by Suzi Moore
So, when I went back to school, I showed my friends the photographs I’d taken. I showed them the pictures of Dad so they could see with their own eyes that he really was a stuntman. He really was the man who jumped out of planes, off the top of buildings and out of burning cars for none other than James Bond.
Which I think is probably the coolest and most interesting job that a dad can have. Ask your dad. I bet he’ll agree.
Mum says that Dad wasn’t scared of anything at all. Apart from rats. He hated rats. Which was why I wasn’t allowed a pet rat for my tenth birthday, but I did get something even better. I got a dog. A chocolate-brown puppy with the biggest eyes you ever saw and we all decided that he looked just like an otter so that was what we called him.
The one thing my dad really loved to do was fly. He always said it was his first love. When he was sixteen, he flew across the English Channel all by himself. Sometimes I would go with him to the airfield at the weekend and we would polish his little yellow plane so much that you could see your face in the wings. I loved that yellow plane. I used to sit in the cockpit and Dad showed me how it worked. He took me up in it eight times and he told me that, when I was old enough, he would let me fly it myself and, if I could just learn how to hold the brushes more carefully, if I could keep my hands still, I might be able to make the miniature planes like he could too. Mum said that the two of us spent so much time talking about planes and cleaning, polishing and fixing the little yellow plane that I could probably already fly it all by myself with a blindfold on. Dad said that if I was anything like him I probably could.
Then, one day, almost exactly sixteen months ago on May 29th, we went to watch my dad perform his aeroplane tricks at a special show where lots of stuntmen and women came from all over the world to amaze the crowds with their Daredevil Show. We drove from our house in London to Sussex in my dad’s brand-new red sports car which had one of those roofs that you can take down. By the time we arrived, Mum’s hair was kind of blown in every direction so that it looked like a seagull was nesting in it. I remember that I was really excited and I just couldn’t wait to see what sort of tricks my dad was going to perform. We watched the crowds getting bigger and bigger and, when they knew it was time for my dad, the James Bond stuntman, they cheered and cheered.
I heard the little yellow plane chug past the crowds and I watched as Dad sped up down the runway and took off. Do you know the song ‘Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines’? If you don’t, ask a grown-up. I bet you anything they can sing it for you. It goes a bit like this:
Those magnificent men in their flying machines,
They go up, tiddly up, up,
They go down, tiddly down, down.
Up,
Down,
Flying around,
Looping the loop and defying the ground.
That afternoon we watched as my dad went up, up, up. We shouted and waved as he went down, down, down. I shouted, ‘I love you, Dad!’ as he looped the loop not once but three times. Then he went down, down, down, but the little yellow plane did not defy the ground. It went down, down, down, all the way to the ground, where it became a ball of yellow and orange flames.
That was how my dad died.
We didn’t have a funeral where everyone cries and dresses up in black. We had a massive party at our house which went on all weekend. Mum said it was a party to celebrate Dad’s amazing life. The house was so full of people that you could hardly get up the stairs without having to climb over someone. And everyone kept telling me how great my dad was, how everyone had loved him and that there was no one else in the world that could do stunts as good as he could. But it didn’t feel very amazing to me.
If he was such an amazing stuntman, why couldn’t he have landed the little yellow plane properly like he normally did? Why did he smash the plane into the ground? I want to ask Mum about it, but I’m too scared. She gets a bit upset when I ask about Dad and I hate to see her cry. Sometimes I fall asleep to the sound of her sobbing, and quite a few times I’ve woken up and she’s asleep in the bunk bed below mine, but I don’t mind. The last time she did that I went downstairs, made her a cup of tea and a piece of toast, although I did spill quite a bit of the tea on the carpet and I forgot to put her three sugars in, but she smiled loads when she saw the breakfast in bed.
So far I haven’t cried at all. I keep waiting for it to happen. Mum says I have to be really brave, just like Dad was, but I don’t think I could ever be as brave as him. Really I keep waiting for Dad to suddenly burst through the door, but that hasn’t happened either.
