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W
hile I’m checking for train times I Google the word “depression” and I think Alice’s mum is right. It says that depression is:
a low mood, a miserable feeling that goes on and on. People can get overly emotional and tearful or snappy and irritable. Depression can be triggered by all sorts of things such as someone close to you dying, losing your job or your home or by any shocking or traumatic events such as an earthquake, plane crash or disaster. Depression can make people want to withdraw from the world and stop going about their normal daily activities. In severe cases people can feel their lives are pointless and some can even think about harming themselves.

And that’s it. I suddenly know what my niggle is. Alice’s mum is right, my dad has depression and I think he’s got it bad. I throw my things into my bag; listen carefully to Alice’s directions to the station and slip out of the front door without her mum seeing. I’m sorry if she’ll think me rude; I probably am, but I know she’ll just get in the way and slow things down if I tell her why I have to leave.

The air in the train is stuffy and hot and the urgency inside me is filling me up so much I think I might explode. And the train is taking so long. It stops for ages at every station and I wish it would just hurry up. The journey to Waterloo is supposed to take fifty-six minutes, but already it feels like I’ve been travelling for at least seven hours. Once I get to Waterloo station I have to get the underground train home. I haven’t been on the underground alone before but I’ve done so many new things in the past few weeks I don’t even feel scared. And anyway, Cali does it all the time, so if she can do it, then so can I.

Why didn’t I get it before? I mean, I knew there was something wrong with my dad’s behaviour, but I’ve been so busy being angry with him for ruining my life that I haven’t really thought about what’s going on for him. He
must feel terrible. No dad would disrupt their kid’s life and make them live in a horrible place unless they had to. I’m so selfish. No wonder I’m such a disappointment to everyone. And I should at least have ignored his wishes and called my granny, even if it would have made him cross. Maybe with depression you lose sense of what you should and shouldn’t be doing and my granny might have been able to put things right. I was silly to try and manage this alone, I should have asked for help. Twelve might be big, but not that big.

Alice sends me a text saying her mum’s really worried about me travelling alone and that I
must
call her as soon as I get home. She says she’s not going to call my dad because she doesn’t want to overload him with any more worry and stress. And maybe it would have been a good idea for me to have thought about his needs a little more before behaving irrationally and running off.

If she thinks she can control me by buying me a phone, then she’s got another think coming. I told Alice once already that I’d call her when I got home. Why can’t her busybody mum just trust me and leave me alone. I switch off my phone and throw it in my bag. I never even asked for a stupid phone anyway, especially not one the same as
Alice’s. I bet Thea Quaddy has one too.

Waterloo is busy. I hold on to my bag, push my way through the crowds and head for the escalator to the underground. It’s confusing. Everyone is rushing about looking like they know where they’re going. The man’s voice on the loudspeaker echoes round the huge airy station making me dizzy. He’s giving us all helpful information about trains and delays, but I can’t understand what he’s saying; his voice just disappears into the space and gets trapped on the ceiling. I wish I had someone’s hand to hold on to, or even just Cali here with me to show me how it all works. I consider calling her and getting her to come and meet me, but that would waste time and time isn’t something I have. I look on the map. All I have to do is get the Bakerloo line, which is the brown line, and then I’ll recognise where I am and be home pretty quick.

The underground platform is crowded. Everyone’s jostling, making sure they’re ready to jump on the train when it arrives so they’ve got more chance of getting a seat. A great whoosh of air travels up the line, and then I can see the lights of the train shining through the dark tunnel. I’m nearly there. My insides are jumping up and down and the air above me feels heavy and tight. It’s pressing down on
my head like a heavy hat of gloom. Thoughts are flying round my brain like bats at night. I know something is wrong, but I don’t know what it is. It’s just a feeling I have to follow. If my dad’s still OK I know he’ll probably shout at me. In fact he’ll be furious and mad that I’ve travelled home alone and been rude to Alice and her mum. But I don’t care, so long as he’s still alive he can do anything he likes, I won’t mind. But if my dad has hurt himself like Google said he might, then I’ll be the one to blame. I should have been paying better attention to his moods.

When I get back to our flats I don’t feel very welcome. It’s raining and grey and now I’m here I feel nervous. Maybe I’m being stupid, maybe there’s nothing wrong at all and I’m making mountains out of molehills with the whole depression thing. It’s quite likely, knowing me. My brain wants me to zoom up the stairs and into the flat fast but my feet are dragging behind. I don’t know what I’m going to find.

