Candyfloss (28 page)

‘Look at them!’ said Rose fondly. ‘Does your dad know much about machinery, Floss?’

‘Well, he
thinks
he does,’ I said.

Rose roared with laughter. ‘You’re like a little old woman at times!’ She paused. Then she looked me straight in the eye. ‘So. What do you think about your dad and me, eh, darling?’

I shrugged shyly.

‘I know it’s early days yet, but your dad and me, well, we really seem to hit it off,’ she said.

‘Yep,’ I said.

‘And this time, when we move on tomorrow, we’re going to make sure we stay in touch.’

‘That’s great,’ I said.

We both paused to serve two customers with pink and lilac candyfloss. Rose went on winding a stick round and round the sugar cauldron even though she wasn’t making candyfloss for anyone else.

‘I know I’m quite a bit older than your dad,’ she said.

‘Are you?’ I said, surprised. ‘I didn’t know that. You don’t look it.’

‘Oh, sweetheart, thank you!’ she said. ‘I also know just how close you and your dad are and that’s lovely. I want you to understand, I don’t want to get in the way of that. When my Saul was young I had a few boyfriends who were rather hard for
him
to handle. It caused quite a lot of trouble.’ Rose stirred and stirred, her candyfloss getting bigger and bigger.

‘So is Dad your boyfriend now?’ I asked. ‘He says you’re his girlfriend.’

‘Did he! Do you mind?’

I thought about it very carefully. ‘I
used
to think I’d mind if Dad had a girlfriend, but I don’t seem to mind a bit if it’s you. Rose, that candyfloss is simply ginormous now.’

‘Yeah. Well. It’s a special big fluffy floss for you,’ said Rose, handing it over with a flourish.

I ate it as carefully as I could, but I still ended up with sticky sugar all over my cheeks and spangling my ears and nose.

‘You’ve even got wisps in your hair,’ said Rose, picking them out carefully. ‘You’ve got such lovely fluffy curls, darling. You’re just like candyfloss yourself.’ She played with my hair, fluffing it out. ‘Yes, if we coloured it pale pink you’d look like perfect candyfloss.’

‘Oooh,
could
we?’

‘I don’t know what your dad would say!’

‘I can get round Dad,’ I said.

‘Yes, I’m sure you can, sweetie. But what would they say at school if you turned up with pink hair?’

‘We’ve only got one more week and then it’s the holidays!’

‘All right then. When you’ve actually broken up we’ll see about turning you into a real candyfloss, OK?’

I told Susan that Rose had promised to colour my hair for me.

‘You lucky
thing
,’ she said. ‘It’ll look prettier than ever. But promise it won’t make you go all silly and clothes-mad and boy-crazy like Rhiannon and Margot and Judy.’

‘I promise promise promise, silly!’ I said, giving her a hug. ‘Maybe you could come to the fair with Dad and me one day and Rose will colour your hair too.’

‘My mum would go demented,’ said Susan.

‘Well, we could pretend it was like spraying your hair red for Comic Relief. Oh Susan, if I get my hair dyed pink I’ll match Pearl! She’s this horse on the roundabout. She’s got a wonderful pink mane and tail, and she’s snowy white with big blue eyes. She’s my absolute favourite, but you can have first go on her when you come to the fair with me. Sapphire’s lovely too – she’s white as well but with a blue mane – and Amber’s great too – he’s a glossy brown with a yellow mane and tail.’

‘You sound like you belong to the fair already,’ said Susan.

‘Oh, I wish!’ I said.

I worried that we wouldn’t be going to the fair so much the next week because they moved on way past Felting to a town called Bromshaw about forty miles away. But Dad went back to see the doctor on Monday morning and had his burns inspected, and she said they were healing beautifully. He could leave his bandages off and drive the van again.

‘It feels so good, Floss,’ said Dad, waggling his fingers at me one by one. ‘It’s great to have my wheels back too. Let’s go for a drive, darling. How about checking out the fair at Bromshaw? I thought it would be fun to see if it looks completely different there.’

I looked at Dad. ‘You think Rose will be selling burgers and Pearl will be stuck onto the Stargazer ride?’ I said.

‘
No!
Are you teasing me, Floss?’

‘Of course I’m teasing you, Dad! We don’t need any excuse. Yes, let’s go to the fair.’

‘You can always do your homework in the van.’

‘I haven’t got any homework, Dad. We break up on Friday.’

