Longest Whale Song (18 page)

‘Well, can't you all be best friends together?' says Jack.

‘Oh, Jack, you don't
understand
.'

‘You sound just like your mother. And all the little girls in my class who come and tell me their sad stories – so-and-so keeps whispering about them, and so-and-so didn't choose them for a work
project – and you're right, I
don't
understand. I don't see why women have to
analyse
everything to the nth degree. It's much simpler if you're a bloke. Everyone's your mate until they bash you, and then you bash them back, and then they're your mate again, no fussing.'

‘Men!' I say witheringly.

Samson kicks his legs beside me. I take hold of one tiny foot.

‘Are you going to be as hopeless, Samson? I don't think so. I'm going to teach you to be a
lovely
boy,' I say.

‘That's what my mum thought about me. Oh God. My mum and dad. They were supposed to be coming on a visit when the baby was born,' says Jack.

‘Oh no,' I say, and then I clap my hand over my mouth because it sounds so rude.

‘It's OK. That's my reaction too. And it's mad – they live so far away they'll have to stay overnight, and I don't know where on earth they'll sleep, because my dad can't get upstairs, and it's hard enough getting us three fed, let alone entertaining two more . . .'

Jack carries on, and now I'm the one not listening properly. I worry on about Sally. I'm still holding Samson's foot.

‘Will
you
be my new best friend, Samson?' I whisper.

He gives a little gurgle, as if he's saying yes. I start to worry about him going to Aunty Mavis, because he's got used to
us
so quickly. Perhaps he'll start screaming at the sight of Aunty Mavis, desperate for us to stay. But when she comes to her front door, holding out her arms, Samson seems happy enough to be picked up and cuddled.

‘Where's this lovely boy then? Ah,
here
he is,' she says, folding back his shawl and giving his forehead a little kiss. The twins hop on either side, vying with each other to see the baby.

‘Don't you worry about a thing. Little Sam will be fine with me,' Aunty Mavis says. ‘Won't you, my pet?'

Samson certainly seems totally happy in her arms. Jack and I look at him.

‘Bye, little boy,' says Jack, giving his chin a tickle.

‘Bye-bye, Samson,' I say, and I blow him a kiss.

We both still stand there a bit anxiously.

‘He'll be totally tickety-boo, I promise,' Aunty Mavis says, laughing at us. ‘Off you go!'

So we slope back to the car and drive off. It feels so strange to be without Samson. We've only had him home for a weekend, and yet it feels as if he's
been part of our lives for ever. I feel such a pang for Mum. She carried Samson around inside her for nine whole months – and now he's been taken away from her.

‘We can take Samson to see Mum today after school, can't we, Jack?'

‘Yes, of course.'

I hunch down in my seat, trying to distract myself by thinking about whales. My book says they sing in strange groans and moans. I try groaning softly to myself.

‘Are you all right, Ella?' Jack asks.

‘Yep.'

I try a few moans this time.

‘Have you got a tummy ache?'

‘No, I'm fine.'

‘Then why are you making that weird noise?'

‘It's whale-speak.'

‘Oh. Right. You're a weird kid, Ella.'

‘Sally sometimes says I'm weird.'

‘Well, she's right.'

I hunch up a little more.

‘You're not still worrying about this best friends business, are you?'

I swallow. ‘No,' I lie.

‘Sally will be fine, you'll see,' says Jack.

He parks the car outside school and insists on
coming into the playground with me, as if I'm one of the infants. I look around the playground. I see Sally straight away. She's standing in a little huddle with Dory and Martha. My breakfast cornflakes churn in my stomach. But then Sally sees me and comes running over.

‘Hi, Ella!' she says, and she gives me a big hug.

Jack grins at me triumphantly. ‘There you are, Ella,' he says. ‘OK, have a good day. I'll pick you up as soon as I can. I'm afraid you might have a bit of a wait. You'll be all right? You won't go off with any strange men?'

‘As if,' I say, and I flash him a quick smile and then saunter off with Sally. I
think
it's OK.

Sally keeps her arm round me, talking all the time. ‘How's your mum, Ella?'

‘She's . . . about the same.'

‘Is she very, very ill?'

