But I saw Dad’s face. He was nodding and trying to smile. I couldn’t say yes. I just shook my head sadly, but promised I’d take great care of the ticket.
Dad opened the van door. Steve lifted me in. Mum gave me one last kiss. Then we were driving away from my mum, my home, my whole family . . .
I waved and waved and waved long after we’d turned the corner and were out of sight. Then I hunched down in my seat, my hands over my mouth to stop any sound coming out.
‘It’s OK to cry, darling. Cry as much as you want,’ said Dad. ‘I know it must be so awful for you. You’re going to miss your mum so. I’ll miss her, in spite of everything. But she’ll be coming back in six months, and the time will simply whizz by. If I can only win the lottery we’ll both jet out to Sydney for a month’s holiday, just like that. Yeah, if I could win the lottery all our problems would be solved.’ Dad sighed heavily. ‘I feel so bad, little Floss. I should have insisted you go with your mum.’
‘I want to be with you, Dad,’ I murmured, though I wasn’t sure it was true now.
We went back to the café. Dad opened it up and got the tea and coffee brewing. There wasn’t much point. We had no customers at all, not even Billy the Chip or Old Ron or Miss Davis.
‘I might as well shut it up again. I doubt anyone will be in until lunch time, if then,’ said Dad. ‘Come on, kiddo, let’s go out for a bit. What would you like to do?’
That was the trouble. I didn’t really want to do anything. We mooched around the town for a bit, peering in some of the shops. There wasn’t much point getting excited about anything because I knew Dad didn’t have any money. He tried to start up this game of what we’d buy if we won the lottery. I didn’t feel like joining in much.
‘I suppose your mum’s Steve could buy you any of this stuff with a flash of his credit card,’ Dad said.
‘I don’t want any of it,’ I said.
‘That’s my girl. The simple things in life are best, eh?’ Dad said eagerly. ‘Come on, let’s go to the park and feed the ducks. You like that, don’t you?’
I wondered if I was getting too old for feeding the ducks, but we picked up a bag of stale sliced bread back at the café and trundled down to the park, even though it had started raining.
‘It’s only a spot of drizzle,’ said Dad.
By the time we reached the duckpond we were both wet through and shivering because we hadn’t bothered with our proper coats.
‘Still, nice weather for the ducks,’ said Dad.
They were swimming round in circles, quacking away. Mother ducks and ducklings.
I threw them some bread, large chunks for the mothers and dainty bite-sized morsels for the ducklings, but they seemed full to bursting already. There were large chunks of bread bobbing all around them but they couldn’t be bothered to open their beaks. They’d already had so many visitors. Mothers and toddlers.
‘Never mind, let’s take the bread back home and make chip butties, eh?’ said Dad. ‘Two for you and two for me. Yum yum in the tum!’
I wasn’t listening properly. I was looking up at an aeroplane flying high in the sky, as small as a silver bird.
‘Your mum won’t be on her plane yet,’ Dad said softly. ‘They aren’t going to the airport till this evening. It’s a night flight.’
I had mad thoughts about packing my case, running like crazy to Mum’s and begging her to take me after all.
Maybe that was why I was so fidgety when I got home. I heaved around on the sofa, I lolled about the floor, I watched ten minutes of one video, five of another, I read two pages of my book, I got out my felt pens and started a drawing and then crumpled up the paper. I ended up rolling the pens all over the floor, flicking them moodily from one side of the room to the other.
One went right under the sofa. I had to scrabble for it with my fingers. I found little balls of fluff, some old crisps, a tissue and a screwed-up letter. I opened it up and saw the word debt and the word court and the word bailiffs before Dad snatched it away.
‘Hey, hey, that’s my letter, Floss,’ he said. He crumpled it up again, screwing it tighter and tighter in his hand until it was like a hard little bullet.
‘What is it, Dad?’
‘Nothing,’ said Dad.
‘But I thought it said . . .?’
‘It was just a silly letter sent to try to scare me. It’s not going to, OK?’ said Dad. ‘Now, you just forget all about it, there’s a good girl. Come on, let’s have our chip butties!’
