One More Little Problem Page 3

  I go and sit in the front garden and have a big snivelling cry.

  After the cry I feel better. I get the shears out of the shed and trim what’s left of the orange geraniums to exactly the same height. I’m kind of embarrassed to be doing this but I like things to be neat and tidy.

  Not much hope of that inside the kitchen.

  Caro and Dad are rolling cigarettes and sharing a can of beer. Dirty plates cover the table and all the work surfaces. Dad has taken off his mouldy work boots and is sitting in muddy grey socks. Caro’s got her black biker boots on the table again. The air is full of raucous laughter and stale smoke.

  For the first time in ages I miss Fran.

  I mean, she said some vile things that last time I saw her but at least you could rely on her to be clean and smell like a fragrant summer’s day. Fran would have washed up her dirty plates and wiped the table down and swept the floor.

  I wash up the dirty plates, wipe the table down and sweep the floor.

  Then I leave them speaking the language of the devil and go upstairs to scrub my face.

  Next day’s Tuesday.

  I wake up with a sinking kind of feeling. Judging by the loud snores coming from across the landing, Dad isn’t going to be in the best of states to go and start job-hunting even though he promised Heather he would on the phone last night.

  I get up and switch on my CD player. At the moment I’m listening to ‘American Idiot’ by Green Day. I load up a scrubbing brush with soap to do my rituals.

  This is what I do:

  Twenty scrubs of my right cheek.

  Twenty scrubs of my left cheek.

  Ten scrubs of my right hand.

  Ten scrubs of my left hand.

  Then I brush my frizzy black hair twenty-five times in total, tie it into a neat pony, slide into my clean cut-off jeans and silver flip-flops and select a nice calming blue vest top from my wardrobe where all the clothes hang at equal distances with exactly the same gaps in between them.

  I used to have a ruler to do this but the Doc helped me stop that. Now I just judge the distance by standing back and gazing at the clothes with a critical eye.

  I move a blue dress about a half a centimetre to the left and a flippy long white skirt about three centimetres to the right.

  There.

  Perfect.

  Now that I’ve done my bedroom and bathroom rituals there’s only one set left to do.

  The stairs.

  I do thirty-one jumps on the top step and thirty-one on the bottom so that I can head into the kitchen and relax.

  Did I say ‘relax’?

  The sight that greets me as I enter fails to encourage a sense of relaxation.

  Dad and Caro must have stayed up chatting half the night because when I went to bed the kitchen was cleaned to perfection (by me) and now there are cans, bottles, ashtrays, chocolate wrappers and CDs littered all over the wooden table, the chairs and the floor.

  Oh well. At least there’s nobody in here yet. Maybe I can have a good think about dating and boys and, gulp, Sol while I’m washing up.

  I twiddle the knob on the radio until I find Radio One and then I slide a pair of nice clean yellow rubber gloves right up my arms and poke around in the plughole with a shudder to remove something that looks like a clump of hair in gravy tied up with some green seaweed and then I scrub the stainless steel sink until it shines my hot reflection back at me and then I set to on the rest of the kitchen with grim determination.

  Dad staggers down about an hour later and swallows three painkillers straight off.

  ‘She can hold her drink, that little friend of yours,’ he says. He’s grey in the face and looks about a hundred.

  He fails to notice the clean sparkling kitchen.

  ‘I could murder a fry-up, Princess,’ he says.

  I slam a box of oats and a jug of milk down in front of him.

  ‘Oh yes, that’s right,’ says Dad, all mournful. ‘You only eat rabbit food.’

  He pours oats into a bowl and crunches through them with a pained expression on his tired face.

  I go into the hall to pick up the post.

  There’s an official-looking letter with Dad’s name typed on the white envelope.

  ‘Probably a bill,’ he says as I hand it over.

  Dad is chewing on a mouthful of oats but as he skim-reads the letter his cheek freezes into a hamster bulge and he drops his spoon with a loud clatter.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ he says. ‘I seriously don’t believe it!’

  I go and stand behind his shoulder (without touching it, of course).

