Sundae Girl

by Cathy Cassidy

  The coffin is already here, heaped with flowers, and we have to walk past it to get to the front-row pew that has been set aside for us. I can feel Grandad falter as we file past, but he puts a fist to his mouth and carries on.

  Nuala and her family are halfway along the aisle, to the right, and Miss Devlin and Mr McGrath, side by side, and Sue from the hairdresser’s. Kristina Kowalski has come too, with Alex. I see them on the other side, two tawny-haired figures, one dressed in a black minidress, the other in a cartoon-knitted sweater and pyjama trousers.

  Next to the aisle, down near the front, there’s a lanky, straw-haired boy with no shoes, a pair of battered Rollerblades leaning against the kneeler. He grabs my hand as I go past, squeezing it tightly.

  We file into the front pew, sit down, Mum and Giovanni, Dad and Victoria, Grandad, Toto and me. We are a family, an unruly, awkward, embarrassing family, but a family all the same. How did I ever think otherwise?

  Gran is missing, of course. She was the heart of our mismatched family, but she will never be here again.

  The funeral Mass begins. The priest says sad things, lovely things, about Gran, and everyone sings sad hymns and there’s a lot of crying, not just in the front pew, and that’s OK. Then it’s over, and the pall-bearers carry the coffin outside to the big black car that will carry it to the graveyard.

  Everyone swarms out of the church then, and that’s the hardest bit, because people are hugging me, holding me, pressing my hand, telling me that my gran was a good woman, a wonderful woman, a saint.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Nuala asks when it’s her turn. ‘About your mum and everything?’ I just shake my head, because the reasons seem so small and stupid now.

  ‘I would have understood,’ she tells me. ‘You know that, don’t you, Jude? That’s what friends are for.’

  ‘I know,’ I say ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Idiot,’ Nuala says softly. Then, ‘I’m sorry about your gran. She was lovely. Remember when she showed us how to make jam tarts, when we were little, and we ate all the jam before the pastry cases were even cooked? She didn’t get mad or anything – just sent us down to the corner shop to buy more!’

  ‘She was lovely,’ I say, and the word was sticks in my throat, like a sliver of glass. Will I ever get used to it?

  Nuala moves aside and Kevin Carter walks right up and hugs me tightly, which isn’t as scary as you’d imagine. It feels safe and warm and good. ‘Thanks, Carter,’ I whisper into his neck. ‘For everything.’

  ‘S’OK,’ Carter says. ‘Any time.’

  We disentangle, still holding hands. ‘So …’ he says. ‘Does this mean you’ll go out with me now?’

  ‘Carter!’ I kick him on the ankle, and he yelps and backs off and sits down on the church steps, strapping on his Rollerblades. Then Kristina and Alex are in front of me, Kristina’s eye make-up all smudged and blotchy with tears.

  Nuala, still hovering at my side, does a double take.

  ‘Take care, Jude, OK?’ Kristina says, wrapping me briefly in a quick, strawberry-scented hug.

  ‘Take care, Kristina,’ I echo, and watch Nuala’s jaw drop.

  Carter appears on my other side, tottering on Rollerblades. He nods towards Alex. ‘Hello,’ he says. ‘And you are …?’

  Alex just squints at him, blankly, and in that moment I can see Carter catching on, working it out, sussing that Alex is different. His face softens.

  Kristina catches my eye, biting her lip. I can see the excuses running through her head, ready to drip off her tongue.

  ‘He’s my brother,’ she says at last, looking from Carter to Nuala, then back again to Alex. ‘He’s called Alex. OK?’

  ‘Oh! OK,’ says Carter, gently. ‘Good to meet you, Alex.’

  Then suddenly there’s a fluttering, a flash of green, and Alex points to the big black hearse, eyes shining. ‘Bird!’ he says.

  There on the big shiny hearse bonnet is a greenfinch, small, vivid, perfect, fluffing up its feathers in the sunshine.

  It’s October now, and spring is long gone. Summer’s over too, and the leaves on the trees that edge the graveyard are turning slowly to scarlet, bronze and gold. There’s a chill in the air, and I wind my black scarf tightly around my neck, letting the ends dangle. It’s the last scarf Gran ever knitted, and I love it, even though it’s full of holes and knots and made from three different kinds of wool.

  ‘What about me?’ Carter asks, tugging at the scarf. ‘Can’t we share?’

