The Yoghurt Plot (3 page)

‘Oh, don't disheeve me  … '

It's Granddad's quavery voice, singing up the stairs.

‘
.
. .
oh, never leave me
 … '

I sit bolt upright. I grope for the alarm clock. Eight forty-five.

Eight forty-five?

School started five minutes ago.

What?

I throw on my school uniform and charge out of the door, running into Dilan's bedroom and kicking him. ‘Get up!' I shout, and slide down the stairs, arriving breathless at the bottom.

Granddad's at the foot of the stairs, his dressing gown all tangled and inside out. It doesn't seem to bother him; he's serenading the Christmas edition of the
Radio Times
. ‘Granddad,' I say, pulling the dressing gown gently from his shoulders and shaking all the crumbs out.

‘Y' movver's not 'ere,' he mumbles to Father Christmas. ‘Can't find me front teef.' I help him back on with the dressing gown. He starts singing again. ‘
How could you use a poor maiden so?
'
It takes an age to get his arms into the holes and I watch the hall clock creep around to five past nine.

‘Havvn't had bekfass,' he says eventually, as an avalanche of old tissues cascades from his pocket.

I hold my breath, pick them up with my extreme fingertips and carry them to the bin in the kitchen.

The fridge hums. I look across at it. It's developed a plastic
O
.

ACTO
.

Otherwise everything's quiet, even deserted. Last night's plates sit on the side, they haven't even made it into the dishwasher. The table's scattered with crumbs, the teapot's cold.

‘See,' whistles Granddad through his gums. ‘No-un – ad look at a 'ime.' He points to the clock. It's nearly quarter past. ‘Ugry – cud ave a yoghurt?'

‘No!' I say, leaping to block the fridge door. I do not like the idea of Granddad wandering around in the early 1970s – especially not in that dressing gown. ‘Stay here, we'll have something else for breakfast. I'll find your teeth.'

Granddad sleeps in what is probably supposed to be a study. It's a boiling-hot room built onto the side of the living room, heaped with more things to make it hot, like electric blankets and pink eiderdowns that came from his old house and smell of mice.

Stumbling over the huge collection of slippers with chunks cut out of them to accommodate his bunions, I finally find a light switch.

I've not been in here much since Granddad moved in. He's been nesting. His old piano, formerly just covered in dust, has an array of tarnished silver trophies and a pair of ancient cracked-leather dancing shoes placed on the top. He obviously doesn't like cupboards, because his clothes are arranged on hangers dangling from the picture rail. There're a few ancient cardigans, but mostly black suits, smart ones, thin ones, some with bow ties looped over the hanger.

By his bed, his chest of drawers is equally cluttered. I brush aside the photo frames until I find a glass.

Inside the glass, suspended in something that might or might not be water, are his front teeth.

‘Here you are, Granddad,' I say – waving the glass at him. He takes it and peers closely at the pink and white teeth floating inside. I realise that he doesn't have his glasses on.

‘Blesh you, Bugg,' he says, holding them up in the air and letting them drip on the carpet before cramming them into his mouth.

I wade back into his room and fumble around on the chest of drawers. His glasses are there, draped over the corner of one of the photos. I pick it up and look. It's a man and woman dancing. He's wearing a black suit, a white shirt, a bow tie. She's got a peachy-pink dress with a huge feathery skirt, and although the photo's faded and cracked, I can make out chandeliers and pale green flocked wallpaper. At the bottom it says:
To Arnold – hoping to make this victory the first of many, Doreen
. Arnold is Granddad's name. I examine the photo – I suppose the face is Granddad's, but you'd hardly know that the shambling thing in the kitchen and the man in the photo were remotely related.

Back in the kitchen, I hand Granddad his glasses, reach into the cupboard for a bowl and the cornflakes, and that's when I spot the yoghurt pots on the side.

Two of them, empty. Spoons sticking out of the top, and not the ones that we ate yesterday. Two more yoghurt pots.

Dilan and I sit with Granddad while we all eat bowls of cereal. I'm in the room, but my mind's elsewhere.

Gone. They've gone, and worse than that, they've left us with Granddad. I glance over at the yoghurt pots. They look different from the ones that Dilan and I tried yesterday. More cone-shaped. I wonder if they've gone back to 1974 – or even further. Perhaps they're meeting Dave Dando. And then an awful thought jumps into my mind. Perhaps Dad's meeting himself – as a baby.

I don't know what happens if you meet yourself. In all the books I've ever read it's meant instant death, or sparks, or one of you has to disappear.

I imagine Dad leaning over the side of a pram and both he and the baby melting into each other.

He might end up as some hideous hybrid. Half man, half baby.

He wouldn't stand a chance.

I look back at Granddad. He's managed to fleck globs of gloopy food down his pyjama top. If Mum or Dad were here, they'd whisk it off him and bung it in the washing machine, but I don't feel able to do that, so I pass him a tissue and point at the slobber and hope for the best.

