by Jean Ure
I nearly told her. I was on the point of it. And then these two girls from our class came and plonked themselves next to us and the moment was gone. It was probably just as well. It would have been different if Nina had been my best friend, but I didn’t really know how far I could trust her with a secret. Even if I swore her to silence she might still think it was her duty to go home and tell her mum. Not meaning to be disloyal; just cos it would seem the right thing to do. And then the people from the Social Services would come round and take us away and say that Mum wasn’t fit to look after us and I just couldn’t bear it!
“You sure you’re OK?” said Nina, as we went back into class after the lunch break.
I told her that I was but I’m not sure whether she actually believed me. I’m not very good at hiding my feelings. Mum always said she could read me like a book.
Nina put her arm through mine and whispered, “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
She would have been a really great best friend.
Last class of the day was P.E. I wondered if I dared bunk off. I was still worried about Sammy, and whether Tizz could be relied on to pick her up. She wasn’t used to doing it cos Mum was usually there. I could just imagine Tizz getting caught up with some of her friends and forgetting. And then Sammy would go wandering off and anything could happen.
I decided to take a chance. Miss Crowe, our P.E. teacher, probably wouldn’t miss me. I wasn’t exactly one of her stars. She was supposed to tick off our names, but she was always so eager to get us all running about that she usually left it till the end of the lesson, by which time I would be safely outside Parkhill Primary waiting for Sammy. Anyway, I didn’t care if she did miss me. Sammy was more important than me getting into trouble.
I didn’t have long to wait. Sammy and Tizz were two of the first out, Tizz marching ahead with Sammy trailing behind looking tear-stained and sorry for herself. My heart sank. What now?
Tizz, scowling, like she suspected I didn’t quite trust her, said, “What are you doing here?”
“Got off early,” I said. “What’s wrong with Sammy?”
“Been sick,” said Sammy. She bunched her hands into fists and knuckled at her eyes. “You told me to eat up all my dinner, so I did, and it was slimy pie and veggibles and it made me sick!”
It doesn’t honestly take much to make Sammy sick. She has this knack of throwing up whenever she’s forced to eat something she doesn’t like. She looked at me, triumphantly. “I was sick all over the floor!”
“Never mind,” I said. “At least you tried.”
“She could have got us into trouble,” grumbled Tizz. “They could have called Mum!”
“I was only doing what you said,” said Sammy.
I said, “Yes, you were, and look, I’ve got a treat for you.” I took the packet of pink wafers out of my pocket. Sammy’s face immediately lit up.
“Where’d you get those?” said Tizz. “We’re not s’pposed to be spending money!”
I told her that I hadn’t spent money. “I got them for my lunch.”
“So why didn’t you eat them?”
“Cos I’ve been saving them. Here!”
I held them out. Sammy snatched at them, greedily.
“We all ought to have one,” said Tizz.
I said, “No, they’re for Sammy. To make up for being sick.”
Sammy tore open the packet and stuffed a wafer into her mouth. She munched, happily. Tizz and I watched. I could almost see Tizz’s mouth watering. Mine was, too!
And then, very nobly, Sammy held out the packet and said, “Share’s fair.”
I struggled. “That’s all right,” I said. “You eat them.”
Sammy said, “Tizz? You want?”
“Nah!” Tizz slung her school bag over her shoulder. “Let’s get back and see if Mum’s there.”
I felt really proud of them. They were behaving so well!
I might have known it couldn’t last. We’d just turned the corner into South Street and were about two minutes away from home when Sammy suddenly went galloping off ahead. I shouted at her to wait for us, cos I had these visions of her catapulting down the basement steps and breaking her neck, the speed she was going. She stopped, briefly, to turn and shout back at me: “I want to see if Mum’s come home!” Next thing I knew, she was crashing slap, bang into Her Upstairs.
“That’s done it,” said Tizz.
We both broke into a run. We were just in time to hear the loud clanging voice of Her Upstairs demanding to know where Mum was. “Is she not home?”
