One More Little Problem (12 page)

It’s empty.

In a flash I’m up the path and hammering on Heather’s front door without even thinking about the contact between my hand and the wood.

‘CARO,’ I call through the letterbox. ‘LET ME IN!’

There’s no sound.

‘Oh, gawd,’ I say. I’ve left Dad all traumatised in the garden too.

I go round the back of Heather’s house and peer in all the windows and rattle the back door but everything is locked.

I’m thinking that maybe I should call the police so I run home and grab my mobile but in the end I do a weird thing.

I call Fran.

And within ten minutes of my garbled
phone call she comes skidding down the road on her mountain bike with her plaits flying out behind her.

‘What is it?’ she pants. I’d only had breath to sob ‘Emergency!’ into the phone.

I explain about Dad and Caro and Caro’s dodgy past.

Fran turns white.

‘We have to break in,’ she says, ignoring my squeak of protest. ‘Heather would understand. This is a matter of life and death.’

I’d forgotten how good Fran was in a crisis.

A moment later she’s broken the kitchen window at the back with a brick wrapped in a handkerchief and she’s feeling around for the catch and we’re both climbing through the window and falling into the sink in a tangle of arms and legs.

‘Eughhh,’ I say. There’s cold water in the sink and I’ve landed right in it.

‘Zelah, never mind the water,’ snaps Fran. ‘Let’s find your friend.’

‘She’s not my friend,’ I start to say. Then I stop.

I’m worried about Caro, more worried than I’ve ever been about anyone.

So maybe she
is
my friend. Sort of. Although she treats me like crap.

Fran has bolted up the stairs ahead of me.

‘FOUND HER!’ she calls down.

I hear her pick up Heather’s phone and dial a number.

‘Ambulance, please,’ she says in her calm, grown-up voice.

My heart thumps as I race upstairs.

Caro’s lying across Heather’s bed.

The duvet is usually a pristine white but today it seems to have bright red poppies all over it.

At least that’s what I think.

Then I realise what’s happening.

The whole world goes black and fuzzy.

Everyone disappears.

W
hen I wake up I’m back home again and lying on Mum’s side of the bed upstairs and there’s a woman in a green outfit shining a torch into my eyes.

‘She’s fine,’ says the woman. ‘Probably just the shock.’

‘No, it was the blood,’ says Fran’s voice. She’s sitting on the opposite side of the bed.

‘I’m not good with blood,’ I say. My mouth is all dry and tastes rank.

‘She’s not good with blood,’ says Fran. ‘She’s got OCD.’

OK, OK. No need to labour the point.

‘Where’s Caro?’ I say, sitting up in a panic.

I see her as she was a few moments ago, lying pale and limp across the duvet with her wrists leaking blood and a sheen of grey sweat on her pretty-evil face.

‘She’s gone to hospital,’ says the woman in green.

‘She’ll be OK,’ says Dad, who’s standing at the foot of the bed. ‘I’m so sorry I got angry with her. I’d forgotten what you told me about her family history. Not that I’m making excuses for what I did.’

I reach out and do something I couldn’t do with Sol the other day.

I hold Dad’s hand. Because I haven’t done much hand-holding since I was twelve, it feels really weird. I can feel the wrinkles over his knuckles and the hairs on his fingers and the rough texture of his palms.

‘Wow,’ says Dad. ‘You do realise you’re
actually holding my hand, Princess?’

He wipes away a tear.

Fran gives me a big smile, a real one.

‘I’m glad you’re OK and that Caro is safe in hospital,’ she says.

Then before I can find the words to reply she’s off downstairs and away down the street on her bike.

‘Something I’ve got to do,’ she calls on the way out.

Dad and I look at one another. Dad is all covered in mud, earth, grass and plants and he looks broken, like an older version of the same man.

‘Sorry I let you down,’ he says, but it’s enough.

I give him my own version of the smile Fran just gave me.

He is my dad, after all.

T
he day after Caro’s admission to hospital the house feels really quiet and strange and calm.

Dad and I tiptoe around one another being apologetic and helpful and trying to smile.