Dad made two each, and one for luck. I could only eat half of one, and that was a great big effort. It turned out Dad didn’t have much appetite either. We looked at the chip butties left on the plate. It was as if Dad had made enough for both my families. I wasn’t sure I could stand to be in this very small family of two now. I wasn’t sure how we were going to manage.
8
I WAS SWIMMING in an enormous duckpond, gigantic birds with beaks as big as bayonets swooping towards me. I opened my mouth to scream for help and started choking in the murky green water. I coughed and coughed and went under. I got tangled in long slimy ropes of weed. I couldn’t struggle free. The vast ducks swam above my head, their great webbed feet batting me. I was trapped down there, my lungs bursting. No one knew, no one cared, no one came to rescue me . . .
I woke up gasping, soaked through. I thought for one terrible moment I might have wet myself – but it was only a night sweat. I staggered up out of my damp bed, mumbling, ‘Mum, Mum’ – and then I remembered.
I stopped, shivering on the dark landing. I couldn’t run to Mum for a cuddle. She was six miles up in the air, halfway across the world.
I started crying like a baby, huddled down on the carpet.
‘Floss?’
Dad came stumbling out of his bedroom in his pyjamas and very nearly tripped over me. ‘What are you doing here, pet? Don’t cry. Come on, I’ll take you back to bed. It’s all right, Dad’s here. You’ve just had a bad dream.’
It seemed as if I was stuck in the bad dream. Dad tucked me in gently but he didn’t know how to plump up my pillow properly and smooth my sheet. He didn’t find me a big tissue for my runny nose. He didn’t comb my hair with his fingers. He did kiss me softly on the cheek, but his face was scratchy with stubble and he didn’t smell sweet and powdery like Mum.
I tried to cuddle down under the duvet but it smelled wrong too, of old house and chip fat. I wanted to go to Mum’s house, but it was all changed. Our stuff was all packed up. Soon there would be strangers renting it. I imagined another girl my age in my white bedroom with the cherry-red carpet and the cherries on the curtains. I saw her looking out of my window at my garden and my special swing and I couldn’t bear it.
Three months ago Steve had fixed up the baby swing for Tiger, all colours and bobbles and flashing lights. I’d done the big sister bit and patiently pushed him backwards and forwards, but I couldn’t help remarking that I wished I’d had a swing when I was little.
I didn’t think Mum and Steve had taken much notice, but the next weekend when I was at Dad’s Steve rigged up this amazing proper traditional wooden swing, big enough for an adult – certainly big enough for me.
‘My swing!’ I sobbed now.
‘What? Please don’t cry so, Floss, I can’t make out what you’re saying,’ said Dad, sounding really worried. ‘Listen, I know how badly you’re missing your mum. I’ve got your airline ticket safe in the kitchen drawer. We can book you onto a flight and you can join up with them. It will be like a big adventure flying all that way.’
‘No, no. I want my swing,’ I said.
Dad missed a beat before he understood. ‘Well, that’s easy-peasy,’ he said. ‘We’ll nip round to your mum’s place tomorrow and take your swing. Don’t upset yourself, darling. Your old dad will sort things for you.’
We went round to the house early Sunday morning, before Dad opened up the café. Dad parked the van outside the house. It looked so absolutely normal I couldn’t believe Mum and Steve and
Tiger weren’t lurking behind Mum’s ruched blinds.
We didn’t have a key, but we didn’t need one to wiggle open the bolt of the side gate and walk round into the back garden. Tiger’s swing wasn’t there. It had been dismantled and packed up. The only trace of it was the four square marks in the grass where the legs had been.
My swing still stood there sturdily. Too sturdily. Dad tried and tried to take it down. He even broke into the garden shed and bashed at the swing’s supports with Steve’s tools. The swing didn’t budge but Steve’s stainless-steel spade got horribly dented.
‘Oh bum,’ said Dad. ‘Now I suppose I’ll have to pay for a new blooming spade on top of everything else.’
‘Never mind, Dad.’
‘But I do mind. Why am I so useless? Look, I’m going to collapse that swing if it’s the last thing I do.’
Dad battered and bashed a lot more. He tugged and tussled with the swing. He even tried digging around it with the bent spade, but the supports went way way down – almost to Australia.
Dad stood still, wiping his brow, his face damp and scarlet.
‘It doesn’t matter, Dad, honestly,’ I said.