Mum says in a way we’re ‘lucky duckies’ because we have each other, and my mum isn’t like any of the other mums I know. She’s much younger than all my friends’ mums, but sometimes I wish she’d wear less embarrassing clothes. She once told me that she hadn’t planned to have babies or anything like that. She wasn’t really interested in changing nappies and stuff, so I was a bit of an ‘accident’. But then she told me that her and Dad always said that if all accidents were as wonderful as me they’d fall over on purpose all day long.
After it happened, Mum wanted us to go on holiday to a tiny island in the Caribbean for Christmas. She said it might not feel so sad if we went away instead of being at the house without Dad because, unlike all of my friends from school, I don’t have any grandparents. My dad never knew his mum and dad because he grew up in one of those homes where lots of children with no parents live. My mum’s mum died before I was born and her dad died before I had learnt to talk. Mum says I did meet him, but I don’t remember. So, even though Mum has lots of friends, we don’t have any family left now, and Christmas would have just been the two of us which would have felt a bit weird.
The trip sounded exciting and we were supposed to fly there on a massive plane, but the day before I started feeling weird. I kept asking Mum if we’d be safe in the big plane and she had to keep telling me we’d be OK. I actually felt sick when I went to bed and every time I closed my eyes I saw Dad’s little yellow plane as it burst into flames. Mum let Otter sleep on my bed that night, but I still had the world’s most horrid dream that our plane crashed into the ocean and we were surrounded by great white sharks. I woke up sweating and panting for breath.
At the airport it got worse. The noise from the planes and the crowds of people rushing this way and that way made me feel dizzier and dizzier until I felt like I couldn’t catch my breath. I wanted to shout: ‘I don’t want to go! What if we crash too?’ I wanted to cry, but I wouldn’t let myself. Dad always said that you should always do the thing that scares you the most, but I wasn’t as brave as him and I knew in that moment I never could be.
As we stood in the queue to board, I saw the burning plane once more and it was too much; the Coke bottle fell from my hand and I turned and ran. Well, I ran as far as a security guard would let me which wasn’t that far really. He grabbed hold of my rucksack and I fell to the ground and banged my head. For some reason I kicked out at him and, even though I didn’t really kick him that hard, Mum was more cross about that than us missing our plane. She was even angrier when I refused to say sorry.
‘He wasn’t a security guard, Zack! He was a policeman! You can get into big trouble for that sort of thing, you know. Whatever would your dad say?’
That was the moment I swore at her. It just kind of came out really, really loudly. And it wasn’t just any old swear word, it was the worst kind. Mum stood there, staring at me, and didn’t speak to me all the way back home.
That night I lay awake, thinking about the last holiday we’d all been on together. We’d flown to a tiny island which had white sandy beaches and turquoise water. The day before we left we went sailing on a beautiful white yacht. The three of us ate a lunch of barbecued lobsters and afterwards Dad and I both jumped off the back of the boat to swim with the turtles. That was one of the best and most fun days I’ve ever had, but thinking about it now just made me feel sad. Because I won’t ever get to do that again, will I?
When I had to go back to school, everyone was really nice to me, but for some reason that made me feel worse. It was a feeling that sort of hovered over me. It was a feeling that got worse when I saw my friend’s dad cheering him on at our school football match. It was a feeling that made me want to shout or cry or something even worse when I saw all the other dads collecting my friends on the last day of term. And when Mum took me to the cinema I noticed that all the other children were with both their mum and dad. It felt as though everyone had their dad but me. I wanted the feeling to go away, but it just stayed and stayed.
A week after the Easter holidays I came home from school and Mum was sitting at the kitchen table with two very serious-looking men who I’d never seen before. They wore grey suits and grey expressions, and I could see that Mum had been crying. They were talking about money and the house, and I heard Mum say, ‘That can’t be right. He would have remembered.’ Then she turned round and saw me standing in the doorway and told me to go upstairs. I wanted to stay and see what they were talking about, but she just shut the door.
