Was He The Queen?! Read online

  No lyrics came out of Charlie. Andy and Otter stopped playing and said something about starting again, and Otter counted them in, but the man tipped over a table with half-empty glasses on it and was forcibly removed. The band stopped playing again. Otter swore. He said they were having one last go and then he’d be off because obviously they weren’t ready and he couldn’t take any more of this.

  Ordinarily, I would’ve thought he was being quite reasonable. If any of us were the oldest in a band that had mostly nine year olds, we’d probably be that peeved. On this particular occasion, I had some idea what Charlie was thinking as he gripped the mic stand until his knuckles were white. His eyes looked as huge and watery as the circular pools left on our table by the glasses the bar girl had just clinked away with.

  “You’re so horrible!” cried Charlie, finally letting go of the mic stand and diving for Devon – or more particularly, her huge, soft cardigan, which he refused to remove his head from underneath until Andy had taken both of their stuff to the van and we were halfway home by foot.

  “Was that your dad?” asked Devon, awkwardly.

  “No.” I shuddered. “But it looked a lot like him.”

  #3 Mollies & Toms

  Devon was sent down her own garden path by Mum when we reached our houses. That made me nervous, because usually anyone can stay for any reason. It was probably because she was pregnant, but Mum looked so incredibly weary that it reminded me of how things were right after Dad had left. The way Charlie was carrying on certainly didn’t help.

  “Mummy!” shouted Kitty, at the very click of the front door.

  “I’m sorry,” said Harry, sheepishly. “She wouldn’t sleep until you came home, so it’s good you’re back early. Oh, Christ, what’s wrong honey?”

  “The concert didn’t really go to plan,” said Mum, truthfully, eyeing our cranky little sister who could do without any more drama at bedtime.

  Charlie looked at me uncomfortably. I couldn’t tell why. Maybe he was just really irked about the man, combined with all the trauma of getting stage fright at his first ever gig. Did he think I was going to tell anybody? Who did he even have to impress other than Devon, who was, erm, there?

  In the morning, Kitty got wind of the situation anyway. Mum and Harry had been having a quiet chat in the garden, under the wrongful assumption that we would all still be in bed at 9am. I wasn’t, because I’d woken up with dry stomach cramps at five in the morning, and was currently confused. Kitty wasn’t, because she’d recently got into a habit of catching the Sunday morning cartoons before even Zak got control of the remote. Aimee was just missing.

  Zak and Charlie were both asleep. None of us were sure if it was puberty, or the secret midnight Wii marathons he’d been given the benefit of the doubt over, but he was certainly lying in later than usual at the weekends, and bouncing around a lot less on school mornings. I secretly figured that Mum was letting him get on with it during Year 6 in the hope that he’d learn his lesson soon enough.

  So Mum and Harry were having their secret mumble about Charlie and the angry man, and it turned out to be less secret than intended because they had left the kitchen window open when Kitty went to nab some Sugar Puffs to eat in front of the telly – a habit she’d learned from Zak, the open champion of supersonic metabolism (but only when it wasn’t proper dinner).

  I don’t know what Kitty heard, but the gist of it was that she was now confused about Dad. That wasn’t surprising, because at my best guess, all she could possibly remember of him was a lot of shouting at Charlie, a bit of shouting at Zak (who used to be more of a wimp than he was now), the smell of beer and the roar of a football match.

  “Harley, it’s the day of Daddy coming back!” she announced, excitedly, running into our room and breaking the puzzlement that had been annoying me since I woke up.

  The day of Daddy coming back? That was rubbish – the man hadn’t actually been Dad. I was certain. I’d got a good enough look at his face to make a witness statement.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Mum says! It’s the day of Daddy coming back. She was saying to Harry.”

  But why? Mum had been sitting a metre from where I was – there was no chance she wouldn’t vividly remember the face of her own ex-husband.

  “Mum wouldn’t say that,” I explained. “And he’s not coming back, not ever. We’ve got Harry now.”

