The Strawberry Sisters Page 5

  ‘My mum says that people take a while to get used to each other,’ I said.

  ‘Your mother is smart.’

  I knew that, but I hadn’t expected Suvi to know it too. I couldn’t think of a time when Mum and Suvi had even really been in the same room.

  Suvi tucked a cushion behind her back. ‘Your dad and I really would like for you girls to feel at home here,’ she said.

  It was a nice thing to say. I couldn’t tell her that I couldn’t ever imagine us trampolining on the sofa or having a floor picnic like we do at home.

  ‘Lucy would be happier with a TV,’ I said.

  Suvi sighed. ‘You have to remember that it is also my home and Kirsti’s home and your father’s too. I want my family, all my family, to talk and play, not to watch TV.’

  It seemed like she really felt strongly about that. I tried to think of something smaller that would make Lucy happy.

  ‘How about orange squash? Would it not be your home with squash in it?’

  Normally, you only got water to drink at Dad’s house. Or leaf-potion tea.

  Suvi tilted her head to one side. ‘I guess I can handle some squash,’ she said. ‘I’ll keep the door of the cupboard closed so I don’t have to look at its sugariness.’

  Her eyes were joking again.

  I sipped my tea very slowly until Kirsti finished feeding. She was so full that while Suvi was winding her she went off to sleep. Suvi laid her gently in her basket.

  ‘I’m going to send some work emails now, OK?’ she asked.

  ‘Are they making you do work already? I thought you were having your maternity time off?’

  ‘I am. I won’t go back to work until the summer, but I’m trying to keep in touch. I want to see how my projects are going. They can probably do them without me, but I like to think they can’t.’

  I had finished all my homework so I looked at the algebra chapter in my maths textbook. I like algebra because you start off with a mystery number, but if you follow the rules you can work out what it is. It’s like detective work.

  After a long while, Suvi put some papers back in a file and shut her laptop and asked me, ‘Do you need any help?’

  ‘No, I’m done. I’m just looking at this for fun.’

  She looked down at the page and up at me. ‘You like maths, huh?’

  ‘Yep, it’s my favourite.’

  ‘Why do you like it?’

  ‘It’s really . . . neat. When you work something out, then it’s finished, and you can always work everything out as long as you know the right way. There’s always a definite answer.’

  ‘And everything fits into place?’ Suvi asked.

  ‘Yes! Exactly. I like everything to have a place.’

  ‘Me too.’ She slid her file neatly back on the shelf.

  The front door banged open and Chloe rushed in, followed by the others. She gave me half a carton of popcorn. ‘I saved you some!’ she said. ‘But you have to take it quick before I eat any more. I was going to save you the whole thing, but then it was just sitting there on my lap and it smelt really good . . . Can I just have one last piece?’

  I held out the carton to her, then took a handful myself.

  ‘How was the film?’ Suvi asked.

  ‘Saccharine nonsense full of worthy morals for good citizens,’ Amelia said.

  ‘She means it had a happy ending,’ Chloe said. ‘Which was mushy, but the car chases were good.’

  ‘The crashes were the best bit,’ Lucy said.

  ‘Was this a suitable film for Lucy?’ Suvi asked Dad.

  Dad smiled. ‘It was one of those CGI animation things.’

  ‘They’re the worst,’ Suvi said.

  Lucy’s eyes widened. ‘Don’t you like anything? What things do you actually like?’

  ‘Maths,’ Suvi said in her unexcited voice, but her eyes were smiley at me.

  ‘Say goodnight, Lucy,’ Dad said. ‘It’s past your bedtime.’

  ‘Just a minute, I have to do something.’ She went up to Kirsti’s basket and leant over to whisper something to her. She looked like the wicked fairy putting a curse on Sleeping Beauty. Then she turned and clumped up the stairs.

  I’m not sure that Lucy likes Kirsti.

  The rest of my first week at St Mark’s was OK. I liked the lessons and most of the teachers. I tried to speak up in classes and not to look like a goldfish. Ashandra and Kayleigh seemed to get on all right, but not brilliantly. I remembered what Mum said about people adjusting and what Suvi said about Mum being smart. Maybe it would take a few more weeks before we were completely best friends forever.

