‘Leah, are you poorly too?’ Mum asked. Marie willed her twin to say she was. If she stayed home Marie could tell her what she had overheard and they could try and work out what it all meant. Leah met Marie’s gaze and Marie knew she understood the wordless message.
‘I… I’m…’ Leah clasped her hands over her stomach. ‘Umm.’ Her cheeks flushed red. She was always useless at lying.
‘Leah?’ Mum tilted her head to one side.
‘I… I’m okay.’ She mouthed sorry at Marie as she picked up her rucksack and followed Carly out of the room.
Mum crossed the floor and slotted The Little Mermaid DVD into the side of the TV. She handed the remote control to Marie.
‘I’ll drop your sisters at school and then I’m going out but Dad’s working from home today and he’ll—’
‘Please don’t leave me.’ Marie grabbed her mum’s hand and tried her to pull her back.
‘Mum!’ Carly shouted from downstairs.
‘I’ve got to go. See you later. Love you.’ Mum dropped a kiss on the top of Marie’s head. The front door slammed and a sense of separation saddened Marie. She listened to her sisters’ chatter as they piled into the car below her window. The engine roared to life and it felt to Marie as if they weren’t just driving away from the house, they were driving away from her. Tears poured down her cheeks, soaking into her Ariel pyjama top. Marie had never felt so lonely.
It wasn’t long until she heard Dad climbing the stairs. ‘I’m under orders to bring you Calpol,’ he boomed cheerfully. She was eight and could swallow a paracetamol but Marie still preferred the sweet gloopy medicine that tasted of strawberries. She didn’t want to see her dad, though. She certainly didn’t want to speak to him. She quickly shuffled under the covers and turned her face to the wall, forced her breath to be slow and even as she pretended to be asleep.
She was good at pretending.
Dad quietly put the bottle and the spoon on her bedside cabinet and left the room, leaving Marie alone with her fake stomach ache, in her fake life where everything suddenly felt as temporary as the stage scenery in her school production of Annie. From the outside the buildings looked real and solid when in fact they were weak and flimsy. Easy to knock down.
Each time the DVD reached the end it would whirr back to the beginning, but Marie had barely registered her favourite film. Her mind was a slideshow of clips from completely different movies, but instead of the usual characters, it was her and her family playing the parts. Herself and Leah separated from their mother and abandoned by their father, placed in the care of a cruel Miss Hannigan, waiting for a Daddy Warbucks who never came – it’s a hard knock life. Carly, thin and hungry, holding out a bowl – please, sir, can I have some more? Bruno forced out of the home he loved, fleeing from the Dog Catcher who wanted to lock him up. Reliant on begging for spaghetti from a kindly Italian restaurant owner so he didn’t starve.
It was all too much. She must have got it wrong. She slid out of bed and padded downstairs. Dad was in his study, his back to her as he hunched over his laptop. Instead of pushing her way in like she usually would, clambering on his lap, she hesitated in the doorway, uncertain and afraid. It was Bruno who spotted her first. He was dozing in the corner in front of the bay window where a patch of sunlight warmed the carpet. Immediately he bounded over to her, ears flapping and tail wagging. He delightedly licked her face with his rough tongue.
‘Marie!’ Her father spun around on his chair. ‘You gave me a fright. It must be almost lunchtime. Hungry?’
Marie shook her head.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.
Marie didn’t know how to articulate all of the emotions that wriggled around her tummy like worms. She thought very hard about what she wanted to say – the questions she wanted to ask – but there was a part of her, a big part that just didn’t want to know the answers. She shrugged.
‘Let’s get you back to bed.’ He stretched out his hand and led the way upstairs. She didn’t want to take it, in that moment he almost felt like a stranger to her, but then she thought, be good and he won’t send you away.
‘Daddy.’ She looked at him earnestly as he tucked the duvet around her legs. ‘I’d never take drugs. Neither would Leah or Carly.’
Be good and he won’t send you away.
‘I should hope not! You shouldn’t be thinking of such things at your age.’
Her stomach growled. She hadn’t eaten since dinner last night. She was ravenous.
‘Shall I bring up some soup? Beans on toast?’
‘Which is cheaper?’
Be good and he won’t send you away.
‘I don’t know. That’s a funny question. Why do you ask?’
‘I think…’ Marie’s voice wobbled. ‘I think we must all cost a lot to feed and we could eat less, I could and—’
‘Why—’
‘And I could share my dinner with Bruno so he doesn’t have to live in a cage with the other dogs laughing at him because he comes from a posh home.’ Tears streamed down Marie’s cheeks.
‘Marie.’ The mattress dipped as her dad perched on the edge. ‘I need you to tell me what this is about.’
All the words she needed to say clumped together as one hard mass and rose in her throat but she couldn’t spit them out. She couldn’t swallow. Breathe.
‘Shhh.’ Dad rubbed her back. ‘Calm down. It’s okay.’
‘It isn’t.’ Marie hiccupped. ‘I heard you and Mum last night. I know you’re going to split us all up and I’ll have to eat cold mush and scrub floors and—’
‘Enough.’ Her dad held up his palm. His shoulders rose before slumping. Marie heard the breath whoosh out of his nose. ‘It seems I have some explaining to do. But, Marie, you must give me your extra best promise that you can keep a secret. Can you do that?’
‘Yes, Daddy.’ His gaze held hers, waiting for more. ‘I promise I can keep a secret.’
Be good and he won’t send you away.
‘We’re in a bit of a sticky situation,’ he began falteringly. ‘Financially… You might have noticed we haven’t been on holiday for a long time. The fridge isn’t packed full of the usual things we like to eat.’
‘Carly babysits us so Mum doesn’t have to pay anyone?’
‘Yes. That sort of thing. If we don’t get back on our feet pretty sharpish I won’t have a business and we won’t be able to live here any more.’
‘Carly and Mum have to go and live in a hovel? And Bruno has to live at the pound. And me and Leah might stay together but three is still a big number to house.’ Marie repeated back the things she had overheard, her voice thick with tears.
‘No. You shouldn’t have… I didn’t mean.’ Her dad dropped his head in his hands. Tentatively Marie shuffled forward in the bed and stroked his hair. He raised his face, his eyes looking at something just past Marie’s shoulder. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly. ‘That’s exactly what could happen. We’ll all be split up and living in different houses.’
‘And we will have to wear rags,’ Marie said sadly. ‘And eat scraps.’