  The letter is from the school board and seems to be inviting Dad to an interview.

  ‘Dad!’ I scream. ‘That’s fantastic! You’ve got an interview! At last!’

  Dad gets up and we do a silly virtual hug-dance around in a circle, him with his grey dressing gown flapping and me waving my arms about in the air.

  Then as a special treat I fry him an egg at arm’s length and covered in a full body apron just in case of grease splattering and it smells so tempting that I cave in and fry myself one as well and we stuff our faces and for a moment I forget all about Caro being upstairs.

  Dad hasn’t, though.

  ‘Is your little friend gracing us with her presence today?’ he says.

  I laugh. Caro never did surface before lunchtime.

  ‘Shame,’ Dad says. He actually looks disappointed.

  ‘Dad,’ I say. ‘It’s really good that you and Caro are getting on so well but the thing is, I find her quite difficult to handle sometimes – I mean, she can have awful screaming fits and she does that cutting stuff – I’m not sure if you realise . . .’

  Dad gets up and clicks the kettle on.

  ‘I realise,’ he says. ‘But I think she’s charming.’

  I nearly fall off my chair.

  ‘Charming’ is one word I would NOT apply to Caro. Irritating, temperamental, rude, aggressive, yes. But CHARMING?

  ‘OK,’ I mutter in a dark voice. ‘But don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

  Dad’s gone. He’s upstairs running the shower and whistling. I haven’t heard him this cheerful in a long time.

  I take a deep breath. Maybe things are looking up. Dad’s happy and if he’s happy, then that makes me happy as well.

  I text Heather: ‘Dad got interview! Zx’ and she texts back ‘Gr8!’ straight away.

  I feel a bit better then, better about everything. Even the prospect of checking my new email account doesn’t feel quite so bad now.

  I mean – what could really be so scary about an email?

  Right?

  Chapter Six

  It’s three in the afternoon and I’m in Heather’s office again. I’ve booked in a diary session with Caro later. I’m going to teach her how to clean the kitchen.

  Dad’s gone out to buy himself a new suit for the interview and to get a much-needed haircut.

  With my heart flopping in big painful spasms I log into my new account on mysortaspace.com.

  A little flashing box pops up next to a picture of a tiny yellow envelope.

  You have one new message!

  ‘What’s the point?’ I mutter to myself. ‘It’s not going to improve my life, is it?’

  But there’s something a bit thrilling about the little yellow envelope sitting there all mysterious and unopened.

  My heart has only just calmed down again but now it leaps into my chest and starts up a slow painful thud that gathers pace into a crazy woodpecker rhythm.

  ‘Calm, calm, phoo, phoo,’ I go, taking deep breaths with my hand on my chest just like the Doc showed me at Forest Hill.

  My heart slows down, but only a tiny bit.

  I click into my inbox and there’s an email with the heading ‘Hi. Want to chat?’

  ‘Not sure,’ I mutter, but curiosity gets the better of me. I open up the message and begin to read.

  ‘Hi Zelah,’ says the mail. ‘Wow what an unusual name! I had to write to y
ou when I saw that name. But of course it’s probably not your real name. I mean – nobody’s called “Zelah”. Right?

  ‘Wrong,’ I say in a huff. What’s so bad about my name? Yes, it’s unusual, but only because my dead mother got it out of a Cornish hiking magazine with her eyes shut and a stabbing pencil.

  When the lead of that pencil touched the glossy page, a whole life of people blinking and saying ‘Pardon?’ and exclaiming at my unusual name lay ahead.

  And I was only one week old.

  I read my way down the email from the mystery flirting person.

  He says his name is ‘Alessandro’ and that he plays in a heavy-metal band and the rest of the time studies for his GCSEs and plays football and goes to the gym.

  Then he goes on a bit about the sort of music he listens to and the TV programmes that he likes and I can feel my eyes glazing over a bit and then I get to the final line.

  Oh, and my dad’s in the slammer. But not for anything really bad like murder. Just for stealing stuff. You know, Zelah – the usual sorta thing.

