We Are the Beaker Girls Read online

  ‘Jess?’ said Mum, looking up from her stool. ‘What’s up? What happened?’

  I took a deep breath. ‘Nothing’s up. Nothing happened. I just got a bit greedy, that’s all. I started licking mine on the way home, and then I got carried away and couldn’t stop. It was soooo delicious.’ I licked my lips for emphasis.

  They laughed at me, believing every word. I knew it was wrong to fib, but I couldn’t stand the thought of the fuss they’d make. Flo would be ‘poor darling this, poor darling that’, and she’d insist on giving me her chocolatey ice cream instead. And Mum would get all fierce and angry and go storming out of the shop, scouring the streets of Cooksea for big boys in baseball caps. I didn’t want them to react like that. I just wanted to forget it had ever happened.

  It wasn’t easy to forget with my mouth so dry and hot and empty and longing for soft, sweet, cold ice cream. We only had a quick scratch lunch too – a tuna-and-tomato sandwich each, with ginger beer for Mum and me, and a small can of real beer for Flo (she says it stops her getting indigestion). But at least in the evening we had a really big celebratory meal, and no one could snatch it away because it was safely on a plate in the dining-room part of the Spade and Bucket pub.

  I love the Spade and Bucket. Outside, it’s got little buckets of geraniums along each windowsill, with umbrella stands full of children’s spades on either side of the front door. It’s lovely inside too, painted in bright seaside colours, and the walls of the ladies’ loo are covered with funny old postcards, most of them rude. I like to sit there, laughing at all the silly jokes.

  We went there on my very first visit to Cooksea – which was also Mum’s birthday. We didn’t have much money for a birthday meal but we shared a spaghetti bolognese and it was totally delicious. We ended up having birthday cake too, because this man called Peter Ingham was having a birthday party. You’ll never guess what: my mum and this Peter were at the children’s home together when they were young! Peter said they’d been great friends. Mum later told me that they hadn’t really – Peter had been a bit of a wimp, and she’d always called him Weedy Peter.

  He didn’t seem weedy to me. Well, not very. He’s a head teacher now but he didn’t look a bit fierce, like Mrs Michaels at my old school. He looked friendly. He wore a very bright jazzy shirt but he seemed a quiet, gentle sort of person. The exact opposite of Sean Godfrey.

  We’d been back to the Spade and Bucket a couple of times for a quick lunchtime snack of cheesy chips – just Mum and me, while Flo was having a lie-down. Of course we wanted Flo with us this time, though it would be a bit of a problem getting her there. Flo is a very big lady and her legs are weak because she had a stroke.

  Mum thinks she should have a wheelchair.

  ‘I should cocoa!’ said Flo, acting the cockney again.

  ‘Seriously, Flo. It would make such a difference. I could wheel you everywhere,’ Mum told her.

  ‘Seriously, Tracy – no! I’m not going to be shoved about slumped in a wheelchair like a helpless old lady,’ said Flo.

  Mum managed not to say that she is a helpless old lady. ‘You could come to all the junk fairs and car boot sales with us,’ she pointed out instead. ‘You’d love to join in the banter with the other dealers.’

  ‘Do I really want to get up before dawn and freeze to death? No thanks very much,’ said Flo firmly. ‘Besides, you’re only a skinny little thing. Look at those puny arms! I bet you couldn’t even budge me, let alone wheel me round a muddy field. If I can’t go out on my own two feet, I won’t go out at all.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have one of those push-along frame things, Flo?’ I asked. ‘You know, it’s got wheels and you just have to edge it forward.’

  ‘No, ta very much,’ she said. ‘I’d look a right banana. What if someone recognized me?’

  Flo had appeared in some films and then as the cleaning lady in an old sitcom called Life with the Lilliputs. Mum and I watched an episode on YouTube. It wasn’t actually very funny, though Flo was marvellous of course. She was half the size then. I doubt if anyone would recognize her now, but it would have been cruel to say so.

  ‘You two girls go out and have a meal at the Spade and Bucket. I’ll be fine here,’ Flo insisted now.

  ‘You’re coming with us,’ said Mum. ‘I’ll drive you there in the van.’

  ‘Don’t talk daft. You’ll never get me in it!’