  It wasn’t that simple in my own memory, but it was all she needed to know. The way she carried on most of the time since he’d been gone strongly suggested that she wasn’t traumatised by having briefly known him. She’d never been interested when someone made mention of him before, so either she was getting older (well, duh), or the idea of him coming back was the only important item as far as she was concerned.

  “But he is coming back,” she insisted. “Mum wouldn’t say if it wasn’t true. Are him and Harry going to get in a big fight?”

  Probably, if he actually was going to come back, which he definitely wasn’t. I couldn’t fault her intuition, even if it was most likely inspired by Mum’s explanation of the weird creepy cat noises coming through Kitty’s window at night. (“The tom cats get in scraps over the mollies.”)

  “No, of course not. I really don’t think he’s coming back, though.”

  I really don’t think… Fantastic, now she’d got me worrying about this because she sounded so sure. I had to ask Mum right away.

  I put my writhing and huffing on the backburner and made my way downstairs. That was when I noticed the open window (and the mess of dry cereal on the counter). Out into the garden I went, with no care for shoes because this was so important.

  “Mum,” I said, urgently. “Why is Kitty saying you said Dad’s coming back?”

  “Oh, is she awake?” asked Mum, with such a lack of concern that I wanted to hit her. (Not that I actually would’ve done, with her being pregnant and my mother and a nice person and all.)

  “She’s been up for ages. But why is she saying you said that?”

  “I didn’t say that,” said Mum, confused. “But we were talking about him. It’s only fair for Harry to know.”

  I agreed with that. “I get that, but she’s got the wrong end of the stick, and I didn’t know what to tell her because I didn’t know why she thought you said that…”

  Harry butted in. “Ah, Sand, It might’ve been the part where you said ‘It’s the days of their father coming back’.”

  Well, yeah, that would definitely be it…

  “What did you mean by that, anyway?” I asked. Even though it was chilly outside on the patio, barefoot with only pyjamas on, I persisted because I was so ruffled.

  Mum sighed. “I meant the way Charlie’s been getting; you know how he is. He tried to get into bed with Zak last night, and needless to say Zak wasn’t very happy about it.”

  I’d heard them scuffling, but didn’t know what it was about. They were always fighting over something.

  “Oh.”

  “Well, I’m worried he’s going to…”

  Go mental? I didn’t think there was anything wrong with putting it that way. He had been, pacing the halls like a zombie night after night until he had to stop going to school for nearly a month. This was right after Dad left, and I privately wondered if the insanity had been building all those years and only fear of our father kept him in bed in the dark out of the way while he was here. I shuddered at the thought, and Mum joined me in that shudder, still unable to finish that sentence.

  It didn’t look like she’d got to that bit with Harry, because he was eyeing us both with curious concern.

  I was glad when Kitty reappeared with her bowl in the kitchen. She was after more cereal, and I noticed her climb up onto the counter, which could very easily end in tears. Obviously this hadn’t bothered her so much that she couldn’t enjoy Looney Tunes and a snack, but it was a good excuse for me to head back indoors.

  “Kit’s in the kitchen again,” I warned them, exaggerating my shiver all the way b
ack into the house.

  Kitty panicked when she saw me, visibly aware that what she was doing was dangerous. We’d all reminded her a million times. She very nearly slipped off the counter, but fortunately didn’t. In that second I’d pictured my hands flying out to catch her, and both my arms snapping like twigs under her growing weight.

  “Don’t climb on the counter,” I told her again. “It isn’t safe. You could fall and hit your head.”

  “Sorry,” she grumbled, locating the right cereal box from her now-kneeling position.

  “It’s really your body you need to apologise to,” I managed to say, before realising just how Devon that made me sound. Her attitude was infectious – her annoying, organ-personifying, hippyish attitude. “I mean, you’ve got to respect yourself.”

  “Sorry, Body,” said Kitty, obediently.

  “Anyway, Mum says Dad’s not coming back. You heard wrong. Nothing to worry about.”

  “Not worried,” she said, clambering down from the counter to the chair to the half-tiled floor. “Who’s worried?”

