Step by Wicked Step Read online

  We just ignore him. We know better than that. I don’t think either of us wants to push our luck. She’s still a little wary of me, and I still get on with her that bit better when all the lights are out, and I don’t have to watch her cocking her head to one side and fiddling with her hair, or rolling the cat like a sausage across the downie.

  But, just to tease him, one of us might mutter:

  ‘Well, Lucy thinks…’

  That always sees him off pretty sharpish.

  ‘Well done!’ said Ralph. ‘I believed every single word of that.’

  Pixie shrugged modestly.

  ‘Now tell us about the ghost of Henrietta Forbes.’

  Needing no further prompting, as usual, Pixie began.

  ‘One night, during a fierce storm –’

  Out of the darkness came the firm interruption:

  ‘Not now, Pixie.’

  Everyone turned to peer at the lump of shadow that was Colin.

  ‘Why not? Will it make you nervous?’

  ‘We have to hear Robbo’s story now,’ Colin explained.

  ‘I don’t mind skipping mine,’ Robbo said hopefully.

  ‘Maybe you don’t,’ said Colin. ‘But I really want to hear it.’

  ‘I could save it for tomorrow.’

  But everyone knew that, by tomorrow, each of them would have gone their separate ways with their own friends. This was the night for stories. And if Robbo hadn’t told them his before they finally gave in to sleep, they’d probably never hear it.

  ‘Colin is right,’ said Ralph. ‘The ghost of Henrietta Forbes will have to wait. It’s Robbo’s turn.’

  ‘Off you go, Robbo.’

  ‘I can’t. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to start.’

  ‘Easy!’ said Pixie. ‘Start with ‘My mum and dad…’ and see what comes out.’

  ‘If you say so,’ said Robbo doubtfully.

  And he began.

  ROBBO’S STORY:

  Dumpa’s the Problem

  My mum and dad split up when I was only six, so I don’t remember much. I can remember my dad kicking a hole in the kitchen door when they were arguing once. My mother was crying, and I was fiddling with the nutcrackers, so maybe it was Christmas. I don’t know.

  Dad came back a lot, and Mum would send Callie and me out in the garden, while they stayed in the kitchen, arguing and arguing. Callie kept going back inside to try to make them stop. But I just stayed out there, kicking the ball to myself, over and over. And, after a bit, Dad stopped coming round, and we had to start visiting him at his new place instead. I didn’t mind, but Callie hated it. She said that it was cold and nasty and horrible, and the sheets felt funny. She tells me things I never realized, but, once she’s come out with them, I know they’re true, and I can’t understand why I didn’t work them out for myself in the first place. They always stick, though. I can never fade them out. I can remember exactly which house we were walking past when she said, ‘Our dad went out to work for years and years to pay for a nice house and all the furniture, and now The Beard’s moved in and taken everything, and it’s not fair.’

  That’s what she calls him. The Beard. I don’t think he’s too bad, but Callie really hates him. She says he picks on her all the time. And it is true that, when Roy first came, Mum only let him tick us off if we were doing something really stupid, like pushing wet fingers in a plug, or chasing balls over the road. She never let him interfere with family stuff, or anything to do with school. But since Dumpa was born, Roy seems to have taken over. Now he goes round telling Callie and me what to do as if the fact that he is Dumpa’s dad makes it all right for him to lord it over us as well.

  I don’t mind terribly, but Callie hates it. Sometimes she stands behind a door and does this imitation of him under her breath.

  ‘Brush your hair, please, Callie. It looks like a rat’s nest.’ ‘Have you done your homework, Callie?’ ‘Did you remember to lock your bike?’ ‘Is this your mess on the floor? Would you clear it all up, please?’

  She sounds just like him. Sometimes she even holds one of her furry slippers up against her chin, to be the beard.

  ‘Callie, have you dusted the stars yet? And polished the moon? And is it your turn to wipe the grease off the sunbeams?’

  Once, I fell down the stairs backwards, laughing, and had to be taken to hospital to have an x-ray on my head. But Callie won’t admit it’s funny. One night, when he’d been getting at her for leaving wet towels on the bathroom floor, she told me she’d put rat poison in his food if she thought she could get away with it.

