by Gwyneth Rees
‘You play football?’
She nodded. ‘Why? Didn’t you think girls could kick a ball?’
I flushed. ‘No, it’s just—’
‘I’m better than Michael, though he won’t admit that. Do you play?’
I nodded. ‘I used to play all the time back home . . . I mean back where I used to live.’
‘Michael and his friends and Rachel and me all play down the park most Saturdays. You can come too if you want.’
‘Great!’ I grinned, momentarily forgetting about everything else. Football down the park sounded like the best thing that had happened to me since I got here.
Abby and I sat on the swings while Martha ran about climbing on one thing after another. Normally in parks I climb on stuff too and chase Martha about, but since Abby was chatting to me I reckoned it would be rude not to stay put and listen. I tried to stop thinking about Mum, but it was difficult. I suddenly really wanted to ask someone else what they thought about the way she was acting.
Abby asked where I lived and when I told her she offered to call in for me on her way to school.
‘OK,’ I said, watching her bend down to pick up a sweet she’d just dropped on the ground. ‘Abby—’
But I was interrupted by my sister. ‘You can’t eat that!’ Martha shouted in her bossiest voice, from the top of the slide. ‘Daddy says the ground is full of germs!’
‘Well, my sister Susie says eating stuff off the floor builds up your resistance to germs!’ Abby shouted back at her. She grinned sideways at me. ‘She says that every time she drops our dinner on the floor, anyway!’
I laughed, but I realized it was going to be difficult telling Abby about Mum while Martha was within earshot. ‘Abby,’ I began again. ‘There’s something I want to tell you, but not here.’ I glanced across at Martha who had slid down to the bottom of the slide and was heading back towards us. ‘Can you keep a secret? Martha musn’t know, OK?’
Abby grinned. I could tell she liked secrets. ‘Of course. Why don’t you come round to mine for a bit? Martha can watch a video in the front room and we can talk in the kitchen. We can get something to eat as well. I’m starving.’
I wasn’t so sure about that. ‘But what about your big sister?’ I wasn’t ready to let another grown-up in on all of this just yet.
‘She’s still at work. Anyway, she won’t mind you coming round.’
‘Are you sure?’
She nodded impatiently, and when Martha came over to tell us that she wanted to go home for tea now, Abby told her that we were all going to her house for tea instead.
Abby lived on the ground floor in a block of flats. They had a little garden at the back with a whirligig to hang out your washing. Abby didn’t know what a whirligig was when I pointed it out. She called it a rotating clothes line. We started telling each other what we called other things then, since it turned out we had quite a few different names for stuff.
Martha kept running in and out of the kitchen while Abby and I were making the crisp and tomato ketchup sandwiches we’d decided on for tea, but I figured once she was settled in front of the TV with her food in front of her, I’d be able to talk to Abby without her overhearing. Though I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to say yet.
Abby suddenly started telling me about her mother almost as if she knew that I was trying to get up the courage to tell her something major about mine. ‘Last week she went into a special clinic to get some help to stop drinking. Susie says we musn’t get our hopes up because she’s done that before . . . but at least she’s trying again.’
‘That must be the hardest part,’ I murmured. ‘Not to get your hopes up, I mean.’
She gave me a funny look, as if she didn’t know too many people who understood that. ‘Here!’ She put the lid back on the ketchup bottle. ‘Catch!’ She threw it to me across the table.
Unfortunately, I’ve never been brilliant at catching things.
Just as the glass bottle missed my hand and landed with a smash on the tiled floor, Abby’s big sister walked in the back door. She was wearing a black duffle coat and she had a bag of shopping in her hand. ‘What the hell’s going on?’
‘Sorry,’ I gulped.
Susie was glowering at the broken bottle which was now leaking ketchup. She glared at Abby who looked like she was trying not to giggle. ‘Are you just going to stand there, miss?’
Abby hurried to the sink to fetch a cloth just as Martha walked in from the living room.
‘Yikes!’ Susie nearly jumped out of her skin. ‘What is this? Nursery school?’
‘She’s my sister,’ I said quickly. ‘We were just leaving.’