‘Oh lumme, yes.’ Dad sighed. ‘What are we going to do with you during the holidays, sweetheart? I’ll have to find
some
kind of job to keep us going, and I very much doubt I’ll be able to take you with me.’ Dad paused. ‘Maybe it’s time for you to go and join your mum, darling. We’ve had a lovely time
together
but I’ve been having sleepless nights, worrying about you.’

‘Don’t worry, Dad. I’m fine. We’ll work something out for the summer.’ I held my hands out in front of my face, palms up. ‘Aha! Rose isn’t the only one who can tell fortunes. I can see a big curvy line on each palm. They’re like smiley faces. That means I’m going to be very very happy.’

‘I hope so, darling. Listen, I was wondering . . . Susan’s dad seems a very nice chap and he did say he owed us. Do you think you could play round at Susan’s some of the time? Once I get a job I can offer to pay.’

‘That would be great, Dad, though it might do my head in if they kept trying to teach me all the time! But they’re going to their house in France.’

‘I don’t know, there’s them with two houses and here we are without any.’

‘Well, maybe it’s good to travel light. Like Rose and all the fairground people,’ I said.

We had another lovely evening at the fair. Eddie, the roundabout man, had become such an old pal by now he utterly refused to take my pound for the ride.

‘In fact you can do me a favour, Floss. I need to test out all my gallopers to make sure they’re all safe and solidly fixed. Perhaps you’d be an angel and ride them each in turn?’

I think he was just being sweet to me but I wasn’t going to argue. While I was test-riding every horse on the roundabout Dad had another chat with the Stargazer guy, and then he bought burgers and chips from one of the vans and had a long discussion about fat and fryers and types of sauce and vinegar. But
most
of the time we hung out around Rose’s stall.

Dad had several goes on Liz’s Lucky Darts stall to be polite – and amazingly scored one hundred and eighty. Well, Liz insisted he had, taking the darts out of the board so quickly we couldn’t really check. She gave Dad a huge blue plush teddy, the twin of Rose’s pink bear.

‘Here you are, Floss,’ said Dad, thrusting a vast armful of bear at me.

‘Thank you very much, Dad – but I think I’m maybe getting too big for bears,’ I said.

‘Well, who can we give it to?’ said Dad.

‘Tiger might like him, but he won’t be back for months. Anyway, I’ve already given him Kanga.’

‘What about Susan? Is she too big for bears too?’

‘She’s not really into cuddly toys, Dad.’

‘Well then . . .’ Dad turned to Rose with a big smile. ‘You wouldn’t like to hang him alongside your pink bear, would you?’

‘I think that’s a lovely idea,’ said Rose. ‘We’ll
hook
him up right this minute. Come here, Blue Ted, come and make friends with Pinkie.’

‘He looks a bit of a
bare
bear compared with her,’ said Dad. ‘We’d better kit him out with some clothes.’

‘Hey, I know an outfit that would be absolutely perfect,’ I said, chuckling. ‘A blue denim outfit. I can sew the skirt into shorts easy-peasy. And the denim cap will look really cute tucked over one ear!’

Dad took me on the Dodgems too. I didn’t really
like
it much, especially when we got bumped, but I squealed and laughed and pretended because Mike, the owner, let us go on for free as we were friends of Rose. Mike’s daughter Ella collected the money on the Dodgems. She was only a year or so older than me but she was much taller, a really tough tomboy girl who leaped lightly from car to car, her money belt tight round her slim hips. She sorted everyone out and swore cheerfully at any boys daft enough to try to cheek her or chat her up.

We went for an ice cream together while Dad and Mike were having a chat, but I hardly dared say a word to her.

‘You don’t
say
much, do you?’ she said, licking her ice cream with her pink pointy tongue.

I just shrugged my shoulders and licked too.

‘You’ve got a tongue, I can see it,’ said Ella. ‘So
speak!
’

‘Have you been with the fair all your life?’ I mumbled.

‘Yeah, my family have always been showmen. Well, my dad used to ride the Wheel of Death, but then he saved up enough to buy his Dodgems.’ She grinned. ‘They’re mine too.’

‘That’s really cool,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know children could work at the fair.’

‘I’m not like a little kid,’ said Ella. ‘My brothers work later on, after dark. We all help out. It’s what you do at a fair.’

‘Well, I always helped
my
dad,’ I said. ‘He used to have a café. I acted like a waitress at weekends. I even got tips.’

‘So how come you’re so friendly with Rose? Are your dad and Rose an item?’

I shrugged again. ‘Sort of.’

‘We all love Rose. She’s generally useless at picking men though. They always let her down.’

‘My dad never lets anyone down,’ I said fiercely.

‘Yeah, he seems like a nice bloke,’ said Ella. ‘Even though he’s a flattie.’

