‘But – it was three!’
‘Yes, but I’m not very good at counting today,’ he said, smiling.
‘You’re so lovely. Thank you very very much,’ I said. ‘Say thank you, all of you lot.’
‘Thank you,’ they said in chorus.
Pixie said, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you!’
Then we carried our ice creams very carefully back to the grass and sat down away from everybody else. We licked and sucked and nibbled very happily indeed. When I was finished I lay down on my back. I relished the cool milky taste in my mouth as I stared up at the blue sky and felt the sun on my face. Maybe I’d get a better suntan than Mum. I felt a little surge of pride. I was coping splendidly. I’d kept all three kids safe and fed and happy, and here we were in this glorious park. Everyone was being kind to us and we had the rest of today and all of Friday to hide out in our tree-house and go exploring.
When I was grown up I’d maybe live further up the hill in the posh houses and look out at this park from my back bedroom window and remember the time I hid here with my brother and sisters . . . and I felt so fond of them now. I even wondered about inviting them to live with me. I imagined Baxter grown up, strong and bold and capable, able to fix the boiler and frighten away any burglars. Bliss would be sweet and gentle, and she’d like to keep house for us, maybe do all the cooking. Pixie would be beautiful, out every night with a different boyfriend, but she’d always come home to us, because we were her family . . .
‘Lily, Lily! I need to do a wee-wee. I need to do a wee-wee right now. Oh dear, oh dear, I’m doing my wee-wee now!’
‘Wake up, Lily, Pixie’s wetting herself and it’s boring here, there’s no one to kill.’
‘Lily, there’s a big bug on my leg, get it off, it’s so scary!’
No, I’d be much better off living all alone. I sat up with a sigh and flicked the tiny beetle off Bliss’s skinny leg. I took Pixie by the hand and led her off towards the toilets in the café.
‘You two come too,’ I said to Bliss and Baxter.
‘I’m not going in the ladies’ toilets,’ said Baxter, but I held him with my other hand and wouldn’t let him go.
‘You’re not to be trusted, matey. You ran off last time, right across that dangerous road to the playground. I’m not risking you running off again and getting lost. You’re coming with us!’
‘Stop it, you’re twisting my arm!’ Baxter moaned.
‘I’ll twist your arm right off if you don’t shut up,’ I said, so fiercely that he knew I meant business and stopped struggling.
I hauled all three of them into the toilets and mopped Pixie while I made Bliss and Baxter use the loo.
While they were distracted washing their hands, vying with each other to see who could make the biggest soap bubble, I dashed into a cubicle myself.
When I came out two old grannies were fussing over the kids, helping them wash their hands. Pixie dimpled at them, and Baxter chatted away, telling them he was a big boy and didn’t really need anyone’s help, but Bliss went rigid with fear when they tried to get her to stick her wet hands in the drying machine. She had this silly idea that it would suck her up completely.
‘It’s OK, Bliss, just flap your hands to dry them,’ I said.
‘Bliss? is that the little girl’s name?’ said one old granny, smiling. ‘What a delightful name!’
‘No, no – it’s – I said Fliss, short for Felicity,’ I said quickly. ‘Thank you for helping them. We have to go now. Our mum’s waiting for us.’
I pushed the kids quickly out of the toilets.
‘Will you quit shoving me, Lily. I’ll be a mass of bruises,’ Baxter grumbled.
‘Yeah, like you haven’t been kicking me all over and giving me bruises since you were Pixie’s age,’ I said. I grabbed hold of Pixie as she tried to run into the café.
‘Hey, hey, it’s this way.’
‘No, I want a cake now. And a sandwich. And chippies,’ she said.
‘I want, I want, I want! You’re such a greedy-guts. You’ve just had an ice cream,’ I said – but I guessed it was about lunchtime, and the smell of food was making my tummy rumble.
‘I want a cake too – and that pie!’ said Baxter.
‘We haven’t got any money. You all know that, even you, Pixie. So shut up, all of you. Come on, we’ll go back to our tree hidey-hole. We’ve got lots of food there.’
‘It’s not proper food though, it’s just cornflakes and silly stuff like that,’ said Baxter. ‘You’re useless, Lily.’
