One In A Billion (4 page)

Pudding was apple flan and ice cream. Dad devoured it like he'd never eaten one before without a single complaint. I only realised why afterwards - it was shop bought by him and immune to criticism.

When everyone was done, the table was cleared, and dad and James had finished their dissection of my somewhat unstable life, as though it were something they had to do week on week, and something they had little choice about, like mowing the lawn or washing the dishes, dad made a shock announcement.

He disappeared into the living room momentarily, before coming back with a stack of papers.

'
Does anyone remember this?' he said with gusto. My dad loved a performance, and he loved even more being the centre of attention. I had definitely inherited my meekness from my mother, because being centre of attention scared me more than anything else.

'
That's your memoir isn't it? James said.

'
Exactly', dad said. 'I'm getting it published.'

'
You. You're doing. You what?' I said, stunned. This news was worse than anything I could imagine. The last thing I needed was my dad being a published author too. I was never going to hear the end of it. 'Your stories of when you were a student? You're going to publish it?'

'
Not me, Random House.' dad said, smiling like the cat that got the cream, that had been promised to him all along, and I hung my head in my hands. I must have gone white too, because mum asked if I was ok.

'
You are kidding me?' James said, taking the manuscript from him. 'Random house?! How did that happen?'

'
I've got an old friend whose daughter works there. I sent them my manuscript and they liked it. They asked me to tidy it up a little bit, which I've been doing over the last few months, then I sent it in again and they accepted it. It'll be available in a couple of weeks, and they want me to do a book launch in the Waterstones on the high street. I wanted to keep it a secret in case they said no, but I got the call on Friday so here we are. Not bad for an old man, hey?'

'
That's amazing dad, well done!' James said.

'
I guess your talent must have come from somewhere', dad said, and I felt emptier than I have in a very long time. 'Like father like son!'

Dad got out a bottle of champagne he'd bought especially, and we all toasted his success.

'
I don't know why you make it seem so difficult Alice', he said to me afterwards. 'There's nothing to it really.'

'
No', I said, defeated. 'I guess not.'

'
Perhaps writing's not really your thing after all. I mean you've given it a shot haven't you? There's no reason to feel bad about giving up on something that's not working. I mean you did that with Harry after all, and the one before him, Mark was it?' dad said. He continued to talk, but by that point I'd given up listening.

The rest of the lunch went the usual way it did, and I left feeling even lower than I had when I'd arrived. My family seemed to have an uncanny ability to make that happen. To make me feel like absolute shit.

On the train home, drunk from the afternoon's booze, and morose for where I'd found myself in life, I began to cry. I cried on the train, I cried as I walked from the station up to my house, and I cried as I sat at my laptop, staring once again at the novel I'd self published last year, that had one five star review from Sophia, and had sold only a handful of copies since its release.

On a blank page, I wrote 'I'm a failure', and then held down the exclamation key until six whole pages were filled up.

Chapter 3

The two removal trucks carved through the winding lanes, tyres hissing and kicking up country dust. Alice and James had been allowed to sit in the cab up-front, while their parents followed behind in their car, a six hundred year old vase on Pam's lap, and the two cats in carriers strapped crudely into the back-seat.

Alice had never been so excited in her life, partly because they were moving to a new house, and partly because the truck was 'super ginormous', as James had excitedly described it.

Alice and James shared the middle seat - one seat belt enough for them both - while flanking them either side were a pair of the group of removal men their parents had contracted to move them from their house in London, to their new one in the countryside. Alice liked the man to her left the best, because the other one spent the whole journey smoking, and smelt of boiled Sunday cabbage.

She'd not seen the house in advance, and when they arrived, she could hardly believe it was theirs. It was in the middle of nowhere, in a tiny village of maybe twenty other houses, none of which were close enough to be called neighbours, and it had five whole bedrooms! That was two more than they'd started with, and one more than they needed.

James bagsied the biggest one straight away, but that was fine for Alice, because she got the one she wanted anyway, and she knew it was the best, despite it being a little bit smaller, because it looked out on the fields at the back of the house.

In those fields, she saw a young boy, perhaps about the same age as her, walking along with his dog. She waved at him, and even though she didn't expect it, he smiled and waved right back.

Alice's father, Peter, was a doctor. Alice knew that he worked in the hospital before, and now he was going to work in what was called a surgery. Alice thought that sounded like he was going to be cutting people up and stitching them back together, but he assured her that it only meant that he would be a personal doctor to several people, a general practitioner, and the surgery was just what they called the place that he worked.

Alice had been born in south London, in a place called Earlsfield, because both of her parents worked in the city of London. Her mother didn't work at a hospital all the time, but she did go there sometimes when she needed to see a patient. She was a speech therapist, and it was her job to help people if they had a problem talking.

Peter found a job in a small village in Cambridgeshire, and even though Alice and James were still in school, they decided this was the only opportunity they'd get to move away from the chaos of the city, which both of them had got tired of putting up with.

