Love and Muddy Puddles

by Cecily Anne Paterson

  Chapter 5

   

   

  I made sure I sang to Charlie again when I got home. She and Josh (yes, he’s my annoying older brother) gave me the usual amount of teasing but she said she’d missed me and I said the same to her, so we were okay with each other. I tried to be generous to Josh, given that I was now popular and sophisticated, and ignored him with great dignity for about half an hour but he made one too many cracks about my new hairstyle so I had to hit him and then I ended up cleaning the toilet, which is Mum’s usual punishment for fighting, despite the fact that it was my birthday.

  I went off to bed cranky and tired from the day spa (who knew relaxing could be so exhausting?) but everything’s better after a good night’s sleep and the next day we were ready to celebrate properly. The usual stuff happened; Charlie and I gave each other presents (lipstick for me from Charlie, yoga pants for Charlie from me), we had pancakes for breakfast, we fielded about five phone calls from aunts and grandmas and then we got to choose what we’d do for the day, which of course was to go to the beach. I sat on the sand and sunbaked while Charlie headed out on her surfboard with Dad and Josh. In the afternoon we listened to music and chilled out while Dad said he had to go out and sign some papers or something, and then we were ready for the big event—dinner and cake!

  Mum put up the decorations like she does every time we have a family celebration. She made some bunting out of red and orange material a few years ago and it comes out for every birthday or special occasion. Mum likes to celebrate stuff. When we were little she bought red plates especially for the birthday person. She also brings them out if one of us wins a prize or a trophy for something. Charlie has eaten off a lot of red plates over the years.

  “What are we having to eat?” asked Charlie. “Is it roast?” Roast lamb is her favourite food, followed by chocolate pudding and ice cream. I like it too, but I’m more of a Thai food kind of girl. I like to think it’s a little bit more exotic.

  “Don’t worry,” said Mum, poking her head around the kitchen door, “I’ve done favourites for everyone.” She was fussing around in the kitchen putting food on plates. “Josh, come in here and help me bring out the food please.”

  Josh snorted and groaned and unfolded himself from the table where he was already sitting down. “It’s so unfair—I have to be the only slave when it’s their birthday. At least when it’s my birthday there are two of them to help each other.”

  “But you love us so much,” said Charlie. “You can’t wait to do the washing up on our birthday. Go on, admit it. You’ve been hanging out for this all year.”

  “You, I love,” said Josh, pointing at Charlie on his way to the kitchen. “Her, I’m not so sure about.” He nodded his head towards me.

  “What?” I yelped. I actually felt hurt. “What’s wrong with me? You can’t just love her and not me. That’s not fair. Anyway, we’re twins. You have to love us both.”

  “Yeah, well I would, except you look stupid,” said Josh, coming back with a dish in his hands. “I mean, what is that?” He pointed to my forehead. “It looks like you’ve got a huge green pimple.”

  I put my hand up to my head and fingered the stick-on jewel that I had carefully placed on my forehead especially for dinner.

  “It’s a bindi, you moron,” I said. “It’s supposed to make me beautiful. It’s Indian.” I rolled my eyes. “Didn’t you know? The whole Bollywood look is really big right now.” Tiger had worn one to the day spa and it looked so good on her I just had to try it out.

  “Well, you look ridiculous,” said Josh. “I guess that’s pretty normal for you though.”

  I made a noise of frustration and lunged at him from across the table. Charlie put her hand up to catch the dish of potatoes he was carrying. “Watch out, Coco,” she said. “You nearly spilled it all.”

  Mum stuck her head around the door frame. “Coco!” she said. “Stop it, you three. Can’t you get on once in a blue moon? And especially on your birthday! Stop fighting. And does anyone know where Dad is? I heard him come in but I haven’t seen him yet.”

  “I’ll go and look for him,” I said, pleased to have a reason to get away. As I left the dining room I turned around and stuck my tongue out at Josh. He made a face at me and said, “Later... “

  I skipped out into the hallway.

  “Dad!” I called. The sound echoed up and down the corridor and the staircases. Our house was big, old and three stories high. Dad could have been anywhere. I headed down the hallway.

  “Dad! Dinner is ready. You have to come now. Mum says so.”

  There was a rustle and a creak from Dad’s study. I tapped on the door and stuck my head around. “Dad, are you in there? Did you hear me? Dinner’s ready. Are you coming?”

  He looked up guiltily from the sofa, where he seemed to be stuffing a stack of papers back into his briefcase. “Yes, I know. I’ll be there in just a second. I just have to sort this out and then I’ll come.”

  I ran back down the hall to the dining room and slid into my seat again. Josh had forgotten his persecution of my bindi and was now busy punching Charlie in the arm. A minute later Dad walked in. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that he had brought in his briefcase. He had a look on his face like he was squashing down something big. A flash of curiosity passed through my mind but then Mum had the food on the table and we were all sitting down, saying grace and eating and eating and eating.

  “That was the best ever,” said Charlie, leaning back and rubbing her belly. “I am so full.”

  “Well, you’d better leave room for cake,” said Mum, pushing out her chair and getting ready to leave the table. “It’s tiramisu.”

  Tiramisu is definitely my favourite cake in the world, and my mum makes it amazingly. Whenever I eat it I tell her I think she should go on a cooking show on TV, but she just laughs and shakes her head. “I don’t cook for judges,” she always says. “I cook for fun.”

  But it wasn’t quite time for tiramisu just yet.

