The Strawberry Sisters Read online

  ‘I got new knickers for everyone,’ Mum said the next day at teatime. One end of the table was completely covered by a castle Lucy was making out of a cardboard box and Pringles tubes and yoghurt pots so we were all squished up at the other end. Mum was eating peas while tapping at her laptop which was wobbling about on her knees.

  ‘Why are you allowed to have that at the table, but I can’t have my phone?’ Amelia asked.

  ‘I’m working,’ Mum said.

  ‘You’re always telling us not to leave things to the last minute,’ Chloe said.

  Mum still had tons of work to do before she went back to teaching Year Two next week.

  ‘I know, but I didn’t want to waste the holidays on work when I could spend time with you girls instead.’

  We had a brilliant summer. We stayed in a caravan in Cornwall, then we visited my cousins, and even when we were at home my mum thought up theme nights and competitions for us. She’s really good at finding fun things for us to do.

  Mum picked up a folder and a load of bits of paper fell on the floor. She isn’t so brilliant at being organised.

  ‘Did you get the rest of my new uniform?’ I asked her.

  ‘Uniform? Um, yes, it’s on your bed,’ Mum said. ‘Except tights, but I’ll get those really soon. I absolutely won’t forget.’ She wrote TIGHTS! on a Post-it note and stuck it to her laptop.

  On Monday, I was starting Year Seven at St Mark’s where Amelia and Chloe went. The bright side of going to secondary school was that my two best friends would finally get to meet each other. I didn’t exactly have loads of friends, but I did have two brilliant ones and I wanted us all to be friends together more than anything. If you have friends then people don’t laugh at you. Or, even if they do, you don’t care so much because you’ve always got someone to be nice to you.

  When I was little, we lived in London and I had two best friends. It was fantastic: we did everything together and, even when one of them was ill, I still had someone to play with. But then we moved here. I think it’s safest if you go to nursery and primary school and secondary school all in the same place; that way you always know someone. It’s quite a stupid idea to arrive in the middle of Year Three when everybody has already got their own group of friends, but nobody listened to me when I said I didn’t want to move.

  Amelia and Chloe had no problems fitting into our new school. Chloe is so friendly and energetic that no one can help liking her and Amelia is so smart and funny that people feel lucky to be her friend. I don’t really stand out like they do. I never know what to say to people when I meet them. For the first two weeks at our new school, I hid in the bushes at playtime. Then one day this girl called Kayleigh tapped me on the shoulder. She had brown, shiny hair like a conker, which was falling out of a ponytail. She smiled at me and said, ‘Let’s play unicorns.’ So we did. Everybody liked Kayleigh and I kept expecting her to go off with someone she liked better, but she hasn’t yet.

  After we’d been mates for a while, I asked her why she was my friend. ‘Don’t you think I’m a bit quiet?’ I asked.

  ‘Not with me,’ she said.

  And it’s true. Kayleigh is so good at having ideas and getting excited about things that it isn’t hard for me to join in. I don’t even mind being silly with Kayleigh because she’s always much sillier and she never, ever laughs at me. She’s also the only person I ever sing in front of. I haven’t got an amazing, swoopy voice like Amelia, but I do like singing. Sometimes me and Kayleigh get dressed up like pop stars and borrow her mum’s karaoke machine. I get the giggles a lot, but it’s really good fun.

  My other good friend is called Ashandra. I met her six months ago when I was at my dad’s new house (we stay there every Wednesday night and every other weekend). Ashandra lives in the house next to his. One day I was sitting in the garden so that I didn’t have to listen to Amelia shouting at Dad and Ashandra leant over the fence and said, ‘How long have your parents been divorced for?’ I thought that was a bit of a rude question, but then she told me about her parents splitting up and her mum getting married again and how her brother hates her stepdad. So she is quite an expert on divorce. Ashandra’s also very smart and doesn’t think I’m weird because maths is my favourite subject. She’s tall (but not as tall as me) and she’s always changing how she wears her curly Afro hair, but at the moment it’s in lots of little plaits. She’s also very understanding about missing your dad. Hers lives in America so she only sees him twice a year.

