Alice in Time (16 page)

Sasha is uncharacteristically quiet all afternoon, which leaves me to get on with writing a brilliant story in literacy. Miss Carter is very impressed and gets me to read it out in front of everyone. I know that if I’d had to do that when I was seven I would have died of embarrassment. Now, although I’m a bit nervous because everyone is staring at me, I just imagine that I’m reading a story to Rory. Afterwards I get another sticker and when Miss Carter is putting it on my jumper, next to the other one, she says, ‘This really is an amazing piece of work. If you hadn’t done it in class I would have thought you’d had some help with it.’

I decide it might be a good idea to tone down my ‘brilliance’ a bit. I don’t want to cause a stir or get noticed too much. I’ve got too many other things to think about without being labelled a child genius – tempting though it is. Mind you, Miss Carter’s next words burst my bubble a bit.

‘Watch your handwriting though, Alice, it’s getting a little bit messy.’ I’ll have to work on making it more rounded and childish.

When I get back to my desk, I’m expecting another pinch from Sasha, but to my surprise she smiles at me and says, ‘That was a really good story.’ She looks almost proud to be my friend – which is a deeply weird experience.

‘You look happy,’ says Mum when she picks me up. ‘Did you make it up with Sasha?’

‘Oh yes, me and Sasha are fine now,’ I tell her as I skip along beside her. My good mood stays with me all afternoon and I help Mum make the tea and then we play a game of ludo. It’s not until seven o’clock, when Mum’s telling me it’s bedtime, that I realise Dad hasn’t come home. I was too busy thinking about Rory’s absence to notice Dad hadn’t showed up. I’m so used to him not being around that I forgot he should be here, with us.

‘Daddy has to work late tonight,’ Mum tells me as we pack the game away. She doesn’t sound too happy about it and she looks tired, so I decide not to kick up a fuss about having to go to bed so early. Besides, I’m exhausted after my day at school. Then I remember that she’s been at work all day. ‘How was Miss Maybrooke?’ I ask her.

‘Fancy you remembering that. She’s a lovely lady, we got along really well and she made me sit and drink tea most of the time. She said a woman in my condition shouldn’t be working, but I explained to her that I didn’t have a lot of choice. I tidied her kitchen up a bit, though. She lives in a lovely house, really unspoiled – well, apart from the bathroom that is. It’s nearly all original.’

Mum’s perched on the side of the bath, watching me to make sure I brush my teeth properly, but I don’t mind. It’s nice talking to her, like this.

When Mum’s tucked me in and kissed me, she goes downstairs and I get my notebook out. I open it and review my list.

1. Stop Sooty from getting run over
.

Short of keeping him locked in a cupboard for the rest of his life, I’m not sure how I’m going to manage this. Perhaps
I could give him some road safety lessons. Or some traffic aversion therapy. That might work, I’ll have to give it some more thought.

2. Stop Mum and Dad from splitting up.

This last one is obviously the biggy.

3. Find a way to get back to reality.

I add a question mark after this one. I can’t go back yet – there’s too much to do. I add:

4. Make Sasha’s life hell
.

That should be easy; I’ve got it well in hand. I need to concentrate on number two. Perhaps I could get hold of some marriage guidance leaflets and place them strategically around the house.

Then I have an idea. Maybe I can stop them getting divorced by behaving really badly. I remember when I was in Year Eight there was a girl in my class who refused to get out of bed when her parents split up. She was off school for ages, but then she moved away with her mum, who went back north after the divorce. That obviously didn’t work, then.

Or there was that girl in Year Nine. She was dead quiet and shy until her parents got divorced, then she went right off the rails. She shaved off all her hair and started getting off with loads of boys, and there were rumours that she was self harming. She left eventually, as well. Anyhow, her radical behaviour didn’t stop her parents from getting divorced, either.

In fact, just thinking about that girl has made me so depressed I feel like giving the whole thing up. I’m about to put my notebook away when I hear my dad come back. He’s in a good mood and I can hear Mum laughing at something he’s
said. It’s like being a proper family again and I don’t want it to stop.

Right, I just need to look at this in a different way. I have the advantage here because I’m seeing it in retrospect. I need to persuade Mum that our life will be awful if she leaves Dad. I need to show her that she needs him. I decide to write down everything I know about the divorce, so I turn to the back of the notebook and make a fresh start.