‘It matters to me,’ said Dad grimly.
I peered up at the swing, wishing I hadn’t said a word. Dad stared too, his brow furrowed, as if he was trying to fell the swing by sheer willpower. Then he suddenly clapped his hands and ran and got Steve’s scary long pruning shears.
‘Dad! What are you going to do?’
‘It’s OK, Floss. I’ve just worked it out. We’ll liberate your swing. We just need the rope and the seat. We don’t need the stupid supports. It’s going to be a portable swing now, you’ll see.’
Dad reached up and snipped at the top of each rope. They came thumping down with the wooden seat attached. ‘There!’ he said, as if he’d perfected the most astonishing trick.
I blinked doubtfully at the severed swing and said nothing.
When we got back home Dad took the swing out in the back yard. He’s never actually got round to turning it into a proper garden. There’s not really room, anyway. There are big wheelie bins for taking the rubbish from the café, and all the cardboard boxes of old stuff that Dad’s going to sort one day lurking under tarpaulin, and bits and pieces of very old bikes, and an electric scooter that never worked properly.
There’s a tiny flowerbed of pansies because Dad says they’ve got smiley faces, and an old sandpit I used to play Beaches in when I was very little, and an ancient gnarled apple tree that’s too old to produce any fruit, although it was the reason Dad bought the café long ago. He was going to make our own apple pies and apple cake and apple chutney and apple sauce. He painted a big new sign to go above the door – THE APPLE CAFÉ – and he painted the walls and windowpanes bright apple-green.
He changed the name to Charlie’s Café long ago, but the apple-green paint’s still there, though it’s faded to a yellowy-lime and it’s peeling everywhere. Mum always nagged Dad to chop the apple tree down because it wasn’t doing anything useful, just causing shadows in the yard, but Dad reacted as if Mum had asked him to chop me down.
‘We’ll hang your swing on the apple tree!’ Dad said now.
He spent all afternoon putting it up. He tested the branches first, swinging on them himself, yelling like Tarzan to make me laugh. I still didn’t feel a bit like laughing but I giggled politely.
Then Dad went up and down a ladder, fixing one end of the swing rope here and the other end there. He had to take an hour’s break hunting down an ancient encyclopaedia in a box of books in the attic to find out how to do the safest knots.
When at last he had the swing hanging we found it was too low, so that my bottom nearly bumped the ground. Dad had to start all over again, shortening the ropes. But eventually, late afternoon, the swing was ready.
‘There you are, Princess! Your throne awaits,’ Dad said, ultra proudly.
I put on my birthday princess gown over my jeans to please him and sat on my swing. Dad beamed at me and then went pottering off again to find his old camera to commemorate the moment. He didn’t come back for a long time.
I had to stay swinging. I didn’t feel like swinging somehow. I wouldn’t have told Dad for the world, but you couldn’t really swing properly now it was attached to the apple tree. The swing juddered about too abruptly and hung slightly lopsided, so you started to feel queasy very quickly. It wasn’t very pretty out in the back yard staring at the tarpaulins and bits of bikes, and the wheelie bins were very smelly.
I sat there and sat there and sat there, and when Dad came back eventually clutching his Polaroid I had a short burst of swinging and smiled at the camera.
‘It’s a great swing, isn’t it!’ said Dad proudly, as if he had made it all himself. ‘Hey, why don’t you phone Rhiannon and see if she wants to come round and play on it too?’
I hesitated. I’d asked Rhiannon round to play heaps of times, but always at Mum’s. I’d wanted to keep my time at the weekend specially for Dad. But now all my time was with Dad.
‘Go on, phone her,’ said Dad. ‘Ask her round to tea. Does she like chip butties?’
I wasn’t sure. We always ate salads and chicken and fruit at Rhiannon’s. Her school packed lunches were also ultra-healthy options: wholemeal rolls and carrot sticks and apples and weeny boxes of raisins. But maybe chip butties would be a wonderful wicked treat?
I knew I was kidding myself. I suspected it would be a big big big mistake to invite her round. But I felt so weird and lonely stuck here with Dad with nothing to do. If Rhiannon was here we could muck about and do silly stuff and maybe I’d start to feel normal again.
I phoned her up. I got her mum first.
