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I said this to Tizz.
“But it’s just babble,” said Tizz. “It doesn’t make any sense!”
“That’s cos she’s confused.” It was what had happened before. Mum had become so hyper that her brain had run out of control. She’d told us, later, that she couldn’t remember anything about where she’d been or what she’d done.
“I was just buzzing with all this energy, you know? Like my head was full of bees.”
“At least this time,” I said, “we know she’s thinking about us.”
Tizz said, “Huh!”
She didn’t say it in her usual scoffing Tizz-like fashion. I had this feeling she was desperately trying not to show that she was every bit as scared as Sammy. I was scared, too, and I was desperately trying not to show it. With Tizz it was a matter of pride. Nothing frightens Tizz! With me it was more like one of us had to stay on top of things, and as I was the oldest, I didn’t really have much choice.
“We should have known,” said Tizz.
She meant we should have known that Mum was in danger of going over the edge. She’d been wound up, tight as a coiled spring, for days. She’s OK if she takes her meds, but sometimes she forgets. Or sometimes she doesn’t take them cos she reckons she can do without. It’s up to us to keep an eye on her. She’s our mum, we’re supposed to look after her.
I said, “Omigod!”
I raced through to the bathroom and flung open the door of the bathroom cabinet. There, on the shelf, were Mum’s pills. My heart went into overdrive, thumping and banging in my chest.
“What is it?” Tizz and Sammy had followed me in. Tizz peered over my shoulder.
“Mum’s pills.” I held up the bottle. “She’s gone off without them!”
“Gimme!” Tizz wrenched the bottle away and wrestled with the top. I watched her with growing impatience.
“Here!” I snatched it back. “Let me.” It was supposed to be child proof, but I knew how to open it. Tizz was too impatient. I got the top off and stared in dismay. The bottle was full! I held it out to show Tizz. Her little pinched face turned pale beneath its freckles. We both knew that Mum had got a new prescription from the doctor over a month ago.
“She hasn’t been taking them,” I whispered.
There was a long silence, broken only by a plaintive wail from Sammy, “I want my breakfast! I’m hungry!”
“Oh, will you just SHUT UP!” screeched Tizz. “Don’t be so selfish all the time!”
Sammy’s face crumpled. Tears welled into her eyes. I screwed the cap back on Mum’s pills and shut the bottle away again in the cabinet. Then I sat on the edge of the bath and pulled Sammy into my arms.
“Don’t cry,” I said. “It’ll be OK. I’ll take care of us!”
“It’s all very well saying that,” said Tizz. “We don’t even know if—”
“Stop it!” I begged. “Please!” I took a breath, trying to make myself be calm. “Mum will come back. She came back last time, she’ll come back this time. But one thing we’ve not got to do, and that’s fight!” I wiped Sammy’s eyes with the edge of my T-shirt. “We’ll be all right,” I said, “so long as we look out for each other.”
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“What’s important,” I said, “is keeping things normal.”
“Normal?” Tizz gave me this look, like, are you out of your mind? “How can things be normal, without Mum?”
“Normal as possible,” I said. “For Sammy.”
I’d sent her off to watch telly while I rooted about in the kitchen to see what I could find for breakfast. There had to be something! But there wasn’t.
“I don’t believe this,” I said.
Tizz said, “What?” in this rather grumpy tone.
“There’s nothing in the fridge!”
Grudgingly, she came over to look.
“What’s that?” She pointed to a carton of milk. I picked it up and shook it.
“It’s empty, practically. And there’s only a tiny bit of butter, and the bread’s almost gone.”
Tizz marched across to a cupboard and yanked it open.
“Cereal.” She banged the packet down on the table. “Marmalade.”
But the cereal packet was only a quarter full, and the marmalade jar, like the fridge, was almost empty. When Mum stopped taking her meds, she didn’t always notice that the cupboards were getting bare. Just like she didn’t sleep much, she didn’t eat much, either. If she’d been at home she’d have sent us up the road to the corner shop.
Me and Tizz stood, looking at each other. I knew that we were both thinking the same thing: how were we going to feed ourselves?
Tizz ran her fingers through her hair, sticking it up on end.
“D’you think she’s left any money?”
“Dunno.” I picked up the cereal packet and shook it, helplessly. “Let’s at least give Sammy something to eat.”
Well! We ran into trouble straight away. Sammy didn’t want cereal, she wanted a boiled egg.
“Bald egg and fingers!”
When I said we didn’t have any eggs and she should just eat what she was given, she complained because there wasn’t any juice.
“Mum gives me juice!”
We didn’t have any juice. I found a tiny dribble of squash, which I made up for her, but she spat it out, saying it was watery.
“Just think yourself lucky you’ve got anything at all,” scolded Tizz. “We haven’t got anything.”
Only tea bags, and we both hate tea. ’Specially without milk. We had to keep the milk to go with the cereal. There was just enough for Tizz and Sammy, but then we couldn’t find any sugar, so that got Sammy going again.
