The Honeymoon Sisters

by Gwyneth Rees

‘You know you’re still only here on a trial basis, don’t you?’ I reminded her as I met her on the landing after I’d brushed my teeth. ‘Nothing’s been decided yet about whether or not you can stay longer.’

  ‘Is that what you think?’ Her eyes were sparkling wickedly.

  ‘Yes.’ I struggled to keep my cool. ‘It’s not even just up to us. Social services have to do an assessment first.’

  ‘Sure, but if your mum’s happy and I’m happy, they’re not going to upset the apple cart, are they? And even if you kick up a fuss I have a feeling your mum’s not going to listen.’

  ‘Yes she will,’ I snarled.

  Sadie shrugged. ‘It’s just, she seems pretty pleased to be looking after me. Dad says that’s what she wanted when I was little but he wouldn’t let her have me. That’s why they fell out.’

  I glared at her. ‘Yeah, right …’

  Sadie just smiled like she knew better. ‘Your mum needs people to need her,’ she whispered. ‘And I need her more than you do. After all, you’ve still got your dad, whereas I’ve got nobody. She won’t kick me out.’

  I realised she must have heard most of my argument with Mum last night. I suddenly remembered something Dad had once shouted at Mum when they’d been rowing – something I hadn’t really understood at the time. He’d yelled that he was sorry he wasn’t needy enough for her. Now for the first time I thought I understood what he meant. Mum was always helping out needy people. Maybe Sadie was right. Maybe if I tried to make Mum choose between Sadie and me then she might actually choose the one she thought needed her most.

  But I wasn’t about to let Sadie know how she’d got to me.

  ‘She will kick you out when I get her to see what you’re really like,’ I retaliated.

  Sadie just grinned. ‘Well, good luck with that.’

  As I walked to school alone I tried to think of something nice to occupy my mind – something that had nothing to do with Sadie. I started thinking about Amy and all the fun times we’d had together. But that just got me dwelling on the fact that Amy was the little sister I’d always wanted. If only Mum had adopted her! Mum was going on about how much Sadie needed us, but what about Amy? In the beginning, when Amy had no prospective parents lining up to adopt her, we were all she had. How come Mum hadn’t felt so strongly about giving her a home?

  The more I thought about it, the angrier I became with Mum.

  I started thinking about Lenny’s next visit and everything I wanted to say to her about Sadie. But I knew I had to be careful. Even if I got Lenny to decide that Sadie and I couldn’t live in the same house together, Mum might not want Sadie to leave. After all, whereas Sadie had nobody else to look after her, Mum knew I could always go and live with Dad as a backup.

  The morning at school was OK, but straight after lunch we had double English, which meant I had to face Mr Anderson again after that whole embarrassing incident in the bookshop at the weekend.

  To my surprise he actually came up to speak to me at my desk before Anne-Marie or Sadie arrived. ‘Guess how Sean spent his Sunday afternoon,’ he said in a quiet voice. ‘Doing a book report on a poetry book! That’ll teach him, huh?’ He gave me a good-natured grin that clearly said ‘No hard feelings’, and even though I was starting to blush I was glad we had cleared the air.

  I felt better until Anne-Marie joined me, gave me a sharp nudge and demanded to know why I hadn’t told her that my mum was fostering Sadie. Word had clearly got out, though Anne-Marie didn’t seem to know yet that Sadie was actually my cousin.

  Five minutes before the bell was due to ring for afternoon break, Mr Anderson said he’d like to hear a few of the poems we’d written for homework. We were supposed to read them out last Friday but there hadn’t been enough time.

  I hadn’t even done mine. The trouble was I hadn’t been able to find Anne-Marie’s sketch, though she swore she had definitely put it in my bag. I didn’t think Mr Anderson would mind that much as he always treats his last-thing-on-a-Friday-afternoon tasks as a bit of fun, but Anne-Marie was clearly pretty annoyed. She picked up my schoolbag to search inside it herself as someone on the other side of the room read out their poem.

  The next person to be picked was Sadie.

  She looked very calm as she stood up. ‘I had Poppy’s drawing,’ she announced.

  That’s when I started to feel my heart thumping. Why had I given her my sketch of Amy? Now she was going to make fun of it …

  I twisted round in my seat to look at her and it was all I could do not to turn back to face the front and plug my fingers in my ears.

