The Strawberry Sisters Read online

  I kept my head down and picked up a different ball. Why was she so horrible? I almost wished I hadn’t bothered coming and that I was sitting in the cafeteria, eating a ham sandwich, but then I saw Kayleigh giggling at Ashandra pretending to play her stick like a guitar and I knew it was all worthwhile.

  When Lucy came in with Mum that evening, she poked me in the middle.

  ‘Can you watch me be a bat?’ she asked.

  Lucy likes pretending to be a bat. She hangs upside down by her knees from a climbing frame at the skatepark down the road and thinks battish things. But she isn’t allowed to go to the park by herself.

  I was in the middle of my homework, but Lucy looked a bit droopy so I said yes. When we got there, a boy a bit younger than me was on the skate ramp, but no one else. I was glad; sometimes when we go to the park there are loads of older boys and I feel a bit embarrassed. Especially when they stare at Lucy while she’s being a bat. Lucy scrambled up the climbing frame and swung into position. She let out a sigh like she’d just leant back in a really comfy armchair.

  I balanced on the bottom rung of the frame.

  ‘What do you think Kirsti is doing now?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘I’m pretty sure she’s either feeding or sleeping.’

  ‘Or gurgling. Sometimes she makes noises like Chloe’s stomach does after she’s eaten curry.’

  I thought that if Lucy was feeling really relaxed and bat-like it might be a good time to ask her about Kirsti.

  ‘Lucy? Why are you always thinking about Kirsti? Are you sad that you’re not the baby any more?’

  Lucy turned her head to look at me. ‘Why would I want to be a baby?’

  ‘You were the baby until Kirsti was born.’

  Lucy’s eyes sparked up like flames. ‘I was not! I haven’t been a baby for years and years. Who wants to be a baby? You have to wear stupid hats and eat sloppy things.’

  ‘So why are you so . . . interested in Kirsti?’

  ‘She’s my sister,’ she said, looking at me like I was mad.

  ‘But why are you always hanging around her when we’re at Dad’s? And why do you keep staring at her?’

  Lucy wrinkled her nose. ‘I told you, she’s my sister.’

  And then I understood that Lucy hadn’t been acting mean to Kirsti, or at least not any meaner than she is to anyone else; she was just spending time with her.

  ‘I know Kirsti’s your sister,’ I said, ‘but Amelia’s your sister too and you don’t spend ages talking to her.’

  ‘I could if I wanted to.’

  ‘But you don’t.’

  ‘But I could. Because she’s near me. Amelia, Chloe and you are all my sisters so you’re in my house. All the time.’

  ‘And that’s a good thing?’

  ‘That’s what it’s supposed to be. All your family should be in your house.’

  I felt a bit sad because, even though Lucy didn’t want to be the baby, she was still little and I didn’t think she completely understood divorce. ‘I know some families are like that,’ I said. ‘But when parents split up people live in different houses.’

  ‘Mum and Dad could buy one big house and we could all live in that.’

  I sighed. ‘I don’t think that will happen.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because Mum and Dad don’t love each other any more.’

  Lucy huffed. ‘They don’t have to do love stuff to be in the same house!’ She started swinging backwards and forwards. Her face was pink and angry. ‘I don’t want Kirsti to be ruined. She’s supposed to be a Strawberry Sister like us, but she doesn’t know anything. She doesn’t know about burping competitions, or licking a cake to bagsie it, and she’s never even played March of the Zombies.’

  ‘She’s a bit small for March of the Zombies.’

  Lucy shook her head at me like I was an idiot. ‘What do you think will happen to all the babies when the zombies come? You’re never too young to be a zombie.’

  ‘We’ll see Kirsti whenever we go to Dad’s,’ I said.

  Lucy put her hands on the bar beneath her, then flipped her legs over so she landed on the ground.

  ‘It’s not the same as having her in our house.’ Her face was all scrunched up.

  I was getting really hungry and cold, but I wanted to be nice so I tried to think of a way to make Lucy feel better.

  ‘You could help Kirsti be a Strawberry Sister,’ I suggested.

  ‘Could I?’

