A Bended Family Read online

  “Weather … m-an!” Andy’s voice wavered with shock, because I was definitely giving him a growly look. I had just wasted over half an hour wondering about Andy, and I hadn’t even known it was him I was wondering about. I had never been so grateful before for the two years I had been separated from him and Charlie for all my lessons.

  #6 8 Simple Rules For Dealing With Space-Alien Stepsisters

  “You, tell her to get out of our room!”

  “It’s her room too, and she’s nowhere near you,” I protested. “Kitty’s on her own bed!”

  Kitty was occupied splashing my magazine-free-gift glitter nail paint all over her new Bratz duvet cover, making a pattern far more artistic than the makeup of a certain girl beginning with “A, I” and ending in “E” with a big fat “ME” in the middle.

  “Look, we need some rules here,” I groaned, trying to take charge since nobody else would. “Or this isn’t going to work.”

  At that precise point, Layla marched into the room, paws still muddy from the garden, and chose to plant herself on Aimee’s pale pink bedsheets.

  “Yeww! Get that skanky dog off my bed! DA-AD!!” Aimee shrieked. I was certain that her face would be postbox red underneath the orange paste and flakes.

  I sighed, snapping my fingers for Layla to lie on the floor, as Aimee straightened her bedsheets and picked blackish, gingerish hairs off between finicky false-nailed fingers.

  “She’s not skanky,” said Zak from the doorway. “We reckon she’s a pedigree German Shepherd, bitch.”

  “What does ‘bitch’ mean?” asked Kitty.

  “A bitch is a female dog, Kit,” I explained, finally taking the nail polish from her and setting it on the nearest bedside table (Aimee’s).

  “Anyway,” said Charlie, showing himself and scrutinising the nail polish before it was snatched by Aimee. “How come your dog’s allowed on your bed, and ours isn’t?”

  “’Cause my dog doesn’t roll in filth and dig holes. My dog doesn’t leave hairs anywhere either!” she snarked, absentmindedly applying a coat of that tacky polish to her fingers.

  “Your dog doesn’t have any hair!” I heard Zak mutter. “To qualify as a dog and not a rat, it needs to have more hair than Charlie at the very least.”

  Mum and Harry came pounding up the stairs eight at a time, presumably in case poor Aimee had come to any such harm as a chip to the acrylic nail in the strain of shooing our dog.

  “What on earth is going on up here?” asked Mum.

  “That skanky dog!” squeed Aimee, gesturing at Layla who tentatively sat up to lick her hand. “See! She’s ruining my topcoat!”

  “Your dog’s allowed on beds – that’s what we trained,” Harry reasoned. “And they trained their dogs the same, so it’s fair.”

  OK, we hadn’t exactly trained our dogs by any stretch, but he had the right idea.

  “But Harley tried to strangle my dog in the street!”

  “And you are feeding our dog nail varnish!” argued Zak.

  Aimee swore, quickly withdrawing her hand and wiping it accidentally-on-purpose on my duvet, never mind how Kitty’s already looked like a makeup-removal pad. She stormed out of the room.

  “Um-mah!” Kitty pointed out, delightedly recognising the bad word from last time Zak was grounded for saying it. “Aimee said a swear!”

  “Yeah! How come I’m not allowed to say that word, even when-?” Zak stopped upon noticing Harry’s expression.

  The car salesman looked about 30% less smart-casual, and for once, uncool enough to be a parent. He sighed, “Look, you’ve got to be nicer to Aimee. She doesn’t have a mum to stick up for her, and sometimes it makes her a bit stressy. We’ll get through all this together. Harley, surely you know a teenage girl needs a mother.”

  I was speechless. Mum had neglected us to be with him. All the cooking and cleaning and bedtime stories had fallen to me. I wanted to say that it wasn’t strictly fair – we don’t have a dad about. Kitty doesn’t remember him. It’s even Charlie’s excuse for being weird at school. Kay doesn’t have either parent around – she lives with a shouty foster carer she calls “Gran” to fit in. Fern hasn’t seen her mum since she was little. We all get along just fine, even though that isn’t fair, so why should we have to feel sorry for someone older than us and let her get away with murder?