‘A
fatty
?’ I said. ‘He’s not! Well, he’s a bit plump but he’s not really fat.’

‘No, I said
flattie
. You’re one too. Punters. Customers.’

She pretended to smoke her chocolate flake. I copied her.

‘I’ve got real cigarettes if you want one,’ she said, reaching in her jeans pocket.

‘No thanks. I – I’ve given up,’ I said quickly.

She laughed at me, but not unkindly. I decided I liked Ella even though I was a bit scared of her. I hoped we might be friends – though not of course a
best
friend like Susan.

It was so sad at school on our last day before we broke up for the summer holidays.

‘I’m going to miss you so so so much, Susan,’ I said, nudging up close to her at her desk.

‘I’m going to miss
you
,’ said Susan, giving my hand a quick squeeze.

Rhiannon made silly kissy noises behind us. We took no notice of her.

‘I’ll write heaps from France.’

‘Yes, do! Only
not
in French. I know what you’re like, Susan.’

‘
Moi?
’ said Susan, laughing. ‘I’ll text you too on my dad’s mobile. And even though I’ll probably see my cousins out in France, and maybe some of the stepbrothers and stepsisters too, I’ll feel so lonely without you, Floss.’

Rhiannon made disgusting vomit sounds.

‘Perhaps you’d better run to the toilets if you’re feeling sick, Rhiannon,’ said Mrs Horsefield.

‘It’s not fair, Mrs Horsefield, you always take
their
side. It’s like they’re your special favourites,’ said Rhiannon. ‘And they didn’t even give you a proper goodbye present, just that babyish home-made thing.’

Rhiannon had given Mrs Horsefield a huge box of chocolates and a bottle of champagne.

Mrs Horsefield paused. She fingered the blue denim pencil case Susan and I had made her as a goodbye present. We’d embroidered it with pink cherry buns and written
Our very favourite teacher
in chainstitch.

‘You’ve all given me lovely presents,’ said Mrs Horsefield. ‘I’m very lucky to have such sweet and delightful pupils. As a teacher I try very hard to be impartial. But do you know something, Rhiannon? I’m a human being too. Sometimes you simply can’t
help
having favourites.’

Susan and I hung back at going-home time so we could both give Mrs Horsefield a big goodbye hug. Then we had to have
our
goodbye hug and that was so hard. But eventually I jumped in the van beside Dad and waved and waved until Susan was out of sight.

‘I hate saying goodbye to people,’ I sniffed.

‘I know, pet. Still, you’ll see Susan quite soon, when she gets back from her holiday.’

‘I wish
we
were going on holiday, Dad,’ I said, sighing. ‘I know we can’t help it, and I’m not really
complaining
, but it’s going to be horrible just stuck at Billy’s house all summer.’

‘W-e-l-l,’ said Dad. ‘I’ve got this idea, Floss. We don’t have to do it if you don’t want to. It’s maybe crazy, but how would you like to join up with the fair for a few weeks?’

‘
What?
Really? Oh Dad, I want to, I want to!’

‘Rose and I have had a long talk. She’s so lovely, isn’t she? I can’t believe my luck. But anyway, she needs someone to help her out, for all she’s so independent. And I’ve been talking to some of the guys, and they always need someone to help build up and pull down their rides. I’m a bit long in the tooth but they can’t always get lads nowadays. I wouldn’t make much money, but there’s a chance I can help out at the burger stall, maybe making chip butties if there’s a call for it. Only you’d stay safe in Rose’s caravan, OK! How would you feel about it?’

‘Oh Dad, yes yes yes!’

‘So you’re really up for it, Floss?’

‘You bet I am!’

‘It’s just for the summer holidays, to see how it works out. I don’t know what we’ll tell your mum. She’s always hated fairs.’

‘We can say we’re touring round the countryside for the summer. That’s sort of true,’ I said. ‘Oh Dad, it’ll be so great! I’m so lucky!’ I paused. ‘Oh no, what about Lucky?’

‘She can come too. She’s a streetwise little cat. I think she’ll take to a travelling life OK, though Whisky and Soda will have to go to Old Ron and Miss Davis. Rose says we can rig up Saul’s old caravan as a very special bedroom for you. You can have Lucky and her duvet in with you. There’ll be room for your silver chest. Rose says she’ll paint flowers all over it if that’s what you’d like. You can have Billy’s doll’s house too, and space for your funny woolly toys and books and sewing stuff. And I haven’t forgotten your swing. Every site we pitch up at we’ll find a good tree and fix it up for you.’