‘No they weren’t,’ Abby said as she took a cloth over to clean up the mess. ‘They can stay for tea, can’t they, Susie?’
But Susie was heading towards her sister now, who was absent-mindedly swishing the cloth about the floor. ‘Watch you don’t cut yourself on that glass! I don’t want blood everywhere as well!’ She crouched down in order to deal with the broken bottle herself.
‘Come on, Martha. Let’s go,’ I whispered. I didn’t reckon I’d get a chance to talk to Abby about Mum now anyway.
‘Was that Abby’s mum?’ Martha asked me when we were outside.
‘It’s her big sister.’
‘She acted like her mum,’ Martha said.
‘Well, she has to look after her. That’s why.’
‘Why does she have to look after her?’
‘Because Abby’s mum and dad aren’t around, OK?’ I grabbed hold of her hand as we approached the main road.
‘Would you have to look after me, if our mum and dad weren’t around?’ Martha asked.
‘Stop asking so many questions, OK?’ I said crossly, because it was giving me butterflies in my tummy, the way her gaze was fixed on me so trustingly.
11
Mum wasn’t back when we got home – not that I’d really expected her to be. She wasn’t even answering her mobile, though it was ringing out. Dad hadn’t phoned back either. I knew it was still the early hours in New Zealand, but I thought Dad might be up and I really needed to speak to him. If only Dad had a mobile with him, or I had the number of the hospital or something. When it was time for Martha to go to bed and Mum still hadn’t come home, I said, ‘She’ll be back when you wake up tomorrow morning. I’ll read you a story to send you to sleep.’ I read her this book she likes about a mermaid who finds out she’s a princess. It took ages to read all of it, but I didn’t want to stop because I didn’t want to have to go downstairs on my own to wait for Mum.
I also didn’t want to be on my own thinking about what Mum might be doing right now. What if she went and accused Kate of stealing her baby? And what if she demanded they be swapped back? Everyone would think Mum was mad, especially because she had been in a mental hospital before. But Mum couldn’t be mad, could she? Even if she had got it wrong about Martha, that didn’t make her mad. I didn’t know exactly what a proper mad person looked like, but I reckoned they’d be talking to themselves like that man in Neighbours and maybe foaming at the mouth a bit and . . . I don’t know . . . going around trying to take bites out of cats or something. I reckoned they’d be pretty scary and easy to spot in any case.
I lay on the sofa watching TV until really late, jumping up every time I heard a car outside. I started to worry that Mum had been involved in an accident. I didn’t know how soon the police came and told you if your relative was in a car crash. My stomach was churning and every time I heard a car drive into our street I jumped up to look out of the window. Our parents had never left us alone like this before.
At midnight I heard a car outside and, when I went to look, it was Mum. I opened the front door as she tottered down the drive trailing her coat and carrying several shopping bags. ‘Mum, I’ve been so worried,’ I burst out, starting to cry, which was really stupid, but I was just so relieved that she was safe. She was wearing high heels. She hardly ever wears shoes with high heels.
‘H
i, baby.’ Her voice sounded funny. She came inside the house and dropped all her bags noisily on the wooden floor in the hall. She kicked off her shoes which clattered against the wall, and slammed the front door shut behind her. She didn’t ask how I was or how Martha was or whether Dad had phoned. She didn’t explain or say sorry about leaving us for so long. ‘Sleepy,’ she grinned, and started to laugh. She flopped down on the settee and closed her eyes.
I stared at her, feeling a whole mixture of things that I couldn’t put into words. Like screaming. Like running away. Like holding her tight and never letting her go. Like hitting her.
I walked across to the sofa. ‘Did you go to Kate’s house? What did she say?’
But she didn’t open her eyes. She grunted and turned over so that her face was squashed against the back of the sofa. I shook her to wake her up again but it didn’t work. She seemed to have fallen asleep.
I went upstairs and into Martha’s room. I didn’t feel like sleeping in my own bed tonight. I pulled back her duvet and climbed in beside her, chucking her teddy bear out of the way to make more room. Her bed was nice and warm but it still took me ages to fall asleep. I just couldn’t stop worrying about what was going to happen tomorrow.