“Hello, young’un,” smiles Ivor, climbing into his old people’s buggy thing. “See you Saturday afternoon?”

I nod and make my way up the stairs. Everything looks normal – well it would, I’ve only been away for a few days – but something has changed. I can feel it sitting in the air
like a dark monster, waiting to get me.

I knock at the door and wait. There’s no answer and there’s no telly sounds blaring away in the background. I lift the letterbox and call for my dad but there’s no reply. My whole body is panicking, everything’s on red alert. I bash the door again and keep on bashing harder and harder, but he doesn’t come.

“Dad,” I scream, “Dad! It’s me, Liberty.” My voice is screeching from deep in my tummy. “Please answer. Please be there, I’ll never do anything wrong again, I promise. Just be there, please.”

I wait a few more seconds but he doesn’t come. The red alert starts flashing through my body, telling me to do something, making me run. I race upstairs to Cali’s house. She’ll know what to do, Cali always knows what to do in difficult situations, or if she doesn’t at least Hanna will. I bang on the door but there’s no answer there so I lift up the letterbox and shout into hall.

“Cali! Hanna!” I call. “Please answer, it’s me, Liberty.”

But no one answers, because there’s nobody home.

A thought flashes through my brain like lightening, turning me into the wind, making me race back down the stairs, past the shops, and behind the market to Tyre Right.
A large stone is swishing in my tummy, making me sick. I can’t believe I’ve let this happen. I’m so rubbish. I’ve failed again.

“Where’s Tyler?” I scream to a man who’s sweeping the garage floor.

‘Calm down, missy, calm down,” says the man, and then Tyler appears from behind a mountain of tyres.

“What’s up, Liberty?” he says.

“Tyler!” I screech, running up to him. “I need your help, I think my dad’s killed himself and I can’t get into our flat!”

T
yler face turns white. He drops everything, takes my hand and we start to run.

“He’ll be OK,” he puffs, getting out of breath, “I promise.”

“But you can’t promise that,” I cry, “when you don’t know.”

When we get to our front door I knock again and there’s still no reply.

“What shall we do?” I cry, clinging on to Tyler’s arm.

“Well,” he says, “we can call emergency services and wait ages for them to come, or I can break in right now and be done with it. These flats are easy enough to get into.
If it was
my
mum I was worried about, I know what I’d do.”

“Break in,” I say, “break in, Tyler, please, just get me in there, quick.”

Tyler pulls something out of his wallet and fiddles with the lock. Then the door flies open and I start to rush in.

“Stay back,” says Tyler, pushing me behind him. “I’ll go in first. I don’t want you to see nuffing that wouldn’t be nice.”

Then before Tyler even gets to the sitting room my dad and Hanna arrive home, chatting and laughing together.

“Liberty!” he says. “What on earth are you doing here?”

“Dad!” I cry.

And then my dad notices that our front door is open and Tyler’s inside.

“Hands up, young man. I recognise you. Thought you’d case up the joint did you, then take advantage of us being out?” my dad shouts, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “Step aside and put your hands up in the air.”

“Dad,” I shout, “Dad, no, leave him…”

“Stand back, Liberty,” says my dad, “this boy’s not safe, he might even have a knife. Stay close to Hanna.”

“Tyler Brown,” sighs Hanna, “I might have guessed
you’d sink to this kind of behaviour.”

“I’ve not done nuffing,” Tyler pleads. “Believe me, tell ’em Liberty, I was only helping out.”

“Helping yourself, more like,” my dad blunders, dialling 999. “About time you got out and got yourself a job rather than thieving from innocent people’s homes. Are you on drugs, young man?”

I snatch the phone from my dad’s hand and stop the call.

“No,” I scream, “listen to him, Dad. That’s the problem round here, nobody listens. Tyler hasn’t done anything and he’s not on drugs; it was me. Alice’s mum thinks you’ve got depression and I looked on the internet and it said that people with depression can sometimes hurt themselves. So I got the train home because I thought you had. And then when I knocked at the door and you didn’t answer I thought you were dead!”

I’m trembling, my body’s turned to jelly and big sobs that have been sitting in my heart climb up to my eyes and flow over. I can’t stop myself.

“Of course I’m not dead,” says my dad, moving my wet hair out of my eyes, “I’m
never
going to kill myself and leave you, Liberty, however bad things get and I need you
to trust me on that. Alice’s mum was right, I have been depressed but that’s normal when people have a sudden shock like losing a business and their entire fortune. It takes time to get used all the new things and to find your feet again. But I’m working my way through it all, I promise and I have no plans to leave you on your own. Hanna and I just went out for coffee to discuss the new plans for the Community Action Scheme.”

