My Mum Tracy Beaker Page 13

  ‘Mum! I heard you!’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t a real row – we were just getting things straight. I’m not standing for any nonsense. Sean might have played around a bit in the past, but now he’s ready to settle down with you and me.’

  ‘And Alfie,’ I said. ‘He’ll never have to go back to Battersea, will he? Promise, Mum.’

  ‘I promise. He’s ours now, no matter what,’ she said.

  ‘Even if he’s sick in your new car and spoils the upholstery?’

  ‘Even if – though you’ll be the one mopping it up.’

  ‘Even if he accidentally swallows your diamond or ruby or sapphire or emerald engagement ring?’

  ‘Even if – though you’ll have to check when it comes out his other end and pick it out of his poo.’

  ‘I’ll make very sure he doesn’t swallow it then,’ I said. We were nearly at Ava and Alice’s house. ‘Mum, can Alice come to tea on Saturday?’

  ‘Soon. But not this Saturday,’ she said.

  ‘Then can Tyrone come instead?’

  ‘He can come too, but not this Saturday either. Someone else is coming. The most important person of all. Cam,’ said Mum.

  ‘Cam would like Alice. She might even like Tyrone,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, I know. But I want this first visit to be special, just for Cam. One, because she’s my mum and I love her. And two, if she hadn’t fostered me, I’d never have met Sean all those years ago when we were kids.’

  I understood. ‘And three, if Cam hadn’t taken me to Battersea I wouldn’t have Alfie,’ I said.

  ‘Mm,’ said Mum.

  So we phoned Cam and invited her, and she asked her friends Jane and Liz to keep an eye on the girls on Saturday. Sean Godfrey seemed happy about Cam’s special visit. Since the Sandy Forthright row he’d seemed very eager to please Mum.

  He bought her a car too. You’ll never, ever guess the car Mum picked! She could have chosen any make at all. Sean Godfrey wanted her to have another red Porsche to be the twin of his, but she’d have had to wait several months for all the special fittings – and Mum’s never been any good at waiting for anything.

  ‘You know what I’d really like instead?’ she said. ‘I know it sounds a bit mad – but I’d like a pink Cadillac convertible.’

  ‘What?’ said Sean Godfrey.

  ‘When I was a little kid it was my dream car. I pretended my mum was a Hollywood actress, and that one day she’d come and fetch me in her pink Cadillac,’ said Mum. ‘Oh, imagine if I had my very own pink Cadillac now! Oh, Sean, please could I have one?’

  ‘But that’s crazy, babe. Why would you want some ancient vintage car that’ll probably be forever conking out when you could have something new and powerful and stylish?’ he said, baffled.

  ‘Oh, Sean, please please please! It was my childhood dream!’ Mum begged.

  ‘I just don’t get you, Trace. You’d think you would want to forget about your crazy childhood,’ he said – but he took her to a vintage-car dealer, and when Mum came to collect me from school she was driving a shiny bright pink open-top Cadillac, just like the ones in old American movies!

  ‘Hop in, babycakes!’ she said in a dreadful American accent, grinning all over her face. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’

  ‘It’s very pink,’ I said.

  ‘Yep,’ said Mum happily. ‘It’s just the way I imagined.’

  Maybe it made her start imagining too much. She got in touch with Granny Carly.

  On Saturday morning Mum took us all by surprise. Sean Godfrey was showing off, doing press-ups on the kitchen floor, and Rosalie was making me another pancake, and Mum was having a second cup of coffee and checking her phone when she suddenly said, ‘Looks like we’re having two visitors for tea today?’

  I stared at her. ‘But it’s a special day for Cam. You said.’

  ‘I know. But the other day I phoned Granny Carly, just to tell her our new address, and she could hardly believe it. She’d seen all my posts on Instagram, but she didn’t realize they were pics of my house. We had a long chat, and she said she’d love to come to tea one Saturday. I thought she meant any old Saturday, so I said yes. But she’s just emailed again to say she’ll be here at three o’clock,’ Mum said sheepishly.

  ‘Can’t you say no?’ I asked.

  ‘Sixty-eight … Don’t you like your granny, Jess?’ Sean asked, mid-press.

  ‘Not much,’ I said truthfully. ‘And you don’t like her either, Mum – you know you don’t.’

  ‘Yes, but … she is my mum.’

