One More Little Problem

  Vanessa Curtis

  ZeLaH

  GReen

  One More

  Little Problem

  Zelah Green: One More Little Problem first published in

  Great Britain 2010

  by Egmont UK Limited

  239 Kensington High Street

  London W8 6SA

  Copyright © Vanessa Curtis 2010

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted

  ISBN 978 1 4052 4054 3

  eISBN 978 1 7803 1071 8

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from

  the British Library

  Typeset by Avon DataSet Ltd, Bidford on Avon, Warwickshire

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by the CPI Group

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

  reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any

  form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,

  recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the

  publisher and copyright owner.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Acknowledgements

  To Margaret, a true friend

  Chapter One

  My name’s Zelah Green and I’m a Cleanaholic.

  I’m upstairs in my bedroom dreaming about a boy I used to know. His name was Sol and although I only knew him for four weeks he’s kind of got into my head and I can’t get him out again.

  I’m also trying to plan my summer break.

  Most kids are going to Disney World or camping in the New Forest or jetting off to Australia.

  My summer plans take the form of a list. This is what it says:

  Clean the house from top to bottom.

  Disinfect bathroom. (I have this little problem with something called OCD. It means that I hate germs and dirt.)

  Scrub mud out of doormats and carpets.

  Persuade Dad to have haircut.

  Hide all alcohol in house in case Dad has a weak moment.

  Cook and batch-freeze summer vegetables from garden.

  Bake a cake.

  Boring! When I read this list back I feel about ninety. What has happened to my carefree teenaged existence?

  Oh yes – it all ended when my mother died, my stepmother tried to get rid of me, my father became a booze-soaked depressive, my best friend deserted me, I ended up in a treatment centre and my, erm, little problem got a bit out of control.

  Put like that, the prospect of baking a cake doesn’t seem too bad after all.

  I’m measuring out some nice clean flour from a lovely sealed packet on to the disinfected white scales when Heather pops her head round the back door. Heather’s our next-door neighbour and she’s gorgeous. Oh, and she’s also Dad’s girlfriend, believe it or not.

  ‘Mmm,’ she says. ‘Victoria sponge?’

  I give her a scathing look.

  ‘Purlease,’ I say. ‘You know full well that a Victoria sponge would involve the use of jam.’

  I don’t do jam. Horrid sticky smelly gloopy stuff clinging to the door handle of the fridge first thing in the morning. Major Dirt Alert.

  I know. I’m a nightmare to live with.

  ‘Fruitcake, then?’ says Heather. She’s in a very good mood this morning. Her sunglasses are in their usual place on top of her long shiny hair and her face is glowing with sun and health. Unlike Dad, Heather is a big fan of eating five portions of fruit and veg a day.

  ‘Heather,’ I say. ‘I’m disappointed in you. You’re supposed to know me better than that. Fruitcake would involve the use of – sultanas.’

  I shudder just using the word. I’m the only person I know who is scared of sultanas.

  Heather gives a big sigh with her hands on her hips.

  ‘I give up,’ she says. ‘Tell me, Zelah. Tell me what sort of cake you’re making. Tell me before I go insane from not knowing.’

  ‘Lemon,’ I say, ignoring her sarcasm and gesturing at the lovely clean little bottle of lemon juice next to my mixing bowl.

  Heather mock-slaps her forehead.

  ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘Lemon. A perfect cleaning aid.’

  I grin with pleasure. In fact I’ve already cleaned out the fridge today with a mixture of bicarbonate of soda and lemon juice and half a real lemon is sitting on the top shelf and soaking up all the vile old-meat-and-fish smells.

  Lemons are big friends of mine. Kind of weird, I know, but as my real friends are a bit thin on the ground right now I need all the help I can get.

  I did have a best friend – Fran – but she visited me when I was an inpatient at Forest Hill and she didn’t Get It. She thought that if you were in any sort of hospital you must be totally bonkers.

  But all that stuff seems pretty normal to me. My father is mad, after all, and although my mum’s dead she was also crazy. Heather’s not exactly Miss Sanest Person on the Planet either. She’s not an out-and-out lunatic but you only have to spy on her doing ChiBall through the lounge window to realise that she’s kind of – unusual.

  That’s why Fran was so great. She comes from a very average sort of family. Her mother likes horses, Country Living magazine and filling up little French dishes with tiny figscented soaps. Her father is a mild-mannered accountant with round black spectacles and a tendency to mutter. The bedrooms in their house are full of plump white linen pillows and pale pink sheets. Fran is neatness personified with her pink summer dresses and flip-flops, her perfect matching pedicures and her dark brown plait hanging exactly down the middle of her back like a well-trained horsetail.

  She’s also very, very clean.

  ‘You’re doing that faraway thing again, kiddo,’ says Heather.

  I break away from my Fran-induced reverie.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Miles away.’

  I gesture towards the eggs.

  Heather understands. She’s good like that.