  Ashandra and Kayleigh were both my special friends, but they hadn’t actually met each other yet. When I found out that we were all going to be in the same tutor group when we went to St Mark’s, I was really excited. I hoped that Ash and Kay would like each other and that we’d all be brilliant friends. It would be just like it was in London; I wouldn’t ever care if someone was rude about my hair or my name or how tall I am because I’d always have a friend around.

  I was also sort of hoping that, since this time I’d be starting school at the same time as everyone else, some other people in the class would be my friends too.

  When we got to second helpings, I said, ‘What’s St Mark’s like?’

  Amelia crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue. ‘Music lessons are good; everything else sucks. That’s all you need to know.’

  Chloe scooped a large forkful of mash into her mouth. ‘I’ll tell you what’s good about school: rugby, hockey, the doughnuts in the cafeteria – except don’t eat the ones with sprinkles because my friend Thunder says that the dinner ladies put their toenail clippings on them to teach us a lesson for pushing so much in the queue.’ She paused for more mash. ‘And netball and rounders and the extra-long banisters in the languages block that you can slide down really fast.’

  I’m not as keen on sport as Chloe is, but it all sounded quite fun.

  ‘Is there anything not nice?’ I asked.

  ‘Lessons. But don’t worry about that too much.’

  ‘But it’s lessons all the time.’

  Chloe wrinkled her nose. ‘Yeah, you have to be in the room, but you don’t really have to pay that much attention.’

  ‘I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,’ Mum said. ‘Because I haven’t got time to tell you how shocked I am and how I expect you to put more effort into your education. We’ll have to save the lecture for when I can go back to not paying that much attention to my job.’

  ‘I do listen in class,’ Chloe protested. ‘Just not all the time. Teachers always say things ten times anyway; you only need to listen once.’

  Mum shook her head, but she was smiling a bit. She shut her laptop.

  ‘Are you finished?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘I’ll finish it when you’re all in bed.’ She turned to me. ‘You’re not worried about school, are you, Ella?’ she asked.

  Worrying is the opposite of looking on the bright side so I shook my head. ‘It’ll be great being together with Ashandra and Kayleigh.’

  ‘Remember it might take a while for everybody to adjust and get to know each other. And you’re bound to make friends with other people in the class too.’

  I pushed my peas round the plate. ‘Do you think they’ll like me?’

  ‘Of course they will. Just be yourself.’

  That sounded like good advice, but, after we’d finished and I went upstairs to look at my new uniform, the more I thought about it, the more worried I became. I mean, who exactly is myself? It’s easy to say what my sisters are like. Amelia is cross and sarcastic and funny and tough. Chloe is thumping and gallumping and likes rugby and pudding. And Lucy is . . . well, there’s nobody like Lucy. I bet she’s never spent any time worrying about what she’s like. She just is.

  People love meeting my sisters. They like them. They remember them. I’m not quite so noticeable.

  I trailed back downstairs to the kitchen. Chloe was doing the washing-up at the same time as eating a peanut butter and Marmite sandwich.

  ‘Do you want one?’ she asked.

&n
bsp; ‘No thanks, I’m still full from tea.’

  ‘Tell me if you change your mind. I’m going to do the next lot with chocolate spread as well as Marmite.’

  ‘Chloe, what kind of person am I?’ I asked.

  ‘A nice one.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘You’re good at jumping.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Remember when we played cricket with Dad and you made that catch?’

  Then she said some nice stuff about me being kind, but mostly she went on about all the times that I haven’t been terrible at sports so I gave up and went and tapped on Amelia’s bedroom door.

  ‘Come in if you’ve got me an answer to the torture of adolescence. Or lots of chocolate.’

  I didn’t have either of those things so I just said, ‘Amelia, what am I like?’ through the door.

  There was a pause. Then the door opened.

  ‘School’s all right,’ she said. ‘It’s pretty much the same as primary school, just bigger and with more people nagging you. Don’t worry, people will like you. You’re nice.’

  I was surprised by this because mostly Amelia says I am a turbo idiot. ‘Am I?’

