The Suitcase Kid

  I take my cue and go back into the room. They all three give me big false smiles. I don’t smile back. I still don’t say anything. They think they’ve sussed me out but they know nothing. And they’re wrong about my new brothers and sisters, as a matter of fact. I don’t think much of Zen but Crystal’s OK, she can be quite sweet sometimes. I detest and despise little sugar-mouse Katie but Paula’s funny, though she gets narked with me when I use her drying tights as a slide for Radish. But the best one of all is Graham. We are now mates.

  He kept out of the way as usual for a few days and then he suddenly waylaid me on the stairs.

  ‘I’ve got something in my room for you,’ he muttered.

  It was a boat. He’d made me a real little Radish-sized boat out of pieces of wood carefully nailed together and then painted. There’s a real sail made from an old hankie and a little red ribbon flag on top.

  ‘This one floats,’ said Graham. ‘I’ve tried it out in the bath. And it’ll take one passenger easily.’

  ‘Oh Graham!’ I gave him a big hug. He went very pink and his glasses misted over. ‘It’s a lovely boat. It must have taken you ages. Why did you do it for me?’

  ‘Because I like the way you keep bashing Katie,’ said Graham, grinning. ‘I can’t stick her either. She always used to get on to me and tease me and muck up my stuff. Now she leaves me alone because she’s got you to plague.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s not fair. And I can’t ever get away from her.’ I considered, my head on one side. ‘It’s awful sharing a room with her. Tell you what, Graham, I could come in here with you sometimes, couldn’t I?’

  ‘Oh, this is too small for two people what with my computer and everything,’ Graham stammered, blinking anxiously.

  ‘It’s OK. I’ve got my own secret place where I go actually.’

  ‘The bathroom?’

  ‘No, much much better than the bathroom. I go there after school. That’s where I’ll sail my boat. Thanks ever so much, Graham. Here, we’re mates now, aren’t we, you and me?’

  ‘Yes OK, if you like,’ said Graham.

  I do like. And so does Radish. She liked the video vessel very much but she adores her real sailing boat. She’d sail the lake all day long if I let her.

  KATIE KEEPS ME awake half the night. She won’t have the light out for a start. Well, she’ll switch the main light off but she’s got this little china lamp in the shape of a toadstool with all these dinky rabbits and squirrels perched on little china chairs inside (Radish squeezed through the little door and tried to make friends but they didn’t want to know). The lamp glows all night long, and then Katie has her own torch and she nearly always has her television on too. She turns the sound down low but the picture goes on flickering.

  The only way I can find a bit of proper dark is right under the bedclothes and then I nearly suffocate.

  ‘Switch that stupid set off!’

  ‘It’s my telly. It’s my bedroom. I can do what I want.’

  ‘I’ll tell my mum.’

  ‘I’ll tell my dad.’

  ‘I want to go to sleep.’

  ‘Well I want to stay awake.’

  ‘Look, I’m turning it off, so tough titty,’ I said, jumping out of bed and switching off the set.

  ‘And I’m turning it on, so tough titties with knobs on,’ said Katie, bouncing out of bed and switching it straight back on.

  She likes it when we have these long arguments late at night. She likes to stay wide awake. Sometimes I have a bad dream and I wake up at two or three in the morning and if I look over at Katie’s bed her eyes are nearly always open, big and blue and unblinking.

  It’s not that she can’t go to sleep. She fights terribly hard not to. She almost never lies down comfortably. She sits up with all her pillows propped behind her. She eats biscuits and drinks a lot of water so she has to keep nipping along to the bathroom. She even wears an old angora jumper under her pyjamas. It’s so tight and tickly it does a splendid job keeping her awake.

  ‘You aren’t half a baby, Katie. Ten years old and scared of the dark.’

  ‘Oh, I’m scared am I?’ said Katie, and she touched the volume control on the television. She was watching one of those awful Nightmare films and just the sound of the creepy music made me put my head back under the covers.

  It was my mate Graham who helped me suss things out. He gets a bit fussed and fidgety if I barge into his bedroom but we sometimes have these little chats on the stairs now. He used to share a bedroom with Katie when they were both little so he knows what it’s like.