That night Mum made me my favourite dinner and as I slurped on the spaghetti and meatballs she told me the bad news. I looked up at her and watched her twist her black hair round her finger, then she took a deep breath.
‘Zack, those men that were here earlier . . . well, the thing is . . . we’ve run out of money.’
I kind of frowned a bit. I didn’t get it.
‘We’re in a bit of a mess money-wise. We’re going to have to sell the house.’
She started to cry and turned to face the window so that I couldn’t see. I still didn’t understand. We didn’t have any money? We were going to have to sell the house? It didn’t make sense at all. We’d always had plenty of money. We lived in a nice house on one of the best streets. We had three cars and nearly always had a holiday each year, and my school was one of those that you had to pay to go to.
‘Zack, honey, it seems like your dad was . . .’
I waited. She sighed and rubbed her eyes so that she smudged the make-up down her cheeks.
‘Those men, well, they had some bad news. How can I explain this? When you work, when you have a job and earn a living, you don’t get to just keep all the money you earn.’
‘Why not?’ I said, frowning properly this time.
‘You have to give a bit, a rather big bit, to the taxman. For the rest of the country. So that we can have schools and hospitals and build roads and things. The more money you earn, the more taxes you have to pay and your dad sort of forgot to do that. So now we owe the tax people money, a lot more money than we have in the bank.’ She sat down next to me and kissed my cheek. ‘Zack, we’re going to have to sell all the things we have. The cars, the house and even then we’ll be . . .’ She sighed and shook her head. ‘Our life is going to be very different from now on.’
And it was.
Our life was about to become completely different.
4
Zack
Over the next three months we sold everything we had. Firstly Mum sold all her jewellery. The diamond necklace she got for her birthday, the ruby ring she got for Christmas and the special bracelet that Dad and I had picked out for their anniversary. She sold all the paintings in the house so that the walls were left with these big, square, empty patches. She sold all the antique furniture so that we only had two mattresses and our clothes lay in piles on the floor. She sold Dad’s sports car, the jeep and the silver Mini Cooper so that we had to walk to school.
Debbie the housekeeper stopped coming to the house so that it started to get messier and messier. The fridge that had always been bursting with my favourite food and drink became emptier and emptier until last night I found one mini Babybel and a vanilla yoghurt. Our house had always been filled with colour and music and new people hanging out in the kitchen, but when they came and took everything away we stopped getting any visitors and our home felt empty and strange.
It’s already July; it’s been months since Mum told me the bad news and next week will be my last week at school and I’m already dreading it. Mum doesn’t want anyone to know what’s really happening, so I can’t tell anyone. She says that she doesn’t want anyone to feel sorry for her and that we have to start our lives again, but I don’t want to start my life again. I want to go back to how it was before. Sixteen months ago, before Dad died.
Our house is filled with photographs of Dad and normally I look at one of the pictures and say hello to him. I’ll say hello to him bungee jumping off the Eiffel Tower or goodnight to him in a suit at a fancy party, but last night I didn’t bother. The day Dad died was really sad, but it felt as though he was still here. Now I really wish he was so I could ask him why. I wish I could properly tell him off for leaving me and Mum in such a horrible mess because sometimes I can feel really angry with my stupid dad and his idiotic ‘forgetting to pay the taxman’.
When I woke up this morning, I looked around at my bedroom which used to be full of cool stuff, but was now nearly empty. My computer, fridge, guitar, TV, model planes, they were all gone. I looked at the empty walls, the piles of clothes on the floor and saw that Otter had made a new basket for himself in a mountain of towels. I leaned forward and stroked his ears; he loves that. He loves being with me the most and he hates being by himself. The first time we left him in the house on his own he chewed the legs off Mum’s special sculpture, chewed the cushions on the sofa and weed all over the new carpet. Dad used to say that Otter was just like me, that we both hated to be by ourselves for longer than five minutes. It’s kind of true, although I don’t chew cushions.
