Angry Coral Week Read online

  I decided to get back to work, hastily jotting down every analysisy sort of thing I could come up with, praying I’d catch up – the shame if he got a better English score than me!

  But then he had the nerve to sit there for the other two thirds-ish of the exam and stare into space.

  That boy was beyond hope…

  #10 Hand-Crunching, Canned Laughter & A Set Of Ratty Towels

  “Chuhhhhhuhuhuhuh!!”

  I leant to stroke the head of Layla, who was stretched out on the sofa, which was protected by a ratty old emergency towel. We were having a girls’ night in with a video of Friends and a bar of Galaxy or seven. I recoiled slightly when her fur felt greasy to the touch. “Aww, Lay-Lay, you’ve got it bad, huh?”

  Hmm, she should try having a human period…

  “Chuhhhhuhuhuhuhuhuhhuhaaaaa!”

  Dogs don’t eat chocolate; I’ve tried telling her that, but, y’know…

  “Chuhuh!”

  In case you were wondering, those “chuhuh”-type noises weren’t being emitted by me or the doglet; they were coming from the speakers of the nice-sized TV, as the long-ago canned audience applauded an attempt by one of the actors at making a classic joke.

  I was fairly content to stay there all afternoon in my comfy chair, with my leg up on a pouf, watching a crackly video with my German Shepherd and a load of choccy – and after all, even if I wasn’t too pleased about either the greasy dog-hair, sugar overload or canned laughter, I was pretty much stuck with it ’til Zak came back in from a hard evening’s revising. (Um, make that a hard evening’s skating with Ryan.)

  They’d abducted my crutches to aid with what they called a “revolution”: the final merging of rollerblading and skiing, poles and all. (It had been a bit of a case of “Well sis, I’d like to see you stop me!” – SWIPE!!)

  Aimee and Ben had disappeared on another Happy Family Dress Rehearsal, of which there had been many lately. This meant taking Kitty to the cinema or the park or the toy shop or McDonalds, in practise for having their own tiddler. (And putting Aimee’s mind at rest about how it really would be worth it in the end.) Kitty was, of course, perfectly happy to oblige to this – free movies, lifts across monkey-bars, Bratz clothes and Happy Meals never hurt anyone’s mood.

  Charlie was supposed to be motivating the cooker towards heating up some packet dinner for us (“us” being himself and Zak and me and Mum and Harry when he got back from Tesco’s), but was way more likely to be shut away in a metal-obsessed world, while Mum tried to drag the stuff out of the freezer and ram it into the cooker with her baby-bump very much in the way…

  “CHUHUHUHUHUH!!” the out-of-view audience went again, as Joey announced something or other to do with his latest audition.

  “Wroooof!” Layla barked, happily accepting a piece of chocolate which I hadn’t offered her, and slavering all over my hand. (Drool which was fishy/meaty/biscuity enough at the best of times, let alone when I knew exactly which orifice her tongue had cheerfully excavated while I turned my attention to a smart quip from the TV.)

  I wiped my hand on the leg of my jeans, hesitating for a moment before breaking off another piece of choc with the other hand.

  Gross.

  Anyway, this was my form of celebrating the SATs being well and truly over. (It was Friday evening.) While most people were out having non-revision fun at parties or sleepovers or outside the off-license (I’m catering for the interests of everyone in my Year, before you furrow your brow in confuddlement), I was seriously glad, to tell the truth, that I had a convenient excuse to blow off my mates, who were having another gathering. Chantalle had seemed fine at school, but kept decidedly quiet about the Kit-Katting – and hey, Devon couldn’t tell me it was my fault if they’d excluded her again; I hadn’t even gone. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to hang out with my friends tonight; only that I couldn’t take hanging out with them at Danielle’s again for at least another month.

  Decade.

  Millennium.

  “Chuhhhhhuhuhuhuh!!”

  “Wolofffff!”

  “Agh!!”

  Clatter.

  Clunk.

  Bosh.

  Silence…

  I virtually felt my ears prick up in unison with Layla’s crimpy, gingerish ones. “Mum?!”

  Nothing.

  “MUM?!”

  I heard a muffled attempt at answering, eventually followed by a low groan.

