Fruit and Nutcase (2 page)

I try to look after them, but I can’t have my eye on them all of the time.

Dad gets ever so impatient when Mum messes up the dinner or burns his shirts. But she can’t help it! It’s just the way she is.

Like Dad flying off the handle. He can’t help it, either; he’s just a live wire. He doesn’t mean anything by it. But it gets Mum all flustered and nervous and I have to go jumping in really fast and make them laugh. I can always make them laugh! Usually.

When we’re having fun together, like when Dad’s being Elvis singing his songs, and Mum’s dancing along to them, life’s absolutely brilliant. I think they’re the best mum and dad in the world and I don’t care a row of pins that we haven’t any money and have to live in the upstairs part of a rotten crumbly old house with Misery Guts lurking like some horrible evil spider waiting to catch us in her web. It just doesn’t bother me in the slightest little bit. It doesn’t bother me
where
I live so long as I’m with my mum and dad.

It’s when Mum does something daft and Dad flies off the handle and makes her cry that I get a bit fussed. What scares me is in case they stop
loving each other and Dad goes off to live somewhere else, so that we’re not a family any more. That is the ONLY THING in the universe that I am scared of. I’m not scared of climbing trees right to the very top, I’m not scared of big fierce dogs that run barking at you, I’m not scared of Tracey Bigg and her gang of stupid bullies, no way! I could bash Tracey Bigg to a pulp any time I want. But I don’t think I could bear it if my mum and dad split up.

Every night before I go to sleep I say this special prayer. I haven’t ever let on to anyone about my prayer before, not a single living soul, but Cat told me I’d got to be honest.

Cat’s the one who said I ought to write a book. She said, “I just know that you can do it, Mandy!” I said, “You mean, like … a book about
me?”
and Cat said, “Well, and why not?” So then I didn’t know what I would have to write about, or what sort of things she’d want me to put, and she said, “It’ll be a true story, right?
Your
story. So just tell it like it really is.”

All this stuff about myself. I dunno! It seems weird. But if it’s what Cat wants.

So, all right! I’m being honest. I AM BEING HONEST! Watch my lips.

I don’t know—
honestly
—whether I really believe in God, but that doesn’t stop me saying my prayer. This is what I pray:

Actually, I don’t do that. Kneel, I mean. I sort of put my hands together, but I do it under the duvet when I’m lying in bed. I’ve been doing it for almost two years, now.

Two years is a long time to keep on saying the same prayer. But it’s worked, so far! Even if Dad does sometimes fly off the handle. Even if Mum does do the daftest things. We’re still all together! I wouldn’t ever dream of going to sleep without saying my prayer.

“Please, God, don’t let Mum and Dad get divorced. Please, God! Let them be together for ever and ever, and ever and ever, and ever and ever, and ever and ever, and ever and ever, amen.”

I have to say it ten times, to match my age. The older I get, the more difficult it will be to keep count of all the for evers! But I will still do it. I will always do it.

My life is quite uneventful, really, and I cannot think there is going to be very much to record, but Cat says, “Go for it! Just put whatever occurs to you. Whatever’s important.”

But now that I’ve said about my prayer, and about Mum and Dad, I can’t think of anything else! Just being together as a family is all that is important.

Maybe I should describe “A Day in the Life of Mandy Small”. It is not what I would call very interesting, but I expect Cat would like it.

OK. Well. I always set my special Mickey Mouse alarm clock so’s to be sure of waking up on time in the morning. As soon as it rings I leap madly out of bed and hurriedly rush into my clothes.

If it’s summer I do it more slowly, but in the winter I have to rush or I would freeze to an icicle
before I got through dressing. This is because we don’t have any central heating in this crumbly old house. Sometimes it is so cold that when I wake up there are frost patterns on my window, all swirly and beautiful.

Once I am into my clothes I go racing to Mum’s room to make sure that she is awake. Dad has to leave home at six o’clock to go and clean windows with his friend Garry, and sometimes after he’s gone Mum falls asleep again. If I don’t wake her she would be late for work and then she would be threatened with the sack, which is what happened once before.

My nan says, “Oh, really, Sandra!” (Sandra is my mum’s name.) “Fancy having to rely on a child to get you up! Why on earth don’t you set your alarm?”

But the one time Mum set the alarm for seven, after Dad had gone off, she forgot to put it back again to 5.30 and Dad didn’t wake up next morning, so then
he
was late and that made him fly off the handle, and that is why I have taken charge. It is easier for me to do it. I don’t mind waking up.