  She cracks the eggs into a bowl and beats them up so that I don’t have to handle the gunky shells. Then she tips it all into the bowl where I’ve mixed up flour and sugar.

  ‘Could you do the butter too?’ I say. Butter paper is seriously gross.

  Heather cuts half a packet of butter into tiny squares and tips them into the mix.

  I squirt in loads of lemon juice and then beat the whole thing into submission while Heather greases the edges of the cake tin with the butter paper.

  When the cake mix is poured into the tin and placed in the (very clean) oven, Heather asks where Dad is.

  ‘Outside, where else?’ I say.

  Dad is at the end of the back garden clipping branches in half for a bonfire.

  He’s got his usual array of petrol cans, fish slices, scissors, tongs and rolled-up bits of newspaper, trying to start a fire.

  We watch as Dad hops backwards when a flame shoots up and misses his eyebrow
s by about a millimetre and then dies away leaving a miserable stream of thin grey smoke behind.

  Dad scratches his head and bumps his elbow on the tree behind him, trips up, falls over into a pile of compost and gets up again, brushing himself free of old tea bags and carrot tops.

  Heather and I survey this sad spectacle in silence.

  ‘You’ve got to love him, haven’t you?’ she says, after a while.

  ‘Somebody has to,’ I agree.

  Heather bangs on the window and yells at Dad to come in.

  Ha! If only it were that simple.

  As he starts to come in through the kitchen door I call out to him just in time.

  ‘Change outside,’ I say. ‘Sorry. It’s just that smoke is major Dirt Alert.’

  Dad makes a sort of growling noise and backs out into the garden, whipping off his shirt to reveal a nice eyeful of flabby middleaged stomach, sprouting underarm hair and baggy old boxer shorts.

  ‘Hands!’ I shout through the window.

  Dad washes his hands and hair under the outside tap.

  ‘Shoes!’ I yell.

  Dad changes his cracked brown gardening shoes to indoor ones.

  You might think this is a bit over the top. But I used to be far worse. Before Forest Hill I wouldn’t have let him inside the house at all.

  When Dad finally gets back into the kitchen Heather dangles a bunch of keys in front of his bleary eyes.

  ‘You’re in charge of my house,’ she says.

  Dad scratches his head.

  ‘What on earth for?’ he says.

  Heather gives a small puff of frustration.

  ‘PATRICK!’ she says. ‘I’m off to Slovenia, remember? You’re to water my plants? And Zelah, you can use my laptop if you like.’

  Heather knows that Dad’s computer is slow and can only do one thing at a time. I have an Atari games thing from the 1970s that Dad picked out of a skip but it only has three games on it and they didn’t have the Internet in the olden days.

  Dad glances outside into the street where Heather’s red Porsche contains a couple of suitcases and some expensive leather hand luggage.

  ‘Oh. You’re going now, are you?’ is all he says.

  ‘You know I am,’ she says. ‘We’ve discussed all this, Patrick. Remember?’

  Dad picks at some dirt behind his fingernails.

  I keep a close eye on where he puts the specks of earth.

  Heather is fluffing up her hair in the kitchen mirror and checking her eyeliner.

  Then she kisses Dad and air-kisses me.

  ‘Keep an eye on your dad, Zelah,’ she says. ‘I trust you. You’ll be fine. And if you need me, I’m on the end of the mobile. OK, kiddo?’

  I nod in a sad sort of way. It won’t be the same without Heather around. She’s kind of like my replacement mum.

  Then she’s slamming our front door and bounding off towards the car, sliding her pencil-thin frame into the front seat and roaring off into the Slovenian sunset.

  Dad and I look at each other over the huge bunch of keys.

  ‘Might as well go next door and see what’s what,’ he mumbles.

  We head up Heather’s neat front path. Her garden looks like the ‘after’ version of ours. Ours is very definitely ‘before’.

  I look back over the fence at our mangled overgrown wilderness of a front garden with the old broken sofa and the ancient toilet bowl with ivy growing around the base. Dad seems to have forgotten all about the front garden. Mum used to keep the front nice with pots on little feet sprouting pink and red flowers and miniature daffodils poking through squares of coloured paving.

  I mentally add another chore to my ever-growing summer list of fun things to do:

  Make front garden look tidy.

  Then we step into the paradise which is Heather’s house next door.

  Chapter Two

  The really weird thing about Heather’s house is that on the outside it is exactly the same as ours, but on the inside it’s like stepping into a different country, or even a different world.

  Long polished corridors with wooden floors stretch towards a huge glass kitchen extension at the back of the house. Heather had this put in when she got a big cash bonus for being Fashion Editor of the Year. The kitchen is full of gorgeous big pieces of pottery and artfully placed green tropical plants with leaves that droop at just the right angle from the windowsills. The floor is made from cool grey slate tiles and the ceiling is inset with tiny round spotlights that shine a pure white light down on to the granite kitchen work surfaces.

  The walls in Heather’s house are all the most pristine white. Here and there is a minimalist piece of modern art showing a blaze of orange or a calm sweep of Mediterranean blue against the white. But mostly it’s all just – white.

