She smiled anxiously at me, flicking her ash. ‘Yes, you’re a good kid, Em. Quit nagging her, Mum.’
‘OK, I’ll start in on you, Julie. Why in God’s name are you smoking again when you gave it up years ago? Are you mad? Well yes, obviously you are, because you’re all dressed up like a dog’s dinner to see this pig husband of yours, when I wouldn’t mind betting he won’t turn up. Even if he does, he’s not taking you out, he’s made that plain.’
‘Do you ever listen to yourself, Mum? Do you get a kick out of saying hurtful things? I can’t stop you saying stuff to me, but I’m certainly not going to have you being mean to the kids, especially not now their whole world’s been turned upside down. Take no notice of your gran, kids, you wear what you like. I think you all look lovely.’
I nodded at Gran triumphantly but I couldn’t really enjoy the victory. I knew Maxie really did look silly in his cowboy outfit. Dad’s boots were so big they came right up to his bottom. Vita looked drop-dead gorgeous but like she was part of a dancing competition, not dressed to go out for the day. And though I kept hoping my Miss Kitty top looked perfectly OK, it was starting to look more and more like my nightie.
Still, Mum styled my hair for me and gave me my velvet ribbon. She tied another in Vita’s wispy locks too, and she gelled Maxie’s black mop so that it stuck up and looked very cute.
Then we waited. And waited and waited and waited. Mum had endless cups of coffee and cigarettes. I started secretly chomping chocolate biscuits because I felt so empty. I tried to keep Vita and Maxie amused, making Dancer draw her Santa experiences with Maxie’s felt pens, but I didn’t have a clue what a sleigh looked like and I was rubbish at drawing reindeer too.
I found it hard to concentrate because I was straining to hear Dad’s footsteps walking up our path. I kept thinking I heard him and went running, but each time there was no one on the doorstep.
‘I told you, he’s not coming,’ said Gran.
I wanted to punch her. Mum looked like she did too.
‘Give him a chance, Mum. He’s not late. He didn’t say a specific time, he just said he’d pop over to collect the kids in the morning.’
‘It’s quarter to twelve, Julie.’
‘It’s still technically morning.’
‘And you’re technically a gullible mug, getting yourself all worked up over that loser. Look at the state of you – and the kids.’
‘Stop getting at our mum and being so mean about our dad!’ I said fiercely. ‘You’re not supposed to talk like that in front of children.’
‘Children aren’t supposed to talk back to their grandmas like that, you cheeky little madam,’ said Gran. ‘Em? Em, I’m talking to you!’
I wasn’t listening. I heard footsteps. I ran. This time I was right!
‘Dad!’
I threw myself at him, my arms round his neck. He hadn’t shaved so his chin was scratchy and his hair was tousled round his shoulders like he’d just got out of bed but I didn’t care.
‘Daddy, oh, my daddy!’ Vita cried, copying the girl in The Railway Children video.
Dad scooped her up in his arms.
‘D-a-d!’ Maxie bellowed, butting Dad so hard with his gelled head that we nearly all toppled over.
‘Hey, kids, calm down!’ said Dad.
He stopped, swallowing, rubbing the space between his eyebrows as he looked the length of the hall to where Mum was standing. ‘Hi, Julie,’ he said softly, as if they’d only just met.
Mum didn’t say anything. She had her arms tightly folded, her hands gripping her elbows.
‘It’s OK for me to take the kids out?’ said Dad.
‘Can’t Mum come too?’ I begged.
Dad hesitated. ‘Well . . . this is a day out just for us,’ he said.
Mum turned on her heel, walked into the kitchen and shut the door.
‘Oh God. Julie? Look, OK, you come too, if you really want to. We have to talk, I know that. I just didn’t want any hassle, it’s not fair on the kids,’ said Dad.
‘How dare you!’ said Gran.
‘Oh God, I’m not up to this,’ said Dad. ‘Come on, kids, let’s get cracking.’ He took hold of Vita’s and Maxie’s hands and started pulling them out the door.
‘Dad! Wait! They haven’t got their coats. And Maxie can’t walk in your boots,’ I said, scrabbling around on the pegs for our three coats and kicking my way through old wellies and slippers for Maxie’s shoes.
‘You’re like a little mum, Em. More grown up than the lot of us,’ said Dad.
