By the Time You Read This (2 page)

I
remember my dad lifting me up by his large hands and twirling me around in the air. Me, giggling with wonderful anticipation of the giddy feeling that would grip me, right before the remnants of my breakfast would start to rise in my throat.

“She’s going to be sick, put her down!” Mom would shout. Spoiling the moment.
Our
moment. And that’s basically all I could clearly remember about him. Oh, and the mole under his eye. The picture on my dressing table, and others banished to a small box in the loft, was all I had to help piece together the size of his nose, curve of his large lips, cute little button ears encased in what I could only imagine to be the smoothest skin I could ever wish to touch. I often imagined jumping into that photo, if only for sixty seconds—each one spent running my finger across the surface of his skin, the contours of his face, implanting an image in my brain that would live there forever and ever.

But I didn’t have the power to jump into a photo.

And Dad wasn’t alive again.

In fact, when Auntie Philomena left the reception I ran into the smelly toilets of that restaurant and cried. I continued to sob for the rest of the night, away from the noisy crowds and uncool music. And then again in my bed, still dressed in that awful frilly dress, dolly shoes banished to the ether. As usual, Mom didn’t notice, she was too loved-up with the Bingo Caller to care. I wasn’t even sure why I was crying because, as Auntie Philomena had put it, this was a
good
thing. Right? Like hearing a message from the grave. But I suppose that’s what really bothered me the most: he was
still
dead. Lifeless. His ashes scattered in a foreign sea thousands of miles away along with old tires and rotting bicycles. He hadn’t come to rescue me from my life of endless days at school, Mom’s moaning and now a stepdad thinking he’d acquired the right to tell me what to do just because he was knobbing my mother.

Dad was still gone.

Philomena had handed me a crumpled old plastic bag like it was a pot of glistening gold; a perfect, divine specimen needing special handling. It was heavy, with something book-shaped inside.
Great,
I thought. Yet another book to read. So all I could do was chuck it on the floor among my Doc Martens, twelve-inch singles and one of the pink dolly shoes, staring at it from time to time with a cocktail of confusion, fear, excitement and sadness floating in the background.

Luckily, that weekend was spent with Carla while Mom and the Bingo Caller honeymooned in Cornwall. Although my best mate and her family lived only next door, same south London, same Charlton, it felt like a trillion miles
away. And it might as well have been. Carla and her brother Corey were allowed to stay up late AND were allowed to eat ice cream AFTER nine o’clock. So, staying there was perhaps a great way of forgetting about Dad’s “message” for a while and get my head right. But my head remained jumbled and I couldn’t get it out of my mind, counting the days till Mom returned. And the minute the sickly newlyweds arrived back home, complete with their first all-shrieking, super-duper, mirror-cracking argument over what to watch on telly, I raced to my room, desperate to peer inside that plastic bag.

“Don’t I get a kiss, young lady?” shouted Mom as I reached the top of the stairs—just outside my room and
that
plastic bag. My heart raced as Mom slowly climbed the stairs, moved toward me and smiled wildly to reveal her front gapped teeth.

“Sorry, Mom. Welcome back,” I said, one eye on the door to my bedroom as she planted a wet kiss onto my cheek.

“Is there one for me as well?” said the Bingo Caller, opening the door to their bedroom. They couldn’t have heard my silent toot as I replied, “Yes.”

At last on my bed, I carefully removed the plastic and instantly clocked the ugly green notebook with the words
The Manual
written on the front in thick black ink.

Mom shrilled my name. “Lois!”

I quickly replaced the plastic bag over
The Manual,
stuffing it under my bed.

“What??!!” I replied, totally exasperated.

“Carla wants to know if you want to go to the sweetshop.”

I clocked the piece of plastic poking out from under the bed. “Erm…yes, tell her I’ll be right down…”

“What is she doing up there?” said Carla.

“Nothing! I’ll be right down!”
The Manual
could wait another half-hour, right?

