The Mixed-Up Summer of Lily McLean

Today’s really weird events:

• My sister explodes.
  
• I get a free holiday.
  
• We don’t find a rat. (It’s much worse than that!)
  

“You can’t force me! I won’t go! You can’t dump me on a boggin’ desert island and leave me there for a week!”

My sister Jenna is working herself up to a complete nuclear meltdown.

“I just asked if you would like to go to Millport on a wee holiday with your gran, Jenna. Nobody’s dumping you anywhere,” snaps Mum.

This is bad. Mum is losing patience. Jenna’s about to blow. I could get hit by flying shrapnel.

The Isle of Cumbrae isn’t my idea of a desert island. It’s less than ten minutes on the ferry from the mainland for a start. And it has a town, Millport, and proper tarmac roads, cafés and an amusement arcade. So it isn’t exactly a shipwrecked-like-Robinson-Crusoe situation, is it?

“Mum, this is so unfair! Jessica is going to Spain for her holidays. Sarah’s parents are taking her camping in France,” wails Jenna. “And you expect me to be happy with freaking Millport! I hate you! I’m not going! There isn’t even wi-fi! I can’t get decent reception on my mobile! I’ll be completely cut off!”

You’d think it was a zillion mega-miles from civilisation the way Jenna carries on. Her wailing and bawling would embarrass a three year old. And she’s fifteen.

“I’m not going! I am absolutely not going and you can’t make me! No way am I spending a week in (insert your own choice of swear word here, because I’m not telling you hers) Millport!” she shrieks. My sister’s tantrums are spectacular. I am in total awe sometimes.

At other times, I wish she’d grow up. I’m four years younger and I feel loads more mature.

Jenna screams hideously, at higher decibels than the silly girls in her beloved vampire movies, and throws a cushion, which bounces off the table lamp and knocks it over. The lamp tumbles on to the carpet, denting the shade. Mum loses her temper. Her face is going very red. This is really not good.

“Jenna, will you calm down right now! Don’t you dare damage the furniture!” she yells.

“How can I calm down when you’re trying to ruin my life? This is so unfair!” howls Jenna.

I flick a glance at the school photo on the mantelpiece: Jenna aged twelve, her hair in two neat blonde plaits, a big toothy grin and smiley blue eyes. I look at her now: purple streaks in her dyed black hair, thick eyeliner and face contorted with fury. What happened to my big sister?

For a millisecond I consider joining in the battle on Mum’s side, but decide it would be futile, maybe even dangerous, to point out to Jenna that a week’s holiday in Millport is hardly likely to ruin her life. (Only a week of it, max.)

I start to edge slowly towards the door, afraid that if either of them notices me, I might be drawn unwillingly into the fight. I don’t share Jenna’s love of confrontation.

Perfectly timed with Jenna’s next eruption, I slip out and retreat
towards the safety of the cupboard.

You don’t need to feel sorry for me. I don’t
live
in the cupboard. I’m not Harry flippin’ Potter. But I like my own space, and space is hard to come by in our house. If there was such a thing as a national minimum space standard, our house would have a big ‘Not Fit for Purpose’ sticker stuck on the front door.

You couldn’t swing a cat, let alone the six of us, in this house (or so my mum shouted at the council guy who showed us around). You’d need to be a major psychopath to swing a cat, though, wouldn’t you? I read somewhere that psychopaths always start with cats.

I like cats, honestly. We have two, McTavish and Quipp, named after the firm of lawyers who fleeced my mum during her last divorce.

That sounds bad, as if Mum divorces a lot. She’s only done it twice. So there are two ex-husbands: my dad and my step-dad, although my dad is particularly ex because he’s dead. My step-dad is very much alive, and making my mum’s life harder than it needs to be, she says.

For now, though, our house is enough of a war zone without worrying about him. Jenna’s words are bouncing off the walls like grenades.

I creep stealthily, like a burglar, towards the cupboard and turn the door handle. If I move quickly, I should manage to get in completely unnoticed.