My heart thumped with pride under my Miss Kitty nightie. We followed Dad out of the house, half in and half out of our coats, Maxie scuffling in his unlaced shoes. We didn’t say goodbye to Gran. We didn’t even say goodbye to Mum.
4
DAD TOOK US on the train up to London. He bought a takeaway cup of black coffee at the station, and a bag of doughnuts for us. He shuddered when I offered him our bag of sugary doughnuts.
‘Go on, Dad, they’re delicious,’ I said, biting a doughnut until the scarlet jam spurted out.
‘Look, I’ve got lipstick,’ said Vita, smearing jam round her mouth.
‘Me too, me too,’ said Maxie.
‘I’m not very hungry, Em. You guys eat them,’ said Dad.
‘Don’t you feel well, Dad?’ I asked sympathetically.
‘I’m fine,’ said Dad, shivering. He pulled my woolly scarf tight round his neck. ‘Ooh, what a great cosy scarf this is!’
Dad had a little sleep on the train. Vita kept wanting to wake him up and Maxie started clamouring, ‘Are we in London yet?’ two minutes after we got on the train, but I managed to distract them. We looked out the window at people’s back gardens, playing Hunt the Child, on the lookout for swings and sandpits and bikes and balls.
Vita and Maxie kept squabbling over who saw things first. I kept glancing at Dad. He was very pale, huddled over, frowning in his sleep. I wondered if he was dreaming about us. I wanted to whisper in his ear, hypnotizing him when he was unconscious. You are going to come back home, Dad. You love Mum and Vita and Maxie and me. You can’t live without us.
I shook his arm gently when we got to Waterloo. Dad opened his eyes and looked startled, as if he’d forgotten all about us. Then he smiled. He went to the gents at the station and came back looking a bit better, his face washed, his breath minty.
‘Right, my darlings, we’re off to the parade,’ he said.
He told us this was a special New Year’s Day parade. We had to walk there because Maxie was terrified of the escalators in the tube station. Dad kept making up stories about the parade, until he had Vita and Maxie believing there would be bareback riders in sparkly bikinis on snow-white horses and painted elephants with jewelled tusks and winged monkeys flying right over people’s heads and snatching their hats off.
I knew he was making it all up but I almost believed it too, so the real parade was a disappointment. We couldn’t see properly for a start because there were such crowds. Dad let Vita and Maxie take turns sitting on his shoulder. I was much too big. If I stood on tiptoe I could see the heads of lots and lots of chanting girls. Every now and then they threw sticks in the air or waved feathers, but that was all. There were big floats with famous people dressed up, waving and calling, but mostly we couldn’t work out who they were.
Maxie whined whenever he had to let Vita have a turn on Dad’s shoulders, so I tried picking him up.
‘Lift me higher, Em, higher!’ Maxie yelled. ‘I can’t see a sausage.’
Then, very spookily, a giant walking sausage came bobbing along as if Maxie had rubbed a magic lamp and conjured it up. It was part of a troupe of people advertising a new breakfast show on television. Men dressed up as eggs, bacon, cups of tea and packets of cornflakes were also parading along, having to take mincing little steps because of their big polystyrene costumes. The Sausage didn’t really look like an obvious sausage when it was separated from its breakfast companions. Lots of people were falling about laughing, th
inking it was something very rude.
I hitched Maxie too high. He saw the Sausage. He screamed.
‘A monster! A monster! A big pink monster’s coming to get me!’
The crowd collapsed, not taking Maxie’s terror seriously.
‘Hey, Maxie, it’s just a big sausage,’ Dad said. ‘Don’t be frightened, sweetheart. The sausage should be frightened of you. You could take a big bite and eat it all up.’
Maxie was yelling too loudly to listen to Dad. He probably wouldn’t have believed him anyway.
‘We’ve got to get out of here, Dad,’ I said.
‘How?’ said Dad, because we were all hemmed in, barely able to breathe.
Maxie showed us how. He paused in mid scream, shuddered – and then was horribly sick all over me. The crowd parted as if by magic and Dad led us through. I was weeping now as well as Maxie. Vita started crying too, so as not to be left out.
Dad stared at us helplessly. He tried dabbing at Maxie and me with a tissue but it was hopeless. The sick was even in my hair.
‘You’ll have to go into a ladies and wash it in the basin. You’ll have to help her, Vita,’ said Dad.