  She had a point. Mum and I tried heaving her up onto the seat at the front but it was much too high. We shoved, and Flo let go of her walking sticks and tried her best to pull herself up, but her arms had no strength left.

  ‘It’s useless, darlings,’ she gasped, red in the face with effort.

  ‘I know!’ said Mum. ‘We’ll pop you in the back!’

  The van has big doors at the back, and there’s a ramp so you can wheel heavy furniture up. We couldn’t wheel Flo because she might have wobbled off, but we helped her stagger the five paces up the ramp. Alfie followed behind, nudging her gently as if she was a giant sheep.

  ‘Hurray!’ said Mum.

  ‘But I’ll never keep my balance when you drive off, and I can’t sit on the floor – you won’t be able to heave me up again,’ said Flo.

  It was my turn to say ‘I know!’ I got the keys and ran back into the shop and found an old Lloyd Loom chair, light enough for me to carry but big and sturdy enough for Flo to sit on. ‘Here you are, Flo. Your special seat!’ I said.

  ‘You Beaker girls!’ said Flo. She looked a bit teary behind her glasses. ‘You don’t give up, do you? Bless you, darlings!’

  It only took two minutes to drive down to the Spade and Bucket, going very slowly so that Flo wouldn’t get too shaken about in the back. Mum stopped the van right outside the pub door and we helped Flo down the ramp again, while Alfie did his best to encourage her, nearly tripping her up in the process.

  There were quite a few people having a drink outside and they couldn’t help staring.

  Flo stuck out her chin. ‘Make way for the royal procession,’ she said, using her posh, fruity voice now, then warbled the beginning of the National Anthem.

  They all started chuckling and Flo played to the crowd, leaning on just one stick so she could give them a royal wave.

  ‘Careful, Your Majesty!’ Mum hissed.

  Somehow we got her safely down, and then I helped her into the pub while Mum went to park the van. It turned out that Flo knew Lizzie, who ran the pub. They threw their arms round each other, and Flo nearly went crashing to the floor. Her legs were wobblier than ever after the journey, but I hung onto her, and eventually we made our way to a table at the back. Lizzie even brought Flo her own big comfy chair with a cushion because the ordinary wooden ones were rather spindly.

  By this time Mum had come back, and Lizzie insisted on giving us drinks on the house. Flo had a large gin and tonic, Mum had a glass of wine, I had a St Clement’s (orange juice and lemonade and delicious!) and Alfie had a bowl of water which he slurped appreciatively. Apparently Flo used to be a regular, popping down nearly every night for a drink or two after work. ‘Or three or four,’ she said, laughing.

  Lizzie had been an actress too – she’d even had a bit part in Life with the Lilliputs, Flo’s sitcom. They nattered on – and on and on – about the show and the cast and the director, while Mum and I looked at the menu and got a bit bored.

  ‘I was an actress too once upon a time,’ Mum said suddenly.

  ‘Really?’ said Lizzie.

  ‘Really?’ said Flo, who was getting used to Mum and her stories.

  ‘Yes, I had the lead part in a Christmas show once. A Dickens adaptation. Very jolly. I got good reviews, didn’t I, Jess?’

  ‘Brilliant,’ I said, deadpan. Mum had played Scrooge in A Christmas Carol – she’d shown me the cutting from the local paper, saying ‘little Tracy Beaker was brilliant’. Little Tracy Beaker was only my age at the time, and it was just a school play, but Flo and Lizzie weren’t to know that.

  ‘And Mum was in an hour-l
ong television show,’ I told them.

  She’d been even younger then – it was a documentary about children in the care system. Mum said she was the star of that too, and I bet she was.

  Lizzie was all round-eyed, but Flo gave Mum’s knee a tap under the table.

  ‘Shall we order our grub then, dearies?’ she said. ‘I’m in the mood for one of your steak-and-ale pies, Lizzie.’

  Mum chose a special burger and chips, and I decided to have sausage and mash because I knew who’d like to share my sausages. We all ate heartily and then decided to have a pudding too, even though we were quite full up. Flo had treacle tart and custard, Mum had banoffee pie, and I had a banana split. It was good to have some ice cream after I’d lost out on my cone. Alfie didn’t have any pudding because he’d gone to sleep under the table, already very full indeed.