To my utter amazement I begin to miss having Caro around. I miss her horrid music and her vile way of verbally attacking me. I miss the way she puts her boots up on the table and rolls her fags. I even miss her bad moods and her door-slamming, chair-tipping tantrums.

‘I must be going mental,’ I say to myself.
‘On top of my little problem. Oh great.’

It’s now three days after she left and I’m combing my hair so hard it’s nearly falling out.

Dad’s outside trying to fix all the damage Caro did. He’s raided Heather’s emergency cash box and ordered a man to come and put new glass in the greenhouse and he’s planted a load more seeds which he says should be up in time for late autumn as long as no more plant-destroying maniacs go at them with a spade.

I do thirty more brushes on the right hand side of my head, thirty on the left and thirty on the back.

I tie my hair back into a neat ponytail and take a long skirt from the wardrobe.

Then I have to move all the other items hanging nearby so that the gaps in between each item measure an exact four centimetres. I cave in and use a ruler for the second time this week.

I hunt about for flip-flops and go downstairs.

Fifty jumps on the top step today and fifty on the bottom and then for some reason I have to do fifty in the kitchen before I can allow myself to eat breakfast.

I sit at the table all on my own with a bowl of Rice Krispies and I listen to the little grains of rice as they pop and crackle and I think:

Other than Fran, Rice Krispies might be my only friends in the world.

That’s one heck of a sad thought.

I’ve got nearly three weeks of summer holiday left. My father is still unemployed and depressed, my ex-best friend is being much nicer to me but we’ve still got a long way to go, the love of my life has reappeared and then faded out of my life again and my Antichrist friend, Caro, is in Somerset, where I’d like to be too if only I didn’t have Dad to look after
and about a million bits of homework.

I feel sad and tired and deflated.

‘I can’t see an end to this,’ I say out loud just as Dad comes in through the open kitchen door.

‘End to what?’ says Dad in a high posh fashion-editor sort of a voice.

The smell of Chanel perfume floods the kitchen.

I’m up out of my chair before you can say ‘Slovenia’.

Heather’s beaming from ear to ear.

‘Surprised?’ she says.

‘Yes, very!’ I say.

Dad is still down the bottom of the garden.

He’s going to be even more surprised. And bowled over by pathetic old-person love, I expect.

‘Why have you come back so early?’ I say.

Heather’s tipping out bottles of perfume and packets of chocolate from duty-free bags all over the kitchen table.

‘Oh, you know,’ she says. ‘Too much champagne wrecks the complexion, kiddo. Remember that.’

Heather’s a terrible liar.

‘You know something, don’t you?’

Heather stops squirting herself from bottles and tries to put on an innocent expression but it doesn’t work.

‘OK,’ she says. ‘Your friend Fran rang me up. She’s a good kid, you know. She was really worried about your OCD.’

I let these words sink in. Fran. Fran was worried about me. Just like the old Fran before all the doubts got in the way.

I realise something at that moment.

I realise that just because you fall out with
your best friend and you feel like killing each other, it doesn’t mean that some small seed of that friendship won’t somehow survive and start to grow all over again.

I smile a real smile for the first time in ages.

I’m going to give Marky’s telephone number to Fran as a thank you.

‘She told me,’ says Heather in a more stern tone of voice, ‘that your dad stopped going to his new job. Is this true?’

I shift about in my chair and look out at Dad.

‘Erm, yes, sort of, a bit,’ I say.

Heather is aghast.

‘You poor, poor child!’ she says. ‘You’re far too young to be worrying about all this stuff! Honestly, Zelah, I feel awful!’

I tell Heather about Caro’s moment of vegetable-rage and she gasps and looks
shocked and covers her mouth and then tries not to laugh.

‘Oh Zelah,’ she says. ‘What a summer holiday you’ve had! Or not had, to be more precise.’

‘There’s more,’ I say.

I relate the tragic tale of how I met up with Sol outside Topshop.

Heather’s eyes grow as big as beetroots as I move on to the bit about not being able to hold his hand.