  ‘Yep, you could be in charge.’ Lucy likes being in charge. ‘You could make sure that she knows all our family things. Teach her our games and take her to our special places. Show her what it means to be a Strawberry Sister.’

  Lucy was still frowning, but I could tell she was thinking about it.

  When we got back from the park, I went looking for Chloe. I found her feeding Buttercup. Luckily for Buttercup, it looked like she was getting a vegetarian dinner this time.

  ‘Lucy doesn’t hate Kirsti,’ I said.

  ‘That’s good,’ Chloe said, nibbling on a bit of Buttercup’s lettuce.

  ‘She’s upset that Kirsti doesn’t live with us. She actually really loves her.’

  ‘That’s good too,’ she said. ‘You have to love your family. Except for complete traitors called Amelia. You have to spit at those ones.’ She scowled up at Amelia’s window. ‘It’s good about Lucy.’

  I thought about that later when I was in bed. Because Chloe was right: it was good that Lucy loved Kirsti. Having a family to love is definitely a bright side. But somehow it was still a problem. It was making Lucy unhappy. But I knew that the answer wasn’t for Lucy to love Kirsti any less.

  When you’re little, you think that love is a really good answer to all your problems. It’s what makes you feel better when you fall over and your mum cuddles you, and the thing that makes you feel safe at night when your dad tucks you in; it’s the happy storybook ending where the prince and princess get married or the characters become friends forever.

  But maybe love isn’t always the answer. Maybe sometimes how much you love someone leads to questions too. Hard questions.

  Saturdays at home are quite pyjama-y. Chloe usually goes out to do something sporty with her friends and the rest of us stay at home and watch TV and read books and chat to Mum and eat lots of sandwiches.

  It’s not like that at Dad’s house. At Dad’s house, there’s always a Plan. It’s not always the same thing because my dad changes what he’s into all the time. It used to drive my mum mad, especially when he’d come home with a new gadget or even more sports equipment. Sometimes I like my dad’s new hobbies and sometimes I don’t. Last year he got really into geocaching and we used to hike round the countryside, using a GPS device to look for secret boxes. I liked finding the coordinates and Chloe liked racing about on the moors, but Lucy got bored and Amelia wouldn’t join in. After a while, Dad didn’t seem so keen.

  Then he got a pottery wheel. I didn’t like that. Clay is really messy and it never does what you want it to.

  Then it was cycling. I quite liked that, except when we went riding in the woods and the paths were really bumpy and I nearly went crashing into a bush. We still go cycling sometimes, but today’s Plan was fishing.

  Dad got everyone up very early, except for Suvi and Kirsti who he said were having a lie-in because Kirsti had been awake for half the night. ‘I’ve got a lot of work to do this afternoon,’ Dad said. ‘So I want to get an early start.’

  Lucy hadn’t been awake half the night, but she was still quite grumpy.

  ‘Fishing for fish?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course for fish,’ Dad said, whipping away her breakfast plate.

  Lucy narrowed her eyes. ‘Sometimes in cartoons when they go fishing they pull out a boot or a tyre on the end of their hook.’

  ‘I think the general idea is to avoid rubbish and stick to fish.’

  ‘I’d like a tyre better than a fish. You can make a swing out of a tyre.’

  Dad took some water bot
tles out of the fridge and put them in a bag. ‘OK, Lucy, you fish for junk and the rest of us will try to catch our supper.’

  Lucy shook her head. ‘I can’t fish anyway. I’ve got ballet.’

  Dad said something rude about ballet. Even though Lucy goes every Saturday, Dad is always forgetting about it.

  ‘It’s teaching me to be graceful.’ Lucy flopped across the table with her legs in the air to steal a slice of Chloe’s toast. ‘Anyway, I want to try to saw Madame Donna in half.’

  ‘Does Madame Donna like it when you do magic tricks on her?’ Chloe asked.

  ‘I don’t always tell her exactly what the trick is.’

  Dad looked at Lucy for a few seconds, then turned to Chloe. ‘You’re looking forward to fishing, aren’t you, Chloe?’

  ‘Yep, I’m going to be brilliant at it. And, while we’re doing it, you can help me with my Fantasy Football team.’

  Dad beamed. ‘Excellent.’

