‘She needs you. Like, really needs you. Now more than ever.’
‘She’ll let me know when she’s ready.’
‘Ready for what?’ I ask.
‘Ow!’
I notice a small droplet of blood on Steph’s thumb. She’s jabbed herself with the safety pin.
‘It’s about something that happened a long time ago.’ Steph’s voice is all jagged.
‘Well, if it happened so long ago,’ I say, ‘it can’t be that important any more, can it?’
‘Just talk to your mum, Feather. It’s not for me to say.’
‘Not for you to say what?’
She shakes her head.
‘Mum won’t talk, Steph. You know she won’t. Not about anything except who’s doing what on Strictly, which is like the least important thing in the world – and now that we’ve taken her TV away, she won’t even talk about that.’
‘It’s not up to you to fix your mum,’ Steph says.
And that’s the end of our conversation.
If Steph won’t tell me what happened, I’ll have to find out some other way. And then I’ll figure out a way to get them to be friends again. If I’m going to get Mum better, I’m going to need all the help I can get.
I push through the front door, drop my swim bag in the entrance and run down the hall.
As I stand in the kitchen doorway, my hair dripping down my shoulders, I can’t believe what I’m seeing: Mitch is sitting at the kitchen table next to Mum, who’s sitting in her wheelchair.
‘You opened the door, Mum?’
Mum laughs. ‘You’re looking at me like I let in an axe-murderer.’
‘But you never answer the door.’ I pause. ‘Ever.’
The last time we had guests in the house was four years ago, for my birthday. And it didn’t end well. One of the boys took pictures of Mum on his mobile and sent them to my class. When I worked out what he’d done I punched him on the nose, grabbed his phone, dropped it into his glass of Coke and told him to leave. He ran home and told his parents and, within half an hour, all the kids at my party had been picked up.
Apart from Jake, I haven’t had any friends round since. I don’t really mind – in some ways it’s easier, it means I don’t have to keep explaining about Mum or worrying how people will react. And anyway, I feel about Jake a bit like Mum feels about me: he’s worth a million friends.
‘It took a while for me to get to the front door,’ Mum says. ‘Mitch was already halfway down the drive. But I made it.’ Mum winks at me. ‘I thought you’d approve.’
Every muscle in my body relaxes. So Mum’s finally decided to make an effort. Me ignoring her this morning and showing her that I’m not going to back down must have worked.
I spin round to face Mitch.
‘So why did you come over?’
‘Feather, love, be polite. Mitch is our neighbour. He’s doing up Cuckoo Cottage.’
‘I know.’
People from London and other posh places have been buying up the cottages on The Green as holiday houses. It’s pushed lots of the locals out of their homes and businesses. It’s why Mr Ding had to sell his restaurant space and get a takeaway van. Sometimes, I have dreams about how no one lives on The Green any more except for us, that it’s like a ghost town or a place after there’s been some kind of natural disaster and everyone’s moved out. Our cottage is too small for rich people to be interested in. And anyway, Dad wouldn’t sell, not in a million years.
‘I thought it couldn’t hurt to pop by and see how your mother was doing,’ Mitch says.
‘Mitch was telling me about the meeting you went to.’
She’s going to kill me.
‘Mum, I’m sorry,’ I blurt out. ‘I didn’t mean to. Not without asking you first. I thought I’d just go and check it out—’
Mum holds out her hand and I come over and kneel next to her chair on the kitchen tiles.
‘It’s okay, my darling, I know you meant well.’ Mum turns to Mitch Banks. ‘The group sounds interesting.’
I feel my eyebrows shoot up. ‘It does?’
I still can’t quite believe that Mum’s going along with all this. All Mum’s been talking about since she got back from hospital is that she wants things to go back to normal. And what she means by normal is before New Year’s Eve, when she would spend her days eating and watching TV.
Sometimes I have the same wish: I love how easy things used to be, how we’d spend hours laughing and talking, snuggled up watching TV and eating Chunky Monkey ice cream straight from the tub, as if the rest of the world didn’t exist.
Only I’m determined that Mum won’t slip back into the habits that made her sick.
‘So you don’t mind, Mum?’
‘No, I don’t mind.’
Mum threads her fingers through my wet hair. She’s told me that when I was born my hair was blonde, not brown, and that when she held me in her arms for the first time, stroking my downy hair, she thought: Light as a feather with hair like washed-out sunshine.
Mum leans over and kisses the top of my head.
Mitch Banks clears his throat. ‘When you walked in, I was inviting your mother to join the group.’ He beams.
‘Seriously?’ I jump up and skip around the table. ‘Really, Mum?’
Mum nods again.
‘We can go together. Steph could drive you—’
‘Let’s not bother Steph,’ Mum says.
The only other option is Dad’s van, except Mum wouldn’t fit on the front bench. I get this picture of Mum sitting in the back, surrounded by sinks and toilet bowls and pipes and screws, the van leaning to one side, one of its tyres hissing because it’s collapsed from carrying so much weight.
‘Or you could walk,’ I suggest. ‘We could take it really slow.’
It took hours for the swelling in Mum’s ankles to go down after the walk from the car to the lounge on the day she came home from hospital. Her feet had bulged out of her slippers, her tracksuits was drenched in sweat. But that just proved that she had to do it more, didn’t it?
‘We’ll see, my darling.’
‘Did you eat my bran muffins, Mum? Nurse Heidi said you have to eat regularly. Healthy things. Low GI. Slow-burning.’
Mum licks her lips, in the way she does when she’s just had a packet of crisps. I really hope Dad hasn’t been feeding her again.
‘I did. They tasted like upholstery.’ Mum laughs.
‘Hey!’
‘I’m just saying it like it is, love. And anyway, Houdini enjoyed the leftovers.’
Mum feeds Houdini things through the lounge window. ‘He didn’t look too impressed either.’ Mum turns to Mitch. ‘Is there anything I can eat that tastes like proper food?’
‘There sure is,’ says Mitch. ‘I’ll drop in some recipes.’
My heart’s going to explode I’m so happy at how positive Mum’s being.
Mitch