Tenterhooks. Suzannah Dunn
coloured a whole book of fish. The day when Mum came to fetch us, she took brand new Michaela into the kitchen and stayed for a while. I could hear her laughing and complaining that Michaela had been born early, a few weeks before Auntie Anne’s birthday, because otherwise they could have shared the same birthday. Whenever I looked up, I could see her and Auntie Anne through the serving hatch. They were both sitting on those high stools. Auntie Anne’s legs were crossed, but so closely that her bare feet were side by side on the same rung; her legs looked like a long silvery tail. I called through to ask Auntie Anne how old she was going to be. Her quick laugh could have been a cough. ‘Rox!’
Mum said, ‘Twenty-one,’ and smiled without moving her mouth.
Then Auntie Anne told the truth: ‘Twenty-one years older than you, I’m going to be twenty-seven.’
‘I’m six.’ I was thinking aloud, although not very loudly.
‘I know you are,’ she said, more quietly.
And now I am eight. Like Alison. Alison and I are the same. Our mums were the same, too.
Now Mum leans back on the twin-tub and complains about Alison: ‘What’s she doing in there? She watches too much telly. And much too close to the screen. Kids – why do they do that? What do they think they’re going to miss?’ Her voice sweeps towards me. ‘Why do you kids do that?’
I look up at her as I have been told to do when she talks to me, but I keep my pen moving and, below me, blue felt-tip is turning a piece of my picture into water.
And she is already telling Dad, ‘I’ll call her in here to choose what she wants for her salad, then perhaps we won’t have to suffer that painful pushing of stuff around her plate.’
But Dad says, ‘I don’t think she’s watching telly, I think she’s listening for the phone.’
And I know why.
‘Phone? Why? Who’s ringing her? I told Mrs Mortimer that I’d take her home, around seven. In fact, I told her twice, because I know that she never listens; and, yes, I do know that she tries hard, but the fact is that she never listens.’
Dad says, ‘She thinks there’ll be a call for her when they’ve drawn the raffle.’
‘You bought her a ticket? And she thinks she’s going to win?’ Mum’s eyes look harder than normal.
‘That’s why you enter a raffle, isn’t it? To win?’
‘That’s why you enter a raffle, perhaps. That’s why dreamers enter raffles.’ A quick, deep breath. ‘Why did you buy her a ticket? You know what she’s like, you know what she was like with the Win-a-Pony competition. Why did you raise her hopes like this?’
‘There’s no harm in hoping.’ Dad frowns over his newspaper.
‘There’s every harm in hoping,’ Mum continues to the top of his head, ‘because she’s going to lose, and don’t you think that she’s had to face enough disappointments?’
Dad dares to peek up at her. ‘Perhaps she will win.’
But Mum folds her arms and crashes them on to her tummy. ‘Reality is where you keep a holiday home: one ticket? Swilling around in that bin with all those hundreds?’
‘Five tickets,’ I have to tell her. Alison stands a much better chance than us because Dad bought a whole book of tickets for her, but the usual one ticket each for Eliza and me, and none for Michaela because she is too young and, anyway, she was on the other side of the field with Mum. Every year, the prize is the same, and every year this day is more important to me than Christmas, but I know that we have to be nice to Alison because her mum has a new life.
‘Five tickets?’ Mum’s eyes flash the ceiling, several flashes, as if she is searching for more words.
Dad gives up on his paper, huffs back in his chair. ‘Alison’s in bad need of some fun.’
‘And I’m in bad need of some housekeeping. Whatever made you think that we could afford five tickets?’
‘Oh come on, Gina, this was a one-off.’
‘A one-off here, a one-off there. Are we going to be doing these endless one-offs for the next ten years? The kid needs bringing up, not showering with presents.’
Dad’s hands open in front of him. ‘Five little raffle tickets –’
‘We have to put this behind us, now; we have to continue our lives as normal.’ But suddenly she has turned away, and mutters to the window, ‘Six months and no word from her mother.’
Quietly, Dad answers back, ‘She has written to Mrs M.’
‘Yes, and what exactly did she tell poor old Mrs Mortimer?’ Turning around, Mum’s face is as white as the sunny window. ‘That she has gone away to think.’ Now she is near to Dad, leaning over him, and I hear the rattle of her earrings in her hair. ‘Think.’
Now her eyes switch to mine. ‘What’s up?’
This has made me jump: nothing is up.
She bashes her hair behind one ear. ‘You’re not going to make a fuss about salad, are you? Because I’m not in the mood for one of your fusses.’
Have I ever made a fuss about salad? Tomato is my fourth favourite food, cucumber my sixth. But as she has asked, I decided to try my luck: ‘No lettuce?’
‘No lettuce,’ this is amazingly quick, but she adds, ‘although I don’t know why, because don’t you want healthy bones?’
What would unhealthy bones be like? Do I have them already? Would I know if I had them?
Her eyes have turned back to Dad. ‘Perhaps we should talk to Tim about a pet for Alison. Surely he could manage a cat.’
‘I did talk to Tim.’
‘You did?’
‘And he says that she isn’t interested.’
‘In a cat?’
Mum always says that Animals are trouble, but cats are the best of a bad bunch.
‘In anything.’
She takes several steps nowhere in particular, but bumps into the corner of the table, rattling my row of pens. ‘But these competitions! That ridiculous business of the Win-a-Pony, and now this!’
‘I know, I know,’ Dad’s hands rise but stay, hovering an inch above the tabletop, ‘but she seems to want to win one.’
‘But that’s silly,’ Mum hisses. ‘Why do kids do this? Why do they have to be so impossible about everything?’
His hands are back on the table. ‘This seems to be something that she wants to do on her own.’
‘Well, fine: she could save up. She has pocket money, you know; Roxanne tells me that she has two shillings every week from Tim, and Mrs Mortimer seems to slip her more than the odd sixpence. Isn’t that right, Rox?’
I look up from the blank bucket which I have topped with blue water, look from Mum to Dad, and nod. And now will Dad realize that I am badly off for pocket money, compared to everyone else?
He looks but does not seem to see me. He tells Mum, ‘Tim says that she’s more than happy to save for the food and everything, she has saved, but she refuses to spend this money on buying the animal: she wants to win one.’
‘Well, this is silly.’ Mum joins us, drops into a chair, drops her elbows onto the table and her chin into her hands.
The corners of Dad’s mouth fold in and down, they press dimples into his cheeks.
I