  And if it weren’t for Dumpa.

  Dumpa’s the problem, you see. He’s only three. And he’s the sweetest child in the whole world. Even Callie admits that. I never thought anything about babies till Dumpa was born. I thought they were just boring. But when Roy took us to visit Mum in the hospital, he scooped this tiny knitted bundle out of its little swinging plastic tub, and put it in my arms. And suddenly it sneezed – the neatest little sneeze you ever heard – and its eyes popped open in surprise, and it stared up at Roy peering over my shoulder. Roy said that Dumpa was far too young to be staring at him properly. But Mum and I knew better. And Dumpa’s proved us right. He’s been following Roy round ever since like a little baby duckling. Sometimes the twins next door borrow him for their games.

  ‘Shove Dumpa in the cupboard. Then, when he bangs, pretend he’s the monster.’

  ‘No. Let’s play prisoners. Put him in his cot.’

  ‘If we put this red hat on him, he could be Santa.’

  ‘No. Let him be a frog. Kiss him and see if he turns into a prince!’

  But as soon as Dumpa hears Roy coming through the gate, he struggles till they let him go, and rushes down the stairs into Roy’s arms. Mum shakes her head and says, ‘He’s definitely his dada’s son.’ And Callie makes that little face that Roy can’t stand, and whispers to me:

  ‘Nice that he has the chance! At least he and his dada get to live in the same house!’

  But I don’t really mind. I think it’s nice to see Roy turning Dumpa upside down, and pretending to use him to vacuum the carpets. The week that Roy announced his mother was ill, and went away, Dumpa was awful.

  ‘Want Dada!’

  ‘Dada coming home soon?’

  ‘Make Woy come back now, Wobbo!’

  It nearly drove me mad. By Thursday, I was halfway up the wall. When Callie heard the gate click, and said, staring out of the window, ‘Surprise, surprise! Here’s The Beard back again,’ I almost felt like cheering. Dumpa went tumbling down the stairs in his excitement. And Callie took great pleasure in tormenting Roy all through the evening.

  ‘How was your mother, Roy?’

  ‘Which hospital was she in?’

  ‘Who else was visiting?’

  ‘What’s wrong with her, exactly?’

  From all his fudging and squirming, I realized that Callie had been right all week. Roy’s mother wasn’t ill at all. He’d obviously had a row with Mum, and just stormed out.

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I told you,’ said Callie. ‘Nobody ever rushes off to visit someone in hospital without a phone call. And there was no phone call that night. Just lots of hissy whispering in their room. And Mum had red eyes in the morning. And even you noticed how much more polite she was to Dad on Saturday. In fact, I think…’

  Her voice trailed off. I knew what she was thinking, and gave her a good long look, to tell her so.

  She went bright red.

  ‘It’s not impossible,’ she said. ‘People do get back together. You never know. It might happen.’

  But Dumpa’s the problem. I’m not sure how Dad would take to looking after him, if he came back. And anyway, Roy might not want to leave his only child with someone else, especially not Dad. They might start squabbling about it, and Callie and I know only too well how horrible that can be. I couldn’t bear to think of poor little Dumpa sitting at the table fiddling with the nutcrackers
, while everyone else is arguing around him.

  But Callie still thought that it was worth a try.

  ‘Look, you skip the weekend with Dad, and drag Mum off to the arcade to get your new soccer boots. Phone me as soon as you know what time you’ll be there, and I’ll think of some excuse to drag Dad out shopping. Then, when we’ve all bumped into one another, I’ll fake a coughing fit, and make them take us in that café for a drink.’

  She’s smart, my sister. Everything went like clockwork. We sat round one of the marble-topped tables in Ginna’s Ice Cream Parlour, and Callie tried to start things off.

  ‘Well, this is nice.’

  I backed her up.

  ‘Like being a real family again.’

  ‘You’re in a real family,’ Mum reminded me sharply.

  ‘Don’t snap at the boy, Hope,’ Dad said irritably. ‘You know exactly what he means.’

