Season of Secrets

by Sally Nicholls

  “It sounds like you deserved it,” says Dad.

  “She hit me,” says Hannah.

  “It was more like a slap,” I say.

  I know what Hannah’s thinking. I can see it in her face. She’s thinking: Mum would be furious about this. Mum’s good at being furious, in a way that Dad isn’t.

  “What do you want me to do about it?” he says. He gives his nervous laugh again. “You live with Grandma now. If you’re going to break her possessions, she’s got every right to punish you.”

  “She hasn’t got the right to hit me,” says Hannah. “And she’s making me pay for everything. You’re our dad! Can’t you stop her?”

  Dad’s eyes are on the tractor in front of him. “No,” he says wearily. “It’s none of my business any more.”

  Hannah and I are speechless. I want to hit him.

  “If it’s none of your business,” says Hannah, at last, “why are you having us home for the weekend?”

  For the longest time, I think Dad isn’t going to answer. Then he says, without looking at us, “Because your grandma asked me to.”

  Our house doesn’t look like home any more.

  There’s a stale smell that I don’t remember. Like old socks, or bedrooms without air in them. There are mouldy mugs and things on the table and, on the floor by the sofa, old plates with the ends of pizzas and baked-bean juice still stuck to them. There’s a pile of letters and papers and bits of stuff on the hall table. The kitchen bin is full so high that when you press the lid, it doesn’t open. Dad’s obviously given up on opening it, but he hasn’t emptied the bin. There’s a plastic bag hanging from one of the cupboards, with rubbish in it.

  “What’s happened to the house?” says Hannah.

  Dad doesn’t answer.

  My room is a mess too, but that’s how I left it. Someone – Auntie Rose maybe – has washed all the dirty clothes, but the rest of my stuff they’ve just piled on my desk. Already it feels like someone else’s room. I take Humphrey out of my bag and put him on the bed, not for comfort, but just to have something that feels like it still belongs to me. It’s not until I go over to the bookcase, that I feel like this place is mine. My books! Tracy Beaker and my big old Winnie the Pooh! I want to take them all out and read them again. I wonder how many Dad will let me take back to Grandma’s.

  I don’t think we’re going to move back here any more.

  “Molly. Molly!”

  Hannah’s leaning against the door frame.

  “What?”

  “He didn’t even tidy up for us. There’s all stuff in the fridge growing mould and things.”

  Probably, we ought to clean it up for him. Probably, that’s part of the whole looking-after-your-parents thing those kids off Blue Peter do. Probably, we have to tidy everything up for Dad if we ever want to come back.

  “Do you want to tidy up?” I say.

  Hannah makes a snorting noise in the back of her throat.

  “I want tea,” she says. “Come on.”

  Dad’s sitting in front of the television. He doesn’t seem to notice the mess. He’s watching the cricket.

  “Dad. Dad. Dad!”

  “What?”

  “Is there any food?”

  Dad rubs his eyes.

  “We could have chips, I suppose. Or there’s eggs, I think. . .”

  We trail after him into the kitchen. No way would my dad let the house get like this normally. Normally, he’s way tidier than my mum; he’s the one who tells her off for leaving books lying around with their spines open, or stamping muddy footprints up the stairs, or bringing home pebbles and shells from the beach then dumping them on a pile on the hall table and forgetting about them.

  “Do we really need any more clutter?” he’d say, holding up the mess of seaweed.

  And Mum would say, “Oh, the girls were going to make a picture!” Or, “We got that bit of rock on that walk in Dorset – do you remember? You can’t throw that away!”

  And Dad would pretend to be cross and say, “How am I supposed to remember? It’s exactly the same as all the other bits of rock! If we go on like this we’ll end up living in a beach hut!”

  And Mum and I would say, “Let’s!” at exactly the same time.

  There are shells and ammonites and bits of sea-smoothed glass still sitting on the kitchen windowsill, but a spider has made a web across them. Dad opens the fridge door and stares into it like it’s got a roast dinner hiding in the back. (It hasn’t.) There are things decaying at the bottom of the salad drawer and a pepper all covered in mould. It smells awful too.

