Clean Break Read online

  Gran came bursting into the kitchen, disturbed from her nap.

  ‘What’s going on? Oh, for God’s sake, you’ve been sick all over my best china!’

  ‘Who’s been sick?’ said Mum, coming in too. Vita and Maxie followed her.

  ‘Em’s been sick,’ said Gran. ‘I told you not to make a pig of yourself, Emily.’

  ‘Yuck!’ said Vita.

  ‘It smells!’ said Maxie.

  ‘You two, out of here,’ said Mum. ‘Go into the living room with your gran. I’ll clear it all up.’

  ‘Maybe you’ll listen to me when I tell you that child should stop stuffing herself. God, what a mess! It’s even splashed on the curtains!’ Gran was nearly in tears herself.

  ‘I’ll wash everything. Just leave us alone, please,’ said Dad.

  He said it very quietly, but Gran stopped fussing and dragged Vita and Maxie out of the kitchen.

  ‘Oh, Em,’ said Mum, dabbing at me with a tea towel. ‘We’d better pull these things off and stick you straight in the bath. Couldn’t you have run to the toilet if you were going to be so sick?’

  ‘It wasn’t her fault,’ said Dad. He was so grey-white he looked like he might be sick himself.

  ‘What do you mean? What’s going on?’ said Mum, trying to hitch my sweater over my head.

  ‘Don’t tell her, Dad!’ I said through layers of soggy wool.

  If he kept quiet then maybe it wouldn’t be real.

  ‘I was planning on telling you anyway, but I was leaving it till after Christmas. I’m so sorry. I just hate myself for doing this to you. I didn’t mean it to happen.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ said Mum, letting go of me.

  Dad took a deep breath. ‘I’ve met someone else, Julie.’

  Mum scarcely blinked. ‘Yes. Well. That’s nothing new,’ she said.

  ‘But this time, well, I love her. I’m sorry, I don’t want to hurt you, but this is it, the real thing. It’s never been this way before.’

  ‘You don’t want to hurt me and yet you’re telling me you love someone else?’ said Mum, her face crumpling.

  ‘Oh, Mum, don’t cry,’ I begged. I wanted to put my arms round her but I was so wet and disgusting I couldn’t touch her.

  ‘Go and get in the bath, Em,’ Dad said. ‘Your mum and I need to talk.’

  ‘I need to talk too,’ I said. ‘You love us, Dad – Mum and me and Vita and Maxie.’

  ‘Of course I love you, darling. I shall come and visit you lots, but I can’t help it. I have to go.’

  ‘You can’t do this to me! You can’t, you can’t!’ Mum started sobbing, swaying on her silver sandals.

  Dad tried to put his arm round her but she started hitting him.

  ‘Don’t, Mum, don’t, Dad!’ I shouted.

  I couldn’t believe this was happening. I kept shutting my eyes and opening them, hoping that I was dreaming. If only I could open my eyes determinedly enough I’d get back to our magical Christmas Day.

  Gran came back in the kitchen and she started shouting too. Then she was propelling me out of the room, dragging me upstairs to the bathroom, stripping the rest of my clothes off and dunking me in the bath like a baby. She soaped me so hard it felt like she was slapping me.

  Vita and Maxie kept tapping on the bathroom door, crying to be let in.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Gran, shampooing my hair because some of it had dangled in the sick. Her nails dug right into my scalp.

  I didn’t dare tell her she was hurting me. She seemed so terrifyingly cross with me, as if it was all my fault.

  Maybe it was my fault.

  Vita and Maxie seemed ready to blame me. They came hurtling into the bathroom.

  ‘Mum’s mad at Dad because you were sick everywhere, Em,’ said Vita.

  ‘She’s shouting and shouting. She even shouted at me though I wasn’t sick,’ Maxie wept.

  They didn’t seem to understand what was really going on. They were too little. I wanted to be too little too. Gran was bathing me like a baby. I wanted to be a baby. I wanted her to wrap me in the towel and pick me up and hug me close. She must have made a proper fuss of me when I was a baby – all grans did.

  ‘There, Em, get out the bath. Don’t just stand there looking gormless,’ Gran snapped. ‘Get yourself dry and then get some clean clothes on.’

  She yanked at me so that I nearly overbalanced. My emerald gleamed as I waved my arms in the air.

  ‘Oh, Gran, my ring! I’ve got it all wet and soapy! Oh no, what if I’ve spoiled it!’ I gasped.

  ‘Yes, well, it was ridiculous giving a child your age an emerald ring,’ said Gran. ‘Typical badword Frankie!’

  It was such a bad word that we all stared at her. How dare she call my dad horrible names! I looked at her pale veiny legs showing through her dressing gown.

  ‘It was ridiculous giving an old lady your age a pair of jeans,’ I said.

  Vita and Maxie gasped. I backed away from her rapidly because she looked like she was going to slap me. But she just sighed and shook her head at me, as if she’d simply caught me scratching or picking my nose. I realized she was too concerned with what was happening down in the kitchen to care about me cheeking her.

  Mum was still screaming and sobbing, on and on and on.

  When I was dry and dressed and in clean clothes Gran made Vita and Maxie and me stay shut up in the living room. She put the television volume up until it buzzed whenever anyone talked but we could still hear Mum in the kitchen. I kept switching channels until Gran snatched the remote out of my hand.

  ‘Let’s watch a video. Let’s watch Thomas. Please, please, Thomas!’ Maxie begged.

  He hadn’t watched Thomas the Tank Engine for months and months. He still knew it by heart. We all knew it by heart but we tried to watch it, even Gran. Mum was still shouting. Dad was shouting back now. Vita put her thumb in her mouth and rubbed her nose on Dancer’s fur. Maxie kept his eyes on Thomas but under his breath he muttered, ‘Bad Mummy, bad Daddy.’

  I wished I had a remote for Mum and Dad so I could press their mute button. I kept telling myself that it would somehow be all right. They’d stop shouting and suddenly sigh and fall into each other’s arms. They’d done this enough times in the past so they could do it again. Dad would say he’d been mad to think of leaving us. He’d swear he’d never see this Sarah again. He’d stay with Mum and Vita and Maxie and me and we’d all live happily ever after. I told myself this fairy story over and over, clenching my fists, my emerald ring digging into my skin.

  ‘For pity’s sake, look at you kids! It’s Christmas!’ said Gran.

  She wrapped her dressing gown right round her and marched off to the kitchen, her bedroom slippers thwacking the floor at each step.

  ‘She’s gone to tell them off,’ said Maxie.

  It seemed to work. The shouting stopped. There was a lot of muttering. Then Gran came back into the living room. Dad came with her. His eyes were red as if he’d been crying too, but he was smiling determinedly. He looked like his upturned lips had been stuck on his face by mistake.

  ‘Right, my little lovelies, what do we all want to play, eh?’

  ‘We could play Snap,’ Maxie suggested.

  He was useless at Snap, so slow at recognizing two identical cards that he simply screamed ‘Snap!’ at the top of his voice all the time. Your ears ached when you played Snap with Maxie.

  ‘Snap’s stupid, and Maxie can’t play it properly,’ said Vita. ‘Let’s play Happy Families.’

  Dad winced. Vita wasn’t deliberately getting at him. She liked Happy Families because she loved the pictures of the rabbit and the squirrel and the mouse families.

  ‘Let’s play a Christmas game,’ said Dad. He looked round for Dancer and put his hand up inside her.

  ‘We’ll all dance,’ said Dancer. ‘Let’s play Musical Bumps.’

  Dad shuffled through the CDs until he found an old Children’s Favourites with silly songs about pink toothbrushes and mic