I know that Mum threw Dad out, because Dad told me all about it. Dad often has a moan about Mum, so I do know that she stopped loving him and made him move out and he was heartbroken to leave us behind. He had nowhere to go and ended up camping out on the floor of a flat belonging to a workmate. The workmate just happened to be Trish and, according to Dad, she was very kind and sweet so that he ended up falling in love with her and they’ve been together ever since. Even though she’s quite a bit younger than him.

It wasn’t long after Rory was born that all this happened, so I’d better get a move on. Why did Mum throw him out? I chew the end of my pencil while I give this some thought.

It doesn’t help that Mum never says anything against Dad. She has a strict policy of not slagging Dad off in front of me and Rory because, she says, however she feels about him, he’s still our dad. That’s all very well, but it means that I don’t know how she feels about him. If she’d ranted and raved I might have a clearer idea as to why she did it.

How can I explain to Mum that if she throws Dad out she will be forcing him into the arms of another woman? Surely that would make her jealous and she might see sense.
Unfortunately, I don’t know how I’d manage that without her thinking I’ve turned into some freaky psychic overnight, assuming of course she believes me – which she won’t.

How I can stop Mum falling out of love with Dad? I suck the end of my plait and stare into space, trying to think of an idea. I’m disturbed by raised voices coming from downstairs. Oh no, not again! They were laughing a minute ago. I creep out on to the landing to find out what it’s about this time and hear Mum’s shrill voice.

‘All I’m asking is that you stop spending so much money down the pub and at the bookies. You promised you’d stop the gambling when I got pregnant, so what’s this . . . ?’

I can see through the banisters that she’s waving a betting slip in his face.

‘And you promised you’d stop nagging me . . .’

He’s got a point. At this rate she won’t have to throw him out – she’ll drive him away.

‘If you won’t do it for me, then do it for your children. You’ve got a family to look after . . .’

‘I never wanted the bloody children in the first place. It’s hardly surprising that I spend all my time down the pub when all I get here is a whiney daughter and a nagging wife.’

He slams out of the front door and I crawl back into bed and pull the covers over my head. I can hear Mum crying in the sitting room.

I don’t whine, do I?

The next morning, I spring out of bed with all the energy of a hyperactive seven-year-old on E numbers. At least that’s what it feels like. My good mood is slightly marred, though, when I walk into the kitchen and see Dad sitting at the table finishing his toast and marmalade. I find it difficult to look him in the eye when I remember what he said about me last night.

‘And how’s my little Princess, this morning?’ he asks in a bright voice, which sounds forced, now I know his true feelings.

‘Oh, just my usual, whiney self,’ I say sweetly, as I sit down. I really can’t help myself.

I notice him exchanging a look with Mum over my head. ‘I’d better be off, then,’ he says, pushing back his chair and standing up. An avalanche of toast crumbs fall to the floor. I can hear them crunching underfoot as he goes over to Mum and gives her a kiss. ‘Someone has to keep this family in the style to which it’s become accustomed,’ he laughs.

If that’s a joke it’s not a very good one, in the present circumstances. Mum laughs, because she always laughs at Dad’s jokes, but I don’t think she sounds very amused.

Dad slips out of the door and Mum gets the dust pan and brush from the cupboard. She tries to sweep up the toast crumbs but the bump prevents her from bending down. I take the dustpan and brush from her and clean up the mess. I wonder why Mum wants another baby when she’s already looking after the biggest one in the world – namely, Dad.

‘What was it that made you fall in love with Dad?’ I ask. I’m attempting to get Mum to remember how she used to feel about him, in the hope that she’ll see what a great bloke he is. The problem is it comes out all wrong, so it sounds like I’m saying, ‘What the hell did you ever see in him?’ Although, actually, I
am
beginning to wonder. I’m not entirely sure Dad is such a great bloke, after all.

‘Your father,’ says mum, ‘can be a very charming man when he wants to be.’ She’s got a faraway look in her eyes and a stupid grin on her face and she’s rubbing her hands over her bump. Oh my God! She’s thinking about sex! Yuck! And they were only arguing about that the other night! What is it with adults? I wish they’d make their minds up. One minute they’re shouting each other’s heads off, and the next minute they’re all lovey-dovey.

