Lily Alone (8 page)

‘No, he's up in Glasgow, remember? I'll be your dad, Baxter.' I made my voice go really deep and growly. ‘
Now then, son, settle down or I'll give you what-for
.' I didn't sound remotely like Mikey but it made Baxter laugh and then snuggle down to sleep. Pixie went out like a light, having stayed up way past her bedtime three nights in a row. Even Bliss seemed fast asleep when I crept in later to check on her.

I was the only one wide awake. I felt like reading so I went into Mum's room so as not to waken the kids. This was a mistake. I looked around at all of Mum's things – her jewellery hanging from her mirror, old scent bottles and powder puffs and make-up scattered messily over her dressing table, a little pile of tights and pants strewn in a corner. I held Mum's big hairbrush and carefully unpicked strands of Mum's blonde hair, then rubbed them together to make one soft little lock. I tucked it in my pyjama pocket and got into her bed to read. The sheets and pillows smelled of Mum's scent. I buried my nose in them, breathing in deeply.

I had to sit up properly and start reading quick to stop myself crying. Bliss's old fairy tales were strangely comforting. Mothers sent their children off into wild woods where there were wolves, they locked them up at the top of towers, they poisoned them with apples. No fairy-tale child would so much as raise an eyebrow at a mother going off on holiday for a week. Maybe it was no big deal at all. Maybe heaps of mothers did the same and nobody let on.

I decided I'd have to be very careful at school tomorrow. But what about Bliss and Baxter? I knew just how much it would worry Bliss. If you told her to keep a secret she'd clamp her lips together and do her very best, but if questioned she'd flush a raw red and she'd start trembling. Whereas Baxter could never keep anything quiet. If you specifically told him not to mention something he'd shout it out at the top of his voice. And what about Pixie? She'd started going to nursery now, and every morning their nice soft teacher sat them in a circle and they had special Talking Time. Little girls and boys said that it was their birthday or Daddy's car broke down or their brother's hamster had died. Pixie would be bursting to tell her news:
My mum's gone on holiday with her new boyfriend and my stepdad can't come to look after us so we're all alone
. I could just
hear
her blurting it all out.

I was ready for them the next morning. I'd fallen asleep in Mum's bed and they all came tumbling in, Pixie just in her T-shirt.

‘She wet her bed,' said Baxter sternly. ‘She's dirty and smelly.'

‘No, I'm not. I didn't wet my cot. Bliss climbed in and did it,' said Pixie firmly.

‘I didn't, I didn't!' said Bliss, appalled.

‘I know. Never mind, Pixie, we'll change your sheets. Come in Mum's bed and have a cuddle just now.'

‘But it's late, Lily, we're going to be late. It's half-past eight,' said Bliss. ‘We have to go to school
quick
.'

‘No, we don't,' I said taking her by the wrist and pulling her into bed with me. ‘We don't have to go to school quick, we don't have to go to school slow, because we're not going to school at all.'

That made them stare.

‘Is it a holiday?' said Baxter.

‘Yes, hurray, hurray!' I said.

Bliss was frowning anxiously.

‘I don't think it
is
a holiday,' she said. ‘We've had half-term already.'

‘It's
our
holiday. Mum's on holiday so we're on holiday too. We can do whatever we like today. No boring old school, yippee. So we can all snuggle up and have a lovely lie-in.'

‘Yuck, I'm not doing sissy snuggling,' said Baxter. ‘So what are we going to do, then? Can we go to Chessington World of Adventures? That's where all the boys in my class go on their holidays.'

‘Yeah, well, if you've got the money, Baxter, I'll take you,' I said.

‘If my dad was here he'd take us,' said Baxter. ‘I want to go on that ride that goes swoop swoop and then turns you upside down.'

‘Oh,
this
ride,' I said, grabbing him round the waist and tipping him up so he was dangling in mid-air.

Baxter squealed and I shook him and then dropped him carefully on the bed.

‘Me now, me now!' Pixie squealed.

‘Don't do me, please don't!' said Bliss.

‘Yeah, but where
will
we go?' Baxter persisted, his voice muffled by the pillow.

