Clean Break (23 page)

We repeated it a great many times. Gran told us off at first, saying we were making an exhibition of ourselves, but some other children started copying us, and then their mum and dad joined in too. Gran raised her eyebrows and sighed at all of us – but she had one quick little go herself as the train drew into Waterloo Station.

‘I looked up the Jenna Williams website on the computer at work,' Gran said. ‘She's not signing until one o'clock, so we've got plenty of time to look around first.'

We walked along the embankment, staring up at the great Millennium Wheel.

‘Oh, Gran, can we go up in it?' said Vita.

‘There's a big queue already. I don't think so, pet. I can't stand hanging around in queues. It makes my back ache just standing still – and it's such a waste of time,' said Gran.

‘Oh please please please, pretty please, Gran,' said Vita.

‘Well . . .' said Gran, wavering.

Maxie stared at them as if they'd gone mad. ‘No!' he said. ‘No, it's too big, too high, too scary!'

‘I thought you liked helter-skelters,' said Gran. ‘They're big and high and scary.'

‘I'm on a mat on someone's lap in a helter-skelter,' said Maxie.

‘Tell you what, Maxie, we could put my jacket on the floor of the glass pod and you could sit on my lap and then you'd feel safe as safe,' I said.

We persuaded him it would work. We had to queue for tickets and then we had to join another queue to get on the wheel.

‘My blooming back!' said Gran. ‘I don't know about Maxie sitting down, but I'm going to have to
lie
down, stretched full out. I don't think this is a very good idea.'

Maybe Gran was right. I kept remembering a Jenna Williams story called
Flora Rose
, where little Lenny gets terribly scared on the Millennium Wheel. I was starting to get a little bit anxious myself. It did look very very high, and you were shut up in the pod a long time. What would happen if the wheel got stuck when you were right at the top, unable to get out?

‘I don't want to!' Maxie whined. ‘It's scary.'

‘No, it's not,' I lied. I tried to pick him up but I couldn't manage to carry him
and
the book bag.

Gran had to carry Maxie, though she sighed
some more when his dusty shoes kicked at her pale pink skirt.

‘Watch your feet, Maxie! And stop that whining, it's getting on my nerves.'

Maxie stopped whining and started full-bodied sobbing.

‘Oh, for pity's sake!' said Gran. ‘Look, this is meant to be a treat. Do stop acting as if I'm torturing you. Maybe we're just going to have to give up on this, Em.'

‘No, no,
please
let's go on, I want to, don't be mean!' Vita wailed. She started sobbing too.

‘Oh, dear God, stop it, both of you, or I'll knock your heads together. Why did I ever say I'd do this?' said Gran, looking at me balefully.

‘You said you'd take us up to London because you're a lovely kind gran and I'm very very grateful,' I said, laying it on with a trowel – no, a huge great
spade
of praise!

‘Yes, I am lovely and kind – and very very stupid,' said Gran, hanging onto Maxie and Vita. They were trying hard to outsob each other. Gran give them a little shake. They sobbed harder. People were staring.

‘Stop it! Stop it at once, you're showing me up! If you don't stop this minute we'll go straight back home without any treats at all,' Gran threatened.

I panicked. ‘It's OK, Gran. I'll stay on the ground with Maxie. You go on the wheel with Vita.'

Gran thought about it. ‘But then you'll miss out altogether, Em, and you're the only one behaving sensibly. Won't you mind terribly if you don't get to go on the wheel?'

I didn't mind one little bit, but I didn't let on. ‘Perhaps I'll get to go on the wheel another time,' I said, trying to look wistful.

‘You're a good girl, Em. Here!' Gran fished in her handbag and tucked a five-pound note in my hand. ‘Buy yourselves an ice cream while you're waiting for Vita and me.'

I was more than ready for something to eat. I'd been so busy fixing everyone else's breakfast I'd forgotten to eat any myself. I bought Maxie and me large 99s from a Whippy ice-cream van. Maxie had given himself hiccups after all that sobbing.

‘Lick your ice cream slowly, don't make your hiccups worse,' I said. ‘Look, Vita and Gran are getting into their pod. Up they go!'

Maxie shuddered. ‘I'm sorry I'm not a big brave boy,' he said forlornly.

