Love Bomb (4 page)

‘I’ve got a bit of news,’ says Dad when I step back. I can tell by the way he says this that he’s practised how it will sound. He’s aiming for casual, but he misses, big time.

‘What?’ I start to rearrange things in the fridge. I think I know what’s coming and I don’t want to hear it.

‘Just that I’m going out on Saturday night, if that’s OK, with a friend.’ A friend. A friend? Why doesn’t he just say it? He means
girl
friend. I hear the dishes rattle in the sink. ‘She’s someone I met through work,’ he says. ‘I painted her yoga studio.’

Bill was right, a
hippy
girlfriend. I keep quiet.

‘Her name’s Rue.’

Rue? Rue! That is so
not
a name. I know I’m supposed to say something now, something like, ‘That is
so
great, Dad!’ but I can’t. Instead, I go with staring at a blueberry Fruit Corner in the fridge. I wonder if he was thinking about her when we were eating my birthday cake … Maybe she chose my perfume. I’m chucking it out.

‘Look, Betty,’ Dad says. I slam the fridge shut and turn to face him. ‘I knew you’d find this hard. It’s been just the two of us for so long.’

His words make my heart feel like a small, hard stone. I can’t stop the horrible thoughts that pour through
me like a film on fast-forward: I see
Rue
curled up on the sofa in my spot, Dad taking
Rue
camping with us,
Rue
making herself breakfast in our kitchen … wearing Dad’s painty shirt … and
nothing
else.

‘It must have been
terrible
for you,’ I blurt out. ‘I didn’t realise you
hated
being with me so much, just the two of us for
so
long!’ Tears appear from nowhere.

‘Betty,’ says Dad, putting out his arms. Normally I love hugging Dad. He stands there in his faded band T-shirt waiting for me to come to him. Round his wrist he’s wearing two friendship bracelets I made for him when I was seven. He’s never taken them off. Not once.

‘I
hate
this, Dad,’ I say, turning away and walking out of the room. ‘I wish you’d never told me!’ I run up to my room, banging the door shut. Then I lie on my bed, hugging Mr Smokey and making his fur all tufty with my tears. Eventually, he wriggles out of my grasp and sits by the door until I let him out.

I curl up on my bed and stare at the shut door. Now I’m all alone. My eyes fall on a purple envelope sitting on my bedside table. Mum’s birthday letter. The last one. I don’t know when Dad put it there. I pick it up and feel its weight in my hands. I find a gap in the envelope flap and push my finger into it. Downstairs, I hear Dad talking on the phone. He could be chatting to anyone – Gramps, a customer, one of his mates – but I can’t stop myself thinking,
he’s talking to her
.

I throw the letter across the room and it lands in a pile of junk by my wardrobe.

Next, I put on my big green headphones and listen to The Clash. Dad hates this album. I turn the volume up loud until the music makes my insides shake. After a few seconds, I reach over to my ancient hi-fi and pull the earphone cable out.

Now the whole house shakes.

On Saturday morning, Dad goes Poo crazy. That’s right,
Poo
. She is totally asking to be called Poo by having a name that rhymes with it. Usually Saturday breakfast is my favourite time in the week: Dad makes pancakes, I choose some groovy music, Mr Smokey watches us suspiciously, and Dad comes up with a plan for the weekend. Previous Pancake Plans include:

1.   Getting the ferry to France because we realised
we were out of Nutella and it’s cheaper over there.

2.   Taking Mr Smokey to the seaside so we could see if he liked paddling (negative).

3.   Seeing how far we could cycle before it got dark (53.5 miles – Croydon).

4.   Visiting six National Trust properties in one day in an attempt to take a photo of a ghost (no ghosts, but we ate a lot of cakes).

5.   Visiting six National Trust properties in one day dressed as ghosts (including Nanna and Gramps).

The Poo assault starts the moment the pancakes hit the pan.

‘You remember I’m going out tonight?’ says Dad.

‘Flip it, Dad.’

‘So Rue’s going to pop in at six, just to say hello and show her face –’

‘Seriously, Dad, they’re burning.’

‘– and then we’re going to that veggie Indian place I took you to in Brighton. I think she’ll love it.’

‘Have you seen the maple syrup?’ I ask, banging the cupboard door shut.

‘She’s a pescatarian.’

‘I put maple syrup on the shopping list,’ I say. ‘No way am I having honey.’

‘Pescatarian means she eats fish,’ says Dad, putting a new bottle of syrup on the table. ‘Then we might go to a comedy club, but I’ll be back late. Is that OK?’

‘Dad, you’ve got to see this.’ I thrust my phone in his face. ‘It’s a baby sneezing into his birthday cake!’

He takes my phone out of my hands and drops it on the table. ‘She’s coming round, Betty. I want you to say
hello
and
smile
and be
nice
.’

‘Fine,’ I say in a normal voice, but I have absolutely no intention of saying hello, smiling or being at all nice. To punish Dad, I text my friends all through breakfast.
He hates this, but lets me do it because he’s trying to keep me sweet for this evening.

This is what I send:

Just found out dads got a heinous hippy girlfriend am supposed to meet her tonight YUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here’s what I get back:

Kat:
Babe you wanna come here and have a sauna? Luv Kitkat

Bea:
Poor Betty
Jiving tonight can you come? Xxxxxb PS Just made a yum lemon drizzle cake!

Bill:
Big news … you ok? Come round to mine after windsurfing?