  Charlie’s worried, groaned my brain. And Mum’s worried about Charlie. I couldn’t say that; she was seven and a half.

  “No one’s worried, don’t worry – I thought you were worried. You can go back to the TV.”

  Bleh.

  #4 Rabbit People

  Just when I’d got my hopes up that I was having a phantom period, like Layla’s phantom pregnancies, I was let down. I would’ve gladly taken an expectant fortnight coiled in the dog basket with a pile of stolen plushies over five to seven days of inhuman punishment. Literal, in-human punishment that no painkiller could properly cut through.

  It was my turn to collect Kitty from school. Zak’s malaise of tiredness was apparently not enough to keep him from Monday football practise.

  “Sarah’s mum’s giving away baby bunnies!” shouted Kit, the very second she set eyes on me. She was still a good six metres away, but I could hear her clear as a windscreen.

  “Good for her,” I said, casually, when she’d got significantly nearer. If I ignored the request like it wasn’t a request, maybe she’d move on to something else.

  “I told her we would have one, because we have so many aminals already.”

  What logic was that?

  “That means we’ve got enough.”

  “It means one more won’t hurt,” she corrected.

  “It means ask Mu-” I stopped in my tracks. Did I want to pass this conundrum onto my struggling mother? On one hand, she’d probably say no straight away and save me a week of bargaining – but on the other, she didn’t need to think about that while she had Charlie and the baby to worry about. Charlie had stayed home all day in shock, and I will admit that it annoyed the heck out of me, on account of the fact that there he was, completely physically healthy, allowed to watch toddler TV all day, while I was forced to tough it out at school with a tummyache that had the nerve to start half the way there.

  “We have to go and get it now,” said Kitty. “Sarah’s mum’s expecting all the bunny people to come at half three, or she’ll be cross.”

  So if we neglected to pick up this bunny, someone else would take it home…

  “Someone else will have it; it’s not a problem.”

  “No they won’t!” Kitty was wide-eyed at my nonchalance. “Sarah’s mum has got a list. If we don’t go, she will phone.”

  Uh-oh. We would have to show up and let her down in person, because if we didn’t, it would be Mum’s problem after all.

  Sarah’s house was thirty seconds from school, just metres down the cycle track and round the corner. Kitty had been to two of her birthday parties there.

  Sellotaped to the glass pane of the front door was a notice that said “RABBIT PEOPLE KNOCK + WAIT. DOOR BELL NOT WORKING.”

  I knocked, and we waited. Within moments, Sarah and her mother came up the path behind us and unlocked the door.

  “Kitty. Rabbit?” said the mother, so sternly that it didn’t even sound like a question.

  “Yes please,” said Kitty, as if the politeness had been forced out of her with a large hook.

  Sarah stood in the hallway, smugly. I knew that she wasn’t one of the nicer girls in Kitty’s class, and I recalled her being a nasty piece of work right from Year R. She had medium-brown hair tied back so tightly that it looked like it hurt – the miniature saleswoman look I remembered from Junior Chantalle. She was leaning against the wall.

  “SARAH, HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU?!” screeched the mother. “DON’T! LEAN ON THE WALL!”

  Don’t, lean on the wall. I could just picture that sentence structure running through Sarah’s mind. Her left eye twitched so hard that I noticed. She was probably contemplating answering back, but didn’t.

  “Wait here; I’m getting the rabbit,” commanded the mother.

  I wanted to say that we’d actually come to turn down her wonderful offer, but like Sarah, I couldn’t get the words out. Sarah’s mother returned with the rabbit. It was a full-sized one, mostly white with grey on top.

  “Kitty told me it would be a baby…” I said bravely.

  “It is a baby,” snapped the mother. “It is seven months old. Are you going to take it or what?”

  Another question that didn’t sound like a question…

  I held out my arms for the rabbit. It lay still as I cradled it, and I could see that its black-looking eyes in fact had a ring of amber for the iris. Sarah’s mother shut the door in our faces, and I had to walk home precariously balancing what seemed to be a fully-grown rabbit, who fortunately seemed too lazy or stunned to try moving from its spot.

