by Gwyneth Rees
I left the house without telling anyone and walked down the road to the bus stop. The bus didn’t take long to come and it wasn’t very busy so I got the seat right at the front on the top deck, which is my favourite place because you can see everything. I stayed on while the bus drove through the town and then, just before it veered off on to the ring road, I got off. It was just a short walk to the cemetery. There’s a little newsagent on the way where you can buy flowers. I know because we always go at Christmas time and on my mother’s birthday.
They only had some old bunches of carnations in a bucket outside the shop so I bought a Bounty bar instead. Dad told me once that my mother really liked them.
Inside the cemetery there are loads of gravestones, but I know where my mother’s is. I don’t know what I expected to find there but I found her grave looking the same as normal, with the jam jar still there from the last time we’d come. The jar was turned over on its side and was full of rainwater and there were some mushy dead flowers still hanging out. I wondered if Dad came here on his own sometimes without telling us. These flowers looked like they had died too recently to be the ones we’d brought last time we all came together. I tipped up the jar so it was free of brown water and dead flowers and put it back in front of the grave sitting upright. Carefully, I balanced the Bounty bar across the top of the jar and sat back on the grass. It was a bit damp but I didn’t care. I looked around quickly. There was nobody here but me.
‘You don’t have to worry about us forgetting you,’ I said out loud. ‘If that’s what it is. I mean, if it’s you who’s been making everything go wrong.’ I waited to see if she was going to reply. I would have freaked out if I’d heard her voice calling down to me from heaven but if I sat with my eyes shut I might find myself thinking her answer. Because I liked to think that was her way of communicating with me – by putting her thoughts into my head sometimes – like the thought that she still loved me even though she was dead. But my mother’s voice was silent even though I screwed up my forehead and concentrated really hard.
The more I concentrated the more my mind went blank. Maybe my mother wasn’t here after all. I thought about what Dad would think if he knew I was doing this. I wondered if he was worried about me now. I felt guilty thinking that he was. Maybe he’d met up with Lizzie and they were hunting for me together.
‘It’s not that I don’t still wish you were here,’ I told my mother. ‘If you were, then I wouldn’t want Lizzie at all. So if you can come back to us, come back now, and I’ll stop looking for another mother, I promise.’
And when I said it out loud, it really hit me how much I’d been looking for a new mum for myself, rather than a new wife for Dad. I’d been trying to select her on the basis of how much I liked her, rather than how much Dad did. And that was the problem. Dad was angry because of the way we were sticking our noses in and telling him who was best for him as if he didn’t have any right to decide that for himself. Maybe he felt a bit like I do when Holly tries to take over and do stuff all the time that’s meant to help me.
I stared at my mother’s name written in gold letters on the grey marble. Maybe she was up in heaven helping me to think things through. Or perhaps not. Either way, I was pretty sure she’d have wanted Dad to be happy, whether that meant him getting married again or not.
I looked at the Bounty bar sitting on top of the empty jam jar. I hadn’t had any breakfast and I was pretty hungry. And suddenly it seemed really silly to leave it here for my mother when there was no way she was ever going to be able to come back to life and eat it.
I got back to find the front door wide open and Matty standing in the hall waiting for me. He must have seen me walking up the street.
‘It worked!’ he grinned. ‘Dad’s been going mental wondering where you are! I told him he’d really upset you! He’s gone down the park looking for you! You’d better ring him on his mobile and let him know you’re safe.’
I looked at my watch. It was quarter to twelve. ‘Do you think he’s found Lizzie?’ I asked, anxiously.
‘We’ll soon find out.’ He watched me dial Dad’s mobile number. ‘So where did you go?’
I didn’t answer. I was concentrating on listening to Dad’s phone ringing out.
‘Yes?’ He sounded tense as he answered.
‘Dad, it’s me.’
‘Esmie! Where are you? Are you at home?’ He practically shouted it.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Well, stay there. I’m on my way back.’ And he cut me off.
‘I hope he’s not going to ground me,’ I said, gloomily, to my brother. ‘He didn’t sound too happy.’
‘Let’s just hope he’s met up with her and everything’s gone all right,’ Matty replied.