James, twelve at the time, had done nothing but complain and plead his parents to reconsider, desperate not to be torn away from friends, as soon as they'd broken the news to him. Alice on the other hand was kind of excited. Sure she was going to miss her best friend Kaylee, but there was no way she was going to miss the city. It was noisy at night time, busy during the day, and it made thinking about her stories difficult. She also hated her school. James had already gone up to big school, but Alice was stuck in primary, where the playground was all cracked and broken, the library had about twenty five books in it, all of which she had read cover to cover several times, there were forty five people in her class (when Chris decided to show up), which meant there wasn't enough space on the desks for everyone, and then there was Lydia. Lydia was two years older than everyone else and had been held back in class because she had learning difficulties. She already had boobs, and the hair on the top of her lip made it look like she'd put it there with marker pen. Lydia was Alice's nightmare, because everyday without fail, Lydia would pick on her.

When her parents told her they would all be moving, to a brand new house and a brand new school, Alice couldn't believe her luck. Even though they weren't going to be doing it for another two months, Alice went upstairs to her room, and began to organise her things into boxes straight away.

When Alice came down from her new room, the removal men were hard at work drinking cups of tea, while her mum and dad were frantically sorting through the things they'd already brought in, into the rooms they were meant to belong in. Her dad hated spending money, and would have organised the move himself, had Pam not told him unequivocally that she would not be moving at all, if they didn't contract someone to help them do it. Peter's way around this was to tell the removal men to put things into one central location in the house, from where they would distribute the items themselves, thus saving time and money. Needless to say, the only thing it served to do was complicate the whole affair, and ended up costing much more in time, money, effort and stress.

James had bagsied the biggest room, but when the excitement of that wore off, and the reality that he was miles away from his home, and in the middle of nowhere, began to dawn on him, he decided to throw a tantrum.

'
It's not fair', he shouted, eyes already red with crocodile tears.

'
Not now, James, please', Peter said.

'
This is so boring', James said, and stormed off into a room he hadn't been in yet. It was already full of boxes, and there was nothing left for James to do but storm out again, a little embarrassed. He was looking for somewhere to sit down and huff, but the sofas hadn't been brought in yet.

'
There's nothing here', James said again, complaining. 'I'm going to have no friends, just like Alice.'

'
James', Peter said, while wrestling what looked like a wardrobe towards the stairs. 'Make yourself useful and stop complaining. Help your mother.'

'
You've ruined my life', James said and stormed out to the garden.

Alice went with him. She tried to console her brother by explaining all the benefits a life in the country would bring, but he didn't want to listen. Instead he starting taking the tops off the flowers that ran along the perimeter of the garden, with a stick he'd found leaning up against the outside wall.

Alice watched the removal men go back and forth, until the trucks were empty, and all of the contents had been put in to either the front room or the hallway, causing a blockage so big that if Alice wanted to get back into the house, she'd have to climb through a window. Instead, she went to explore the garden, while her dad dealt with the mess he'd created, and her mum told him where to put things.

At the front of the house was the main road through the village, but it wasn't like any road she'd ever seen before. It was a lot smaller, and didn't even have a line down the middle of it. She'd seen one car go past in the whole time she'd been watching the removal men, and that went so slowly, she could even see the people inside it. There were no zebra crossings, no traffic lights, no blood stains, no cars parked, no litter bins, no dog poo and no men being sick, all of which she'd seen quite often on the street she used to live on.

While her parents were busy, and James was exploring the old shed and garage, Alice dared herself to cross the road, just to see what it looked like from the other side. She looked carefully either way, made sure nothing was coming, and then ran as quickly as she could to the grassy bank on the other side. From here, she could see the fields in the distance to her left, as the village ran out into the country again, and to the right, two other houses much smaller than her own, and the road that led to the main part of the village, which they'd driven through to get here. It was something she couldn't wait to explore.

There were no shops in the village. No pubs or clubs or cinemas or other forms of entertainment, which she'd have to get used to, but the village did have a mobile library that drove in every second Thursday of the month; which she was excited about getting acquainted with, a church, and a bluebell woods, although she wasn't entirely sure what that was.

Her parents had also been reliably informed by the headmaster and headmistress of the secondary and primary schools respectively, that there were other children that lived in this area. Both boys and girls. She hoped that there wasn't anybody close by that was anything like Lydia.

'
Are you new?'

The voice startled her. She'd been lost a little bit in her own world, day dreaming like her parents always told her she was, and she hadn't noticed the boy now standing in front of her, and the dog he had by his side.

'
I'm Toby', Toby said, and held out a hand covered in dirt for Alice to shake.

'
Why are your hands so dirty?' Alice said, taking it anyway.

Toby had freckles, thin hair and sticky out ears. He had dirt all over his hands, his t-shirt and on his cheeks, one of his front teeth was missing, and he smelt of fish. His dog was a beautiful border collie with one brown eye and one blue eye, and it kept sniffing at Alice and trying to paw her. She giggled as he nuzzled into her, his nose tickling her skin.

'
I've been fishing in the lake. Do you want to see?' Toby said, holding out a carrier bag.

Inside were two mucky brown fish, a box of maggots and some soggy bread. Alice put her hand over her mouth.

'
Yuck', she said.

'You can hold them if you like?' Toby said, as though there would be no reason in the world that someone would choose not to.

'Maybe next time', Alice said, and began to stroke his dog instead.

'
This is Miro', Toby said, 'he's the best dog in the world.'

'
He's friendly', Alice said.