What we actually said out loud was, ‘Happy birthday, darling! Would you like to pop back upstairs and get ready for school while I make you a birthday breakfast?’ and ‘I’m not hungry.’
Part of me wanted to stay and damn well eat my birthday pancakes – Jonah King could deal with having to keep his eyes to himself. The other, loserish part of me was painfully aware that I’d not brushed my mass of dark-brown hair, and the new spot by the side of my nose felt the size of a marble.
I sloshed out a glass of orange juice and stomped out.
Mum caught me up at the top of the first staircase, on my way up to the attic bedroom opposite Nicky’s.
‘We’ll do your presents and cards after you’ve been out with your friends,’ she whispered. ‘You still look half asleep. It’ll be nicer to open them when you’re awake enough to enjoy it. Come and have some pancakes, though, once you’re dressed. Or there’s cereal?’
‘Whatever.’ I’d arranged to walk with my friends to an ice-cream parlour on a local farm after school, which was the part of my birthday I was looking forward to, but I wasn’t about to let her off the hook for breaking the promise about new kids on special days.
‘Oh, darling. Please don’t be like that.’
I climbed a few steps before turning to look back down, challenging her to provide a credible excuse for the apparition in my kitchen.
She pursed her lips. ‘They’d tried everywhere. It was three in the morning when the call came, and he’d been at the police station since midnight.’
‘Not our problem, though. Not today.’
‘Libby, it was us or a residential unit a hundred miles from his siblings. His school. His friends.’
I scoffed. ‘He doesn’t have any friends.’
She went very still. ‘You know him?’
‘He goes to Bigley.’
‘No. On the form it said somewhere in Mansfield.’
‘And, what? These forms are never wrong? He transferred after Christmas. Got kicked out of his last school for assaulting a teacher, according to the rumours.’
Mum shook her head, as if dismissing that highly relevant piece of information. ‘It’s only one night. He’ll have moved on by the time you come home.’
‘Only one night.How many times have we heard that before?’
Nicky found me attacking my frizz with a hairbrush a short while later. She perched on the edge of my dressing table, her sixth-form outfit of denim shorts, black tights and a stretchy T-shirt in sharp contrast to the grey skirt, navy blazer and stripy tie that made up my Bigley Academy school uniform.
‘Happy birthday, sis.’ She held out a small package perfectly wrapped in lavender tissue paper finished off with a silver ribbon, the edges expertly curled.
‘Mum said we’re doing presents after school.’ I took the gift anyway.
‘Because it would be weird for a vampire to have to sit through our family celebration.’ She pulled a face. ‘I want to say I can’t believe they said yes. But that’s not true. I can totally believe it. I just think it sucks. We always open presents before school, so you can open this one now.’
I unwrapped the paper to find a journal, the cover decorated with trees, in the midst of which was a tiny, enchanting cottage.
‘I know your dream is to live all by yourself in the middle of a forest. Now you can write out your dreams inside one. I know it’s not quite the same, but, well…’
‘I love it.’ I abandoned my hair to give Nicky a hug. I supposed most families knitted together through their uniquechallenges and adventures. But sharing our parents and our home with so many other children over the years, having said hello to foster siblings who became like genuine sisters and waved goodbye to some we couldn’t wait to leave, Nicky and I had bonded in a way that few could understand. When my friends grumbled about their brothers winding them up or sisters nicking their stuff, I wished I could make them appreciate the consistency of a person who’s been there for all the in-jokes and the tough memories and the quirks that make your family yours.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved that my parents did this amazing work. I’d cared about every child who’d spent time in the two little bedrooms below mine. But all too often, amidst the chaos and the meltdowns, the revolving door of social workers and what felt like every precious conversation with my mum being interrupted or overshadowed by children who hadrealproblems, I longed for a cottage in the woods, just for me. A place where I could stroll about in my underwear if I felt like it. Where my thoughts and feelings mattered. This journal would become my hideout that year. My metaphorical cottage in the woods, home to my deepest feelings and what became my biggest, wildest secret.
4
NOW
Weekday mornings generally followed the same routine. After yet another night of torturous tossing and turning, I heaved myself out of bed at seven and attempted a supersonic shower with a broken showerhead that needed one hand holding it in position before being interrupted by Isla banging on the bathroom door needing a wee. Then began the chaos of getting two kids ready for school. Every morning I made the same promise to myself as I slurped a mouthful of scalding then somehow, seconds later, cold coffee, packed and then repacked lunch boxes due to Isla suddenly deciding she hated whatever she’d loved the day before, cajoled her into eating breakfast while preventing Finn from eating everything, located lost shoes, brushed teeth, settled arguments and wiped Isla’s ever-ready tears: tomorrow, it would be different. I’d get organised the night before, go to sleep at a decent time, get up earlier. Then I’d have time to eat more than Isla’s toast crusts, and maybe even dry my hair properly so it didn’t explode into frizz.
But without fail, by the time evening arrived it was all I could do to get the kids into bed before I either taught another class,caught up with messages and other admin or collapsed onto the sofa with a bar of chocolate.