I don't know what to say, so I just nod.

‘You poor thing. I don't know what I'd do if
my
mum got that ill,' says Sally. ‘And what about the baby?'

‘He's lovely,' I say. ‘I feed him and wind him, and sometimes I even change him – but not when he has a really dirty nappy. I leave that for Jack! You should have seen the way Samson peed all over Jack's chest, it was sooo funny!'

Sally laughs, and we both make silly peeing noises and gestures, and get the giggles, hanging onto each other. But Dory comes running over, sticking her nose in. Martha follows.

‘Hello, Ella. What are you two laughing at?' Dory asks.

‘I wouldn't be killing myself laughing if
my
mother was dangerously ill in hospital,' says Martha.

‘She's not
dangerously
ill. That means she might . . .' I can't say the word. ‘It's not dangerous,' I repeat. ‘Dr Wilmot says she's in a stable condition.'

‘So what's the matter with her?' Martha asks.

‘She's in a coma.'

‘What does that mean?'

‘She's just asleep.'

‘Asleep, like . . .'Martha shuts her eyes and makes silly snorty snoring sounds.

‘No, nothing like that! Stop it! Don't you dare make fun of my mum,' I shout.

Miss Anderson comes hurrying across the playground out of nowhere. ‘Hello, Ella. Welcome back to school! Martha, what are you doing?'

‘Nothing, Miss Anderson,' says Martha, opening her eyes wide to act all innocence.

Miss Anderson looks at me.

‘She was being horrid about my mum!' I say furiously, blinking back my tears.

I realize this is a
big
mistake as soon as I say it. You never ever tell tales to a teacher at our school, no matter what.

‘Martha, I'm thoroughly ashamed of you! I can't believe you could be so unkind when Ella is worried and upset about her mother,' says Miss Anderson. ‘I think you'd better go into school right this minute and sit by yourself in the classroom. Off you go.'

Martha glares at me in an
I'm-going-to-get-you
way and slopes off. Miss Anderson gives me a pat on the shoulder and then hurries off to separate two boys who have started wrestling. Sally and Dory are looking at me reproachfully.

‘
What?
' I say. ‘Martha
was
being horrid about my mum, you heard her.'

‘She was just being silly about snoring,' says Sally. ‘I know she upset you, Ella, but she wasn't really being
horrid
.'

‘Oh yes she was,' says Dory surprisingly. ‘Martha's very good at knowing
exactly
how to upset people on purpose. She's the world champion.'

‘I thought you were her friend,' I say.

‘Yes, but I wish I wasn't sometimes, because she
can be so mean. I wish I could be friends with you two instead.'

I want to be kind to Dory. She's a smiley girl with shiny black hair cut in a very tidy fringe (I still don't know what to do about mine!) and she can be good fun at times. I loved it when she brought her pet mouse to school. In fact the only thing
really
wrong with her is that she's always been best friends with Martha. So now she doesn't
want
to be friends with her, maybe we could all be best friends together, the three of us. Jack seems to think it would work – though he doesn't always know everything.

‘I'd
love
it if you were our friend, Dory,' says Sally. She's looking at me imploringly.

I take a deep breath. ‘Yeah, that would be great,' I say.

‘Oh, fantabulistic!' Sally says, and she gives Dory a big hug.

Dory gives her a big hug back. Neither of them gives
me
a hug. Well, Sally
did
hug me when I came into the playground. We can't play huggybears all the time. It will be all right, all right, all right.

It's definitely all
wrong
with Martha. She glares at all of us when we go into class after the bell's gone. Her glare assumes ferocious werewolf
proportions when she looks at me. I don't care. She was mocking Mum. I hate Martha.

She tries to talk to Dory, but Dory edges her chair away from Martha's desk, nearer to us. Sally writes Dory a little note. Dory writes one back to her.

‘What's she saying?' I whisper to Sally.

‘Oh, just that she's glad she's our best friend now,' says Sally. She doesn't show me. She crumples up the note and pops it in her desk drawer.

‘She's just a
friend
friend, not a best friend,' I mutter.

‘Whatever,' says Sally.

There's a gentle tap on my back. I turn round. It's Joseph.

