Longest Whale Song

  I could just ignore him altogether and slope off to my room. That would be mega-effective. He couldn’t even tell me off for being cheeky because I wouldn’t have said a word.

  But I am actually quite hungry now, so I shuffle into the kitchen and sit down at the table. Jack has put two and a half sausages on my favourite plate, the orange one with the little gold elephants. There’s a small mound of mash with a knob of butter on the top and four little sprigs of bright green broccoli. It all looks very nice – even the broccoli.

  I don’t say anything, but I pick up my knife and fork and start eating. Jack starts eating too. I decide I will maybe just eat the half-sausage, but once I’ve started I feel ravenous and in ten minutes it’s all gone, apart from one tiny sprig of broccoli, because I feel I have to leave something.

  Jack looks at me. ‘Was that good?’ he asks in a neutral sort of voice.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. I wait. ‘Thank you.’

  Jack nods at me. ‘You’re very welcome, Ella.’

  I stand up and start stacking the dishwasher.

  ‘Oh, thanks, love,’ he says.

  ‘J-a-c-k?’

  ‘Yep?’

  ‘Can I phone my dad now?’

  ‘Yes, I was going to suggest it. We need to fix up exactly when he’s coming.’

  He gives me the number. My fingers go a bit trembly as I’m dialling. Mum never gave me the number. We didn’t ever phone Dad. I’m not really sure Mum would want me to. She always said we didn’t need him. But we need him now, badly.

  So I dial the number and wait. The phone rings, once, twice, three times, four, five. There’s a click after the sixth ring and the answerphone message starts up.

  ‘Hi there. Mike and Tina can’t get to the phone right now. Can you leave a message and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.’

  Mike and Tina? Who’s she? My thoughts spin, trying to find a suitable explanation. Perhaps Dad has a dog called Tina. I make her up in my head: a cream Labrador, very sweet and gentle, with big brown eyes. Dad takes her for walks every morning and evening and feeds her special titbits, and she crouches at his feet all night. No, perhaps Tina is a cat, and she sits on Dad’s lap when he watches television and purrs softly to herself. But it’s no use. No matter how hard I try to imagine a Tina dog or a Tina cat, a new type of Tina keeps sidling into my mind. A girlfriend. She’s curling up with Dad at night, she’s sitting on his lap, she’s whispering softly . . .

  I put down the telephone.

  Jack puts his hand on my shoulder. ‘Didn’t you want to leave a message?’ he says gently.

  I shrug his hand away. I don’t want him feeling sorry for me. ‘There’s no point leaving a message. I’ll be seeing him tomorrow,’ I say.

  I can’t get to sleep for ages and ages. I hear Jack getting up at some point and making himself a cup of tea. I wonder about calling out to him to make me a drink too. I feel ever so thirsty – but I won’t call out. I imagine what it must be like for Mum. She could be feeling terribly thirsty, terribly hungry, but she can’t call out. She’s lying there all alone in that strange hospital bed and she can’t call for a cuddle . . .

  I start crying again. After a minute or two Jack comes knocking at my bedroom door.

  ‘Ella? Are you OK?’

  What a stupid question! Of course I’m not OK. I burrow underneath my duvet, and sob there, where he can’t hear me. He opens my door.

  ‘I’m here if – if you need anything,’ he whispers.

  I don’t answer and he goes away again. I fall asleep in a sodden heap under the covers. When I next surface it’s morning.

  Jack stares at me when I go down to the kitchen. I’m in my best black and white dress again, though it’s a bit creased and crumpled now.

  ‘Why aren’t you in your uniform?’

  ‘Because my dad’s coming!’

  ‘Yes, I know, but you’ve still got to go to school, silly.’

  ‘No, I can’t! Dad said he’s taking the day off work. He’ll be coming this morning!’

  ‘Look, he knows you have to go to school. I can see him, we can come and meet you at school together.’

  ‘No! No! If I’m not here he might go away again!’

  ‘Hey, hey, calm down. Of course he wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘Yes, he might. He said last time he’d come back to see me really soon, maybe the next Saturday, and then he didn’t come back – he didn’t come back ever.’

  ‘Well, what kind of a father is that?’ Jack snaps.

  I flinch as if he’s slapped me.

