Clean Break (9 page)

‘Hey, you three. Having fun?'

‘No, we're not,' said Vita. ‘We want to go home.'

‘Back to Sarah's?'

‘That's not
home
,' said Vita in disgust. ‘
Our
home.'

‘Not yet, Princess Vita. Come here, darling, let me tell you all about Princess Vita's new holiday home. She has a house right on the top of the cliff made of shells, thousands and thousands of tiny shells stuck in pretty flower patterns—'

‘I'm not listening! I don't care about stupid princesses. I'm not listening, not listening, not listening,' Vita chanted, her hands over her ears.

She wasn't a pushover like me. She wouldn't let Dad win her round, though he tried his best. She wouldn't even kiss Dad goodbye when he'd trailed us all the way back home. Dad tried to kiss her anyway. Vita rubbed her cheek fiercely, as if he'd smeared her face with something disgusting. Maxie held his head stiffly to one side so he couldn't be kissed either.

‘Oh, kids,' Dad said sadly. He looked at me. ‘You'll give me a kiss, won't you, Em?'

I wanted to kiss him, of course I did. I wanted to wind my arms round his neck and beg him to stay. But I kept thinking about the way he'd kissed Sarah. I dodged round Dad and rang our doorbell quickly, ignoring him.

‘
I CAN'T BELIEVE
he took you to that woman's flat!' said Gran. ‘Here, take those clothes
off
, Em.'

She pulled them off me so violently it's a wonder my skin didn't come off with them. Mum picked the black jumper up with the tips of her fingers.

‘She must be very small, very slim,' she said. ‘Is she very pretty, Em?'

‘No! Not a bit. She's weird.'

‘In what way weird?'

‘Like she's got this tattoo on her arm. And her hair's really really short. She looks sort of scruffy,' I said, pulling on my pyjama top.

Vita and Maxie were already in bed, though it had been a struggle to get them there. Vita showed off like anything, prancing around like the dancers
in the New Year's Day parade, twirling two old socks above her head like streamers. Maxie got the giggles and then gave himself hiccups and couldn't stop. He kept his mouth open when he hiccuped to sound as grotesque as possible.

I couldn't get them to shut up. Mum didn't even try. She leaned against the bathroom door, staring into space. Gran had to come in and give them a telling-off, scooping them both out of the bath and shaking them hard. She had them dried and dressed in their night things and tucked firmly into bed in ten minutes, with dire warnings if she heard another peep out of them.

She let me stay up because she wanted to know every last detail about Dad and That Woman. Mum started concentrating then, asking me question after question. My head ached, trying to tell her the right answers.

‘Do you think he really loves her, Em?' Mum asked, her voice a sad little whisper.

Gran sniffed. ‘That's not the word I'd use. Frankie doesn't know how to love anyone, not in the real sense of the word.' Gran went off on a rant. Mum and I weren't listening. Mum was looking at me desperately.

I struggled, not knowing what to say. I kept thinking about the way Dad looked at Sarah, the way he followed her around, the way he kissed her.
That was love, wasn't it? Then I remembered a word from one of Mum's magazines.

‘I think it's just infatuation, Mum.'

Gran laughed and called me a little old woman, but Mum took me totally seriously.

‘So you think it's all a five-minute wonder and he'll come back to us?'

‘Yes, yes, of course he's going to come back to us,' I said. How could I say anything else?

‘You'll be a fool if you take him back,' Gran said.

‘OK, I'm a fool. I don't care,' said Mum. ‘You don't understand.'

‘Too right I don't,' said Gran.

‘Haven't you ever been in love, Gran?' I asked. ‘You once loved my grandad, didn't you?'

‘Look where it got me,' Gran snorted. ‘He pushed off and left me stranded with your mum. Still, at least I learned from my mistakes.' She shook her head at Mum.

‘You don't always have to be right, Gran,' I said. ‘Dad
will
come back, you'll see. It will all come right and we'll be happy again.'

