssh, Princess Emerald! We won’t discuss state secrets in front of Princess Vita and Prince Maxie,’ Dad said, putting a finger to my lips.

  I didn’t say any more. I held it in all through tea. Gran laid out turkey sandwiches and mince pies and chocolate log.

  ‘Now for pity’s sake go easy, Em. Maybe you’d be better off with plain bread and butter,’ said Gran.

  I was feeling so empty I was ready to wolf everything down. The food tasted strange though, too light, like cotton wool. My head felt stuffed with cotton wool too. I couldn’t think properly. It was just like a dream. Here I was, licking chocolate off my fingers, having my Christmas tea, and Vita and Maxie were pretending to feed Dancer and being all giggly and silly – but Mum was upstairs in her room, not having any tea at all.

  Gran tried taking her a tray but she brought it back down untouched.

  ‘I want Mum,’ Maxie said suddenly, sliding off his chair.

  ‘No, leave her alone, Maxie, she’s got a bad headache,’ said Gran.

  ‘She gave me a bad headache with all that shouting,’ said Vita. Then she paused. ‘She is OK now though, isn’t she, Dad?’

  ‘I think she still feels a bit poorly, Princess,’ said Dad.

  ‘No wonder,’ Gran spat out. ‘You lying pig.’

  ‘Now, now. Come on. You were the one who told me to think of the kids. We don’t want to spoil their Christmas,’ said Dad.

  He tried very hard, dancing and singing and playing jokes. When Vita got over-excited and Maxie got tearful he squashed up on the sofa with them and made Dancer tell them a long story about her little reindeerhood in Lapland. Santa came on a talent-spotting visit when the reindeer school had its sports day. Dancer ran like the wind and won her race even though she was the youngest reindeer and her antlers were still as small and furry as pussy willow.

  I wanted to snuggle up and listen too but I crept out of the room, past Gran angrily washing the tea things in the kitchen, up the stairs to Mum. I listened outside her room, scared of going in, feeling weird and embarrassed. Then I heard her little sobs, just like Maxie’s, and I went rushing in to her. She still had all her clothes on but she was right under the duvet, hunched up in a soggy ball.

  ‘Oh Mum, don’t cry so,’ I said. I burrowed under the covers and put my arms tight round her as if she was my little girl and I was her mother.

  ‘What am I going to do, Em?’ she sobbed. ‘I can’t live without him.’

  ‘It’s OK, Mum, it’s OK,’ I said over and over, trying to soothe her.

  She wriggled away from me, suddenly furious. ‘It’s not badword OK, you silly little girl. He’s leaving us for another woman, for God’s sake,’ Mum hissed.

  ‘No he’s not. He’s fine now, Mum. He’s being really lovely to Vita and Maxie and me. He’s trying to make it up to us. He won’t go, not really. He loves us.’

  ‘Did he say he wasn’t going?’

  I swallowed. ‘Yes,’ I said, because I so wanted it to be true.

  Mum held onto me. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  Mum knew I wasn’t sure but she badly wanted it to be true too. She let me convince her.

  ‘I’ll find it hard to forgive him, though,’ she said. ‘This isn’t the first time, Em. There are things you don’t know about him. I don’t know why I’m so desperate to hold onto him. I’d maybe be better off without him, without all this uncertainty and heartbreak.’

  ‘But you love him, Mum.’

  ‘Of course I love him, Em.’ Mum sat up and gave me a proper hug. Then she switched on her crystal-drop lamp and looked at herself in the mirror.

  ‘God, what a sight I look!’

  Mum’s very pretty but she really did look a sight, even in the soft sparkly light of the lamp. Her hair was sticking up in clumps and her eyelids were sore and swollen, like purple grapes. Her dark lipstick was smeared all round her mouth, like Vita when she’s been drinking Ribena.

  ‘No wonder he’s got sick of me,’ Mum moaned.

  ‘You go and wash your face and put lots of makeup on,’ I said. ‘Then you’ll knock him dead.’

  ‘OK, miss, I’ll do as I’m told,’ said Mum.

  She got herself sorted and then slipped her feet back into her new silver sandals.

