Clean Break Read online

  I brightened a little. ‘I’ve seen the film,’ I said. ‘I like it a lot. But isn’t the book a bit old-fashioned and hard to read?’

  ‘Why not give it a try and find out?’ said Mrs Marks.

  Yvonne pulled a horrified face when she saw I’d been given three classics to read. ‘You do your homework quicker than anyone and yet you get punished for it?’ she said. ‘You poor thing, Em!’

  Even Jenny looked appalled. But I found I got sucked straight into the story of The Railway Children. After a page or two it was just as easy to read as Jenna Williams and I didn’t mind a bit that it was old-fashioned. It was a bit weird knowing that Bobbie was fourteen and yet she didn’t wear make-up or high heels, she dressed just like a little girl. She didn’t act like one. Bobbie and Phyllis and Peter were allowed to wander all over the countryside by themselves and their mother didn’t worry one bit.

  The bits about their father interested me the most. I thought the children were a bit slow to catch on when it was obvious he’d been taken away to prison. I wondered how I’d feel if Dad was in prison. At least I’d be able to visit him once a month, and I’d be able to send him letters and phone him.

  It was so awful not knowing where he was. I looked at a map of Britain in an atlas at school. Scotland didn’t look very big on the page. I hoped you might be able to search all over in a week or so, but when I asked Mrs Marks she said it was hundreds of miles wide and long. Dad could be up Edinburgh Castle or wandering down Sauchiehall Street or crossing the Tay Road Bridge; he could be sailing across a loch or climbing a mountain or paddling in the sea or patting a Highland cow or playing the bagpipes or wearing a kilt . . .

  The sisters in Little Women didn’t know where their father was either. He was away for most of the book, fighting in a war. I couldn’t ever imagine our dad fighting. He was a total pacifist and believed all wars were wicked. Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy were very proud of their dad though, and knitted him socks – just like me knitting Dad his stripy scarf! I wondered if he was still wearing it. Probably not, as it was getting too hot. I hoped he wouldn’t just throw it away. If he’d stuffed it in a drawer somewhere, did he take it out sometimes and hold it to his cheek and think of me? Did he ever think about Vita, his little princess? Did he ever wonder how Maxie was managing without him?

  The March sisters’ dad came back home after he was wounded in battle. If our dad got ill, would he come back to us? I couldn’t imagine Sarah doing any nursing.

  There was a lot about illness in Little Women. I liked the chapter where Beth nearly died. I read it over and over again. If Vita became dangerously ill I’d nurse her devotedly and spoon-feed her and comb her hair and wipe her fevered brow with a cold flannel and tell her endless Dancer stories.

  Then I read A Little Princess. That was the best book of all, though it was so so sad. I loved the beginning when Sara’s father bought her trunkfuls of beautiful clothes – silks and furs as if she really was a little princess. Then Sara’s china doll – Emily! – got kitted out with little cut-down versions of each outfit. I hated it when he left Sara at the girls’ school and she missed him so much, but the worst bit of all was when she found out he’d died.

  I could bear it if I got so poor I had to work as a servant or live in an attic like poor Sara, but I simply couldn’t stand it if Dad ever died.

  I so identified with Sara that I wore one of Mum’s old black T-shirts and her black skirt (I had to use a safety pin to do the waistband up – it’s terrible when you’re much fatter than your own mother). I trudged about in my last year’s winter boots, holding my head high, pretending to be a princess even though I looked like a ragamuffin. I wore Dancer on my hand, pretending she was a very big pet rat.

  ‘For pity’s sake, what do you look like, Em?’ said Gran.

  I gave her a silent look of contempt. This was the way Sara dealt with Miss Minchin and it always unsettled her. It infuriated Gran.

  ‘Don’t you look down your nose at me, Emily! Take those awful black clothes off. And get rid of that wretched reindeer! You’re too old to go round clutching a silly soft toy all the time.’

