Sugarcoated Page 11

  Marjory spoke to my dad using one of the slightly patronising shouty voices the chirpy emergency services people on reality TV shows save for vagrants or old dears who’ve broken a hip. While she spoke she reassured him with big capable pats to his knee.

  ‘Come on now, sir.’

  The capable pats became firmer until my dad lifted his head and frowned at Marjory like she was an annoying stranger.

  ‘Will Claudia be going with you? To Australia? Should she be packing?’ Marjory raised her voice to hold my dad’s attention. ‘Or is she staying here by herself?’

  My dad shook his head.

  ‘Your mum doesn’t want you missing school,’ he answered me, not Marjory. ‘Says you’ll be fine on your own for a few days and there’s no point you moping about a hospital saying you’re bored and hungry and annoying everybody with your humming. But if you pass your resits Mum says we’ll send you to Australia for Christmas to get to know your … That’s if the wee soul … Did I tell you how sick he is? Sean they’ve called him …’ My dad’s head, after a blurt of almost sensible talking, was threatening to bury itself in his knees again. Marjory grabbed his hand. Hauled him to his feet.

  ‘You need to focus now, Mr Quinn. Claudia’s going to help with your toilet stuff and I’ll find you some clothes.’

  Taking Dad’s arm, Marjory clomped him upstairs. In the time it took me to collect Dad’s shaving kit and toothbrush from the bathroom, Marjory had sorted his suitcase.

  ‘Undies, shirts, shorts and trousers. See? And I’ve left that space for toiletries and gadgets. All right, Mr Quinn? I think you should put this top on for travelling. And I’d definitely wear underpants. Claudia can find you some. Here she is.’

  Dad, towel all bagged round his lower half like a helpless toddler in a giant nappy, was sagged on Mum’s dressing-table stool. When I held out a jumper for him to wear he made no effort to take it and dress himself.

  I’d to pull it over his head, force his arms into the sleeves. While I was struggling with that, Marjory was in Dad’s wardrobe clanging coathangers together. One by one she pulled out all Dad’s jackets and held them against herself in front of Mum’s long mirror.

  ‘Why’s a policewoman going through my clothes?’ my dad asked when I lifted Mum’s batgirl glasses from his face and he was able to see in the distance again. He scrunched his face at the sight of Marjory smoothing his sports jacket over her bust, admiring herself from different angles. ‘Oh, take this Harris tweed, Mr Quinn. Wear it to the airport and you could get an upgrade.’

  Marjory peeled Dad’s jacket from her police tunic and came round behind him, holding it out for Dad to slip on.

  ‘Now we’re all packed I’ll call the airline. Explain your circumstances. And don’t worry about Claudia while you’re out the country; we’ll keep an eye out for her – arm in here for me, sir,’ she coaxed Dad. He put one arm in his sleeve. Then he stopped, letting his jacket slip to the floor.

  ‘Why are you in my bedroom?’

  Dressed in sensible clothes, Dad was suddenly more collected. ‘Are you to do with losing my passport and the VISA? I didn’t contact you lot yet. Too busy.’ He turned from Marjory to Mum’s dressing table. Yanked Mum’s jewellery drawer out so roughly that half her earrings and bangles and bracelets bounced out the sides of it, rolling and tumbling to the carpet. ‘I told them at the bank and the passport office: how can a passport and a VISA be stolen from my house when there’s been no break-in –’

  ‘Sure about that, sir?’

  ‘I’d know if an intruder had been through my own drawers, wouldn’t you?’ Dad snapped at Marjory from inside the top I’d dressed him in. He was pulling it off. ‘Your mother’ll have shoved them in with all the clutter she takes abroad and never uses.’

  Dad buttoned himself up all wrong into a denim shirt, snapping at me now. ‘I told Grace to look through her bags when I spoke to her earlier because I know your mother and I’ll bet you, Cloddy –’ Dad vented his frustration by booting his sports jacket across the bedroom, ‘I’ll open her handbag in Melbourne and I’ll find the lot: VISA, passport, licence, kitchen sink …’

  When Dad ran out of steam again and slumped, head in hands, on to his bed, he reminded me of the creepy kinetic automata that freaked my dreams for weeks after he took me to see them in some museum donkeys ago. One minute the puppets were manic, arms and legs flicking and kicking and jerking obscenely and dancing to crazy speeded-up music. Then suddenly they were inert, inanimate, faces frozen and blank. Staring into space, just like Dad. Till Sarge-Marge came to the rescue again.

