I went over to the garden area where adults usually go to sit away from the noisy kids. Luke climbed a tree. Dad sat on a bench by the tree, leaning on his knees, unrolling and rolling his papers. Sometimes you can be a family and not all want to sit together.
And I was just thinking about things, like how come Mum was with Jed the tramp, and did he see her too, when I heard some rustling in the bushes behind me.
The huge silver-grey dog came bounding out, the same one I saw with Mum on the school playing fields.
I sucked in my breath, held my arms in tight. The dog nudged my hand, pushing his nose under so I’d have to stroke him. He circled round and round. Then he sat down, his tail sweeping the gravel side to side, side to side. His head was as high as my chest; his small brown eyes sparkled like a million stars. His eyebrows and beardy chin and whiskers twitched so you could tell what his face was saying. And it was saying, I want to be with you!
I very, very nearly called out. Not because I was afraid, but because sometimes you just can’t help it. And I could feel the words bubbling up – Look, Mum, look! Isn’t he beautiful? And it made me laugh, even though she wasn’t there.
Just then I made my one and only rule for not speaking. I was allowed to laugh. Because laughing isn’t words. Nobody knows what you are saying, but everyone knows what you mean. Even a dog.
12.
I’D BEEN SAVING THE PIZZA FOR THE TRAMP, but the dog sniffed around my pocket. And even though I could see he was really hungry he took the pizza gently from the napkin. Then he licked my fingers. I patted him and stroked him. I couldn’t help loving him.
Then Dad called, told me and Luke to come over. The dog followed without me even asking. That’s the brilliant thing about dogs. They don’t say, Where are we going? They just come with you.
Luke ducked out of the way as the dog trotted beside me towards him, but was soon ruffling and patting him and looking impressed. But not Dad.
“Where the hell did it come from?” Dad said, pulling us behind him, like he was snatching us out of the mouth of a monster. The dog hung back, his head down, his tail still.
Dad tried to find the word that would make the dog go away, flapped his arms and said, “Shoo, go on! Fetch! Off with you! GO AWAY!”
He was just like the people at school. They were scared of the dog because he was so big. They didn’t stop to look into his soft eyes and see he wasn’t trying to do any harm.
I kept looking round, thinking Mum might be there, somewhere.
The dog’s ears went up, as if he heard something, and suddenly he bounded off in big lollopy gallops, like he was in slow motion. He disappeared behind the bushes.
Dad turned to me, shouted, “For heaven’s sake, Cally! What’re you playing at?” He paced and shouted. “You should know better than to go up to a strange dog without checking with the owner, or without checking with me first.”
He looked at me. He rolled his papers. I could see he was trying really hard not to blow his top. “Don’t do that again. D’you hear me?” He took a breath to calm down. “Are you all right?”
Obviously not now he’d shouted at me.
Dad sat down hard on the bench, curling the papers into a tight tube. He looked at his watch. He muttered sorry, and something about everything going to be fine.
I could feel something bad coming with those words. Why do people say everything’s going to be fine when they don’t mean it at all? It’s what the nurse says before she jabs you with a needle. Before she puts Savlon on your graze and makes it sting like crazy. After she tells you she’s very sorry that your mum’s never coming back. They are going to hurt you and then give you something stupid like a cherry lollipop. That’s how you know it’s not going to be fine.
Dad took a deep breath, sat us down either side of him. He unrolled his papers.
“I’ve got something to show you,” he said.
He smoothed the sheets. The top one said, Second Floor Flat to Rent, Overlooking the Common.
He said, “We’ve got to move out of our house.”
Nobody said anything. When you don’t want to believe something, it’s like you get instantly frozen in ice. You can’t move and you can’t blink.
As we left the park, Luke was saying, “What do you mean? Why are we moving? Where are we going?” Hundreds of questions.
But Dad wouldn’t answer. He just said, “Don’t say anything until you’ve seen it.”
And I didn’t say anything. Because I was already sure by then that nothing I said would make any difference.
But what I remember most was that was the day I decided the big silver-grey dog’s name was going to be Homeless. And that was because Jed, the tramp, was standing on the other side of the road opposite the park. He was wearing a big pair of sunglasses. Mrs Brooks’s sunglasses. Next to him was the giant silver-grey dog with a cardboard sign around his neck. It said HOMELESS.
13.
NUMBER 4, ALBERT TERRACE WAS A TALL HOUSE made of rust-coloured bricks, with crumbly grey cement in between. The blue paint flaked around the big windows, made it look as if it had sad old eyes. Where we lived now had just been built when Mum and Dad moved in; everything in it was ours. The builders made the outside; Mum made the inside. She varnished the window frames every year, to keep them shiny.
A car pulled up and a lanky man got out. He buttoned his grey jacket, said hello kiddiewinks, but Dad didn’t make us say hello back.
He handed Dad a key, held his arm out, said, “It’s got great views over the common and good-sized bedrooms; it’s a fine example of Victorian history.”
We’ve done Victorian history at school and I learned what it was like for children living back then when we rehearsed for Olivia! – misery, disease and empty bellies.
The small garden at the front had a pot of sunflowers with green heads tethered to sticks; there was a small concrete yard out the back. We were going to have to share the garden and yard and a washing line and a shed with the people in Flat 1 downstairs.
Flat 2 was empty. Our footsteps were loud along the hall and in the hollow rooms. The rooms were all painted the same plain colour, like old book pages; they smelled of dust and other people.
We all looked out the window at the common. A big patch of land for everyone.
Dad nodded towards the view. “Somewhere for you to throw a Frisbee, hey, Luke?”
Luke went out, slamming the door. The bang crashed into the walls of the empty rooms. Through the window I saw Luke running across the common. Dad swore. I said my twelve times table in my head. Miss Steadman said I needed more practice, and you can’t remember your tables unless you keep saying them over and over and over.
The lanky man was still waiting outside. “I’m sure you’re going to like it here,” he said. But I could tell he didn’t care because he was staring at the big wad of money in Dad’s wallet. They signed bits of paper and swapped them.
We found Luke throwing stones in the stream under a little brick bridge. His face was blotchy.
“I’m sorry, son,” said Dad, “but we don’t have a choice.”
“This is your choice, not ours,” said Luke, spitting out the words.
Luke looked at me, knew I was with him. We would never choose to leave