Clean Break Read online

  Maxie stopped whining and started full-bodied sobbing.

  ‘Oh, for pity’s sake!’ said Gran. ‘Look, this is meant to be a treat. Do stop acting as if I’m torturing you. Maybe we’re just going to have to give up on this, Em.’

  ‘No, no, please let’s go on, I want to, don’t be mean!’ Vita wailed. She started sobbing too.

  ‘Oh, dear God, stop it, both of you, or I’ll knock your heads together. Why did I ever say I’d do this?’ said Gran, looking at me balefully.

  ‘You said you’d take us up to London because you’re a lovely kind gran and I’m very very grateful,’ I said, laying it on with a trowel – no, a huge great spade of praise!

  ‘Yes, I am lovely and kind – and very very stupid,’ said Gran, hanging onto Maxie and Vita. They were trying hard to outsob each other. Gran give them a little shake. They sobbed harder. People were staring.

  ‘Stop it! Stop it at once, you’re showing me up! If you don’t stop this minute we’ll go straight back home without any treats at all,’ Gran threatened.

  I panicked. ‘It’s OK, Gran. I’ll stay on the ground with Maxie. You go on the wheel with Vita.’

  Gran thought about it. ‘But then you’ll miss out altogether, Em, and you’re the only one behaving sensibly. Won’t you mind terribly if you don’t get to go on the wheel?’

  I didn’t mind one little bit, but I didn’t let on. ‘Perhaps I’ll get to go on the wheel another time,’ I said, trying to look wistful.

  ‘You’re a good girl, Em. Here!’ Gran fished in her handbag and tucked a five-pound note in my hand. ‘Buy yourselves an ice cream while you’re waiting for Vita and me.’

  I was more than ready for something to eat. I’d been so busy fixing everyone else’s breakfast I’d forgotten to eat any myself. I bought Maxie and me large 99s from a Whippy ice-cream van. Maxie had given himself hiccups after all that sobbing.

  ‘Lick your ice cream slowly, don’t make your hiccups worse,’ I said. ‘Look, Vita and Gran are getting into their pod. Up they go!’

  Maxie shuddered. ‘I’m sorry I’m not a big brave boy,’ he said forlornly.

  ‘You can’t help it, Maxie. Don’t worry. What would you like to do for your treat then? Vita’s had the ride on the wheel. There she is, waving, way up high already, look!’

  Maxie ducked his head. ‘Don’t want to look!’ he said.

  I waved back to Vita. I picked Maxie’s limp arm up and waggled it, so that he was waving too. His other arm waggled in sympathy and he dropped his ice cream on the ground.

  ‘Oh, my ice cream!’

  ‘Oh dear. Well. You can finish mine if you like. Or I’ll get you another one. Gran’s given me heaps of money.’

  ‘Will that be my treat, another ice cream?’ said Maxie.

  ‘No, no, you can choose something else.’

  ‘A helter-skelter?’

  ‘Maxie! Look, there aren’t any helter-skelters in London, trust me. They’re just at funfairs and the seaside. And even if we took you all the way back to the one on the pier, I don’t think you’d really like it. You could sit on my lap on the mat, but it’s not me you want, is it? It’s Dad.’

  Maxie put his sticky hands over his ears but I knew he could still hear me.

  ‘I miss him too, Maxie. So much. I’d give anything for him to come back. I’ve wished it over and over.’ I took Dancer off my hand and looked at my ring. ‘We could make another wish if you like, on my magic emerald.’

  ‘Will it come true?’ said Maxie, taking his hands away from his head.

  ‘Well, it hasn’t come true yet. But it could come true this time. Shall we try?’

  Maxie clasped my hand and we wished for Dad. I muttered a whole lot of stuff. Maxie just went, ‘Dad Dad Dad Dad Dad.’ Then we both looked round over our shoulders. There were dads everywhere, shouting, laughing, calling, chatting, joking, pulling funny faces. But not our dad.