  “Why don’t you throw things out?” says Hannah.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Like that. That horrible pepper with stuff growing on it. Why’s it still there?”

  “Oh. . .” Dad picks up the pepper and pushes at the bin lid. The flappy bit doesn’t flap. He looks at the pepper for a moment, then puts it back in the fridge again.

  “How about pizza?” he says.

  I don’t say anything.

  Hannah’s all excited about pizza. She bobs up and down, wanting garlic bread and chicken wings and Coke, and can she ring the pizza place?

  “And strawberry Häagan-Dazs,” she says to the man on the phone. Dad opens his mouth to argue, then shuts it again. He looks too tired to complain.

  “I ordered ice cream,” says Hannah. “Did you hear me?”

  “I heard you,” says Dad. “Did they say how long it’s going to be?”

  In What Katy Did, Katy runs a whole house on her own. She’d at least tidy. I wander back into the kitchen and pick up the pizza crusts off the plate. I try and squeeze them into the plastic bag hanging off the cupboard. The bag falls off, spilling bits of food on to the floor.

  Dad appears in the doorway.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing. The bin fell off the cupboard.”

  Dad rubs his face.

  “I thought you were doing a Hannah on me,” he says. “Come on, love, leave it alone. Pizza’ll be here soon.”

  I trail after him. I bet Katy never had this problem.

  In the living room, Hannah’s watching The Simpsons with her feet up on the table. I sit on the edge of my chair. If Mum was here, we wouldn’t be waiting for pizza and watching telly. We’d be doing proper family things.

  “Dad,” I say.

  He doesn’t look up.

  “Dad. Can we play Monopoly?”

  Hannah sits up.

  “Yeah!” she says. “Can we? Can I be the banker? Can I be the dog?”

  “No,” says Dad. He doesn’t stop looking at the television. He doesn’t even like The Simpsons.

  “Awww,” says Hannah. “Why not?”

  “Because the pizza will be here soon.”

  “Can we play Cheat?” I say.

  “No.”

  “After tea?”

  “No.”

  I stick my fingers in the hole in the chair. I know it’s the wrong thing to say, but everything’s wrong.

  “Mum would’ve let us.”

  Hannah gasps. Dad doesn’t move. He carries on staring at the telly like he hasn’t heard me.

  “Mum would’ve played Monopoly. And she would’ve cooked us a proper tea. You don’t even have anything for breakfast! Mum wouldn’t just have sat there—”

  “Your mum’s dead,” says Dad.

  “I know she’s dead! Do you think I don’t know that? But she would at least have been nice to us! She would at least have looked at us! She wouldn’t have just sat there!” I’m crying now, messy, gulpy tears. “I wish you were dead,” I say. “And Mum was alive. Mum would never have left us.”

  Dad stands up, so abruptly that I think he’s going to hit me, my lovely dad is going to hit me.

  “This is ridiculous,” he says.

  I stop mid-gulp.

  “I don’t know what your grandma thinks she’s doing,” he says. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing. Pretending you can come back and live here.�
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  Hannah tenses.

  “Aren’t we going to?” I say.

  “No.”

  Time stops.

  “I’m sorry I’m not dead,” says my dad. “If I was, maybe this whole mess would sort itself out.”

  This is too scary to cry about. Dad isn’t crying either, but his face is moving under his skin.

  “I’m phoning your grandma,” he says, and he strides out of the room, pushing past me like Hannah does.

  The doorbell rings.

  Hannah’s glaring at me.

  “Thanks a lot,” she says. “For ruining everything!” and she runs out of the room after Dad.

  The doorbell rings again.

  It’s the pizza man.

  “You ordered pizza?” he says.

  I don’t answer. I’m crying too hard.

  “Can you go and get your mum or dad for me?” he says. “Only someone needs to pay.”

  Dad is on the computer upstairs. His eyes are open and he’s staring at the screen, but his hands aren’t moving.