  ‘Yeah, if you tell any of the teachers apart from the music teacher that you’re my sister, they’ll probably be shocked that we’re related because I’m revolting. You’ll just have to give them time to get over the fact that you’re not continuing the family tradition.’

  She closed the door.

  I asked Lucy next. She was in the sitting room, staring at the TV.

  ‘Lucy, how would you describe me?’

  ‘I wouldn’t.’

  ‘But if you had to?’

  ‘I wouldn’t because it would make noise and I don’t want noise because I’m watching this magic show.’

  I looked at the screen. A lady in a sparkly leotard was climbing into some sort of cabinet and the magician was waving a saw about. The mute sign was in the corner of the screen. ‘You haven’t even got the sound on,’ I said.

  ‘I know. The mysterious music is stupid. Shh.’

  ‘Why do I have to shh?’

  ‘Because I’m concentrating. I won’t be able to remember how to do this on Saturday at ballet if you keep talking.’

  ‘Just tell me how you would describe me and I’ll—’

  She put a hand over my mouth, then, without taking her eyes off the TV, she picked up a magazine and a pen from the coffee table. She wrote something and handed it to me.

  There was one word written in her large, wobbly handwriting:

  NICE

  I let her go back to the magic.

  Mrs Bottomley always said that ‘nice’ was a wishy-washy word that didn’t really mean anything and that we weren’t allowed to use it in our writing.

  But nice is better than horrible. I’m not ultra-clever like Amelia, or amazingly chatty like Chloe, or even adorably crazy like Lucy, but maybe if I was super nice people would notice me and like me.

  On Monday morning when I got up, I couldn’t find my new school skirt, even though I had very carefully clipped it on to one of those special skirt hangers as soon as I got it. In the end, I found it in the bathroom. It was being a tent for Lucy’s Action Man. Back in our bedroom, Chloe was still in bed, but Lucy was dancing around naked.

  ‘Lucy!’ I said. ‘Can you please not use my skirt?’

  ‘Not use it for what?’

  ‘Not for anything! I need it for wearing.’

  Lucy made a grumbly noise. ‘I never get new skirts. Why do you always get new things?’ She pulled her old gingham school dress over her head. ‘I get things that Amelia has worn and then Chloe has worn. And when Chloe wears things she makes them stink.’

  ‘I think that dress has been washed since Chloe wore it.’

  Lucy gave me a look. ‘Yes, but I still know what she did in it.’

  Chloe pulled her duvet off her face. ‘Are you saying the ghost of my farts lives on in those dresses? Cool.’

  Lucy yanked her socks on. ‘It’s very not cool. And I won’t ever wear the dress that you used the skirt to carry frogspawn in.’

  Chloe tumbled out of the top bunk. ‘Mum will make you.’

  ‘She can’t. It’s not here any more.’

  I exchanged a look with Chloe. ‘Where is it, Lucy?’

  ‘I’m not telling you. If I tell you then I’ll have to bury you in the same place.’

  I hoped that Mum wouldn’t find out about the dress because, when people do things to clothes that Cost Good Money, Mum gets mad about possessions not being properly looked after and made the most of, and it usually ends up in a Complete Sort Out.

  A Complete Sort Out means you have to take everything out of your wardrobe and drawers and you are only allowed to put back the things that are clean and neat and fit you. You are not allowed to keep old school projects, even if you did use half a packet of pipe cleaners on them, and, before the inspection, you have to remember to hide your old birthday cards from when they said ‘love Mum and Dad’ on the same card.

  Lucy was hopping towards the door, but Chloe grabbed her by the elbow. ‘Don’t let Mum find out about the dress or she’ll be mad.’

  That wasn’t a very clever thing to say to Lucy because, even when someone else might be cross, Lucy is always crosser.

  ‘I’m not going to! And I wouldn’t have to bury things or chop things up or post them in the postbox if everybody just gave me what I want.’

  I know the things that Lucy wants. She keeps a list on our noticeboard. It includes: ‘no more traffic lights’ and ‘a really nice axe’.

  I don’t think we should give her what she wants.

  ‘Anyway,’ Chloe said, ‘Ella has to have new things because she’s so ginormous.’ She meant it in a kind way, but the word ‘ginormous’ is only really nice when you’re talking about cakes or trampolines.

