Lemonade Sky

by Jean Ure

  Nina lived in totally the opposite direction from us. I was a bit concerned that it would make me late back, but I really did want to get some healthy food. We couldn’t live out of tins all the time. Mum would be horrified. She always said that tins were for standby.

  “See? Look!” Nina waved a hand as we got off the bus and went down some steps to the market. “Loads of stuff!”

  We walked up and down, searching for anything that was going cheap. Nina found some carrots, and I found some apples and bananas.

  “Oh, and tomatoes!” Nina grabbed me by the hand and dragged me across to one of the stalls. “How much have we got left?”

  I counted it out. “40p.” I loved the way she’d said we, like we were in this together. It made me feel less on my own. But the tomatoes were way more than we could afford. I stared at them, wistfully. They were so lovely and red, and all plump and juicy!

  “’Scuse me.” Nina marched up boldly, and held out the 40p. “How many tomatoes could we get for this?”

  The man on the stall looked like he might enjoy biting the heads off chickens. Like really scary! I got all tense, expecting him to tell us to push off, but after studying us for a bit he said, “How many d’you want?”

  “Many as we can get, please,” said Nina.

  It came as a shock, Nina being so daring. At school she was quiet as a mouse. But it worked! We went away with a big bag of lovely ripe tomatoes. Nina said, “There! Now you can have tomato salad and tomato sandwiches and tomatoes every single day till you get sick of them! D’you want to come back to my place for tea?”

  I hadn’t expected that. I hesitated.

  “Might as well,” said Nina. “Now you’re here.”

  It was a great temptation, but I thought probably I ought to get back before Tizz and Sammy started wondering where I was. Nina came with me to the bus stop and waited till a bus came that was going in the right direction. She called after me, “Don’t squash the tomatoes… or Sammy’s cake!”

  I couldn’t wait to get home. I was so proud of myself! I had apples, I had carrots, I had bananas and I had tomatoes. What could be healthier?

  As I clattered down the basement steps I felt a sudden surge of hope. Maybe today would be the day when Mum had come back! She would have been there, waiting, when Tizz and Sammy got home from school. Now they would all be sitting at the kitchen table, Mum drinking a cup of her peppermint tea that she loved, Tizz and Sammy telling her how I’d looked after them. Cos I had looked after them! I’d done my very best. They would just be starting to grow impatient. Mum would be saying, “Where’s Ruby? Why isn’t she home yet?” Then Tizz, with her sharp ears, would hear my footsteps and come rushing to let me in. And there would be Mum, running to meet me, holding out her arms, a big beam on her face.

  “Ruby, darling, I’m back!”

  But she wasn’t. Instead, I found Sammy in tears and Tizz in a fury, with her face all pinched and scrunched.

  “Where have you been?” She snarled it at me. I shut the door, quickly, in case Her Upstairs might be lurking.

  “I’ve been to the market! I got us some fruit and veg. Look, see, tomatoes!” I waved the bag at her. Tizz punched at it, angrily.

  “It’s nearly five o’clock!”

  “I couldn’t help it, I had to get two buses.” And now she’d gone and scattered my precious tomatoes all over the floor. Some of them had actually burst. “Why is Sammy crying?” I said. “What have you done to her?

  “Me?” Tizz screamed it at the top of her voice. “I haven’t done anything! You’re the one that’s upset her. She thought you weren’t coming back!”

  “Oh, Sammy—” I put down my bag and folded her into my arms. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”

  “She thought you’d run away,” said Tizz.

  “No!” I was horrified. It had never occurred to me that Sammy might think that. “I’d never run away from you! Not ever!”

  But how was she to know? Mum disappearing had turned her whole little world upside down. She probably felt she couldn’t trust anyone any more. Either me or Tizz, or even both of us, could suddenly walk out and not come back.

  I cooked her fish fingers for tea; the whole packet. It seemed the least I could do. And I didn’t nag her to eat any fruit. Me and Tizz shared my stolen sandwich and ate a banana each. The bananas were a bit black and mushy, so I said maybe we’d better finish them off before they went rotten, but Tizz said, “No, thank you,” and opened a tin of sausages without asking my permission.

