Clean Break (13 page)

‘Oh, for God's sake, don't be so boring. You sound more middle-aged than your grandmother,' Dad snapped.

I couldn't keep back the tears this time. Dad saw. He stopped. He knelt down with difficulty, Vita and Maxie hanging from either shoulder like rucksacks.

‘Em. Em, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean that. I
wasn't being serious. I was just playing with the idea. I don't want tonight to end, darling.'

‘I don't either, Dad,' I sobbed. ‘I don't mean to be boring. We can manage without night things – Maxie doesn't even
wear
pyjamas. It would be great to miss school. It's just . . . Mum might think we're never coming back.' I thought of Mum worrying so and I cried harder.

‘Don't cry, Em. Please. I can't cuddle you properly with these two. Come nearer, sweetheart. There now. Dry those tears, Princess Emerald. You're the brave little girl who looks after us all and never cries, right? Don't, darling, you're breaking my heart.'

‘I've stopped now, Dad,' I sniffed.

‘It's OK, baby. I'm going to take you home now. It's going to be all right, Princess Emerald. I'm ordering up your silver carriage right this minute.'

Dad and I settled Vita and Maxie on the back seat.

‘Do you want to curl up in the back too, Em? You look exhausted.'

‘No, I want to sit with you, Dad.'

I was too anxious to go to sleep. Dad tried telling me elaborate Princess Emerald stories all the way home but I couldn't concentrate properly. He kept losing the thread himself, so that it all started to sound like a dream. We jumped from the princess's
palace to her marble swimming pool, but then we were swimming with dolphins way out in the ocean. I started to wonder if it was
all
a dream and I'd wake up all over again on Christmas morning. It would really be the best Christmas ever and Dad wouldn't walk out.

Then we drew up outside our house. The lights were all on. The front door opened and Mum and Gran came running down the front path. They were both crying.

Mum gave me a huge hug and then delved in the back of the car for Vita and Maxie. They were so fast asleep she couldn't wake them up. She started shaking them frantically.

‘Vita! Maxie!'

‘Hey, hey, they're fine. Don't worry,' Dad said gently.

‘Don't
worry
?' said Mum.

She pulled Vita and Maxie out of the car and tried to carry them both, though their weight made her buckle.

‘Let me carry them, darling,' said Dad.

‘Darling?' said Mum. ‘For God's sake, Frankie, stop torturing me. Are you coming back to us now, is that it?'

Dad hesitated. ‘Oh, Julie. I still care for you so much. But I've got to be honest. I'm not coming back, my life is with Sarah now.'

Mum's chin shook. She pressed her lips together. Tears slid down her cheeks.

‘I wish I could be here. I wish I had the kids around me, I miss them so,' said Dad. ‘I love them, Julie.'

‘How dare you!' said Gran. She slapped Dad hard across his cheek, her bracelets jangling. ‘Do you have any idea how frantic we've been? We thought you'd abducted them. Did you know the police are out looking for you?'

‘For God's sake, did you have to bring the police into it? I'm not a kidnapper, I'm their dad.'

‘What sort of a dad are you, walking off at Christmas, leaving them desperate, crying their little eyes out.'

‘Now come on, I didn't do that, you know I didn't. I tried hard to make it easy for everyone.'

‘This is
easy
?' said Mum.

‘It's not easy for me either,' said Dad. ‘Can't you quit shouting and slapping and making things so horrible and heavy. I wanted today to be lovely for the kids, a treat they'd remember for ever.'

‘Why?' said Mum. ‘Are you clearing off for good, is that it?'

‘Well, Sarah's had this offer with a Scottish theatre. I thought I'd go with her, see if I can maybe get work up there too. But don't worry, babe, I'll come back and see you and the kids as often as I
can, even though the fare down is pretty huge.'

‘You save your money,' said Gran. ‘Though most of it is
my
money that I was fool enough to lend you. We don't want to see you ever again. Push off with your stupid little girlfriend and never ever come back.'