When we finally leave for school, the bus doesn't come for ages. We wait at the bus stop and neither of us says the thing that's hanging over us. Neither of us mentions the awful possibility that our parents might be lost in time. Instead Dilan listens to his iPod and fiddles with his phone.

‘Weird,' he says. ‘I've got loads of random texts. They must have come through yesterday – I just didn't notice.'

‘Who from?' I say, hoping it could be Mum and Dad.

‘Me,' he says. ‘They're from me. I'm telling myself what's going to be for lunch – what?'

I scrape lichen from the glass, worried.

By the time we arrive it's nearly break time and we have to explain ourselves.

The school secretary, Miss Golightly, is behind her desk, picking peanut brittle out of her teeth. She thinks we don't know that she eats all the time, but we do, and it's fairly obviously peanut brittle because the wrappers overflow from the bin beside the door  …  and because she's absolutely enormous.

‘Bugg, Dilan – what happened to you? I was just going to ring home.' She's a got a deep warm hot-chocolate voice. It makes her difficult to resist.

‘Mum and Dad—' starts Dilan, but I cut him off. I know what he's going to say, but he shouldn't – not yet.

‘The alarm didn't go off, sorry, and then there was a bit of trouble with Granddad,' I say.

‘Oh – dear Arnold.' Her face creases into a look of genuine sorrow. ‘How is he – any better?'

I think about Granddad dancing with the
Radio Times
. ‘Much the same thanks, Miss Golightly.'

She heaves a sigh. ‘Such a shame, such a shame – and to think what could have been if things had been different.' She sighs again and flaps her hands at us. ‘Off to break – and then into class.'

‘Why did you cut me off?' asks Dilan as we go down the corridor.

‘Because we mustn't tell anyone that Mum and Dad have disappeared. They'll send the social services, and take us away, and then we'll never be able to get Mum and Dad back.'

Dilan looks at me. ‘Do you really think  …  ?'

‘I do,' I say.

Dilan sighs, gloomily. ‘I reckon you're wrong,' he says, scratching his head. ‘Anyway – you never know, they might be back already.'

I sit in maths calculating the age that Mum and Dad would be now, if they got stuck in 1974 and by some miracle Dad didn't meet himself. I think that Dad would be eighty-six and Mum would be seventy-five. Where would they live? How would they live? Would they even know that they'd travelled in time or would they think everyone had suddenly got rid of all the cars and knocked down the housing estate?

‘Bugg – in this equation – what is the
n
th term?'

I stare blankly at the board and feel sick. I'm losing touch with reality.

English is agony. We're doing
Macbeth
. I start to worry about Mum and Dad going back to Shakespeare's time. Or even the Stone Age. They'd never survive. Mum has to have a cup of tea with fresh milk every day, and Dad can't move before he's read the newspaper, and they'd never understand what anyone was saying to them. All those grunts.

In geography we all set out into the town with clipboards. For the first time I notice just how dismal the seafront is. It's all battered plywood and skanky posters, broken palm trees with piles of windblown sand clustered around their roots. It's as if Henderson's car showroom is so big and so shiny it's sucked all the life out of everything around it. The pier itself is a set of posts stuck with seaweed near the shore, and the faintest frame of rusted metal further out at sea. I can still make out the bottoms of the flag poles, but otherwise it's just Henderson's overflow car park full of gleaming cars.

At the end of the day I go to drama club. Miss Swanson asks us all to trust each other. We take it in turns to blunder around with our eyes closed, trusting and crashing into radiators. My partner is an irritatingly bouncy girl called Lorna, who's only recently moved into my class and whose mum runs the shop. The same shop we saw in 1974. She was at another school, but I reckon they moved her because she's so irritating. She just does stuff – like saying things when people shouldn't, and asking teachers things that would be better left alone. Last week she told the dinner ladies that the dinners were disgusting and that they shouldn't overcook everything. She's right, everything is overcooked, but you shouldn't say anything about it. It's just the way it is. The
worst thing is that I think she likes me: she keeps appearing at my elbow, even though I never hear her coming and it makes me jump.

I'm supposed to be nice to her, because Mum says we need to be nice to her. This is not really a sufficient reason, but I try not to guide her into the wall.

But I'm not really concentrating on the drama class. I'm worrying about Granddad getting peckish, helping himself to a yoghurt and going back to the Second World War, when Shabbiton was covered in barbed wire and anti-aircraft guns.

It would finish him off.

Lorna leads me into the radiator for the third time. ‘Ow!' I say, as I bang my knee.

‘Whoops – sorree,' she says. ‘Wasn't thinking.'

I don't think she's actually deliberately stupid, but it doesn't make me want to be her partner.

‘Blindfolds off!' calls Miss Swanson.

I rub my eyes and glance up at the clock. Four o'clock. That means Mum should be picking me up any minute.