And then Alice and her mum fly up the stairs looking like they’ve been running through ghosts at a hundred miles an hour.

“There you are,” puffs Alice’s mum, pulling me into a fussy hug. “We jumped in the car straight away, I was so worried about you. And you,” she says, looking at Dad.

“Too much excitement for one day,” says Hanna. “Why don’t we all go up to mine and have a nice cup of tea?”

It’s strange having Alice, Tyler and Cali, who’s just got back, in the same room together. Tyler is looking awkward, like he doesn’t really belong; he’s too big for this room, too tall and out of place. Alice is looking down her nose at everything like she might get germs on her shoes and Cali’s looking lost and confused, even though she’s in her own
house. I feel like a tube of superglue, trying to hold everyone together.

“I’m sorry, Tyler, for getting all dramatic and overexcited,” I say. “I hope I didn’t mess things up at work for you again.”

“Nah, you’re all right, Liberty,” he smiles. “I’m glad you feel you can count on me, not many folk do.”

“Well,” pipes up my dad, carrying in a tray of hot tea, “we can soon remedy that, Mr Tyler Brown. It’s people like you we need to get this Community Action Scheme of Hanna’s off the ground. You’re young, you’re strong and you’ve very obviously got guts and the young folk might listen to you. Can you use a computer?”

And it’s like someone has switched a light on in Tyler’s brain, like he’s seen daylight for the first time in his life. He gets busy talking to my dad and Hanna about street crime and kids and drugs and things that would help improve everyone’s lives. My dad and Hanna are all smiles with each other and smiling definitely wasn’t something on the Google list for depression.

Alice’s mum is sipping her hot tea as fast as she can. She’s being polite but really I think she’d like to get back in her car with Alice, scrub them both off with baby wipes
and get them both safely back to their perfect home.

“Well, I’m glad you’re both safe and well, Henry,” she smiles, “and I do apologise for letting Liberty escape the roost and travel alone.”

“I’m learning a lot about Liberty myself,” my dad winks, “and I’m coming to the conclusion that’s she’s just like her mother: wilful and wild. There’s no stopping her you know.”

And I know that it’s time for me to apologise to Alice’s mum for being so rude and causing her worry and time for me to give Alice a hug goodbye.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t around for you when you needed me,” says Cali, when everyone’s gone and it’s just her and me, together in her room. “I was up with Joyce practicing
Bugsy.
”

“It’s OK, Cali,” I say. “I was so scared he’d killed himself and it would all have been my fault. I rushed up to you first because you’re good at sorting things out. You have a knack for it.”

“That’s what friends are for,” she says. “Like Tyler says, Libs, you can count on your friends. Talking of which,” she laughs, “d’you fancy going through my lines with me?”

“It’s easy giving up the violin. I’m putting my head down at school, getting on with my school work and not even thinking about the violin one tiny bit. After all, it’s only a violin, it’s not the end of the world or anything.

It’s the beginning of December and I’ve had almost one whole month without getting into trouble at home
or
at school, which is a big relief for me, for my dad
and
for Mrs Cobb.

“I’m glad to see you’re settling in at last, Liberty Parfitt,” she says, passing me in the playground.

When Cali, Dylan and everyone else are busy rehearsing
Bugsy Malone
I take myself off to the library to
work alone. I’ve decided to become a paediatrician when I grow up (that’s the long word for children’s doctor) which means I need to work really hard at science. Dr Johnson, our science teacher, thinks I can make it and although science is not my best subject, I’m starting to understand it more and more. I’ll have to do A levels after my GCSEs and then go on to medical school after that to train. I know it’s a long way off
and
it will be a lot of hard work, but my dad seems much, much happier with me now I’ve made myself a plan.

My dad seems happier with himself too. He still bursts into tears sometimes and sometimes he still sneaks into my room at night and talks to Lissy in the dark and falls asleep on the end of my bed. It’s a bit spooky. He’s either talking to a ghost or talking to me but getting my name quite wrong. But he’s not watching so much telly any more or drooping about the place. He’s washing and shaving every day again and wearing proper clothes. He spends lots of time with Hanna and Alice’s dad’s laptops trying to do fundraising for the Community Action Scheme. They’re trying to get the Council to give them an office to use and enough funding so that my dad and Hanna can get paid to work full time. They have all sorts of ideas to help the
old people and single parents and sick people and they’re trying to set up places for teenagers to go at night, to have fun, instead of hanging out on the streets. Tyler’s getting really involved with this and is even thinking of training to be a youth worker when he finishes school.