Sammy fell silent.
“She hasn’t been there all day.” Her Upstairs looked at us, suspiciously. “I’ve tried several times.”
“She’s out,” said Tizz. “Gone to visit a friend.”
“She’ll be back later,” I said. “Can I give her a message?”
“Yes. You can ask her if she would kindly be sure to put the lid back securely on her bin so we don’t have rubbish blowing about all over the place. It’s like living in a tip!”
Her Upstairs went stomping off up the steps to the front door. We trailed back down to the basement. In spite of what she’d said about Mum not having been there all day we still went rushing through to the kitchen to see if my note had been moved. It hadn’t. It was there, propped against the radio, just as we had left it.
Tizz, in her disappointment, turned angrily on Sammy.
“That was utterly stupid of you! Wanting to see if Mum’s come home…” Tizz put on a Sammy voice, all little girly and lisping. “That’s really gone and done it! Thank you very much.”
“She knew anyway,” I said. “She’s been battering at the door all day. She knows Mum isn’t here.”
“Not for certain! For all she knew, Mum could have been asleep and just not heard her. Now she’s going to start spying on us. Honestly!”
Tizz hurled her bag viciously across the kitchen. Sammy’s lip trembled.
“Don’t be cross with her,” I said. “She couldn’t help it.”
“She’s got to learn! Otherwise she’ll get us all locked up.”
“Go to prison?” quavered Sammy.
“That’s what it feels like… they put you in a home and they won’t let you leave!”
I sank down on to the nearest chair. It was all going to pieces. Tizz in a temper, Sammy in tears. Me in despair. I didn’t know how much longer I could cope.
Later that evening, we had temper tantrums. All because I wanted Sammy to let me wash her hair. When Mum was feeling good, she made sure we washed our hair every weekend. When she wasn’t feeling good, it was up to us to remember. Well, up to me mainly. But there had just been so much for me to think about since Mum had gone. The need to wash Sammy’s hair had completely slipped my mind.
It made me feel bad, like I was letting Mum down. She really does like us to be clean and tidy. Unfortunately, last time I’d washed Sammy’s hair I’d got soap in her eyes, and now she wouldn’t ever let me forget it.
“You’re rough, go away, I don’t want my hair washed!”
“But it needs it,” I said. “I won’t get soap in your eyes again, I promise!”
“What’s happening?” said Tizz, appearing at the door.
I told her that Sammy was refusing to let me wash her hair.
“I washed mine,” said Tizz.
She made it sound like she deserved a gold star. “Look at you,” she said. “You’re a right mess!
“So are you!” yelled Sammy.
“At least I’m clean! You’re disgusting!”
I said, “Please, Sammy. Please let me wash your hair.”
“Shan’t!”
Before we could stop her, she’d gone racing out of the bedroom and into the loo. Tizz at once charged after her and hammered on the door.
“Samantha Tindall, you come out of there!”
Sammy shrieked, “Go away!”
Tizz looked at me like, now what do we do? It’s not very often Tizz is at a loss. I
shook my head; we could hardly break the door down.
“I guess we just have to leave her,” I said. “Let’s go and watch telly.”
“She can’t be allowed to get away with it,” protested Tizz. “She has to do what she’s told!”
“Tell her,” I said.
Tizz banged again on the door. “You wouldn’t behave like this if Mum was here!”
“That’s why she’s doing it,” I said.
“Just taking advantage!” Tizz rattled the door handle, in a fury. “Just playing up!”
“It’s not her fault,” I said. “She doesn’t understand what’s going on. She wants Mum. She’s scared!”
“You think she’s the only one?”
Tizz rounded on me, and I saw that tears had sprung into her eyes. That shook me. Tizz never cries. She’s never scared!
“Mum will come back,” I said. “She came back before, she’ll come back this time.”
“How do you know?” muttered Tizz.
I didn’t. But I had to believe it!
“Sammy.” I tried the door handle, very gently. “Sammy, please come out! No one’s cross with you. And you don’t have to have your hair washed tonight if you don’t want to. We can do it tomorrow. Please, Sammy?”
