Longest Whale Song (3 page)

‘No, he's not. He's stupid. And lazy. And he goes out drinking with his mates and comes home late. And he watches daft telly. And he eats smelly curries, and
he
smells too. I don't know what my mum sees in him,' I say.

‘I'm not sure I do either. Though she obviously adores him. But he's definitely not
my
type,' says Liz.

‘Who
is
your type, Liz?'

She stretches. ‘Oh, someone tall and hunky and romantic and sophisticated and a little bit dangerous. James Bond will do for me. Only he's taking his time turning up in his fancy car and whisking me off to the Seychelles. Or Barbados. Or Mauritius. Or wherever he takes his lady friends on holiday. Definitely not camping in Wales.'

‘We went camping in Wales at half-term last year.'

‘Exactly,' says Liz, rolling her eyes. Then she shakes her head. ‘I shouldn't be talking like this. Jack's your stepdad. He loves your mum dearly. And he loves you too, Ella.'

‘No, he doesn't! He doesn't love me one bit. He just has to put up with me because I come as a package with Mum. He'd
much
sooner I didn't exist. And ditto me him.'

‘Well, he does exist, sweetheart, and I'm sure he's trying to be a good dad to you – and now he'll be a good dad to the baby too.'

Liz leans over and pats me on the shoulder. ‘Finished your hot chocolate? Come on, then, let's get you tucked up on the sofa again. And then, when you wake up in the morning, I'm sure the phone will be ringing and we'll find out all about the baby.'

I do exactly as I'm told – but when I wake up in the morning, the phone
isn't
ringing. I wonder if Liz is going to sleep half the morning the way she did before – but she gets up surprisingly early. She fixes us both breakfast and then we sit around, staring at the phone.

‘Mum must have had the baby by now,' I say.

‘Not necessarily. Sometimes it can take twenty-four hours. Even forty-eight,' says Liz, shuddering.

‘Oh!'

‘Maybe I shouldn't have told you that. Oh dear, I'm hopeless with little children.'

‘I'm not
little
,' I say, though I'm starting to feel
very
little now. I so want Mum to be all right and give me a big cuddle.

I struggle with Liz's very splashy shower. I forget to put the dolphin curtain inside the bath and everywhere gets very wet. I'm scared Liz will tell me off but she doesn't even seem to notice.

Then my hair won't go right. I'm trying to grow out my fringe. Mum has a way of fluffing it up with
a brush and getting it to look OK – but I don't know how to do the fluffing bit. My fringe hangs limply way past my eyebrows so I can hardly see.

I get dressed in my clean clothes and find my skirt's been crumpled up in a corner of my case and is all over creases. I wonder about asking Liz to iron it for me but decide it doesn't really matter.

Then we sit around again all morning. We watch a bit of television, and then Liz suggests I choose a DVD. She's got heaps of DVDs but they're mostly TV series like
Sex and the City
. I try one of these, but Liz jumps up and says maybe it's not suitable. We watch endless episodes of
Friends
instead. I wonder if my hair will ever go like Rachel's once the fringe has properly grown out. I usually like
Friends
, but now I can't seem to get into each story.

I ask Liz for some paper and I start drawing a picture of Mum and me. I draw me OK, but when I try to draw Mum pregnant, she looks all lopsided and silly. I scribble all over her quickly.

‘Oh, that's a shame! It was a lovely picture! You're very good at drawing, Ella. How about drawing me?'

I have a go. Liz doesn't look so keen this time.

‘Oh God, am I really that fat? You haven't drawn
me
pregnant, have you? That's it – it's time I took my diet seriously.'

She's bought us fish fingers for lunch. ‘I know children love fish fingers,' she says proudly.

I did use to like them when I was little, but I've gone off them now. We have proper Sunday dinners at home. Mum cooks a chicken, and we have crispy roast potatoes and green beans and broccoli, and I eat it all up, even the broccoli.

Liz gives me five fish fingers and some baked beans and oven chips. She fixes herself one fish finger and a green salad. I try to eat all my meal to be polite, but I'm not feeling very hungry. Liz ends up eating most of mine.

