Gone Missing (10 page)

Me and Dad still have our spats, I guess we always will. We are very different kinds of people. Sometimes even now Dad will put his foot down, with a great SMASH, so that if I were a poor little butterfly creature I would be utterly crushed and humiliated. As I am not a butterfly, but more of a fighting type, I tend to stick up for myself, and that can lead to trouble. But nothing like as serious as it used to be. It's Kirsty, these days, who sends Dad into apoplexy. She's suddenly become a rebellious teenager, always answering back and trying to have her own way. So
much for little Miss Goody Two-Shoes! I just sit there and enjoy it.

I had to tell them where Honey was, of course; I knew that I would. I did point out that she was sixteen.

“If she doesn't want to come back, she doesn't have to. She can do what she likes!”

But apparently that wasn't quite right. She was old enough to leave school–just–but she couldn't stay away from home unless her Mum agreed. She also had to be in what they called “a safe environment”. Mum rather anxiously asked me, “
Is
it a safe environment?” I knew she was thinking about me rather than about Honey. I told her that it was. I said, “It's mainly just boring.”

“But this boy that was there—”

“Joe,” I said. “He's OK. And anyway, there's his nan.”

“It hardly sounds ideal,” said Mum.

It hadn't been for me; but maybe it was for Honey. Her mum came round to talk to me and I told her about Honey being a waitress, and doing some of the cooking, and how she was enjoying it, and her mum said, “Well, it's probably better for her than living with me. She wasn't ever happy with me.” I think my mum was quite shocked; but Mum had never really believed me when I
said how badly Mrs de Vito used to treat Honey. She always told me that I must be imagining it, or at any rate exaggerating.

In the end, Honey was allowed to stay where she was. We called each other quite a lot during the first few weeks, but as time passed it grew harder and harder to think of things to say.

Honey's life seemed totally bound up in Soup 'n Sarnies. All she wanted to tell me about were the customers, the new menu, the number of sandwiches she'd made. I tried to be interested, but I really wasn't. And I don't think Honey was terribly interested in hearing about my life, either. I'd taken up with Marnie again, I was concentrating on school work, I'd got myself a boyfriend (one that Dad didn't actually do his nut about, even if he didn't altogether approve).

And so Honey and I gradually drifted apart, and I didn't hear anything more until just a few weeks ago when she suddenly turned up, beaming, on the doorstep,
with a tiny baby. She and Joe had got married! A year ago I'd have been appalled. Honey and fat slob Joe! In fact he wasn't fat any more, he'd slimmed right down and actually looked quite presentable. Mum said afterwards that he was a “really nice young man. Not a bit like you described him!” The more I thought about it, the more I realised how snobby I'd been. Joe was the best thing that could ever have happened to Honey. Maybe he wouldn't win Brain of Britain, but he was kind, and gentle, and he loved her. I oughtn't to have sneered.

They'd come on a visit to Honey's mum, to show off the baby. They've called her Star, and she's the sweetest thing! Honey made me hold her, though I didn't really want to. Just for a second I got quite gooey and thought that I wouldn't mind having a baby myself. But not for years and years! I have plans. At the moment they don't extend much beyond getting decent marks in next year's exams. After that–we shall see.

One thing I am
not
going to do is end up working in a greasy spoon. I still have a mark on my arm where the beastly coffee machine spat at me. It's a constant reminder, if ever I'm tempted to listen to music or chat with friends instead of doing my homework. Far more effective than Dad shouting!

Not that he does, any more, it's Kirsten he shouts at now. I reckon she deserves it; I'm sure I was never as tiresome as she was. There are times I even feel a bit sorry for Dad. I can see that I must have tried his patience. Of course we continue to have our differences, I expect we always will, but we are both doing our best to be civilised.

I'm trying to, like, respect his views, even if I don't always agree with them; Dad's trying to accept that I am a person in my own right.
I would say that on the whole we are managing quite well.

He certainly isn't the wicked stepfather I used to make him out to be. He might have these really strange ideas about life and how it should be lived, but he's my dad, and I do still love him in spite of everything.

And I know that he loves me; he's just not comfortable showing his feelings. But, hey, we're all different! It doesn't mean we can't get on together. I am becoming
seriously
tolerant in my old age.