‘You don't mean that,' said Dad. He looked at Mum. ‘
You
don't mean that, do you, Julie?'

‘Yes I do,' said Mum. ‘Get lost, Frankie. I'm over you already. Let's go for a clean break. I never want to see you ever again, do you hear me? Leave me and my kids
alone
.'

Dad stared at her. One of his cheeks was still scarlet where Gran had slapped him. He rubbed it, looking dazed. Then he took a deep breath.

‘OK. If that's the way you want it,' he said. He looked at Vita and Maxie and me. ‘What do you want, kids?'

I didn't know what to say, what to do.

I wanted to tell Dad I wanted to see him all the time.

I wanted to tell Mum I didn't ever want to see Dad ever again.

I wanted and wanted, torn in two.

Vita was sobbing now, exhausted.

‘What do you want, Princess Vita?' Dad asked softly.

‘I want to go to
bed
,' Vita wailed.

Maxie was past saying anything. He was crumpled in a heap in the hallway, whimpering.

‘Look at the state you've got them in,' said Mum. ‘What sort of a dad are you?'

‘OK, OK. I'm a lousy dad, a useless husband, a hopeless provider,' Dad shouted. ‘Right then, I'll make everybody happy. I'll clear off out of your lives. We'll go for a clean break.'

He jumped back in his silver car, started the engine and zoomed off into the night.

DAD DIDN'T COME
back. It looked as if he meant it.

A clean break.

He sent Mum a cheque with a Scottish postmark on the envelope. He didn't put his address. He didn't write a letter either. He just scribbled on the back of the cheque,
Love from Frankie and xxx to the kids
.

‘That's not a proper letter we can keep,' I said sadly.

‘It's not a proper cheque either,' Gran sneered. ‘He still owes me thousands and yet he's acting like Lord Bountiful sending your mum a cheque for a hundred pounds. As if that's proper maintenance!'

A hundred pounds seemed a huge amount to me. I thought of running round the Flowerfields
shopping centre with a hundred gold coins in my school bag. I could go to the Bear Factory and buy a cuddly black cat with his own cute pyjamas; go to the bookshop and buy an entire set of Jenna Williams stories; go to Claire's Accessories and buy all sorts of slides and scrunchies and glittery make-up; go to the Pick 'n' Mix Sweetstore and choose a whole sackful of sweets . . . and I'd
still
have heaps left to buy presents for Vita and Maxie.

Then I thought of all the boring stuff like bills in brown envelopes and cornflakes and loo-rolls and spaghetti and milk and Maxie's new school shoes and Vita's leotard for ballet and my new winter coat. Maybe a hundred pounds wasn't very much after all.

I put Dancer on my hand and made her talk to me.

‘Cheer up, Princess Emerald,' she said. ‘Your dad won't let you down. He's the most wonderful man in the world, you know he is. I'm sure he'll send another cheque soon. This time there'll be a proper letter you can keep, just you wait and see.'

I waited. Dad didn't send anything. He didn't pay his rent to the Pink Palace either. The fairies grew dusty behind their bars.

‘I don't know what to do,' Mum said. ‘I can't keep it on. I can't be in two places at once. It never
brought in much money even when Frankie was around. We'll have to let it go.'

‘You can't let them close Fairyland!' I said, appalled. ‘What will Dad do when he comes back?'

‘Get this into your head once and for all, Em. He's not coming back,' said Mum, taking hold of me by the shoulders and speaking to me practically nose to nose.

‘Yes he is, yes he is, yes he is!' I said inside my head.

I made Dancer whisper it to Vita and Maxie and me every night when we went to bed. We all believed her. Maybe Mum did too, in spite of what she said. She paid the Fairyland rent herself right up until Easter.

We'd all started hoping that Dad would come back then, even if it was just for a visit. He always made such a special day of Easter. I remembered one Easter, when Vita was very little and Maxie was just a baby, Dad hired a huge rabbit costume from a fancy-dress store and pretended to be the Easter Bunny, crouching down and hopping, flicking his floppy ears from side to side.

