The Tutti-frutti Collection

While we were doing the shopping I looked at some aubergines (which is how it is spelt, not oberjenes as I originally thought) and they are not in the least like slugs, more like big purple eggs, so I really don’t know what Janetta’s mum was talking about.

After lunch Aunt Jilly and Uncle Ivo came and brought their new baby with them. It is a horrible thing, all sicky and stinky and does nothing but bawl.

Mum and Slimey both drooled over it. Slime kept giving it his bony old finger to hold and making these silly baby noises. I personally think you ought to talk to babies sensibly, in proper language, so that they can learn things. I don’t see any point in filling their heads with all this gooey yuck. I mean, if they grow up thinking that stuff like “Doo doo doo” is how people communicate, for goodness’ sake, it’s just going to retard them. It stands to reason. They left me alone with it for a few minutes and I went up to it and said, “Good afternoon. How are you today?” and it actually looked at me quite intelligently. I don’t expect it knew what I was saying, but I bet the words have gone into its head and I bet they’ll be some of the first words it ever speaks. I bet they’ll get a surprise one day when it sits up in its pram and says good afternoon to them.

“Good afternoon. How are you today?”

They won’t know it’s me they have to thank.

I’m getting more and more worried about Mum. She and Aunt Jilly went into the kitchen together to look at a plant that keeps shrivelling and they were there for simply ages so I went after them to find out what they were doing and as soon as she saw me, Mum gave Aunt Jilly this warning glance and they both stopped talking, but not before I’d heard what they were saying. Well, what Mum was saying. She was saying, “Yes, I know, I’m really going to have to pluck up the courage and tell her.”

It doesn’t sound good.

141 Arethusa Road

London W5

9 October

Dear Carol,

Many thanks for your lovely long letter! I’m afraid this is going to be another shortish one as we’ve been out walking all day on Hampstead Heath and I am whacked. Getting too old and fat!!!

The answer to your question, which I know you’re going to ask, is no … I haven’t yet broken the news to Cherry. Yes, yes, I accept that I’m a total coward, but I am going to do it tomorrow afternoon when she gets in from school. Roly has to go away for the night – he is doing a talk to some mixed infants way up in the north of England – and so it will be a good opportunity. Just Cherry and me on our own. I think she might take it better that way.

We all really enjoyed ourselves today. It was a lovely family outing, the sort of thing we ought to do more often. We took our food with us and had a good old-fashioned picnic! It was Roly’s idea, and he prepared all the goodies. He was really imaginative – and it was all vegetarian! Vegetable samosas, sausage rolls made with vegebangers, vegetable kebabs, soya desserts. I am quite being won over, and I think Cherry is, too. At any rate, she gobbled everything up. I don’t believe she even realised that the sausage rolls weren’t made with real sausages!

Altogether it was an absolutely super day. It gives me hope that Cherry is coming round at last. I am just keeping my fingers crossed that hearing about you-know-what doesn’t set her back.

Jilly and Ivo came over yesterday with little Sammy, and at first Cherry was very cool, very aloof, refused even to look at him. But then we left them alone together for a few minutes, just to see what would happen, and she couldn’t resist! Roly reports that she was nattering away nineteen to the dozen. So I think when she gets used to the idea she’ll be fine.

She has been asked to take the part of an angel in the school nativity play, if you can believe it. An angel! Cherry! She is also going to sing. I don’t know if you have ever heard your god-daughter sing? It is not an experience I would recommend! She has a voice rather like a hyena. I only hope they don’t discover their error and give the part to someone else because she is terribly puffed up and looking forward to it. I wouldn’t like her little bubble to be burst.

Her friend Melanie came to tea the other day. She is a nice child; steady and reliable. Cherry occasionally tries bossing her but fortunately Melanie can hold her own. I think that’s why the friendship has lasted. Melanie won’t stand for any nonsense! Roly was there and kept everyone in stitches, clowning around and generally playing the fool. He is absolutely, instinctively marvellous with kids. I think Cherry was quite proud of him. She certainly ought to have been.

There! This letter hasn’t turned out so short after all. Next time I will report how she takes the news about Mum’s big secret …

All my love,

Chapter 4 (#u9bfd9cb0-0f56-5bd1-83bf-75605afd6e61)

Sunday

Today we all trailed half-way across London to go for a picnic on Hampstead Heath. On account of Slimey Roland refusing to pollute the environment, we had to go by tube. That meant taking the Central line to Tottenham Court Road, which is 13 stops, and then hanging about for ever waiting for a northern line to Hampstead, which was another seven. What a pathetic way to travel! We must have looked ridiculous. Slimey was wearing a T-shirt and shorts (shorts! With his legs!) and Mum was wearing a horrible sort of boiler suit and looking really dumpy. Definitely middle-age spread. In addition to the shorts, Slime was humping an enormous backpack. You’d have thought he was going on a round-the-world hike. I wore jeans and was the only one who looked half-way normal.

It was a really draggy sort of day because all we did was walk on the Heath and occasionally sit down and eat stuff and then get up again and do more walking and then sit down again to have a drink, and then they wanted to read their Sunday papers, which actually was the best bit because it meant I could go off on my own, which I did, and met this girl throwing sticks for her dog. She let me join in, which was fun. It was a really good dog, a German shepherd, which I would love, but some hopes.