  “Dad,” I say. “Dad. We need money for the pizza.”

  He doesn’t move. I can see the bulge in his pocket where his wallet is, but I don’t dare go and get it.

  “Dad,” I say. “The pizza’s here. Dad.”

  I come a little closer and I see that he’s crying.

  On Saturday morning, Grandpa plays fourteen games of Cheat in a row with us.

  It doesn’t help.

  Orphaned

  If you only have one parent, like Hannah and I do, because our mum is dead, then you’re an orphan. I always thought it was if both your parents were dead, but it’s one or more.

  It sounds very grand to be an orphan, like Harry Potter or Mary in The Secret Garden. Hannah and I ought to be living in a children’s home like Tracy Beaker does, or on a street corner, with boots with holes in them and nothing to eat. But being orphaned isn’t like that at all.

  Being orphaned sounds very dramatic, but it isn’t really. You get used to it. You get used to anything. You get used to living in someone else’s house and not having any of your own stuff or your own friends or your dad and going to a weird tiny school where no one talks to you and Josh and Matthew laugh at you all the time. You get used to Hannah and Grandma always fighting, and Dad always going away, and not knowing whether you’re going to live here for ever, or if you’re going home tomorrow.

  You can even get used to having a hole in your life where someone used to live. A hole where you thought they’d live for always, except that one day they just step sideways, without looking back or saying goodbye, and vanish for ever.

  November

  Grandpa brings us back from Dad’s. All the way back, I expect Grandma to be angry with us and I think Grandpa does too, because he says, “It wasn’t their fault, Edie,” almost as soon as we come through the door.

  Grandma runs her hand through her hair.

  “I’m sure it wasn’t,” she says grimly. Then she sees Hannah’s face. “Oh, come on, Miss,” she says. “Looks like we’ve got you for a while longer. Let’s see if we can keep the new kitchen set in one piece, eh?”

  But Hannah doesn’t smash anything else.

  It’s November now and the nights are drawing in. Every day it’s getting darker. If my man’s right, that means the Holly King’s getting stronger. Since we came back from Dad’s, everything has been heavier and duller. Even the sky is heavy – grey clouds, with grey sky behind them.

  Dad only comes to visit us twice in all of November. He doesn’t stay in the house long – I think he’s frightened of what Grandma might say to him. They’ve hardly spoken since our weekend at home. He doesn’t take us anywhere interesting instead, though. We go and have fish and chips by the sea in Alnmouth once and we go for a walk round the village the other time – the same boring walk we always do when we come to Grandma and Grandpa’s.

  Hannah doesn’t fight and she doesn’t break anything, but she droops. When Dad talks to her, she pulls away. Twice, when we’re out together, she starts crying for no reason at all.

  I don’t cry. I haven’t forgiven Dad either, but I can’t say so. Not after what happened last time, I can’t. Dads are supposed to love you whatever you do, but maybe that bit of Dad has broken, if he can send us back here after one fight. What if one day we fight and he just runs to our house in Newcastle and never comes back home?

  I start to dream about the Holly King. He’s snuffling round the house at night. He’s bringing the winter. He sends icicles down the chimney and frost creeping up the walls of the house. He blows through the cracks in the doors and taps on the glass of my window. He’s trying to get in.

  I read a lot. I finish all the Secret Seven books and start on a series about mysteries. Grandma complains about how much it’s costing her to order them all for me and aren’t there enough books in the library already? But I’ve read all the Enid Blytons and Jacqueline Wilsons in Hexham Library, so what am I supposed to do? I help Grandpa in the shop.

  I get very slightly taller.

  December comes.

  Mistletoe and Crime

  Christmas cards have started appearing through the door. Hannah and I write one for everyone in school.

  “What about Dad?” I say.

  “Dads don’t get Christmas cards,” Hannah says. She’s writing furiously, leaning over the table with her head bent over her card. I look over her shoulder.

  “You’re not sending that!” I say.

  “Of course I am,” says Hannah. She puts the card in the envelope, licks it, and writes SWAMP on the back.