  * * *

  After a family conference, we had an eight-rule list of commandments and had re-divided the chores. We’d established that life in our house was going to continue being unfair on pretty much anyone called Hartley. (Excluding Mum, and anyway she’d be a Robinson soon enough.)

  Harry seemed optimistic that all was right with the household jobs, but I knew better. Every time Zak reached another birthday, Mum tried to graduate him to the washing up or dustbin duty, and every year, within a week there would be enough smashed plates and spilled refuse that responsibility zapped right back to me. My whole life I’d been a mere twelve minutes older than Charlie, yet he was mollycoddled and treated as if his special needs precluded any dependability at all. (Please, dyspraxia and bedwetting hardly affect your ability to tidy the house or brush the dogs!) Kitty, of course, wasn’t worth a mention when it came to anything more complicated than lumping a few things back into a toybox, or pretending to iron with a rock.

  Equally as clumsy as any of them, I’d simply spent my life trying harder than anyone else not to trip or drop things where it was important. I was sure Mum knew that my relative success at fine motor skills had been down to hard graft, but it didn’t change the fact that things had to get done, and she didn’t always feel like doing them. That Tuesday, I had to muck in with the housekeeping for close to two hours after school on top of homework, while Aimee texted in the corner behind a sideways-up AQA Science book. Like her, my brothers had become accustomed to a life of minimal effort, and because of my experience I even complained less about doing this sort of thing when it came up. It had taken me until now to realise that I’d been moulded into the perfect daughter by their laziness.

  #7 Fishing Out The Wedding Tackle

  CRASH!

  Brother #2 collapsed to the floor. He nearly fell out of the hatch with our slide-down attic stairs, but Harry grabbed him just in time.

  “Whoa, Zaccy – nearly hurt yourself there,” snorted Charlie, well within his comfort-zone teasing Zak.

  “For the last time! Stop calling me Zaccy!” Zak scowled. “How’d you like being called Charlotte?”

  Charlie had been calling him “Zaccy” all day, after some bloke Zacky V out of his favourite band. “OK, Zaccy – whatever you say, Zaccy!”

  It was then that I heard an awful splintering sound, and the floor of the spare room / storage cupboard cracked violently under Charlie’s feet. He and Aimee only just leapt out of the way.

  Zak chuckled. “Now that’s what I call the Cha Cha Slide!”

  Charlie looked at me and cringed. Not so much at the cheesiness of the comment, but because for whatever reason we were both always far too uncoordinated to get that dance right, and just had to be leaving Primary school the year it was big over here.

  “Ah, right. I’m sorry for suggesting the use of your store room, Sandie,” said Harry, awkwardly, looking down through the hole. “I’ll get it refloored just as soon as I’ve had the front garden paved.”

  Ugh, that was one of Harry’s reconstructive plans for the house. The presently overgrown, weedy front garden would be bricked over so he’d have room to park more than one car. He says it will only be sensible if Aimee wants to get her license. Other ideas include real stairs down from the attic, a proper conservatory and new bathroom.

  “It won’t hurt to use the baby’s room for storage for a bit,” said Mum, seemingly unruffled by the speculation-turned-reality of our tumbledown house.

  We’d been fishing out the wedding tackle – or something along those lines. That may sound ridiculous, and maybe I was losing my imagination, but Brothers #1 and #2 had been arguing over quite the title o
f our clearout.

  I’ll take you back half an hour – we’d just opened the attic cupboard / spare room, and taken in the actual sum of junk (and spiders) that’d been living in there over the past couple of years since we’d last arranged a clearout. That had been just after Dad went, and at the time we’d decided that (other than his stuff) we really wanted / needed to keep everything in there.

  “So if we’re looking for Mum’s old wedding gear, then aren’t we sort of fishing out the wedding tackle?”

  “Eww, Zak!” I’d groaned. “D’you even know what ‘wedding tackle’ is?”

  “Uh, yeah, your wedding gear?”

  “No, think more along the lines of the lesser-spotted oomigoolie bird,” Harry corrected. “And we can’t reuse any of it – we’re going to pawn it.”

  Zak smirked again.

  “OK, sell it,” Harry groaned, swiping a breakable vase from Kitty’s struggling grip. “We don’t need it back after all, do we Sandie?”