‘Yuck, I’m not touching all their sick. Anyway, I don’t know how to wash hair, Mum does mine,’ said Vita. ‘You two are disgusting. I’m never sick.’
‘I wasn’t sick,’ I sobbed.
‘You were at Christmas,’ said Vita.
‘That’s enough, Vita,’ said Dad. He was starting to look very queasy himself.
‘The pink monster, the pink monster, it’s coming to get me!’ Maxie yelled.
‘For God’s sake, Maxie, we’re miles away from the stupid sausage. It wasn’t a monster, it was just a poor out-of-work actor just like Daddy in a manky costume. Maxie, I’ve dressed up in daft costumes. I was once a chicken in a shopping centre when a new cheapo chicken restaurant opened up. All these little kids kept barging into me going cluck cluck cluck.’
‘He’s not listening, Dad,’ I said, wriggling. ‘Ugh, it’s all soggy round my neck. I can’t stand this.’
‘Here, we’ll take your coat off,’ said Dad, helping me out of it at arm’s length. ‘Oh Lord, it’s all on your nightie thingy too. Perhaps we could buy you a new top or jacket or something and stick these stinky ones in a carrier bag? Where does Mum buy your clothes, Em?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
It was hard to find clothes that would fit me in ordinary places like Tammy or The Gap, but I didn’t want Dad to know that. Gran had once sent off for a Big Kiddo catalogue and I nearly died, because they were all clothes specially for fat kids. I knew I was a fat kid but I didn’t want the labels on my clothes reminding me all the time.
‘We’ll try to clean you up a bit and then take you to one of the big posh shops. They’ll have a special girls’ department, Em, all sorts,’ said Dad.
I guessed he meant all sizes. I nodded at him, grateful for his tact, though I could feel myself going bright pink.
‘It’s not fair!’ Vita wailed inevitably. ‘I want new clothes if Em’s getting them. It’s not my fault that Maxie wasn’t sick on me! Please can I have new clothes, Dad? I need a new sparkly top and some of those shiny trousers with lots of pockets and there’s these pink and purple trainers with glitter on the edgy bit, they’re sooo cool.’
‘OK, OK, little Vita Fashionista,’ said Dad. ‘I’ll do you a deal. Get Maxie to shut up and I’ll buy you all a new outfit.’
I stared at Dad anxiously. I knew he didn’t have any money. I’d heard Gran going on about it bitterly enough times. But I couldn’t stay wearing the sick-stained stuff. I badly wanted Dad to get us all new clothes. I didn’t protest.
It was a waste of time anyway. All the shops we saw were shut.
‘Oh God, what are we going to do now?’ said Dad. ‘Look at you, Em, you’re shivering. You’ll catch your death of cold without your coat. Maybe we’d better take you straight home.’
‘No!’ Vita wailed. ‘No, no, no! We’re having a whole day out with you, Dad. Just send Em home!’
‘Yeah, just send Em,’ said Maxie.
‘That’s so mean, Maxie! It’s all your fault, not mine!’ I protested.
‘Ssh, ssh, OK! We won’t send anybody home,’ said Dad. ‘I know what we’ll do. We’ll go to my home.’
We all stared at him. What did he mean, his home? It sounded much too permanent.
It wasn’t his home. It was Sarah’s.
We went on the Underground.
‘You’ll have to put up with it, Maxie, we’ve no other way of getting there,’ said Dad. ‘Come on, be a man.’
Maxie couldn’t even manage being a little boy. He whimpered like a baby. Dad picked him up and carried him. Maxie moaned when the tube thundered into the station. He burrowed right inside Dad’s jacket, using his scarf as a cuddle blanket.
I sat, stiff and sodden and smelly, while everyone kept their distance and stared. Vita was the only member of our family looking normal. She sat demurely, smiling up at strangers, while they put their heads on one side and purred at her.
I wished I was Vita. I always always always wished I was Vita.
When we were out of the Underground at last she put her hand confidently into Dad’s.
‘Is your house a nice house, Dad?’
‘Well, it isn’t exactly my house, Princess Vita. Now, there’s a thing. If I had my magic house it would be like a fairy castle and it would have four turrets and you could have one turret all to yourself. You’d go up all these windy stairs, carpeted in deep pink, with pale-pink walls patterned with bluebirds and butterflies, and then right at the top there would be this wooden door carved with hearts and flowers and inside would be your own special room.’