  Amelia made a vomiting noise. Dad turned to where she was slumped on the sofa.

  ‘There’s no need for that. You know, it’s nice and quiet by the river; you could sing us one of your songs.’

  Amelia lifted her head. ‘Or I could stay in bed like normal people do at the crack of dawn on a Saturday. Anyway, since when have you been interested in my singing?’ And then she slumped back down face first.

  ‘Amelia hasn’t got time for us,’ Chloe said. ‘She needs hours to put on all her make-up and then she’s got to text all her friends about whether some idiot boy looked at her or not.’

  But Dad was still trying to get someone other than Chloe excited about fishing.

  ‘There’ll be maggots, Lucy! You like wriggly, squirmy things, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s why she likes you, Dad,’ Amelia said and she rolled off the sofa and crawled back upstairs.

  ‘That was quite rude,’ Chloe said. ‘You ought to speak to her about her attitude, Dad.’

  Dad blinked. Chloe doesn’t normally talk in that teacherish way.

  ‘I’ll come,’ I said. I wasn’t exactly keen on fishing, but it would be nice to spend some time with Dad and he seemed so excited that I didn’t want to disappoint him.

  ‘You’re all coming,’ he said.

  Lucy waved a ballet shoe at him.

  ‘Except Lucy.’

  A door closed upstairs.

  ‘And Amelia.’

  In the end, we left Amelia in bed and dropped off Lucy at the community centre for her lesson. Then we headed out of town to the neighbouring village, parked the car at a pub and made our way to the river.

  ‘But won’t Lucy need picking up soon?’ I asked.

  ‘I asked Rose’s mum to drop her back at home. We can stay for a few hours.’

  Chloe started telling Dad about football transfers. I wasn’t sure if they were real ones or fantasy ones. I just hoped that wasn’t the only thing they were going to talk about.

  It was pretty down by the river. The sun was shining and birds were singing. The trees were leaning over the bank like they were admiring themselves in the water. It was very calm and peaceful.

  ‘I wish we had an air pistol,’ Chloe said.

  Dad set up a couple of deckchairs and showed Chloe how to bait a line. We only had two rods so I just had to watch. Once the lines were in the water, there wasn’t that much to do so they talked some more about football. A lot more.

  ‘Can we talk about something else?’ I asked.

  So they talked about rugby. And then rally driving.

  Eventually, Chloe said, ‘Sorry, Ella, I’ve had ages. It’s your turn.’ And she gave the rod to me. ‘Actually, I saw a kind of burrow hole back there. I’m going to go and see if there are any vicious badgers in it.’

  ‘Don’t disappear,’ Dad said.

  So then I got to copy Dad casting his line. He got tangled up the first time so I’m not sure that he was a really good example to follow, but eventually we both got everything where it was supposed to be. I sat back in my chair. It was nice being outside and having Dad all to myself for once.

  But I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  It was quiet for a minute. Dad yawned.

  ‘Kirsti’s nice,’ I said eventually.

  ‘She’s a bonny baby, isn’t she? You know, I was working so hard when you girls were small that I missed out on a lot of things. I’m really looking forward to seeing this little one grow and flourish.’

  ‘You can still watch us growing up too,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, yes, of course.’

  If I hadn’t been being super nice, I might have thought that he seemed to say that in quite a quick way, like he didn’t really mean it; instead, I tried to say something else about Kirsti, but I couldn’t really think of anything because she didn’t exactly do a lot.

  There was a long pause.

  ‘How’s Mum?’ Dad asked.

  I didn’t know what I was supposed to say to that. Was Mum supposed to be happy or sad without him?

  ‘She’s fine.’

  ‘Good.’ He leant back in his chair and closed his eyes. ‘And how’s school?’

  I knew the answer to that one. ‘It’s great because now Ashandra is at the same school as me and Kayleigh so we can all be friends together.’ I stared at the water. ‘I mean . . . we’re not exactly best, best friends at the moment. Actually, Kayleigh said something not that nice about Ashandra the other day, and also Ashandra didn’t want to work with us on a book project, but we’ve all joined the Hockey Club so that’s good.’ I squeezed the fishing rod tight. ‘In the end, I think we’ll all be really good friends. Don’t you?’