  ‘She didn’t have a television then so she used to make me play all these games with her and then we’d have to take turns telling ghost stories and whenever I fell asleep she’d pinch me and once she hit me so hard with her torch I had a black eye in the morning and I got into trouble with Dad for it because he said I was a right little wimp if my kid sister could get the better of me in a scrap,’ Graham said, sighing.

  ‘Doesn’t she get tired like other people?’

  ‘Yes, of course she does. Haven’t you seen the dark circles under her eyes? And she sometimes falls asleep at school.’

  ‘So why won’t she go to sleep at night like anyone else?’

  ‘Because she’s scared.’

  ‘But she makes herself scared, watching all those horrid videos.’

  ‘No, that’s to keep her awake. She’s scared of going to sleep.’

  ‘Mm?’ I stared at him. ‘What’s there to be scared of in going to sleep?’

  Graham fidgeted quite a bit. He screwed up his face several times and took his glasses off and polished them.

  ‘She’s just scared, that’s all.’

  ‘But what of?’

  Graham’s eyes looked very strange and bare and pink without his glasses. They blinked a lot.

  ‘When our mum died they told us she’d gone to sleep,’ he said, swallowing. ‘Paula and I knew she’d been ill and then we knew she was dead. But Katie was just this little squirt and she didn’t know what dead meant. So they said it was just like going to sleep. They meant to be kind but she got very scared of going to sleep after that.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Andy?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t tease her about it, eh? I mean, I know she’s a right pain, she’s my own sister and yet I can’t stick her, but all the same, don’t go on about it.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  And I didn’t. That night I didn’t even moan when she kept bumbling about the bedroom hour after hour. I settled down and went to sleep myself. I woke up about midnight. I looked over. Katie was still awake, sitting bolt upright staring at the television screen.

  ‘Katie.’ I reached out and touched her. She was icy cold. ‘Hey. Why don’t you switch that off and come in my bed for a cuddle, eh?’

  She paused. There was a little silence. Then she gave a sniff.

  ‘What on earth makes you think I want to come in your bed, Andy Pandy? You’re so big and fat I’d get squashed flat in five minutes.’

  I still didn’t tease her. But I didn’t half want to.

  I DON’T LIKE Old People. They really get on my nerves.

  Miss Maynard is old. She’s my headmistress. I had to go and see her the other day. She started off being quite matey and she even offered me one of her special toffees but then she started in on me.

  ‘It’s just not good enough, Andrea. Your schoolwork’s gone to pieces this year. You don’t hand your homework in on time, or you don’t even bother to do it. You don’t have your P.E. kit for your lessons. You don’t bring a proper sick note when you’ve been off school. What’s going on, mmm?’

  My teeth got jammed in this huge wodge of toffee so I could only manage to urgle-urgle in response. Anyway, how could I explain properly? I’m so busy flitting from my mum’s place to Dad’s and back again that I leave half my stuff behind. I hand Mum my P.E. stuff to go in the wash and then I forget to take it with me to Dad’s. It’s no use expecting Carr
ie to do it. She washes but she doesn’t ever iron anything and I get teased when I’m at Dad’s because my school blouses are all crumpled and once they went shocking pink because Carrie shoved my stuff in with Zen’s scarlet sweater. Carrie didn’t even say she was sorry. She said she thought the pink shirt looked lovely with my bottlegreen uniform, much better than boring old white.

  I don’t always bring a sick note because I forget to ask Mum or Dad . . . and maybe just occasionally I’m not exactly sick, I’m just staying off school because I’ve got fed up with it. No-one knows. I pretend to Mum or Dad that I’m going to school and I get on all the right buses but I don’t always get off in the right place. I slope about the town instead. Sometimes I go to the garden in Larkspur Lane and Radish and I spend hours and hours there. She sails backwards and forwards across the lake and then she treks through the jungle or climbs the north face of Mount Mulberry . . .

  ‘Andrea!’ Miss Maynard put her thin wrinkly face close to mine. ‘You’ve gone off into a daydream! For goodness sake, girl, you must stop this silly habit. I know things have been difficult for you at home.’