‘Maybe I'll try phoning Jack,' she says when she's washed the dishes.

His mobile's turned off.

‘Then perhaps I'll try phoning the hospital,' she says.

‘Yes, do. I tell you, Jack's probably forgotten to phone. He'll be off drinking the baby's health in the pub with all his mates,' I say.

‘Ella, you sound like a very bitter little old wife,' says Liz. ‘He
won't
have forgotten.'

She phones the hospital. It takes her ages and ages to get through to the ward – and then they won't tell her anything because she's not Mum's next of kin.

‘
I'm
her next of kin. I'll talk to them,' I say, but
they won't talk to me either, because I'm a child.

‘They've told me to phone your mum's husband, and I'm
trying
to, but he's not answering,' says Liz. ‘Oh, well. We'll just have to wait.'

So we wait and wait and wait some more. Liz keeps yawning and stretching and cracking her knuckles.

‘I usually go round the shops on Sundays. I wish we could go now – it would do us both good.'

‘What, shopping?'

‘Take our minds off things. But I'm not sure Jack's got my mobile number. Oh, I do so wish he'd just phone
now
.'

We stare at the cream phone on the small table in the corner of her living room. Liz picks up the receiver, just to check it's working. Then we wait some more.

Much later on we have tea: small sausages and spaghetti – toddler food. Then we watch television. Every time I go to the loo in Liz's shiny bathroom I sit with my head in my hands and have a little private sob because I'm starting to feel so scared.

It's getting almost to my bed time again. I'm sitting counting up to a thousand in my head, telling myself that if I can only get through each number in sequence without getting mixed up and making mistakes, then Mum will be all right. I get to three
hundred and something when the doorbell rings. Liz and I jump and stare at the phone, both of us muddled. No, it's definitely the doorbell.

Liz runs to the door. Jack's standing there. His hair is sticking up in a silly way. His face is white and sweaty and he smells of his horrible beer.

‘Jack! You were supposed to
phone
!' says Liz. She sniffs pointedly. ‘Have you been off drinking while we've been chewing our fingernails? How is she? Is the baby here?' Her voice is getting high-pitched.

‘I've had just one drink,' says Jack. He walks round Liz towards me. He's moving very carefully, as if he's on a tightrope.

‘Jack? Is the baby all right?' Liz asks.

‘The baby's fine,' says Jack. ‘A little boy, six and a half pounds.'

He reaches out and takes my hand. He's horribly hot and clammy. I can't say a word. I want to run away. I know there's something terribly wrong.

‘Ella, love . . .' Jack says. He sits down beside me on the sofa, so heavily that he nearly squashes me. He clears his throat. ‘Ella,' he says again, ‘I'm afraid your mum's not very well.'

The ceiling drops on me. The walls crush my sides. I can't speak. I can't even breathe.

‘Oh my God,' Liz says. ‘What happened? What went wrong? Oh, Jack, tell us!'

Jack swallows. He looks like he's making a big effort. He's looking at me. ‘Mum got very tired having the baby. She's gone to sleep now, a very deep sleep, and she maybe won't wake up for quite a while,' he says, and his voice suddenly wobbles. He's trying very hard to control his face, but it's wobbling too, his lips trembling, his chin crumpling, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down.

I hear
She's gone to sleep
, and tears start slipping down my face. I think I know what Jack means.

‘You mean she's
dead
?' Liz gasps.

‘No, no. She had this condition, eclampsia. I'd never even heard of it. Apparently it's very rare. Anyway, everything started going wrong, and then she lost consciousness – and now she's in a coma,' Jack whispers – though I hear every word.

‘Oh no, how terrible,' Liz says. She starts sobbing, sounding oddly like a little girl.

‘Stop it, Liz. Not in front of Ella,' says Jack. He tries to give me a reassuring nod. ‘The doctors say Mum might get better soon.'

Might
get better!

I open my mouth, licking my lips, trying hard to make my voice work. ‘I want to see her,' I say.