  Dancer wriggled onto my hand and stroked Maxie’s cheek with her paw. He brushed her away, not in the mood for her stories. I wasn’t really either. I undid my school bag and read the first page of my Dancer book. My heart started thumping. It seemed so stupid now, so totally babyish. Why on earth would Jenna Williams want to read it? She’d probably say something nice to me, but privately she’d be thinking me a totally sad idiot. I crammed my story back into my school bag, hiding it under all the books.

  We sat silently on some steps, waiting. It seemed an age before Gran and Vita got out their pod and came over to us. Vita was dancing, twirling round and round. ‘It was so great up on the wheel! I saw Buckingham Palace and the Queen waved to me,’ she carolled in a cutesie-pie voice.

  ‘It was amazing, you could see for miles,’ said Gran, jigging around, almost breaking into a dance herself. ‘Oh dear, you two, what glum faces! Maxie, you’re such a prize banana. Come on then, let’s go for a little walk along the embankment.’

  ‘Hadn’t we better go and find the bookshop now?’ I said anxiously.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Em, your blessed Jenna Williams isn’t going to be there for an hour and a half. We don’t want to be hanging around waiting with nothing to do. No, I want to show you the Globe Theatre – it’s only a couple of minutes away, we could see it from the pod. It’s been built just like a proper Elizabethan theatre.’

  ‘I want to go on the stage and dance!’ said Vita, holding out her arms and simpering, as if she could hear tumultuous applause.

  So we trudged along the embankment. My book bag got heavier and heavier and heavier, but I didn’t dare complain. Maxie trailed beside me, scuffing his feet. Vita stopped prancing and started pestering for an ice cream, because Maxie and I had already had one. Gran had to stand on one foot and adjust the straps on her sandals, sighing.

  ‘Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,’ she said. ‘It looked so near when we were in the pod, but it’s obviously miles away.’

  ‘Miles and miles and miles,’ Maxie said glumly.

  ‘It’s not fair, I want an ice cream,’ said Vita.

  ‘What’s the time? Maybe we should start going back now,’ I said. ‘I want to be first in the queue at Addeyman’s bookshop.’

  ‘I told you, there’s heaps of time yet. We’ll just go as far as that big chimney, see it? I think that’s Tate Modern, the art gallery. I wouldn’t mind getting some postcards,’ said Gran.

  ‘To send to Eddie?’ I said.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Gran. ‘Though I don’t want to send any picture of daft scribble or dead cows or what have you.’

  We didn’t get to go inside the gallery. We all stared transfixed at the huge sculptures outside, on the forecourt. There were four gigantic towers, one red, one yellow, one blue and one green, with shiny silver slides spiralling round and round, down to the ground. There were doors at the bottom, and stairs leading up inside.

  ‘Helter-skelters!’ Maxie shrieked.

  ‘Well I never! There you are, Maxie, your wish come true! They look like helter-skelters, certainly,’ said Gran. ‘But they’re not real ones.’

  ‘They look real. I want to go on the red one!’ said Vita.

  ‘You can’t go on them, they’re sculptures,’ said Gran.

  ‘No, Gran, look, people are going on them,’ I said, pointing to heads bobbing at the top of each tower.

  ‘So they are! Well, all right, I don’t see why you can’t go too,’ said Gran. ‘Maxie, you go on with Em.’

  ‘No, not Em. I’m going with Dad!’ said Maxie.

  ‘Your dad’s not here, Maxie,’ said Gran, sighing.

  ‘He will be, he will be! We wished it, and it’s come true, it really has!’ said Maxie, his face radiant.

  ‘Oh Maxie,’ I said, but I wondered if Dad might just be up at the top of these magical helter-skelters, waiting for us.

  I took Maxie and Vita on all four helter-skelters. They weren’t dark inside. They were lit up with a wonderful golden glow and there were pictures to look at as we climbed the steps. There were strawberries and scarle