Freia Lockhart's Summer of Awful (17 page)

I know if I ask Dad, he'll say it's fine for me to go, but the thought of leaving him alone with Gran all day gives me a guilt attack. And the idea of spending the day with Gran fills me with dread. In the end, it's the thought of Gran moaning to Mum about me choosing a friend over my family's needs that makes my decision. I call Vicky from the phone in the hall.

“I was hoping it'd be you,” she says when she answers. “Are we on for tomorrow?”

“I'd really like to, but I can't. My gran's here and I have to take her to see Mum.”

“No, you don't,” says Gran, appearing out of nowhere, even though I double-checked that the living room door was closed before I dialled Vicky's number. “I'm perfectly capable of catching the bus to the hospital if your father can't drive me. You go and do whatever it is you've got planned. Enjoy yourself – you're only young once!” She walks to the kitchen, humming brightly.

“Your gran sounds nice,” says Vicky, who's obviously heard every word. “We'll pick you up at nine.” She hangs up before I can say anything else.

Gran comes back with her cup of tea and gives me a don't-mention-it smile.

I know I should be happy that I get to hang out with Vicky and the twins tomorrow, but I'm so resentful that the decision was taken out of my hands that I'm not looking forward to it at all. I lift the receiver to call Dan to vent about it but I don't want to risk Dr Phil answering, not after the scene he made last night. Besides, if she caught on that I was talking to Dan, Gran would probably snatch the phone from me and have a good old natter to him, too.

When I get back to the computer, my hot chocolate is cold and has a rubbery skin on it that makes me gag when I accidentally swallow a bit. I tip it down the sink and get ready for bed.

I wake from a dream in which I'm surrounded by a flock of giant squawking seagulls with monkeys on their backs. The monkeys are dressed in jockey silks, which would be cute if they weren't hissing at me through their razor-sharp teeth. I sit up but the noise doesn't stop. Then there's a crash, followed by a yowl. By the time I get upstairs Dad's on the landing, holding Boris, who's puffed up to twice his usual furriness and looking outraged. Before I can ask what's happened, Gran comes out of the bathroom with Rocky perched on her shoulder. When he spots Boris he starts squawking hysterically, just like the gulls in my dream. Boris jumps from Dad's arms and bolts downstairs.

“There, there, Rocko. The bad kitty's gone now,” says Gran, turning her head to kiss Rocky's beak.

“What's with all the noise?” asks Ziggy, emerging from his room. “It's a quarter past five.”

Dad gives Rocky the death stare. “Boris and that bird had a bit of an altercation over the kitty litter.”

“It's not Rocky's fault,” says Gran, indignantly. “When he heard the cat scratching around in the bathroom he wanted to investigate.”

Dad turns the death stare on Gran; he's becoming quite an expert at it. “I thought we agreed that Rocky was going to stay in your room. With the door closed.”

“The door
was
closed. Rocky opened it by jumping up and down on the handle. It's one of his tricks.”

Ziggy turns towards his room. “I'm going back to bed.”

“Good idea. Come on, clever boy.” Gran gives Rocky another kiss and nods goodnight to me and Dad, who's still glaring murderously at them both.

“You go to bed, too,” I tell Dad. “I'll take Boris into the study with me.”

“Thanks. I think he'd better stay down there until that vulture leaves.”

I find Boris sitting on the kitchen counter next to the breadbin. His fur has unpuffed but he still looks nervous. “Come on, old man,” I say, scooping him up onto my shoulder. For once he doesn't object.

By the time Boris and I settle a scuffle for territory on the sofa bed and I get comfy again, I'm wide awake, my mind churning. Why didn't Dan call last night? I'd stayed up waiting, reading
Charlotte's Web
until it got to the bit where Charlotte knows that she's going to die and I couldn't read any more. Then I lay awake for a while with the lights out, imagining other, better endings for the book. One where Charlotte lived for so long that she became a great-great-grandmother, and one where she met a charming, handsome spider whose kiss gave her eternal life and they had hundreds of thousands of spider babies together and lived in the barn with Wilbur (who was also somehow ageless) forever.

It seems stupid now, making up happily-ever-after endings – everyone knows that life doesn't work like that. Which brings me back to my original question: why didn't Dan call last night?

Vicky's mum drops us outside the zoo with the double stroller, a picnic lunch so large it takes two backpacks to hold it and the instruction to meet her at the same spot at one-thirty. The twins are in one of their I'm-two-and-I-can-walk-by-myself moods so we chuck the backpacks into the stroller. I offer to push so that Vicky has her hands free for the twins, but Tina insists that she has to hold my hand or she won't go anywhere. Vicky apologises eleventy times as she expertly steers the stroller with one hand and Billy with the other, but I don't mind. It's nice to feel wanted.