  ‘You’ve said a million times that Cam has always been more of a mum to you than Granny Carly. And you can’t put Cam off now, not when she’s made arrangements. That would be so mean!’

  ‘Seventy-two … Why on earth can’t both these mums come?’ said Sean Godfrey, starting to pant a little.

  ‘Because they don’t really get on,’ said Mum. ‘Sean, would you stop bobbing up and down like that, it’s getting on my nerves.’

  ‘Seventy-four … Just let me get to a hundred,’ he said.

  ‘Granny Carly probably won’t turn up anyway,’ I said. ‘She hardly ever came when she was supposed to visit you at the Dumping Ground.’

  Mum had told me this again and again, but now she looked stricken. ‘Of course she’ll turn up,’ she said fiercely.

  ‘Seventy-nine … Tell you what, I’ll ask my mum round to tea as well. Then they can all have a go at each other,’ said Sean Godfrey. He started laughing at the idea, and collapsed on the floor. ‘Now look what you girls have made me do!’

  ‘Out the way, Mr Sean,’ said Rosalie, stepping over him to serve me my second pancake.

  ‘Have you got a mum, Rosalie?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course I have, back in the Philippines. I have many dear relatives. It’s why I work so hard for this big fierce man – they all need a share of my wages,’ she said.

  ‘Ah, you love me really, Rosalie,’ said Sean Godfrey, sitting up. ‘Are you going to make your special chocolate cake for Tracy’s mum?’

  ‘I’ll make the cake,’ said Mum. ‘And OK, we’ll have both of them together, Cam and Carly, even though they’ve got nothing in common. Apart from me.’

  ‘But Rosalie’s famous for her chocolate cake,’ said Sean Godfrey.

  Big mistake. Mum was more determined than ever to make one herself. Mum’s good at making cakes.

  She’s always made me very special birthday cakes. Last year’s one was like our living room – all red, with a purple marzipan sofa and red marzipan cushions. She fashioned two little marzipan people with amazing hair made out of liquorice laces. She makes birthday cakes for herself too – really elaborate ones with lots of layers and buttercream and icing, and all kinds of decorations on top, and Happy Birthday Tracy Beaker piped in big red letters. It might seem a bit weird – it’s mostly only Mum and me and Cam eating it, and it goes stale long before we get to the end – but Mum has this thing about birthday cakes because she had to share hers with Weedy Peter. She always wished for her mum to come and see her – and now her mum was coming, and I wished she wasn’t.

  Mum took over the kitchen, and wouldn’t even let me help her bake, though usually I share the stirring, and she always lets me scrape round the bowl with a spoon. I could see it was annoying for Rosalie, being exiled from her own kitchen, but she just shrugged and went to polish the parquet floors. She let me wrap dusters round my feet so that I could put an extra shine on them while I skated backwards and forwards. Alfie tried to copy me, and Rosalie and I ended up shrieking with laughter.

  Mum came to see what was going on. I thought she’d be thrilled to see the floors looking so splendid for our visitors, but instead she got cross.

  ‘You’ve turned the whole house into a death trap! My mum wears really high heels – she’ll skid and break her neck!’ she said, huffing and puffing.

  Alfie got a bit frightened and did a little wee. He couldn’t help himself, but that made Mum even crosser.

  ‘F
or goodness’ sake, Jess, take that dog out and walk him round the grounds. It’s time you started training him properly. You shouldn’t keep laughing at him when he does something silly, it will only encourage him. I thought you promised to be a really responsible dog owner! You’re useless!’

  I took Alfie outside and we moped around. I felt Mum was being extra mean. So did Alfie.

  Sean Godfrey came out onto the patio and started skipping with a rope. I sniggered at the idea of a grown man skipping, but he was irritatingly brilliant at it. He turned the rope so quickly I couldn’t even see it, and yet he didn’t trip once, his feet nimbly dancing up and down.

  He saw me watching. ‘Do you want a go, Jess?’ he asked.

  ‘No thanks,’ I said.

  We heard a shout from the kitchen, and then a very rude swear word.

  ‘Uh-oh!’ said Sean Godfrey. ‘Your mum’s in a right strop this morning!’

  He just wanted to cosy up to me and moan about Mum, but I wasn’t going to join in, even though I was still smarting at being called useless.