‘You can't help it, Maxie. Don't worry. What would you like to do for
your
treat then? Vita's had the ride on the wheel. There she is, waving, way up high already, look!'

Maxie ducked his head. ‘Don't want to look!' he said.

I waved back to Vita. I picked Maxie's limp arm
up and waggled it, so that he was waving too. His other arm waggled in sympathy and he dropped his ice cream on the ground.

‘Oh, my ice cream!'

‘Oh dear. Well. You can finish mine if you like. Or I'll get you another one. Gran's given me heaps of money.'

‘Will that be my treat, another ice cream?' said Maxie.

‘No, no, you can choose something else.'

‘A helter-skelter?'

‘Maxie! Look, there
aren't
any helter-skelters in London, trust me. They're just at funfairs and the seaside. And even if we took you all the way back to the one on the pier, I don't think you'd really like it. You could sit on my lap on the mat, but it's not me you want, is it? It's Dad.'

Maxie put his sticky hands over his ears but I knew he could still hear me.

‘I miss him too, Maxie. So much. I'd give anything for him to come back. I've wished it over and over.' I took Dancer off my hand and looked at my ring. ‘We could make another wish if you like, on my magic emerald.'

‘Will it come true?' said Maxie, taking his hands away from his head.

‘Well, it hasn't come true
yet
. But it could come true this time. Shall we try?'

Maxie clasped my hand and we wished for Dad. I muttered a whole lot of stuff. Maxie just went, ‘
Dad Dad Dad Dad Dad
.' Then we both looked round over our shoulders. There were dads everywhere, shouting, laughing, calling, chatting, joking, pulling funny faces. But not
our
dad.

Dancer wriggled onto my hand and stroked Maxie's cheek with her paw. He brushed her away, not in the mood for her stories. I wasn't really either. I undid my school bag and read the first page of my Dancer book. My heart started thumping. It seemed so stupid now, so totally babyish. Why on earth would Jenna Williams want to read it? She'd probably say something nice to me, but privately she'd be thinking me a totally sad idiot. I crammed my story back into my school bag, hiding it under all the books.

We sat silently on some steps, waiting. It seemed an age before Gran and Vita got out their pod and came over to us. Vita was dancing, twirling round and round. ‘It was so great up on the wheel! I saw Buckingham Palace and the Queen waved to me,' she carolled in a cutesie-pie voice.

‘It was amazing, you could see for miles,' said Gran, jigging around, almost breaking into a dance herself. ‘Oh dear, you two, what glum faces! Maxie, you're such a prize banana. Come on then, let's go for a little walk along the embankment.'

‘Hadn't we better go and find the bookshop now?' I said anxiously.

‘Don't be silly, Em, your blessed Jenna Williams isn't going to be there for an hour and a half. We don't want to be hanging around waiting with nothing to do. No, I want to show you the Globe Theatre – it's only a couple of minutes away, we could see it from the pod. It's been built just like a proper Elizabethan theatre.'

‘I want to go on the stage and dance!' said Vita, holding out her arms and simpering, as if she could hear tumultuous applause.

So we trudged along the embankment. My book bag got heavier and heavier and heavier, but I didn't dare complain. Maxie trailed beside me, scuffing his feet. Vita stopped prancing and started pestering for an ice cream, because Maxie and I had already had one. Gran had to stand on one foot and adjust the straps on her sandals, sighing.

‘Maybe this isn't such a good idea,' she said. ‘It looked so near when we were in the pod, but it's obviously miles away.'

‘Miles and miles and miles,' Maxie said glumly.

‘It's not fair,
I
want an ice cream,' said Vita.

‘What's the time? Maybe we should start going back now,' I said. ‘I want to be first in the queue at Addeyman's bookshop.'

‘I told you, there's heaps of time yet. We'll just
go as far as that big chimney, see it? I think that's Tate Modern, the art gallery. I wouldn't mind getting some postcards,' said Gran.

‘To send to Eddie?' I said.

‘Maybe,' said Gran. ‘Though I don't want to send any picture of daft scribble or dead cows or what have you.'

We didn't get to go inside the gallery. We all stared transfixed at the huge sculptures outside, on the forecourt. There were four gigantic towers, one red, one yellow, one blue and one green, with shiny silver slides spiralling round and round, down to the ground. There were doors at the bottom, and stairs leading up inside.