I
waited impatiently as Mr. Tally, the bald man behind the counter, looked on as Carla picked out her ten penny candies. Mr. Tally had this annoying habit of watching us and ignoring the grown-ups who were probably busy out back, shoplifting a pint of milk (I’d never even stolen before, although Corey swiped a sherbet dip once).

“I think you’ve gone over,” said Mr. Tally, and I wasn’t sure why, considering he’d always tip the tiny paper bag out onto the counter and recount the contents anyway.

“How have I?” challenged Carla, today dressed in a pair of
very
ripped jeans. The door pinged as another young customer ignored the
“only two schoolchildren at a time”
notice slapped onto the glass door. “I’ve got a Flying Saucer, a Mojo, Refresher, whistle, pink shrimp and a Fruit Salad. How’s that up to ten cents?”

I sighed and glanced at my watch. We’d been at this for ten whole minutes and I was bored. I had to get back to my bedroom and that plastic bag.

“The Jamie whistle counts for two pennies,” he said.

“So I’ve still got three pennies then! Stupid!”

To save on time and aggravation, I picked out a readymade bag, hoping it contained my favorites, and we headed toward home.

“Why don’t we go down the rec?” asked Carla.

I opened my bag, relieved to find a white chocolate mouse. “I don’t feel like it today. Let’s just go home.”

“You got stuff to do?” she asked with a look of utter disbelief.
As if Lois Bates would ever have anything exciting to do.
She had a point.

“So what’s it like with the new pops?” she asked, her mouth stuffed with at least three items.

The white mouse and Black Jack currently being demolished in my own mouth nearly flew out as I shrieked, “He’s not my dad, Carla!”

“Sooooreeee!” she shrugged, curling her lip like they did on telly. Actually, Carla could very well be mistaken for one of those actresses or models, anything she wanted to be. She was easily the prettiest girl in Charlton—no, make that south London—and even with short hair. Tall, slim, always wore the latest fashion, fun, but an absolute whiner if she didn’t get her own way. I was relieved when she sucked on a gobstopper, leaving me to gossip about Sharlene Rockingham and whether Mrs. Codrington—our science teacher—used to be a man or not.

The hot sun shone above us, warming my insides like an electric blanket, and I could swear I felt Dad’s presence. Like he was willing me to do it; just go home and open up that grocery bag, start acting my age and not my shoe size. I was a big girl now, after all—and, I repeat,
almost
a teenager.

I finally left Carla in front of her television and came face-to-face with the plastic bag in my bedroom. I discarded the plastic and the relief was instant—followed by a stab of fear. Puke tents were suddenly pitching themselves in my tummy as the plastic fell to the ground, mercifully covering the pink dolly shoe I now used as a pencil holder.

And there it was again.

The “something” my dad had left me.

The ugly green book, staring back at me.

I opened the hard cover and immediately smiled at the first caption.

I sighed heavily, dropping the book straight onto my toes, wincing as the pain shot upward. My body flopped backward onto my untidy bed, shoulders colliding with the one-eyed teddy, and a single tear poured from my eye like a waning waterfall. My chest heaved up and down with the force of a silent sob, not because it hurt (and it did) but because, after all these years, I’d finally heard from my dad.

And he’d just told me he loved me.

I made myself a cup of hot chocolate and placed it well away from
The Manual
and inches from Dad’s picture. I sat upright on my bed, something that would please Mom as she was always going on about my
posture.
My face began to drip again. I wiped my eyes frantically and swiped at the snot with my hand, sniffing a couple of times, then stopped behaving like a wuss long enough to peep into the second page.

I frantically turned to the next page, heart beating forcefully under my T-shirt.

I sat back against the headboard and shoved the one-eyed teddy onto the floor.

My sobs returned. This time, a little deeper.

I turned the page, feeling sad. Then happy. Scared. Excited. This yo-yoing of emotion felt so strange to me.

I stifled a smile. At last, explanation for my horrible and weird name.