  ‘Make a quick cuppa for your dad. Plenty sugar.’ She thumbed me from the room. ‘Then I’ll run you to the airport, sir. And give me details about the items you’re missing and I’ll look into it. You’ve lost passport, VISA and driving licence. Nothing else?’

  All the way down to the kitchen I listened to Marjory booming at my dad.

  ‘And there’s been no forced entry, sir? No chance you left a window open for a sneak thief?’

  ‘Window’s painted shut,’ Dad rumbled back.

  ‘No tradesman about the place you don’t know well? Strangers?’

  ‘Strangers? Don’t be ridiculous.’

  I was at the bottom of the stairs when my dad spluttered his response this time. Zzzzip his suitcase dismissed the very idea.

  ‘Do you have strange men hanging about your bedroom?’ he asked Marjory but before she’d a chance to answer he went on, ‘Look, I’ve sorted out the passport for Australia, and I won’t be driving while I’m there and the bank won’t bill me for the VISA fraud –’

  Dad’s suitcase was on the first leg of its journey to Australia. He was hauling it down our stairs. Mum would have slaughtered him if she’d caught him scuffing the woodwork like that, but I don’t think Dad noticed the scratches he was leaving. ‘D’you know in a day and a half someone was spending thousands on my card. Ten grand nearly. Hundreds in some clothes shop here in Glasgow.’

  BUMP went the case.

  ‘Then even more on jewellery in London –’

  BUMP

  ‘– and a night in some flash hotel –’

  BUMP

  ‘– plus a load of flights to Heathrow from Estonia or somewhere like that that probably doesn’t have a runway.’

  BUMP

  Dad’s voice was growing louder. Not just because he was nearly at the bottom of the stairs. The info he was giving Marjory was cranking up his blood pressure.

  ‘D’ you know what? Before they cancelled my card some jumped-up call centre jobsworth asked me if I was sure I hadn’t booked all these flights myself and forgotten about them. Or given someone my details. Like I’d do something like that –’

  ‘Well, sir, that would just be procedure to rule you out for the fraud. Ten grand’s a big spending spree for a thief to get away with. You’ve been unlucky. Well VISA has now.’ Marjory and my dad were approaching the kitchen together. ‘When a customer burns plastic up to the limit like that they’re usually asked to give passwords and dates of birth before all the sales go through. It’s strange so many big transactions were allowed without the card being blocked and VISA getting in touch with you. Because your spending pattern had changed. Anyway,’ Marjory was right outside the kitchen door, ‘at least you’ve cancelled the credit card now, sir.’

  Despite the spatter of water gushing into the kettle I was filling, I heard every word Marjory said. And it drained the blood from my arms so instantly that I dropped the kettle into the sink. I had to lean my elbows on the edge of it to stop my knees buckling.

  ‘At least you’ve cancelled the credit card now, sir.’ Marjory’s words seemed to ricochet off all the kitchen surfaces.

  Water sprayed everywhere. Over my jeans and my T-shirt, across the kitchen counters, into what was left of the packet of shortbread.

  ‘Flood,’ Marjory bellowed in my ear when she caught me at the sink; cold tap full blast, kettle overflowing underneath it. Me frozen. Gulping.
Dad shouldn’t have needed to cancel the card.

  ‘Chop, chop, Sleeping Beauty.’

  Shooing me aside, Marjory turned off taps and swabbed and sluiced the worktops down. Plugged in the kettle. I didn’t move out of her way, though. Couldn’t.

  I was zombified.

  Staring at the kitchen phone.

  I was seeing the only recent stranger to our house speaking into it.

  A stranger my dad knew nothing about.

  And I was seeing this stranger while he drew a loveheart round my dad’s password: CLODDY.

  Asked for our secret numbers.

  Which I gave him.

  Couldn’t hear what the stranger was saying because my head was still clanging with Marjory’s last comment to my dad.

  Stefan told me everything was sorted. He cancelled the card, or so he said.

  After I found him:

  A strange man in Mum and Dad’s bedroom.

  But he wouldn’t have.

  The inside of my mouth was a kettle boiled dry. I tried to gulp saliva into it.

  He couldn’t have.