‘Can it be pink too?’
‘The pinkest pink ever. You’d have a pink four-poster bed with rose-pink velvet curtains and a patchwork quilt in every shade of pink with little red hearts stitched into the centre of each patch.’
‘Where will Dancer sleep?’
‘Oh, Dancer’s got her own sleigh-shaped wooden bed. We’ll hang a little bell mobile above it so that as it spins it tinkles softly, so she can dream she’s back with Santa.’
‘Um, you said a rude word,’ Maxie said, still clutching Dad about the neck, his skinny legs wound round his waist. ‘They say tinkle at nursery when you need to do a wee. Dad, I need to do a wee now.’
‘Well, hold it for a bit, son.’
‘I can’t,’ said Maxie, wriggling.
‘You’d better! We’ve had enough contact with your bodily fluids to last a lifetime,’ said Dad. ‘Haven’t we, Princess Emerald? OK, shall we do your turret now?’
‘No, me, me!’ said Maxie. ‘I want my own turret, for me and all my bears.’
‘Indeed, you can have a veritable bear lair and we’ll make sure there are pots of honey and spoons, all sizes, only you get a great big giant vat of honey and a ladle and you can go lick lick lick until you’re sticky all over. Then you can go to your very own indoor paddling pool and splash around until you’re squeaky clean and then . . . OK, what do you start doing then, Prince Maxie?’
‘I start in again on the honey!’ said Maxie, smacking his lips.
‘You got it!’ said Dad. He turned round awkwardly; still lumbered with Maxie. ‘Oh, poor Em, you look so miserable. Don’t worry, darling, we’ll get you all cleaned up in just a tick, I promise. Now, let’s start on your turret.’
I so wanted Dad to invent a beautiful turret for me, but I needed to ask something first.
‘What about your turret, Dad?’
Dad missed a beat. He knew what I was getting at. Who was going to climb up to his turret and live with him? Was it going to be Mum . . . or this Sarah?
I had a picture of her in my mind. I’d watched old movies with Mum and Gran and seen all the soaps. I knew what bad women were like who stole men away from their families. They were blonde with scarlet lipstick and they wore tight clothes that showed off their figures. They laugh
ed a lot and licked their red lips and crossed and uncrossed their legs. I knew I would hate her.
Dad stopped at a little parade of shops and went up to a battered door beside an Indian grocery.
‘That’s a shop, Dad,’ said Vita.
‘I live up above it. It’s handy when we run out of bread or milk,’ said Dad.
‘I didn’t know you could live above a shop,’ said Maxie. He craned his neck, looking up, as if he expected Dad’s bed to be rocking on the roof and his chair topping a chimney stack.
‘It’s inside, little pal. Just an ordinary flat,’ said Dad, getting the door open and leading us inside.
The stairs were very dark and smelled of strange food.
‘I don’t like it,’ Maxie wailed.
‘I’m afraid you’re just going to have to lump it,’ Dad said gently.
‘This is your flat, Dad?’ said Vita, stopping on the stairs.
‘Well, technically speaking, it’s Sarah’s,’ said Dad.
Vita said nothing, but she reached out and slid her hand into mine. I squeezed it hard and she squeezed back. Then Dad was knocking on the door, although he had the key in his hand.
‘Sarah, sweetheart! I’ve brought the kids back,’ he called.
He unlocked the door and we stepped warily inside. There wasn’t a hall. We were straight away in a living room, although there was a bed in one corner with someone huddled under the purple velvet quilt.
‘Sarah,’ Dad said.
She stirred but didn’t come out from under the quilt.
‘It’s not bed time,’ said Maxie.
‘Perhaps she’s ill,’ said Vita.
‘She’s fine, kids. She’s just sleeping,’ said Dad. ‘Sarah, wake up. I’ve brought the kids to meet you.’ He reached under the quilt and gave her a little shake.
‘Frankie?’ she mumbled. Then she sat up straight. She wasn’t wearing a nightie or pyjamas, just a little stripy vest. She was almost as small and skinny as Vita, with short black hair sticking straight up and dark eye make-up rings round her eyes. She had a bluebird tattooed on her bare shoulder and matching blue varnish on her tiny bitten nails.