  Jack puts his hand over his mouth. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t really mean that.’

  ‘Yes, you did!’

  ‘Look, tell you what. We’ll phone your dad again, and see what time he reckons he’ll be here.’

  ‘All right, let me talk to him,’ I say.

  We only get the answerphone again. Mike and Tina, Mike and Tina, Mike and Tina . . .

  ‘There, see! His answerphone’s on. Which means he’s left already. He could be here any minute!’

  ‘He lives in Sussex – it’ll take him hours to drive here.’

  ‘I bet he got up first thing. I bet he’s been driving for hours already.’

  ‘Ella—’

  ‘I’m not going to school, Jack. You can’t make me.’

  ‘But we’ve just got you settled back into going to school.’

  ‘I’m not going, I’m not going, I’m not going!’

  ‘All right! You’re not going. I think we’ve established that. Only I have to go out and do one thousand and one things. I’ve still got childminders to find and nurseries to see, I’ve got to meet this social worker, I need to buy all the food and stuff I forgot yesterday . . . How am I going to do all that?’

  ‘You can do that when my dad’s here.’

  Jack sighs. ‘You’re so like your mum, Ella. She always has to have the last word too.’

  Then he puts his cup of tea down, looking stricken. I sit silently at the table. Mum can’t have the last word now. She can’t say any words at all.

  Jack pours me a bowl of cornflakes. We eat morosely. Then the phone goes and I rush to answer it – but it’s just the Garton Road head teacher wanting to speak to Jack. He’s on the phone for ages. I sit stirring my cornflakes aimlessly, watching them go soggy and sink to the bottom.

  ‘Well, I need to go to my school soon, even if you don’t,’ Jack says, coming back into the kitchen. He yawns and stretches. ‘I’m going to set my class a whole load of stuff to make it easier for the supply teacher. If you insist on staying home, you can do the work too.’

  ‘That’s not fair! You teach Year Six!’

  ‘Well, you’re bright, aren’t you?’ says Jack.

  ‘I’ll do my own schoolwork,’ I say.

  Jack clears the kitchen table and we sit at either end doing our work, Jack typing away on his laptop, me drawing. I draw lots more whales. I draw a blue whale that takes up the whole paper because it’s the biggest whale ever. Its tongue weighs as much as an elephant! It eats four tons of food a day. I imagine four tons of little shrimpy things getting sucked into that great mouth every day. Blue whales live in little family groups, so I get more pieces of paper and draw a great big mother blue whale and then a baby blue whale that only takes up half the page.

  I’m almost certain Dad will be here by the time I finish my family of blue whales. I run to the door several times, just checking that the bell’s working. ‘You did tell Dad we live in this house now, didn’t you, Jack?’

  ‘Yes, of course. I gave him the postcode so his satnav can take him straight to us,’ says Jack, writing rapidly.

  ‘Mm,’ I say.

  I flip to a new page about pilot whales. They look funny, with big bulging foreheads and wide mouths, showing their teeth. They act like they’ve got brilliant satellite navigation themselves. They can home in on big schools of fish many miles away.

  It’s an odd way to think of talking about fish. I imagine a fish s
chool. I draw a little fish Sally dividing twenty shells by four. I draw Dory edging up to her, admiring Sally’s shiny scales and pointy tail. I draw Martha doing a back flip, her fins raised, showing off like mad. I draw Joseph with his nose in a big book strewn with seaweed.

  ‘What’s a book with a fishy title?’ I ask Jack.

  ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea,’ says Jack.

  There’s no way I can print all that on the cover of one little book, so I make do with Under the Sea. Then I draw a Miss Anderson big haddock with a smiley mouth and curly hair and a coral necklace.

  ‘What subject is that schoolwork?’ Jack asks, still typing away.

  ‘Science.’

  ‘Well, that drawing doesn’t look very scientifically accurate,’ Jack says. ‘What’s it supposed to be?’

  ‘A school of fish.’

  ‘What? Oh, I get it.’

  ‘And this pilot whale is homing in on them fast,’ I say.

  I give Sally and Joseph and Miss Anderson extra fins so they can flap them quickly and escape. It looks like Dory might be in trouble. And as for Martha, flashing her fins and drawing attention to herself – she’s going to disappear in one gollop.