  Not Stefan.

  Not my sweet-talking guy.

  24

  all by myself …

  Petrified about what I might splurt about Stefan before I’d had time to figure if any of it was possible –

  Why would he nick anything?

  I barely opened my mouth in the half hour before Dad left for the airport. Hummed tunelessly instead. Reading me all wrong, Dad assumed my zipped lips were due to pre-Empty butterflies.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he reassured me out on the pavement as Marjory was shotputting Dad’s suitcase into her boot. ‘The neighbours know you’re home alone, Cloddy.’

  This comment, fluffy as Milky Way on the outside, was also Dad double-speak for ‘no drunken shindigs, all right?’

  ‘Oh, and I’ve spoken to your Uncle Mike. He knows you’re alone, too. Turns out he’s coming down to Glasgow in the next day or so. Not exactly sure when, but he’ll bunk at ours. Save the taxpayer a few quid on his usual hotel bill. This is my brother. Same line of business as yourself,’ Dad explained to Marjory while she was opening her passenger door for him. ‘Big chief honcho up north. Heard of him? Mike Quinn?’ That news stopped Marjory in her tracks. For the first time since we’d met she sounded almost feminine.

  ‘Not Super Mike? Peterhead? Oh, he’s a star. And it’s us he’s coming to liaise with,’ her deep voice did its best to giggle. ‘We’re working with him. National task force. The boss has just briefed him about that attack. Outside your shop. Could be part of the same case. Those men. With the hammer. Those ones you’ve identified, Claudia –’

  Marjory was positively skittish now, words puffing out in breathless gasps each time she stabbed her chest with both thumbs to illustrate how the Strathclyde polis were working with Uncle Super Mike’s division in the North-East.

  ‘Same investigation. Massive. Europe wide. Investigating this crime ring. Drugs and vice. Small, small world, sir, as they say. On that Disney ride: It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all. You know the one I mean?’

  Rather Dad than me, stuck with Marjory singing bass all the way to the airport.

  ‘I can’t believe this. What a coincidence. Super Mike. You’ll feel safer in this big house when he’s around, Claudia. I might pop round myself, let him keep an eye on me.’ While Marge was living out some secret fantasy with my uncle, Dad beckoned me to the passenger window. He took my hand. Pressed a far smaller quantity of notes into my palm than I’d been given by a certain person I daren’t mention to Dad in case he had a stroke. Dad squeezed my fingers shut over the money. Kissed my knuckles.

  ‘Say a prayer for wee Sean. Work hard, be good and look after yourself, Claudia,’ he managed to whisper just before Marjory leaned across him. Stubbing a big thumbs-up at me she winked, ‘Remember, I’ll be on the end of the phone if you need me. Soon as we round up those men you recognised, we’ll bring you down for an ID parade. See you then.’ Can’t wait. I shivered while I watched the police car drive Dad off. Claudia. You never call me that, Dad, I thought.

  Am I the only person who’s suddenly felt their home didn’t feel like home any more when the other people who lived in it went away? I don’t mean to the supermarket or work or the pub, but on a proper journey: Plane. Train. It was so weird. Once I waved Dad out of sight and stepped back through our front door, it was like Loneliness clanked in to keep me company.

  Don’t go. Come back, the bricks and mortar seemed to pine.

  I didn’t know what to do with myself. On the kitchen table a wisp of steam was still rising from Dad’s mug of hardly-sipped tea. I wrapped my hands round it. Tried to make myself stop thinking how our house had never felt colder. Less safe. The distance to the nearest neighbour so far. The pathway to the street so long. So overgrown.

  I realised, of course, that I was missing a trick. Here was me with my first ever proper Empty: party time, as just about anyone I knew would be whooping if they were standing here, in my kitchen, in my big Clod clogs. They’d have made calls already: Spread the word, gonna? Posted an invite on the Web. Come on over. There’d be just about time to compile a dance playlist before the doorbell was red hot, house heaving to the rafters, slopped bev stickying everyones’ party shoes to Mum’s good floors. Even though it was a school night, less than a week before exam-time, even though none of the folk who’d show at my party were mates:

  Whose Empty is this? Claudia Quinn? Who? Oh her? The big galoot who failed everything last year and who’s a total random since her mate left?

  But they’d still come to my party. It would last all week if I wanted it to. Night and day.