I woke up really early the next morning – the clock said it was six o’clock – and when I went downstairs Mum was up and wide awake, trying on a dress she’d bought in London. The dress was a long shimmery one with pink sequins and it came with a pink feather boa. She’d bought loads of other clothes as well. They were all over the floor.
‘I thought you went to find Kate,’ I said. ‘Not to go shopping.’
‘She wasn’t in,’ Mum said. ‘This shop was open late. They wanted to close up, but I just kept buying things!’ She giggled.
‘So, are you not going to bother about Kate now then?’ I asked hopefully.
‘I’m going back today.’
‘To London?’
She nodded as she struggled to do up the zip on her dress. She had a red bra underneath that was nearly all showing because the front of the dress was so low cut. ‘Look! It’s the school colours!’ she giggled, pulling a pair of red, lacy knickers out of a carrier bag and twirling them round her finger.
‘Mum, you can’t go back to London!’ I barked at her. ‘And you can’t wear that. It’s disgusting and it doesn’t even do up!’
‘I don’t need it to do up,’ Mum laughed. ‘I need it to undo. In a striptease you undo!’
‘Striptease?’ I felt like I was going to be sick.
She picked up the feather boa and started whirling it round her head like she was about to throw it into an imaginary audience along with the knickers.
‘Mum, that’s not funny!’ I protested.
She started talking nonsense – at least it seemed like nonsense to me. ‘. . . bring the house down . . . the school down . . . the world down . . .’ She was dancing round the room in the dress, swinging her hips and twirling her feather boa and humming music that sounded like the kind you might dance to if you were a stripper, instead of being somebody’s mother and headmistress of a school.
Mum was dancing her way into the kitchen, so I followed her. I stopped as I saw what she’d done in there. The cupboards were all open and cans and packets of food were lying around all over the work surfaces. Mum was heading for the back door. ‘Mum – no!’ I rushed over and pulled the key out of the lock. ‘Don’t go outside now, please.’
‘Please don’t go,’ Mum repeated after me. ‘Pleeeease don’t go.’ She sounded like she was thinking about breaking into song.
Martha suddenly appeared in the kitchen doorway. All the noise must have woken her up. I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her back out into the living room. I didn’t want her to see Mum like this. ‘Go back to bed!’ I snapped. ‘It’s too early to get up yet!’
Martha glared at me. ‘I want to see Mummy!’
‘Listen, Martha, you’ve got to do what I say! I’m in charge until Dad gets back!’
‘No, you’re not!’ She screwed up her nose. ‘Mummy is!’
That’s when I really lost it. ‘Oh, sure she is!’ I bawled. ‘She’s really in charge of us, isn’t she? If she wants to throw you into the sea, along with all your goldfish, is that OK?’
Martha’s face crumpled and she burst into tears.
I felt really bad then – as if all my angry feelings had swirled up into a big ball which I’d just hurled full-on at Martha. And I hadn’t got rid of them that way either. They had just bounced straight back to me, only now I’d hurt Martha with them as well. And all because I didn’t know what to do.
I told Martha I was sorry and got her to come upstairs with me by whispering that we were going to make a special secret phone call to Dad. On the way upstairs I lifted the front-door key off the key rack, made sure the door was double-locked so there was no way Mum could open it, and put the key in my dressing-gown pocket. I let Martha ring Dad’s number, but there was still nobody there even though a whole day had passed since I’d last phoned and it was early evening in New Zealand now. I tried not to let my sister see how worried I was.
I told her to get dressed and that I’d bring her breakfast upstairs to her, and then I went to get dressed myself.
When I got downstairs, Mum was sitting on the sofa still wearing her new pink outfit. She had found a pair of knitting needles and she was unravelling one of her jumpers into a long string of red wool.
‘Mum, what are you doing?’ I asked, staring at the half-unpicked jumper on her lap.
‘Knitting,’ she said. ‘Knitting backwards . . . Mum used to knit. Babies aren’t always good sleepers.’
I kept staring at her. I was remembering something Dad had told me once when I’d asked what Mum had been like when she was mentally ill. As usual, he had refused to talk about Mum’s illness in very much detail. But he had said something about mentally ill people often not making any sense when you were speaking to them.
