Freia Lockhart's Summer of Awful (19 page)

“What gives you the right to mess around with my brownies? Do you have to interfere in everything?”

Rocky clacks his beak at me menacingly and stands taller on Gran's shoulder, but I refuse to be intimidated. I glare at the two of them.

“Here we go,” mutters Ziggy as he leaves the kitchen.

Gran's voice is quiet. “I didn't mean to interfere, Bloss. You were so sad last night, I just wanted to do something nice for you.”

I just wanted to do something nice for you
, nine words to which there is no comeback. “Oh … well … thanks.”

“That's all right. I always find giving something a good hard scrub therapeutic. It gives me something to take my anger out on, you know? Plus, it's great for the arms – helps keep the dreaded bingo wings at bay.” She holds up her trim arm as evidence, waiting for me to smile, but I'm more interested in the first part of her explanation.

“What were
you
feeling angry about?”

“Oh, you know.” She walks towards Rocky's perch, keeping her back to me as she settles him. “My daughter having cancer, not being with Archie on New Year's Eve, missing my little flat and my friends at the villa … But you know what they say: busy hands still the brain.”

“Well, thank you, but I would have done it myself.”

Gran smiles and shakes her head. “You know what you are, Bloss? A control freak, just like your mother.” She turns back to making her tea before I can argue.

At least I can cross the first chore off my to-do list, even if I didn't do it myself. Now, onto the second. I email Vicky, Steph and Siouxsie saying I can't come tonight because Mum's coming home.
It's not a lie
, I tell myself as I hit send. Before I've even finished cleaning out my spam folder, a reply from Siouxsie arrives. She's sick and can't come either. I'm not sure what to make of it. At least I know she's not cancelling because she doesn't want to go if I'm there, but the Sooz I know would have to be on her deathbed to miss a night out with her friends.

I race to open the door when I hear the Volvo pulling into the driveway. I don't know what I expected – that the hospital would send her home with a wheelchair maybe, or at least that she'd need to lean on Dad – but I'm surprised to see Mum get out of the car and walk to the front door by herself. She notices me waiting for her and walks a little faster, enveloping me in her arms even before saying hello. She's wearing her usual perfumed oil, but the antiseptic hospital smell still clings to her skin. Hugging her back, I try not to brush against the row of stitches I imagine running like a railway track across the right side of her chest.

“It's good to be home,” she says when she finally pulls away from me.

Dad arrives, clutching Mum's overnight bag and a plastic bag from the pharmacy. “I'll just do a quick tidy in the bedroom,” he tells Mum. “I didn't have time to make the bed before I picked you up.”

“Already done,” says Gran, coming out of the kitchen wearing Dad's apron and holding a large knife. “And I changed the sheets while I was at it.”

Dad's cheeks go bright red. Having glimpsed the state he left the bedroom in this morning, I'm not surprised: if it wasn't for the queen-size bed, I could've mistaken it for Ziggy's sty. Dad mutters thank you and takes Mum's stuff upstairs.

“I've got the kettle on for a cuppa,” says Gran, turning back towards the kitchen.

“I appreciate you tidying up, but you really shouldn't have gone into our bedroom,” says Mum when the three of us are sitting at the table with steaming mugs of tea and a plate of gingersnaps. “I think Terence is a bit embarrassed.”

Gran dunks a biscuit into her tea and sucks on it loudly. “Does he think I've never seen a pair of dirty underpants before? What's this family got against accepting a bit of help?”

“Nothing, but–” Mum is cut short by a violent screech from the corner of the room. She jumps in her chair, wincing when her right arm bangs the edge of the table.

“You haven't met Rocky yet, have you?” Gran goes over to the perch and holds out her wrist for him to step onto. “Gene, this is Rocky. Rocko, this is your big sister, Gene.”

Mum and Rocky exchange looks of mutual distrust.

“You'd better say hello,” I advise her. “Rocky gets aggro when he thinks he's being ignored.”

Gran gives me the old-lady death stare. “He just wants to feel included.”

“Very nice to meet you, Rocky,” says Mum, “but perhaps you'd be more comfortable back on your perch?”

Gran looks miffed but she takes Rocky back to the other side of the room, handing him a gingersnap as compensation.

“Where's Zig?” Mum asks me, glancing towards the garage as if she expects him to walk through the door at the mention of his name.

“He's probably at Biggie's place. He's pretty much moved in there while you've been away.”

Gran tsks as she takes her seat again. “I don't like that Biggie boy, Gene. I told Terry that he's a bad influence on Ziggy, but he said–”

“I said that I thought all of us had enough to worry about at the moment and that Gene and I will deal with it once things are back to normal,” says Dad from the doorway.

Gran scowls and picks up her mug.