  I draw myself up into an indignant pillar.

  No, I do not know!

  My father might be many things – sarcastic, miserable and depressed just for starters – but he’s never been in prison. Not as far as I know, anyway.

  Great. The first reply I get and it has to be from some weirdo with an old man in jail.

  I shut down my inbox and retreat back home in disgust with Heather’s laptop under my arm so that I don’t have to keep going next door to check it.

  Little images of lovely Sol and his dark scowling sexy eyes keep getting in the way.

  *

  I come home all worn out to take a cleaning lesson with Caro.

  ‘This green stuff is washing-up liquid,’ I say.

  ‘And this is a scourer, to get all the tricky stains off the cooker.’

  ‘Yeah yeah,’ says Caro. I’d say she’s lost interest, but that would imply that she had some in the first place.

  ‘Look,’ I say, with an icy edge to my voice. ‘If you’re going to live here for six weeks rent-free, you’ve got to help me out. It’s not fair.’

  ‘Ooh, it’s not fair! Poor little OCD!’ mimics Caro in a high squeaky voice nothing like my own.

  I hate being referred to as ‘OCD’.

  I take a deep ‘phoo, phoo,’ breath with my hand on my chest.

  ‘Just get cleaning, please,’ I say, putting the scourer and liquid into her black-nailed hands.

  Caro looks at them in disgust but goes over to the sink and does some half-hearted wiping with a fag hanging from her lips and an iPod stuffed into her eardrums.

  I’m not in the mood for hearing the rasping satanic mutterings of Marilyn Manson so I go upstairs.

  I sit on Mum’s side of what used to be her and Dad’s bed and I feel all hopeless and dried-up with exhaustion. Again.

  I miss Mum. She was bonkers and told elaborate stories with not even one single grain of truth in them but she was very good at listening to what she called ‘women’s problems’.

  Heather’s good at all that stuff too. But she’s not here.

  I sigh and pat the bed.

  ‘Miss you, Mum,’ I say.

  There’s the faintest whiff of Miss Dior perfume in the air.

  Mum’s favourite. I often smell it when I’m sad.

  Then I go downstairs to inspect Caro’s cleaning.

  Dad gets back from his quest to buy an interview suit clutching a purple carrier bag and with a smart new haircut.

  My eyes fill up with big tears just looking at him.

  ‘Dad,’ I croak. ‘You look like you used to.’

  Dad looks worried.

  ‘Is that a good or a bad thing?’ he says, plonking his bag down and pulling out a lovely new grey suit for my inspection.

  ‘It’s good, deffo,’ I say. ‘You look kind of – younger. And less like a sad old hippie.’

  Caro is peering at the suit.

  ‘Jeez,’ she says. ‘Wouldn’t catch me dead in something like that. And shame about the hair. I liked your old rock-guy look.’

  Dad looks confused, anxious and pleased all at the same time.

  I give Caro a sharp look.

  ‘Don’t put him off, please,’ I hiss. ‘We’ve been waiting a long time for this interview.’

  ‘I’m just saying,’ she growls.

  ‘Well, don’t,’ I say. ‘And the fridge needs cleaning out. Bicarb of soda and half a lemon.’

  ‘When’s tea break?’ Caro is saying. ‘I’m in need of sugar and alcohol.’

  ‘When you’ve finished,’ I say.

  I’m turning into a right little taskmaster. But it’s the only way with Caro. If you’re nice to her, she walks all over you in her biker boots and makes you wish you’d never been born.

  Or conceived.

  Or even thought of.

  ‘I’ve nearly finished, man,’ says Caro. She looks so funny in her apron with rubber gloves on and a fag hanging out of her mouth that I can’t help but smile at her.

  ‘You’re doing a good job,’ I say, trying to make amends.

  Caro grunts at this, but she gives me a half-hearted grin before turning back to our scummy sink.

  I get Dad to try on his suit. It looks really smart. I can tell he’s quite pleased with the way he looks because he keeps twisting and turning in front of the mirror, keeping an eye on his trendy new haircut and slimline silhouette.