“Your old man’s all right, Liberty,” he says. “I could have made something of myself if I’d had a dad like yours.”

I haven’t heard from Alice since the day I thought my dad had killed himself and I feel a bit guilty about not calling her, especially when it was her that mum bought me the phone. But then she hasn’t called me either. So I’m not sure what to do. I mean, she was my best friend for years, but now we’re just so different. I’d quite like to ask my dad’s advice, but that’s never going to be possible because we still don’t talk. Well, I mean, obviously we do talk about things like what we’re having for dinner and what you have to do to become a paediatrician, but we don’t talk about important things like how we’re feeling. We’ve never even mentioned the night I ran away and got trapped by the gang, or about me getting panicked about my dad killing himself and running off from Alice. After we’d finished having cups of tea with Hanna that day we just came back to our flat and carried on like nothing
serious had happened. And I never ask him about how he’s feeling or about his late-night crying visits to my room when he sleeps on my bed. I don’t like it, but he’s not really doing any harm and if we talked about it I wouldn’t even know what to say. In our flat those topics of conversation have a big “Don’t go there” sticker stuck right on top of them. I think my dad is the type of person who likes to brush his problems and worries under the carpet and pretend they don’t exist. Or maybe he really has washed his hands of me and just doesn’t care any more.

Cali and I still help the old people on Saturdays. We still read the paper to Joyce and have tea and cake but I always make an excuse to leave when they get the big fat book of musicals out. My dad has made his feelings loud and clear about me getting involved in that kind of thing and if I want a peaceful life then I just have to listen and do as he says. Maybe, when I actually get to become a paediatrician, he’ll send me a little parcel of love that will land like glitter on my smile, just like he does with Sebastian. That is a day I’m wishing for, a day where I can make my dad proud.

It’s annoying because every time we have a class music lesson Mrs O always says, “Remember, Liberty, that violin
part in
Bugsy
is yours if you can find yourself an instrument. There’s no one else to do it, so if you don’t turn up, we’ll just have to use the CD player instead.”

I wish she wouldn’t keep saying it. I wish I’d never asked her in the first place. She just needs to shut up about it and let me get on with more important things. Then, when she tells us she’s going to start up a choir so we can tour the country and try and win competitions for our school, she causes even more trouble between Cali and me.

“Come on,” says Cali, “let’s join! At last The Grave is doing something exciting. It’ll be brilliant!” Then she wiggles her bum and says, “Hollywood’s not gonna know what’s hit it when I arrive on the scene! And remember,” she taunts, “champagne, parties, limousines!”

And of course a little part of me would love to join the choir, but I don’t want to upset my dad again. I need to stick to my plan.

“No,” I say, “I don’t care about limousines, Cali, and I don’t care about the choir. I’m going to do something important with my life. I’m going to be a paediatrician, remember, and I don’t think you have to be good at singing to do that. Unless you’re the kind of paediatrician that sings to the children on her hospital ward.”

“Oh, come on,’ she says, “it’s just for fun, Libs. You don’t do anything fun any more. It’s just work, work, work, with you and it’s boring! If you’re not going to join the choir you should at least get involved with
Bugsy
in
some
way, I don’t know, backstage or ticket selling or something.”

“Well you were the one who thought this school was stupid and that no one ever wanted to work hard and learn anything and now I’ve given up messing around and I’m trying, you’re still not happy. You can’t have it both ways, Cali,” I snap.

“Of course you can,” she says, “it must possible to work hard
and
have fun.”

And now I’m confused.

“Well, you don’t have to live with my dad,” I sigh. “He hates me doing that sort of stuff and you know it. Just go to choir yourself, Cali and leave me out of it. OK?”

“Yeah, I might just do that,” she persists. “But don’t you think it’s weird that your dad won’t let you? I mean it’s not like it’s harming anyone is it? I mean no one’s gonna die if you join a choir? It’s ridiculous and what’s worse is that you’re doing what he says and you haven’t
even asked him why. You don’t even know what’s at the bottom of all this. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Yes, well,” I gruff, “there’s a lot of stuff in this world that doesn’t make sense, Cali, and we just have to get used to it. If your life was anything like mine then you might understand.”