I felt angry tears prickling in my eyes. I’d been trying so hard to look after them all. It was mean of Baxter to call me useless. I wondered if I could somehow have made us better food. There were eggs at home. I could have boiled some and mixed them with salad cream and made lovely egg sandwiches . . . No, we’d run out of bread. What were we going to do if the food we had with us didn’t last till Saturday? I hadn’t realized we’d feel so hungry here.
It was making it worse, all of us standing staring at the food on display, our mouths watering. Pixie looked particularly wistful, reaching out her hand towards the cake.
‘Ah, look at that little moppet,’ said yet another granny. ‘Are you hungry, darling?’
‘Very hungry,’ Pixie lisped, blinking her big blue eyes and looking hopeful.
But the granny just laughed at her and limped off to order some soup for herself.
‘Come on, outside. We can’t beg,’ I said.
‘Yes, we can. Let Pixie, she’s good at it,’ said Baxter.
I wavered because I was so very hungry – but I knew this would be a way of drawing attention to ourselves. One of the serving ladies was already hovering, worried we might touch the food.
‘No, come on, now,’ I hissed. The kids followed me, grumbling and moaning, back through the café to the outside terrace at the top of the stone steps.
Almost every table was occupied with lucky people eating. There was one spare table right at the end. No one had cleared it yet. It had four big plates, with quite a lot of chips left, and half a pie. Baxter spotted it and his eyes went big.
I looked around. No one seemed to be watching us, they were all too busy talking and eating their meals.
‘OK,’ I said softly. ‘We’ll sit down at that table and pretend it’s our meal. ‘Follow me. Act casually.’
Baxter over-acted, tossing his head about and trying to whistle. Bliss started to giggle helplessly, but I quelled her with a look. We sat down at the table, Baxter barging to be first so he could sit in front of the pie plate.
‘No, we’re going to share it,’ I said, leaning over and cutting it into four squares. ‘And we’re counting out the chips, OK?’
‘Is it all right to eat other people’s food?’ Bliss asked.
‘No, it’s very germy indeed – in fact I saw a fat man sneeze into this pie, and he licked all the chips,’ said Baxter.
‘Yuck,’ said Bliss, pushing her plate away.
‘Don’t be silly, Bliss, Baxter’s just tricking you so he can have your share. It is bad to eat other people’s leftover food but we haven’t any choice, have we? It’s not stealing because someone else has already paid for it – and they don’t want it any more. It would just get chucked in the rubbish bin so we might as well eat it, eh?’
Bliss didn’t look convinced, and didn’t even try one chip, but Baxter and Pixie tucked in heartily, and so did I. Our small portions were finished in three or four gulps and we were still left hungry. I looked at the people at the tables nearest to us. The two grannies from the toilet were there, eating large slices of coffee-and-walnut cake and sipping frothy coffee. The larger granny wolfed hers down, but the other one nibbled hers in a half-hearted fashion.
‘I think we might be getting a bit of cake for pudding,’ I murmured to the others.
We had to wait a long time because the grannies nattered to each other for ever, but eventually they heaved themselves up and tottered off in their baggy trousers and sensible sandals.
>
I nipped off my seat, grabbed the plate of cake, and was back at our own table in a second. I cut the cake into four and gave Bliss the biggest piece.
‘No, she doesn’t want any. I’ll have hers,’ said Baxter.
‘You eat your cake, Bliss. You’ve seen those old ladies. You could see they weren’t a bit germy, and they were very fierce about handwashing, weren’t they? So you eat your cake, OK?’
She still wasn’t too sure, but when she’d tried a crumb of cake and a smear of cream she decided it tasted so good she didn’t care if it was crawling with germs. Baxter finished his cake in one gulp and was already rocking back on his chair, craning his neck to see if he could see anyone else likely to leave us a feast.
‘Look at those girls there! I bet they never finish their chips. They’re too busy giggling. I think they’re going, they’re picking up their bags, quick!’
He started weaving his way through the tables. He picked up a plate with a piecrust and chips, grabbed an uneaten sandwich, another half cake, a mound of salad and three cooked carrots, piling them on top of each other higgledly piggledy. He returned triumphantly with his loaded plate.
‘Honestly! You couldn’t be more obvious if you tried,’ I said.