  “No dear. Let’s just say we’re wedding out the fishing tackle,” said Mum witheringly, already suffering the pregnancy vocab slide, and probably having no idea what she’d just said.

  “Why not give your wedding a fish theme?” suggested Kay, who’d been spending more and more time in our house of recent.

  “Urgh.” Mum grimaced. She’d just slid her ancient dress out of its protective bag. “It’s even more hideous than in photos. How much can you even get for a once-white dress with a coffee stain on it?”

  The coffee stain was from the last time we’d tried to clear out the cupboard, and somehow managed to transfer a full cup onto an unstable table.

  “Ah. Likely not much,” sighed Harry.

  I was so confused. Here he was, talking about paving the front garden and plumbing a whole other bathroom in, but he couldn’t fork out on a dress for their wedding? Or anything for their wedding, as a matter of fact. Was Mum really sure she wanted to marry this man? I mean, it seemed so, but she’d told me herself that she’d wanted to marry Dad even after he “accidentally” broke her pinky finger during an argument. I really wanted to check that Mum wasn’t having one of her notorious funny crushes, and that Harry wasn’t only marrying her so he could get our house.

  “I’ve got a brilliant idea!” said Kay. “How about I tailor your wedding stuff? I could do a theme and all. Like maybe not fish – maybe pirates or something!”

  I squirmed. Mine and Charlie’s eleventh birthday party had been pirate themed. It was absolutely not appropriate for a wedding – at least not if the happy couple aren’t seriously into it. You don’t do a wedding theme for the sake of it.

  “That’s a nice idea, love,” said Mum, deliriously. I couldn’t be certain that the roof up here hadn’t flaked something heavy onto her head and caused some sort of concussion.

  “So I can have a go?” checked Kay, enthusiastically. “I promise I won’t mess this up!”

  “And I promise I will attend even if she does,” said Harry, wrapping his arms around Mum’s waist.

  I could see this wedding being about as “grrreat” as a fishtank full of Frosties with Kay in charge of the clothing design…

  * * *

  “I’ll never have a decent hairstyle!” moaned Dani. She has the kind of darkish brown hair that’s thick enough but never seems to reach below the shoulder, and greases up about five minutes after washing.

  “I’ll cut it for you!” offered Kay, who’d been stuck in an I-want-to-be-a-stylist phase since that PSHE lesson.

  “No thanks, Kay.” Dani backed away like a slug being chased by a salt shaker.

  “Actually, your hair’s getting kind of long though, Harley…” mused Kay. “Wouldn’t you like a trim for the w-?”

  “Kay, I swear that if you come anywhere near me with those shears, I will kill you with my bare hands.”

  Kay was sat at the end of her bed with her clothesmaking scissors and sewing machine, still puzzling over Mum’s old wedding dress. She’d taken a brief break to offer her “expertise” as a hairdresser, and I wasn’t sure which I rathered her putting her attention to.

  I was feeling über-cautious, what with all my previous haircuts having been done by an auntie I trusted with my life. Yes I did need to find a solution to free haircuts now that option wasn’t there, but Kay didn’t seem to know what she was doing in any respect.

  “Aww, please! I’ll be extra careful!” She pouted. I was not convinced. She sounded like a little girl begging to play dress-ups with her granny’s best china dolls. I felt like I was faced with a tanned Edward Scissorhands in a tartan sari, tights and flip-flops, looking ready to lop somebody’s head off with one accidental swoop. “And look at all those split ends! Tut, tut, tut.”

  “No means no, Kay,” I insisted, probably sounding like the narky dog owner or older sister I was used to being.

  “Harley, I promise, I’ve got an idea I want to try on you for the wedding. It’ll look great. Please don’t stomp on my creative vision!”

  “Can I see it?”

  “Oh, trust me, you’ve seen it. You said you liked it.”

  What on earth could she mean?

  “Can we see it?” asked Keisha, excitedly.

  “Sure,” said Kay, flipping open a fairly recent copy of Bliss. She passed it around our friends, skilfully blocking my view. They all seemed to think it was alright. Chantalle was even smiling.

  “Please can I see it?” I asked.

  “You’ve seen it. You liked it. Don’t you want a surprise?”