  I could have said something. I could have told her she was being greedy and selfish, but just for the moment all the fight had gone out of me. I ate the bananas myself. They were rather horrible, but there are worse things in life. Maggots, for instance. If you were really starving you would eat maggots. Black bananas were almost a delicacy in comparison. At least, that is what I told myself.

  That night, Sammy crept into my bed and fell asleep curled up against me. It wasn’t really comfortable, but I didn’t have the heart to turn her out. I was just glad she didn’t hate me any more.

  On Thursday it was going to be Sammy’s birthday. Thursday was tomorrow, and we hadn’t got a single present for her! Just the little pink cake that Nina had given me, which I’d carefully wrapped in tinfoil and hidden at the back of the kitchen cupboard.

  But the little pink cake would only last about two mouthfuls. She had to have more than that! I decided that at lunch time I would see if I could find something else as an extra treat for her birthday tea. I wouldn’t steal it; I’d finished with stealing. I would take an apple and some carrots into school with me, and I would eat those and bring my lunch back home for Sammy. Nobody could object to that.

  In the meantime, treats were all very well but you couldn’t expect a six-year-old to have a birthday without any presents. That would be terrible.

  “We’ve got to get something for her,” I said.

  “With what?” said Tizz. “You went and spent all our emergency fund on rotting veg!”

  It was true that the bananas hadn’t been very pleasant, and the tomatoes, my beautiful ruby red tomatoes, were already turning suspiciously soft and squishy. Even the carrots had brown patches. But I did think it was mean of Tizz to draw attention to it.

  “I didn’t spend all the emergency fund,” I said. Even after I’d paid Nina back, we’d still have £3 left. But we really needed to keep that cos it would be horribly scary not to have anything at all. “You don’t think Mum might have got her something before—” I waved a hand. I didn’t like to say it out loud. Before Mum had disappeared.

  “Might have done,” said Tizz.

  “Maybe we should go and look?”

  “You go,” said Tizz.

  “No, both of us!” I said.

  I knew Tizz didn’t want to, but I didn’t, either. I told her she was being unfair.

  “I’m doing my best! I can’t do everything.”

  “Oh, all right,” said Tizz.

  Together, we crept into Mum’s room. Even though I knew Mum couldn’t possibly have come back during the night without our knowing, there was still a bit of me that hoped against hope we might find her there, curled up beneath the duvet, peacefully asleep. I saw the way Tizz let her eyes flicker towards the bed, and guessed she’d been hoping the same thing. I reached out for her hand and squeezed it.

  “She will come back,” I said. “She will!”

  Tizz said, “Yeah, yeah. Let’s get this over with.”

  She grabbed the stool from Mum’s dressing table and dragged it across to the wardrobe. It was an old wardrobe, very big and heavy. On the top, safely out of reach, was where Mum used to keep our Christmas and birthday presents. She really thought we didn’t know!

  I watched anxiously as Tizz stood on tiptoe on the stool and peered over the top of the wardrobe.

  “Is there anything there?”

  “Nope.” She jumped back down. “Nothing.”

  “What are we going to do?” I hear
d my voice, pitifully wailing. Sammy couldn’t have a birthday without any presents!

  “Dunno.” Tizz banged the stool back into place. “Don’t see there’s anything much we can do.”

  “You don’t think, when you have lunch…”

  “What?”

  “You could, like… take something for Sammy? Something nice, like a – a KitKat, or something?”

  “Don’t have KitKats,” said Tizz.

  “Well, whatever! A pudding or something.”

  Tizz looked at me like I’d gone mad.

  “If we can’t give her presents,” I pleaded, “we ought at least to give her a birthday tea!”

  Tizz said she would think about it. As we left the room we bumped into Sammy, on her way out of the bathroom. Her hair was dripping wet.

  ”I washed it myself,” she said.

  “Oh Sammy,” I said, “good girl!”

  “Not before time,” said Tizz. “You were starting to look like a bird’s nest. Goodness only knows what you had growing in there!”

  “Go ‘way,” said Sammy. “You’re rude! And why were you in Mum’s room?” She stared up at me, trustfully. “Has Mum come back?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “But she will!”

  Next day, I took Nina’s money into school with me. I had to press it on her. She really didn’t want to accept it.