‘You shut up. You don’t have to eat it,’ said Baxter, gobbling the whole of the piecrust before I could cut it fairly into quarters. I divided the rest for the girls, making them eat a carrot each because I knew it had lots of vitamins, and I ate the salad myself. It probably had lots of vitamins too, but it tasted like damp flannel.
‘Now it’s your turn to find us some food, Bliss,’ said Baxter. ‘I did great, didn’t I?’
‘I don’t really like this food,’ said Bliss. ‘Not when it’s all mixed up together.’
‘It gets mixed up in your stomach, doesn’t it?’ said Baxter. ‘You’re just too scared to go and nick some.’
‘It’s not nicking, Baxter,’ I said fiercely. ‘I wouldn’t let you do it if it was. It’s just . . . clearing up the plates.’
I let him go and do some more ‘clearing’ because he loved doing it, and I figured the café people wouldn’t be too cross with him if they caught him because he was such a little boy. We sat there a whole hour or so, with Baxter going off foraging for us every few minutes. We had such a feast at our table that little brown sparrows kept flying down for a beakful too. One of them hopped right across our table top and back, cocking his head at us cheekily.
‘Oh, he’s so sweet,’ said Bliss. ‘Can we keep him and tame him and have him for our own pet bird?’
‘Oh yeah, and we’ll have a pet rabbit too, and maybe a baby deer,’ I said, but then I stopped, because Bliss’s eyes were shining hopefully.
‘Only joking, Bliss. They’re like Baxter, you can’t tame them,’ I said, which at least made her laugh.
When we were at last so full of everyone’s leftovers that we were leaving stuff too, we strolled off down the steps, through the gates, to sit on a fallen tree trunk in the sunshine. We kicked our legs for a while and sang silly songs, but the food and the warm sun made us all sleepy, even Baxter. We curled up in a heap in the grass, Pixie on my lap using my chest as a pillow, Bliss and Baxter either side of me, and went to sleep.
It was a long, long sleep, in spite of the hard ground and the kids squashing me, perhaps because I hadn’t slept properly at night since Mum met Gordon. I dreamed I sprouted angel’s wings, pink and red and gold. I floated up into the air away from everyone. I flew far away in the sunshine until the parakeets squawked so loudly that they woke me up. My wings fell off and I was left sprawling on the grass with pins and needles in my arms.
I gently slid Pixie off me and sat up, stretching. She was still asleep, but Baxter and Bliss were taking it in turns to walk along the fallen tree trunk.
‘At last!’ Baxter shouted. ‘You’ve been asleep ages.’
‘Baxter wanted to wake you but I wouldn’t let him,’ said Bliss. ‘We’re pretending to be tightrope walkers, Lily. Come and join our circus!’
I joined in the circus games, doing handstands and cartwheels. When Pixie woke up we played she was our performing monkey. Then Baxter and Bliss were lions and I was their trainer. When they grew hoarse with roaring I became Madame Lily with my troupe of lily-white horses, and we all cantered round and round, Pixie puffing along behind us like a little Shetland pony. I was way too old to play these sorts of silly games and told myself I was just joining in to keep the kids amused.
When we were all out of breath we flopped down on the grass again and took it in turn to tell stories. I told them a story about all of us growing wings and flying off to different parts of the world. They were interested for a while, but Bliss crept nearer and held my hand and said she didn’t want to fly anywhere without the three of us. She told a long convoluted story about Cinderella and Snow White and the Sleeping Beauty, who all lived in a palace together and wore a different beautiful ball gown every day.
Baxter started telling a story about a terrifying wolf man who burrowed through the bracken and attacked his victims, sinking his vicious teeth into their necks, but I shut him up, especially when he started acting it out and both little girls started squealing. Pixie was excited and yelled, ‘More, more! More wolfie!’ when I sat on Baxter to stop him, but Bliss was truly frightened. Pixie herself was too little to tell a proper story. She just said a whole jumble of stuff: ‘Pixie did dancing, then Pixie did singing, then Pixie ate lots and lots of ice cream,’ droning on and on about herself.
‘Pixie did telling stories and she was boring,’ said Baxter unkindly. He stood up, kicking through the bracken, and found an old dog-chewed ball. ‘Hey, let’s play catch!’