  ‘AMY,’ she read out in a calm voice as she held up my picture. Her poem was very short and nothing like I’d expected.

  ‘A is for Afro

  M is for mischievous

  Y is for yellow ribbons.’

  Then she sat down in her seat abruptly.

  I immediately thought of the photo on our fridge of Amy with yellow ribbons in her hair and a mischievous grin on her face. I have to say I felt a bit stunned.

  ‘Very good, Sadie,’ Mr Anderson said. ‘Simple and very effective. Well done.’

  ‘Trust her,’ Anne-Marie hissed in my ear, though I knew she was just jealous that Sadie was getting praised and not her. ‘That wasn’t even a proper poem. At least the verse I wrote about her stupid bird is humorous and does actually rhyme!’

  ‘Wait … you managed to write a humorous poem about a bird that’s had its throat cut and then been stuffed?’ I said. ‘I thought you were an animal lover!’

  ‘I am. I just did it to annoy Sadie. If I don’t get picked to read it out I’m going to slip it into her bag.’ She grinned. ‘Probably safer to do that anyway!’ She returned to rummaging in my bag, which she had half emptied out on to our desk.

  ‘Found it!’ she hissed as she pulled out her missing drawing. ‘It was in your science folder. You didn’t look very hard, did you?’ She gave it to me and I saw that she’d drawn a man with a gigantic bum and written ‘Mr Anderson’ beside it.

  ‘Anne-Marie, you are pathetic,’ I whispered.

  ‘What’s this then, Poppy?’ To my horror I realised Mr Anderson was coming up behind me.

  ‘It’s not mine,’ I hissed, but I wasn’t sure if he heard me as the bell rang to signal the end of the lesson. ‘It’s Anne-Marie’s,’ I added, but my voice was drowned out by everyone else’s as they packed up their stuff ready to leave.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Mr Anderson said when he saw it. ‘Thanks for that, girls. Please tell me you haven’t got a poem to go with it.’

  ‘No … there’s no poem,’ we both said together.

  I felt like my whole face had burst into flames as I left the classroom.

  Anne-Marie was trying to stop giggling. ‘Sorry,’ she whispered. ‘It was meant to be a joke. I didn’t think he’d see it.’

  ‘Well, he did!’ I snarled. ‘You do realise he’s going to think I’m totally obsessed with the size of his bum now?’

  But that just made her giggle even more.

  *

  I went over to the nearest bit of wall in the playground and sat down. I wished I could just run home and hide. If only I could hole up in my bedroom until I stopped feeling like I was … I don’t know … leaking out my worries all over the place or something. It’s hard to describe, but it felt like the invisible barrier that usually does a great job of containing all my thoughts and feelings had suddenly stopped working and the rest of the world could actually see the really uncool mess going on inside my brain.

  ‘Are you OK, Poppy?’ I turned to see Josh in full big-brother mode, looking all concerned as I bit my bottom lip and tried not to give in to the urge to bawl my eyes out.

  ‘Not really,’ I grunted.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Everything!’ I told him about Anne-Marie’s sketch, and I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when his first response was to laugh.

  ‘Oh dear …’ he spluttered, then pulled a straight face as he saw how close to
tears I was. ‘Listen, if you like, I’ll get Sean to explain –’

  ‘Sean?’ I scoffed. ‘Don’t be stupid! He’ll be too busy rolling about laughing to explain anything.’

  ‘Not if he sees how upset you are.’

  ‘Sure … right.’

  ‘No, you’ll see. Sean likes you. He’s going to want to help. He’s only gone to the tuck shop … there he is now …’

  I felt myself flushing for absolutely no reason when Sean arrived and sat down on the wall beside us. He offered us his crisps and Josh took one.

  ‘Listen, Sean … you know that mate of Poppy’s with the big mouth – Anne-Marie? She’s dropped Poppy in it with Leo and I was thinking you could help sort it,’ Josh told him. (It was funny hearing Josh refer to our English teacher by his first name. He’s started to do that quite a bit when he’s with Sean.)

  ‘Josh, leave it. It doesn’t matter!’