‘Oh Flora, I’m so glad you called! How are you?’ she asked in hushed tones. ‘I was so shocked when Rhiannon told me about your mother.’
She was acting as if Mum had died.
‘I’m fine,’ I lied. ‘Please can Rhiannon come round to tea?’
‘What, today? Well, her grandma and grandpa are here. Tell me, Flora, do you see your grandma a lot?’
‘My grandma?’ I said, surprised. ‘Well, she sends me birthday presents, but she doesn’t always remember how old I am. Dad says she gets muddled.’
‘What about your mum’s mum?’
‘She died when I was a baby. There’s Steve’s mum, but I don’t think she likes me much.’
‘You poor little mite. Well, listen to me, sweetheart. Any time you need to discuss anything girly, you come and have a word with me, all right? I know your dad will do his best, but it’s not the same, not the same at all. A growing girl needs her mother. I just can’t understand how your mother . . .’ She let her voice tail away.
I clutched the phone so tightly it was a wonder the plastic didn’t buckle. I couldn’t stand her going on like that, as if Mum had deliberately abandoned me. I decided I didn’t want Rhiannon to come round after all, but her mum was busy calling to her and asking for details of the address.
I heard Rhiannon saying stuff in the background. It didn’t sound as if she wanted to come round.
‘You’ve got to go! It’s the least you can do. Poor little Flora will be feeling so lonely,’ Rhiannon’s mother hissed.
‘I’m fine, really,’ I said.
‘Yes dear, I’m sure you are,’ she said, in a don’t-think-you-can-fool-me tone of voice.
I couldn’t fool Rhiannon either when she came round. She was wearing a lacy blue top and white jeans. She had one little plait tied with blue and white thread in her long glossy black hair. She looked beautiful. She seemed so out of place in our café.
‘Oh Floss, you poor thing, your eyes look so sore, all red and puffy,’ she said.
‘It’s an allergy,’ I said quickly.
Rhiannon sighed at me. She turned to Dad. ‘My mum says you must phone her if you’ve got any problems.’
Dad blinked. ‘Problems?’
‘You know. Over Flossie,’ said Rhiannon. She was acting lik
e she was my social worker or something. Even Dad looked a bit irritated.
‘We haven’t got any problems, Floss and me, have we, doll-baby? But it’s very kind of your mum to offer all the same, so thank her very much. Now, would you two girls like to go and play on Floss’s swing?’
He led the way through the café, out into the kitchen, and opened the door to the back yard dramatically, as if Disneyland beckoned.
Rhiannon stepped warily into the back yard, walking as if she was wading through mud. She peered at the wheelie bins, the tarpaulins, the bits of bike. It was definitely a mistake inviting her round. I suddenly saw Rhiannon telling her mother all about our dismal back yard. Worse, I saw her telling Margot and Judy and all the girls at school.
I looked at her anxiously.
‘Oh, there’s your swing. How . . . lovely,’ she said.
‘I know it’s not lovely,’ I whispered. ‘But Dad’s fixed it all up for me specially.’
‘Sure. OK. I understand,’ said Rhiannon. She raised her voice so that Dad could hear in the kitchen. ‘Oh Floss, your swing looks great hanging on the apple tree,’ she said, enunciating very clearly, as if Dad was deaf or daft.
She hopped on it, had one token swing, then hopped off again. ‘So, shall we go up to your bedroom and play?’ she said.
‘Maybe we should swing a bit more,’ I said.
‘But it’s, like, boring,’ said Rhiannon. ‘Come on, Floss, I’ve been nice to your dad. Now let’s go and do stuff.’
‘OK.’
We went back indoors. Dad had started peeling potatoes in the kitchen. He looked baffled to see us back so quickly.
‘What’s up, girls?’ he said.
‘Nothing’s up, Dad. I – I just want to show Rhiannon my bedroom,’ I said.
I didn’t didn’t didn’t want to show her my bedroom.
She looked round it, sucking in her breath. ‘Is this your bedroom?’ she said. She wrinkled her brow. ‘But I don’t get it. Your bedroom’s lovely, all red and white and clean and pretty.’
‘That’s my bedroom at my mum’s, you know it is,’ I said.
I sat on my old saggy bed and stroked the limp duvet, as if I was comforting it.