“I am not going to Millport! You might as well just kill me now! I hate you and I hate this stupid house!” she screams.

Mum’s replies are machine-gun staccato. And suddenly, adding to the din, there’s a deafeningly high-pitched wail like an air raid siren.

“Mum! Bronx has the remote and he won’t give it to me and I don’t want to watch Ben 10. I want to watch the Spiderman DVD.
Mum! It’s not fair! Mum!”

Oh great. Now Hudson has joined in. Let World War Three commence.

The fact that I have a hideout in the cupboard is not information I wish to share with my family. It’s a secret, but not the biggest secret I am keeping.

I switch on the cupboard light and creep inside, shutting the door quietly on the racket.

Now I have some peace, I reflect on our lack of living space. My mum has her bedroom upstairs, which my baby sister Summer sleeps in too. My older sister Jenna has a tiny room not much bigger than this cupboard, all to herself (because nobody in their right mind would want to share with her), and I sleep in the third bedroom with my two wee brothers, Bronx and Hudson. They are six and seven and sleep in bunk beds, which they fight over on a nightly basis. They fight over everything. They are fighting at this very moment.

“Bronx, if you don’t give me that remote, I’m going to get a bazooka and blow you into a squillion bits!”

“Mum! Hudson’s being horrible to me!” squeals Bronx. “I need to watch Ben 10 and he won’t let me!”

“Shut up, you little morons!” shouts Jenna, at exactly the same time as Mum yells at Bronx and Hudson to be quiet. At least they agree about something.

I hate sharing a room, particularly with small, noisy, smelly boys, and I am finding it very difficult to get used to our new sleeping arrangements. We had much more space in the house we lived in before. Sorry, I am starting to sound as spoiled and whiney as Jenna. Whoops.

I’m not the only one who hates the house though. Mum does the lottery every week, desperate to win enough to buy a bigger house. My gran says it’s a ridiculous waste of money, which is a bit of a cheek, as she plays bingo whenever she gets the chance.

“If you loved me, you wouldn’t ask me to do this!” wails Jenna, her voice muffled a bit by the closed cupboard door. “Millport is only fun for ancient people like Gran and wee kids like Lily. This is so unfair!”

Wee kids like me, huh. But who’s having the toddler tantrum, Jenna?

Just a couple of years ago, Jenna thought it was the best thing ever to leave Mum, Bronx, Hudson and Summer behind and head off on the ferry with me and Gran for a week in a rented caravan in Millport.

We’d scramble about in the rock pools carrying plastic buckets and fishing nets, hunting for minnows and tiny crabs. We would cycle round the island on hired bikes and buy ice lollies from the Fintry Bay café. We’d dare each other to dip our toes in the freezing sea and if the weather was even remotely warm, we would risk an icy swim. If it was wet, and being a Scottish island it often poured for days on end, we would play cards or Monopoly in the caravan or venture out to the Ritz café for a hot chocolate. I loved those holidays and Jenna did too. But not any more she doesn’t. Now Millport is the end of the world, according to my big, thinks-she’s-so-grown-up sister.

“Mum, Hudson spilled juice all over the carpet!” screeches Bronx.

“I have not spilled it, you pushed me and you knocked it out of my hand!”

Mum abandons the battle with Jenna for a moment and rushes through to the kitchen to grab a wad of kitchen roll.

“For goodness’ sake boys, is the carpet not disgusting enough
already without this mess!” She’s not wrong there.

“It wasn’t me!” wails Hudson, who never accepts blame for anything, even when he’s caught red-handed.

I think he only knows three phrases: “Bronx made me do it,” “It wasn’t me!” and “He started it.” I know the wee ones have weird names. I blame my step-dad. He’s a nutter. He called the boys after places in New York, even though he’s never been there. In fact he prides himself on never having left Ayrshire in his whole life. I bet you’re thinking that my mum should have put her foot down about the names – she was there at the birth after all. But you don’t know my step-dad. People don’t cross him.

Well, we did cross him in the end, but that’s another story. I might tell it later, but I kind of prefer not to talk about it as a rule. It wasn’t a happy time.