  Omigod. I was pretty sure –although don’t get me wrong, because in our soap-free, little-sis-friendly home the only labour scenes I’d seen were canned-laughter-interspersed ones on sitcoms like the one in the background– that my mum was in a state of “he’s-on-his-way!!”, except without yet knowing whether “he” was actually a “he”. The confusing part was her seeming inability to talk.

  And I couldn’t get up to go and see what was going on, because I had no means of transport/support for my leg. Omigod, omigod, omigod…

  My mobile phone was on charge in the kitchen, and there was no way I could help.

  I wanted to swear.

  Usually, I’m the one sat there giggling at other people’s rudey phrases, and right now, tempted as I was, I couldn’t even think of a brilliant, witty curse word for “Omigod, somebody please take over!!!”.

  “Charlie!” I yelled, praying he’d hear me.

  Nothing.

  “CHARLIE!!” I felt my throat ache with almost-tears as I bellowed unattractively in the direction of upstairs. Hopeless – my little voice would never reach him up in the attic. If he was in the attic; that is…

  I could hear the faint sound of splishing and still-running taps that I’d maybe missed before when I was engrossed in the video. Oh, that’s right – he wasn’t generating tinnitus up in his (since recently) dingy bedroom; he’d run himself a bath. There was a cease to the splishing for long enough for two metal-damaged lugs to strain in recognition.

  Then I heard a muffled, “Huh?”

  “Charlie? Can you come down here?” (There was now absolutely no need to shout, since he was in the floor-punctured room above me, with only possibly a green plastic sheet, some bubbles and a bottle of TRESemmé between him and me.)

  “Not really…”

  “Why?”

  “Why d’you think? I’m in the bath…”

  “Well, this is an emergency!”

  “Uh, but you didn’t say that…” he said. (And I could almost hear the withering expression he must’ve felt smart for giving me – when I couldn’t see it, not least thanks to the scary groundsheet blocking the living room/bathroom spy-hole.)

  “Mum is having the baby!” I groaned, wishing he didn’t have that boyish braindeadness thingy that all the males our age seem to have.

  “Wha-?” I heard him almost accidentally ask me what I’d just said, and then, in a sensible sense of urgency -yay!- decide to trust his ears.

  Suddenly there came the sound of stampeding elephants (or one freaked-out thirteen-year-old and a mongrel dog) fighting for space on the way downstairs, and into the kitchen burst Hendrix the Horny Hound, and Charlie in a holey towel. I cursed that with my neck craned its furthest I could see too much of him and yet nowhere near enough of Mum.

  “W-what do I do?” he panicked.

  “What sort of state is she in?”

  “Um… I don’t know! I think she’s asleep.”

  “Asleep?!”

  “Well, sort of? Her eyes are closed and she isn’t talking.”

  “What?!”

  “Maybe she hit her head, like …on the counter? Or, the table… or-”

  “Concentrate, Charlie, concentrate!” I blurted.

  “Mum…” he whimpered. “I don’t know what I’m doing, here… Hang on: do I call an ambulance? Nod if I call an-”

  “Yes, you dork!” I yelled to him. “That or get me my phone! It’s on charge on the kitchen counter!”

  “Uh-huh,” he mumbled, racing back to me with the pink Motorola that I’d thought I’d never been so
pleased to have that night at Dani’s. This occasion certainly beat the record…

  “Right, I’ll just-”

  “Look, I’m getting the ambulance, now,” he told me, going into the hall to use the house phone.

  “OK, I’ll ring Harry, then!” I squeaked, nailing in the buttons for the Contacts list like I was the owner of a brand-new hammer.

  Brrp, brrp… brrp, brrp…

  “Hello?”

  “Harry! Mum’s gone into labour! Or fainted! Or something!”

  He let out exactly the sort of word I’d been hunting for, and then said, “Alright, OK, don’t panic – I’m just leaving Tesco’s. Coming right home!”

  “Charlie’s getting an ambulance…”

  “Tell him not to bother; I’ll get back there much quicker than them!” he gabbled, hanging up.

  Oh. My. God.

  It was just as well, though, seeing as from the sounds of it, Charlie’d accidentally gone through to the Fire and Rescue Service.