  As Kitty and I agreed that a life in our crowded tumbledown house would be far better than having to stay at Sarah’s, I couldn’t help wondering what Mum and Harry were going to say…

  #5 Drawing With The Darkness

  Tuesday was Andy’s fourteenth.

  Charlie had suddenly perked up at the thought (and the bunny) on Monday night, and gone into a gift-finding-and-wrapping frenzy (with the help of my remaining Rudy paper). He’d decided to give Andy his Pink Power Ranger for old time’s sake, as last time he was round Andy had been talking about how he’d kept all his favourite toys and how silly it was not to get the pink one because of a colour.

  Hm, mature.

  I went with Charlie to knock for him in the morning. Even if I was still a little embarrassed that he’d seen me in my knickers, I also felt slightly indebted to him for what happened on the day at the zoo. Maybe I should’ve bought him a present, but I was quite sure the state of Charlie’s gift would help him infer how little we had to spend.

  “Guys, guys! I got SO MUCH-” Andy stopped short. He did this virtually every year. Like anyone else living in our street who wasn’t us, he got so much stuff for Christmas and birthdays that it was still a bit hard for him to imagine how it was for us. Even after he’d watched us unwrap our thirteenth birthday gifts, which were two small things each.

  “No, go on,” I prompted him. Though I wasn’t that interested in this year’s boy toys, I certainly wasn’t offended at how much money Andy’s dad had to waste. He spent it on us four often enough.

  “OK, I’m getting a PS3 and five games for that or my Xbox, but I already have a new bike, an external hard drive for my PC, Sonic Mega Collection on PS2 from Ryan, two more Andy McNabb books, another nerf gun, all last year’s good movies on DVD, and Otter let me keep my bass!”

  Every year, I struggled to remember what Andy had got for the birthday before. I knew he’d got a new telly and his own DVD player for Christmas, but as for his thirteenth birthday, I was lost. It had been back in the midst of time since we started Year 7 where we hadn’t really spoken.

  “That’s cool, we’ve got a bunny,” said Charlie.

  I knew that annoyed Andy even though he had just unwrapped more gifts and promises of gifts than we’d ever seen at once – and we were twins! His animal allergies had been reduced to a joke over the last couple of year
s, but I somehow suspected that so much as a rabbit or cat in the long term would still not be OK with his dad.

  Just like with Rachel, I let myself down by still feeling sorry for him for not being able to cuddle a bunny, even though I hadn’t wished for a bunny since Year 4, and even though he had everything a teenage boy could possibly need (except maybe a mum). We were used to looking on wistfully at Andy and his supposedly charmed life, because we all knew better.

  * * *

  That night there was peace in the house. Charlie was staying at Andy’s, on one of those blue-moon midweek sleepovers Mum usually despises. Zak had worn himself to a shadow of a boy and nearly fallen asleep in his shepherd’s pie, so he was long gone by the time I headed for bed after my washing up duty. Kitty was zonked out with her bedside light on as usual – her occasional spook moments a blessing in disguise for me, because any other girl (read: Aimee) would wake up at the flick of my own lamp when I wanted to read a book.

  Aimee did roll over and complain about the lamp, so I indicated Kitty’s one and said, “What difference does it make?”

  She growled and resumed trying to sleep. She’d been a lot more tired as well, recently, but I thought it had more to do with sneaking out on weekends to be with Ben than anything else.

  “Knock knock,” hissed Devon, through the forest of tops and jackets and jumpers in the wardrobe.

  “Not home,” I whispered back, and refocused on Harry’s Reader’s Digest mail-order classic Jane Eyre, which I was reading out of curiosity.

  “Do you want to come over here and watch the makeover film?” she asked.

  “No, not really. I’m going to sleep at half nine.”

  “Oh, come on. It’s really good.”

  “Devon… what film with a makeover?”

  “Uh, it’s just something I put together last year sometime. You know, the one where I cut your hair and it was amazing?”