Clean Break Read online

  She was just joking, being sweet to me, but I really did seem to be getting a lot fitter. I was still rubbish at PE and games at school, but at least I didn’t get so breathless now. I was really getting thinner too. I was still fat, but not ultra-wobbly-enormous.

  ‘You’re like Nellie in Jenna Williams’s Teen series,’ said Jenny. ‘She goes swimming in Teens on a Diet, remember? Hey, Em, did you know Jenna Williams is doing a big book-signing up in London next Saturday?’

  ‘Really!’

  ‘Yes, there was all this stuff on her fan club website. She’s got a special new book coming out. It sounds soooo good – The Emerald Sisters – and there’s a big new bookshop in Covent Garden called Addeyman’s. Jenna Williams is going to be there all day. I’m so mad though, because we’re going to stay with my gran and grandad in Devon that weekend. I’ve begged and pleaded with my mum but she says I’ve got to go with them, there’s just no way I can make them see reason, so if I give you all my books, Em, will you get Jenna Williams to sign them?’

  I blinked at Jenny, trying to take it all in. ‘Next Saturday? Jenna Williams is really going to be there? You can actually meet her and talk to her and get her to sign books?’

  ‘You can, you lucky thing. I can’t. But you will take all my books to be signed, won’t you? Please say you will, Em. Then I’ll be your best friend for ever.’

  ‘Hey, I’m your best friend!’ said Yvonne, giving her a nudge.

  ‘Yes, but if you read Jenna Williams like Em and me you’d find out you can have two best friends, like in her book Friends Forever, when Emma and Ali are parted but then Emma gets to be friends with Jampot as well. And threesomes work perfectly – look at Nellie and Marnie and Nadia in the Teen books.’

  ‘Will you just shut up about boring old Jenna Williams and her silly old books,’ said Yvonne, yawning hugely. ‘Don’t you two ever think of anything else?’

  I found it very difficult to think about anything else.

  I badly wanted to go up to London on Saturday and meet Jenna Williams.

  I waited until Mum got home from work, and we were all having tea together. It was Spanish omelette. Gran now had this thing about all things Spanish. We were just waiting for her to scrape her hair into a bun and don a frilly flamenco frock.

  ‘I don’t like Spanish omelette. I just want chips,’ said Vita.

  ‘I want chips too,’ said Maxie.

  ‘Stop it,’ said Gran. ‘Eat your lovely omelette up, Vita, and set your brother a good example.’

  ‘But it’s horrible,’ said Vita, poking it with her fork. ‘Look at all these bits hiding inside!’

  ‘Lovely vegetables,’ said Gran.

  ‘Yucky vegetables,’ said Vita. ‘It looks like someone’s been secretly sick inside my omelette.’

  ‘Vita! Stop being so naughty, especially when Gran’s been kind enough to cook us all a meal,’ Mum said.

  ‘Yucky sicky yucky sicky,’ Maxie chanted.

  Mum pretended to swat him. She smiled wearily at me. ‘Thank God I’ve got one sensible child. You’re ever so quiet, Em. Nothing’s wrong, is there?’

  ‘No, everything’s fine.’

  ‘How are you doing at swimming?’

  ‘Great. Maggie taught me how to do a racing dive this morning.’

  ‘Are you in a swimming race, Em?’ said Gran, scraping Vita’s offending vegetables out of her omelette.

  ‘I’m not fast enough to enter any races yet, but I’ll know how to do the proper dive when I am,’ I said.

  ‘Yucky sicky yucky sicky,’ Maxie persisted.

  ‘Put another record on, Maxie,’ said Mum, rubbing her forehead.

  ‘Sucky yicky sucky yicky,’ Maxie chanted, and then screamed with laughter.

  ‘Mum . . .’

  ‘Yes, love?’

  ‘Mum, you know Jenna Williams?’

  ‘Yes. Well?’