  Ben’s car arrived back at an illogically similar time to Harry and his own, so there was a bit of a kerfuffle about parking (not losing sight of how there was a woman -Mum- on the kitchen floor, possibly dying of a head injury and probably also on the verge of bringing new life into the world), but they all came clattering into the house at exactly the same time as Zak and Ryan.

  “I’m off home if it’s OK!” I heard Ryan mutter, alarmed, and disappear.

  “Hey, great thinking, Charlie!” Harry commended him for something of which I wasn’t sure. “And Zak! Return those crutches to your sister IMMEDIATELY!!”

  Zak stumbled into the living room, sheepishly, face waxy with shock. “Sorry, Harley…”

  “Mummy!” Kitty wailed, before catching herself: “Hang on, don’t worry – I know what’s going on!”

  I hauled myself out of the chair.

  As I reached the door of the kitchen, I was just in time to see Ben take over: “Right! Zak, Kitty, come with me!”

  “Come with you…?” asked Zak.

  “Yes. Now.” he ordered, and dragged them both next door, Aimee following after with a look of Total Hormonal Freakout on her face.

  I saw what Harry’d been extolling my twin for. So maybe it’d just been the tatty blankets out of the dog-basket and a thin cushion I hadn’t noticed him remove from the sofa, but he’d propped up her head just enough to keep it from contact with the perma-cold tiled floor. Mum was conscious now, but seemed confused.

  Harry helped Mum into the car and gave me and Charlie a serious look: “Coming or staying? You can go next door if you like, but-”

  “Coming!” I gushed, grabbing my indecisive, stupefied twin (who had, for the record, dashed upstairs at some point to drag his clothes back on, and now had the towel wrapped around his hair), and hobbling to the car.

  Charlie sat in the front, next to Harry, and I found myself in the backseat next to my woozy, groaning mother and several bags full of shopping.

  Harry pulled out of his (for once) badly-parked position, and stepped on it. (The “it” being his accelerator pedal, of course.)

  Mum moaned again, and grasped my hand tighter even than when I was a toddler and she was worried about me running into the road; so tight that I was glad I’d finished my exams and only needed the use of it about as much as my cast-bound leg.

  Oh, how I wished I could still be lounged in the living room with my crackly video, menstruating dog and hunk of Galaxy…

  Or even better, to rewind right back to those protective hand-crunching, round-the-mouth food-spreading, me-and-Charlie-and-you days that were almost out of sight in my 1994½-to-1996 box…

  #11 Wibbly Pig & A Bladder To Match

  Mum had been checked over at the hospital and was totally fine. She’d long since been squirreled away somewhere with Harry, and we’d been told that things were progressing at an unusual rate. So at some point very, very soon, I was going to have my third little brother. OK, OK, so maybe Charlie was only my little brother by thirteen minutes, but he was still a little brother, and the way he carried on didn’t help.

  Another baby! Yay!

  Time to break out the Wibbly Pig books again!

  I said as much to Charlie, sitting next to me in the sheeny-shiny, MRSA-lurky hallway of the maternity ward, but he just looked at me like I was from another planet. (Who knows, maybe he’d tried on a pair of stilettos round Devon’s and seen above to those birthing scenes on Mars or Venus? Not that it’d taught him much.)

  “Don’t you remember Wibbly Pig?” I asked him, amazed at his boyish stupidity.

  “Erm, where was that from?”

  I almost said “the ’94½-to-’96 box”, but he wouldn’t’ve got that, either: “Toddler books that starred a pig who played with cardboard boxes or something…”

  “Oh. Well, I kinda try to block out all the horrible stuff from before Dad left.”

  “But this wasn’t Dad! This was Mum and me and you and Shelley!” I reasoned. “I can’t believe you don’t remember those!”

  “Vaguely.” He shrugged, shifting and hopping out of his seat. “Back in a sec!”

  Charlie’d been vanishing like that every three minutes or so since we’d been sat here. I couldn’t tell if he was nervous, or just feeling sick over the whole kitchen thing.

  “Sorry ’bout that,” he muttered, sitting back down, now without the towel turban that he’d likely lost in the loo. “So, you were saying?”

  “Um…” I mumbled, trying to remember – whether it was what was going on in a room not too far away (not that we could hear or anything) or the stupid way he was leant on his elbow in a badly-acted “interest” pose that was throwing me off, I had no idea. “Why’re you sat like that?”