  “Honestly,” she said, “you don’t have to pay me back right away.”

  But I felt that I had to. In spite of sometimes running out of things, like milk and eggs and stuff, and having to throw herself on the mercy of Her Upstairs, Mum had this strict rule about never borrowing money.

  “Get yourself into deep trouble if you start doing that!”

  So I forced Nina to take her £2, only to immediately wish that I hadn’t. If I’d kept it I could have bought something for Sammy!

  In CDT that morning I pinched a sheet of card and at breaktime I cut it and folded it and wrote, HAPPY BIRTHDAY SIX YEARS OLD! in red felt tip on the front. Inside, I put Hugs & kisses and loads of love from Ruby xxx.

  “Is that for Sammy?” said Nina.

  I nodded. “I forgot to buy her a proper one.”

  “Home-made’s much better,” said Nina. “You just need to put a bit of decoration on it, like…” She took some different coloured pens out of her bag. “Can I do it?”

  Nina is so good at drawing! She made a border of butterflies and little birds. I said, “That looks really professional! Sammy will love it.”

  At lunchtime I took a cheese sandwich and a pot of Strawberry Frootie. The sandwich was in a plastic box, so I reckoned it would keep all right for just one day. I thought that I would get another one tomorrow and then we could all share them and have a proper birthday tea together, the three of us. It would be nicer for Sammy than me and Tizz just sitting there watching her. We could pretend it was a little party, and put candles on her cake and sing Happy Birthday. Sammy would enjoy that.

  I felt quite proud and happy. I could cope! I was ’specially pleased about the cheese sandwich, cos cheese is healthy. It’s also one of the few things Sammy will eat without complaining. And Strawberry Frooties are all sweet and pink and yucky, so I knew she would enjoy that. Anything sweet, and especially pink!

  I could hardly expect Nina not to notice when I put the sandwich and the Frootie in my bag. I explained that I’d brought the carrots and apples with me cos I wasn’t sure how much longer they would last.

  “I reckoned I ought to eat them up first. I can always eat the sandwich later.”

  Nina agreed that that was probably a good idea. “D’you want a mouthful of curry?”

  “Not sure I’ll have room,” I said, “with all these carrots.”

  Omigod, those carrots were disgusting! Not only did they have brown bits in them, they’d gone all soft and bendy. It was like chewing rubber.

  “Just a mouthful,” urged Nina.

  In the end I had several mouthfuls. I couldn’t resist! I absolutely adore curry, it had been a great struggle not to grab one when I was in the lunch queue.

  “Phew!” Nina pushed her plate towards me. “Finish it off, please. I’m positively bloated!”

  She was such a bad liar. But the curry was bliss, especially after three days of nothing but toast and marge and rotting fruit. I was beginning to understand how difficult it must be for Mum, trying to feed us all a healthy diet on so little money. We’d always been broke, as long as I could remember. Even when Tizz’s horrible dad had been around. Even when Mum was working. It was always a struggle. But I couldn’t remember that we’d ever gone hungry.

  As usual, on my way home after school my heart started thudding, boompboompboomp, and a prickle of sweat broke out all over me. Would today be the day Mum came back? The blood pounded in my ears as I hurtled down the basement steps. Tizz flung open the door before I’d even got my key out.

  “We’re starving,” she said. “What are we going to have for tea?”

  Crossly I said, “Why ask me?” Yesterday she’d just helped herself. A whole tin of sausages! I chucked my bag into a corner, before remembering, too late, that I had a Strawberry Frootie in there. I rushed across to rescue it.

  “I thought you were supposed to be in charge?” said Tizz.

  “Doesn’t seem to make much difference,” I said. “Nobody takes any notice.”

  “Oh. Well! In that case—” Tizz tossed her head. “We’ll eat what we like.”

  I said, “Where’s Sammy?”

  “Watching telly.”

  “Good.”

  I took out the Frootie and the cheese sandwich.

  “What are those for?” said Tizz.

  “They’re for Sammy. For her birthday tea. Did you get her anything?”

  “No, I couldn’t. People were watching.”

