The Suitcase Kid Read online

  I take my cue and go back into the room. They all three give me big false smiles. I don’t smile back. I still don’t say anything. They think they’ve sussed me out but they know nothing. And they’re wrong about my new brothers and sisters, as a matter of fact. I don’t think much of Zen but Crystal’s OK, she can be quite sweet sometimes. I detest and despise little sugar-mouse Katie but Paula’s funny, though she gets narked with me when I use her drying tights as a slide for Radish. But the best one of all is Graham. We are now mates.

  He kept out of the way as usual for a few days and then he suddenly waylaid me on the stairs.

  ‘I’ve got something in my room for you,’ he muttered.

  It was a boat. He’d made me a real little Radish-sized boat out of pieces of wood carefully nailed together and then painted. There’s a real sail made from an old hankie and a little red ribbon flag on top.

  ‘This one floats,’ said Graham. ‘I’ve tried it out in the bath. And it’ll take one passenger easily.’

  ‘Oh Graham!’ I gave him a big hug. He went very pink and his glasses misted over. ‘It’s a lovely boat. It must have taken you ages. Why did you do it for me?’

  ‘Because I like the way you keep bashing Katie,’ said Graham, grinning. ‘I can’t stick her either. She always used to get on to me and tease me and muck up my stuff. Now she leaves me alone because she’s got you to plague.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s not fair. And I can’t ever get away from her.’ I considered, my head on one side. ‘It’s awful sharing a room with her. Tell you what, Graham, I could come in here with you sometimes, couldn’t I?’

  ‘Oh, this is too small for two people what with my computer and everything,’ Graham stammered, blinking anxiously.

  ‘It’s OK. I’ve got my own secret place where I go actually.’

  ‘The bathroom?’

  ‘No, much much better than the bathroom. I go there after school. That’s where I’ll sail my boat. Thanks ever so much, Graham. Here, we’re mates now, aren’t we, you and me?’

  ‘Yes OK, if you like,’ said Graham.

  I do like. And so does Radish. She liked the video vessel very much but she adores her real sailing boat. She’d sail the lake all day long if I let her.

  KATIE KEEPS ME awake half the night. She won’t have the light out for a start. Well, she’ll switch the main light off but she’s got this little china lamp in the shape of a toadstool with all these dinky rabbits and squirrels perched on little china chairs inside (Radish squeezed through the little door and tried to make friends but they didn’t want to know). The lamp glows all night long, and then Katie has her own torch and she nearly always has her television on too. She turns the sound down low but the picture goes on flickering.

  The only way I can find a bit of proper dark is right under the bedclothes and then I nearly suffocate.

  ‘Switch that stupid set off!’

  ‘It’s my telly. It’s my bedroom. I can do what I want.’

  ‘I’ll tell my mum.’

  ‘I’ll tell my dad.’

  ‘I want to go to sleep.’

  ‘Well I want to stay awake.’

  ‘Look, I’m turning it off, so tough titty,’ I said, jumping out of bed and switching off the set.

  ‘And I’m turning it on, so tough titties with knobs on,’ said Katie, bouncing out of bed and switching it straight back on.

  She likes it when we have these long arguments late at night. She likes to stay wide awake. Sometimes I have a bad dream and I wake up at two or three in the morning and if I look over at Katie’s bed her eyes are nearly always open, big and blue and unblinking.

  It’s not that she can’t go to sleep. She fights terribly hard not to. She almost never lies down comfortably. She sits up with all her pillows propped behind her. She eats biscuits and drinks a lot of water so she has to keep nipping along to the bathroom. She even wears an old angora jumper under her pyjamas. It’s so tight and tickly it does a splendid job keeping her awake.

  ‘You aren’t half a baby, Katie. Ten years old and scared of the dark.’

  ‘Oh, I’m scared am I?’ said Katie, and she touched the volume control on the television. She was watching one of those awful Nightmare films and just the sound of the creepy music made me put my head back under the covers.

  It was my mate Graham who helped me suss things out. He gets a bit fussed and fidgety if I barge into his bedroom but we sometimes have these little chats on the stairs now. He used to share a bedroom with Katie when they were both little so he knows what it’s like.

  ‘She didn’t have a television then so she used to make me play all these games with her and then we’d have to take turns telling ghost stories and whenever I fell asleep she’d pinch me and once she hit me so hard with her torch I had a black eye in the morning and I got into trouble with Dad for it because he said I was a right little wimp if my kid sister could get the better of me in a scrap,’ Graham said, sighing.

  ‘Doesn’t she get tired like other people?’

  ‘Yes, of course she does. Haven’t you seen the dark circles under her eyes? And she sometimes falls asleep at school.’

  ‘So why won’t she go to sleep at night like anyone else?’

  ‘Because she’s scared.’

  ‘But she makes herself scared, watching all those horrid videos.’

  ‘No, that’s to keep her awake. She’s scared of going to sleep.’

  ‘Mm?’ I stared at him. ‘What’s there to be scared of in going to sleep?’

  Graham fidgeted quite a bit. He screwed up his face several times and took his glasses off and polished them.

  ‘She’s just scared, that’s all.’

  ‘But what of?’

  Graham’s eyes looked very strange and bare and pink without his glasses. They blinked a lot.

  ‘When our mum died they told us she’d gone to sleep,’ he said, swallowing. ‘Paula and I knew she’d been ill and then we knew she was dead. But Katie was just this little squirt and she didn’t know what dead meant. So they said it was just like going to sleep. They meant to be kind but she got very scared of going to sleep after that.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Andy?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t tease her about it, eh? I mean, I know she’s a right pain, she’s my own sister and yet I can’t stick her, but all the same, don’t go on about it.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  And I didn’t. That night I didn’t even moan when she kept bumbling about the bedroom hour after hour. I settled down and went to sleep myself. I woke up about midnight. I looked over. Katie was still awake, sitting bolt upright staring at the television screen.

  ‘Katie.’ I reached out and touched her. She was icy cold. ‘Hey. Why don’t you switch that off and come in my bed for a cuddle, eh?’

  She paused. There was a little silence. Then she gave a sniff.

  ‘What on earth makes you think I want to come in your bed, Andy Pandy? You’re so big and fat I’d get squashed flat in five minutes.’

  I still didn’t tease her. But I didn’t half want to.

  I DON’T LIKE Old People. They really get on my nerves.

  Miss Maynard is old. She’s my headmistress. I had to go and see her the other day. She started off being quite matey and she even offered me one of her special toffees but then she started in on me.

  ‘It’s just not good enough, Andrea. Your schoolwork’s gone to pieces this year. You don’t hand your homework in on time, or you don’t even bother to do it. You don’t have your P.E. kit for your lessons. You don’t bring a proper sick note when you’ve been off school. What’s going on, mmm?’

  My teeth got jammed in this huge wodge of toffee so I could only manage to urgle-urgle in response. Anyway, how could I explain properly? I’m so busy flitting from my mum’s place to Dad’s and back again that I leave half my stuff behind. I hand Mum my P.E. stuff to go in the wash and then I forget to take it with me to Dad’s. It’s no use expecting Carr