Maybe that’s what’s wrong with my sister. Perhaps she’s got post-traumatic stress disorder or something. I read about that somewhere. Mum says I’ve not to be daft and it’s hormones that are making Jenna a nightmare. (She says I’ll be as bad in a year or so, but I refuse to believe that I will ever be that unreasonable.)

Not that Jenna’s like that when she’s with her silly friends though. She’s a different person then, all hair tossing and eyelash fluttering and giggling and eyeing up boys. No, she keeps her true nightmarish personality for her own family. We’re the ones who suffer.

Their voices are louder, less muffled now. The fight has clearly moved from the living room into the hall.

“I never get my own way about anything,” weeps Jenna.

“Well let me see,” says Mum. “What about the time you wanted to go to a festival and I said no, and you went anyway?”

“Yeah, but you were just being mean saying no. Jess was allowed to go. Her mum’s not a cow. And nothing bad happened did it?”

“You’re hardly going to tell me otherwise, Jenna,” snaps Mum.

“It was just one time!” roars Jenna. “Get over it!”

“And what about the time you pierced your nose?” I mutter, glad Jenna can’t hear me. I’d never dare to say these things to her face.

I hear a creak and know that Mum has just sat down on the stairs, a sure sign that she is admitting defeat.

“Why can’t you do something just to please your old gran?” Mum asks, in a hopeless attempt to make Jenna feel guilty. “Lily isn’t making this fuss!”

“That’s because Lily’s a sanctimonious little creep! She’s a smarmy little goody two-shoes!”

Oh, that’s charming. Thanks for that, sis. Sometimes I wish my cupboard had soundproofing. I stick my earphones in my ears and crank my radio up.

“That’s a very unkind thing to say about your sister, Jenna!” snaps Mum, kindly leaping to my defence.

“You don’t know what she’s like when you’re out at work. She’s always making trouble for me with Gran!”

This is so unfair that my jaw drops. It’s not my fault that Gran finds Jenna a major handful at the moment. It’s not my fault she prefers me. I am tempted to fling myself out of the cupboard and rugby tackle Jenna to the floor. But then they would know I was in here and I would much prefer to keep my hiding place a secret.

Mum works most days as a cleaner. She does another early evening shift selling ice cream in a café on the front, near the pier, but that’s seasonal. Gran babysits for the wee ones when Mum’s at work, which is good because Mum doesn’t need to pay her, but Mum says that actually she pays
dearly
for it. I can see what she means. Gran knows fine well that Mum needs her, and she likes the power it gives her. Gran is actually my dad’s mum. Mum’s own parents moved down South to sunny Brighton when they retired, and who
can blame them? It rains here in Largs all the bloomin’ time.

A door slams. Then another. Above the tinny music on my radio, I can hear Bronx and Hudson wailing.

“Mummmmm, Hudson hit me with the remote. It’s not fair!”

“He nipped me first, Mum! And Mum, Summer stinks! I think she’s got a dirty nappy!”

I turn the knob on my radio up and the DJ’s inane rabbiting is finally all I can hear. It’s a major improvement.

Where was I? Oh yeah, our space issue – there’s also a tiny galley kitchen, which can only hold two people at a time, at a push. Mum does the ‘cooking’ (if heating up ready meals in the microwave counts as cooking), but Jenna is quite good at it when she is in a giving mood, which is increasingly rare. She makes us all spaghetti carbonara or bolognaise and leaves the kitchen looking like the aftermath of a major natural disaster.

Finally, there’s the living room, which is in dire need of a 60-minute makeover. It has a swirly lime-green carpet, floral-patterned peach curtains and lumpy textured wallpaper. It’s in here that Bronx and Hudson watch cartoons and play Xbox and fight with each other, while baby Summer howls in her playpen and Mum and I try and eat our dinner and hear the television above the racket. Jenna takes her plate into her room and rarely brings the dirty ones back out. Mum says we’ll get rats.

I daren’t tell her it’s much worse than that. We’ve got a disembodied voice in the house.