  We’re sitting side by side on the wall that runs alongside the graveyard, looking out at the new-mown grass, the rows of gravestones with their little metal pots filled with supermarket flowers. Carter unpeels the scarf, edges closer to me and wraps it around us both. The fringed ends hang down almost to the ground.

  Toto is scrabbling about in the grass at our feet, checking out Carter’s abandoned BMX bike, sniffing at the wire-mesh bins filled with rotting flowers, crumpled cellophane. Nearby, the standpipe tap still drips from where I changed the flowers on Gran’s grave, rinsed out the metal vase and refilled it.

  ‘I still miss her,’ I tell Carter. ‘All the time.’

  ‘I suppose you do,’ he says.

  He doesn’t say that I’ll get over it, or that the pain will fade with time, like other people do. He just listens, and I think he understands.

  ‘Grandad still sets a place for her at the table, sometimes,’ I say. ‘Or makes her a mug of cocoa at night. I don’t think he’ll ever totally believe that she’s gone.’

  ‘Well, you get used to people being around,’ Carter points out, grinning, digging me in the ribs.

  I smile. ‘Yeah. Yeah, you do.’

  I passed my piano exam, by the way – I even got my Merit. Mum framed the certificate and hung it on the wall in the living room, above the piano, right next to her framed poster of Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz.

  Things are different, now, at home. Mum came out of the alcohol dependency unit in May, and right away she signed up for a course the hospital were running on dealing with addiction. She took it seriously, going in every day, learning about alcohol and the way it affects the body. It’s a drug, she told me, for some people. She fell in love with drink, loved it more than me or Gran or Grandad, more than Dad or Giovanni. She let it drain the hope out of her life, turn a Technicolor world to black and white.

  ‘Drink wrecks lives,’ she said to me. ‘You wouldn’t believe the damage, the pain it can cause.’

  Well, I would, as it goes.

  ‘The trouble is, people don’t understand alcoholics,’ Mum went on. ‘They don’t want to be shouted at, or pitied or despised. None of that helps. They need to talk, they need to be understood. And who better to do that than an ex-drinker?’

  So now my mum is training to be a voluntary addiction counsellor, which sounds kind of crazy, but then again, in another way, it makes a lot of sense.

  Mum called Miss Devlin a few weeks ago, asking about the drama group, and after long discussions, the two of them agreed to organize a production of The Wizard of Oz at St Joe’s. ‘It’s a wonderful musical,’ Mum insisted. ‘With a timeless message. We’ve all wasted time looking for someone else to fix up all our troubles, haven’t we? But nobody else can do that – only we can. We’re the ones with the magic.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Miss Devlin said. ‘I suppose we’re all looking for our very own yellow-brick road.’

  It’s just a matter of time before Miss Devlin discovers that Mum will be more help with the hair, make-up and costumes than anything else, but hey – that’s showbiz.

  Giovanni, The One With No Backbone, is still around. His support and encouragement helped Mum get through, and it helped Grandad and me as well. Last month, he sold his ice-cream van on eBay. He hyped it up as a 1960s classic van, and scooped a fortune from some collector down south who reckons he’s going to do it up and put it in a museum.

  It turns out he’s been saving up for years anyway, and he’s just put down a deposit on a t
iny stall in the food court at the big shopping mall in town. It’s going to sell ice-cream sundaes, low-fat sorbets, frozen yoghurts and fresh fruit smoothies, just like Mum suggested. Giovanni will work there full-time, Mum and Grandad part-time, me on Saturdays. Scary.

  ‘At least I don’t have to wear a minidress and winkle-pickers,’ I tell Carter.

  ‘Shame,’ he says, his arm snaking around my waist. ‘That dress was cute! I liked the fringy bits.’

  I frown. ‘How do you know it was cute?’ I ask. ‘How do you know about the fringy bits?’

  Carter looks shifty. ‘Your grandad showed me the photos. Last week, when he was helping me fix the buckled wheel on my BMX.’

  Carter has abandoned his Rollerblades at last. Brendan Coyle chucked him out of the street hockey team, so he took my advice and found a new hobby. Sadly, his talents – if he has any – do not seem to lie in the world of BMXing, either.

  Carter pulls on the long black scarf, reeling me in like a fish on a line until our cheeks are touching. He puts a hand up to push my hair back, tilt my face towards him. He kisses me then, and my lips tingle and my toes curl, and I have to admit that Carter does have talents after all.