Anyway, after all that we got on the tube and came home again, and what was supposed to be the point of it is what I want to know? If they wanted to go for a walk and sit on the grass and eat things why not just go up the road to the Common? Why trail all the way to Hampstead Heath? Mum says it’s because Slimey used to live there before he married Mum and moved in with us and made my life a misery. Well, she didn’t say that bit. I said that bit. I will never accept him as a second dad.

Dad was supposed to ring me this evening but he must have been too busy. Mum has said I can go and stay with him at half term. A whole week! Hooray!

The food today was pretty horrific, incidentally, for a true carnivore such as myself. Vegetarian sausages, for heaven’s sake! I just munched in glum silence, not saying anything, as I could tell that Mum was really enjoying herself and I didn’t want to spoil things for her, but she needn’t think I didn’t notice because I most certainly did. And if she thinks I am going to become a cranky veggie, she has another thing coming!

I’m really looking forward to tomorrow because HE is going to be away. He’s going to go and bore some poor little kids at a school in Newcastle, showing them pictures of elves. That means Mum and I will be on our own! Double hooray!

Monday

It’s just as well I made things up with Skinny Melon today because it turns out she was 100% right. My worst fears have come true. Mum is going to have a baby.

She broke it to me after tea, just as I was thinking we could settle down to have a lovely evening all to ourselves like we used to before HE came. She said, “I know I should have told you months ago—” and then she didn’t get any further because I said, “Months? You mean it’s been going on for months?” and she admitted that it had. She said that she is going to have it, “Some time in the New Year … on or about St Valentine’s Day.” That is the 14th of February! No wonder she looks bulgy round the middle.

I hate Slimey Roland worse than ever now. Doing this to my mum! I bet it was his stupid idea. He’s all gooey about babies. Mum would never have thought of it for herself. She and Dad were going to have another one once only she decided against it, so if she decided against it with Dad why would she go for it with Slime? She surely can’t want to have a baby that’s going to be all gingery and freckled and look like a fungus?

She kept trying to butter me up. Trying to make me feel better about it. She kept saying things like, “It’ll make us a proper family”, and “It’ll be nice for you to have a brother or sister”. I don’t want a brother or sister! I hate babies! They mess themselves and yell all the time. They are totally disgusting. And its surname will be Butter and it’ll belong to them, to Mum and him, and I’ll be an outsider.

I’ll never forgive him for this. Never!

Tuesday

I told Skinny Melon this morning that she was right, and she said, “Oh, you’re so lucky! That is totally brilliant. I wish my mum would get married again so that we could have another baby.”

There are times when I think that Skinny is not quite right in the head.

After school we had a rehearsal for the Christmas play and those of us that are angels were taught the angels’ song. We each get to sing one verse on our own and then the chorus all together. Mr Freely came in while we were doing it and said, “My goodness, that is some voice Cherry has!” One or two of the others put their hands to their ears and complained that I was deafening them, but you have to sing loudly if people at the back are going to be able to hear you, and it is a rock nativity, after all. Not the wishy-washy churchy kind. That’s why Miss Burgess chose me, because I have this big voice.

I really enjoy singing. It has made me wonder whether perhaps I ought to try and be a pop star when I’m older. I know it is an overcrowded profession and that last year I thought I might want to be a judge, but being a pop star would bring deep joy to a great many people’s lives whereas quite often judges do the exact opposite.

Maybe I could be a judge after I’ve finished being a pop star as I don’t think you can be a judge until you are quite old, by which time I would most likely be bored with the other. I once heard someone say that fame could become very wearisome.

Actually, the reason I would like to be a judge is so that I could say to children when their parents are trying to get divorced, “Do you want them to get divorced?” and if the children said no, then the parents wouldn’t be able to do it.

I’d have said no. I didn’t like Mum and Dad quarrelling but I hate having to live with Slimey Roland and Dad having another wife. What I’d have said is you’ve got to turn the house into flats, one upstairs and one downstairs, and Mum can live in one and Dad can live in the other and I could live in both of them and go upstairs or downstairs as I liked. That, I think, would be perfect.

Or else they could have sold the house and bought two littler ones next door to each other and knocked a hole through the middle. They could be in Southampton so that Dad could still do his new job. They could be in cottages with chimneys and little gardens.

And Dad could go off to work and Mum could stay at home and read her books and they wouldn’t ever have to see each other if they didn’t want, they could even go out with other people, I wouldn’t mind, just so long as they came home at night and were always there.

I said all this to Skinny once and she said that if she had a dad she’d want him to live in the same house as her and her mum and her brother and sister and for them all to be together all of the time. This would be her idea of heaven.

I agree it would be mine if Dad could come back and he and Mum didn’t quarrel.

There’s a boy at school called Timothy Dunbar who lives with his mum during the week and his dad at weekends. He reckons it’s brilliant as his dad spoils him rotten, giving him presents and taking him to places of interest, which he never did when he was at home. But it’s all right for Timothy Dunbar. His dad only lives just a few streets away and his mum hasn’t gone and got married again.

Slimey came back tonight. Worse luck. I was hoping he might have fallen through a crack in the paving stones.

Wednesday

Mouse droppings and jellied eyeballs. Or maybe it was frogspawn. Either way it was disgusting.