  “Sealed with a mashed pea,” she explains. She looks at the card thoughtfully. “Or mashed poo, perhaps. . .”

  “Dad,” I say. “Can we send one to Dad? He sends Grandpa and Grandma one.”

  Hannah scowls at me across the table.

  “Grandma and Grandpa and Dad don’t live with each other,” she says. “Yes? And we ought to live with Dad, only we don’t. And we don’t want Dad to think that’s OK, so we won’t send him Christmas cards, because not sending Christmas cards is what you do to people you’re supposed to live with. OK?”

  “OK,” I say.

  Hannah nods.

  “Right,” she says, and starts drawing little poos over the back of her envelope.

  I half-expect Dad to send us a Christmas card, but he doesn’t even send one to Grandpa and Grandma.

  Who knows what that means?

  You’d think Josh would be angry when he got a card like Hannah’s, but he just laughs.

  “Read mine,” he says.

  We all gather round Hannah as she reads it.

  Merry Christmas, Joyeux Noel, Fröhliche Weihnachten, Feliz Navidad

  This card is sold in aid of Save the Children.

  I get a funny feeling in my stomach as I read the card.

  “What’s page three?” I say.

  “It comes after page two,” says Matthew. He laughs.

  “Creep,” says Hannah. “It’s in The Sun. It’s got naked girls on it.”

  Hannah doesn’t get angry about her card either. She reads it again and smiles. Then she puts it in her pencil case.

  I wonder if I’ll ever understand my sister.

  Christmas coming brings more things to worry about. I ask Grandpa, “We will have stockings, won’t we?”

  “Course you will,” says Grandpa. He’s unpacking a big box of tins. “Put those on the shelf, will you, love? I’ll tell Father Christmas specially.”

  I squash the tins on to the shelf, then come back to the counter. There’s a sticker on the till with some useless barcode on it. I pick at it, trying to get it off without leaving marks on the plastic. I know Father Christmas isn’t real. I know it’s your mum really.

  “Dad’s got our stockings, though.”

  “He can bring them.”

  I pull at the sticker, trying not to leave marks on the till.

  “He is coming for Christmas, isn’t he?”

&n
bsp; Grandma’s balanced on top of a stepladder, pinning Christmas things to the top of the shelves. She looks round, arms full of tinsel.

  “Molly Alice,” she says. “For pity’s sake! Of course he’s coming. Where else would he go?”

  But I still worry.

  We have a real Christmas tree, from Emily’s parents’ farm. There are piles of presents already under it – loads more than usual.

  “Sympathy presents,” says Hannah. “Try and look sadder next time someone comes round to visit and we might get some more.”

  We have more people to buy for this year too. We have another trip to Hexham with Auntie Meg. I get:

  Grandma – posh chutney and a fridge magnet with Grandmothers Are Perfect on it, in the hope she takes the hint.

  Grandpa – a bow tie with purple polka dots to make him laugh.

  Hannah – a punch bag to beat up instead of me or Josh.

  Dad – a photo frame with last year’s school photo in it, so he doesn’t forget who we are.

  We get a witch doll with stripy tights for Miss Shelley and a box of chocolates for Mrs Angus because, Hannah says, “If you give grown-ups sweets, they have to offer them round. So not those – I don’t like fudge. Get those.”

  I have loads of pocket money saved because there’s nothing to buy here except sweets, and Grandpa gives us those for free. I buy a woolly hat and box of chocolate Santas for my man – just in case.

  Pictures in the Earth

  I’m turning the Yale lock on the back door as slowly and quietly as I dare. Grandma’s in the shop, and she’s got sharp ears. I’m not allowed out on my own after dark, which means I’m not allowed out at all in the evenings now.

  I pull the door open; quietly, quietly. Someone laughs in the shop and I slide out under their noise, pulling the door shut behind me. Free!

  I’ve got a torch, and the spare key in my pocket. And I’m not going far. I just want to leave my Christmas presents for my man – just in case he came back.