“I can’t eat Krispies without sugar!”
Tizz said, “Oh, for goodness’ sake!” She picked up the marmalade jar, spooned out a dollop and dumped it on top of Sammy’s bowl.
“There! Stir that in.”
“It’s marm’lade,” whined Sammy. “I don’t like marm’lade!”
“Just get on with it,” snarled Tizz.
Sniffling, Sammy did so.
There were five slices of bread in the bin, but they were all hard, so I had to toast them.
“You have two,” said Tizz, “cos you didn’t have any cereal.”
And now there wasn’t any marmalade left, which meant I had to eat toast and marge, which is horrible, but there was only a scraping of butter and I let Sammy have that cos she won’t eat marge at any price.
“Call this normal?” said Tizz, pulling a face.
“We’ll go up the road,” I said. “After breakfast. We’ll buy stuff.”
“What with?”
“Money!” chortled Sammy. I guess she thought it was a joke.
“Yeah, right,” said Tizz. “Money.”
I jumped up. “Let’s look first and check what’s in the cupboard.” There might just be enough to keep us going.
I pulled out everything I could find and stacked it up on the table. There wasn’t very much. A tin of baked beans, a tin of spaghetti, two tins of tomato soup, a tin of sausages and a tin of pilchards.
We sat there, staring at them.
“That’s not going to last ten days,” said Tizz. “Not even if we just have one tin a day. Between us.”
Sammy was looking worried. “Why’s it got to last ten days?” Her lip wobbled. “When’s Mum coming back?”
“Soon,” I said, “soon! But just in case – I mean, just in case she’s away for ten days–”
Ten days, like last time. Sammy’s face crumpled.
“Where is she? Where’s she gone?”
“See, we’re not actually sure,” I said. I said it as gently as I could, but there wasn’t any point in lying to her. “You know how sometimes Mum gets a bit, like… excitable? Like when she’s having one of her big happies?”
Sammy nodded, doubtfully, and stuck her thumb in her mouth.
“It can make her do things she wouldn’t normally do. Like—”
“Disappearing,” said Tizz.
“But it’s all right,” I said, quickly. “She’ll come back! It’s just that we have to take care of ourselves while she’s not here.
“And not tell anyone that she’s gone!”
I said, “Yes, we’ve not got to tell anybody. Not anybody.”
That was the mistake we’d made last time. We’d been living over the other side of town, then, in an upstairs flat, and we’d been so scared when Mum went off that we’d told the lady in the flat next to ours, and she’d rung the Social Services people, and they’d come and taken us away. Even when Mum had turned up again they wouldn’t let us go back to her. It had been months before they said she was well enough to take responsibility for us. And all that time me and Tizz had been in a children’s home and Sammy had been with foster parents. That had been the worst part, being split up. We weren’t going to let that happen again.
We’d still been quite little, then. Too young to look after ourselves. But I was twelve now, and Tizz was ten, and nobody, but nobody, was going to come and take us away!
“I don’t suppose you remember last time?” said Tizz.
Slowly, Sammy shook her head.
“She was only a baby,” I said. “But now she’s big – she’s nearly six! She can be trusted to keep a secret. Can’t you?”
Sammy said, “What secret?”
“About Mum not being here. We don’t want people knowing, cos if they know they’ll put us in a home, they’ll say we can’t take care of ourselves. But we can,” I said, “can’t we?”
Sammy sucked on her thumb. She seemed uncertain.
“Of course we can!” I said. “We’re not stupid. Just think how proud Mum will be when she gets back and we tell her all the things we’ve done!”
“Such as what?” said Tizz. “Eating toast and marge and Rice Krispies with marmalade?”
I scowled at her, over Sammy’s head.
“I only asked,” said Tizz.
I said, “Well, don’t! Have a bit of imagination.”
Tizz hunched a shoulder.
“Can we stay up late?” said Sammy. “And watch whatever we like on TV?”
“You’ve got it,” said Tizz.
She really wasn’t helping. I said, “Maybe just now and again. Not all the time, though, cos that wouldn’t be right. Mum wouldn’t like it if we did that.”
“Will she be here for my birthday?”
“She might,” I said. “But if not, we’ll have a big bash when she gets back.”
“Seems to me,” said Tizz, “before we start thinking about birthdays we ought to find out if there’s any money anywhere.”
I knew that she was right. If we didn’t have any money, I couldn’t think what we would do.
First off, we looked in the saucer on the kitchen windowsill where Mum sometimes kept bits and pieces of change. There was a little bit in there. We set Sammy to counting it. Proudly she announced that it came to “£3 and 20p.” Meanwhile, I had £2 in my purse, and Tizz produced a fiver. I said, “Wow!”
“I was saving it,” said Tizz.
“That’s all right,” I said. “Mum’ll give it back.”