  ‘Anne-Marie drew an embarrassing picture of Leo and he saw Poppy with it,’ Josh continued as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘Now he thinks Poppy drew it.’

  ‘An embarrassing picture? Brilliant! Did it feature his enormous bum, by any chance?’ Sean was grinning.

  I felt my face getting even hotter. ‘Josh – I told you to leave it!’ I spat out angrily, jumping up to leave. But to my horror, before I could get away, I started to cry. (Sometimes when I’m really angry about something, it’s like my brain has gone bananas and the angry bit has got cross-wired with the upset bit or something.)

  ‘Hey!’ A hand reached out and grabbed my arm. At first I thought it was Josh, and I was about to shake him off when I saw that the hand belonged to Sean. ‘I’m sorry …’ he said. ‘I should stop going on about it, but it was just so cool what you said that time, that’s all … you see all the other girls at school were going on endlessly about how perfect he is … which makes you want to throw up after a while … and there you were saying … well … you know …’

  I stood facing him, trying to assess if he was winding me up. His eyes were pretty sincere.

  ‘Julia blew the whole thing way out of proportion,’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘I didn’t even say it the way she made out.’

  ‘Well, don’t worry, cos you haven’t given Leo a complex about his bum, if that’s what’s bothering you. He already knows he spends way too much time sitting on it reading books and that he needs to start cycling everywhere like Mr Christie if he wants to get a 5/5!’

  ‘Anne-Marie was the one who invented that stupid quiz – not me!’

  ‘I think he knows that, Poppy.’

  ‘But now he’s seen that horrible drawing Anne-Marie did and he thinks it’s mine –’

  ‘Don’t worry about that. I bet he already guessed who did it. He’s pretty smart about that kind of thing. But just in case, I promise I’ll tell him it was Anne-Marie. OK?’

  ‘Could you?’ I asked hopefully. ‘But be careful cos I don’t want to get Anne-Marie into trouble and –’

  ‘You know what? You’re just like my sister!’ he interrupted me with a cheeky grin. ‘She’s always worrying and overthinking everything too!’

  Chapter Thirteen

  The next bit of trouble between Sadie and me started that afternoon when we got home from school. I’d had to explain to Anne-Marie why Sadie was living with us and I’d ended up telling her we were cousins. I had told her as few of the details as possible and asked her to keep it a secret, but Sadie was still furious because she said Anne-Marie would definitely blab and then it would be round the school in no time.

  ‘It doesn’t matter that much if they know, does it?’ I defended myself.

  ‘That’s easy for you to say!’ she huffed.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘What do you think it means?’

  ‘Listen, she was asking me loads of questions and I had to give her something or she’d never have shut up. Maybe I should’ve told her your dad’s in prison instead?’

  She glared at me angrily. ‘You didn’t have to tell her anything! Hey, what’s this?’

  She had been emptying out her schoolbag looking for her homework diary and she’d just discovered the poem Anne-Marie had put there earlier.

  I once killed a bird

  Whose last words were absurd –

  ‘I’d be chuffed to be stuffed,’ it did say.

  So I said I would pay

  To put it on display

  And the taxidermist came the next day.

  I laughed when Sadie showed it to me. It was actually one of Anne-Marie’s better creations. In fact, I couldn’t help wondering if her dad had helped her with it. He’s a bit of a joker and I could imagine him encouraging her with something like this.

  ‘It’s not funny!’ Sadie said angrily. ‘People really do kill animals and birds just to get them stuffed.’

  ‘Come on, Sadie,’ I protested. ‘Anne-Marie was just having a bit of fun. She’s the last person who would hurt an animal. She’s totally potty about them. Her whole back garden and conservatory are full of rabbit hutches and cages with gerbils and guinea pigs and hamsters and stuff. She gets them from rescue centres and looks after them all by herself, cleaning out their cages and using her pocket money to buy them things they need. I’m telling you she’s animal mad.’

  Sadie had gone alarmingly quiet. ‘I had no idea,’ she finally murmured.

  ‘Well … yeah …’ I was a little confused by her reaction.

  ‘So it’s a sort of zoo for small furries?’

  ‘Well … sort of, I suppose …’

  ‘I don’t agree with zoos. Or with animals being kept locked up in cages.’