‘What's that pink animal flapping past your nose? Whoops, it's a flying pig,' said Gran. ‘If you ask me, I doubt you'll ever see him again.'

‘We're not asking you. Of course we'll see him. I'll see him every day at the Palace,' said Mum.

The Pink Palace really looks like a palace. It's
a huge Victorian building with little towers and turrets. It used to be owned by a big insurance company but they sold it off in the 1960s and someone painted it bright pink all over and turned it into a gift emporium. The pink is faded and peeling now and the towers and turrets are crumbling, but the gift emporium is still there, though half the stalls have closed down.

There are still T-shirt stalls and silver jewellery stalls and second-hand CD stalls and weird stalls that sell all sorts of junk and rubbish. The best stall of all was my dad's Fairyland. It was very tiny, in its own dark little grotto, with luminous silver stars twinkling on the ceiling and a big glitter ball making sparkles all over the floor. There were fairy frocks and fairy wings and magical fairy jewellery, fairy wands and fairy figurines and entire sets of Casper Dream fairy books.

I
was the one who gave Dad the idea for Fairyland! When I was much younger I had this embarrassing obsession with fairies. I was desperate to have a proper fairy dress. I can't help squirming now, because I've always been a great fat lump even when I was little, but I still fancied myself in a pink gauze sticking-out skirt with matching wings.

Dad searched everywhere to buy one that would fit me for my birthday. He tried to find a specialist fairy shop. Then he had this brilliant
idea. He decided to open his own fairy stall and call it Fairyland.

It was a success at first, because his prices were very low and if kids came along and looked wistful he'd often bung them free fairy bubbles or pixie toffees. He even hired himself out to do themed fairy parties on Saturdays. All the little girls loved him. The mums loved him too. But whenever Dad had an acting job he shut the stall up, and even when he wasn't working he couldn't always be bothered to trail down to the Palace and sit inside his Fairyland. He started to lose customers, so Mum would attach a little card to his white security railings:
IF YOU FANCY ANY OF THE FAIRIES
,
PLEASE APPLY TO JULIE AT THE RAINBOW HAIRDRESSING SALON ON THE THIRD FLOOR
.

Mum went into work five days a week, sometimes six when they were short-staffed, and she worked right through till ten on Thursdays, when it was late-night shopping. She really did dye people's hair all colours of the rainbow. Vita and I begged her to dye
our
hair shocking pink or deep purple or bright blue but she just laughed at us.

She went back to work on 2
^nd
January. I stayed at home with Vita and Maxie and Gran. I got out my brand-new journal and sat staring at the first blank page. After ten minutes I wrote:
Saw Dad
. I waited, sucking the end of my pen. Then I closed
the journal with a snap. I didn't feel like writing any more.

It was a long long long day. I couldn't wait for Mum to come home. She was later than usual. I started to get excited. Maybe that meant Mum and Dad were having a drink together, talking things over. Maybe right this minute Dad was telling Mum he had made a terrible mistake. Then he'd kiss her the way he'd kissed Sarah. They'd come home together, arms wrapped round each other, our mum and dad.

I went running to the front door as soon as I heard the key in the lock. Mum was standing there all by herself. Her face was grey with the cold and there were snail-trails of mascara down her cheeks.

‘It's the wind making my eyes water,' she said, wiping them.

‘Did you see Dad?' I asked softly, not wanting Gran to hear.

Mum shook her head. She closed her eyes but the tears still seeped out under her lids. I put my arms round her.

‘He'll go to the Palace tomorrow,' I said.

He didn't. He didn't go there the next day or the day after that. He didn't ever have his mobile phone switched on. There was no way we could get hold of him.

‘I need his address. Suppose there's some terrible emergency?' said Mum. ‘Can't you remember where
this Sarah lived, Em? What was the name of the road?'

