Lemonade Sky (4 page)

“It’s just… you know! In case she isn’t.”

“This is it,” said Tizz. “Got to be prepared.”

Life was
so
much easier when Tizz decided to cooperate.

“We’ve absolutely got to watch what we’re spending,” I said, as we wheeled our trolley into Tesco. It did make me feel a bit important, being in charge of the shopping. I told Tizz that she was to add things up as we went round.

“Make sure we don’t overspend.”

Tizz said, “OK.”

“We’ve got £9.75. So when we get up to £9 you’ve got to let me know.”

“OK,” said Tizz.

We set off down the first aisle, heading for the bread counter. We’d been to Tesco loads of times with Mum, which was just as well cos otherwise it would have been really confusing. I picked up two large loaves and put them in the trolley.

“That’s two at 55p,” I said.

“Got it,” said Tizz.

Sammy’s hand was already reaching out towards the cakes. She likes the little squishy ones covered in green and pink goo. Mum sometimes lets her have one as a treat.

“
Rubeee!
” She tugged at my arm. “Cakies!”

“Not now,” I said.

“Mum would let me!”

“Mum’s not here,” said Tizz.

“And anyway,” I said, “they’re not good for you.”

Sammy’s face crumpled. A woman walking past smiled, sympathetically.

“They are nice, though,” she said, “aren’t they?”

Well!
That
wasn’t a very helpful remark. I hastily hauled Sammy off towards the milk and eggs. I reached out for two cartons of milk and stared in outrage.

“
£1.18?”
Just for a carton of milk?

“That’s £3.36,” said Tizz.

“Just for
milk
?”

Tizz shrugged.

“That’ll only leave us…” I did some frantic finger work.

“£6.39,” said Tizz.

I was beginning to understand how it was that Mum kept running out of money and having to buy things on tick and borrow stuff from Her Upstairs. Rather grimly, I marched on down the aisle.

“
Marge.
”

Sammy opened her mouth and let out a wail. “Don’t like marge!”

“Nobody does,” said Tizz. “We’ve all just got to put up with it.”

I was so thankful that Tizz was being supportive at last. It was like the reality of the situation had suddenly hit her. Mum had disappeared and we were on our own. And if we didn’t want to be split up, we had to learn how to take care of ourselves. It wasn’t any use splurging on pink cakes and chocolate biscuits, then being forced to throw ourselves on the mercy of Her Upstairs cos we’d run out of money and there wasn’t any food left.

“Let’s get some eggs,” I said.

I hadn’t the least idea how much eggs cost. I thought maybe you might be able to get six for about 60p. I mean, 10p an egg seemed reasonable. They are only tiny. My mouth fell open when I saw that even the tiniest ones were £1.38 a carton.

“What’ll we do?” I whispered. “We’ve got to have eggs!”

“We’ll just get six,” said Tizz. “If we have any money left we can always come back and get more.”

I nodded, gratefully. It was such a relief to have someone else share the burden. “How much have we spent now?”

Tizz cast her eye over the contents of the trolley. I could almost see her brain whirring into action. “£5.53.”

I do honestly think she is some kind of mathematical genius. She can do all these things in her head! “How much does that leave us?”

“£4.22.”

I gulped. We hadn’t even finished buying everything on list number one! We still had cheese and cereal to get.

We found some cheese triangles, which met with Sammy’s approval, and a cheap bumper packet of Cornflakes, which didn’t. She wanted Coco Pops or Sugar Puffs and couldn’t understand why she couldn’t have them.

“Thing is,” said Tizz, “she’s never going to eat Cornflakes without sugar.”

I was tempted to say, “You mean, you’re not,” but that would have been unfair when Tizz was behaving so nicely.

I said, “I know what we’ll do! We’ll get some jam. That’ll do instead of sugar, and then we can use it on bread as well.”

Tizz looked doubtful, but she didn’t argue. I had never known her so meek. It was actually a bit unsettling cos I knew it meant that she was worried.

We found some strawberry jam, and put it in the trolley. I was starting to feel important again. We were doing well!

“What’s that leave us?”

“£2.44,” said Tizz.

“Hm!” Perhaps, I thought, we should look at the second list and decide what was priority and what wasn’t. We stood in a huddle by a freezer cabinet. “So what do you reckon?” I said.

We all had different ideas. I guess it was inevitable. Tizz wanted pizza, I said meatballs, Sammy shouted out “Fishy Fingers!” at the top of her voice. “Fishy Fingers and choc’lit bikkies!”

“That’s two things,” said Tizz. “Just choose one.”

But Sammy couldn’t cope with that. She put a finger in her mouth and scowled.

“Let’s go and check prices,” I said.

Pizza was ruled out straightaway. We simply didn’t have enough money left. We went for two tins of meatballs in the end, cos they were cheap. Like
really
cheap. I was impressed by how cheap! You could practically live on meatballs. We got a packet of fish fingers, cos it seemed only fair Sammy should have something she wanted, and that left us with exactly £1.

“What about orange squash?” said Tizz. “We ought to have something to drink.”

I mumbled, “Water,” but Tizz had found a whole big bottle of squash for only 99p so it was really hard to say no, especially as I’d got my meatballs and Sammy had her fish fingers and Tizz, so far, didn’t have anything. She was behaving
so
well!

“Can we?” she said, waving the bottle at me.

I said, “Yes, all right. Let’s go and pay.”