  ‘She’s just a bit het up because my Granny Carly’s coming. She can’t help it,’ I said. ‘I’d better go in and see what’s up with her now,’ I said. ‘Come on, Alfie.’

  Rosalie was at the kitchen door, peeping in. ‘Doesn’t look good,’ she whispered to me.

  I gave her Alfie’s lead and slipped into the kitchen. Mum’s cake was on the floor in pieces. Mum was sitting beside it, her head on her knees. She looked like she might be crying – though of course she never cries.

  I sat down beside her and put my arm round her. She cuddled up close, and then blew her nose on a kitchen towel.

  ‘Did the cake slip off the baking tray?’ I asked.

  ‘It did. How did you know?’ Mum said, sniffing and wiping.

  ‘I heard you say a very, very rude word.’

  ‘Well, if I ever hear you saying that, I’ll be furious.’

  I started gathering up the cake pieces. It was lucky that Rosalie kept the floor so clean.

  ‘Can’t we stick the bits together with buttercream?’ I asked.

  ‘Nope. It’s completely smashed,’ said Mum. ‘It’s only good for trifle now.’

  ‘I love trifle,’ I said.

  ‘And I love you, Jess,’ said Mum, giving me a hug. ‘Sorry I was ratty. I always seem to get in a state when my mum comes.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Oh, Jess, what am I going to do? I don’t think I can bear starting all over again on another blooming cake.’

  ‘Why don’t you make a trifle then – a big strawberry one with lots of cream – and ask Rosalie if she’ll make her chocolate cake?’ I said.

  ‘Good plan,’ said Mum.

  She said sorry to Rosalie too.

  ‘That’s OK, Miss Tracy,’ said Rosalie. ‘When my mum came over here on a visit, I got in such a state I forgot about my cake altogether and it was burned black by the time I remembered. And I only have the one mum, and you’ve got two!’

  Mum and Rosalie worked companionably together in the kitchen, while I took Alfie back into the garden and started teaching him to walk to heel. Alfie’s not very good at anatomy. He kept forgetting where my heel was. I had loads of treats in my pocket to reward him with if he ever got it right, but he didn’t. So eventually we played Hunt the Treat instead. He could do that trick easy-peasy.

  We just had a sandwich for lunch as we were going to have an elaborate tea. Mum and Rosalie and I had tuna and sweetcorn on brown bread. Sean Godfrey had a steak sandwich in a baguette.

  Then the waiting began. Mum and I couldn’t settle to anything. Mum changed her outfit twice. She put on her best red frock and heels, but then thought she didn’t look relaxed and casual enough, so she changed into jeans and a T-shirt – and then decided she looked too scruffy. She ended up in her velvet jeans and a prettier top and then started fussing about her hair and make-up.

  Cam came first, dead on time – dear lovely familiar Cam, in her jeans and T-shirt with no make-up at all – and I hugged her, and Mum stopped acting weird and hugged her too. Sean Godfrey kissed her on the cheek and she kissed him back.

  ‘I remember you from when I was a kid, Cam,’ he said. ‘You haven’t changed a bit.’

  ‘I remember you too, Sean. You’ve changed a lot!’

  ‘I’ve done all right for myself, haven’t I?’ He nodded his head at his house, his garden, his pool, his car. ‘I hope you approve.’

  ‘Just so long as you look after my Tracy and Jess,’ said Cam. ‘Here, I’ve brought some house-warming presents.’

  She fished them out of her big bag: a little bunch of daffodils from her garden, a tin of home-made blueberry muffins, a doggy chew for Alfie – and a parcel.

  ‘Don’t get too excited,’ she said when she gave it to Mum. ‘I found it at a boot fair. It’s something you wanted when you were little, Tracy.’

  Mum tore open the package. She’s hopeless with presents – she has to get them undone straight away, rip rip. She found herself holding an old-fashioned alarm clock – a kid’s one, with Mickey Mouse telling the time with his big gloved hands. I was a bit baffled, but Mum’s face screwed up and her eyes went watery.

  ‘Oh, Cam,’ she said, and gave her a big hug.

  ‘It’s … very nice,’ said Sean Godfrey, trying to be polite.

  ‘It’s exactly like Justine Littlewood’s!’ said Mum. ‘I was so dead envious of her Mickey Mouse alarm clock. Oh, Cam, you’re brilliant!’