In muffled tones she said, “Go ‘way! I’m doing things.”
She emerged a few seconds later to announce, defiantly, that there wasn’t any toilet paper left.
“I used it all up.”
“Did you wash your hands?” said Tizz.
“Yes, I did, and you’re a rude girl asking me!”
“I’m just trying,” said Tizz, “to look after you. And now we haven’t any toilet paper! What are we supposed to do without toilet paper?”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll get some.”
“But what are we going to do till then?”
I told her there was a box of tissues by Mum’s bed. “We can use those.”
But the tissues stayed where they were, on Mum’s bedside table. Neither me nor Tizz wanted to go into Mum’s room and see her bed, all rumpled from when she’d last slept in it. I promised that I would bring some toilet paper home with me tomorrow.
“More expense,” grumbled Tizz.
“I didn’t say I was going to buy it,” I said. “I said I’d bring some home with me.”
We didn’t have the money to waste on luxuries like toilet paper. Or toothpaste. Or washing-up liquid. We were running out of everything! Next morning, soon as I got to school I went down to the girls’ cloakroom in the basement and shut myself in one of the cubicles. Hooray! There was an almost full toilet roll. I didn’t take the actual roll cos that would have been too bulky, but I tore off most of it and sat there folding it neatly and stuffing it down the side of my bag. It felt like a kind of weird thing to be doing, and I know that toilet roll isn’t an absolute necessity, like food and drink, but I just couldn’t see how we were to manage without it.
I’d been bracing myself to be called into the Office cos of bunking off early the previous day, but nobody said anything so it seemed like I’d got away with it. I asked Nina at breaktime.
“Didn’t Miss Crowe want to know where I was?”
“Don’t think she missed you,” said Nina.
“What about when she did the register?”
Nina giggled. “I put on your voice and answered for you!”
“You pretended to be me?” I was like, gobsmacked. It’s true that Miss Crowe is a bit daffy, but even so, if she’d noticed I wasn’t there Nina could have got into real trouble.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I said.
Nina shrugged. “No problem.”
I promised that I would do the same for her one day, but she just said, “Whatever.” She didn’t even ask me where I’d gone or why I’d bunked off. I told her anyway, cos it seemed only fair.
“I had to go and pick Sammy up. Mum couldn’t get there and I was worried Tizz might forget and go off without her.”
Nina nodded. “I thought it was probably something like that.” She linked her arm through mine. “How is your mum? Is she all right?”
I said, “Yes, she’s fine.” And then, before I could stop myself, “It’s just she has some days when she’s not so good as other days. That’s all.”
“And then you have to take care of Sammy.”
“Well… you know! Just occasionally. But I’m quite used to it,” I said. “It doesn’t bother me.”
“I think you must be a very good sister,” said Nina.
I was embarrassed by that. Quickly I said, “I’m sure you would be, too!”
“D’you reckon?”
I said, “I’m sure you would!”
“’Cept I’m an only child. D’you think being an only child makes you selfish?”
I squeezed her arm. “Not in your case!”
Later on, standing with Nina in the lunch queue, I stole a sandwich. I didn’t mean to. It wasn’t something I’d planned. It just happened. My hand seemed to reach out all by itself, without me having any control over it. I saw my fingers close over the sandwich box, like one of those grabbing machines you get at the end of piers. The ones that scrabble about amongst all the prizes at the bottom of the cage and there’s just this one thing you’re desperate for it to pick up and it absolutely never does. Even if it did, you could be sure it would drop it before it was hauled to safety.
I didn’t drop my sandwich. My fingers closed over it good and hard and whizzed it quick as a flash into my bag. Nobody saw; not even Nina. I thought how horrified Mum would be if she knew that I had turned into a thief. I felt that I ought to be ashamed, but all I could think was, suppose we ran out of food? I was responsible for Tizz and Sammy. I couldn’t let them starve!
