Scarlett - Cathy Cassidy [26]
He looks at me and catches the glint in my eye. ‘Don’t, Scarlett,’ he whispers. ‘Don’t say a word.’
And somehow, both of us are smiling.
‘Scarlett,’ Dad shouts out into the garden, where I am painting Holly’s toenails with a glittery green nail polish called Lime Pickle. ‘Your mum is on the phone again.’
‘Don’t want to talk to her.’
It’s the sixth time Mum has called since the night of my Great Escape. It’s the sixth time I have refused to come to the phone.
‘Scarlett, please,’ Dad appeals from the kitchen doorway. ‘You have to talk to her sometime.’
‘Do I?’ I ask. ‘Why, exactly?’
‘She’s your mother,’ Dad huffs. ‘She’s worried about you. And besides, she’s giving me a really hard time. She thinks I’ve turned you against her.’
‘Nope, she managed that all by herself,’ I tell him.
‘Go on,’ Holly chips in, wiggling her shimmery green toenails in the evening sun. ‘You’ll hurt her feelings.’
‘No chance,’ I reply. ‘She doesn’t have any.’
Dad trudges back inside, defeated. ‘Serves her right,’ I tell Holly, and she looks at me sadly with those spaniel eyes.
Clare is sitting in a garden chair a few metres away, stitching at a small piece of patchwork, a work in progress. It looks like a cot quilt for the new baby, little scraps of fabric pieced carefully together with bright, decorative stitching over the top. I wonder if my mum ever sat up late stitching patchwork for me? No chance.
‘That’s cool,’ I whisper to Holly. ‘The quilt, I mean.’
‘It’s for the baby,’ Holly says. ‘It was my idea. It’s got bits and pieces from all our favourite things, Chris’s old jeans, my dresses, Mum’s flowery skirts…’
Clare hears us talking and looks up from her sewing. ‘The idea is to give a little bit of something we each love to keep the new baby safe and warm,’ she explains. She looks at me and her eyes light up. ‘I don’t suppose…?’
She looks at me keenly, like she might be about to ask for a slice of my red fluffy rucksack, but I glare at her and she thinks better of it, gathers up her patchwork and heads inside. She’s learning.
Holly, by contrast, doesn’t know when to shut up. ‘Talk to your mum,’ she wheedles. ‘You can’t ignore her forever!’
I frown. ‘Look, Holly, my mum doesn’t want me. Nor does Dad really, and I know I’m just a nuisance to you and Clare. Don’t expect me to start playing happy families, OK? My life’s not like that.’
‘We do want you!’ Holly squeaks. ‘Mum really likes you, and I’ve always wanted a sister – sorry, a step sister. As for Dad…’
A cold silence falls down around us, and my scalp prickles. ‘Holly’ I say quietly. ‘He’s not your dad, OK?’
Holly bites her lip, dragging a hand across her eyes, but not in time to stem the tears. She makes a little strangled noise, jumps up and runs inside, tipping the Lime Pickle nail polish over. It makes a little puddle of glittery goo on the grass, then seeps slowly away, and I’m left wondering why it’s me who feels like I’m the one to blame.
In honour of Holly’s first veggie weekend, Clare makes banana curry with poppadoms and onion bhajis. Holly kicks my foot under the table, giving me a sad, wide-eyed look designed to say sorry. I wink back, relaxing a bit. She didn’t mean to upset me.
‘Good to see you two girls getting on,’ Dad says, snaffling yet another onion bhaji. ‘It’s been a good weekend.’
‘Don’t know how I’ve lived through the excitement,’ I say.
‘I liked it,’ Holly argues. ‘This is the weekend I went vegetarian! And we fixed up the wall, we played Cluedo, I got my toenails painted. You even helped me dye my bedsheets orange!’
‘Bedsheets?’ Dad echoes, looking alarmed, but Clare hushes him. She picks up a bowl of ripe strawberries, fresh from the garden, and sets it on the table along with a dish of thick, yellow cream. Everybody digs in.
‘You’ll need to talk to your mother sometime, though,’ Dad says, biting into a strawberry. ‘And to us, come to that. We need to get things sorted, talk to the school, get you settled properly.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘I won