I spent the next ten minutes pacing up and down, wondering what was going to happen when Dad got back. But before Dad arrived home, Juliette did. She gave me a kiss on both cheeks as she walked in the door and stopped short when she saw my face. ‘What has happened now?’ But there was no time to answer her because at that moment Dad appeared at the bottom of our drive. Lizzie wasn’t with him.
Matthew and I looked at him anxiously. Dad looked stern and as soon as he clapped eyes on me, he put his hand on my shoulder, turned me round and marched me into the living room where I got the biggest grilling ever about where I’d been, and lots of threats about what he’d do to me if I ever left the house without telling him again. I told him I’d only gone to look round the shops and that Holly’s mum says he can’t wrap us up in cotton wool for ever, but that just got him ranting on about the numbers of children who get abducted from shopping centres until Matthew said, ‘Yeah, but who would want to abduct her?’ which made Dad round on him instead.
‘I’d forget the smart talk if I were you, Matthew! Didn’t know where your sister was, eh?’
He went on at us both for a bit longer. Neither of us dared to ask him about Lizzie. But, just as Matty and I were giving up all hope of her even having been in the park, he suddenly told my brother he wanted him to stay in and look after me the following evening because he was going out.
‘Can’t Juliette do it?’ Matthew protested.
‘Juliette does enough babysitting. Anyway, it won’t hurt you to make yourself useful!’
‘Dad, where are you going?’ I butted in, excitedly. ‘Are you going out with anyone we know?’
‘I could tell you that, Esmie,’ Dad said, turning to look at me. ‘But if I did, I’d be rather afraid that you might interfere and ruin everything. Without meaning to, of course.’ He gave me a wry smile and suddenly I had a feeling that he wasn’t quite as angry as he was making out. ‘Now . . . I need to speak to Juliette.’
Juliette was in the kitchen, and the second Dad had left the room, Matthew and I followed him. We stood outside the door, listening.
‘Juliette,’ Dad said, ‘I think I owe you an apology.’ Matthew and I held in our breaths. Was this it? Was he about to ask her to stay? ‘I’m very sorry about all those things I said before. I know you were only trying to help, even if your methods were a bit misguided. I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that – it was quite uncalled for.’
‘Well . . .’ Juliette began. I could tell she had no intention of accepting his apology particularly graciously, or of apologizing back, but fortunately Dad didn’t seem to expect her to.
‘I wonder if we could have a talk about things,’ he said. ‘In private.’ He suddenly came to the door and stuck his head out at us as if he knew we’d been listening all along and had intended us to hear his apology but wasn’t about to let us hear anything else. ‘OK, you two! Upstairs! Now!’ he barked, and we fled.
I was sure he had asked her to stay, but you can never be entirely sure about anything – as I was fast discovering – and every time I tried to talk to Juliette about it she changed the subject. Matty said that maybe Dad had asked her and she was taking some time to think about it, but I didn’t see why she’d need to do that. After all, why wouldn’t
she want to stay now that everything was sorted out between her and Dad?
Then, the following morning, Dad woke up with pains in his tummy. Juliette reckoned he was just nervous about that evening – she was convinced that it actually was a date – but I wasn’t so sure that was the reason. When Dad’s nervous, he’s just nervous. He never gets pains. He made a few trips to the bathroom that really stunk the place out but that didn’t seem to help his tummy any because he ended up taking himself back to bed. Juliette went and got some tablets from the chemist and he took those. Then he said he was starting to feel feverish.
‘You are not going to be able to go out tonight after all,’ Juliette said.
Dad moaned that he had to. ‘If I don’t, she’ll think I’m just chickening out. After everything else that’s happened, she’s never going to believe I’m really sick.’ And that’s when we knew that his date had to be Lizzie.
‘Did you meet up with her in the park, Dad?’ I pressed him. ‘What happened? What did you talk about?’ But he ignored me and hugged his tummy miserably.
‘Then you must invite her here!’ Juliette said.
‘Here?’ Dad grunted. ‘To see me like this?’
‘I will invite her. I will tell her you are sick but you need cheering up and I shall ask her to come and visit you. Have you got her number?’