  And off they went, grinding away at one another as usual, with Dad wanting to know why Mum had let me skip my weekend at his house if I wasn’t playing in a match, and Mum saying she was surprised that either of us ever bothered to go at all, given his grumpy moods. In the end, Callie and I slipped off our seats, and went to stand in front of the display of ice-cream cakes.

  ‘Well,’ Callie said sarcastically. ‘This is going well, isn’t it?’

  ‘They’re hopeless when they meet.’

  She turned to stare at me.

  ‘That’s it! They’re hopeless when they meet. So we’ll try something else!’

  And so we did. The ‘something else’ turned out to be a load of barefaced lies.

  ‘Mum says to thank you for returning my woolly.’

  ‘Dad says it was really nice of you to send him that list of my soccer fixtures.’

  ‘Mum says you cook much better curries than Roy does.’

  ‘Dad was pretty impressed by the nifty way you beat his nextdoor neighbour to that parking place.’

  We got really good at it as the weeks passed. I even began to think of myself as an ace trouble-shooter, keeping the peace between two hot-blooded scrappers. And, after a while, something strange happened. Without even noticing, they started to do the job for themselves.

  ‘Ask your dad if he’d like to have you for a couple of extra days over half-term.’

  ‘Tell your mum if she needs some new tyres on that car of hers, I know a man who gets them very cheaply.’

  ‘Don’t forget to take that spare fruit cake round to Daddy’s house.’

  ‘Why don’t you give Mummy these plant cuttings Aunt Sue left me? I know I’ll never manage to make them grow.’

  Callie was getting pretty confident now.

  ‘We’re doing well,’ she told me. ‘We’re almost there.’

  But I wasn’t nearly so sure. I reckoned there was still a big difference between the two of them trying to get along like reasonable people, sending each other unwanted fruit cake and plant cuttings and things, and their wanting to get back together in the same house. But I didn’t want to spoil things for Callie, whose eyes lit up at every little niggle between Mum and Roy.

  ‘The Beard’s in trouble again,’ she’d tell me, grinning. ‘He’s fixed up some overtime for the evening she wanted to go out.’

  Or:

  ‘Mum’s dead cheesed off. He left the shopping lying on the table, and now that ice-cream’s melted in the tub.’

  She’d come in my room in the morning, and tell me hopefully:

  ‘I think they had another little spat last night.’

  I tried to warn her.

  ‘Lots of people argue. It probably doesn’t mean what you think.’

  ‘It did with Dad. And Roy has stormed out once already.’

  ‘And he came back.’

  But Callie had got it all worked out in her head.

  ‘You wait and see. One day, Mum and The Beard will have a giant row, and he’ll push off, just like before. But this time, instead of moping, she’ll get in touch with Dad.’

  Her eyes fell on the chubby little fists fighting their way out of the sleeves of a desperately flapping soccer shirt, eight sizes too big.

  ‘Dumpa’s the problem, of course…’

  Both of us watched him silently for a moment. Then Callie said:

  ‘Well, Dumpa will simply have to learn to cope. You have. And I have. So Dumpa can as well.’

  ‘But Dumpa’s only three.’

  ‘He’s nearly four.’

  And it was on his birthday that the row came. But it wasn’t between Mum and Roy, when it happened. Well, not at the start, at least. At the beginning, it was between Callie and Roy. He caught her pushing her bike down the very narrow space between the bushes and the car.

  ‘Callie! You know you’re not supposed to do that. Go round!’

  ‘I’m in a hurry.’

  ‘You can’t go that way. You’ll scratch the car.’

  ‘No, I won’t.’

  ‘Callie! I’m warning you! Come back! Right now!’

  Callie scraped the bike fiercely along the bushes, breaking stems.

  ‘You can’t tell me what to do! You’re not my father!’

  He caught her by the wrist and swung her round.

  ‘That’s my car you’re about to scratch!’

  ‘It’s sitting in our drive. By our house! In our garden!’

  ‘Listen,’ he hissed in her ear. ‘I’ve just about had enough of you!’

  Tears spurted out of Callie’s eyes.

  ‘And we’ve all had enough of you! You’re a big, meddling pig, and you’re nothing to do with us. You’re bossy and horrible, and even Mum’s sick of you!’

  I think he might have slapped her then. But just at that moment Mum threw open the window.