  We took Cam for a tour of the house. She was trying to be polite, but you could tell it wasn’t really her style at all. It was all far too big and bare, the few furnishings shiny-new, the sofas so slippery you practically slid off them. It still didn’t have any of our stuff in it. Sean Godfrey couldn’t see the point of our Toby jugs and our china dogs and our plaster ducks and the rest of our precious things. He didn’t even want us to put up our picture of the mother and daughter like us. He said it was too old-fashioned. I’ve got it in my wardrobe now, and sometimes I squeeze inside and talk to them.

  Cam’s house is crammed with ornaments and pictures, and she has bright cushions and throws covering up her ancient saggy furniture, and bookshelves round all the walls. Sean Godfrey doesn’t have a single book, just a few magazines. He only has one painting – it’s on his living-room wall, along with his framed photos and cuttings, a life-size portrait of himself in his football strip. It’s very unnerving being in a room with two of him.

  Cam wasn’t that keen on the garden either, murmuring that his neat ornamental flower beds and great green lawns made it look like a park. Sean Godfrey took this as a compliment. She liked the pool though, and said she wished she’d brought her swimming costume.

  ‘Borrow mine,’ said Mum, which made Cam laugh because she’s quite plumpish now and Mum’s a skinny-minny like me.

  Cam loved Rosalie. She’d been very iffy when Mum told her that Sean Godfrey had his own housekeeper. ‘So he can boss her around and tell her what to do?’ she’d said.

  She found it funny that actually Rosalie often bossed Sean Godfrey around, and told him what to do. Rosalie was very complimentary about Cam’s muffins. When Cam saw Rosalie’s chocolate cake on a plate in the kitchen, she was very complimentary back.

  ‘Are we having tea now?’ Cam asked hopefully. ‘I skipped lunch deliberately, and I’m starving!’

  ‘Soon,’ said Mum. ‘We might be having another guest.’

  ‘Jess’s new pal Tyrone?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ said Mum. ‘We will ask him sometime though. If Jess insists.’

  ‘Is it Marina and her two girls? Jess is friends with the younger one, isn’t she?’

  ‘They’re definitely invited – maybe next weekend.’

  ‘So who is it? I know! Justine Littlewood!’ said Cam.

  She was Mum’s deadliest enemy at the children’s home.

  ‘Oh, very funny,’ said Mum. ‘Hey, I hope she’s seen my photos on Instagram! At the Dumping Ground w
e all used to talk about what we’d do and where we’d live when we were grown up. I wanted to be a writer and Justine wanted to be a model and Louise wanted to be an actress, and we all wanted to live in a great big house with a swimming pool and drive a flash car – and here I am, living the life! I bet Justine’s pea-green with envy.’

  ‘So who’s the mystery guest?’ Cam asked.

  ‘Well. It’s Carly,’ Mum mumbled. ‘I didn’t actually invite her to come, not today, but she just assumed that she could barge in whenever. But you know what she’s like. I’m pretty sure she won’t turn up. And who cares anyway? You’re here, Cam, and you’re the only mum I want.’

  Cam reached out and gave Mum’s hand a little squeeze.

  ‘So shall I put the kettle on?’ Rosalie asked.

  ‘Yes, let’s have tea right this minute,’ said Mum.

  Sean Godfrey wanted us to have tea in the sitting room, with Rosalie serving us from a trolley!

  Mum rolled her eyes at this idea. ‘Let’s have tea in the kitchen, for goodness’ sake,’ she said.

  So we all sat down at the kitchen table, Rosalie too, and I was just trying to decide whether to have a muffin or strawberry trifle or chocolate cake first when the doorbell rang.

  ‘Mum!’ said Mum, and she leaped up and ran into the hall.

  MY TUMMY WENT so tight that I didn’t want muffin or trifle or cake any more. I sat very still. Alfie crept under the table and licked my knees, which was very comforting.

  We heard talking and laughing at the front door, and then Mum and Granny Carly came into the kitchen. Carly was holding an enormous bunch of roses and lilies in cellophane, a carrier bag and a big cardboard box. I hardly recognized her. She didn’t look the slightest bit grannyish. She’d had her hair straightened and it was blonder than ever. She’d had her eyebrows done too. She looked as if she’d just come back from holiday, with a low-cut white dress to set off her tan, and high heels that made her much taller than Mum.