Mrs Zas has been teaching me basic waltz steps when the shop’s quiet. It turns out that being clumsy doesn’t affect dancing that much. I can’t stop practising. Even at night, when I’m in bed, I feel like my feet are twitching to the beat. One two three… one two three… Plus, practising steps is taking my mind off the regional heats this afternoon.
It feels special to be doing something that made Mum and Dad so happy when they were young.
‘Your dad okay?’ Jake asks.
He’s the only one I told about Dad and the business.
‘Sort of. I’ve been helping him sort out the van and his books, and I’ve been calling his old customers to let them know he’s still in business.’
After our heart to heart in the van, Dad promised he’d make more of a go of the business and that he’d stop feeding Mum rubbish. And he’s been insisting that she come to the kitchen for meals. Proper meals. And I’ve made sure I’m there whenever Nurse Heidi weighs Mum so that I can keep track of her progress.
‘You’re amazing,’ Jake says, tucking his arm into mine.
Jake’s been spending a bit more time with me lately, though he never comes to The Green without stopping by to see Clay.
I lift Jake’s arm up and twirl under it until I’m dizzy.
I wobble off the side of the pavement and Jake holds out his hand and spins me round and round until we’re dizzy and laughing and stumbling around all over The Green.
I haven’t felt this good in ages.
Jake collapses on the ground.
‘You know you’re going to be amazing this afternoon, right?’
He’s talking about the regional swim heats.
I’m still spinning so hard I can’t answer.
‘I know you’re scared,’ he adds. ‘You always act bonkers when you’re scared. But you’re going to be awesome.’
I shake my head. ‘I haven’t been practising enough.’
After that burst of training a few weeks back, I’ve let it slip again.
‘You’ll step up a gear once you’re competing, and we can do loads of practice for the national swim competition this summer.’
Steph and me have been going to the pool alone lately, Jake keeps saying he has to work or to see Amy. I guess that’s another reason I haven’t been practising so hard; it’s not the same without Jake standing by the side of the pool yelling my name.
‘I’d like that,’ I say. ‘I thought Mum might come this time, but she said she wasn’t feeling well.’
‘Maybe she isn’t.’
‘She never feels well when I want her to support my swimming.’
I haven’t had the courage to ask Mum about the photo of her in the Lido yet.
Jake steadies me and we walk the rest of the way to Bewitched.
I dance up and down the steps of Mrs Zas’s shop.
Jake laughs and pokes me in the ribs. ‘Let’s go inside, people are staring.’
He’s only pretending to be embarrassed. I know Jake’s happy that things are going better with Mum and Dad – they’re his hope that there are some parents who don’t fall out of love and break up.
‘Morning, Rev Cootes!’ Jake calls over to the churchyard.
Rev Cootes looks up from watering his plants. Mrs Zas says he fusses over his plants too much, watering them and giving them special fertiliser and poking and prodding at them. If you want something to grow, you’ve got to leave it alone long enough to do some living, she says. Poor Rev Cootes.
‘Hi, Rev Cootes!’ I call out.
I’m working on him too. If I can get him to see how amazing Mrs Zas is, they could dance together. And maybe we can get Rosemary to come and watch. It doesn’t matter if she doesn’t understand what’s going on, she’ll still like it, watching the dancing. Mrs Zas says that your body remembers things as much as your mind does; all those years and years of dancing, it’s bound to trigger something.
Rev Cootes gives us a nod.
I unlock the shop. Mrs Zas had a key cut for me for the days she does her dance classes. Today, Jake’s going to do some sewing in the back while I staff the shop.
Rev Cootes is still staring at us like he wants to say something but then, when he notices us staring back at him, he bows his head and goes back to his flowers.
‘Apparently, Rev Cootes was really sociable when he was young – the life and soul of the party,’ Jake says.
‘Really?’
Jake smiles. ‘Yeah, Clay told me.’
I feel a thud in my chest. If I could get a pound every time he says, Clay told me this and Clay told me that, I’d be able to get Dad’s bank balance out of the red.