Mum wasn’t making any sense now. And all that stuff about Kate didn’t make any sense either.
Suddenly I knew that I was going to have to phone Dr White whether I wanted to or not.
I waited until eight o’clock, then I went to use the phone in Mum and Dad’s bedroom. Maybe Dr White would have started work by now. Dad used to be at work by eight when he was doing a surgery before we’d moved. I didn’t tell Mum what I was doing. I would tell Dr White that Mum wasn’t making sense, but I would also tell him that she wasn’t mad like some of his patients, because she knew who she was and she wasn’t hearing voices or anything, so surely she didn’t need to go back into hospital? I had to wait ages while the hospital switchboard put me through to the right department and, when they eventually did, Dr White’s secretary wasn’t in yet. Dr White wasn’t in yet either. The switchboard lady asked if I wanted them to page him. I said I did and I hung on for what seemed like forever until she came back to me. ‘I’m sorry, dear. He’s not responding. He might be on his way in to the hospital. Why don’t you try again in half an hour or so? Or there’s the duty doctor if it’s an emergency . . . Is it an emergency?’
I told her I would wait and try Dr White again a bit later and put down the phone. I didn’t want to speak about Mum to a doctor I didn’t know.
‘Mum!’ I called downstairs. She didn’t answer, so I went to find her. She wasn’t in the living room and when I went through to the kitchen she wasn’t there either, but the kitchen window was wide open. A chair was pulled up against it. I unlocked the door, rushed outside and checked our driveway. Mum’s car was gone.
I felt sick. Had she gone to London again? Or, worse still, had she gone to school wearing that dress? It was Tuesday. Mum had a meeting with the deputy head first thing every Tuesday.
I was having trouble breathing properly and I couldn’t think what to do, and then I thought of something – Mum’s mobile! I rushed back into the house and rang the number. I held my breath as it started ringing out. There was a voice at the other end, crackly
but audible. ‘Mum, is that you?’ I gasped. ‘Where are you?’
‘It’s Martha.’
‘Martha!’ I was so confused, I couldn’t think for a few moments. Martha wasn’t with Mum. Martha was here with me. Martha was upstairs in her room. ‘Martha, where are you?’
‘In the car . . . Mummy’s taking me to London . . . I wanted you to come too, but she said—’
‘Put her on!’ I gasped. ‘Quickly!’
There was a brief crackle as if the phone was being handed over, and then the line went dead.
I quickly punched in Mum’s number again, but now her phone was just on voicemail. I was about to try a second time when our own phone rang out. I slammed the receiver against my ear. ‘Mum?’
‘It’s Dad.’
‘Dad!’ I couldn’t believe it.
‘Daniel, I’ve only just got back to the house,’ he said. ‘Grandma died a couple of hours ago. What’s wrong?’
‘It’s Mum,’ I blurted. ‘She stopped taking her medicine. She’s taking Martha to London. I’m scared what she’ll do. She thinks Martha isn’t really her baby. She thinks she was swapped in the hospital. Dad, it’s not true, is it? Martha is our baby, isn’t she? She couldn’t really have been swapped—’ I broke off because I was starting to cry.
There was a silence at the other end. Then Dad started asking questions rapidly, but I couldn’t answer any of them. I felt like my brain was going completely mad too. All I knew was that if anything happened to Martha – or Mum – I couldn’t stand it. I started saying that to Dad, over and over, not listening to him at all.
‘DANIEL, SHUT UP!’ Dad barked, and I got such a jolt that I did shut up.
I listened as he gave me a set of instructions. I was to give him Dr White’s telephone number. Dad would phone him from New Zealand. While he was doing that, I was to ring ‘999’ and call the police and tell them my mum was mentally ill and had driven off in the car with my little sister.
‘But she’s not really ill,’ I protested. ‘And I know where she is. She’s gone to see that lady called Kate who we met who was in hospital with her . . . the one she thinks—’ I gulped. I couldn’t even bear to say out loud again what Mum thought. ‘Kate lives in London. Mum went to see her yesterday but she wasn’t in.’