  “No, no,” I said. “It’s always presents before cake.” We have a tradition in our family where there is always an extra present before the birthday cake as well as the ones in the morning.

  Mum reached around to a bag behind the door. “You’re right,” she said, handing me a pink package with a fluffy bow on it, and Charlie a green and white spotted parcel with a brown bow. “Happy birthday, girls,” she said.

  Dad nodded. “Happy birthday.”

  We both started opening. I like to do it carefully whereas Charlie just rips into the paper but we still manage to get to the gift part at the same time. When we were little, we always got identical gifts. Auntie Jo would always give us matching clothes and Uncle Peter usually found us a book each in the same series. It kind of took the surprise out of Christmas morning or birthday parties, so we worked out that if we opened the presents from the same people at the same time, we could both enjoy it together. Even though now our parents and our friends have worked out that yes, we are actually pretty different, and it’s probably a good idea to buy us different things, we still have a habit of opening up together.

  “It’s the skinny jeans I wanted,” I yelled in delight. And then Charlie screamed, “A riding helmet!” She looked to Mum and Dad for an explanation.

  “We’ve been looking at those horse pictures you’ve been pasting up on your walls all year,” said Mum. (It was true. Charlie had liked horses since she was 10 but it had upped a notch this year when she started collecting horse books and pictures and putting them everywhere.)

  “We thought if you really want to ride that much, we would arrange some lessons this year,” said Mum, looking around at Dad, who nodded and picked at his tie. He still looked like he was trying to hold back some kind of enormous joke. While Charlie squealed for joy and tried on her helmet, Mum looked at me. “We know you’re not into horses, sweetheart, so I thought you would probably appreciate something to wear.”

  “Well, that’s a no-brainer,”
said Josh. “All she ever goes on about is what she wears.”

  “Leave me alone for one night, can’t you?” I said to him. “It’s my birthday. Stop picking on me.”

  “It’s not your birthday, really,” he said. “And isn’t the whole reason we’re having this dinner tonight instead of yesterday on your actual birthday because you had to go on some stupid ‘spa’ trip with your barbie doll girlfriends all day?”

  “Well, you can hardly talk,” I spat back. “Look what you’re wearing. Honestly—a flannel shirt? You can get those from the supermarket for nine bucks. You’re embarrassing.”

  “Coco! Josh!” said Mum. “Stop it please.” She looked angry. “I am really sick of you picking on her, Josh.”

  Josh looked like a turtle pulling his head into his shell, so I gave him a smirk from across the table which was supposed to say ha ha, I won, but I didn’t hide it well enough.

  “Don’t, Coco.” Mum turned around to me. “He might be being mean to you, but sometimes you deserve it. A little bit less obsession with clothes and your looks might be a good thing, young lady.”

  She stood up and started gathering plates, still looking at me. “You probably do need to learn that what you look like on the outside is not nearly as important as who you are on the inside.”

  I pursed my lips, but made a tiny sorry face at her and rolled my eyes when she turned away.

  “Now, I’m going to get the cake. And when I come back I want you two to have apologised to each other.” She walked out to the kitchen.

  “Sorry,” Josh muttered at me with a grimace on his face.

  “Sorry,” I squeaked, sticking my tongue out at him. He stuck his back out at me and then Charlie made a face at us as well and we all started to giggle uncontrollably. “You look like a chicken when you do that,” I said to her, gasping for air.

  “Buck buck buck,” she said, making the face and setting me off again.

  Mum came back to the table with an enormous tiramisu on a cake plate. “Alright, if you’ve stopped being chickens, let’s have some cake,” she said. She was just about to put it down in front of Charlie and me when my dad spoke.

  “Hold on, Deborah,” he said.

  We all turned and looked at him.

  “I think before we have the cake, I need to tell you all something. We can eat the tiramisu afterwards to help celebrate it.” Now he was grinning from ear to ear.

  I raised an eyebrow at Charlie as if to say did you know about this? What’s going on? She shrugged back at me. No idea.

  Mum put the tiramisu down and went back to her seat. “What are you going to tell us?” she said. “You look like it’s very important.”

  “Oh, it is,” he said, still grinning. “You’ll guess in a second. You know how the other night you and I were looking at that real estate website?” he said to Mum.

  “Ye-e-es,” she said, looking expectant and pleased but wary at the same time.

  “Well, I have an announcement to make,” he said. He looked around at our wide-eyed faces.

  “We’re all going to have a big life change. I’ve bought a farm for us and we’re going to move from the city to the country. We’ll be on our new property by the beginning of next term.”

  The first noise I heard was a massive whoop out of Josh’s mouth. Mum’s eyes were popping out of her head, but the smile on her face said that she was happy and she expected it all along. Charlie was screaming for joy and yelling, “I’m going to have a pony, I’m going to have a pony.” Dad was laughing, looking around and enjoying the surprise and the delight and the reactions from them all.

  But there was no reaction from me. At least, not at first. I was frozen to my chair, my new skinny jeans still on my lap and the half-scrunched wrapping paper in one hand.

  Then I felt a white-hot flame of rage and fear burst up from my feet to my mouth. I jumped to my feet, pushed my chair behind me, screamed at the top of my lungs and ran, as fast as I could, out of the dining room and all the way up two staircases, crying and sobbing as I went. At the top of the stairs, just before storming into my room and slamming the door behind me, I turned around and yelled at them all.

  “I hope you’re happy. You’ve completely ruined my birthday. And my life.”