After we get our tickets, I'm as keen as Tina to head straight to the nearest exhibit, but Vicky insists that we stop and get a map and plan our route, including regular toilet stops, which she says are inevitable since the twins have started potty-training and think that using public loos is one of life's great adventures. Tina and I cheer when Vicky finally says, “We'll start at the meerkats.”

The meerkats are at their best, chasing each other and chirruping and sitting on their back legs with their bellies exposed to the morning sun. On top of the tallest rock the sentinel keeps watch, twitching its head from side to side vigilantly. Last time I was here was with Dan, about a month after we started going out. It was a cold, drizzly day in early spring, but we'd run out of places to go to get away from our families and the zoo had a free entry day in the school holidays. The rain set in about an hour after we got there and we spent most of the afternoon sheltering in a warm, secluded corner of the butterfly house, talking and … other stuff. Holding hands on the tram back to the city, I remember thinking that it had been one of the most perfect days of my life.

“You okay?” Vicky looks concerned.

“Sorry, I was just thinking.”

“About your mum?” She pulls Billy from the wall that he's about to leap off, into the meerkat pit, and we walk on, Tina's slightly sticky little hand still clutching tightly onto mine.

“Yeah, about Mum.” That's who I should've been thinking about. I bet if Mrs Soong was in hospital, Vicky wouldn't leave her bedside.

“How is she? She'll be home soon, right? I mean, everything I've read about breast cancer surgery says that most people only need a few days in hospital afterwards.”

Vicky's been reading up on breast cancer. Why hadn't I thought of that?

“Her surgeon says she should be home tomorrow.”

We pull up at the baboons and Tina lets go of my hand to join Billy in pointing and laughing at their colourful bottoms.

“Has she said anything about post-operative treatment yet?” asks Vicky.

“Ummm, no. I don't think so.”

“Well, do you know if she's going to need chemo? Or radiotherapy? Both?”

“Hey, check out that baboon making the other one pick fleas off her – it's like watching Belinda and Bethanee in monkey form.”

Vicky glances at the pair I'm pointing to but barely smiles. I know that once she gets a topic in her head she won't stop talking about it until she's satisfied that it's been thoroughly discussed (this is true of everything from which Ramones album is the best to the moon-landing conspiracy theory), so I'm kind of pleased when Billy yells, “Toilet time!” and we have to hotfoot it to the nearest loos.

When we start on our way again I keep up a steady stream of chatter with Tina to avoid Vicky asking any more questions that I should know the answers to, if I was paying attention. My ploy works until we sit down for lunch.

“You know, your mum has a really good chance of making a full recovery,” says Vicky, handing each twin a quarter of a sandwich before offering the other half to me. “In women her age, breast cancers tend to be slow growing. In fact, the five-year survival rate for women with tumours under twenty millimetres in size is over ninety per cent. Your mum's tumour was smaller than that, right?”

“I'm not sure.”

Vicky looks surprised. “Well, do you know if she has one of the breast cancer genes?”

My sandwich sticks in my throat when I swallow. I take a large swig of juice to try to push it down. “There's a gene for it?”

“Yeah, a couple. If you've got a family history of breast cancer, you might want to get tested yourself so you can … you know, make an informed decision about preventative surgery or whatever.”

I pick up the map that's lying on the picnic rug. “So, reptile house next?”

The twins are tired by the time we reach the Australian animal exhibit. Tina doesn't even want to get out of the stroller to help me spot the wombat.

“You have to be very lucky to see one,” I explain to the twins as I scan the enclosure. “They're nocturnal, which means they usually hide in their burrow during the day, but sometimes …”

“You know, I've never thought of it before,” says Vicky, “but you remind me of a wombat.”

Relieved to be talking about anything other than breast cancer, I joke, “Because I'm short and hairy?”

“No, because you retreat into your burrow when you're scared or you don't know how to deal with something.”

I know she couldn't possibly have meant to sound so harsh, but that doesn't make me feel any less insulted.

We get back to the entrance gates before Mrs Soong arrives, having spent the last half-hour in virtual silence. From the hopeful little smile Vicky gives me every time she catches my eye, I can't tell whether she understands why her remark has upset me so much, but I don't have the energy to explain myself to her. It hasn't helped that the butterfly house was the last stop on our tour, and all I could think about while Tina and Billy were trying to trap the poor creatures between their hands was being there with Dan, and how precious our time together felt back then.

At home, there's a note from Dad saying that he and Gran have gone to the hospital and will be back around seven, and that Dan called. It finishes with a
PS: Don't let Rocky out of his cage unless you want to clean the floor again
. As if on cue, Rocky lets out an almighty screech from the corner. I give him the death stare and go to use the phone in the hall.

“Do you think I'm a wombat?” I ask when Dan answers.

“Sorry, what? This is Freia, right?”

“Vicky said I'm a wombat. She reckons I go into my burrow and hide when things get tough.”