  “Sat like what?”

  “All… all posy and manufactured!”

  “Hmph… I’m not…”

  “You are.”

  “I’m not!” He frowned, moving to a slouched down, rockgod, frowny-into-distancy position. One that was only marginally better, because he at least wasn’t meeting my eye anymore.

  That was when I spotted the enviably pretty nurse strutting up the hallway with a trolley.

  I waited tactfully for her to disappear through the swing door, before engaging in some world-class teasing:

  “It was that nurse, wasn’t it!”

  “Was not!” he huffed.

  “Was too!” I faux-huffed back, so he’d hopefully twig how hopelessly dumb that had sounded coming from his gob.

  “Wasn’t!” he blushed. “If you know so well what a hot nurse looks like, you try explaining!”

  Yup, he’d got me there – how could I possibly attempt to verbally fathom what was going through his immature head, without looking too much like I fancied her myself? (Which I didn’t…)

  “Well… as a boy, I suppose it’s your own right to fall madly, badly in love with every non-related person with boobs.”

  “Doesn’t make you fall - makes you… um… wait, what?” His face reddened even more.

  “Ew!” I grimaced, blotting out all sex-ed-style pictures threatening to invade my head.

  “Sorry…” he added. “Kinda forgot I wasn’t with Andy or anyone…”

  “Right…” I acknowledged. “Remind me to bore you about stomach cramps sometime.”

  His expression should’ve been all smiley and slightly-teased-but-not-bothered, but instead, it had turned steely and cold. “I’m furious at Zak, if you must know…”

  “Why?”

  “Well, he took your crutches, and that left me in charge! I didn’t know what to do! All I could think of was-”

  “Mum?”

  “No, all I could think of was… nothing…”

  “Your mind went blank?”

  “My mind went juddery: it was spinning with all this rubbish about what-if-we-had-nothing-and-were-still-in-this-situation…? And I couldn’t think straight, and before I knew it I was just… well… doing stuff on -what do all the people say?- cruise-control…
?”

  “Autopilot,” I corrected him. “But you did your best; you’re in the good books.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You would’ve done it much better. So I’m mad at Zak, OK, and that’s gonna take a while to-”

  “Look, I’m gonna call him now, and see if he and Kitty are alright with Ben and that.”

  He nudged me, and pointed to a sign forbidding mobile phones. I considered myself forbidden, and scooted outdoors as fast as my sticks could take me.

  Brrp-

  “Hi.”

  “Oh, hey, Kitty – where’s Zak?”

  “Zak’s running his head under the tap. He’s been doing that for ages now, but I’m not sure how long because the clock’s stuck.”

  “Any chance I could borrow one of his ears for a few minutes?”

  “What?”

  “Could you get him to speak to me?”

  “Zak! Phone! It’s Harley!”

  “Tell him I’m just checking on you guys…”

  “She’s just-”

  A new voice took over; that of my (imminently becoming) middle brother: “Hullo…”

  “That sounded a bit drowsy,” I mused. “You guys OK?”

  “Oh, fine, fine. Thank God Ben’s got an Xbox.”

  “I don’t care if Ben’s got an Xbox,” I sighed, wondering if maybe it was a thing adolescent boys did as an emergency measure – being shockingly, worryingly, immaturely tactless; not playing computer-games. “I’m not sure how late us guys’re gonna be here. Can you make sure Kitty goes to bed by eight, please? And that wherever she goes to bed there’s somebody in the house?”

  “S’alright, we’re all staying here,” he informed me, still sounding clumsy and possibly in shock.

  “Good. You OK?”

  “Uh, yeah. But you really should tell your mate Devon that force-feeding a seven-year-old teen novels is dumb.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s reading her Cathy Cassidy.”

  “There’s nothing offensive about Cathy Cassidy,” I reassured him. “Anyway, I’ll have to ring off in a minute - just tell me Aimee and Ben and Eileen’ve stayed in?”

  “Aimee and Ben and Eileen’ve stayed in. Going, now – gotta thrash Ben at-”

  I’d hung up for him, since I really didn’t care what game he was playing – I only cared that Kitty was safe in the hands of the girl who, mad as a muskrat as she might’ve been, was like her other older sister.