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Tizz said, “Yeah, like living on bread and marge. Yuck!”
Sammy said, “Ugh! Yuck! Bluurgh.”
They both bent over and pretended to be sick.
“We want chips,” said Tizz. “We want pizza! We want—”
“Fishy fingers!”
“Yay!”
Tizz and Sammy smacked their hands together in a triumphant high five. I was glad that Sammy had cheered up, but I did hope we weren’t going to have scenes in Tesco. I wasn’t sure I could cope with that. It would be just so embarrassing! Everyone would look at us, especially if Sammy worked herself up into one of her states. Just now and again, if she can’t get what she wants, she’ll throw herself on the ground and drum her heels and refuse to get up. Mum is the only one who knows how to deal with her.
“I think,” said Tizz, “if you want my opinion, we ought to be allowed to have whatever we want to have. Without you dictating to us!”
“Just buy nice things,” said Sammy.
“Yeah! Right. ‘Stead of all that boring muck!” Tizz waved a hand at my list of things we had to have.
I felt quite cross with her. She wasn’t being at all helpful.
“Let’s put down some other stuff.” Tizz snatched up the second list and added CRISPS in big capital letters at the bottom of it.
“Sweeties!” shouted Sammy.
“SWEETIES,” wrote Tizz.
She was being deliberately provoking. I almost felt like throwing my purse at her and telling her to get on with it. Let her take the responsibility. But of course she wouldn’t; not when it came to it. She just wanted to challenge my authority. It is very difficult, sometimes, being the oldest, especially when you have a sister who refuses to do what she’s told. And keeps getting the littlest one all worked up. I could see that Sammy was well on the way to having one of her screaming fits.
“Listen,” I said. I squatted down beside her. Even a five-year-old can be made to see reason. “We’ll try to buy some nice things, I promise you! But nice things are expensive and we can’t afford too many of them, so—”
That was as far as I got because at that point someone hammered on the front door and we all froze. Well, me and Tizz froze. Sammy hesitated for just a second, then with a joyous cry of, “Mum!” went galloping off.
It wasn’t Mum. It was Her Upstairs. Mrs Bagley. Mum calls her ‘that woman’. We call her Her Upstairs. We don’t like her.
She came pounding into the room with a scared-looking Sammy trailing behind her. She is such a huge great woman that the floor trembles as she walks.
“Where is your mother?” she said, in this big booming voice that practically made the walls shake.
I was about to say in quavering tones that Mum wasn’t here when Tizz jumped in ahead of me.
“She’s out,” she said.
It is just as well that Tizz is so quick. The way she said it – “She’s OUT” – was like, what’s it to do with you? If I’d told her that Mum wasn’t home, you can just bet she’d have demanded to know where she was, and then I wouldn’t have known what to say. I don’t think as fast as Tizz. She can always be relied on to come up with a smart answer.
Her Upstairs did this huffing thing. Sort of ‘Pouf!’ With her lips billowing out and her nostrils flaring, like she suspected Tizz of being impertinent. Tizz faced up to her, boldly.
“Can we give her a message?”
“You can indeed.” Her Upstairs has these big bosoms. I mean, like, really really big. Like massive. Mum says you could lay a dinner table on them. When she gets indignant, which is what she was now, she kind of inflates them. I watched them heave and wondered what we’d done to upset her this time.
“You can tell your mother,” she said, “that I have called for my flour.”
I said, “F-flour?”
Even Tizz looked a bit taken aback. At any rate, she didn’t say anything.
“My flour. My self-raising! I should like to have it back. If, of course –” her lip curled – “there is anything left to have back. Shall we go into the kitchen and see?”
She set off across the room. Thud, bang, stamp, across the floor. Tizz sprang into action.
“It’s all right! Ruby’ll get it for you.”
“I will,” I said. “I’ll get it for you!”