  Lizzie had to serve the other customers, but she joined us again when Flo and Mum were having cappuccinos. I like a spoonful of the froth on the top, but I hate the actual coffee underneath.

  ‘Do you remember when Jess and I came to have supper one evening a few weeks ago – there was that big birthday party …?’ Mum said, making little twirls in her coffee with her spoon.

  ‘Course I remember! The birthday boy was an old pal of yours, wasn’t he?’ said Lizzie.

  ‘Sort of,’ said Mum. ‘Is he a regular here, then?’

  ‘He’s a teacher, isn’t he? They come here whenever they’re celebrating,’ said Lizzie. ‘They can get quite raucous.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call Peter Ingham raucous!’

  ‘So who’s this Peter chappie then?’ Flo asked. ‘An old boyfriend of yours, Tracy?’

  ‘Hardly!’ said Mum. ‘Just someone I knew as a kid, in the children’s home.’

  ‘Shall I say you were looking for him next time he comes in?’ Lizzie asked.

  ‘No! Yes. Well, maybe. I thought he might come looking for me actually, just to see the shop. Flo’s called it The Dumping Ground, and that’s the name we gave to the children’s home.’

  ‘Sounds like you are a bit sweet on him, Tracy,’ said Flo.

  ‘Rubbish!’ said Mum.

  I looked at her hard. She’d gone very pink. Perhaps it was just because it was hot in the pub and she’d had a lot to eat. Perhaps.

  WE SETTLED FLO into her bed downstairs, behind the shop, with her usual flask of tea and a packet of digestive biscuits in case she got hungry in the night (unlikely, after such whacking great portions of steak pie and treacle tart). She also had a hot-water bottle, even though it was the middle of summer, to stop her feet getting cold and crampy. Her book lay beside her reading lamp just in case she couldn’t sleep. It was the biggest book in the shop, Gone with the Wind.

  ‘That’s my motto in the night,’ Flo giggled. ‘Good job no one shares my bed any more.’

  She also had her radio on, turned down low.

  ‘But you can’t hear it properly,’ I said.

  ‘It’s still a comfort. It makes me think someone’s there,’ she explained.

  ‘Well, you always have someone here now,’ said Mum. ‘Jess and me, right up above you. If you need anything in the night you just have to give a shout.’

  ‘You’re lovely girls, you two,’ said Flo, and her voice went husky. ‘Don’t know what I’d do without you now.’

  ‘We don’t know what we’d do without you,’ said Mum.

  ‘You’re not going to suddenly up sticks and leave, are you?’

  ‘Absolutely not. You’re stuck with us. Now go to sleep. Night, Flo.’

  ‘Night, darling. Night night, Jess, sweetheart,’ said Flo.

  ‘Night night,’ I said, giving her a kiss. Her cheek always felt soft and powdery and she smelled of very musky perfume. She hoarded old bottles of scent and used them liberally, even though some of them were years old. I always had to hold my breath when I leaned over her, but I suppose there were much worse things she could have smelled of.

  Mum took Alfie outside for his last wee. She wouldn’t let me go out by myself after dark. I got ready for bed. We hadn’t had time to do the upstairs rooms up properly because we’d been so busy sorting out the shop, and the little one was still stuffed with junk, so I was sharing with Mum. The ceiling had cracks and a damp patch, and the floral wallpaper was torn in places. Still, we were used to cracks and damp and peeling paper after our flat in Marlborough Tower, and the bedroom had all our favourite things in it, making it feel like home.

  Mum had hung our picture of a mother and daughter having a cuddle above our bed, and I’d arranged our china dogs all along the windowsill. My old toy dog, Woofer, was lying on the pillow, his head flopping. I knew he was droopy because he’d lost some of his stuffing, but it made him look sad. I couldn’t help worrying that he minded being left on the bed while I played with Alfie.

  I picked him up now, gave him a stroke and took him over to have a chat with the china dogs. I made each of them greet him in turn, giving little sniffs and barks. I know some people would think me a great daft baby playing such silly games, but it’s fun, so who cares?