Standing in front of us at the checkout was a family. A mum and a dad and two children. One of the children was perched in the seat at the back of the trolley. The other, a little boy about Sammy’s age, was clutching a packet of sweets he’d grabbed from a display stand. His mum said, “What are you doing with that? Put it back!” She tried to take it off him, but he gave this naughty grin and clutched it even tighter. He obviously knew his mum was a soft touch. She not only let him have the sweets but even told him to pick something up for his sister. His dad said, “That boy twists you right round his little finger,” but you could tell he wasn’t really bothered. I thought that those two children were well spoilt. I couldn’t help wishing we had a dad that came shopping with us and let us pick up bags of sweets.

Sammy, of course, had seen it all going on and was reaching out
her
hand to grab something.

“Sammy, don’t!” I said.

“I want one,” said Sammy. “I want a bag of sweeties!”

“Stop it!” I tapped her on the back of her hand and she immediately let out a howl. Both the mum and the dad turned to look at me. I felt like some kind of criminal.

“I want sweeties!” wailed Sammy.

Urgently, I told Tizz to take her outside. Sammy was dragged off, still wailing. The mum and dad watched her go.

“Doing the shopping all by yourself?” said the mum.

I nodded. I could see her eyes flickering over the contents of our trolley.

“That’s a big responsibility,” she said.

I drew myself up. “I know how to shop.”

“I guess your mum gave you a list?”

I wanted to tell her that I had written my own list, but that might have made her suspicious, so I just said, “Yes,” as brightly as I could. “It’s my little sister,” I added. “She wants things that aren’t on there.”

The mum laughed. “Tell me about it!”

Fortunately at that point she had to concentrate on packing her bags. I started to take the stuff out of our trolley. Two loaves, two cartons of milk, one pot of marge, half a dozen eggs, two tins of meatballs, cheese triangles, strawberry jam, Cornflakes, fish fingers, and a bottle of squash. It seemed like a lot, but how long would it last? I just hoped Tizz had added it all up correctly, cos how embarrassing would it be if I didn’t have enough money? I would die of shame!

But the bill came to
exactly
what Tizz had said it would. I might have known I could rely on her. I don’t know where she gets her mathematical brain from. Certainly not from Mum! Mum is as useless at doing sums as I am. We both have to rely on fingers.

I think we were all hoping that Mum would be there, waiting for us, when we got back. I’d even imagined how it would be. I’d pictured her running up the basement steps crying, “Darlings, there you are! I’ve been so worried about you! Where have you been?” I even said to Tizz, as we toiled up the road with our heavy bags, that we should have left a note, just in case.

Eagerly, Tizz said, “Why? D’you think she’ll have come back?”

I said, “She might have done.”

Tizz immediately broke into a run. Sammy cried, “Mum!” and tried to follow but went and tripped over and banged her head, so that by the time I’d put down my bags and kissed her better and picked up the bags and carried on, Tizz was out of sight. I knew as soon as we caught up with her that Mum hadn’t come home. Tizz was slumped against the railings at the bottom of the steps.

“Where is she?” said Sammy. “Where’s Mum?”

“She’s not back yet,” I said.

Sammy turned and started pummelling me. “You said she would be! She would be!”

Gently, I corrected her. “I said she
might
be. Let’s go in and eat something! We’ve got all this lovely stuff. Let’s decide what we’re going to have.”

“Choc’lit biscuits!” shouted Sammy.

I guess you can’t really expect a five-year-old to be logical. I mean, she
knew
we didn’t have any chocolate biscuits. She was just trying it on. Trying to punish me, like I was the one to blame for Mum not being there.

Tizz had gone racing ahead of us into the flat. I caught the tail end of her whizzing into Mum’s bedroom. I supposed it
was
just possible Mum had come home and gone straight to bed. Sometimes, when she’s been on a high, she can suddenly fall back into a depression, and when she’s depressed she can sleep through anything. A herd of elephants wouldn’t wake her up.

Tizz came trailing back into the sitting room. “She’s not here.”

“No! Well.” I did my best to make it sound like it was no big deal. “She’s only just gone away. It was ten days last time. Could be ten days this time. That’s why we’ve gone and got all this stuff! Keep us going. So when Mum
does
get back she won’t feel guilty.”

Last time, she’d felt guilty for months afterwards. We’d gone to visit her in the hospital and she’d rocked to and fro on her chair saying, “How could I leave you? How could I do it to you? I’m a terrible mother! I don’t deserve to have children!”

I’d kept begging her to stop blaming herself. I’d told her, over and over, that it wasn’t her fault. “You can’t help being ill!”

Just cos it’s not the sort of illness you can see, like when people have flu or something, doesn’t mean it’s not real.

“Let’s go and get something to eat,” I said. “We’ve got to eat properly! For Mum’s sake. Let’s d—” I broke off, as Tizz suddenly launched herself across the room. “What are you doing?”

“I want to hear Mum’s message again!”

Tizz pressed the button on the phone and Mum’s voice filled the room. Light, and bright, almost dizzy with excitement.

“Darlings, darlings! Love you, darlings!”

I couldn’t bear to listen. It simply wasn’t Mum. That is, it
was
Mum, but it was Mum teetering on the edge. I felt like any minute she was going to lose her balance and go plunging into a big black hole.

Determinedly, I went through to the kitchen and began unpacking the bags. I prepared what I thought was a really good meal. I mean, considering.

I opened a tin of meatballs, put out a loaf of bread with the marge and the jam, plus three glasses of orange squash. Absolutely
nothing
to complain about. But they were both of them just totally ungrateful.

“Is this all we get?” said Tizz.

“For the moment,” I said.