‘Well, we'll go to the adventure playground,' I said.

Baxter cheered, but Bliss looked worried.

‘What about the big boys?'

The last time we'd gone there after school there were seven or eight boys hanging out there, drinking and smoking and swearing as they mucked about in the kids' den. Baxter had run up the ramp fearlessly to join them, but they'd thrown a lager can at him and pushed him over. I'd gone to rescue him and they'd thrown cans at me too, and said all sorts of horrid stuff. When I got all the kids home I'd sworn we'd never go there again – though Baxter moaned and complained, saying he
wanted
to go and play with the big boys.

‘The big boys won't be there just now,' I said.

‘Will they be at school?' Bliss asked.

I nodded, though I was pretty sure they weren't the sort of boys who
went
to school. Still, I knew they stayed up half the night, so they'd likely be fast asleep till lunchtime.

‘And we're really really really not going to school?' said Bliss. ‘Won't we get into trouble?'

‘No, I told you, we're on holiday. Now all go and get dressed. Pixie, I'd better dunk you in the bath.'

I served them cereal for breakfast and I let them put extra sugar on their Frosties. While they were all happily crunching away in the kitchen I went into the living room and picked up the phone. I dialled Mum's mobile. I wasn't going to tell her about Mikey. I just wanted to tell her we were all OK – and I needed to check she was fine too. But dialling didn't get me anywhere. I just heard a recorded message:
I'm sorry, it has not been possible to connect your call
.

I tried again, just to check, and got the same message. Mum must have her mobile switched off.
Too busy with Gordon
, I thought, clenching my fists.

‘Lily?' Bliss was standing at the door.

I slammed the phone down quickly.

‘Were you ringing Mum?' Bliss whispered.

‘She's having a lovely time on holiday and says she hopes we're having a happy holiday too,' I said quickly. ‘Bliss, you've got bright purple lips.'

‘Baxter poured us some Ribena.'

‘You're meant to
dilute
it. Haven't you lot had
enough
sugar? Your teeth will be black by the time Mum comes back.'

‘Lily,
is
mum coming back?'

‘Of course she is,' I said, and I made myself laugh. ‘Honestly, Bliss, you're hopeless. You always have to get in such a state over things. You're such a baby!'

I was being horrible to her simply because she'd said aloud the thing that was starting to worry me dreadfully. It made me feel momentarily better to pour scorn on her. It was as if I was mocking my own worries and it might help make them go away. But then I saw Bliss's poor little face, her eyes watery with tears, and I felt terrible.

I flew across the room and put my arms round her.

‘I'm sorry, I'm sorry, please don't cry. I don't know how I could have been so horrid. Here, Bliss, you get your own back. Say something really mean and spiteful to me.

Go on, say it.'

Bliss fidgeted. ‘Come
on
, Bliss.'

‘I can't think of anything,' she said. ‘But don't be cross again, Lily, please.'

‘It's OK. I promise I won't be cross again.'

‘Ever?'

‘Well. I can't really promise that.'

‘All right, promise you won't be cross again this week,' said Bliss.

‘I promise,' I said, and we stood quietly together, still hugging hard.

Then I heard a great swooshing sound from the kitchen. It sounded horribly like someone tipping the whole jumbo packet of Frosties onto a plate.

‘I
will
get cross with Baxter though,' I said, running into the kitchen. ‘Baxter, for goodness'
sake
. Tip them back in the packet.'

‘I wanted to see how many bowlfuls there were,' he said. ‘I'm still hungry.'

‘No, you're not, you're
greedy
. Come on, help me clear up, you lot, then we'll go to the adventure playground.'

Baxter made himself scarce at once, and I had to stop Pixie helping after she dropped a plate, but Bliss was very obliging.

‘Good girl, Bliss. You can take Headless to the playground.'