  ‘I haven’t got a home any more. Mum and Dad—’

  ‘Yes, I know. And I do sympathize. But I can’t help thinking you’re making a rather unnecessary fuss. You know as well as I do that lots and lots of parents divorce and move house. It’s very upsetting, but it’s not the end of the world. We’ve been making allowances for you long enough, Andrea. Now it’s time you started pulling yourself together.’

  She gave my shoulders a little shake as if she was really pulling me together. I felt that if she went on pulling I’d go twang like elastic.

  Mr Roberts is old too. Really old, with white hair and whiskers, but he still serves in his sweet shop though he can’t bend any more because he says his knees have gone. You can’t see whether they really have gone or not because of his corduroy trousers. Bill the baboon doles out pocket money on Saturdays. I get it too when I’m around, and then we all go down the road to the local shops. Paula’s always fussing about her figure so she doesn’t go to Mr Roberts’ sweet shop, she buys tapes and magazines from the newsagent’s on the corner. Graham and Katie and I go to the sweet shop.

  ‘Hello, my darlings,’ Mr Roberts says as soon as he sees us. He’s always twinkling and stroking his beard. You expect him to go Ho-ho-ho like Father Christmas.

  Graham is very shy with most people but he gets quite chatty with Mr Roberts. But it’s Katie who is the favourite. Naturally. She twirls about the shop like a sugar-plum fairy and Mr Roberts chuckles and claps and calls her his Little Precious and his Cute Little Sweetheart. He always lets her have a free go in his Lucky Bag, five pence a dip.

  He offers me a free go too but I just stick my nose in the air and say no thanks. I have to buy my sweets and chocolate from him because there’s nowhere else to get it, but I’m not going to make friends.

  Mr Roberts and I are deadly enemies. The very first time I went into his shop with Graham and Katie he looked me up and down and then he whispered to Katie, ‘Who’s the Jolly Green Giant then?’

  It was a loud whisper and I heard. Katie sniggered and snorted and even Graham smiled. He said later that Mr Roberts just called me that because I was wearing my green school raincoat. Rubbish. It was a studied insult because of my size.

  The grannies and grandads are all old too. I can’t stick any of them. I have my own Nan and Grandad but they live in Canada with my auntie so they’re no use. They’re Dad’s mum and dad. Mum’s mum and dad are dead so they’re no use either. It’s not fair, because Paula and Graham and Katie have got two full sets of grandparents and they’re always coming to see them, and Zen and Crystal have a granny and grandpa too. They aren’t too bad, because they took me to the zoo with them, and we all got icecream and an animal colouring book. Paula and Graham and Katie’s lot are awful. The baboon’s parents are squat and hairy like him, even the granny. I’d hate to kiss her because she has a moustache. But the worst ones of all are the other gran and grandad. They used to help look after Paula and Graham and Katie after their mum died. They still come and visit a lot. They don’t think much of my mum. They keep going on about the past, and how devoted Bill was to his first wife, and Mum gets very pink in the face. They practically ignore her. And me. You will never believe this but when they come on a visit they always bring presents for Paula and Graham and Katie. Sometimes they’re really big presents, new clothes or books or records. Sometimes it’s just boxes of chocolates. But whatever it is, I don’t get anything at all. Not a sausage.

  Mum got pinker than ever, pinker than my spoiled school shirts, and eventually I heard her ask the gran and grandad if they could include me in the present-giving so that I wouldn’t feel left out.

  ‘But Paula and Graham and Katie are our grandchildren,’ they said. ‘Andrea’s nothing to do with us.’

  Well, good. Catch me wanting anything to do with them.

  DAD’S GOT A camera. We’re back to the old routine now. One week at Mum’s. One week at Dad’s. You know. As easy as A B C. Carrie was a bit huffy at first because she’d had a social worker round to check up on things.

  ‘And she said everywhere is spotless,’ said Carrie. ‘You tell your mother that. We might be a bit untidy, but the flat is perfectly clean and she said that Zen and Crystal are delightful intelligent children who have obviously had a lot of loving care and stimulation.’

  The delightful and intelligent twins were having a fierce pillowfight as she spoke, lovingly and carefully stimulating the pillows until they both burst simultaneously and scattered a snow of feathers.

  Carrie just laughed. Even Dad didn’t get cross. He got his camera and took lots of photos.