  I sit up and stretch. I can’t believe that only twenty minutes have gone by. Come on, Dad. Please please please come now.

  I sigh and yawn and rock my chair.

  ‘Don’t tip it like that – you’ll go right over and bump your head,’ says Jack.

  ‘That’s such a teacher thing to say.’

  ‘Well, tough, I am a teacher. Now shh, Ella, I’m trying to work out this wretched lesson plan. Draw another whale.’

  ‘I’m a little bit tired of whales,’ I say.

  ‘They’ll have gone on to something else in science today.’

  ‘Well, you could work on doing your own special whale project at home,’ says Jack.

  I think about it. I don’t usually like any of Jack’s suggestions simply because he’s Jack – but I suddenly see a big glossy folder with MY WHALE PROJECT carefully printed in fancy lettering, with little whales spouting up and down the page. Joseph once did a special planets project and showed it to Miss Anderson, and she was positively ecstatic.

  ‘Do you have a special folder, Jack? Preferably a blue one?’ I ask.

  ‘What do you think I am, your local branch of Paperchase?’ says Jack. ‘But I expect I can buy one for you. If you’re very good and don’t disturb me now.’

  I draw a grey whale with lots of scars on his poor head, scraping his way along the ocean floor, eating lots of little creatures. Then I copy out all the things the book says about grey whales and pilot whales and killer whales.

  ‘I think projects are meant to be in your own words,’ says Jack.

  ‘I’m rearranging them, sort of,’ I say.

  ‘I’d soon sort you out if you were in my class.’

  ‘I’m ever so glad I’m not,’ I retort.

  And then the doorbell goes, and I jump up so quickly I tear my grey whale almost in two and I don’t care, I just have to get to the door and see . . . my dad. It is him! He’s so smart too, wearing a proper grey suit, a beautiful blue shirt, and a pink and blue silk tie. Oh, he’s got dressed up properly for me. It’s as if a famous rock star is standing on the doorstep. He looks so strangely familiar and yet so different too, somehow taller, older, not really the way I’ve been picturing him at all.

  ‘Dad!’ I say.

  ‘Hello, Ella!’

  We stand there, stuck, freeze-framed with the strangeness of it all. Then he bends a little and opens his arms. I stumble forward awkwardly, feeling the blood thumping in my head, but when I feel his hands holding me, I suddenly cling to him and start crying.

  We stand there on the doorstep, rocking to and fro. After a long while Jack comes to the door and invites Dad inside.

  Jack puts on the kettle and Dad looks at my whale drawings.

  ‘You did these all by yourself? My, but you’re brilliant! Imagine you knowing all this stuff about whales!’ says Dad. ‘You’re such a clever girl.’ He’s acting as if I’m about four.

  ‘I just copied them,’ I mumble.

  ‘You’re a real little artist! Isn’t she brilliant, Jack?’ says Dad.

  I take him into my bedroom and pull out all my old drawing books and flip through them quickly. He admires each one, and stares around my room.

  ‘This is a very pretty room, Ella. Purple and silver, eh? Very sophisticated.’

  ‘They’re my favourite colours.’

  ‘I thought blue was your favourite colour.’

  ‘That was ages ago,’ I say.

  ‘Where’s your big teddy?’ Dad asks, looking around.

  Oh help. I can’t tell Dad we gave him to a jumble sale.

  ‘It was so sad. He got lost,’ I say quickly.

  ‘Lost? How could a great big bear that size get lost? He was bigger than you!’

  ‘Yes, I know, but – but it was when we moved here. It was horrible. We couldn’t find him anywhere,’ I fib. ‘He was my all-time favourite cuddly toy, Dad, honest.’

  ‘Well, don’t worry, pet, we’ll get you another,’ says Dad. ‘So, do you like it here?’ He nods at the door. ‘He’s OK, is he, this Jack?’ he whispers.

  ‘I don’t really like him. I don’t know what Mum sees in him. Oh, Dad, Mum’s so poorly. She’s just lying there in hospital and she can’t move, she can’t speak, she can’t even open her eyes. Dad, she will get better, won’t she?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course she’ll get better,’ he says.

  ‘You promise, you absolutely promise?’