  Then I tell Caro to wash all the kitchen windows inside and out and am about to go upstairs and actually unpack my school homework from my bag where it’s been festering since day one of the holidays when a text message pops up on my mobile.

  ‘You have a message from Alessandro on mysortaspace.com!’ it says. Yikes! I forgot I’d given them my mobile number when I registered.

  I sink down on to the top step with a heavy sigh. If I peer towards my bedroom I can just see my school bag with a green geography exercise book poking out of one corner.

  It seems that’s about as close as I’m going to get to what I’m supposed to be doing this summer.

  I could really do with some advice about whether or not to log on and reply to the new email.

  And I feel a bit lonely with Heather away.

  There’s only one person who would be able to tell me what to do.

  Only one person who knows all about flirting with boys even though she tosses her plaits and pretends to ignore them.

  The problem is, that person is the only person I can’t ask for anything ever again.

  But I reckon I’m going to have to swallow a whole heap of pride along with my revolting vegetable dinner tonight.

  I need to stop having this lonely holiday.

  I need my best friend back.

  I have to ring Fran.

  Chapter Seven

  I always thought that Fran and I would be friends forever. We’d even done one of those blood pact things where you cut your wrists and put them together but because of my little problem, Fran was the only one who actually touched the blood and it was her own, not mine.

  Maybe that’s where we went wrong. Maybe the pact should have involved my blood too. But blood is major Germ Alert AND Dirt Alert.

  Since we broke up as friends I’ve tried not to think about Fran.

  But it’s easier said than done. I’ve been round her house so many times that I can imagine every single thing she does, right from the moment when she wakes up on her pink pillow, checks her silver alarm clock and bounces out of bed to the moment when she climbs back up the cream-coloured stairs, cleans her teeth in the white bathroom with her yellow toothbrush and clicks off her soft pink reading light.

  I picture all this stuff on a regular basis.

  It’s like comforting, but also torture.

  Because I’m not part of that picture any more.

  But that’s all going to change.

  Dad’s already downstairs when I come down in my cut-off jeans, silver flip-flops and a p
ale blue T-shirt.

  ‘You’ll wear out that stair carpet with your jumping,’ he says.

  This is a very un-Dad-like comment. The Doc advised him not to draw attention to my rituals, as it would slow down my recovery.

  He must be feeling nervous.

  I sit him at the table and make him toast, slide the evil pot of jam in his direction and pour out large mugs of tea to calm our nerves.

  It’s only eight o’clock and Caro won’t be up until lunchtime so it’s just the two of us sitting over breakfast.

  It feels good. Dad’s got the new suit on and has washed his short hair and punked up the front with some gel. He’s added some little black-rimmed teacher glasses to complete the look.

  The man in front of me is almost unrecognisable from the check-shirted hunchbacked digging gardener with the grubby nails.

  I take a photo on my mobile and send it to Heather. She’s always saying to me that she loves Dad for who he is but that he could do with smartening up a bit (understatement).

  Besides which it’s quite stressful for a person with my little problem to have a dirty smelly father.

  Today Dad smells of pine shampoo and citrus shaving gel.

  A message flashes back on my mobile.

  ‘Who is handsome man? Hx’

  I don’t know whether she’s joking, or whether she thinks I’m having breakfast with a complete stranger.

  ‘She’s joking,’ says Dad, reading the message over my shoulder and trying not to give a pleased smirk.

  I wait until he’s brushed his teeth and picked up his briefcase and driven off to his interview.

  Then I do some extra jumps on the stairs and a good forty or so face washes upstairs in the bathroom.

  I brush my hair until it crackles with static and sticks up in the air.

  Then I tie it up with a blue ribbon and find some long blue sparkly earrings.

  This is all really annoying but I need to get myself prepared for what I have to do next.

  I can still remember the number off by heart.

  I creep into Dad’s room and shut the door. Don’t want Caro hearing any of this.

  I sit on the Mum side of the bed.

  I take a deep ‘phoo, phoo,’ breath with my hand on my chest.