  It was Dad’s turn to have us for the weekend, but he arranged for us to stay at home instead because Suvi’s parents were coming from Finland to meet baby Kirsti. I wondered if there would be lots of relations coming to see the baby and if that meant we would miss lots of weekends with Dad, but Mum said that she would take us to the beach all day Saturday so that was a bright side.

  Lucy wasn’t interested in the beach; she was just cross about not seeing Dad.

  ‘What are they for me?’ she asked Amelia on Friday night when we were watching TV.

  ‘What are who for you?’ Amelia said, without taking her eyes off the screen.

  ‘Suvi’s mum and dad. They’re Kirsti’s nana and grampy, aren’t they? So what are they for me?’

  ‘Two old Finnish people.’

  ‘She means they’re not anything for you. You’re not related to them,’ Chloe said.

  ‘Why not? How come Kirsti gets everyone?’

  ‘You’ve got people in your family,’ I said. ‘Like us lot.’

  ‘Kirsti has us lot too.’

  ‘Here, I’ll show you, Lucy,’ I said. I found a pen and an old envelope on the coffee table and I drew out Lucy’s family tree for her. ‘See, here’s you and here’s Kirsti. I used a dotted line because she’s your half-sister. And here’s Suvi. I did a dotted line for her too because she’s your stepmum not your real mum.’

  ‘She’s not our stepmum,’ Amelia said. ‘She’s not married to Dad.’

  I ignored her. ‘And the straight lines are your sisters and the wiggly lines are for grandparents.’ I was pleased with the diagram; it made everything neat and clear. I liked looking at how I fitted in with all the people around me.

  ‘That’s stupid,’ Lucy said, snatching the envelope from me.

  ‘But it makes it easy to understand. You can see exactly what the relationship is between people.’

  ‘What’s a relationship?’

  ‘The connection between you and another person. How close you are to someone.’

  Lucy shook her head. ‘I don’t get how I feel from a map. I just feel it.’

  But I noticed that she didn’t let go of the envelope and her eyes kept running along the dotted line between her and Kirsti.

  We had a brilliant time at the beach with Mum (apart from Chloe whacking Amelia round the head with a deckchair and Amelia calling Chloe a cow, but after that they didn’t speak to each other so it was more peaceful). We didn’t get home until really late so I slept in on Sunday. When I came down into the kitchen, Amelia and Lucy were already there, eating toast and reading. Amelia was hunched over one of those books that has a painting of a lady on the outside and lots of long words on the inside and Lucy was flicking through a catalogue of tools. She’d circled lots of things on the hammer page.

  ‘Where’s Mum?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s asleep in the sitting room,’ Amelia said.

  ‘She fell asleep writing lesson plans and drinking coffee,’ Lucy added.

  ‘Did you put a blanket over her?’ I asked.

  Lucy shook her head. ‘No, but I did drink her coffee.’

  ‘You’re not supposed to drink coffee,’ Amelia said. ‘Remember that time Dad gave you an espresso and you tried to ride your bike down the library steps?’

  ‘That wasn’t because I had coffee; that was because I was training to be a stunt girl.’

  I we
nt and put my duvet over Mum.

  While I was pouring cornflakes, Chloe came into the kitchen with her new friend, Thunder. I’d seen him at school. He looked large from across the cafeteria, but he looked really large in our kitchen, trying not to knock anything off the counter with his big bottom.

  ‘This is Thunder,’ Chloe told us.

  ‘Why are you called Thunder?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘Because you can hear him coming from miles away,’ Chloe said.

  Thunder didn’t say anything. He just looked from Chloe to Lucy to me to Amelia and back to Chloe. ‘How many of them are your sisters?’ he asked.

  ‘All of them,’ Chloe said.

  ‘Wow. You’ve got a lot. When that new one at your dad’s house gets bigger, you’ll have enough for a five-a-side team.’

  Chloe looked at us again. ‘They’d need a lot of work.’

  ‘I’d need a lobotomy before I’d play football,’ Amelia said.