Headless was Bliss's favourite cuddly teddy. She slept with him in her arms but Mum never let her take him out because he looked so awful. He used to be called Whitey because he was a polar bear, but now he was a sickly yellow-grey. He really
was
headless. Baxter had tried to tug him out of Bliss's grasp and his head had come right off. Mum had tried to sew it back on but she couldn't stitch it tight enough. His head wobbled alarmingly and fell off again when we were crossing a road – and a car ran over it. Mum wanted to put the rest of Headless in the bin but Bliss wouldn't hear of it. She loved him more than ever now he was mangled.

‘I want
my
teddy,' said Pixie.

‘Yes, we can take all the teddies – we can have a teddy bears' picnic!'

I wrapped all the battered animals in Pixie's old cot blanket and took the rest of the Frosties, a packet of Jammy Dodgers and a bottle of Coke from the kitchen. Pixie ran along beside me, wanting to add all sorts of weird stuff.

‘Let's take a chair for all the teddies to sit on! Let's take the teapot so the mummy teddy can have tea! Let's take the washing-up bowl so we can do the washing up! Oh, let's take the washing-up squirty thing so we can make bubbles!'

Bliss and Baxter could barely talk when they were Pixie's age, they just mumbled together in their own twin language. I started to wish Pixie was a twin too – she was like a little woodpecker drilling into my brain. Still, it stopped me thinking too much. I was learning that the trick to stop feeling scared was to keep busy busy busy.

So I carted the teddies and their picnic to the door and sent the kids off to the toilet to do a wee because I didn't want to get all the way to the playground and then have to trail back almost immediately because of an urgent call of nature. I was actually pulling the front door shut behind us when I suddenly stiffened. The door key! I felt sick. The flats seemed to slip sideways, as if there was a sudden earthquake in south-west London.

Mum had gone off with her handbag – and the keys were in a little pouch inside. Had she taken them with her? I rushed back inside, leaving Baxter and Bliss playing with the fork-lift truck, while Pixie started setting up a preliminary picnic on the doorstep. I looked on the coffee table, on the kitchen worktop, in all Mum's drawers in the bedroom. I couldn't find a spare key anywhere.

Mikey still had a set of keys, I knew that, and hated the way he could burst in on us any time he wanted. But he was in Glasgow now, so couldn't help out.

What were we going to do? We couldn't stay stuck inside the flat till the weekend. And what if Mum didn't come back then?

I knew you could get new keys made, but you had to have another set to copy. You could get a whole new lock with a set of new keys – folk were doing it all the time on our estate to keep people out – but that cost a lot of money. We didn't have any money, apart from a few pennies to rattle in an old piggy bank.

‘Come
on
, Lily, we want to go to the playground!' Baxter shouted.

‘The bears are hungry, They're growling, grrr, grrr, grrr,' said Pixie.

‘I'm
coming
,' I said.

I couldn't keep them in. They'd be like wild bears themselves by lunchtime.

I put the door on the latch and pulled it closed. I looked up and down the balcony to see if anyone was watching. If any kids saw they could get in they'd steal stuff and trash the flat. I stood biting my thumbnail. Still, we didn't really
have
any stuff worth stealing. And the three kids had done a pretty good job of trashing the flat already, especially Baxter. We still had his purple crayon marks all over the walls and a great hole in the plaster where he'd bashed into it trying to skateboard. Bliss hadn't made any marks, but there were lots of discoloured patches on the pale carpet where Pixie had peed, just like a little puppy marking her territory.

I gave the door another pull and set off down the balcony.

‘Come on, you lot,' I said.

I put my finger to my lips as we passed Old Kath's flat. We all went on tiptoe – but Kath's got these great bat ears that are always flap-flap-flapping. There was a tap from inside her kitchen window. I pretended not to hear and pushed everyone past, but Kath was at her front door while I was still trudging for the lift.

‘Hey, you kids,' she yelled, and she caught hold of Pixie. She moved quicker than a rattlesnake for all she'd got a zimmer frame.

Pixie gave a little squeal. Old Kath kept hold of her firmly with her gnarled old fingers and made ridiculous coochy-coo noises as if Pixie was a little baby instead of a person.

‘How's my little angel then?' said Old Kath.

‘She's fine. The lift's here. Come on, Pixie,' I said urgently.