Candyfloss Read online

  Then I heard it! The gate creaking. Someone walking up the garden path.

  I sat rigid on the old sofa, waiting. I heard them outside the door. They didn’t knock. There were scrambling sounds. Then I heard the door opening.

  They were coming right in.

  They were coming down the hall ready to get me . . .

  ‘Floss? Flossie, love?’

  ‘Oh Dad!’ I said. I gave a shaky cartoon laugh: Ha ha ha. ‘Hey, what are you doing back home?’

  ‘I know it’s daft, I know you’re perfectly fine here by yourself.’

  ‘Yes, Dad.’

  ‘But I couldn’t stand it. I kept imagining stuff. I know it’s mad, pet, but would you mind coming in the chip van with me?’

  ‘OK, Dad. I am fine here, but if it’ll put your mind at rest then I’ll come too. Let’s go,’ I said, scooting off the sofa and hanging onto his arm.

  We started up a whole new routine. Every evening I set off with Dad in our van. We’d go to the big garage behind the station, hook the chip van up and tow it onto the station forecourt. Then Dad would start the generator and get the fryer heated up while I squashed up in a cramped but cosy nest in the corner of the van, out of sight of the customers. I had two cushions and Dad’s old denim jacket to snuggle up in. I didn’t need to wear any kind of coat. It was boiling hot in the van from the fryer, with its sizzling fat.

  I did my homework first, except when it was maths, which I needed to do before school with Susan. Then I read for a bit. I started reading all these old Victorian Sunday school books from Billy’s house. They were told in a strange old-fashioned way, but the stories were really good once you got into them. They were all about poor ragged children begging on the streets of London. They often had cruel drunken stepfathers and sickly little baby brothers and sisters. They sometimes coughed a lot and then said they saw angels and then they died. I read some of the best bits to Dad in between customers.

  ‘Aren’t these stories a bit morbid for you, Floss?’ said Dad. ‘They certainly give me the willies!’

  ‘I like them, Dad,’ I said.

  When people started coming out of pubs it got too busy and noisy to concentrate on my books so I made things instead. I made a friendship bracelet for Susan. Several friendship bracelets. I made a Scoubidou keyring for Dad. I fashioned slightly wonky denim jackets for Ellarina and Dimble. I made a little blue denim mouse with a string tail for Lucky.

  I tried taking Lucky to the van with us one day, but it was much too hot and cramped for her and she hated it. She seemed much happier left at home. She couldn’t care less about creepy men and sad old ghosts.

  Dad would give me a little paper plate of chips every now and then, or a can of Coke, but I couldn’t drink too much because there was nowhere I could go to the loo. After a while I’d start to get achy and my eyes would itch, so I’d put my sewing stuff away and plump up my cushions and rub my cheek against Dad’s old jacket and go to sleep. Then at midnight Dad would tow the chip van back to the garage, lift me up into our van and drive us home. I’d tumble into bed half asleep, one arm out of the covers so I could still reach down and stroke Lucky.

  Dad still worried about me being in the van. ‘Your mum would go mad if she knew I was keeping you up till all hours,’ he said. ‘It’s not suitable, I know. Especially when all the lads start coming out the pubs and get a bit mouthy. The language! I think we’ll have to put earmuffs on you, little Floss.’

  I had learned a few amazingly awful phrases, which came in useful when Rhiannon and Margot and Judy were teasing me. They held their noses all the time when I came near. I knew I did smell chippier than ever, but I pretended not to care.

  I did try very hard the next Saturday when I went to spend the day with Susan. I got up early and had a bath, although the peeling enamel scratched my bottom. I shampooed my hair as best I could and then tried to brush out all the tangles. My curls had grown a lot. They stuck up all round my head in a mad fuzz.

  I wore my birthday jeans and top and I cleaned my trainers. Dad made a big effort too. He put on his blue shirt and his best jeans even though he was just going to loaf around at home for most of the day.

  He drove me to Susan’s house. I was worried that it was going to be a huge great mansion with beautiful polished furniture and very pale sofas and carpets, and I’d have to sit on the very edge of my seat and not eat or drink anything slurpy in case I spilled it. It was a relief to see that it was an ordinary red-brick Victorian villa.

  When I got inside I saw it was gloriously untidy, with shoes all over the hall and papers and files stacked high by the phone and books everywhere – not just on the bookshelves but in higgledy-piggledy piles all over the carpet and climbing up the stairs and stacked halfway up each windowsill. There were books in the lavatory, books in the bathroom and books all over the kitchen, stuffed in between the saucepans and the spice jars.

  The kitchen seemed to be the main Potts living room. There was a television on the dresser and fat velvet cushions scattered over the benches on either side of the long table. The actual living room was turned into a huge library study, with Mrs Potts and her computer and desk and filing cabinet one end and Mr Potts and his computer and desk and filing cabinet the other.

  They had the big bedroom upstairs. Susan had a very little bedroom with a pine bed and a patchwork quilt and a special shelf for her elephants and giraffe and crocodiles and rabbits. The middle-sized bedroom was Susan’s study. She had her own computer and desk and filing cabinet, and masses of books on shelves and drawings and posters and maps Blu-tacked all over the walls.

  ‘It’s so lovely, Susan,’ I said, tiptoeing around, peering at a book here, a picture there. ‘You’ve got so many things!’

  ‘I wondered . . . would you like to make another book world like we did in the library at school?’ Susan asked.

  ‘Ooh yes,’ I said.

  I watched as Susan eagerly started getting books down from shelves and tipping out a stack of wooden building bricks all over the wooden floor with a great clatter.

  ‘Won’t your mum mind us making such a mess?’ I asked.

  ‘She doesn’t mind a bit if we’re being creative,’ said Susan.

  ‘Creative?’

  ‘You know, making things up and being artistic.’

  ‘I can do that,’ I said.

  So we were happily creative most of the morning, building a land for all Susan’s animals. We made a book mountain and had the elephants plodding up it tail to trunk, led by a little Roman toy soldier that Susan called Hannibal. We made a river out of blue and green books, edged with potted ferns and ivy from the kitchen windowsill. The two crocodiles lurked in the river, jaws ready to start snapping. We made Hannibal have a paddle and then run away screaming. The giraffe came to have a drink and had a tasty fern sandwich garnished with ivy salad. The pink and blue rabbits had a frolic too, and we sat the giant green one on top of the mountain as a monument.

  ‘We could really do with some more people,’ I said. ‘Do you have any plasticine?’

  ‘No, but I’ve got modelling clay. Will that do?’ said Susan.

  It did wondrously. We made a little Roman army for Hannibal to command, and some pilgrim worshippers to kneel at the paws of the Giant Green Rabbit. We made twin giraffe babies for the big giraffe, and lots of tiny baby rabbits for Mrs Pink and Mr Blue Bunny. We made half a person screaming in the river, with a severed leg in each crocodile’s jaw.

  We had great fun acting it all out, but I was still a bit worried about the mess, especially as we’d accidentally smeared modelling clay all over the floorboards. However, when Susan’s mum came to see what we were up to she was so pleased by our bookland that she actually took photos of it. She took photos of us two with our arms round each other and promised I could have copies of all of them.

  Then we went in the kitchen with Susan’s mum to watch her prepare lunch.

  ‘Though I know I’m not as good a cook as your father, Floss,’ said M