After I have shaken Mum, I go into the kitchen and make some tea and toast. I then go back to Mum’s room to check that she is still awake. Sometimes she is, but more often she has gone and nodded off again. It isn’t Mum’s fault that she can’t wake up in the mornings. She’s just not very good at it. Some people are and some people aren’t, and Mum is one of the ones that aren’t. But it’s all right, because she’s got me. She says, “What I’d do without my Mand, I don’t know.”

Mum is Sand and I am Mand. I think that’s really neat!

Dad is Barry. It occurs to me that if they had another baby and it was a boy, they could call it Harry and then we would have Barry and Harry, and that would be neat, as well. I’d quite like a baby brother, but Nan says, “Heaven forbid! They can’t even cope with one of you.” So I don’t think, alas, that they will have another baby. Apart from anything else, where would it sleep?

All we have in this upstairs part of the house is one bedroom for Mum and Dad, one
(tiny
little) bedroom for me, one room for sitting in, one which is a kitchen, and one which is the
bathroom, though that is just a measly bit of room shaped like a wedge of cheese, half-way down the stairs, that we have to share with old Misery Guts, who moans like crazy about tide marks round the bath and hairs in the wash basin. She also used to moan about us using her loo paper, so now she carries her own roll with her whenever she goes there.

Now I’ve forgotten where I was.

I know! Telling about my day.

So. Right. As soon as I’ve eaten a bit of toast, and Mum’s had her cup of tea, we go down the stairs, on tiptoe because of Misery Guts, and close the front door behind us
really quietly,
and run up the road together, laughing, as it is always a relief to know that a) Mum is not late and won’t be threatened with the sack and b) we have not disturbed old Misery Guts and been yelled at.

Poor Mum! She hates being yelled at. She’s quite a timid person, really. I am more like Dad. I am FIERCE. What my nan calls “aggressive and up-front”. But she can talk! We both take after her. Dad’s dad, my grandy, is well under her thumb. That’s what Mum says, anyway.

Mum hasn’t got a mum and dad. She was dumped when she was just a little kid. I think it
must be so terrible to feel that you’re not wanted. That is something I have
never
felt. I know I was a mistake, because Nan has often told me so. She says that Mum and Dad were “no more than children themselves” and “far too young to go having babies”. But once they’d got over their surprise they were really pleased. Mum says I’m the cleverest thing she’s ever done. She says, “Your dad was so excited! He even came to the hospital to see you arrive!”

So I know that I am loved and wanted. I just wish I could be certain that Mum and Dad love and want each other. I think they do, ’cos they always kiss and make up and Dad is always buying Mum little presents to show how much she means to him. But it just would be nice to be certain
sure.

Now I’ve gone and lost track again. Miss Foster – she’s our teacher at school – she’d say I’m not concentrating. She’s always accusing me of not concentrating.

OK. So now I am! This is what happens after me and Mum have left the house.

We walk as far as the tube station together, then Mum kisses me goodbye and I go on to school. I always turn at the corner and wave, and
Mum waves back. For the rest of the day, I can’t wait for school to end so that I can go back home again.

I can’t stand school. There’s this girl in my class called Tracey Bigg who really bugs me. She’s really got it in for me. This is because one time when Oliver Pratt was blubbing and Tracey Bigg and her mates were making fun of him, I went to his rescue. Like Tracey was jeering at him and calling him a crybaby so I told her to stop it and she said, “Who do you think you are?” and I said I knew who I was and if she didn’t shut her mouth I’d shut it for her and she goes, “Oh, yeah?” and I go, “Yeah,” and we have this huge big fight and Oliver just stands there with his finger in his mouth, gorming. I mean, he is a total nerd but he can’t help it. I don’t expect he can. It isn’t any reason to be horrid to him. But lots of people are, like Billy Murdo and his gang.
Bully
Murdo, I call him.

See, if you’re not the same as all the rest, you get picked on. Oliver’s not the same ‘cos he’s a bit, well, sort of slow; and I’m not the same ‘cos—I don’t really know why I’m not the same. But Miss Foster’s always getting at me and making me feel like I’m useless. I wish I could go to an
acting school! One of those places where sometimes the kids get picked to be on telly. I bet I’d be good at that! But probably, I expect, you need lots of money, like you do for most things. So until some big pot film person catches sight of me and goes “Hey! Wow!” and instantly offers me a Lead Part in his next production, it looks like I am
stuck.
Worse luck.

The minute school is over I go scooting off just as fast as I can to collect Mum from her baker’s shop, where she works, and we go round the supermarket together and buy stuff for tea and carry it home and hope old Misery isn’t waiting to pounce on us the minute the front door opens, which all too often she is.