Gone Missing. Jean Ure

      Sunday morning, when she came back from Gathering, Mum called me into the kitchen. I thought she was going to warn me not to make a fuss, just eat what everyone else was eating in order to keep Dad happy. Mum would do almost anything to keep Dad happy. I was all prepared to put up a fight when she kind of took the wind out of my sails by saying, “Your father and I have been talking. He is still waiting for you to repent, but there is obviously no point in forcing you. It has to come from the heart. In the meantime you must make your peace with the Lord as best you may. I just pray he forgives you.”

      I said, “Forgives me for what?”

      “Rejecting his bounty. It is not up to us to reject what the Lord has seen fit to provide.”

      Whew! Mum doesn’t usually talk like this; she is usually quite normal. I guessed they’d been discussing me at Gathering. It was probably Dad who’d written the script for her.

      I said, “Does that mean you’re not going to nag me to eat dead stuff any more?”

      Mum suddenly switched back to being Mum. “Not as long as you promise to eat everything else. I don’t want you getting anorexic.”

      I assured her that I would glut on vegetable matter as much as she liked. I have no objections to potatoes and cauliflower. I said this to Mum. “Vegetables aren’t pumped full of antibiotics–plus they don’t have their throats cut.”

      Kirsty, who was laying the table, at once said, “No, they just get pulled up by the roots! How’d you like to be pulled up by the roots? Vegetables have feelings too, you know.”

      “Girls, please don’t start,” said Mum. “We don’t need any smart mouth. Just remember, your dad’s been working hard all week, he deserves a bit of peace and quiet on his day of rest.”

      Dad may have agreed there wasn’t any point in forcing me, but he obviously wasn’t pleased about it. He was in a foul mood from the word go. You could always tell when Dad was in a mood. He’d be ominously quiet, and his cheeks would turn a purply pink and his lips purse into this thin line. I guess what it was, he resented me being allowed to get away with something. Cos that’s how he would have seen it. He’d have gone to Gathering all stiff and self-righteous, thinking everyone would be on his side and say how he’d got to tie me to a table leg and force-feed me, or lock me in my room and starve me into submission. He’d have liked to do that. He’d have felt he was carrying out God’s mission. As it was, he sat and simmered all through lunch, seething as he watched me eat my vegetables. When he finally blew, it was like Vesuvius erupting. And over something utterly trivial.