But Dad refused to give it to her. ‘If there’s any phoning to be done, Juliette, I think I’d better do it myself,’ he said, drily. ‘Don’t you?’
And Juliette had to admit that he had a point.
When the doorbell rang that evening I rushed to answer it. ‘Lizzie!’ I yelled out, excitedly. ‘I knew you’d come! Dad met you in the park, didn’t he?’
‘Hello, Esmie. How’s the patient?’ Lizzie smiled, ignoring my question.
‘Still poorly,’ I said, beckoning her in. ‘But he’s not running to the loo as often now.’
‘Good! But maybe he’s not up to seeing visitors yet? Perhaps I shouldn’t have come.’
‘Of course he’s up to seeing you!’ I answered, eagerly, and I’d have pushed her straight up the stairs if Juliette hadn’t come out into the hall and ushered her into the living room instead.
‘I was just making a cup of tea,’ Juliette said. ‘Would you like one? I will go and tell the invalid you are here.’ She winked at me as she left the room.
Now that Lizzie and I were alone together, I suddenly felt awkward. ‘You’d better not give him those,’ I said, as she put a bag of grapes down on the coffee table. ‘Fruit isn’t very good for you when you’ve got an upset tummy.’
Lizzie smiled. ‘You’re probably right, Esmie. Maybe you should have them instead.’
‘OK!’ I reached out and grabbed one. I love grapes. I had eaten several and was reaching out to take some more when Juliette came back.
‘Wash them!’ she ordered, smacking my hand. ‘And put them on a plate!’ She shuddered. ‘I hate how the English eat grapes. Picking them off one by one. I must buy some grape scissors for this family.’
‘She hates it if you cut the nose off the cheese as well,’ I said, rolling my eyes upwards to show how daft I thought that was. ‘You know – the pointy bit at the end.’
Lizzie laughed. ‘So how are you managing, Juliette? Is your patient giving you a lot of trouble?’
Juliette pulled a face to say that she was managing, but only just. ‘So irritable when he is sick! I tell him that I do not expect him to behave like a grumpy child with me, please, but he is still impossible!’
Dad arrived then. He was fully dressed, thank goodness, though I noticed he was wearing a very loose pair of trousers. He looked pretty horrible, and I just hoped we hadn’t made a terrible mistake letting Lizzie see him like that. I mean, what if it put her off for ever? ‘Hello, there,’ he said, looking a bit nervous.
‘Lizzie’s brought you some grapes,’ I told him. ‘They’re really nice but I said you’d better not eat them. Remember what Granny’s always saying fruit does to her bowels.’
‘I think we can do without hearing about your grandmother’s bowels, thank you, Esmie,’ Dad said, wincing as he obviously got some sort of nasty spasm in his.
‘Are you sure you wouldn’t rather I left and came back another time?’ Lizzie said, anxiously. ‘You don’t look at all well.’
‘Dad’s always really brave when he’s not well,’ I said, proudly. ‘Holly’s mum says you’d think the whole British police force was going to fall apart without him, the way he insists on going in to work even when he’s sick. Holly’s my best friend,’ I told Lizzie. ‘Her mum’s single too but Dad doesn’t fancy her, do you, Dad?’
‘Esmie, why don’t you go and see if Juliette wants any help in the kitchen?’ Dad said, glaring at me.
‘But Juliette’s not in the—’ I protested, but then I realized she must have slipped out of the room without me noticing.
‘It’s all right, really,’ Lizzie said, smiling warmly at both of us. ‘You stay if you want to, Esmie.’
‘OK!’ I said, ignoring the fact that Dad was still jerking his head at me in the direction of the kitchen. I looked at Lizzie instead. She was wearing a really nice green skirt. ‘My new dress is that colour,’ I told her. ‘Juliette helped me choose it. Do you want to see it?’
‘I’d love to!’ Lizzie smiled.
‘What a good idea!’ Dad agreed. ‘Why don’t you try it on for us – and take your time! There’s no rush!’
‘It’s OK, it won’t take a minute!’ I said, jumping up and running upstairs to get changed. I saw that Matty’s door was closed so I stopped and knocked loudly. ‘Matty! She’s here!’ When he didn’t answer, I flung his door open.