  “Yeah, it’d really suit you,” said Rachel.

  It occurred to me that if I did see the picture, I’d probably chicken out – and I really did need a haircut, for which, without my hairdressery aunt, Kay really would be the best bet.

  “I’m only gonna take a bit off the fringe, and trim the ends.”

  Huh, I thought. My fringe is already wonky, so it can’t exactly get WORSE.

  “Um, OK, I guess,” I conceded. “But be careful!”

  She flipped over her mirror so that the reflective side faced the wall, and the back of it was revealed with all its butterfly and star-shaped stickers. (They were just like the ones on my wardrobe, except none said “I ate all my fish today!”)

  Kay left the room briefly to fill up a spray bottle. She dampened my hair like a real stylist, and even combed it through. Maybe things were going to go well after all.

  She snipped and tucked for over half an hour, luring me into a false sense of security as she seemed to be taking things slow. When she set down the scissors and announced, “All done!” I was taken by surprise.

  Without letting me look, Kay flipped on the dryer and reorganised my still-damp hair for a minute, before spinning the mirror back to its normal position.

  I gasped.

  My sensible (up ’til I set the scissors to it, anyway) fringe had completely changed – it was mad. Asymmetrical wouldn’t cover it. It was up on one side and down on the other, except not on any kind of smooth gradient. It was severe. As for the rest of my hair, she’d kept the length (phew, I guess), but it was now weird and choppy around the edges. If I didn’t pat it down, it was going to stick out at the sides.

  “Looks great, doesn’t it?!” she exclaimed, triumphantly.

  “Eh?”

  Great…?

  Great…? It was horrendous! Last time I’d seen someone with hair like that, they were growing it out from a pixie and couldn’t even tie it back for PE. Oh poo.

  “Kay, can I have a hairband a second?” I asked, shakily. “I want to see if I can still tie it all back.”

  “OK.” She shrugged, pulling out the fluffy scrunchie that was keeping her own, loopy-looking brown hair in a side pony where it flowed out of her headscarf. “How do you like it, though?”

  I managed to pull my hair back in the scrunchie. Most of it stayed off my face. I supposed I could settle for most. The thing was, I still didn’t like it as such, and all my friends were insisting I looked better than ever. Were
they all crazy, or was I just boring?

  #8 Wibbly Invitations & Widdly Spying

  “Yak, yak, lippy… yak, yak, thong… yak, yak, modelling…”

  That’s pretty much what I could make out of Aimee’s phone conversation. I wasn’t eavesdropping – these were the few intelligible words I had actually heard while she nattered on her mobile while making breakfast. You’d think she’d learned her lesson after what happened last night.

  There was an incident of the bathwater kind, further proof that our house just wasn’t cut out for another two people and their clutter and general needs. Aimee had left her running bath unattended for about an hour and a half while in the bedroom prattling on her phone and flipping through her (carefully stashed, but I know where) expensive shampoos and bath rubbish which we are not allowed to use.

  To be fair, it takes about half an hour to fill our bath – but as we’d unfortunately just realised, it takes about an hour to have overfilled it to the point where the floor gives way.

  Aimee’s the sort of ungrateful person whose actual response to this was that it serves us right for being filthy enough not to own a working shower. Well excuse me for having no power over my parents’ money-handling! And excuse them for never having had the money to fix that shower ever since they moved in. And excuse Mum for chucking Dad out when he was spending all prospective shower funds on beer with pre-teenage twins in the house, and excuse her for choosing Aimee’s dad as the love of her life and probable solution to our lack of working shower.

  Yup, I’d got as far as wondering if Mum found Harry to serve a mutual purpose where the house was concerned. He has money – it’s just that as I have found out, it’s in the form of his old house which no one has wanted to buy. All these renovations will come after he manages to get rid of it. The question is when? “When?” is always the question with our family.

  Call it a consequence of Kay’s eco-unfriendly hairsprays, a new do, and some unhappy information from Zak on my way back into the house, but I hadn’t stopped worrying all night. I had problems – bigger problems than the niggle of whether I was in fact boring; even bigger problems than how to have a wee in private when there’s a big hole in the bathroom floor and the room below is occupied.