None of these suggestions are satisfactory. If I leave the house, Dad might sneak Poo in. Instead, I decide to do something which is definitely very sane and normal. I barricade myself in my bedroom by pushing a chest of drawers in front of the door. I make sure I’ve got supplies – Ribena, Cheddars and a banana – and I also take in a jug in case I need a wee. Then
I sit on my bed and wait.

My bedroom matches my mood. Being a decorator’s daughter, I was allowed to paint my room any colour I wanted and I went for a blue. My ceiling is Inky Pool 3, my walls are Skylight and my door is Blue Lagoon. And it’s messy. Mugs, abandoned cereal bowls, magazines and clothes are scattered across the floor. I’m sitting in a big blue mess.

Just as the sky becomes a fraction darker than Inky Pool 3, a car sweeps to a stop in front of our house. I duck away from the window, turn my music up loud and bury myself down in my bed. When the doorbell rings, I pull a pillow tight round my head so I don’t even know if Dad calls me.

After I’ve checked they’ve gone, I creep downstairs and make some cheese on toast. Then I sit amongst the junk in my bedroom and eat my crappy dinner. All I can think about is Dad and Poo nibbling on crispy pakoras, trying each other’s sweet stuffed naan, and
laughing about what a ‘terrible teen’ I am.

Even thinking about Toby doesn’t cheer me up. I’ve gazed at him a lot this week, and even managed to speak to him a couple of times, but nothing has managed to satisfy my monstrous Toby-cravings. In fact, the more I have to do with him, the worse they get.

Amongst the tangle of clothes pouring out of my wardrobe, I think I spot the flat cap the old man gave me. I’m sure that wearing it will cheer me up. I tug at it and a landslide of jumpers, scarves, jeans and bras spills into the room. Then I discover I’m holding a sock. I rummage through the clothes, and before I know it I’m organising things into piles. I even have a rubbish pile and a charity shop pile. One pile is particularly rectangular and purple, my Dead Mum letter pile. The deeper I get into my wardrobe, the more letters I find.

It’s only when I’ve put everything back in the wardrobe, hung my three dresses on hangers and thrown out the rubbish, that I realise I still haven’t found the flat
cap. Never mind, I haven’t thought about Dad and Poo for at least an hour.

The only thing left on the carpet are the letters.

I decide to arrange them in date order. I have fourteen. The first one I ever got has been read so many times it’s falling apart. The letter on the top of the pile is
the last one
, and the only one I haven’t opened. I turn it over and over. It seems heavier than the others and the edges are crisp and sharp. Why did she draw a heart on this one?

I put the rest of the letters in the Puma shoebox that’s been lying on my floor since my birthday and then I climb into bed with the unopened letter.

Taking a deep breath, I run my finger under the seal and peel open the envelope. I pull out three sheets of paper.

Dear Plumface,

Today you are fifteen, but as I write these words, you’re one and a half and a lunatic. Seriously, you eat
flowers, but only yellow ones. The only time you aren’t being crazy is when you are asleep, like right now.

I’ve just done some maths in my head – which is impressive as I only scraped a C in my maths GCSE – and I’ve discovered something frightening. Something as frightening as finding a drooling orc under my bed who is panting and wants to eat me. If, by some miracle, you are unfamiliar with Dad’s favourite book, ‘Lord of the Rings’, orcs are sentient beings bred for evil. So, I’ve discovered something terrifying, and if you bear in mind I have terminal cancer, you’ll realise I have a good grasp of frightening situations.

A year ago, Dr Harper told me that, ‘in a best- case scenario’ I might have ‘twelve months to live’. Then he did a wincey face that seemed to say, ‘Don’t go booking any holidays for next summer!’ Today, my twelve months are up so it looks like my plan to
write you a letter for every birthday of your life was unrealistic. I was going to do 120, in case you eat loads of raw veg and live to be ancient. So far, I’ve written twelve.

In the words of Dad when I told him I was pregnant with you: crapola.

Admittedly, when I decided to write 120 letters, I was taking a lot of drugs (prescribed) and I also decided to release an album and run the New York marathon.

I haven’t sung with The Swanettes for months and the last time I ran – from the kitchen to the living room when you bit Dingo’s tail – I ended up on a drip. Every day I sleep for a few more hours and this morning I couldn’t eat my toast.

Betty, I
love
toast.

I am just so tired. I don’t know how long I can keep going, even for you, my beautiful wild baby.

So, I have a plan. I’m going to hide some letters up in the attic in my Remington Super Smooth Ladies’ Razor box. If you want to read them, you know where to look. If you don’t want to read them, that’s OK. I wasn’t interested in anything my mum had to say when I was 15 (or 18, or 23, or 26). Either way, there’s a good razor up there.

These letters are going to be different to the birthday ones. To be honest, I was running out of things to write and sometimes it was difficult thinking of jolly things to say when my mood was really rather sombre. Imagine it: ‘Hey Plumface, You are three! Just had chemo and I’ve got rampant diarrhoea and my mouth is stuffed full of painful ulcers!’

The letters in the attic are between you and me. I’m not even going to tell Dad they’re there, but I’ve made him promise to leave some boxes of stuff up there for you. They will be stories. Stories about me when I was your age. Stories about me doing all
the things you are probably going to do. Stories even Dad hasn’t heard … including the one about my first ever kiss, History Boy, and my scalp spot. There. That’s called ‘a teaser’. You see, even though your dad is quite simply the best, he doesn’t know what it’s like to be fifteen and a girl.

For me, the most frightening thing in the world isn’t a drooling orc under the bed, or even dying. It’s knowing that I am leaving you, my baby, which is really the worst thing any mum can do.

If you would like to read my stories, Betty, they are my fifteenth birthday present to you.