  ‘Dancer isn’t a toy, she’s a puppet,’ I said.

  ‘It isn’t even your puppet, miss.’

  ‘Vita doesn’t mind me borrowing her. She likes it when I make her talk to us.’

  ‘I haven’t seen you letting Vita borrow your Christmas present,’ said Gran.

  ‘She’d only lose it,’ said Mum. ‘She’s not careful like Em. Quit nagging at her.’ Mum put her arm round me and whispered ‘Take no notice’ in my ear.

  I waited until night-time and then when Mum came to tuck me up I hung onto her, pulling her down on the bed beside me.

  ‘Hey, hey, careful, chickie!’ said Mum.

  ‘Mum, why does Gran always get at me?’

  ‘She gets at all of us, Em. I told you, she’s tired, and she’s at a funny age. Try not to let it bother you. I switch off when she’s having a go at me and sing a song in my head. You try it some time.’

  ‘I know Gran gets grumpy with all of us . . . but she’s meaner to me than Vita or Maxie. I just get on her nerves all the time. She acts like she can’t stand me.’

  ‘Oh, darling, don’t be silly. Gran loves you, she loves all of us.’

  ‘She doesn’t love me like she loves Vita and Maxie,’ I said. I pulled Mum’s head close beside me on the pillow. ‘Is it because I’m fat?’ I whispered.

  ‘Oh, Em!’ Mum’s voice cracked as if she was going to start crying. ‘You’re not fat, sweetheart. You’re just going through a little podgy stage.’

  ‘Like I’ve been in a podgy stage all my life. Look at those baby photos of me. I look like a sumo wrestler!’

  ‘Rubbish!’

  ‘I still look like a sumo wrestler now. It’s so unfair, when you’re all so weeny. Especially you, Mum.’ I seized hold of her bony little wrist with my big pink sausage fingers. It felt like it could snap as easily as a wishbone.

  ‘You’re so skinny now, Mum. You’re not ill, are you?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Are you sure? Oh, Mum, I do worry about you.’

  ‘You’re just my sweet little worrypot. You mustn’t worry so, Em. You’re just a little girl. I’m the mum. It’s my job to worry, not yours. Here, where’s Dancer?’ Mum put Dancer on and made her tickle my neck with her antlers.

  ‘Cheer up, Em! How about a smile, eh? You need a bit of fun in your life.’

  It was May Day Monday the next week. Vita, Maxie and I were off school. Mum and Gran had a holiday from work.

  ‘There’s a Green Fair in Kingtown,’ said Mum. ‘Shall we go and see what it’s like?’

  ‘A Green Fair?’ I said. I imagined emerald roundabouts and jade giant wheels and olive dodgems, peppermint candyfloss and sage chips and apple ice cream. ‘Like everything’s green? Wow!’

  ‘Will you talk English, Em?’ said Gran. ‘Don’t be so soft, of course it’s not coloured green. More mud-brown, if you ask me.’

  ‘It’s green because it’s an environmentally friendly fair,’ said Mum.

  ‘Full of hippies and gypsies and druggies and drunks,’ Gran sniffed. ‘You’re off your head wanting to take the kids. I don’t know what’s the matter with you. I did my level best to bring you up decently and yet you run off with the first weirdo who comes along—’

  ‘Mum!’

  ‘And look where that got you – not even able to go to college, and lumbered with a baby, and then you fall for Frankie Fly-by-Night and land yourself with more kids, and you won’t even work in a decent hairdressing salon, you end up in a crumbling dump like the Pink Palace.’

  ‘The Palace isn’t a dump, it’s lovely,’ I said.

  ‘Can we dress up as hippies and gypsies?’ said Vita. ‘Can I wear lots of jewellery, my bead necklace and my bunny brooch and my sparkly tiara and my Indian bangles? You can wear Dancer, Em, if you let me wear your emerald ring.’

  ‘Some nasty druggie thief wi