Before Amy, we only ever vacuumed the floor on special occasions. Now she makes Dad push the vacuum cleaner around every day and do all these stupid exercises at the same time. He looks stupid in the pink rubber gloves and plastic muscleman pinafore she got him for when he does the washing-up.
“Dave!” she says, inspecting the sink. “You haven’t even bleached it yet, have you? We’ll all get salmonella at this rate.”
And then she sprays the whole world with Spring Breeze air freshener that stings our eyes and chokes our throats.
When Amy’s out at Zumba class I get the chance to sit close to Dad and watch the telly and feel like it’s just him and me again. And I want to tell him everything. I want to say it all out loud, all the words twisting through me, getting tangled up inside. But I don’t know where to start. I’m too scared of making him cross or upsetting him.
“Do you like Amy, Dad?” I whisper. “Like, really like her?”
Dad sighs and stares at Top Gear. He snaps open his next can of lager and I watch the foamy bubbles fizz up through the opening and dribble down the sides.
“I mean, we don’t really need her,” I say. “Do we? I think we were much better without her. And I’m worried about money. The landlord said if you miss the rent again he’ll evict us, remember, Dad?”
Dad flicks the TV from channel to channel. He sips and sips and sips.
“Don’t you start on at me as well,” he says, without looking at me. “It might be hard for you to understand, but I don’t just like Amy, Gabriella, I love her. I’m a man possessed by a beautiful woman. I’m sorry if you don’t like it, but I can’t help myself.”
His words fly at me like a football in the park, punching me with a cold hard thud in the tummy. I think I might be sick. He’s never said he loves me. He’s never said anything that nice about me, ever. I rub my face. I bend over to re-tie my laces.
Dad pats his wobbly tummy and peers at me from under his fringe. He sip, sip, sips his lager. “I reckon…” he says.
Then he stops talking. The air between us pulls tight and makes me hold my breath. Suddenly it feels just like the day he said Mum and Beckett were leaving.
“I reckon,” he says, “if I can shed a few pounds, Amy might even marry me. What d’you think of that, eh? And I promise you Amy’ll let you be a bridesmaid if you keep your room tidy and start doing the stuff she asks. The pair of you could dress up all posh and lovely. Don’t worry about the rent, Gabriella. I’ve got it all under control. You just have to learn to trust your old dad.”
He rummages in his pocket then pulls out a small square box and opens it up. “And when she sees this little baby,” he chuckles, holding a diamond ring between his fat finger and thumb so it glitters in the light, “she might not even care about my tummy!”
I fly into my room, slam the door and bite back the sour tears that are rising in my throat. I can’t let myself think about what Dad’s just said, so I pull out my box of art scraps and scatter them across the floor.
I cut and rip shiny sweet wrappers and bits of paper, making them into tiny bricks. I draw the outline of a house on a fresh clean page and glue the shiny bricks on one by one. I make little red roof tiles out of material I found at a car boot sale and a trail of grey smoke coming from the chimney out of a pair of Dad’s old pants. I colour in a bright blue front door and put loads of sunflowers in the garden like in the Italy programme. I cut a girl’s face from a magazine and stick her on the picture so she’s looking out of the window at the flowers.
I pick up my little photo of Beckett that lives on my bedside table with the special book I won in the school art competition about famous artists. I stare at his face and wish he would leap out and talk to me.
“I wish you were here, Beckett,” I whisper. “Where are you?”
In the photo he was twelve, same as I am now, which means he’ll be nineteen now. Nineteen is so old! I flick through my magazine and I find a picture of a man with brown hair just like Beckett’s. I cut him out, glue him in the garden and bend his arm so he’s waving up at me. Then I hear the door slam and Amy’s voice screeching like a parrot in a cage.
“Are you ready, Dave, or what?”
I hear Dad shuffling into the hallway.
“What?” he says. “Ready for what?”
“That’s typical,” she spits. “You men are all the same. Total let-downs!”
“Babe,” he says. “Come ’ere, darling. Wassup?”
“Wassup?” she screeches. “I’ll tell you ‘wassup’, Dave. You promised to take me out. You promised me a romantic night, you stupid fat bum. Just the two of us, without Miss Untidy Ungrateful Flappy Ears butting in, remember?”
I put my headphones on and fill my brain with tunes. I make some lovely grass with scraps of green thread on my picture and some soft white clouds from cotton wool. I stick more white pages around my picture and start filling them up too. I add a swimming pool and an outdoor cinema. I build a treehouse out of matches and make a swing from bits of string. I add a village with pavements and little stone cottages in a row. I add a dog, a shop, a hairdressers, a chippy and a Chang’s. I cut out cars and a lady on a bicycle and loads of smiley people walking down the road.
When the front door slams it’s so loud the floor shudders under me. I pull my headphones out and listen. I peep into the hall.
I don’t even care if they’ve gone. It’s better here without them.
I make myself cheese on toast, leaving the butter and the knife and the crumbs all over the worktop and I stretch out on the sofa with my shoes on, snuggling in front of the telly.
It’s mostly boring stuff until this murder thing comes on. It’s exciting at first, but then knives start flashing and the man’s big black boots send shivers down my spine. I wish Dad were here with me, and then I could watch it, no problem.
When it gets really gory and this woman’s voice is screaming I cover my face with my hands. I wish I could switch it off, but I can’t move. I can’t switch to another channel because I have to make sure that they catch the murderer in case he’s actually real, in case he’s actually lurking about outside our flats.
It’s not until I feel chilly that I look up at the clock and notice it’s half-past twelve. The murderer man is stalking around in this underground car park, hiding in the shadows. A lady is heading towards her car, but she can’t see him. I scream at her to hurry up, to run away, to lock herself in her car and call the police. She’s walking so slowly, her high-heeled shoes clip-clopping, scraping on the concrete.
“Run!” I shriek. “Run, you stupid lady, run!”
Something creaks in the hall. I freeze. My heart pounds in my ears and ripples through my skin. The murderer man’s eyes glint in the moonlight.
“Dad!” I call out. “Is that you?”
The murderer music starts howling and the lady is all shrieking voice and clip-clop running, panting, out of breath. But the murderer man is faster. His boots are slapping the ground in long strides, quickly catching her up.
“Dad!”
I flick the telly off and my ears thump as I drown in the silence.
“Dad!” I whisper. “Dad, where are you?”
I grab Blue Bunny, hold him close and stroke the silky label on his ear. Beckett gave him to me the day I was born and even though he’s a bit battered he’s still the best thing in the world. I wish Beckett were here now. He would know what to do.
I stay frozen in the chair for hours, watching the clock tick, tick, tick on the wall. Someone