Another year he hid hundreds of tiny wrapped chocolate eggs in every room of the house and all over the garden, and we spent all Easter morning running round like crazy, seeing who could find the most (me!).

Last year Dad gave us all different eggs. Maxie got a big chocolate egg wrapped in yellow cellophane with a toy mother hen and three fluffy chicks tucked into the ribbon fastening. Vita got a pink Angelina Ballerina egg with a tiny storybook attached. I got a Casper Dream fairy egg with a set of Casper Dream flower fairy postcards. He gave Mum a special agate egg, with whirls of green and grey and pink, very smooth and cool to touch.

‘It's called a peace egg,' Dad told her. ‘You hold it in your hand and it calms you down when you're feeling stressed.'

Mum held her agate egg a lot through January and February and March. Sometimes she rolled it over her forehead as if she was trying to soothe all the worries inside her head. She held onto it most of this new Easter Day.

Mum tried her hardest to make it a special day. She made us our favourite boiled eggs for breakfast and she even drew smiley faces on each one.

We had chocolate eggs too, big luxury eggs with bright satin ribbons. When we bit into them, teeth clunking against the hard chocolate, we found little wrapped truffles inside. Mum said we could eat as much chocolate as we wanted just this once – but we were all keyed up waiting for Dad to come with
his
Easter surprises.

We waited all morning. Gran cooked a chicken for lunch. We waited all afternoon. Gran suggested we all went for a walk in the park but we stared at her as if she was mad. We didn't want to risk missing Dad.

‘He's not going to come,' Gran said to Mum. ‘You
know
he's not. You haven't seen sight or sound of him since that dreadful day when he ran off with the kids.'

‘He didn't run off with us, Gran. It was just a day out,' I said heavily.

‘A day and half the night, with the police out searching,' Gran sniffed.

‘I
have
heard from him,' Mum said. ‘You know he sent another cheque last week. And he put
Happy Easter
to all of us. So I thought . . .' Mum's hand tightened on her peace egg.

‘You thought he'd come running back with his silly fancy presents, getting the kids all over-excited and driving you mental,' Gran said.

‘Shut
up
!' Mum shouted. She suddenly flexed her arm and hurled her peace egg to the other side of the room. It landed with such a clunk we all jumped. The peace egg stayed smoothly intact, but it dented Gran's video recorder and chipped a big lump out of Gran's skirting board.

‘Oh God, I'm sorry!' Mum said, starting to sob.

We thought Gran would be furious. Her eyes
filled with tears too. She went to Mum and put her arms round her.

‘You poor silly girl,' Gran said. ‘I can't bear to see you sitting all tense and desperate, longing for him. You're making yourself ill. Look how thin you've got.'

I looked at Mum properly. I hadn't noticed. She really had got thin. Her eyes were too big in her bony face, her wrists looked as if they would snap, and her jeans were really baggy on her now, so that she had to keep them up with a tight belt.

It wasn't fair. I missed Dad every bit as much as Mum and yet I hadn't got thin, I'd got fatter and fatter and fatter.

It didn't stop me creeping away and eating my entire Easter egg all in one go. I licked and nibbled and gnawed until every last crumb was gone. My mouth was a mush of chocolate, pink tongue covered, my teeth milky brown. I imagined my chocolate throat and chocolate stomach. Yet I
still
felt empty. I was like an enormous hollow chocolate girl. If anyone held me too hard I'd shatter into a thousand chocolate shards.

I felt so lonely during the Easter holidays. Whenever we went out to the shops or the park or the swimming baths there were fathers everywhere. They were making the teddies talk to the little kids in the Bear Factory; they were helping
their kids feed the ducks and pushing swings and kicking footballs; they were jumping up and down playing Ring-a-Ring o' Roses in the water.

There were dads in every television programme, making a fuss of their kids. One time we even spotted
our
dad in an old film. It was just a glimpse, in a crowd, but the plait was easy to spot.