  I’m not ginormous fat, just ginormous tall. None of Amelia’s old things fit me because I’m already taller than her.

  By the time we got downstairs, Mum was at the why-ing stage. When we’re late, which is always, Mum has three stages. She starts out with hurrying and saying things like, ‘Please stop singing into that hairbrush and sort your hair out, Chloe.’ Then she gets to why-ing where she stomps about, looking for things she needs for work, and saying, ‘Why is there a face flannel under the table? Why has my diary got ketchup all over it?’ The last stage is when she turns into one of those army men and just barks out orders. She got to the army stage when Amelia finally appeared in the kitchen, smoothing down her fringe while reading her poetry book.

  ‘Everybody move!’ Mum snapped.

  ‘But w—’ Lucy started.

  ‘Lunches,’ Mum said, pointing to four Tupperware boxes on the counter.

  ‘An—’ Chloe began.

  ‘Shoes,’ said Mum and pointed into the hall.

  I opened my mouth to say I was hungry.

  ‘Magic Breakfast,’ Mum said. ‘Line up!’

  Magic Breakfast started when Lucy began nursery and Mum first went back to work. We all stand in the kitchen, holding a glass, and Mum pours milk into each one. (If we hold the glasses close together, she can do it in one long pour across the top without spilling a drop.) Then you’ve got about fifteen seconds to drink your milk. During that time, Mum hands you a pack of mini cereal and you eat the cereal while walking to school. The magic is that the milk and the cereal combine in your tummy just like a proper sit-down bowl of breakfast.

  ‘This isn’t very magic any more’ Lucy said, wiping her milk moustache on Chloe’s sleeve.

  ‘You’re just saying that because I got the Frosties,’ Chloe said, wiping her own milk moustache on her sleeve.

  ‘The magic is that I get to work on time,’ Mum said, picking up a bag of books and a stack of paper. Then she noticed Amelia trying to slip back upstairs. ‘Door! Now, now, now!’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re complaining,’ Chloe said to Lucy. ‘You get another meal at Breakfast Cl
ub anyway. Why can’t we go to Breakfast Club, Mum? They do actually have one at our school. People get to go inside in the warm and eat toast; the rest of us have to skulk about outside.’

  ‘Skulking is cheaper.’ Mum bustled us out of the door. ‘Besides, it’s a skill for life. Look at the good use Amelia has put her skulking skills to already.’ She slammed the door behind us. ‘Everybody got everything?’

  ‘I seem to have misplaced my will to live,’ Amelia said.

  ‘Always the last place you look,’ Mum said and she gave us a kiss that was a bit like the milk pouring – it slid across all four of us in one go. ‘Good luck, Ella. Hope you have a lovely first day.’ Then she scooped Lucy into the car and drove off.

  Amelia sighed loudly and pulled out a tiny mirror and the eyeliner that she’s not supposed to wear to school and drew dark rings round her eyes. She gave us both a half-hearted wave before striding off.

  ‘Do you want to walk with me and Thunder?’ Chloe asked me.

  I swallowed a mouthful of dry cornflakes. ‘No, I said I’d call for Kayleigh.’

  ‘Do you remember where you’re going from your induction day?’

  I nodded. I did remember and also, when we visited for our induction day in July, I made a little map of the school just in case I suddenly forgot. It was in my sock. Just in case I lost my bag.

  Chloe gave me a friendly punch on the arm. ‘If you have any problems, just ask someone to find me. Everybody knows me.’

  Kayleigh lives three streets away. When I rang the bell, her mum opened the door.

  ‘Hiya, Ella.’ She turned her head and shouted, ‘Kayleigh! Ella’s here. Get a move on!’ She was wearing those funny sticking-out trousers ready for her job at the stables. Kayleigh and her mum are both mad about horses. They’ve been saving up to buy their own horse the whole time I’ve known Kayleigh.

  Kayleigh came out of the kitchen, carrying her new bag. Her mum kissed her on the cheek.

  ‘Bye, babe, have a good day. Don’t let the big kids give you any nonsense.’