Me and Nina sat together, as usual. We had the last seats at the end of a table full of Year eights, so it was like we were on our own. Thinking about it, me and Nina mostly were. I’m not sure why. Maybe it was because all the others reckoned we were a bit odd. Back when I was in primary school someone had started a rumour that my mum was mad, which is the kind of thing that follows you around. As for Nina, she’d been home-educated for most of her life and hadn’t been sure, to begin with, how you were supposed to behave in a class of thirty other kids. I guess it was only natural we stuck together. I was really glad we had, cos I don’t know what I’d have done without her during those first terrible days when Mum wasn’t there.
Halfway through lunch Nina dug me in the ribs and said, “Hey, Ruby, want my pudding?”
She pushed it towards me. A tiny little sponge cake with pink icing. I’d thought at the time it was a strange choice, cos Nina was like, really health conscious. It was something to do with being educated at home and always being given fruit and nuts and stuff.
“Don’t you want it?” I said.
“I do,” said Nina, “but I mustn’t. I’m getting a spare tyre. Feel!”
I felt. “There isn’t anything there!”
“That’s what you think. If I carry on like this I won’t be able to do my skirt up.”
“That is such rubbish,” I said. “You don’t eat hardly enough to feed a flea.”
“Excuse me,” said Nina, “I pigged out on a whole Mars Bar last night.”
I just didn’t believe it. Her mum would never let her.
“I did,” said Nina. “I had a binge. Oh, please, Rubes, do take it! You could keep it for Sammy, for her birthday. You could buy some little candles for it.”
It was true; I could. I was really tempted.
“It’ll go to waste,” said Nina. “Unless you want to eat it?”
“No! I’ll take it for Sammy.”
“Have you got something you can wrap it in?”
I opened my bag and pulled out a wodge of toilet paper. Nina’s eyes widened. I didn’t know for sure whether she’d seen the sandwich, but she could hardly help noticing the toilet paper.
My brain clicked into furious overdrive. How was I supposed to expla
in that? I giggled, trying to turn it into a joke.
“I haven’t got the squitters, if that’s what you’re thinking! I had to buy a toilet roll on my way into school, cos we’ve, like, run out? But then it wouldn’t go into my bag so I had to unravel it all and kind of squash it down, kind of thing.”
Nina said, “Good thinking! Just make sure you don’t squash Sammy’s cake. Honestly, I shouldn’t ever have taken it! I am just so weak. In future, I’m going to stick to fruit. You’re supposed to eat five helpings.” Her eyes widened. “Five. Every day. And all I do is pig out on Mars Bars!”
I knew she didn’t, really. She was just saying it to make me feel better. Not that it did, cos I knew what she was doing. Also, I was suddenly starting to feel bad about the stuff I was giving to Tizz and Sammy. When we’d gone shopping on Sunday we hadn’t even considered fruit or vegetables. I needed to get some, right away!
Nina was looking at me. She seemed concerned. “Did I say something wrong?”
“No.” I shook my head. “You just reminded me that I was supposed to get fruit and vegetables as well as toilet roll, and I stupidly didn’t bring enough money with me!”
I’d hidden our emergency fund, all £5 of it, in a pair of socks under my mattress. I would have to go home and get it and then go out again, cos we really needed those fresh fruit and vegetables! Mum would be so upset if she thought we hadn’t been eating properly. Even at times when we were desperately broke she’d always done her best to make sure we had some healthy food to eat.
“I could lend you something,” said Nina. “How much d’you want? I’ve got… £2! Would that be enough?”
I accepted it, gratefully. “I’ll pay you back tomorrow, I promise!”
“That’s all right,” said Nina.
“No, I will,” I said. “Honestly!”
“Tell you what,” said Nina, “you ought to go down the market. It’s really cheap down there, ’specially at the end of the day. That’s what my mum says. She says they like to get rid of stuff before it goes rotten. Bush Street Market? Have you ever been there?”
I shook my head. I’d never even heard of it.
“I could show you, if you like,” said Nina. “It’s on my way home.”