It was more a game of ‘drop’, playing with Bliss and Pixie, but they became two piggies-in-the-middle while Baxter and I threw the ball over their heads. Then we found a small broken-off branch that could just about serve as a bat. We invented a weird game, half cricket, half rounders, where Baxter and I bowled and batted and fielded all at the same time. Bliss lay on her back and mumbled another fairy story to herself. Pixie skipped round and round behind us like a substantial little shadow.
Baxter and I had an argument about who was winning our silly game. I eventually gave in and said he was the winner – even though he wasn’t.
‘I’m the winner!’ he shouted, punching the air. ‘Right, what do I get for a prize?’
‘Here’s a huge silver trophy,’ I said, miming handing it to him.
‘No, I want a real prize. Can I have another ice cream?’
‘What’s up with your brain? We haven’t got any money.’
‘That man gave us one ice cream for nothing. Maybe he’ll give us another one. Go on, ask him.’
‘No, I’m not asking! He’ll think we’re horribly greedy.’
‘I am,’ said Baxter, patting his tummy. ‘Can we go back to the café then? We’ll nick some more leftovers.’
‘It’s not nicking. But all right,’ I said, because I was getting hungry all over again and reckoned it might almost be time for tea.
The four of us climbed up the hill to the gate – but found it was locked.
‘Why did they go and lock it?’ said Bliss.
‘Because they’re meanies,’ said Baxter. ‘Stupid meanies, because we can climb over, easy-peasy.’
Baxter and I could, but we had to haul Bliss up and she went very white and wobbly halfway over and wailed that she was stuck. We had to give her a little push and that made her scream. Pixie couldn’t manage it either, but she clung to me and I swung us both over.
‘There we are! Come on then, let’s see if we can find lots of cake,’ I said. ‘Stop whimpering, Bliss, you didn’t really hurt yourself.’
‘Yes, I did,’ Bliss sniffed, but she wiped her eyes and nose and trudged along by our side.
We went up and up and up the steps until we saw the terrace – but it was empty. There were no people there at all, and all the tables had been wiped clean, and the chairs st
acked. The café was clearly closed.
‘Oh rats,’ said Baxter, running round the tables, even peering underneath them, but there wasn’t a scrap of food left.
‘Never mind, it wasn’t very nice food anyway,’ said Bliss.
‘Are you mad! It was lovely, especially the pie,’ said Baxter.
‘Yes, but not with other people’s slurp all over it,’ said Bliss.
‘Let’s have ice cream!’ said Pixie.
‘No, the ice-cream place must all be shut up too,’ I said, but Pixie wouldn’t quieten until I took her there to show her. We couldn’t go through the café because it was all shut up and locked. We had to walk right round the back of the big house and then circle it. We found the ice-cream place eventually – and of course it was shut.
‘Open it!’ Pixie wailed. ‘I want an ice cream!’
‘I want another piece of pie with lots of chips!’ said Baxter.
‘Stop moaning, both of you. You’re such greedy-guts.’
‘It’s not greedy to want tea.’
‘Well, we’ve got lots of tea, back by the tree. Come on, we’ll go back there and have a little feast,’ I said.
‘That’s just boring home food,’ said Baxter, stamping, starting to get into a real strop.
‘It’s all we’ve got – and if you don’t want it, I’ll give your share to Bliss and Pixie,’ I said. ‘Now, come on.’
I wasn’t quite sure how far away our hiding place was. I just knew it was too far. We were all tired now, grubby and hungry and thirsty. Pixie started whining to be carried when we’d only been walking five minutes.
‘Come on, Pixie, you’re a big girl. You can walk all by yourself,’ I said, trying to be bright and encouraging.
Pixie threw herself down on the ground.
‘No, I can’t walk, I’m little little little,’ she declared, going stiff as a board when I tried to pick her up. I couldn’t just leave her there – though I was tempted. I had to give in and carry her. It didn’t feel too bad at first, in fact it felt good to have Pixie’s arms right round my neck and her legs clamped round my waist, but in a little while I felt as if I was hauling fifty pixies. My neck ached, my back ached, my legs ached, and my arms felt as if they were being pulled out of their sockets.