  After a while, Toto starts whining for attention, and we pull apart, grinning. Carter picks up a fallen branch and chucks it along the cobbled pathway for Toto to chase. It’s dusk, and the sky is streaked with pink and orange, casting a golden glow over everything.

  ‘Can’t wait to see the next lot of photos,’ he says slyly. ‘You know, the ones from Italy.’

  ‘You will not be seeing any photos from Italy!’ I tell him, sternly.

  ‘What was it you said?’ he teases. ‘Three metres of apricot-coloured net? Frills and flounces and satin ribbon! A proper bridesmaid’s dress, this time. Nice!’

  So I elbow him in the side and he yells and wriggles out of the scarf and falls back off the wall into the fallen leaves, waving his legs in the air.

  There’s going to be another wedding – Mum and Giovanni, this time. They’re flying out to Cosenza in Italy, where Giovanni is from, so that his mum, dad, three brothers, four sisters and twenty-two cousins can all be there, along with assorted aunts, uncles and friends.

  Grandad and I are going too, of course. It’s going to be a church wedding, and Grandad is going to walk down the aisle and give Mum away in time-honoured tradition. Me, I’ll be trussed up like an ice-cream sundae, leading six small Italian bridesmaids behind me.

  Yippee. I can’t wait.

  Carter jumps up and sits astride the wall.

  ‘Hey, Jude,’ he says, grinning at me. ‘How long have we been going out now?’

  ‘We’re not going out,’ I tell him.

  ‘Right.’ He frowns. ‘So … what are we doing exactly?’

  ‘Just hanging out.’

  ‘Hanging out. OK.’ He’s so near I can feel his breath, warm and sweet on my cheek. His fingers close around mine.

  ‘Whatever,’ he says. ‘We’ve been hanging out all summer, yeah?’

  ‘Suppose,’ I shrug.

  ‘Well, remember you once said you had to practise something lots to get really good at it?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it,’ he says, ‘and I reckon there are whole aspects of hanging out we haven’t even covered yet. It might take months and months – years even – to get it perfect.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So maybe we should put some more practice in, later. Meet you at the chippy at half seven?’

  Carter leans forward and kisses me softly, then jumps off the wall, picks up his BMX and pedals away. Toto runs along behind, nipping at his tyres.

  ‘Watch this!’ he shouts, rolling into a wheelie and trying to swat Toto away at the same time. Predictably, the BMX skids off the path and crashes into a wire-mesh bin. Carter sits up, rubbing his elbow.

  ‘I’m getting better!’ he says, grinning.

  In the setting sun, the cobbled path that cuts through the grass gleams golden yellow. It shimmers in the fading light like something magical, a path that could lead you to an emerald city, glinting in the distance, or maybe just to a night at the chippy with a cute, clumsy, straw-haired boy.

  The way I see it, you just have to take your Technicolor moments where you can, before the world fades back into black and white. I slide off the wall and run along the golden path towards Carter, my scarf flying out behind me.

  Thanks …

  To Liam for endless support, hugs and for managing to drive a VW camper van around the M25 with me screaming quietly in the background. To Calum and Caitlin for surviving so well when I’m busy writing/daydreaming – you were the best first readers ever! Also, to Mum, Dad, Andy, Lori, Joan and all my fab family You weren’t really embarrassing, honest – not compared to Jude’s lot! I’m lucky enough to have the best friends ever – special thanks to Helen, Sheena, Fiona, Mary-Jane, Zarah, Catriona and everyone else who has made time for fun, swims, slushy movies and heart-to-hearts over the last year. It means a whole lot to me.

  Thanks to Paul for the webby work and Martyn for the maths. Thanks to Darley, ‘special agent’, and his sassy sidekicks Julia, Lucie, Zoe and all at the agency. Also to Rebecca, my fab editor, Adele, for the ideas, the van and the pep talks … and Francesca, Kirsten, Tania, Jodie, Sarah, Alison, Emily, Katya, Sara, Jennie & the whole Puffin crew! I couldn’t do any of this without you.

  Most of all, thanks to the kids from all around the world who email my website, write to me or come to book festivals and signings … your support, enthusiasm and loyalty makes all the hard work worthwhile.

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  First published 2007

  Text copyright © Cathy Cassidy, 2007

  Illustrations copyright © Cathy Cassidy, 2007

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  ISBN: 978-0-141-91095-6