Sarah Lean - 3 Book Collection

Mrs Cooper said quietly, “Such a shame this all seems a problem,” which made Dad’s mouth screw tight.

It wasn’t like him to bite his tongue, but you could tell what he was thinking. It was written all over his face. Stop interfering, mind your own business and get out of my winter cave!

He looked at me once more. “NO!” he shouted.

Homeless’s ears pricked at a whistling sound. He looked over his shoulder. Someone was standing by the trees, a small dark figure with a purple Puffa jacket, but only I saw him. Jed. Homeless slipped through my hands, through the open gate, and ran.

Mrs Cooper sighed, “Oh, well, problem solved. For now.”

Dad glared at her, said, “Someone else can sort it out. They’ll soon forget all about it.”

Forgetting is one of the words I hate. I know what it means – it’s when you can’t remember. And when you can’t remember, you’re not as good as when you can.

Dad pushed through us, called back without looking, “Cally, come inside now.”

Mrs Cooper whispered to me, “I’m sorry, I think I made things worse.”

Sam tapped on Mrs Cooper’s hand. I could see she was making sense of the taps and shapes on her hand, listening to something. She shrugged, smiled. “Sam says, don’t worry. You’re not alone.”

23.

DAD WAS LYING ON THE SOFA WATCHING TV, his shirt untucked, a bottle of beer in his hand.

“We can’t have a dog here,” he said. He sat up, put the bottle down and pressed the mute button.

“We can’t afford it. You’d want it to have a good home, wouldn’t you?”

There was no point in trying to persuade him. No point in speaking to him at all. I folded my arms and watched a woman crying and shouting silently on the screen. A policeman was shouting back. Both of them trapped behind the glass.

“I suppose this is going to be another reason for you to carry on not speaking, is it?”

For the first time I could hear a crack in Dad’s voice.

The woman on TV was running from a big explosion and the policeman was shooting into the flames. Dad stood in front of the telly and switched it off. The fire zooped into blackness.

“Look, if you just tell me what’s going on then maybe I can do something about it.”

Dad rolled his eyes, realised what he’d said.

“OK. I can’t do anything about moving here or that dog. I’ve told you why.” He crouched down in front of me. “Cally, please, just say something.”

I tried to will him to know how much more it was. You can’t just forget about things that mean so much to you. Even though Mum had died, he made it seem like we never knew her at all, like she never even existed. But she was here. I saw her, I felt her, especially when I was with Homeless.

“Has something happened at school?”

He waited. “Please, say something.”

I looked into his eyes. I could see a tiny dark silhouette of me. Inside I said, “Mum, I love that dog,” and she said, I know.

Then Dad went to the fridge, got another bottle of beer, said, “You know this not talking isn’t very clever. It’s not clever at all.”

I remembered when we all went to the Bishop’s Palace in Wells, by the big yellow cathedral. There was a moat and an open window by the drawbridge. Swans were waiting there. Two of them reached their necks up and pulled a blue rope to ring a bell. They were mute swans. They didn’t speak or squawk. They used the bell to tell someone they were hungry.

Mum said, “What beautiful creatures. Can you see how clever they are to find a way to speak to us like that, to speak of everything about themselves?”

And I felt the churning and the yearning inside for how Dad was back then. How he’d listened to her and looked at her. How he saw all of us, saw the way we wondered at the swans, and had said, “I see it too.”

24.

JESSICA STUBBS BROUGHT IN A FOLDED NOTE at afternoon registration and I could tell by the way Miss Steadman looked up that the note was about me. She came over when it was quiet in maths and we were doing some difficult division.

“Mrs Brooks wants to see you before you go home. I think you know what it’s about.”

Mrs Brooks had a new pair of sunglasses perched on her head. She came down the corridor carrying a bin liner tied into a bundle. The air trapped inside made it into a puffy black balloon. She was walking with a lady from the office, saying, “If you could find the caretaker, let him know I need to see him. Straight away!”

Mrs Brooks came into her office, opened the window and left the bag by it. She huffed loudly, sat down hard in her chair, said, “Firstly, we need to talk about the fact that Miss Steadman tells me you’re not participating in lessons.”

Her new sunglasses had black lenses with white around the outside.

“Can you tell me what this is all about?”

There was a long silence.

“You know all this not talking is starting to become a bit of a problem.”

She waited. “What about that dog on the playing field? Is that something to do with you?” She linked her fingers and leaned across her desk.

“I mean to get to the bottom of this because that dog’s been into school again and left a nasty mess. Daisy Bouvier’s new shoes are ruined.”

She nodded towards the bin liner. She polished her sunglasses, sighed and waited, then said, “I think it’s about time we asked your dad to come in for a chat.”

25.

“YOU CAN GO EXPLORING ON THE COMMON ON one condition,” said Mrs Cooper. She gave me an alarm clock. “When that rings, you’re to come home.”

I nodded. Me and Sam had a plan. I’d given Sam cards saying BIG, DOG and FIND, and he’d nodded like mad. He went to ask his mum if we could go on our own.

Mrs Cooper tapped on Sam’s hand, pulled the blue bag off his back. There were other conditions.

“And you’re not to let him go swimming, Cally,” she said.

I nodded. Sam didn’t want to know. He pulled his hand away from his mum and went over to the wall, felt for the calendar hanging there. The dates were in normal writing with Braille bumps on each box. I watched Sam’s fingers run over the boxes and stop where a red sticker circle had been stuck.

“It’s dangerous for Sam to swim in chlorine or cold water because it makes his asthma bad,” said Mrs Cooper with her hands on her hips. She looked hard at Sam, went over and took his hand away from scratching at the sticker and trying to peel it off.

“Really bad,” she said again. “A paddle in the stream is fine, but nothing more.”

She smoothed Sam’s hair and sighed. “Let Cally push you in the buggy.”