  I peered through the window, Woofer tucked under my arm. I saw the pizza place and the Indian restaurant and the fish-and-chip shop on the corner. If Mum was too tired to cook we had lots of alternatives. I saw Mum now, turning down our road, Alfie trotting along beside her, pausing at every lamppost. When she walked under the light I saw that she was talking on her phone. She was holding it tight against her ear, looking very absorbed. When she got to our shop, The Dumping Ground, she didn’t come in immediately. She stood there, still talking, for a good five minutes, while Alfie skittered about impatiently.

  My heart started thudding. Who was she talking to? Why didn’t she want me to hear her? It wasn’t Sean Godfrey, was it? He’d tried to get in touch with Mum several times since they broke up. We hadn’t told him we were leaving Marlborough Tower, but he’d tracked Tyrone down and asked him where we were living now.

  Tyrone thought the world of Sean Godfrey. According to him, Mum was off her head to walk out. Maybe he imagined he was doing her a favour, telling Sean Godfrey we’d gone to live by the seaside. Luckily he didn’t remember which seaside, so we felt pretty safe. Tyrone texted me to check he’d done the right thing. I texted back in capitals:

  NO YOU’VE DONE THE WRONG

  WRONG WRONG THING!!!

  I expected Mum to be furious but she thought I’d been a little hard on Tyrone. ‘He can’t help being a bit thick,’ she said.

  ‘Mum! We’ve agreed. We’re not telling anyone where we are, apart from our special friends,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, I know. But Tyrone would think Sean and I were special friends, seeing as we lived together and actually got engaged.’

  ‘We didn’t live with him long. And OK, you got engaged, but it wasn’t as if you were married. And Sean Godfrey is the number-one person we don’t want tracking us down!’ I said. ‘It seems to me you’re the one who’s being thick, Mum!’

  ‘Hey! Less of that cheek, Baby Beaker! And there’s no need to act like Sean is some scary serial killer. Maybe he’s just … missing us,’ she said.

  I hated the way she said it. As if she was missing him. We were so happy here in Cooksea. We had Flo and the shop and the sea, we had Alfie, we had each other. What more did Mum want? All right, we didn’t have Sean Godfrey’s huge great house and his huge great swimming pool and his huge great car.

  We didn’t want them. And anyway they weren’t on offer any more. We were pretty sure that Mum’s worst ever enemy, Justine Littlewood, had already moved in.

  Mum was still on the phone now, nodding and muttering and listening intently. Alfie was starting to get fed up. He ran around her, tying her up with his lead, and then, when she still didn’t take any notice of him, he started barking at her impatiently. You didn’t need to be an expert in dog language to interpret what he was saying: Hurry up! I’m bored! I want to go indoors! I want my bedtime chew! I want my bed! I want Jess!

  I opene
d the bedroom window and leaned right out. ‘Mum!’

  She looked up, startled. ‘Don’t lean out like that!’ she hissed. ‘It’s not safe!’

  ‘Well, come back in! Alfie’s upset!’ I called.

  At the sound of my voice Alfie’s barks got even louder. Mum sighed, said a quick goodbye to whoever it was, and opened the shop door. Alfie came charging up the stairs, shoving the bedroom door open, and then leaped into my arms as if we’d been parted for weeks.

  ‘For goodness’ sake!’ Mum said crossly, following him. ‘What were you doing, hanging out the window like that! I’m sure you’ve woken Flo – and half the street into the bargain.’

  ‘Well, you were such ages.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Who phoned you?’

  ‘No one,’ said Mum, starting to get undressed.

  ‘Mum! I saw you!’

  ‘What are you doing snooping on me? For heaven’s sake, Jess, I can do what I want,’ she said, putting on her pyjamas.

  ‘Yes, but you shouldn’t tell fibs, especially not to me.’

  Mum went off to the bathroom. I tried to calm Alfie down and get him settled in his dog bed. I wanted someone to calm me down too. I hated it when Mum and I quarrelled.

  She came back into the bedroom, wiping toothpaste stains off her mouth. ‘I wasn’t fibbing,’ she said. ‘No one phoned me. I phoned them.’

  ‘So who did you phone then?’

  Mum sighed. ‘Look, I don’t have to tell you. I’m the mother, not the kid. I check up on you, not the other way round.’

  ‘It was Sean Godfrey, wasn’t it?’ I said, ready to burst into tears.