When we reach the storeroom Jake goes over to the rack of ballroom dancing costumes. ‘These are awesome.’
‘Mrs Zas has made loads of them herself. I’ve asked her to make one for Mum.’
‘You think your mum will agree to wear a dress?’
‘I’ve got to try, right?’ I touch one of the purple velvet dresses with a full skirt. ‘You should take lessons, Jake. Women love a man who can dance – Amy would swoon…’ I hold my hand to my forehead and pretend that I’m falling backwards.
Jake blushes.
I stand up straight. ‘Seriously, you’d be good.’
He tugs at his earlobe. And then he looks at his feet.
‘What?’ I ask.
‘Nothing.’
‘You’re not acting like it’s nothing.’
‘Things aren’t great between me and Amy.’
I’m hoping that Jake isn’t picking up on the voices in my head saying, At last! And Thank God!
‘What happened?’
‘She keeps complaining about us not spending more time together.’
Only, I reckon they’ve been spending more time together than ever recently.
‘Hasn’t she always complained about that?’ I ask.
‘Yeah. But it’s got worse. It’s like she keeps checking up on me. Calling Mum to ask where I am. Turning up at my house.’
‘Well, she obviously cares about you,’ I say. And I actually feel a bit sorry for Amy because she’s probably feeling the same thing as me: that now that Jake’s found a new best friend, he’s slipping through our fingers.
‘Clay says Amy’s not right for me.’
I’ve said that Amy’s not right for him like a thousand times. Maybe Jake needed to hear it from a guy. At least it’s reassuring to know that Clay can see through her.
‘Yeah,’ Jake says. ‘He thinks I’m going out with the wrong type.’
‘So what type should you be going out with?’
He shrugs. ‘He didn’t say.’
I get this crazy thought that maybe Clay meant me. I mean, you can’t get more different a type of girl to Amy than me.
‘I’m sure it will work out,’ I say, kind of feeling bad as I do because really I hope it won’t.
‘We’ll see,’ Jake says.
I point at the storeroom. ‘Mrs Zas asked if we could fix the astronaut costume.’ I laugh. ‘Its arms have fallen off.’
Jake takes off his coat, grabs the astronaut costume and settles down behind Mrs Zas’s workbench and I go back into the shop.
‘Jake?’
He looks up and smiles. He’s wearing his favourite knitted sweater, the one with the black cat on the front. As I look at him I realise that he’s giving up his time to help me in the shop and I remember how I love him more than just about anyone in the world.
‘Thanks,’ I say.
‘What for?’
‘For being awesome.’
I go up and hug him and hold him so hard I can feel his heart beating against my chest.
‘I can’t breathe!’ he says, doing a mock gasp.
I step away. ‘Better get sewing,’ I tease. ‘When Mrs Zas isn’t here, I’m the boss, remember?’
Just as I go back to the counter to look for any notes Mrs Zas might have left in the diary, the bell above the door rings and Rev Cootes comes in. I don’t think Rev Coo
tes has ever been in Mrs Zas’s shop and I wish I could freeze time and go and get her and drag her back just so that she can see it. Maybe he waited for Mrs Zas to be out to come in.
‘Hi, Rev Cootes,’ I say.
Behind me, I can hear Jake rustling the astronaut costume.
Rev Cootes looks around the shop. ‘I was hoping to borrow a costume…’
I gulp down my amazement and say, ‘Of course!’
Rev Cootes walks over to the superhero section of the shop.
‘It’s for my sermon. I thought my words could do with being brightened up by a prop or two.’ He touches the Superman cape. ‘I’ll be talking about heroes on Sunday.’
‘That sounds interesting.’
‘Maybe you’d like to come along – with Josephine?’
Mum would kill me. She hates religion.
‘I’ve got swim training on Sunday,’ I say. And then vow to actually go to the pool to train.
‘Oh… of course.’ He goes over and picks up a Spider-Man mask. ‘Clay said I should try to be a bit more relevant…’ He takes a Superman cloak off the rail. ‘Isn’t it interesting how human beings have always believed in heroes?’
