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  'You a n d Carl! It's so unfair, it's my t u r n with him now. Can't we do a swapsie when we go to Kew? You have Paul the Ball. I'm tired of him trying to score goals with me.'

  'No t h a n k s . I don't really like him.' I paused.

  'What do you t h i n k Carl sees in him? He's so . ..

  b a s i c '

  Miranda and Alice exchanged quick glances.

  'What?' I said.

  'All boys are basic,' said Miranda quickly. She prodded her flat cake. 'Hey, I t h i n k I'm going to call this cake a biscuit, t h e n it won't be so much of a failure. Shall I try to squeeze chocolaty bits into it so it can be a giant chocolate-chip cookie?'

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  'You could always ice it,' I said, finding a full packet of icing sugar in the cupboard. 'I'll make enough icing for all of us.'

  'Cool,' said Alice. 'And have you got any decorations, Miranda, like those little silver balls?'

  'Maybe. Let's have a peer,' said Miranda. 'We could use little sweets instead, couldn't we?'

  Alice couldn't find silver balls, so she used little pink sugar flowers instead, stuck in a p a t t e r n around the edges of her white iced cake.

  Miranda's cake/biscuit was thickly iced and t h e n piled high w i t h S m a r t i e s , Liquorice Allsorts and Jelly Babies.

  I decided to resist sweet decoration. I iced my sponge as smoothly as I could, put a drop of blue colouring in the remains of the icing, poured it into t h e icing b a g a n d t h e n piped Happy Birthday Carl as carefully as I could.

  'Oh wow, why can't I do that?' said Miranda.

  'Are you going to give it to him next Friday?

  Then we could maybe say it's from me too. It's all my ingredients, after all.'

  'It might be stale by then,' I said quickly. 'No, I'll give it to him tomorrow.'

  Mum was up terribly early on S u n d a y morning.

  She h a d a b a t h and washed h e r h a i r a n d t h e n came and p a t t e d me awake.

  'Help, Sylvie. My hair's sticking up all over. It won't go right. Please be an angel a n d wake up and style it for me.'

  'Mum, you're going swimming. Your h a i r will get soaked in the baths. It won't m a t t e r w h a t it looks like now,' I said, diving down u n d e r t h e covers.

  'Gerry will see it before I go in t h e pool,' said Mum. 'Come on, Syl, please do it. And look, does this skirt look OK?' M u m tugged at t h e frills on her gypsy skirt anxiously. 'I don't look too girly, do I?'

  'No, no, you look fine,' I said, sitting up. 'Well, maybe a bit dressed up to go swimming.'

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  'Dressed up, like way over the top?' said Mum.

  'Oh God. Maybe I look like I'm about to .. . what do gypsies dance? The Fandango?' She raised h e r a r m s a n d s t a m p e d h e r foot a n d t h e n groaned when she caught sight of herself in the big mirror. 'What should I wear then, Sylvie?'

  'Casual clothes.'

  'I haven't got any casual clothes. I've got fancy clothes and office clothes and very scruffy cleaning-the-house clothes. I can't wear them –

  Gerry will take one look and run a mile.'

  'I didn't think he was up to running.'

  'Stop that, Sylvie!'

  'No. Sorry. I didn't mean .. . It's j u s t so weird t h a t you're, like, going on a date.'

  'If it feels weird for you just think w h a t it's like for me. It is mad, isn't it? Maybe I should phone him up and call the whole thing off.'

  'No, no, you're going, Mum, and you'll have a lovely time and this Gerry will be lovely too and if you come here I'll make your hair look lovely as well. Which way do you want me to style it?'

  I said, kneeling up on my bed and tucking it behind her ears, trying it this way and t h a t .

  'Any way' But then she saw me plaiting a lock and she twitched her head away. 'Any way except little plaits! I don't want to look like a middle-aged schoolgirl.'

  'You're not middle-aged anything yet, Mum.

  You're young!

  'I've got middle-age spread already,' said Mum, patting h e r tummy ruefully.

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  I thought of Miranda's stick-thin mother.

  'You're just right,' I said. 'You don't want to look too thin. Hey, Mum, why don't you wear your jeans and t h a t black sweater?'

  ' I t ' s kind of our black sweater now. And my jeans are all frayed at the bottoms.'

  'That's a totally cool look.'

  'Maybe on thirteen-year-olds. Don't forget we're maybe having lunch at the posh club.'

  'OK, OK, stick with the gypsy skirt. Tell you what, get the tongs and I'll make your hair all wavy and then we'll stick a rose behind one ear!'

  We didn't go as far as the rose but I did wave Mum's hair for her so t h a t she could make a magnificent first impression – even if she doused the curls five minutes later.

  She set off, smiling bravely, tossing her curls and swishing her skirt, but when she turned to wave at the gate she pulled a funny face of terror, like Munch's Scream.

  'It's OK, Mum, you'll have a great time,' I said, giving her a thumbs-up sign.

  I watched her head bobbing away above the hedge. I so hoped it would go well for her, though I wasn't at all sure about this Gerry.

  I wondered w h a t my father would think if he knew Mum was dating again.

  I used to hope he'd come back – not as my real dad, who lied and cheated and couldn't be bothered with us half the time. I wanted him transformed into a new loving, caring dad who'd make a big fuss of Mum and come home on time 157

  and laugh and joke and take us out. I wanted a dad who'd t r e a t me like I was really special. I'd heard Lucy's dad call her his Fairy Princess. He looked at lumpy old Lucy as if she really had golden locks and gauzy wings and a sparkly crown. I'd wanted to cry then, almost wishing I could trade places with Lucy.

  I still felt guilty when I thought about her.

  No, I wasn't going to think about h e r today. I wasn't even going to think about Miranda.

  I wanted to concentrate on Carl.

  I wondered if he'd be awake yet. I flopped back on my bed imagining Carl only two walls away lying in his own bed. When we were little we'd h a n g out of our windows as soon as we woke up and yell to each other. When we got older we'd keep tin cans by our beds and bash t h e m in our own complicated code. We never said anything extraordinary – Hi, are you awake? I had a funny dream. Have you done your homework yet?

  Yum, I think Mum's making pancakes – but it felt great to be secretly communicating, even though we wore our arms out bashing those stupid tins.

  We both h a d mobile phones now but we seemed to have got out of the habit of calling each other recently. I reached over the side of my bed for my phone in my school bag. I wondered about phoning Carl now, but if I woke him he might be grumpy. I wanted today to be perfect.

  I tried sending him a tiny text: R u AWAKE? I waited, hanging onto the phone, willing it to 158

  ching-ching back at me. The phone stayed silent.

  I sighed and lay on my front. I tried to distract myself thinking up a new Glassworld Chronicle, but for once it was hard concentrating on King Carlo and Queen Sylviana. The idiotic Piper kept playing his shrill pipes wherever they went, even in their innermost private chambers, clowning like a jester and captivating the King.

  I banged my head on the pillow to try to rid myself of this irritating image. I didn't didn't didn't want to think about him.

  Maybe Paul would sidle off with Miranda next Friday and Carl and I would look at the Chihuly glass together, j u s t the two of us. I daydreamed about a new Ice Age in Glassworld, a winter so cruelly cold t h a t everyone froze to death, iced into white statues – everyone but King Carlo and Queen Sylviana in their heavy sable robes.

  No, Princess M i r a n d a r e t t e escaped, s k a t i n g across the iced-over sea to h e r own sunny land of Sangria, but Piper Paul blundered into a snow-drift and was never seen again, never never never.

  I went to r u n a bath, hoping t h a t Mum hadn'