  I love the white. Most of all I love that the house is so clean.

  Heather pays Tina-the-Cleaner to come in three times a week and keep her house looking the way she likes it.

  If Dad wasn’t unemployed I think I’d ask Tina to come and sort our house out too, but I reckon we can’t afford it. Plus she might well get lost underneath the piles of decaying crappy furniture and old carpets. And she smokes, and although Heather has banned her from lighting up inside, my dad would just smile and let her smoke herself to death in the living room.

  In Heather’s house I don’t have to tuck my elbows into my sides or hold my breath as I walk down the hallway or up the stairs. There are no grimy smears on the oak banisters or bits of dried snot on the walls or rancid smells of food past its sell-by date.

  I’d quite like to move in with Heather but she’s always going on about how she isn’t very maternal.

  Shame. If I moved in with Heather there’s just the smallest chance that my little problem might get better.

  Or even go away.

  Dad’s not interested in Heather’s house. He splashes some water on a few house plants even though she’s only just watered them and then slopes off home to his asparagus beds.

  I rescue the drowning plants and then go into Heather’s shiny disinfected kitchen to lean back against her gleaming black Aga.

  I take a deep breath of all my favourite smells: bleach, apple-scented washing-up liquid and lemony dishwasher tablets.

  We don’t have those smells at home.

  Hey! I could use Heather’s new laptop to surf the Internet and check my email. Dad’s computer is so ancient that it takes half an hour to download even the most basic website.

  But computer keyboards are evil.

  I read that they have more germs in them than an entire toilet.

  Keyboards are like major Germ Alert AND Dirt Alert all at once.

  I pull on a brand new pair of pink rubber gloves from the pile kept by Heather’s cleaner, grab a new bottle of disinfectant spray and head to the office.

  I roll the gloves as high up my arms as possible and then pick up Heather’s keyboard by the tips of my fingers and shake it upside down with a shudder.

  A little spray of crumbs, dust and bent paperclips hits the desk.

  Gross.

  I sweep all the gunk into the bin and then give the computer keyboard a good scrubbing with the disinfectant before shaking it upside down again one more time just to check I’ve got every life-threatening germ out of there.

  Then I settle down, log on to the net and am just about to start surfing about a bit when I notice that Heather’s stuck a little yellow post-it note on the desk next to the laptop.

  ‘Zelah, friend of mine’s just launched this site,’ it says. ‘Might be fun to give it a try? Hx.’

  There’s a website address so I type it into the search engine and watch while a pink website flashing big red hearts pops up on Heather’s screen.

  ‘Aged fourteen to sixteen? Register now for fun, friendship and flirting at mysortaspace, the site everyone’s talking about,’ it says.

  I roll my eyes and slump back in the chair.

  Yuk!

  But then I think abou
t the fact that the one boy I really like, I’ll probably never see again and then I think about the prospect of yet another evening with Dad being gloomy and I don’t know what comes over me but I click on the link and before I know it I’ve set myself up a profile on mysortaspace.com and registered to get a password.

  My new secret dating name isn’t very imaginative. I just call myself ‘Zelah’.

  And I’m not putting a photo on there.

  My face is all red-raw from a mad bout of scrubbing last night and my hair has stopped being sleek and swishy and grown back into mad black fuzz since the haircut from Forest Hill.

  An email flashes into my new inbox, welcoming me to the website and telling me that any interested flirty boys can now send me emails in confidence.

  I sink into my chair and bury my face in my hands.

  What am I doing? Even if I did meet the boy of my dreams I wouldn’t actually be able to touch him so you can imagine the fun date that we’d have, waving at one another from opposite sides of the sofa that might as well be opposite sides of the planet.

  Plus boys don’t actually wash much so there’s a risk of major Dirt Alert AND Germ Alert if I ever meet up with one.

  And there’s another thing. I already met the boy of my dreams three months ago.

  He had olive skin and dark hair and scowling brown eyes.

  Oh Sol. I miss you. Loads.

  I switch everything off and lock the office before staggering back next door for a comforting Ribena and a stale custard cream.

  It’s only the second day of the summer holidays and already my little problem has flared up a bit after the madness of signing on with mysortaspace.com.

  So I’m doing thirty-one jumps on the bottom stair just to make myself feel a bit better.

  I used to do hundreds of jumps but after a lot of help I managed to cut them down to fifteen a day. At the moment I’m doing at least thirty on the bottom step and the same on the top and then the whole thing in reverse when I come down again.

  I’m just in the process of doing the final few jumps when the doorbell rings.

  Damn.

  Dad’s down the bottom of the garden with a big fork in his hand. I can’t answer the door until I’ve finished the ritual or else lots of bad things might happen (although you could say they already have, seeing as my mother is dead, my father is unemployed, my neighbour’s bogged off to a foreign land and my ex-best friend thinks that I am a deranged lunatic, which I probably am seeing as how I’m standing on the staircase jumping up and down in broad daylight).