Sugar and Spice (9 page)

Even when I’d come to the end, I couldn’t get to sleep for thinking about it. Imagining how it must have been, when the Nazis came. Imagining how it might have been, if they hadn’t come. If Anne Frank had grown up and got married and had children of her own.

Karina said it was just utterly boring and she didn’t know what people saw in it. According to Karina, if Anne Frank hadn’t been discovered by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp, no one would ever have bothered reading her stupid diary.

It was when Karina said things like that that I knew we couldn’t ever be friends. I knew that if Mr Kirk had set us an essay on Anne Frank, I’d have dashed off ten pages of my own, just like that, and wouldn’t have cared if Karina
had
gone off to join Amie Phillips. However, all we had for homework that night was maths. Oh, dear! I really have to concentrate
so
hard on maths. But I decided that I would. I’d make a determined effort, because dear Mrs Saeed never embarrassed me, or singled me out, even when I did get good marks. Also, of course, Shay would be pleased with me. I wanted Shay to be pleased. At any rate, I certainly didn’t want her to be cross!

So after tea I cleared a space on the kitchen table and sat down with my maths book and started to concentrate. It was fractions, at which I’m quite hopeless. Especially
decimal
fractions. But I remembered Mrs Henson telling
me: “You can do it, Ruth, if you just put your mind to it.” That was fractions, too. I seem to have a big black hole in my brain when it comes to numbers. But I could do it!

I chewed the top of my pen. 0.35 + 0.712 + 0.9…I couldn’t even use a calculator, cos my dear little brother had gone and ruined the only one we had. He’d dropped it in the bath!

Can you imagine? Mum said she’d see if there was another one on offer somewhere, like with a packet of crisps or something, but in the meantime I was having to work everything out
on paper.
In fact, that was what we were supposed to do anyway, but I bet nobody else did.

I’d just worked out the answer and was feeling rather pleased with myself, when Mum came bursting into the kitchen and cried, “Ruth, I’ve just remembered…it’s Lisa’s Home Bake day tomorrow and I promised her I’d make something for her to take in. I’d clean forgotten about it! Just pop down the corner shop, there’s a good girl, and get me some pastry. I haven’t got time to make any.”

I
hadn’t got time to go down the corner shop. “I’m doing my homework!” I said.

“Oh, now, come on, it’ll only take you five minutes!”

“So why can’t Lisa go?” She was the one that wanted the stupid pie, not me.

“I’m not sending a nine year old out in the dark. Just get yourself down there and stop being so stroppy.”

I went off, grumbling. How ridiculous, going to the corner shop for pastry when I had a mum who worked in Tesco’s! Needless to say, there was a queue a mile long at the checkout. There would be, wouldn’t there?

Everyone picking up fish fingers and TV dinners on their way home from work. Angrily I snatched a packet of pastry out of the freezer and stamped about at the back of the queue. Why did Mum do this to me? What about my education? I knew she had a lot to cope with, what with working all day and having to look after Dad, not to mention Sammy and the Terrible Two. But I was trying to do my maths homework!

Anyway, guess what? When I finally raced home with the pastry, it was THE WRONG SORT. She hadn’t wanted
frozen
pastry.

“How can I roll it out if it’s frozen?”

She sent me all the way back again. This time, for
chilled
pastry.

“Short crust, mind, not puff!”

So then I had a bit of an argument with the man at the checkout cos he said the frozen pastry wasn’t properly frozen any more and he didn’t want to take it back. But Mum hadn’t given me any more money and I was practically in tears, cos I just couldn’t stand the thought of going all the way home and all the way back for the second time, but in the end a nice lady standing behind me said it was all right, she’d take the frozen stuff, and I was just
so
grateful to her.

“That’s better,” said Mum, when I’d panted up six flights of stairs and back into the kitchen. (The reason I’d had to pant up the stairs was cos the lifts weren’t working.
Again.
)
“Now, look, just pop across the hall and ask Mrs Kenny if she’s got a tin of cherries I could have. Here! You can give her this in exchange.” She tossed a tin of fruit salad at me. “Go on! I can’t make a pie out of fruit salad.”

I
hate
having to go and ask Mrs Kenny for things. Mum’s always making me do it. I just find it so degrading! Anyway, Mrs Kenny didn’t have a tin of cherries. I told her Mum wanted to make a pie for Lisa’s Home Bake, so she gave me some sticks of rhubarb instead. I loathe rhubarb; so does Lisa. Tee hee! I should care. Mum did, though. She said, “What’s this? Rhubarb? That’s no good! I wanted cherries. You know Lisa won’t eat rhubarb!”

“That’s all she had,” I said.

Mum made an impatient tutting sound, like it was my fault Mrs Kenny didn’t have spare tins of cherries in her cupboard. Why didn’t Mum, if it came to that? What’s the point of working in Tesco’s if you can’t stock up with things?

“We’ll have to cook it,” said Mum. “Get me a saucepan. Well, go on! Don’t just stand there. Do something!”

So before I know it, I’m over at the sink scrubbing rhubarb and chopping it into little pieces and pulling off the stringy bits, and dumping it in the pan and showering sugar over it.

“Not that much!” screamed Mum. “God in heaven, your dad won’t have any left for his tea!”

I sometimes think that my mum is
seriously
disorganised. Me, myself, I like things to be orderly. I’m always tidying my desk and making out lists of Things to be Done. But it seems like I’m the only one in my family.

After I’d helped with the pie and done the washing up, including all the stuff left over from earlier, Mum said we might as well get the lunch-boxes ready for tomorrow.

“Save the rush in the morning.”

I said,
“Mu-u-um,
I’m trying to do my homework!”

“Oh, very well,” said Mum. “If you don’t want to help. As if I don’t have enough to do! I’d
hoped
to be able to put my feet up at some stage.”

I looked at Mum and she did look frazzled. I know it wears her out, all the work she has to do. So we made up the lunch-boxes and I did some more washing up, and then, because poor Mum was obviously worn out, I told her to go and sit down and I’d make her a cup of tea; but when I took the tea into the other room I found her struggling with Dad’s oxygen cylinder, trying to
drag it out from the bedroom. I ran straight over to help her. Dad’s oxygen cylinder, which he has to use if his breathing gets extra bad, is really really heavy. Between us, we managed to lug it across the hall and into the lounge.

We were both panting, though not as much as Dad. I suppose I ought to be used to it by now, but I’m always secretly terrified that maybe one day he just won’t be able to breathe at all.

Naturally, with all the racket going on, Sammy woke up. He came pattering out in his pyjamas, wanting to know what was happening. Seconds later, the Terrible Two appeared. By the time I’d got them all back to bed, and Dad was breathing better with his oxygen mask, it was nearly ten o’clock and I was just feeling too tired to concentrate on fractions. The homework had to be handed in next morning. What was I going to tell Shay???