‘Now, everyone, before the end of the session, can we try the ultimate trust game?' Miss Swanson claps her hands. ‘Lorna, stand on this chair, would you?'

Lorna springs over and climbs onto the chair, swinging her arms, all keen and  …  ugh.

‘Now, everyone else, we have to make Lorna feel safe enough to throw herself forward into our arms. So gather round and let's put our arms out, to make a springy bed for her.'

We move together. There are only eight of us, but I suppose Lorna doesn't weigh much. ‘Ready?' Miss Swanson gazes up at Lorna.

‘You mean I just throw myself forward on your arms?' says Lorna.

Miss Swanson grins and nods. ‘Yes – you'll be perfectly safe.'

‘OK,' says Lorna, bending her knees, ready for a dive, before launching herself right over our arms and onto the gym floor.

Lorna's nosebleed doesn't stop for ages.

‘I'm s'posed to be cubbing home wiv you,' she says through the bloody tissue.

‘Really?' I say.

‘Yes, my mum spoke to your mum.'

‘Oh –' I say.

But my mum doesn't come. Dilan's already gone home, presumably on the bus, and I didn't bring enough money for the bus fare home, certainly not enough for me and blood-stained Lorna.

At five, Miss Golightly takes pity on us and says, ‘I know I shouldn't, but I'll run you back, dears.'

So we cram into her miniature car, really designed for two ordinary-sized people, not one peanut brittle addict and two medium children, and she drives us scarily fast through the streets before juddering to a breathless halt at the back of a traffic queue. We wait for an enormous removal van to back into the drive of a massive house.

Miss Golightly sighs, tapping her fingers on the dashboard. ‘The Hendersons, moving house again. Apparently that house has got its own cinema.'

‘And a swimming pool,' says Lorna.

I watch two removal men struggle up the steps with a green and gold chandelier modelled on the monuments of Europe. One of the Eiffel Towers jams in the doorway, and the little nodule on the top pings off.

‘The problem with that lot,' says Miss Golightly, ‘is that they've no taste and too much money,' She slaps her hand over her mouth. ‘Shh – I never said that. Most unprofessional.'

‘But you're right,' says Lorna. ‘No manners either. Mum told Eddie Henderson he wasn't welcome in the shop because he was so rude.'

‘Really?' says Mrs Golightly. ‘I always thought Mrs Henderson was rather nice.'

I try to picture what they even look like. All fairly enormous, as I remember. Like their houses and cars.

‘Oh, I think she's OK. It's Eddie really. He's won the lottery twice, you know. Mum says the chances of that are something like 28 million to one.'

‘Well, good luck to them,' says Miss Golightly, slamming her foot down on the accelerator and sending us flat against the seat back.

As we whizz past Dando's Surf Shack I peer in past the baseball caps and skates to see if I can see Dave Dando – but if the overweight middle-aged man behind the counter is Dave, I'd have been hard pushed to identify him as the boy on the bike.

‘There,' says Miss Golightly, screeching to a halt outside our house. ‘Is your Granddad in?' she asks.

‘He's always in,' I say, before I realise that I don't want Miss Golightly to come inside and see last night's dinner scattered across the kitchen. ‘But he might be asleep.'

‘Jolly good,' she says, unsticking herself from the driver's seat and swinging past me towards the front door.

‘Can I come?' asks Lorna, still holding most of a loo roll against her nose.

‘Um,' I say, but she's already in the house.

I rush through to find Miss Golightly holding Granddad's hand. He's sitting on the sofa, gazing at the telly – I'm not sure he's even noticed her. She looks as if she might cry, but I'm afraid I don't care, I'm just grateful to find him there and not back in the Bronze Age.

‘Who's that?' asks Lorna.

I don't answer, just pull the door shut so that Miss Golightly and Granddad can have a little time together.

‘Why are you called Bugg?' asks Lorna, sliding into the kitchen.

‘It's short for Jitterbug,' I say, looking at the chaos that was once our kitchen. Granddad must have made his own lunch. It seems to have been tuna and instant custard.

‘Litterbug?' says Lorna beside me, agape. Then, ‘Whoa  …  what a mess!'

‘No, Jitterbug,' I say. ‘It's a dance. Haven't you got to get home?'

‘Not really,' she says. ‘Mum's in the shop, I could hang around. What about Dilan?'

‘It's a dance too, a folk dance. And actually, you can't hang around. You see it's  … ' I fumble around desperately for an excuse. ‘It's Dad's deadly snake society night. We can't have anyone else here, it might upset them.'

Lorna blinks excitedly. ‘Really? I love deadly snakes.'

‘And they bring their scorpions,' I say.

Lorna's eyes light up.

‘And crabs – they quite often have giant crabs.'

‘Fantastic. Cool,' she says.

‘But you have to leave – they won't like it if you stay. Some of the snake fanciers have really bad tempers.'

‘O–K,' she says, suspiciously easily. ‘I'll go.'