  ‘Of course. Don’t worry so, Ella. They’ll be looking after her in hospital, doing their very best for her.’

  ‘Can we go and see her now?’ I beg.

  Dad looks startled. ‘Well, I’m not sure that’s appropriate. They won’t want you to see your mummy if she’s so poorly.’

  ‘Yes, they will! I go to see her every day. Oh please, Dad, please, please!’

  I’m desperate for him to come. Then the three of us will be together and Dad will make Mum better – he said he would, he promised.

  ‘Well, Jack can take you later—’

  ‘I don’t want Jack! I want you, Dad!’

  ‘Oh. Right.’ His eyes get misty. ‘I’ll take you then.’

  ‘Now? Please say now.’

  ‘Yes, right you are. Now. This very minute.’

  I’m worried Jack will come too, but when we tell him, he says he’s got all these people to see.

  ‘What do you want to do about lunch?’ Jack says, looking at his watch.

  ‘Oh, I’ll take Ella out for lunch,’ Dad says.

  ‘Right. Thanks, Mike. I’ll see you back here then. I’ll give you a spare key so you can let yourselves in if I’m not back,’ says Jack.

  ‘That’s good of you, Jack,’ says Dad.

  They’re being very smiley-smiley and calling each other Mike and Jack, but I can tell they don’t like each other.

  Jack’s hesitating. ‘Obviously we’ve got all sorts of things to discuss. All sorts of stuff to consider. But – but you won’t do anything rash, will you? I mean, I know you’re Ella’s dad, but I’m her stepdad and – well, we both want what’s best for her, don’t we? I mean, you wouldn’t just take off with her without discussing everything first?’

  Jack drones on and on in his teacher’s voice. Dad’s not listening either. He squeezes my hand.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I take your point, Jack. Right, come on then, Ella.’

  ‘Get your jacket, love,’ says Jack, following us to the door. ‘And you’re walking funny in those patent shoes. Why don’t you change into your school shoes? I’m sure they’re much comfier.’

  I don’t want to wear my old jacket – one of the buttons has come off and the sleeves have gone all bobbly. It looks awful with my black and white dress. I have to take it because it’s cold outside, but I’m not wearing my scuffed brown school shoes – they’d look awful. Th
e black patent shoes are a little bit small for me now, but they look lovely. Dad’s so smart. I want him to think I’m smart too.

  Jack’s picking up my shoes from where I kicked them off in the hall yesterday, but I take no notice.

  ‘Bye, Jack,’ I say, and rush out of the front door.

  Chapter 7

  I look around for Dad’s car. Parked right behind Jack’s ancient Ford Focus there’s a shiny red Jag. My mouth opens. I look at Dad. He clicks his keys and it gives a little clunk as it unlocks.

  ‘Oh, Dad, how cool!’ I say.

  Dad bows and opens the door. ‘Care for a little spin, my lady?’

  ‘You bet!’

  ‘Right you are. Where do you want to go? We could go out into the countryside, if you like. I know, there’s a special farm where you can stroke all the baby animals – would you like that?’

  ‘I’d absolutely love it!’

  ‘And we can have a spot of lunch in this gastropub—’

  ‘Mum and Jack had their wedding reception in one of those pubs,’ I say.

  ‘Oh, very stylish,’ says Dad, grinning. He starts the car.

  ‘Do you know the way?’

  ‘To this farm? Yes, I checked before I left home.’

  ‘No, to the hospital! We’re going there first, aren’t we?’

  ‘Well, yes. If you want. Though if your mum’s unconscious—’

  ‘Oh, Dad, she might be a little bit better today. And when we both talk to her, she’ll be so surprised she might just open her eyes! Do you know the way?’

  ‘I think so,’ says Dad, sighing.

  He drives through the town, going the long way round, past my school. I peer out hopefully, willing Sally and Dory, and especially Martha, to glance out of our classroom window to see me driving past in such style. We even pass the end of our old road.

  ‘Oh look, Lanford Road. I wish we still lived there,’ I say.

  I wait, hoping that Dad will say he wishes he still lived there too. He doesn’t say a word. When we get to the hospital car park, he starts fussing.

  ‘I’m sure visiting hours are in the afternoon.’