‘How's your mum, Ella?'

‘Oh, sort of the same, thanks,' I say.

‘She's still in a coma?'

‘Mm. But it doesn't mean she can't get better,' I say.

‘I know. I looked it up on my computer. I printed some stuff out for you. Here.'

He hands me a sheaf of papers. They're features from newspapers:
MIRACLE MOM WAKES WEEKS AFTER MONTH IN COMA; COMA BOY OPENS HIS EYES AND SMILES WHEN POP IDOL VISITS; COMA BRIDE WHISPERS ‘I LOVE YOU
.'

My eyes fill with tears. ‘Thank you so much, Joseph.'

‘There was lots of serious medical stuff too, but I thought you'd like these true-life stories best.'

‘I do, I do!'

‘Ella, Joseph! Come
on
now, we're meant to be concentrating on weighing and measuring,' says Miss Anderson. ‘In fact, you can help us, Ella. You have a new baby brother. Do you know how much he weighed when he was born?'

‘He weighed six pounds eight ounces, Miss Anderson. But he probably weighs a lot more now because he's had lots of feeds.'

‘Ah, you probably have to measure his baby milk too. How much are you feeding him at the moment?'

‘Four ounces at a time, Miss Anderson. He absolutely gobbles it down. He makes really loud sucking sounds, he's so funny,' I say eagerly. ‘Like this!' I demonstrate.

‘Ah!' says Miss Anderson, smiling.

‘Oh, per-lease!' Martha hisses. ‘They're acting like this is little baby Jesus! All babies suck. And Ella sucks too. It's not fair –
she
doesn't get told off for making stupid sucking sounds and yet
I
get sent into school just for snoring.'

‘Are you addressing me personally, Martha, or
making general comments like a Greek chorus?' says Miss Anderson. ‘Perhaps you'd like to contribute properly. I think you've got a little sister, haven't you? Can you remember how much she weighed when she was born?'

‘She's not my real sister, she's only a
half
-sister, and I haven't got a clue what she weighed and I couldn't care less,' Martha says.

I stare at Martha while Miss Anderson tuts and tells her off for being cheeky. I never knew Martha had a half-sister. So she's probably got a stepdad too. I still can't stand her, but perhaps I'm slightly more interested in her now.

I'm
not
especially interested in our weighing lesson now we've stopped talking about Samson. I wonder how much baby whales weigh. Their mothers feed them lots of milk, just like human babies. The calves are very weak at first, so they sometimes rest their flippers on their mother's body to help them swim along. They stay with their mothers for two or three years. The mothers teach them how to hunt and how to talk to all the other whales. I doodle a mother and baby whale on the back of my rough book.

Miss Anderson walks past and raises her eyebrows.

‘I'm just trying to work out how much a baby
whale would weigh,' I say quickly. ‘They're a quarter the size of an adult, so it's a sum I should be able to work out easy-peasy.'

‘Oh, very good, Ella.'

‘I started a special whale project when I was at home,' I say. ‘Shall I show you?'

‘Yes, I'd love to see it. Maybe after school? I'm glad you like doing special projects, Ella. You can make a start on your Tudor project today.'

But this is where everything starts to go wrong. Sally has started doing her Tudor project with Dory and Martha. They've chosen Tudor costume.

‘But surely you can start another project with me now?' I say to Sally.

‘Well, I really
want
to do Tudor costume. We've done pages and pages on it already,' she says. ‘Tell you what, Ella, you can do some drawing for us.'

‘Oh, great, then I can draw all those fancy sticky-out dresses,' I say.

‘Over my dead body,' says Martha. ‘
You're
not part of our project.'

‘But Sally and I always do our projects together,' I say. ‘We're best friends.'

‘And Dory's our friend too,' Sally reminds me.

Martha looks furious. ‘Dory's
my
best friend,' she says. ‘Aren't you, Dory?'

Dory doesn't look like she wants to be Martha's
best friend in the slightest, but she doesn't dare say so.

‘So it's me and Dory and Sally. So you shove off, tell-tale,' says Martha.

She pushes me hard, so that my chair scrapes the floor. Miss Anderson looks up enquiringly.