I thought hard but it was no use. I'd been in such a state of despair and embarrassment I hadn't taken any of it in. I couldn't even remember which station we'd got out at, though Mum made me stare at a tube map to try to jog my memory. I stared until all the coloured lines wavered and blurred. None of the names meant anything to me.

‘For God's sake, Em, how could you be so useless?' Mum snapped.

I went off by myself and had a private weep in the toilet. I
felt
useless. I twirled my emerald ring round and round my finger, wishing it was magic so I could conjure Dad from thin air.

I couldn't understand how I'd been so mad with Dad on New Year's Day. Why hadn't I given him a goodbye kiss? I'd have given anything to kiss him now.

I knew Vita felt the same way. She was unusually quiet during the day, sitting curled up with Dancer. She went to bed without a fuss and seemed to go to sleep straight away but when I woke in the night I heard someone sobbing. I thought it was Maxie and stumbled out of bed to his little lair. He was huddled up with his bears, breathing heavily, fast asleep. The sobbing seemed to be coming from my own bed.

‘Vita?' I whispered. ‘Are you crying?'

She was howling, her head under her pillow. She was wearing Dancer like a big furry glove.

‘Hey, come out, you'll suffocate.'

Vita turned away from me, hands over her face, embarrassed.

‘It's OK, Vita. Here, have you got any tissues?'

‘I've used them all up,' Vita gulped.

‘Hang on, I'll go and get you some loo-roll.'

I slipped out of bed again, pulled off a long pink streamer of Andrex and tiptoed back to our bedroom.

‘Is that you, Em? Are you all right?' Mum called from her bedroom.

‘Yeah, Mum, I'm fine,' I whispered, not wanting to worry her. It sounded like Mum might have been crying too.

I got back into bed with Vita and tried to mop her face for her.

‘Get off! I'll do it,' she said fiercely.

When she'd finished wiping and blowing and snuffling I tried putting my arms round her. She didn't wriggle away.

‘Poor Dancer, you've made her all wet,' I said, feeling her. ‘Have you stopped crying now?'

‘I'm trying to. But I just keep thinking about Dad and how I wouldn't listen to him and now he's so mad at me he won't come and see me—'

‘Rubbish! Dad never gets mad at anyone, especially you, Vita. You know you're his favourite.'

‘I'm not!' said Vita, but she sounded hopeful.

‘You're
everyone's
favourite,' I said, sighing.

Vita gave a small pleased snort.

‘Blow your nose again,' I said, giving her another wad of loo-roll.

She tried to blow her nose with her Dancer hand.

‘There now, Princess Vita,' I made Dancer say. ‘We all come over a little weepy at times. Let me wipe your little nose for you. There now. Shall I tell you a secret?'

‘What?' said Vita.

‘You're
my
favourite too. You're much prettier than boring fat old Em and you're not a silly little sausage like Maxie.'

Vita giggled. ‘Yes, he
is
a silly little sausage,' she said. She paused. ‘Em's a
bit
pretty. She's got lovely hair.'

‘She's got a lovely nature too, putting up with a sister like you,' I said.

‘When Dad comes next time I'm going to be much much nicer to him,' said Vita, snuffling. ‘So long as he doesn't bring that Sarah!'

‘She's horrible,' I agreed. ‘Dad's gone mad, liking her better than Mum.'

‘When I'm married I'm not going to let my husband run off,' said Vita.

‘I'm not going to get married at all,' I said. ‘It's too easy to pick the wrong person. I'm going to live
all by myself and I'm going to eat all my favourite things every day and stay up as late as I like, and I shall read all day and write stories and draw pictures with no one bothering me or fussing or needing to be looked after.'

‘Won't you be lonely?' said Vita.

‘I shall have a friendly dog and a little cat to curl up on my lap. My sister Vita will come visiting riding on Dancer the Reindeer with her good kind obedient husband and six pretty little girls, and my brother Maxie will come visiting with his big bold wife and his six silly little sausage boys and so I will have more than enough company, thank you.'