I pick at my lunch. I’m not really hungry. Mum and Georgie huddle together and talk in whispers. Granny is lost in her dream. I have to chop up Milo’s meat and play trains with his veg. Jess is opposite me. She scoffs her food like usual with her big fat stupid grin.
“I’ve got big plans for my presentation,” she says, whooshing her dolphins through the air, dunking their snouts in her gravy. “Have you decided what you’re doing yours on yet?”
I glare at her.
“I’ve got more important things on my mind, Jess,” I say. “More important things like my dad.”
“You’re boring, Mima,” she says. “Get over yourself. He’ll either come back alive or he’ll come back dead!” She slurps a piece of floppy beef into her mouth. “Nothing much we can do about it. But he’ll be back one way or another. Shame my dad has to come back at all.”
I cover Milo’s ears.
“Please don’t say the D.E.A.D. word in front of Milo,” I whisper. “You’ll set him off crying again.”
“I’ll say what I want,” Jess glowers. “You’re not the boss of me, Jemima Taylor-Jones.”
Then she storms off to get pudding.
After lunch, Milo charges about with some little ones playing war. He uses his fingers to make a gun.
“Piiiiooooowww! Piiiioooowwwww! Piiiiooooowww!”
The noise saws into my brain. I wish they would just stop and sit down and do some colouring or something peaceful like that. A red chubby-cheeked baby on another table starts crying and crying and crying and his mum ignores him and keeps chatting on and on and on. Everyone’s voices are screeching and battling with each other and I wish I could scream out loud and say, STOP!!!! SHUT UP!!!!!! BE QUIET!!!!!
I slide closer to Mum.
“Can we go soon, Mum? Please!” I whisper. “I’m so bored.”
“I’m not ready to leave yet, Mima,” she shouts above the din, drowning me with custard breath. “I’m having fun.”
“But how can you have fun,” I say, “when Dad’s only just gone away? And you didn’t even want to come yourself. You said!”
“Because what else am I supposed to do, Jemima?” she hisses. “I have to be here, and if I let myself go I’ll end up in a puddle of tears and I won’t be able to stop for the next six months. And what good would that do? So I’m trying to get on and have fun. I’m well aware that Dad’s gone and I don’t need you to keep reminding me of that fact every five minutes. I’m just trying to put a brave face on it – we all are…”
She cradles her fat belly in her hands and her voice cracks open.
“I know you’re hurting too, Jemima, and I’m sorry that it’s so hard for you when he goes, but going on about it isn’t going to help.” She digs around in her bag and pulls out my iPod. “If you’re that bored listen to this, or go and talk to Jess, because we’re not leaving yet.”
I fire invisible bullets at her. I’d rather be facing possible death in Afghanistan with my dad than be stuck here with her and Milo and the fat greedy baby in her tummy.
I slide over to Granny.
“I’m bored, Granny,” I say. “I want to go home.”
Granny smiles at me, but she’s not really here. She’s lost in her memories of Derek and Bognor Regis and the Blitz.
She pats my arm.
“Listen to your music for a bit, pet,” she smiles. “Like Mum said.”
I get another helping of apple crumble and custard and plug myself into Kiss Twist and as soon as they start singing ‘A Million Angels’ I know I’ve discovered the first part of my Bring Dad Home mission.
I dig around in Mum’s bag, find a biro and a felt-tip pen and set to work on my skin. I draw a million angels up and down my arms and blow them to my dad. I watch them flutter from my skin and fade from biro blue to a radiant flash of brilliant white wings that swoop and soar through the sky. I watch a million angels settle around him so they can guard him and keep him safe until I can find a way to bring him back home.
I just finish linking the angels together with a string of tiny red felt-tip pen hearts when a little girl sits next to me and holds out her arm.
“Want some angels too?” I ask. “For your dad?”
“For my mum,” she whispers, her eyes twinkle with tears. “She went away this morning, before I was awake.”
“Same as my dad,” I say.
I draw a million inky angels up and down her little arms and string them together with hearts.
“You have to blow them through the sky to your mum. Look,” I say, blowing the first one for her. “Watch them fly.”
And one by one the angels flutter from her arms and soar towards the sky. The little girl swallows and opens her eyes wide.
“They’re really going to find her?” she says.
“Really,” I say. “I promise. And they’re going to look after her too. They’re going to keep her safe. They’re going to bring her home.”
I begin working my way around the dining room. I draw a million inky angels and felt-tip pen hearts up and down all the kids’ arms. Everyone wants some, except Jess. She glares at me. She swoops her plastic glittery dolphins through the air. But I won’t let her stop me. I keep going and going and other kids start drawing too until we’re a frenzied army of blue biros. A battalion of red felt-tipped pens.
“You’re all crazy,” says Jess, “if you really think pathetic biro angels are going to help. It’s not a game our dads are playing, Jemima, they’re fighting a war!”
“But maybe if we draw enough of them,” I say, “and we all keep blowing them every day, it might help. Just imagine how many of them are flying through the sky right now. There must be a trillion at least. My dad told me about this thing called collective thought. It’s a powerful thing, Jess. It’s when lots of people are thinking hard about the same thing to try to make something happen. Maybe it’s a bit like when people pray for peace and stuff and for everyone to be saved. And you don’t know, it might just work because miracles do happen, you know.”
Jess raises her eyebrows and laughs.
“But they’re not flying, are they?” she says, staring at our arms. “They’re just pictures, Mima. Useless biro pictures.”
I swallow the lump in my throat, ignore her horrid words and turn back to the other kids.
“Don’t listen to Jess, listen to me. You have to keep blowing them,” I say. “Every single day and I promise all our dads and mums will come home safe. Everyone will come home alive.”
A shadow falls over my face.
“Jemima!” my mum shrieks, towering over me. “What on earth are you doing?”
The shrill and tinkling laughter clatters and smashes to the ground. Everyone’s sharp eyes and dazzling lips land on me.
“Look at them all,” she says, pointing to the inky octopus of arms. “It’ll take for ever to wash all that off, Jemima, and everyone has school in the morning.”
“I was only trying to help,” I say. “I thought it was a lovely idea.”
“It might be a lovely idea, sweetheart,” she sighs, “but it isn’t really helping, is it? Helping is being good and getting on with things.”
Later, when I’m alone in bed, the wind howls around the house. Hisses through the window frames, roars through the trees. Thunder growls in the distance again. Rumbling