‘I suppose it is,’ I say.
‘It’s the ordinary heroes that impress me,’ says Rev Cootes. ‘The everyday people who do remarkable things.’
‘Shame there aren’t many heroes in Willingdon,’ I say.
‘Oh, there are heroes everywhere,’ Rev Cootes says. ‘You know that, when she was a little younger, your mother was regarded as a hero in the village.’
‘Really?’
He nods.
‘She’s the reason Willingdon doesn’t have a motorway running through the middle of it.’
‘I think you must have got Mum mixed up with someone else.’
The sewing machine Jake’s using in the storeroom stops whirring.
Rev Cootes shakes his head. ‘No, it was Josephine Tucker. I didn’t always agree with her activist methods but I admired her courage.’
‘Her activist methods?’ I ask.
‘She hasn’t told you the story?’
Jake comes into the shop and stands beside me. ‘What kind of costume were you looking for, Rev Cootes?’
I squeeze Jake’s arm to get him to shut up. This is the most interesting thing I’ve learnt about Mum since that photo I found in the garage.
‘You were saying, about Mum and the motorway…’ I say.
Rev Cootes nods.
‘They were going to build the M77 through the middle of the village. Your mother was the one who got everyone to protest and write letters to Downing Street. She even slept out in the middle of The Green for a week. Refused to move when the diggers came in. There were articles in the national news.’ He smiles. ‘With the fire Josephine Tucker had in her belly, we all thought she’d be running the country within a few years.’
Except she’s not running the country. She’s hiding inside a tiny cottage.
I know that Mum did first aid and that she swept to people’s rescue when they were choking and having heart attacks and everything but I’ve never heard of her sitting in the middle of The Green leading a protest. I can’t imagine her doing stuff like that. It makes me feel proud. And then it makes me feel sad and angry and confused. Why hasn’t anyone told me any of this stuff before?
Jake smiles. ‘How about a piece of kryptonite?’ He picks up a green glass stone from the shelf above the Superman costume. ‘That would be a good prop.’
Rev Cootes nods. ‘That sounds nice and simple.’ He blushes. ‘I’m not really one for dressing-up.’
Which is funny, considering he spends his life wearing a dog collar.
Jake hands him the green stone. ‘We’ll let Mrs Zas know you borrowed it.’
Rev Cootes blushes even more.
I don’t understand why Jake’s focusing on a stupid prop for a stupid sermon when we could be quizzing Rev Cootes more about Mum.
‘Thanks for this,’ Rev Cootes says, holding up the green stone. ‘I’ll be sure to return it.’ He walks back out through the door and over to St Mary’s.
I’ll have to find an excuse to go over and talk to him.
And then Mrs Zas’s computer catches my eye and I have an idea.
‘That astronaut costume fixed yet?’ I ask Jake.
He smiles. ‘Nearly.’
He hesitates for a second and then shuffles back into the storeroom.
An astronaut, that’s what I’d like to be right now: locked in a bubble of air, floating in space, far away from everyone and everything I know.
When Jake’s out of sight, I switch on the computer Mrs Zas has on her counter. She does lots of mail-orders, which is part of what she asks me to help her with. Except I don’t go into her orders file to check whether anything needs to be bagged up and taken to the Post Office. Instead, I click on Google and type:
Josephine Tucker M77 Motorway Willingdon.
Mrs Zas’s computer is so ancient that the page takes ages to load. The coloured beach ball spins and spins and spins. Come on…
The screen blinks to life.
My breath catches in my throat and it’s like I’ve forgotten how to take the next one. I press my hand to my neck.
There are loads of articles about Mum. Why did I never think to do a search on her?
I click onto the Newton News website and then click on the archive button and Google Josephine Tucker.
There’s a picture of Mum sitting cross-legged in the middle of The Green, her hair hanging long down her back. She’s holding a placard: SAVE THE GREEN.
I open another article:
Local swim teacher completes a twelve-hour swimathon to raise money for the new Lido…
Local swim teacher?
