The Suitcase Kid Read online

  ‘No thanks. Anyway, you don’t know it’s going to be a girl. It could be a boy. A boy like Zen,’ I said.

  My dad doesn’t go a bundle on Zen either. I’m glad. I don’t see why Zen and Crystal get to have my dad all the time just because they haven’t got one of their own. (Carrie said their dad couldn’t face commitment. He probably took one look at Zen and scarpered.)

  ‘Twin Zens,’ I added triumphantly.

  But Carrie shook her head.

  ‘No. I had a scan. In case it was twins again. And it’s just one baby. A little girl.’

  ‘Oh.’ I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  There was this great long silence. Carrie looked at me. Then she looked at Dad. He didn’t do anything. So Carrie came and put her arm round me.

  ‘What shall we call your little sister, Andy?’ she said.

  Dad brightened up. ‘Yes, Andy. How about you choosing a name for her?’

  Carrie looked a bit worried, but she nodded.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘I’ll choose her name.’

  They’re going to have to let me choose it now. They practically promised. And I’m going to pick the worst name ever.

  I used to have this Great-Great-Auntie Ethel who smelt of wee-wee and shouted at everyone. She took one look at me and said ‘Who’s that great gawky child with enormous feet? Let’s hope she’s got brains because she’s certainly no beauty.’

  I’ve got brains all right. My little step-sister-to-be is going to be called Ethel.

  AILEEN WAS ALWAYS my best friend right from the time we were in the first year at Infant school. Her mum and my mum were friends too and Aileen’s mum would drive us all home after school. Sometimes we’d go back to Aileen’s and her mum would make hot chocolate with marshmallows and Aileen and I would play with her Barbie dolls. Sometimes Aileen and her mum would come back to Mulberry Cottage with us and we’d have fruit juice – once we had mulberry juice – and Aileen and I would play Sylvanian families.

  Then we got old enough to do things without our mums and so we’d go to the park and play on the swings and we’d go down to the corner shop to buy crisps and Coke and we’d creep through a hole in the fence on this bit of wasteland and play games in the bushes.

  We had such a great time. But now it’s all different. When we left Mulberry Cottage, I couldn’t go on playing with Aileen after school every day. My mum’s new house with the baboon is miles and miles away. My dad’s flat with Carrie is even further away in the opposite direction. Mum did let me have Aileen round to tea one time, but Katie kept hanging round us and we didn’t have anywhere private to play so we just ended up listening to Paula’s records. We couldn’t be secret and special the way we used to be.

  I still see Aileen every day at school but it’s not the same. Aileen’s mum gives a lift home to Fiona now. Aileen and Fiona play together after school. We go round in this sort of threesome at playtime. Aileen keeps insisting she’s still my friend but when we have to join up with a partner in class now she always goes with Fiona.

  I COME HOME from school by myself now. There isn’t anyone to give me a lift. I have to walk down Seymore Road and round Larkspur Lane and up Victoria Street into the town. I go to the bus station and then, when I’m staying with Mum, I get a 29 as far as The Cricketers pub and then I have a ten-minute walk. I have to get two buses when I’m at my dad’s, a 62 and a 144 and then I have a fifteen-minute walk even after the two bus rides. I’m exhausted when I get back, I’m telling you.

  I’d go crazy if I didn’t have Radish to talk to on the way. Once or twice just at first I got lost and forgot the way and got that horrible hot swirly feeling in my stomach. I had to clutch Radish tight to stop myself crying. Then I calmed down and asked a safe-looking lady with children to show me the way to the bus station.

  Then another time my purse must have fallen out of my coat pocket because when I was queuing up for the bus I went to get my money out ready and my purse had gone. I thought for a moment I’d lost Radish too but then I found her clinging to the pocket lining. She made me feel a bit better but I still didn’t know what to do.

  I could simply have told the bus driver I’d lost my purse but I was scared he’d get cross. He was one of those big fat men with a frowny face.

  But I didn’t have to ask him in the end because an old lady had been watching me frantically searching my pockets.

  ‘What’s up, dear? Lost your bus fare? Here, don’t you fret, I’ll pay your fare today.’

  I was very grateful and asked Mum for extra bus fare the next day to pay her back. Mum got ever so fussed when she found out what had happened.

  ‘Poor old Andy. You must have been so worried. Oh dear, I do hate it that you have to come home by yourself now.’

  Mum can’t come and meet me because she works nine to five in a chemist’s shop now to help pay the bills. I wish she’d chosen a more exciting shop, like a cake shop or a toy shop or a pet shop. You can’t get very excited when she brings home half-price loo rolls and stale cough sweets.

  ‘I’ve been coming home from school by myself since I was six years old, Auntie Carol,’ said Katie smugly.

  ‘That doesn’t count. Your stupid old school is just down the road. A baby of six months could crawl it,’ I said.

  ‘I wish you’d swop to Katie’s school, Andy,’ said Mum. ‘It would be so much more sensible.’

  ‘But if I went to Katie’s school then it would take me hours and hours to get there when I’m staying at Dad’s,’ I said.

  ‘Well. All this to-ing and fro-ing is getting ridiculous anyway,’ said Mum. ‘You’re getting worn out, Andy. I’m thinking about you, darling. It would be so much better if you settled down in one place for a while and went to the local school.’

  ‘That’s what Dad says. He wants me to settle down with him. And go to Zen and Crystal’s school,’ I said.

  I’m not going to go to any other old school. I like my school. Even though it isn’t really the same any more. Aileen isn’t the same. The teachers aren’t even the same. They made a bit of a fuss of me at first when Mum and Dad split up but now they often get cross with me. I forget to do things or I lose my books or I don’t listen in lessons.

  ‘If you’d only try to concentrate, Andrea,’ they say.

  I am concentrating, but it’s not often on lessons nowadays.

  There’s only one good thing about all these boring journeys to and from school. I’ve discovered another mulberry tree. It’s in a garden in Larkspur Lane so I get to see it whether I’m living at my mum’s or living at my dad’s. It’s not as nice as our mulberry tree at Mulberry Cottage of course. It’s very old and knarled and bent over, but it still grows lots of mulberries.

  I watched them ripening from red to purple to bright black and brimming with juice. No-one seemed to be picking them. The grass grew lavishly and the flowers were in tangled clumps and the creepers were crawling all over everywhere. Perhaps no-one was living there any more.

  I peered over the high fence every day, trying to see the house, though it was hidden by another tree. I never heard a radio or saw a deckchair out in the garden. I started to lean right over the gate, peering in. Sometimes I got Radish out so she could peer too.

  The garden would be fairyland for Radish. She could trek through the grass playing Jungle Explorers, swinging on the creepers like a tiny Tarzan. And she could eat mulberries . . .

  My mouth watered as I looked at those great big berries. One day I could stand it no longer. I got my leg up over the gate, I jumped down into the garden, I ran through the long grass, I reached the mulberry tree, I snatched a handful of berries and then rushed back. I scratched my hand on the tree and banged my shin badly climbing back over the gate but I had the mulberries safe in my hand. I crammed them into my mouth and the juice spurted over my tongue and I closed my eyes because it was just just just like being back at Mulberry Cottage.

  I still stop at the mulberry garden every day. And mostly I slip inside.