  ‘My million-dollar mum,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, Em, you’re the sweetest, weirdest kid,’ said Mum, her face crumpling.

  ‘Don’t cry again, you’ll mess up all your makeup!’

  ‘OK, OK, I’m not crying,’ said Mum, blinking like crazy.

  We walked downstairs hand in hand. Gran came out into the hall holding a tea towel.

  ‘God, you’re going to beg him to stay, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘You’ll never learn, Julie. After the way he’s treated you! He needs strangling.’ She twisted the tea towel violently, as if it was Dad’s neck.

  Mum took no notice. She took a deep breath. She held it for a long moment, her chest high, her lips clamped together. Then she breathed out and walked into the living room. Dad looked anxious as she swayed towards him in her silver sandals. Vita sat up straight, Dancer hanging limply from her arm. Maxie jammed his thumb in his mouth and hunched up very small, as if he was trying to make himself invisible.

  ‘Hello, darlings,’ Mum said, brightly and bravely. She stretched and yawned, acting like she’d just woken up. ‘Mm, I had a lovely nap. Shall we see what’s on telly now?’

  She wasn’t really kidding anyone, not even Maxie, but we all acted like we hadn’t heard any of the shouting and sobbing.

  Dad gently pushed Vita along the sofa and patted the cushion. ‘Come and sit down, babe,’ he said gently.

  Mum sat beside him. Vita, Maxie and I arranged ourselves round them. Gran sat sniffing and sighing in her chair opposite. We watched all the Christmas specials on the television and whenever there was a funny bit we all laughed a little too hilariously. Maxie snorted so much that he gave himself hiccups.

  ‘You’re getting over-tired, young man. Time you were in bed,’ said Gran.

  ‘No no no!’ Maxie squealed.

  ‘Yes yes yes!’ said Dad. ‘Hey, Maxie, Dancer wants to tell you about her reindeer house back in Lapland. You’ll never guess what sort of bed she has.’

  Maxie let Dad carry him upstairs. Vita started clamouring, so Dad carried her on his other arm. I watched, w
ishing I could whittle myself down to pocket size so I could cling to Dad like a little monkey too. I clumped along behind them instead.

  Dad invented an entire Lapland saga, telling us about the baby reindeer nurseries with their green mossy cots with swan’s-down quilts, and then describing reindeer school, where they had lessons in dancing, trotting, galloping, and special flying instruction for advanced and extra-talented reindeer.

  Maxie fell asleep first. Dad tucked him under his own blankets and ruffled his dark tufty hair. Vita allowed herself to be tucked up too, but was clearly willing herself to stay awake, her forehead furrowed with the effort of keeping her eyes wide open. But eventually she gave a little sigh, clasped Dancer to her chest, and fell asleep too.

  Dad wriggled his hand free of the glove puppet and patted Vita gently on her bony shoulder. She’d refused to put on her own Barbie pyjamas and was wearing one of Mum’s little black nightie tops. We’d argued over which one of us would wear it when Mum broke one of the straps and donated it to our dressing-up box. I won, but when I tried it on Vita laughed cruelly and said I looked like one of the hippos in her Disney video. I shoved her hard in the chest and said she was just jealous, but I let her commandeer the little black nightie after that. Vita looked wonderful in it, like a little midnight fairy.

  ‘My girlie,’ Dad whispered, and he kissed her high forehead.

  The room seemed very quiet. Dad smiled at me, not quite meeting my eyes.

  ‘Into bed, Princess Emerald,’ he said.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Now come on, darling, it’s way past your bed time.’

  ‘Dad, promise you’ll stay?’

  Dad screwed up his face for a moment. Then he stood up, seized my hand and kissed my ring. ‘Your wish is my command, Princess Emerald,’ he said. ‘Now stop looking so worried and hip-hop into bed.’

  Dad started a hip-hop little song about Princess Em and her magic ring, bling bling. I sang along too. I even danced round the bed, but when Dad tried to tuck the duvet under my chin I flung my arms round his neck.

  ‘Hey, hey, you’re throttling me!’ Dad joked.

  ‘Dad, you do promise, don’t you?’