  ‘That’s when they chop your brain out,’ Lucy explained to Thunder.

  ‘Sport is for people who can’t read,’ Amelia said and she picked up her grown-up book and flounced out.

  ‘Sport is for people who aren’t noodle-armed sofa-monkeys!’ Chloe called after her.

  ‘If you haven’t got a really sharp knife to chop out the brain,’ Lucy said to Thunder, ‘you can do what the Egyptians did and pull it out through the nose with a hook.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Thunder said as if she’d actually given him a useful tip.

  I peered into the giant carrier bag Thunder had with him. There was a bear’s head in it.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘Bear suit,’ Thunder said, like that was perfectly normal.

  ‘What for?’

  Chloe got a piece of paper out of her back pocket and unfolded it to show us. ‘It’s a project,’ she said.

  There were a lot of little cartoon bears on the paper, all of them doing different things.

  ‘We’re going to be famous,’ Thunder said. ‘We’re going to film Big Bear in loads of crazy situations and when it goes viral we’ll be millionaires.’

  ‘How?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘Because everyone will want to watch it.’

  ‘But how will that make you money?’

  Thunder’s face fell. I’m not sure he’d really thought things through.

  Chloe gave him a reassuring punch on the arm. ‘We’ll sell T-shirts, won’t we, Thunder? And mugs and key rings.’

  Thunder beamed.

  Lucy went off to add a crochet hook to the list of things she wants and Chloe unlocked the back door.

  I sat down to eat my cornflakes. ‘What are you doing, Clo?’

  ‘We’re going to dig up worms.’

  ‘For the bear video?’

  ‘No, this is a different project. We’re going to feed them to Buttercup, except we’re going to change her name. What do you think of Attila the Bun?’

  I didn’t like it. ‘Mmm.’

  Chloe looked at me. ‘We can always just keep her as Buttercup.’

  ‘I don’t think she’ll eat them,’ I said. ‘Rabbits don’t eat worms.’

  ‘This one will,’ Thunder said. ‘We’re going to turn her into a meat eater.’

  ‘It’s the first step to creating a vampire bunny,’ Chloe explained as they walked out into the garden.

  Our garden is much bigger than you’d expect it to be by looking at the front of the house. It’s narrow, but the overgrown lawn slopes a long way back to a group of trees that we call the forest. Near the house is Buttercup’s hutch and a shed which is jammed full of old scooters and buckets and spades and pots with dried-up plants in. Chloe rummaged around in there until she found a trowel.

  While I ate my cereal, I watched them chatting and wiggling worms in front of Buttercup. They laughed a lot. Half the time I didn’t even know what they were laughing about, but I could tell they were both having fun.

  Lucy came back into the kitchen and rifled through the cupboard under the sink. She pulled out some jam jars and a stack of old newspapers.

  ‘I need some paint,’ she said.

  ‘What sort of paint?’

  ‘The white sort.’

  ‘I meant, what do you want to paint? Is it a picture or are you making something?’

  ‘It’s secret.’

  Lucy says that a lot. She doesn’t tell you anything unless she has to. ‘I’ve got a set of watercolours that I got two birthdays ago,’ I suggested.

  ‘Is that those titchy little squares? That look like sweets?’

  ‘Yep, except there’s no pink because Chloe ate it to see if it tasted like sweets too.’

  ‘Did it?’

  ‘No.’ I rinsed out my cereal bowl. ‘But it did make her sick pink.’

  ‘I don’t want those ones. They’re too small. I need lots. Like when you get those buckets of paint.’

  ‘I think there are some tins on the shelf in the shed.’

  I glanced out of the window again. Thunder was rolling around on the grass and I could hear Chloe shouting, ‘Who’s the worm master now?’

  ‘Can you get them down for me?’ Lucy asked, opening the back door.

  ‘No way.’

  ‘Why not?’

  When Lucy gets into trouble, anyone who saw what she was doing and didn’t stop her gets into trouble too. Mum says she’s only seven and we have to take care of her. It’s a bit like getting a baby crocodile to behave. Except even more bitey.