He was listening to music. He took off his headphones and looked up. ‘What?’
‘Lizzie’s here. And they’re getting on really well!’
He grinned and gave me the thumbs-up sign. ‘Good one, partner!’
‘So,’ Juliette’s voice sounded suddenly, from halfway up the stairs. ‘You are not arguing for once. That is good.’ She came up behind me and put her hand on my shoulder. ‘It looks as though our Lonely Hearts Plan has worked out after all, no?’
I nodded. ‘Juliette, you are going to stay, now, aren’t you?’ I asked her, earnestly. ‘I mean, that’s what Dad wanted to talk to you about the other day, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Your father has asked me to stay.’
‘Great!’ I laughed. ‘Now everything’s perfect!’
‘I have decided to stay,’ Juliette continued, quickly. ‘On one condition.’
I looked at her. ‘What?’
‘The condition is that you remember, Esmie, that I will not be staying for ever. I will only be here until the end of the year, then it will be time for me to go.’
‘Of course, but that’s ages away,’ I said, dismissively. Juliette was staying on now, and that was all that mattered to me at the moment.
But Juliette seemed to be really worried about something. ‘Esmie, I do not want you to think of me as always being here with you,’ she went on, slowly. ‘It worries me that you . . . What I mean is that I cannot . . .’ She paused, frowning. ‘I cannot be your mother,’ she said, finally. ‘Nobody can. Different people can fill that gap a little bit but nobody can be the perfect mother you have in your dreams.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘Except that Lizzie seems really nice and if Dad really likes her and they fall in love and get married . . . I mean, I know they might not but—’
‘Even if you eventually end up with the best stepmother in the world, she will not be perfect,’ Juliette interrupted me. ‘And I do not want you to expect her to be.’ She sighed. ‘Esmie, even if you had a real mother, she would not be the one you dream of inside your head. The mothers we make up in our heads are always perfect. Even people with real mothers have imaginary ones too, and the imaginary ones make it really difficult for the real ones to do anything right!’
‘What do you mean?’ I frowned. I’d nev
er thought before that other people might have make-believe mothers too.
‘Think about it,’ Juliette replied, firmly.
So I promised that I would think about it. But not now. Now, all I wanted was to put on my new dress and dance about the house in it.
Suddenly Matthew spoke. ‘Don’t worry about us, Juliette. We’ll be OK.’
Juliette gave him a tender look. ‘You are a sweet boy, Matthew.’
My brother looked embarrassed and quickly put his headphones back on.
‘What about me?’ I asked, anxiously. ‘Am I sweet too?’
‘I thought you did not like to be called sweet!’ Juliette laughed. ‘I thought Holly’s mother said—’
‘Holly’s mother doesn’t know everything!’ I interrupted, huffily, as I flounced off to my own room to get changed.
There’s not a whole lot more to tell you really, except that Dad and Lizzie are still getting on really well and it’s been over three months now. Lizzie comes round to our place a lot and sometimes she does stuff just with me, like she takes me shopping or we go and see some girlie film together. Juliette was right, though – she’s not perfect. She gets all het up when she’s driving and you can’t get her to pay you any attention at all if she’s trying to pass a traffic light before it turns back to red, and she parks in places where she shouldn’t which gets Dad all het up. She isn’t a very good cook, either. So far as I can tell she can only make two things – lasagne and chilli con carne – and otherwise she just buys stuff out of Marks and Spencer’s. But at least she seems to make Dad happy.
Matthew and Jake are friends again, and Jake has completely stopped hanging out with those other boys. Matty says he reckons Jake gave himself a fright when he stole those CDs. I said that I wasn’t going to speak to him again unless he took those CDs back to the shop and owned up, but Matthew said that Jake couldn’t be expected to be that brave and that maybe I should give him a break just so long as he promised never to steal anything again. Anyway, now the two of them have started going to Burger King after school instead of McDonalds, ever since this girl in their class told Matty that she always goes there after school with her friends. I reckon Matthew fancies her, and when I asked him, he told me to shut up and went bright red, which Holly says definitely confirms it.