There’s a picture of Mum in the Newton pool, wearing goggles and a swim hat, her arms propped up on the edge, grinning.
She raised money for the new Lido to be built? None of this makes any sense.
I click on a third article:
Josephine Tucker, an advocate of Baby Dippers, has taught just about every child in Willingdon to swim…
I Google Baby Dippers and open the Wikipedia page:
Babies have a natural instinct for the water. Dipping them under the water when they are a few weeks old will give them a natural confidence in water…
‘You okay, Feather?’
Jake’s standing behind me; I can feel him looking over my shoulder. I shut down the screen.
I’m light-headed and dizzy. ‘Fine.’
Jake looks at the blank screen for a moment and then smiles and holds up the astronaut costume. ‘It’s done.’
I take a breath to calm down, lean in and kiss his cheek. ‘You’re a genius.’
As we both get back to sorting out the return costumes and packaging up the mail-order items, I think about everything that’s happened in the last few minutes: Rev Cootes telling me about Mum being a local hero and then me finding those articles about her being a swim teacher, articles which told me that my water-phobic mum not only hung around the Lido getting a suntan (like the photo I found in the garage suggests), but that she taught half of Willingdon to swim, that she loved the water. And I’ve made a decision. I’m not going to go tearing in this time. I’m not going to ruin the good stuff Dad and me have got going right now, or how Mum’s making loads of progress with getting her health back on track. I’m going to keep going as normal, or make it look like that at least. And when no one’s looking or asking questions, I’m going to make sure I find out why everyone’s been lying to me this whole time.
22
Steph drives us to the Newton pool and I can’t help looking at her face in the rear-view mirror. She would have been around when Mum protested against the motorway and when she taught all those kids to swim. I think of all the times I moaned to Steph about how much I’d love Mum to come and watch me compete; every time she’d give me a hug and say we had to respect Mum’s decision, that water made her nervous, tha
t there was nothing we could do about it.
Steph’s face doesn’t give away a thing. I bet she’s got so used to making stuff up about Mum, she’s lost track of what’s true and what’s not.
And that’s the thing. I’m not angry at Mum. There’s obviously a reason why she’s scared of everything from water to hospitals to stepping out of the house – it’s normal she wouldn’t want to talk about it. But there’s no excuse for everyone else lying to me. Like Steph and Dad. They could have helped me to understand. I wouldn’t have brought it up with Mum, not if they thought it would upset her. I have a right not to be lied to by the people I love, don’t I?
I bite my tongue and remind myself I have to keep quiet until I’ve done some investigating of my own. Then I’ll ask everyone in my life why they’ve been lying to me.
For the second time today, I look over at Jake and feel grateful to have him as my best friend. He’s just about the only person I can trust right now.
I take his hand and lean my head against his shoulder.
‘Thanks,’ I say.
He turns to face me. ‘What for?’
‘Just for being you.’
I sit in the whipping area, Steph and Jake beside me, waiting for the race to start. As I breathe in and out, I force my mind to go blank: if I’m going to qualify for the regionals, I have to let all my thoughts about Mum float away.
Only, the thoughts won’t stop shooting in.
I scan the crowd that’s come out to support the Willingdon team. I know lots of them are here for me, which should make me feel happy. But the only thing I can think is that, like Dad and Steph, they’ve been lying to me. The whole Slim Skills bunch is here; I wonder whether they know too. And there’s Allen of course, sitting there with his camera because he’s covering the competition. Our parents had to sign forms to say it was okay to have photos taken in our swimming costumes. I should probably quiz Allen about Mum: with all his snooping around, he probably knows everything that’s going on.
I bet even Mitch knows stuff about Mum that I don’t. Maybe they have meetings when people first arrive in the village to warn them: Whatever you do, don’t tell Feather Tucker anything.
I look over at Mrs Zas. She keeps coming back from her dance classes really drained. But she never stops smiling. She catches my eye, holds up her hand and waves.
Wishbones Page 16