‘I should have been here for you,’ she says. ‘I could have given you some moral support or got you a fabulous deal on a designer dress.’

Then she presents me with a weird stuffed Slovenian teddy bear and marches off down the garden towards Dad with a purposeful glint in her eye.

It’s the final week of my holidays and at last
it feels like I am doing what I’m supposed to be doing.

A Big Fat Nothing.

And guess what?

I’ve just logged on all reluctant and sad and I’ve got an email from Sol!

This is what it says:

Dear Zelah, hope you’re OK. It was fun seeing you again the other day even though I could see it was a bit stressful for you. Sorry about that. But maybe we could meet up in town again some day? Love, Sol. P.S. You looked kind of hot.

Now I’m in a dilemma. I don’t know whether he means ‘hot’ as in sexy or ‘hot’ as in I was all flushed and bothered because I wasn’t expecting him to turn up or try to hold my hand.

Hmm. But at least the email doesn’t tell me to get lost.

Things are better at home too.

Heather’s taken control of Dad. He’s got another interview lined up and this time she’s determined that he will get the job and stay in it. For a Very Long Time.

So I haven’t got too much to worry about.

Even my rituals have got a bit better now. I’ve cut down my jumps again to fifteen and I’ve reduced the number of times I scrub my face and hands to twenty.

So, I’m lying up in my bedroom staring at the ceiling with nothing much to do and the sun’s out and Dad and Heather are chatting away downstairs and I’ve caught up on all my homework and the phone rings and I’m nearest so I pick it up.

‘Hi,’ says Caro’s voice. It sounds wary and older.

‘Hi,’ I say after a short pause. ‘How are you?’

‘Back at Forest Hill,’ says Caro. ‘The Doc drove over and got me from the hospital.’

I swallow hard. I hope Caro’s not going to lay into me again. Just when everything was calming down and getting better.

‘Don’t start,’ I say. ‘I’m not sure I could stand it. I’ve cut down my jumps.’

‘Chill, OCD,’ says the familiar voice. ‘You get yourself worked up, don’t you? I’m not ringing to have a go.’

That takes the wind out of my sails.

‘Oh,’ is all I can manage. For a moment I wonder if this is some imposter pretending to be Caro.

‘Yeah, I was ringing to say something else,’ says Caro. ‘Bear with me. This is not going to be easy, man.’

I brace myself for the insult or the revelation or the unwelcome news.

But it never comes.

‘Thanks, Zelah,’ is all that Caro says in a voice I’ve never heard before. ‘Thanks for
putting up with me. And say thanks to your dad, and that.’

There’s a gentle click.

She’s gone.

Wow. Caro said something kind! It’s a miracle!

I look at myself in the mirror. I see a happy sunburned girl with frizzy black hair and red cheeks.

Maybe the summer just got a whole lot better.

I’m galloping downstairs after doing only ten jumps on the top step and I’ve just reached the bottom one and am about to do the same and then burst into the kitchen except that Heather and Dad are speaking about something in very low voices and obviously don’t want me to hear, so I stand very still and try to eavesdrop, but I can’t really hear anything although I
swear
at one point I might have heard the word
‘wedding’ but that can’t be right.

Heather will never agree to marry Dad.

Probably just as well.

I mean – all that worry, and organisation, and stress and planning!

Heather’s way too busy with work to organise a wedding. And Dad would be useless at anything involving fashion and women and crying.

So – I wonder who’d have to deal with all
that?

No! They wouldn’t – they
couldn’t
. . . not after my dreadful summer.

I shake my head and dismiss the thought.

I do ten very quiet jumps on the bottom stair.

Then I go to join my family.

Thanks to Leah Thaxton and the team at Egmont for their enthusiasm on all things Zelah-related. As ever Peter Buckman has remained the eternal optimist and been wonderfully candid and encouraging, so special thanks to him and all at The Ampersand Agency. And writing wouldn’t be possible without the love and support of David, Carol and Tim Curtis, Tim Cowin and my lovely friend Sue Fox.

Also by Vanessa Curtis:

ZeLaH