Neighbours (5 page)

No one in Dickie's family noticed he was missing at first. Mr and Mrs Dent didn't like their children very much, and the less they saw of them the more they liked it. Once, Tracylene had been in prison for a month for shoplifting, and her parents hadn't even noticed she'd gone.

When Mrs Dent stuck Dickie's burger, chips and beans down on the table for his tea and realised she'd just put it on top of another plate of burger, chips and beans, she wondered why her son hadn't eaten his tea the night before. She shouted upstairs for him but by the time she realised he hadn't answered, her favourite programme was on the TV, so she didn't bother. The opening music was playing and it drew
her like a magnet towards the screen.
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There were five plates of burger, chips and beans piled on top of each other before she thought that maybe Dickie was not at home.

‘I wonder where he's got to?' she said as she sat down to watch TV again.

‘Who?' said Mr Dent. ‘Tracylene, get me another beer.' The beer fridge was in the hall, to be nearer to Mr Dent's TV chair, but even then, it was too much of an effort for him to fetch his own drinks.

‘Get it yourself,' Tracylene shouted from her bedroom. She loved her dad in the same way people love walking in dog poo. ‘I'm off out, Mum.'

‘Don't do anything I wouldn't do,' Mrs Dent told her.

‘You wish.'

Tracylene was wearing her favourite outfit, although the endless diet of burgers, chips and beans made it harder to fit into than she remembered.

‘Must have shrunk in the wash,' she said to herself as she checked her reflection in the mirror. ‘Still looking good, though.'

This was a strange definition of ‘looking good'. Large amounts of Tracylene bulged out above and below her bright pink mini-skirt and a
large amount of her chest simply refused to stay where it was meant to. The fact that her spindly high-heeled shoes didn't collapse under her weight was proof that Chinese engineers were very clever people.

‘Rubbish underwear,' she muttered, topping up her layers of eye-shadow and lipstick.

‘Rubbish knickers! Rubbish knickers!' squawked Adolf the budgie, the Dent's other pet. Adolf lived in Tracylene's bedroom and she had taught him to talk. Whenever Tracylene posed in front of her mirror, which she did dozens of times a day, Adolf would whistle at her and say, ‘More lipstick, baby!' and ‘Nice legs!' When he was alone, though, Adolf used to look in his mirror and say to his reflection, ‘It's a rotten job, but someone's got to do it.'

Tracylene tottered out of the front door and went off to meet her friends Shareelene and Torylene and a group of spotty boys who worshipped them.

After a few more days had gone by and the pile of cold burger, chips and beans had grown to eight plates high, Mrs Dent had an idea. Tomorrow she
would put the ninth plate next to the old pile instead of on top of it, just in case the pile fell over. That was the most complicated thought she'd had that month.

‘He hasn't been at school all week,' she said the next night when Mr Dent got back from explaining to the dole office how his bad back had actually got a lot worse. ‘Do you think we should call the police?'

‘Who? Why?' asked Mr Dent. ‘Tracylene, get me another beer.'

‘Get it yourself,' said Tracylene, who loved her dad in the same way people love being sick. ‘I'm off out, Mum.'

‘Don't do anything I wouldn't do,' said Mrs Dent.

‘You wish.'

Tracylene tried to imagine something her mum wouldn't do, but she couldn't.

Mrs Dent rang the police.

At first the police didn't want to go to the Dents' house.

‘That family's been nothing but trouble since they moved here,' Sergeant LeDouche said after he'd got off the phone. ‘The mum's been done for dangerous driving. The dad's been done for drunk and disorderly. The daughter's been done for shoplifting and the boy's always in trouble. They're bad news.'

‘Maybe if we keep quiet,' his assistant suggested, ‘they'll all vanish one by one.'

‘We can only hope so,' said the sergeant.

But Mrs Dent kept phoning every few days for the next month until the police could ignore her no longer. By the time they went around to number 11 Acacia
Avenue, the kitchen table had forty-three plates of cold burger, chips and beans piled up on it. Mrs Dent had got it into her head that if she stopped putting Dickie's dinner out every day, she might never see him again.

‘Okay, Mrs Dent, when did your little boy disappear?' LeDouche asked her.

‘Um, one, two, three, four …' Mrs Dent tried to count the plates of cold food but got stuck when she reached seven. The sergeant could count to fifteen, which he did three times and then took two away.

‘I haven't put today's dinner out yet,' said Mrs Dent. ‘So that's another day.'

‘Reumm, yurghhmm oh,' said the sergeant with a mouthful of cold burger.

They took away the cold dinners for forensic examination, as well as all the beers in the fridge – just in case there were fingerprints on them.

‘Don't you want to see Dickie's room?' said Mrs Dent.

‘Disgusting, untidy, smelly, red sports car posters, dirty clothes, wet towels, unmade bed, naughty
magazines, broken toys, is it?' said LeDouche.

‘Yes, don't you want to check it for DNA?'

‘Mrs Dent, we don't really do that. You've been watching too much TV.'

‘Don't be stupid,' said Mrs Dent. ‘How can anyone watch
too
much telly?'

‘Whatever,' said the sergeant and left.

He thought about getting a missing persons poster made for Dickie, but he was such an ugly boy he decided not to because it would frighten people.

In the meantime, the Floods were enjoying their new fridge. Betty thought she might've got into trouble for what she'd done, but everyone was delighted.

‘It's much better than our old fridge,' said Nerlin. ‘Top of the range, excellent.'

‘One less Dent in the world too,' said Valla. ‘Nice one, little sister. High five.'

‘No, no, Valla – remember what happened last time?' Mordonna warned him.

‘What?' said Valla.

‘Your hand fell off, and it took me ages to sew it back on again.'

‘Isn't that supposed to happen when you do a high five?' Valla asked.

‘No, not usually.'

Even Vlad the cat loved the new fridge. As he walked past it, he could see his reflection in the doors and pretend it was another cat stalking him. Also, there was a special chilled fish tank inside full of Siamese fighting fish, his favourite meal, kept at exactly the right temperature to make them really angry and fight each other as they slid down his throat.

It really was a magic fridge, with something just right for every single one of the Floods.

‘I can't believe how good this chocolate intestine roll tastes,' said Merlinmary.

‘And these ballerina's toes are out of this world,' Winchflat added.

‘I never knew simple serial killer's blood could taste so good,' said Valla.

‘Well done, sweetheart,' Nerlin said to Betty. ‘We're all very proud of you.'

‘It's the best sort of recycling,' said Winchflat. ‘Take something broken and useless and turn it into something really useful. And I'm so glad you gave
him that special finish so we never have to polish him. Stainless steel can be really hard to keep looking nice.'

Dickie said nothing. He was a fridge, and fridges, even the most advanced ones, don't speak.
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He just hummed softly in his expensive I'm-so-happy sort of way.

And because Dickie was a magic fridge, no matter how much of the wonderful food everyone ate, there was always more.