  ‘You’ll wear that camera out before the baby’s even born,’ said Carrie, still laughing. She turned to me. ‘I bought your dad this second-hand camera so he can take lots of photos when the baby’s being born. Won’t that be lovely?’

  I stared at her. I know how babies are born of course. I didn’t think they were going to be the sort of photos you could put in a silver frame and prop on top of the television set.

  Dad saw me looking doubtful.

  ‘I want to take lots of photos of my number one daughter too,’ he said. ‘Come on, Andy, give us a smile.’

  I gave him a smile. And then another. And then I put my hand on my hip and gave him a little wave. Then I pointed a toe. Then I pirouetted round the room, Dad going snap snap snap.

  ‘That’s the girl, Andy. Hey, that’s great. You’ve really got the idea, haven’t you?’

  It was wonderful. I felt like a film star. Crystal came and joined in and she smiled and waved and pointed too, but she didn’t do it as naturally as me. And Zen was hopeless, galumphing about and pulling hideous faces at the camera.

  ‘No, Andy’s the star model,’ said Carrie. ‘Here, let’s dress her up like a real model, eh? Come and help me choose some clothes, Crystal. And we’ll make her up and give her a posh hair-do. Would you like that, Andy?’

  I liked it enormously. Carrie dressed me up in one of her long droopy fancy frocks and Crystal draped a shawl round my shoulders and stuck a ring on every finger. Carrie stroked dark shadow on my eyelids and purple lipstick round my mouth and then brushed my hair up into a crazy kind of bun. Crystal squirted me all over with scent even though it wouldn’t show in a photograph.

  Then we had a long, long, posing session, Dad snapping away until he eventually ran out of film. He developed the photographs himself, blundering round the bathroom in the pitch dark. I couldn’t wait to see the finished photographs. I felt as if I’d been transformed into this new grown-up magical pretty person. I looked for her in the photographs – but I just saw myself, looking a bit funny in a long frock with stuff smeared all over my face.

  ‘I don’t like them. Tear them up, Dad. Ugh, I look awful,’ I said hastily.

  ‘No, they’re very good. The lighting’s a bit haywire and you’re out of focus here and there, but o
n the whole they’re great,’ said Dad.

  ‘You look great, Andy,’ said Carrie. ‘You know what? You’ll have to be a fashion model when you grow up. You’re nice and tall already. Fashion models have to be very tall.’

  I didn’t know that. I thought about the idea. Maybe the photographs weren’t too bad after all.

  Dad gave me some copies to show to Mum when it was her turn to have me.

  ‘Oh for Heaven’s sake!’ said Mum. ‘Look at the way they’ve got you up! You look awful, Andy. All that dreadful make-up. And you’re wearing that Carrie’s clothes. Why on earth couldn’t your father take some proper photos of you in your own clothes, instead of all dolled up like a dog’s dinner.’

  ‘I was being a fashion model, Mum. Carrie said I could be a model when I grow up, she did, Mum, honestly.’

  ‘She would,’ said Mum, shuddering.

  ‘Fashion models aren’t fat,’ said Katie, poking me in the tummy.

  ‘I can go on a diet when I grow up,’ I said, but I was starting to wish I hadn’t taken the photos with me.

  But then Paula came and had a look.

  ‘Don’t you look grown-up, Andy? No-one would ever think you were only ten. You look almost as old as me.’

  That pleased me quite a lot.

  And then Graham had a quick shuffle through the photos too.

  ‘Don’t, Graham. I look such a twit,’ I said, going hot.

  ‘Yeah, you said it, Andy Pandy,’ said Katie.

  ‘I think you look pretty,’ said Graham.

  That pleased me even more.

  ‘WHAT’S MISS MAYNARD on about in this letter, Andy? She’s moaning about all your dental appointments, saying it would be better if you could go after school. But you haven’t had any dental appointments, have you? You went for a check-up in the summer and you didn’t even need any fillings. So what’s going on, Andy? Andy??’

  ‘How did you do in your English test, Andy? And how’s the old arithmetic getting on? Why won’t you let me see your schoolbooks nowadays? You are still top of the class, aren’t you? Andy, what’s the matter?’