  ‘I’ve got to look the other way in case you’re doing something Mum ends up saying you shouldn’t have,’ I said.

  Lucy huffed, but she knows the rules.

  I turned my back and studied the calendar carefully. It was still on June.

  There was some banging from the shed and then I heard Lucy walking back across the kitchen.

  ‘Lucy? You’re not going to paint anything really bad, are you?’ I said, keeping my back to her.

  ‘Of course not.’ She bumped me as she went past. ‘I’m going to paint something really good.’

  When they’d finished poking worms at Buttercup, Chloe and Thunder went to meet some more of their friends to go bowling and Amelia was shut in her room, so I went to find Lucy. She was in the Pit with something heavy in front of the door.

  ‘Go away!’ she said. So I did.

  I was pretty bored with no one to hang around with so, as a last resort, I decided to do some homework. Mum woke up and helped me learn my French vocabulary. Then, while she was making Lucy’s costume for her Harvest Festival performance, I worked on my chemistry homework. Chemistry is definitely one of my biggest bright sides at school. It’s nearly as cool as maths. After I’d finished, I copied out the periodic table so I could stick it next to my bed and learn all the symbols.

  When Chloe came home from bowling, I packed up my coloured pencils and went to talk to her.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’

  She flopped down on the sofa. ‘Yes, but don’t sit next to me. I’m very sweaty. Thunder wanted some shots of Big Bear bowling, but that suit is really hot. It is quite good though; little kids think you’re a teddy bear.’ She fanned herself with one of Mum’s magazines. ‘Except the ones that think you’re going to eat them. Either way, they all scream their heads off.’

  ‘What did Buttercup think of the worms?’

  ‘She’s not keen. Thunder thinks we should try them wrapped in lettuce.’

  ‘You’re good friends with Thunder, aren’t you?’

  She yanked off her trainers. ‘Yep, he’s an idiot.’

  ‘You’ve got lots of friends.’

  ‘Yeah, loads.’

  ‘Do your friends all get on together?’

  ‘Well, Thunder is always stamping on people, but in a nice way. Most of the time everyone gets on and we have a good laugh.’

  ‘How do you do it? How do you get people to have fun together?’

  She peeled off her sweaty socks. ‘I suppose we do stuff.’

  ‘D
oes that make people get along?’

  She creased up her forehead. ‘I think so. If you go kayaking with someone and then you nearly drown and then you don’t drown, it makes you quite friendly.’

  That sort of made sense. I suppose if you’re trying not to fall into a raging river then you wouldn’t have time for arguing.

  ‘But we don’t do kayaking at school,’ I said.

  ‘Kayaking is best, but you could do rugby or join the swimming team or anything where you’re all doing it together.’

  I’m not crazy about sport like Chloe is, but I thought it was a good idea. Being super nice didn’t seem to be helping Ashandra and Kayleigh become best friends so maybe I needed to get them to join a team with me, then they could see how much fun we could all have together.

  Later on, Mum managed to persuade Lucy to come out of the Pit and Chloe to stop playing computer games. She couldn’t make Amelia come out of her room, but the rest of us had a biscuit-making competition without her; Chloe and Lucy against me and Mum. Chloe pretended to like her and Lucy’s banana and chilli cookies, but Mum’s and my chocolate chip ones were nicer. Mum agreed; she gave me a big high five when we did the tasting.

  Chloe was right; it does feel good to be part of a team.

  ‘I thought you were right off PE,’ Kayleigh said on Monday morning when I asked her about joining a team.

  ‘I’m just off basketball.’

  She pushed an escaping strand of hair behind her ear. ‘Well, I’ve always wanted to play polo.’

  ‘The one on horses or the one in a swimming pool?’

  ‘On horses of course.’

  ‘I’m not sure our school has got a team for that.’

  In the end, we decided to take a look at the sports noticeboard before registration. There were a lot of teams, but most of them seemed to be already filled and the notices were about practices or matches. They were looking for more people for gymnastics, but you had to do a try-out for that. I can’t even do a cartwheel so I didn’t think I had a very good chance of getting chosen.