  ‘Roy! Let go of Callie at once, please!’

  Roy stared up the garden. He was open-mouthed.

  ‘Are you taking her side?’

  ‘I’m not taking any side at all,’ called Mum. ‘But she wants you to let go of her, and I want you to let go of her.’

  ‘Because she’s not my daughter? Is that it?’ He dropped Callie’s wrist as if it had scorched him. ‘Well, let me tell you something, Hope. If I’m good enough to get up half an hour earlier than I need every morning to drive her to school, and good enough to work overtime to pay for repairs to the roof over her head, and good enough to trail round the supermarket for her favourite foods, then I’m good enough to stop her carelessly scratching my car!’

  Mum slammed the window shut, and that was it. The row was on. They tried a dozen times to sort it out over the next few days. But every discussion ended with flaring tempers and banging doors, or with silence and cold looks. It seemed they couldn’t come to terms at all. Roy was insisting he had every right to make Callie do what he told her. And Mum was arguing that it wouldn’t help. ‘Believe me,’ I heard her say over and over. ‘It’s better if you leave all that to me. Callie’s so proud, and if you push it, all that will happen is she’ll start to hate you.’

  Start! I could have told them both something. But I kept quiet. And slowly, slowly, the days went by. It was quite obvious that things were getting worse and worse. On Wednesday Callie was twenty minutes late for school because Roy suddenly decided he wasn’t going to drive her any more. (‘I only give lifts to people who are civil to me,’ he announced. ‘And Callie barely speaks.’) On Thursday, he came back without the only cereal Callie likes. (‘I only shop for people who say thank you as if they mean it.’) And when the snow began on Friday evening, he made it clear that even though Mum’s car was in the garage being fixed, he wasn’t driving us to Hawksmoor Hill with our toboggans. (‘The slope in the garden’s good enough for Dumpa. And after all, as Callie says, you’ve all had enough of me.’)

  ‘Pig!’ Callie muttered, gazing out at the glorious white flurries. A tear rolled down her cheek, and I knew she was remembering the time Dad hurried us out of the house into the car, and we were first on the hill. First to make tracks over the huge, perfect, winking bl
anket of snow. First to hurtle down the steep slopes without having to steer round people dragging their sleds up again. First in the whole white world, or so it seemed.

  With her finger, Callie tracked another snow tear down the window pane.

  ‘I wish –’

  But she couldn’t say it. And I pretended she’d meant something else.

  ‘Maybe Roy will feel differently tomorrow.’

  She shrugged. She couldn’t care.

  ‘Maybe he will.’

  He didn’t, though. Roy is as stubborn as Callie, in his own way. All morning he made a great show of keeping busy, clearing out the shed. Dumpa trailed after him, of course, to and fro under the kitchen window, as Roy carried one armful of junk after another along to the dustbins.

  Mum opened the door a crack against the icy wind.

  ‘Come inside, Dumpa.’

  He shook his head so fiercely, his woolly hat fell on the snowy path.

  Mum tried again.

  ‘Dumpa! You’re freezing out there. Come in with us.’

  Callie and I watched from the window as Dumpa turned his back and stamped off.

  ‘Roy! Send Dumpa in, please! He’s going blue with cold.’

  Roy just pretended not to hear, and disappeared in the shed.

  Pulling her boots on, Mum went after them. Callie opened the window, so she could listen better. Blasts of wind swept in, lifting her hair, and gobs of sleet blew in her face, but she didn’t notice. She was determined to hear every word.

  ‘Roy!’ Mum rattled the latch of the shed door. ‘Roy! Can you please persuade Dumpa to come back inside.’

  Roy poked his head out.

  ‘I think it’s obvious he wants to stay with me.’

  Mum stood her ground.

  ‘It’s very cold. I’d like him back inside, please.’

  ‘Why? Aren’t two children out of three enough for you?’

  Mum told him, icy as the wind that swirled sleet in her face:

  ‘That’s a ridiculous thing to say. It’s not a matter of Dumpa’s taking sides.’

  Roy lifted another box of broken plastic plant pots.

  ‘I don’t see why not. You obviously have. So he can, too.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’