  But, even though I knew a hardcore Empty might have made me more popular, or at least less invisible to my yearmates, I wasn’t tempted. Wasn’t in the mood. Even though I hated the silence around me, and a party would have drowned the silence. Which wasn’t silent at all anyway. Silence never is.

  Haaaaaaahhhh it swirled around me, breathing down my neck, into my ear, forcing me to beat a retreat to the only place in the house I knew wouldn’t feel abandoned. My room. But even walking upstairs was a different experience to how it felt when Mum and Dad were around. Eeeek-eeeeee every tread creaked beneath my feet like it was sadistically out to spook me. And when I wandered into Mum and Dad’s bedroom to turn out a lamp the door clicked shut on me, making me spin round, heart vaulting from my mouth. I couldn’t remember the door ever doing that before. Nearly shat a brick.

  Then the phone calls started.

  Honestly. Just the bell shrilling through our big empty house the first time was bad enough.

  I squealed higher than poor Squeally, the ex-pet mouse I fed to death used to squeal whenever I trod on her tail.

  But when I picked the phone up and no one answered …

  I mean, of all the nights for some psychic eejit to plough the phone book, select Quinn, Sean at random, then churn up my guts with silent phone calls: I’m sensing a jumpy girl in a big house All By Herself. Let’s get dialling.

  Actually only the first few calls were silent.

  ‘Hello?’

  Nothing.

  ‘Hello? Hel-low?’ That happened twice, each call only lasting a few seconds before whoever was on the other end clicked the phone down.

  That was the main thing about those two calls that was disconcerting.

  Proved someone was there.

  So the third time I was a bit more pro-active.

  ‘He-llo again.’

  Nothing.

  ‘Look. If this is a wind-up, gonna stop.’ This time I put the phone down. Bang! Dialled 1471.

  We do not have the caller’s number said the calm lady from the phone company. Surprise, surprise. So when the fourth call came, I hardly gave it the chance to ring.

  ‘Get stuffed ya muppet!’ I snarled into the receiver. Just take a flying fu-’

  ‘Claudia!’

  ‘Mum?’

&n
bsp; Ooops. She sounded a bit shocked, my poor Mumsie, what with being such a lady. And that was before I swore.

  ‘Did I disturb you? Are you studying, darling?’ her questions travelled one way across the world while mine, ‘Have you been trying to get through, Mum?’ crossed them in the opposite direction. This was one of those long-distance calls with a delay that drives you spare. Means a proper conversation is impossible.

  ‘Is your dad gone? The baby’s pulling through. Isn’t that lovely? And he’s so beautiful. We’re laughing; he’s got your big feet.’ It felt like Mum took five light years to tell me while I interrupted her with the very questions and answers she was looking for: ‘Dad’s on his way. How’s the baby? Oh, that’s great! What’s Sean look like?’

  Then we’d rung off. ‘I’ll phone back from a landline when Dad comes, darling. This mobile’s dreadful. Look after yourself.’ I wished I hadn’t sounded so narked by the pauses on the line.

  ‘Fine, Mum.’

  ‘Bye, Mum.’

  ‘You’re breaking up, Mum.’ I’d snapped to bring the call to an end. Now, having had Mum closer than she’d been for days, then letting her go, I felt lonelier than ever.

  25

  dangerous mint

  Even though less than twelve hours from now I knew I’d be sweating through a timed essay: Mussolini’s Dictatorship – Good or Bad? under exam conditions, and had done No Revision Whatsoever, I wasn’t exactly in the mood to get stuck into swotting. (Was I ever?)

  So I cracked open a can of Dad’s Guiness – No lady’s beverage, as Mum calls it, which is one of the reasons I like it so much. Another is the taste. Bitter thickness; nothing like it. Worth every sip of its 600 calories a pint. While the creamy head settled in the glass, I booted up my computer, lowered one of those amazingly sticky Buttermint boulders into place behind my bottom front teeth. Then I started my weekly email to Georgina.

  Guess what? I’m All By Myself.

  Like always, I dictated my news aloud so I could kid myself me and G were gabbing face to face. I even hummed All By Myself à la Celine, nasal and swoopy and – thanks to the slow dissolve of the buttermint, lispy and slavery – imagining Georgina duetting with me, her voice much trillier and school choiry. We’d only ever get through a few bars of silly singing like that before hysterics took over.