  ‘Oh come on, Sadie, they’re pets. They’d die in the wild.’

  ‘Better to die in the wild than live in a cage for your whole life,’ Sadie said.

  ‘But they aren’t in cages the whole time. The rabbits get the run of the garden and the guinea pigs have an outside run too. Anyway, they’re domestic rabbits. They’re meant to be kept as pets.’

  ‘Alison says a cage is a cage however you try and dress it up,’ she stated firmly.

  ‘She would,’ I muttered.

  ‘Did I tell you she got expelled from school last year for trashing the science lab?’ she added proudly. ‘It was a protest because she found out our science teacher used to work in a laboratory where they did experiments on animals.’

  ‘Crikey!’ Now she had my attention.

  She grinned. ‘Actually that’s just given me an idea of how to deal with snooty Anne-Marie.’

  ‘Sadie, leave it. She doesn’t need dealing with.’

  She smirked. ‘I think she does.’

  My phone started ringing and I saw that it was Dad.

  ‘Hi, Dad. Is everything OK?’ I asked, forgetting about Sadie for a moment. Normally Dad phones because he needs to cancel or rearrange something and I was already bracing myself for the disappointment. Then I realised we didn’t actually have another day together set up yet.

  ‘Poppy, I’m phoning about Friday. Presumably you’re already aware that it’s my birthday?’ Dad always sounds horribly businesslike on the phone.

  ‘Of course, Dad!’ How could he think I’d forget?

  ‘Kristen suggested the three of us go out for an early supper somewhere. She could meet you from school and bring you into town. The two of you can go shopping or something first and then I’ll meet you and take you somewhere special for dinner. How’s that?’

  ‘Oh.’ To say I was surprised would be an understatement. In fact, I loved the idea of going shopping with Kristen, though I knew I’d have to be careful not to sound too enthusiastic in front of Mum.

  ‘Poppy?’ He sounded a bit impatient and I realised I hadn’t given him an answer.

  ‘That sounds great, Dad.’ To actually see Dad on his birthday and get to celebrate it with him would be fantastic! ‘I just need to check with Mum.’

  ‘If there’s a problem, get her to ring me,’ he said (which I knew meant he was prepared
to argue with her about it if necessary). ‘Otherwise I’ll see you on Friday.’

  ‘OK. See you on Friday.’

  As I came off the phone I couldn’t help wishing we were more like Anne-Marie’s family, who always say ‘Love you’ to each other at the end of every phone call. I think that’s really nice, and sometimes I imagine myself saying that to Dad and him saying it back to me. Somehow I can’t see that ever happening for real though. Even Mum doesn’t do it that often.

  ‘Is everything all right, girls?’ Mum asked as she came into the kitchen.

  ‘Yes,’ I said quickly. ‘Dad just phoned.’ I told her what he’d suggested and she said that was fine. ‘Mum, when is Lenny coming next?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m not sure. She’s getting back to me about it. Why?’

  ‘I want to speak to her.’

  I saw the wary look Sadie gave me but I didn’t care. I went to get changed out of my school uniform.

  ‘So what are you going to tell Lenny?’ Sadie demanded, coming into my room without even knocking.

  I shrugged. ‘Haven’t decided yet.’

  ‘You know what, Poppy? I like it here – and I really want to stay. So if you insist on trying to spoil things for me, like telling the social workers about me going to see Alison, then I might just have to speak to them too. Because there’s something I know about your mum that I bet they don’t.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She came and sat down on my bed uninvited, looking like she was about to confide some big secret. ‘I know the real reason your mum and my dad fell out.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I asked impatiently. I wanted to get changed, but I wasn’t about to do it in front of her.

  ‘Your mum tried to steal me away from Dad when I was little. That’s why he wouldn’t let her see me again. She actually tried to kidnap me!’

  ‘Oh come off it!’ I scoffed. ‘Mum loves children … there’s no way she’d ever do anything like that to you or any other child …’

  ‘Dad says she probably thought she was rescuing me, but that she still had no right.’ She lowered her voice. ‘You see, she wanted to adopt me, and when Dad said no she freaked out, and that’s when she tried to kidnap me.’ She paused. ‘Somehow I don’t think she’d be allowed to be a foster carer any longer if social services knew about that, do you?’