  ‘She’s doing this big book-signing up in London on Saturday. I so want to see her, and I’ve promised Jenny I’ll take all her books to get them signed, and I can’t let her down because she’s my best friend, and anyway, I’m desperate to go myself. Can I go, Mum? Please say yes. Please please please!’

  ‘Oh, Em.’ Mum leaned back in her chair, rubbing her forehead again. ‘I know how much you’d like to go, pet. But it’s Saturday. I can’t take you on a Saturday. Especially not this week, I’ve got a big wedding. I have to be at the bride’s house at breakfast time, and I’ll be working flat out till I start at the Palace. Then I can’t let Violet down, it’s just the two of us now, and there’s a whole disco-dancing troupe coming in to get their hair dyed violet for their Deep Purple routine.’

  ‘I know, Mum. But you don’t need to take me. I can go by myself.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Em,’ said Gran.

  ‘I’m not silly! Look, I go swimming by myself, don’t I, and I manage perfectly, and then I go to school by myself, I do heaps and heaps of stuff by myself, so I’ll be fine going to London, it’s just a simple train ride, and I promise I won’t talk to any strangers. Please say yes, Mum.’

  ‘You are being silly, love,’ Mum said despairingly. ‘I couldn’t possibly let you go up to London by yourself.’

  ‘But I have to meet Jenna Williams, Mum, I just have to!’

  ‘Oh Em, don’t.’ Mum pushed her plate away and buried her head in her hands. ‘If only your dad was here to take you!’

  She whispered it, but we all heard.

  Maxie stopped chanting his stupid nonsense and slid under the table. Vita reached for Dancer and put her thumb in her mouth. I clasped my hands so tightly my emerald ring bit hard into my finger.

  ‘We don’t need him,’ said Gran. ‘I’ll take Em.’

  We stared at her.

  ‘Don’t look so gob-smacked!’ she said. ‘Why shouldn’t I take my grand-daughter to meet this Jenna Williams? I know she means a lot to her. So I’ll take her.’

  ‘Oh Gran!’ I said, and I rushed round the table and gave her a big hug.

  ‘Hey, hey, get off me, you daft banana, you’re squashing me,’ said Gran, but she gave me a quick hug back.

  ‘But Mum, what about Vita and Maxie? I can’t take them with me, not if I’ve got all the bridal hairdos and then all the purple tints at the Palace.’

  ‘Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound,’ said Gran. ‘I’ll look after them too. We’ll have a proper treat day out in London.’

  ‘But we don’t like Jenna Williams,’ said Vita. ‘She’s not a treat for me and she’s certainly not a treat for Maxie because he can’t even read yet.’

  ‘You’ll have to choose your treat too,’ said Gran.

  ‘Oh wow!’ said Vita. ‘Then I want to go to a ballet and I want to go to a rock concert and I want to go to a big big shop and buy heaps of clothes and toys and my own television and I want to go to the zoo and ride on an elephant and feed the tigers and—’

  ‘I’ll feed you to the tigers, you greedy little madam,’ said Gran, laughing. ‘What about you, Maxie? What do you want for your treat?’

  ‘Want to go on the helter-skelter,’ said Maxie.

  ‘The what?’ said Gran. ‘Oh great! Where do you think I’m going to find a helter-skelter? In the middle of Piccadilly Circus?’

  ‘Not the circus, I don’t like the clowns,’ said Maxie. He looked surprised when we all laughed at him.

  ‘I’m going to be the clown, taking you three up to London,’ said Gran, sighing. ‘I’m beginning to regret I ever made the offer.’

  I gasped, wondering if she might go back on it altogether. She saw my face.

  ‘Don’t worry, Em. I will take you. You deserve a little treat.’

  I fixed up my towel nest in the bath that night and did a little rewriting of my Dancer story. I tore out several pages about Dancer’s mean ancient grandma reindeer who had cross-eyes and knobbly knees and a habit of giving her grandchildren a sharp thwack about the head with her gnarled antlers.

  ‘Em? Are you writing in there?’