‘He’s under an awful lot of pressure at the moment, though,’ says Mum, ‘at work and with the new baby on the way. He does have his little failings, I admit, but I love him all the same.’

I stare at Mum. I’ve got my mouth open again. The gambling
and drinking are hardly ‘little failings’. She’s not even lying to me about loving Dad. She really means it, I can tell. I’m confused.

‘So how come he slept on the sofa last night?’ I ask.

Mum laughs. ‘Because I threw him out of the bed. I’m so big at the moment there isn’t really room for him as well and neither of us were getting any sleep so he went downstairs instead.’

It seems that not everything is as it appears. But that doesn’t answer the question. If Mum is still so ‘in love’ with Dad, why is she about to leave him?

I try to persuade Mum that I’m perfectly capable of walking to school on my own, but she won’t hear of it.

‘Maybe when you’re a bit older, Alice.’ God, and there was me thinking that I didn’t have any freedom at fourteen! At least I wasn’t escorted everywhere like a prisoner.

I go up to my room to get my school things ready. If Mum does still love Dad then her reason for leaving him must have been the gambling and drinking. If I can get him to stop, then maybe we can all live happily ever after. The problem is, I get the feeling it would be easier to persuade the Pope to convert to Buddhism, than to get my dad to change his ways.

I’ve got some serious research to do. I need to find out about support groups for Dad, like Alcoholics Anonymous. And there must be a similar thing for people with a gambling problem. Gamblers Anonymous maybe. And I might as well find out everything I can about post-natal depression while I’m at it. If we had a computer this would be easy. It’s not the
sort of thing that I’m going to find in the school library, I really need to get to the public library. An idea forms itself in my head.

As we make our slow, waddly way to school, I say to Mum, ‘Don’t forget I’m going to Sasha’s for tea tonight.’

Mum has stopped to catch her breath. She’s breathing quite heavily and luckily not paying too much attention to me, which makes a nice change.

‘What? Are you sure? I don’t remember that.’

‘Yes, it’s all arranged,’ I lie cheerfully. ‘I’m going home with Sasha after school and her mum will bring me home.’

‘OK, that’s quite a relief actually. I’m feeling a bit sluggish today.’

‘I’ll see you later, then,’ and I give her a kiss and run into the playground. Now, after school, I can nip off to the library and when I get home I’ll pretend I’ve been to Sasha’s and Mum will never be any the wiser.

It’s quite a relief to be at school. At least now all I have to worry about is being horrible to Sasha. Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy.

It’s still weird to see all these people I know as little kids again. It strikes me that they’re not really all that much different to their fourteen-year-old selves. Lauren Hall, who I sit with in GCSE maths, is painfully shy; I can see her clinging to her mum at the school gates. Lucy Clark is surrounded by a load of friends, girls as well as boys, Luke is larking around with them in his cheerful, funny way and Chelsea and Clara have separated themselves from the crowd and are leaning against the wall, whispering together and looking superior. It’s just
me that’s different. My seven-year-old self would have been playing happily with Sasha, no doubt, trying to stay out of trouble and thinking about not very much except Barbie, probably. Oh, the blissful ignorance I lived in!

Someone’s tugging at my sleeve. ‘Did you bring the skipping rope?’

‘No,’ I tell her, and then before she can have a go at me I say, ‘Ponies is a stupid game, anyway.’ She’s about to argue so I add, ‘It’s a bit babyish running around pretending to be a horse.’

I can tell Sasha is dying to play at being a horse, but I also know that she won’t want to be thought of as ‘babyish’. Nothing is going to get me to play one of those ‘pretending games’, though. I know I used to love them, but I’m way too old to play them now.

Sasha is looking cross and puzzled. She’s probably wondering what has happened to the pliable, meek and easily bossed around little playmate that I used to be.

‘Well, you thought the game up in the first place – so it’s
you
that’s babyish.’ She puts her hands on her hips and sticks her bottom lip out. I can’t help laughing at her as she flounces off.

The bell goes, and as we line up I find myself thinking about Imogen again and wishing she was here.