I gripped Dad’s hand and held my breath while we watched Cat on the swing, Cat sipping juice, Cat with her blue-black hair shining like a beetle’s wing. She was nibbling her nails and chatting to Tania about a big, fat snail that was slithering up the wall. She turned to us and waved. A teeny smile crept around her cherry red lips and I kept thinking, OMG, I can’t believe this girl is going to be my sister. My sister. My sister!
When the DVD finished, I let out my breath and Dad and Mum and me stared off into the distance for a while without speaking. My brain started whizzing at a hundred miles an hour. Seeing Cat on the DVD made her much more real than talking to the social workers about her, or making her the book about our family. The words that tumbled out of Mum’s mouth a year ago, when she’d read the newspaper article about adoption in Cornwall, had actually turned into a real live girl.
That night, I lay awake for hours trying to imagine Cat sleeping in the room next to mine. I imagined us calling out goodnight to each other and sharing secrets and stories. I imagined us giggling and messing about until Mum got so cross she had to stomp up the stairs and shout. I wanted Mum to shout. I wanted her to be a normal Mum who wasn’t treading on eggshells all the time, so afraid that something bad might happen to me. I giggled and imagined Cat and me brushing each other’s hair a hundred times like they do in The Railway Children. I saw us doing drawing together and playing. I’d teach her how to surf and make cupcakes and paper cranes.
I really did want all those things and I really hoped my imagination might make me feel happy and excited. But, with every new thought, the skipping rope inside me pulled tighter and tighter and a million more damselflies whirred. I looked out of my bedroom window at the bay below. The oily black sea was swishing the world to sleep and the lights from the village and the night sky reflected on the water, a twinkling sea of stars. I looked out and wondered about so many things. Then I yawned, snuggled down in my bed and pulled Peaches Paradise under my duvet. I held her close and whispered into her ear.
“Is it true what Dad says? Did I really choose Cat when I was just a tiny star? Did Cat choose me?”
And now it really, really is happening. There are no more days left to wonder because Mum and Dad have gone to meet Cat. I wasn’t allowed to go, so I’m with my best friend, Anna. Susannah said it was better this way, but I think that’s stupid. This is my family, but now I feel left out and pushed away and my tummy won’t stop whirring. I can’t tell Anna because, although we’re besties and we tell each other most things, she doesn’t understand about whirring tummies and worries. Anna likes to be happy, happy, happy. Her mum’s made us fish-finger sandwiches – our favourite – and we’re dipping them in ketchup and watching Dr Who. Anna’s goggling away and hasn’t even noticed that I’m not really watching; she can’t feel that my insides are all tugging and twisting.
Later on, when we’re busy making cupcakes for pudding, Anna looks at me. “Adopting Cat must be really weird. I’ve been thinking about it,” she says, “and wondering… aren’t you scared your mum and dad might like her more than they like you?”
A huge cold pebble grows in my throat and tears start stinging my eyes. I make a few big blinks to get rid of them and swallow hard. I keep stirring and stirring the cake mixture round and round and round. I’ve been worrying that Cat might not like me and that I might not like her. But I haven’t even thought about Mum and Dad liking her best.
“Do your mum and dad like your sister best then?” I say.
“Well,” says Anna, pulling herself up on the worktop and licking cake mix from the spoon, “they say they like us both the same, but anyone can tell it’s not true. Evie’s so little and cute, everyone loves her – they can’t help it.”
When we’ve finished decorating the cakes and have eaten three each with hot chocolate, we go into Anna’s bedroom to make paper cranes.
“I s’pose it might’ve been the same if Alfie was still here,” she says, “they might’ve liked him best too. Everyone always loves the baby of the family. It’s a fact.”
My eyes go all misty. I can’t see what I’m doing any more and I wish Anna would just stop talking. I’ve never felt like my mum and dad didn’t love me. My mum’s so panicked about me all the time I sometimes feel like she loves me too much. But maybe Anna’s right; maybe that’s why they’ve always wanted another child. I mean, I’m quite pretty, although my hair’s a bit wispy and wild, and I’m nearly top of my class at school, but maybe… I try and fold my paper crane into shape, but it goes all wonky. I scrunch it up and feel lonely inside, as if my whirring tummy has opened into this huge dark empty cave. I stuff another cupcake in my mouth to fill the big scary hole.
“I think they like Alfie best already,” I blurt out, spraying vanilla cake crumbs everywhere. “I know they love me and the social workers wouldn’t let them adopt if they thought there was a problem. But I can tell they never stop thinking about him. Alfie is always perfect in their eyes. Because he’s dead, he can never do anything wrong, and I’m doing wrong stuff all the time.”
“I think they should get rid of that shelf thing,” Anna says. “My mum thinks it’s a bit spooky to have all those pictures of him.”
“It’s just for remembering,” I say.
But Anna will never understand about things like remembering because her life has been simple and straightforward and normal, not all complicated like mine.
The first five years of my life were brilliant until the Alfie stuff happened. Then a big red bus nearly killed me when I was seven and, ever since, nothing’s been the same. My mum stresses about me being safe and well all the time and hates letting me out of her sight. I secretly think she’s worried I might die, but she’s never actually said it in those exact words. She wouldn’t even let me go on the Year Six residential week. She worried that my canoe might sink or the abseiling rope might snap. She was convinced the coach driver would fall asleep while he was driving and crash. It was really embarrassing. I had to make up some story about not being able to miss my nana’s seventieth birthday party. I couldn’t tell Anna because she’d just laugh. And I felt really stupid because I had to sit in with the Year Fives and do all my lessons with them for the week.
Mum really, really panics about me going surfing and she’s tried to stop me a million times, but Nana and Pops and Dad are on my side. She’s convinced I’ll come to some tragic end in the waves. She’d like me to sit quietly and read books or make mermaids with her or pots with Dad. And I try to understand because the Alfie stuff and the big red bus must’ve been really hard for her. But sometimes I think she doesn’t get that it’s been hard for me too.
When we’ve finished tea, Anna and I rush to the bay. My mum hates it when we go alone, but Anna’s mum trusts us. Anyway, Anna’s little sister, Evie, has an earache so her mum has to stay home with her. I feel a bit nervous, like my mum’s big eyes are somehow watching from way above me in the sky, like she can see that we’re alone.
Surfing is my best thing ever and today the sea is amazing. It’s so sparkling and clear that we can see little fish darting under our boards like silver streaks of lightning. It’s hard to explain what surfing really feels like, but close your eyes and just imagine that the rest of the world has disappeared. Imagine that nothing else exists or matters except you with your arms stretched wide, flying on top of a tumbling, unstoppable wave. An amazing white horse, with froth fizzing around your feet and the salt on your lips and the sun melting your face into bliss. Imagine surfing through blue, blue sky, through fluffy white clouds with the wind in your hair, to heaven and far beyond. Imagine being the wildest and freest girl alive, then times that feeling by a trillion and you might start to get what I mean. Dad says I must have salt water in my veins because I love the sea so much. The truth is, surfing’s the only time I feel free.
Anna and I surf until our arms and legs ache so much they almost drop off. Then we play mermaids. We swish around in the waves and clap and sing, “A sailor went to sea, sea, sea, to see what he could see, see, see, but