  I said, “Huh!” as I hid the Frootie and the sandwich on the top shelf of the kitchen cupboard, where Sammy couldn’t see them. “For your information,” I said, “they were watching me, too.”

  “Big deal,” said Tizz.

  Whatever that was supposed to mean. She was just miffed cos I’d got something for Sammy and she hadn’t.

  “I’ve made her a card, as well,” I said. “See?”

  “From both of us?” said Tizz.

  “No. Just me.”

  I guess it was a bit mean, but then Tizz had been even meaner, not getting anything for Sammy’s birthday.

  We ate tea in glum silence. I boiled three eggs and one of them burst. Normally I’d have had the burst one, but today I didn’t offer. I said we’d toss for it. Just me and Tizz, and I won. But it seemed I hadn’t boiled them long enough. Sammy wouldn’t eat hers cos she complained it was runny.

  “And there’s something nasty in it!”

  “It’s only a speck of blood,” said Tizz.

  “Blood?” Sammy shrieked and shoved the egg away so violently it spilled across the table. I had to open some pilchards for her. Our one and only tin! Tizz calmly spooned up the spilt egg and then, without asking, helped herself to a cheese triangle. I ate tomatoes. I think some of them must have been going putrid cos they tasted really disgusting, but we couldn’t afford to just chuck them out. The food situation was really starting to get serious. It was frightening how a cupboard that had been quite full on Sunday could suddenly look half empty only three days later. It wasn’t even like we’d been pigging out. I wasn’t surprised when Tizz announced that she was still hungry.

  “I can feel the sides of my stomach flapping!”

  Sammy said that the sides of her stomach were flapping, too.

  “What have we got?” Tizz marched across to the cupboard. “Cornflakes. Soup. Baked beans. Yuck, yuck, double yuck! There’s nothing here worth eating.”

  I told her she could have an apple. “I’ll cut one up and we’ll all share it.”

  “Oh, big deal,” said Tizz.

  I did wish she would stop saying that. I didn’t know what it meant, but it sounded really sarcastic.


  The apple was OK; sort of. I glared at Tizz, daring her to say anything, but she just chewed, in silence. Sammy whined that it was sour, which I have to admit it was, so we tried dipping it in jam.

  “There,” I said. “That’s quite nice, isn’t it?”

  Sammy nodded, doubtfully. Tizz, meanwhile, had pushed back her chair and was heading for the door.

  “Where are you going?” I said.

  “Out,” said Tizz.

  “Out where?”

  “Just out. I won’t be long.”

  I couldn’t really stop her. I left Sammy sitting on the sofa watching television and went into the bedroom. I’d decided that if I couldn’t afford to buy her a present I would have to give her something that belonged to me. Something that I knew she liked, such as…

  My fan! My Spanish fan! I took it out and flicked it open. It was made of paper and was quite fragile, which was why I never let Sammy play with it even though she was always begging me. She’d been after that fan for simply ages.

  I sank down on to my bed, wondering if I could bear to part with it. It had been a present from Cal; he’d brought it back from Spain with him. I loved it for its own sake, but I loved it even more cos of it being Cal that had given it to me.

  Cal really, truly was the best boyfriend Mum had ever had. THE BEST. I had known Cal ever since I could remember. He’d been around before Sammy was born. He didn’t actually live with us in those days, though me and Tizz would have liked him to. But he was just always there. And then Mum had taken up with Sammy’s dad, the one me and Tizz referred to as the Hunk, and for a while we didn’t see Cal any more. Mum said he’d gone off on his travels.

  The Hunk was OK, I suppose, and we didn’t actually mind him, except that he wasn’t Cal; but he drank too much and was always getting into fights, so really it wasn’t surprising that he came to a sad end, though that didn’t stop it being upsetting for Mum.

  It was after the Hunk had gone that Cal came back into our lives. He actually moved in for a bit, just for a few short months. He took care of Mum, and he took care of me and Tizz and Sammy. It was like having a proper dad for the first time. Me and Tizz had really hoped that he was there to stay. We even had this dream of him and Mum getting married, so that we could all settle down and be like a real family. But for some reason things didn’t work out. Mum said that Cal wasn’t really a settling-down kind of person. It was because of him having these itchy feet, which kept making him want to get up and go.