I got up off my mattress and thought about the week ahead. The last week at school with all my friends. Louis is my best mate; we’ve known each other since primary school and we do everything together, but since I told him I was leaving London he and Ed have been hanging out a lot more than they usually do. I phoned him last night, but the two of them had gone to the cinema together. Part of me thinks that Lou will forget about me once I’m gone, but I’m trying not to think about that.
I’ve been wondering about what kind of school I’ll go to in September and what everyone will be like. I’ve never been the new kid before and it kind of scares me; it makes me feel like that might be the worst thing about all of this. It makes me feel terrible. In fact, ever since I found out we were going to have to move, I’ve been pretty miserable.
When Mum told me about selling the house, I wasn’t sure where we’d go. Then she showed me a photograph of our new home, the little house where she had grown up.
Not only did I have to move out of my home, leave my school and all my friends, but we were going to leave London too and it made me so cross that I threw the last can of Diet Coke across the room and kicked the bin on the way out. She told me to come back and sit down, but I wouldn’t; instead I just hovered by the door. She came closer and tried to put her hand on my shoulder, but I just shrugged her off me, moved away and leaned against the fridge, folding my arms across my chest. She sat down at the kitchen table and opened a shoebox full of photographs that I didn’t really recognise.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘I was about your age when this was taken.’
I turned away and sighed, but she moved the photo right underneath my nose so I had to look. It was of a row of three white cottages with a group of people outside the middle one. There were two fair-haired boys that looked so alike, both of them smiling in the sunshine; the younger one looked as though the other had just told him the funniest joke.
I recognised Mum straight away. She was sitting on the wall next to the tallest boy, her arm round his waist, a gap-toothed grin lighting up his freckly face. Standing on the wall next to Mum was another girl with long blonde hair, her hands on her hips, her cheeks puffed out and her eyes tightly shut. Standing at the gate and looking back across at them was a tall man with a rounded tummy. His black hair stuck out from underneath a cap, his hands were the size of dinner plates and resting on his f
oot was a tiny black dog. I turned away, not looking at the rest of the people in the photo. I didn’t want to see any more. I didn’t care.
‘That’s my dad,’ Mum said with a sad smile. ‘He didn’t have many things. He wasn’t interested in money, but when he died he left a will saying that he wanted his only grandson, you, to have his cottage. It’s yours.’
‘Why?’ I said angrily. ‘I don’t want the stupid cottage! Can’t we sell it then we’d have some money? Then we could stay here!’ I shouted at her.
‘I can’t, Zack. At the moment that cottage is all we have and if I owned it, if it was my house, the bank or the taxman would take it away from me and sell it to pay off Dad’s debts. But because it belongs to you it means that they can’t touch it. You can’t sell it until you’re eighteen.’
Eighteen! That was six years from now. That was forever.
‘Zack, please. Try and understand. We’re really lucky. Exmoor is a wonderful place to grow up. You’re going to love it, Zack. The cottage is right on the beach so you can do lots of water sports; you’ll like that. If it wasn’t for Granddad, you and I would be homeless.’
Homeless? The word scared me. It made me think of those people you see outside the Tube.
Mum keeps saying how sorry she is, but I’m so cross that I’ve started being a bit mean to her. I can’t help it. I try and be nice, like when I saw her packing all of Dad’s old clothes into big brown boxes I saw she was sort of crying. I went to get some tissues, but as my hand reached out to the tissue box I caught sight of my empty bedroom, the miserable, lonely mattress, and I swiped the box on to the floor.
So I’m twelve years old and I own a cottage that I don’t even want to see, never mind live in, but I don’t have a choice. I have a right to be mad at Mum, don’t I? I have a right to be mega-angry at Dad, don’t I? I’m starting to think I sort of hate him and I know I already HATE the stupid cottage by the sea.