In the five minutes that she's been home, Mum's gone from grinning like she just won the lottery to looking like she misses the peace and quiet of her hospital bed.

Despite promising myself that I'm going to play it supercool when Dan calls from his mum's place, I jump when the phone rings.

“I can't believe you're bailing on us,” says Steph when I answer. “What gives?”

“Sorry, but I have to … it's enforced family bonding time.” I lower my voice so that Mum won't hear. She's already told me not to stay home tonight on her account, since she'll probably flake straight after dinner.

“So it's not because you'd rather be alone with Dan?” Steph sounds suspicious.

“Definitely not,” I assure her. “Dan's not even here. He left this morning to visit his mum.”

“And you can't have a good time because your boyfriend's not going to be there? Isn't being with your best friends enough to make up for that?” Steph's voice rises as she gets worked up.

“Of course it is, it's just … look, Vicky and I had a sort of … thing, yesterday.”

I tell Steph what happened at the zoo, sticking to the facts and trying not to say anything that could be construed as bitching. “I know Vix probably didn't mean to upset me, but I just don't feel up to a night of hearing more fun facts about cancer.”

“That's just Vicky's way of dealing with things,” says Steph. “Facts are her security blanket; they help to avoid dealing with feelings. I'm sure she was only giving you the information that she'd want to have if it was her mum who had cancer.”

“Maybe, but I still couldn't handle any more of it.”

“Fine, suit yourself.”

I don't blame Steph for being narked with me. I try to make it clear that she's not the one I'm avoiding by asking if she wants to see a movie together.

“Sure,” she says, but she hangs up without making a date.

I reboot the computer to check what movies are showing. If I can find something that I know Steph will love and email her about it straightaway, it might make up for leaving her in the lurch tonight. When I open my email there's a message from Vicky saying that the twins' babysitter has cancelled and she has to stay home tonight, too. I guess it's not impossible.

I decide a ride might help ease my nagging sense of guilt about wrecking Vicky and Steph's night, so I take the remains of the brownies to Switch for Jay to taste test. I guess I may have subconsciously been in need of some beagle time, because I tell him about what happened with Vicky before he's even swallowed his first bite.

“I can understand why you're upset,” he says when I finish ranting, “but I think Steph's probably right about Vicky's motives. I remember when Mum was sick and her friends used to come by to see her and drop off casseroles and make sure I hadn't burned the house down while I was meant to be looking after her. After seeing Mum they'd always stop to chat to me and say things like, ‘She's definitely on the mend,' and ‘I'm sure she'll be fine,' and I'd just want to say to them, ‘What the hell do you know?' The worst was when I'd bump into someone on the street and they'd say, ‘How's your mum?' I mean, what do you say to that? ‘She's ace, thanks, except for the disease that's trying to kill her'?”

While Jay speaks, I find myself nodding and nodding. It's a relief to hear that I'm not the only one who doesn't appreciate people trying to be nice to them.

“These are amazing, by the way.” Jay points to the brownie with his fork. “It's like chocolate and peanut butter made love and had a baby delicious. I reckon I can sell two dozen a week, if you can keep up the supply.”

“Really? And you like the icing?”

“Oh yeah! It's the icing that makes it. If it was all cake and peanut butter, it might be a bit dry, don't you think?” Jay takes my “hmmm” as an agreement. “Of course you do, otherwise you wouldn't have iced them. Genius!” He scrapes his fork across the plate to get every last crumb. “I'm going to take the rest of these bad boys home with me. They might make being away from Nicky on New Year's Eve a bit less miserable.”

I tell him that Dan's not coming home either and we commiserate over another brownie before I have to head off. (He's right about the icing. I'll have to think of a sneaky way to get Gran's recipe before she goes.) When I get back on my bike I feel much, much better. Just because tonight isn't going to be the New Year's Eve of my dreams doesn't mean that the coming year will definitely be a washout. After all, I spent last New Year's Eve at home and this year turned out way better than I could ever have imagined.

I ride through the big iron gates of the park and pull up at Our Tree, taking a moment to make sure DTF still +s FL before sitting on the grass underneath it and scrounging in the bottom of my bag for a pen and paper. After a minute, I come up with a stumpy pencil and the back of a receipt. They don't exactly set the tone for successful resolution making, but I figure it's what I do after I write my resolutions that counts, not what they look like.

I review the list before I get up to go. It seems doable. I mean, all it comes down to is Be Nice and Stop Whingeing. As long as Mum doesn't get any new ideas from Dr Phil, it should be a piece of cake.

“Hey, you.”

I can hardly hear Dan over the loud music in the background, something with an
ish-ish-ish
drum machine and electro-synthesised vocals. “Where are you? Have they locked you in a small dark room with that noise as punishment for something?”