I rushed into the kitchen, grabbed the bag of flour and scrabbled frantically in search of our pound coins. I had to plunge my hand in so deep that great white clouds came puffing out all over me. And then, in my panic, I went and dropped the bag and loads of flour went and spilt over the floor.
But at least I had the coins! All five of them. I stuffed them into the back pocket of my jeans and wiped my top with the dish rag. Unfortunately, by now, there didn’t seem to be very much flour left in the bag. Hardly any, in fact. Most of it was on the kitchen floor.
Hastily, I seized a tablespoon out of the drawer, scooped up as much as I could and poured it back into the bag. It probably wasn’t very hygienic cos I didn’t know when Mum had last had a cleaning session, but the way I saw it, flour was used for cooking and cooking killed germs. Anyhow, it was only Her Upstairs.
I went back into the sitting room. Her Upstairs was standing there, with her arms folded. Tizz was looking defiant. Sammy had rushed off to hide behind the sofa.
“I found it,” I said. “There’s still some left.”
I held out the bag. Her Upstairs took it, rather grimly. She removed the elastic band, looked in the bag and went, “Huh!” Then she looked at my top and went, “Hmph!”
“Mum was going to give it back,” I said.
“Not before she managed to get through three quarters of it, I see. What on earth was she making?”
I looked helplessly at Tizz.
“Can’t remember,” said Tizz.
“I was under the impression she merely wanted a sprinkle. Perhaps you would be kind enough to inform her, when she gets back, that I should appreciate it, in future, if she would not come to me when she runs out of something.”
“I will,” I said. “I’ll tell her.”
“Thank you. I should be grateful.”
Her Upstairs moved off, towards the door. I followed her, anxiously. Please, just let her go.
As she passed the table, where we’d laid out the stuff we’d found in the cupboard, she paused for a moment. I could almost hear her nosy parker brain ticking over.
What are they doing with all those tins? Where is their mother? What is going on?
It was Tizz, again, who came to the rescue.
“We’re tidying up the cupboard,” she said.
“Hm!” Her Upstairs gave a sniff. “Not before time, I dare say.”
I resented that! It was criticism of Mum. Like saying she wasn’t good at keeping things in order. Maybe she wasn’t, but so what? She was our mum and we loved her! We didn’t mind if the cupboards were in a mess. And what was it to do with Her Upstairs anyway?
“I hate that woman,” said Tizz, when the door was safely closed.
I didn’t like her very much either, especially when she was so mean about Mum, though I could sort of understand why she didn’t want Mum asking for stuff any more. Cos I didn’t think, really, that Mum had been going to give the flour back. Not that she would have kept it on purpose; just that it would have slipped her mind.
I said this to Tizz, but she got all angry and snapped, “Don’t defend her, she’s horrible! And you—” she whizzed round on Sammy, crawling out from behind the sofa. “Don’t go running off to answer the door when you don’t know who it is! You don’t want us all to be split up, do you? Cos that’s what’ll happen if Her Upstairs finds out!”
Sammy’s lower lip started to wobble. Tears came into her eyes. “I thought it was Mum!”
“If it had been Mum, she’d have used her key.”
I thought, yes, if she hadn’t lost it or had her bag stolen. I told Sammy to cheer up.
“We’ll go shopping in a minute. That’ll be fun!”
“Buy nice things?” said Sammy.
“We’ll see.”
“Fishy fingers!”
“Maybe.”
Sammy glanced slyly at Tizz. “– Fishy fingers! We want fishy fingers!”
But Tizz wasn’t playing any more. “Don’t keep on,” she said. “It’s a question of what we can afford.”
At last! She was beginning to give me some support. She didn’t even grumble when I insisted on finding a new hiding place for our emergency fund.
“I’m just scared,” I said, “that if we take it with us we might be tempted to spend it, and then we’ll be left with nothing.”
Tizz said, “Right.”
“I mean, I know Mum could be back at any moment—”
She could! She really could! She could be there waiting for us when we got back from Tesco.
“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.
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“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.”