‘Helter-skelters!' Maxie shrieked.

‘Well I never! There you are, Maxie, your wish come true! They
look
like helter-skelters, certainly,' said Gran. ‘But they're not real ones.'

‘They look real. I want to go on the red one!' said Vita.

‘You can't go
on
them, they're sculptures,' said Gran.

‘No, Gran, look, people
are
going on them,' I said, pointing to heads bobbing at the top of each tower.

‘So they are! Well, all right, I don't see why you can't go too,' said Gran. ‘Maxie, you go on with Em.'

‘No, not Em. I'm going with
Dad
!' said Maxie.

‘Your dad's not here, Maxie,' said Gran, sighing.

‘He will be, he will be! We wished it, and it's come true, it really has!' said Maxie, his face radiant.

‘Oh Maxie,' I said, but I wondered if Dad
might
just be up at the top of these magical helter-skelters, waiting for us.

I took Maxie and Vita on all four helter-skelters. They weren't dark inside. They were lit up with a wonderful golden glow and there were pictures to look at as we climbed the steps. There were strawberries and scarlet ribbons, roses and Little Red Riding Hood in the red helter-skelter; bananas and teddy bears, sandpits and smiley suns in the yellow helter-skelter; turquoise pools and clear skies, cornflowers and little boy babies in the blue helter-skelter; Granny Smith apples and grassy meadows and an entire Emerald City of Oz in the green helter-skelter.

Everyone emerged at the top with great smiles on their faces before they spiralled all the way downwards on the shiny silver slide.

Everyone but Maxie.

We went up the red helter-skelter, the yellow helter-skelter, the blue helter-skelter, the green helter-skelter. Maxie didn't give the pictures a second glance. He was peering round, looking desperately.

‘I give up!' said Gran, when he started sobbing. ‘He asks for a helter-skelter in the middle of
London. One, two, three, four helter-skelters appear as if by magic. And is this child delighted? No, he bawls his blooming head off!'

‘It's not really Maxie's fault, Gran. He was hoping to see . . . someone,' I said. I picked Maxie up and gave him a cuddle, though I could barely move for the big book bag on my back.

I was starting to get a bit anxious. It was twenty to one. I didn't want to be late for Jenna Williams.

I struggled with Maxie for a minute or so.

‘Oh, for pity's sake, Em, put him down. Why should you have to lug him along like that?' said Gran. ‘Maxie, stop that silly snivelling. Stand on your own two feet and walk properly.'

Maxie couldn't manage it. In the end Gran sighed deeply and took him from me.

‘I'll carry you for one minute, that's all. You watch your feet on my skirt, and for pity's sake don't wipe your snotty little face all round my shoulders! Oh, the joys of being a grandma!' said Gran.

We trudged back along the embankment and up over Waterloo Bridge. Gran threatened to chuck Maxie over the parapet into the water. Maxie knew she was joking, but decided to clamber down from her arms and walk under his own steam, just in case.

Vita was the one whining and dragging her feet now, complaining that no one ever carried
her
. I
was feeling pretty exhausted myself. I seemed to be carrying at least a hundred Jenna Williams hardbacks in my bag. There was a cold wind up on the bridge but I was so hot my green dress was sticking to me.

‘Is it far now, Gran?' I asked.

‘Just at the end of the bridge, over the road and round to the left,' said Gran. ‘Five minutes. Don't fuss, Em. We'll be there on time. You'll be one of the first to see her. Then we'll all go off and have a bite to eat. I can't wait to sit down, these flipping sandals are killing me. And my back's playing up worse than ever after hauling ten-ton Maxie all over London. I must be mad.'

We got to the end of the bridge. We could see a huge queue winding halfway down the Strand.

‘Why are all those people there, Gran?' said Vita.

‘Don't ask me,' said Gran. ‘Hang on, there's that musical,
The Lion King
, on at the theatre up ahead. Maybe they're queuing for a show. There's lots of children, that must be it.'

My heart was starting to thump hard inside my green dress. There were lots and lots and lots of children. The girls all seemed to be clutching Jenna Williams books.

We got to the top of the street. The queue was thicker now, ringing round the Covent Garden piazza. There were crash barriers stretching all the
way to the big Addeyman's bookshop over at the other side. The queue disappeared inside the door.