  I looked at Dad. He was fast asleep.

  I didn’t wake him up. When Chloe came back, she took the rod gently out of his hands. She said that she heard him walking about with Kirsti in the middle of the night so he must have been tired. Sometimes it’s difficult to think of the bright side of a baby who takes up all your dad’s spare time, even when she’s not there.

  We thought we’d got a bite on the fishing line at one point, but when we managed to reel it in it was only a chunk of wood.

  Eventually, Dad woke up and took us home for lunch.

  The afternoon’s Plan was much smaller because Dad needed to do some work. He said we just had time to take Kirsti for a quick walk round the park before he got started.

  ‘You’re not coming, are you?’ Amelia asked Suvi while Dad was changing Kirsti.

  ‘I think I will stay here and make some phone calls,’ Suvi said, but her face looked like she’d wanted to say something else.

  It takes a long time to get out of the house when you’ve got a baby with you. First you have to make sure that they’re not hungry and that their nappy is clean. Then you have to check that they won’t be too cold or too hot. Dad had a ginormous bag full of things to take with us, even though we were only going down the road.

  ‘Don’t be long,’ Suvi said as we were leaving. ‘Kirsti will need another feed soon.’

  We piled out of the door. Dad stopped to adjust the handle on Kirsti’s pram and an old lady walking past peered in at Kirsti.

  ‘Isn’t she lovely?’ she said. ‘Goodness, are all these girls yours?’ she asked Dad.

  ‘Every one.’

  She beamed at us. ‘How splendid. You must be very proud. Five little treasures.’

  Dad smiled back. ‘Sometimes it’s more like five little monkeys!’ He put his arm round Lucy. ‘They’re good girls really. You make your old dad proud, don’t you?’

  I didn’t know that I made Dad proud, but I smiled at the old lady. Amelia cracked her chewing gum.

  ‘Enjoy the weather while it lasts,’ the old lady said and she was off.

  ‘Who was that?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Dad said. ‘A nice lady.’

  ‘Why was she talking about us?’

  ‘I think she was impressed that I’ve managed to produce such a handsome, well-behaved brood.’

  Kirsti let
out a wail, Chloe burped and Amelia said a bad word.

  ‘I think she thought we were famous,’ Lucy said.

  The walk didn’t last long. Kirsti cried a lot. Lucy asked a lot of questions about why Kirsti cries so much. Chloe didn’t stop talking to Dad and Amelia didn’t say a word. I offered to get another blanket out of the bag in case she was cold, but Dad said no. Then I said I could push the pram if he was still tired, but he didn’t want me to do that either. It’s quite hard being nice when people don’t want your help.

  When we got back, Dad disappeared into his study and we hardly saw him again that weekend.

  I was really pleased when Ashandra said she wanted to sit with me and Kayleigh at lunch on Tuesday, but it turned out that she just wanted to talk about the art competition.

  ‘Do you want to show everyone your research first in class or shall I?’ she asked Kayleigh.

  ‘You can show yours,’ Kayleigh said. ‘Actually, I haven’t exactly got very much research.’

  Ashandra pursed her lips. ‘Why not? We agreed on Friday that we’d get our research done this weekend. You heard us talking about it, didn’t you, Ella?’

  To be fair, it was mostly Ashandra that I’d heard talking about it. Although Kayleigh definitely did do some head-nodding. Before I was forced to answer, Kay folded her arms. ‘I don’t really think we need to do all this research stuff; we should get on with decorating our panel.’

  ‘We need to know what we’re going to put on it first.’

  ‘I’ve got loads of ideas.’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s not going to be a very accurate representation of Chinese culture if we don’t have a solid foundation of research.’

  When big words come out of Ashandra’s mouth, they seem to clog up Kayleigh’s ears and she doesn’t listen to anything else. She rolled her eyes at me.

  ‘Kayleigh?’ Ashandra tapped the table. ‘We’re supposed to be in charge of the project.’

  ‘Seems like you’re being in charge enough for both of us.’

  ‘Somebody has to be responsible and not act like a little kid.’

  Kayleigh clenched her jaw. ‘Are you calling me a baby?’