‘Yes, of course you do. I'll take you to see Mum tomorrow – and your new baby brother,' says Jack.

‘I want to see Mum
now
,' I say.

‘No, darling, it's much too late. They won't let you in the ward now,' says Liz.

But Jack is still looking at me. ‘All right, I'll take you now,' he says.

‘You can't, Jack, it's way past visiting time – and it'll upset her terribly.'

‘Of course it will. But she needs to see her mum right this minute,' says Jack. ‘Come on, Ella, I'll drive you there.'

‘Are you all right to drive?' Liz asks.

‘I've had one drink, that's all.'

‘No, I meant you're so upset yourself.'

‘I'll be very careful. Do you want to come too?'

Liz hesitates. ‘I'll wait here,' she says.

So I go in the car with Jack. I forget to put on my coat. It's not really cold in the car but I start shivering violently.

‘Hang on,' says Jack. He stops the car, gets out and goes to search in the boot. He brings back a tartan rug. We three sat on it a few months ago when we had a picnic in the park. Jack wraps it round me and then carries on driving.

We don't talk on the way to the hospital. I keep thinking about Mum sleeping. I'm still scared it
means she's dead. I've never seen a dead person but I imagine Mum chalk-white, with her eyes closed and her mouth gaping open.

We leave the car in the hospital car park. Jack helps me out, tying the rug round my shoulders.

‘You're sure you want to see Mum?' he asks.

I nod, though I'm not so sure now. Jack takes my hand and leads me into the hospital and down a maze of corridors. There are red routes and green routes and yellow routes. We keep going down unmarked corridors and losing the right-coloured route. It's as if we're stuck in the middle of some grisly children's game. Then, at long last, we come to the right ward. Jack pulls me in, though my legs have gone wobbly.

‘Excuse me, sir. It's way past visiting time. You can't come in here now,' says a nurse.

Jack pauses. He puts his hands on my shoulders. ‘This little girl must see her mother. She's very ill. She needs to see her just for a few seconds,' he says in his best teacher voice.

He doesn't wait to argue it out, he just steers me onwards, to the end of the ward, to a special room. I bite on my knuckles, terrified. I don't know what Mum's going to look like. I want
my
mum, not some weird nightmare half-dead mother.

I peep round the door and see her. There's a
nurse beside her checking some sort of machine. Mum's lying on her back, oddly flat now, with tubes coming in and out of her. But she's still Mum, eyes closed, her hair tousled on the pillow, her hands lying gently curled on the covers.

‘Mum – oh, Mum!' I say, running to her.

I kiss her soft pink cheek. ‘Mum, it's me, Ella. Oh, Mum, wake up, please wake up.'

Mum seems to catch her breath. The nurse looks round. But Mum's eyes don't open.

‘Mum!' I say, right in her ear.

It's like Sunday mornings before Jack, when I used to climb into Mum's bed and try to wake her up. She'd lie still, eyes closed, pretending. I'd have to tickle her under her chin to get her to open her eyes.

I try tickling her now, very, very gently, but her eyes stay shut. I smooth her hair off her forehead, combing it with my fingers, and then I take hold of her hand.

‘That's right, Ella. I'm sure Mum knows you're here,' says Jack. ‘Give her a goodnight kiss. I'll bring you back tomorrow.'

I kiss Mum again and then whisper in her ear. ‘Keep breathing, Mum. In and out, in and out. Promise you'll keep breathing.'

I DON'T GO
to school on Monday. Neither does Jack. We spend the whole day at the hospital. We sit in Mum's room on hard orange chairs, Jack on one side, me on the other. Jack talks to her a lot, whispering all sorts of mushy stuff. Sometimes he tries
telling her jokes. The nurse laughs a couple of times, but Mum doesn't give the flicker of a smile. Her eyes are still closed. Alady doctor comes and lifts up her eyelids and peers into her eyes with a little light. I hate this in case she's hurting her, but Mum doesn't seem to mind. She lies still, fast, fast asleep.