Contents

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

Also by Jean Ure

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As soon as I opened my eyes, I knew that something was wrong. When you live in a basement it is always a bit gloomy, but I could tell from the way the sun was shining through the tops of the windows that it had to be late.

I lay for a moment, watching the dust specks dancing in the light. Where was Mum? Why hadn’t she woken us?

From across the room there came the sound of gentle snoring. Either Tizz or Sammy, whiffling in her sleep. I raised myself on an elbow and gazed across at them. Tizz, in the top bunk, was lying on her back with her arms outside the duvet. Sammy was scrunched in a heap, sucking at her thumb. She was the one that was whiffling. Little snuffly noises, like a piglet.

Somewhere outside, further up the road, a church clock was striking. I sank back down, counting the bongs. Ten o’clock! If Mum was awake, she’d have come crashing in on us hours ago.

“Up, up! Glorious sunshine! Don’t waste it! Out you get!”

I strained my ears, listening for some sign of movement. Anything to indicate that Mum was up and about. All I could hear was Sammy, whiffling, and the occasional sound of a car going past.

I pulled the duvet up to my chin. There wasn’t any actual need to get up; it wasn’t like it was a school day. Sometimes at weekends, if Mum was in one of her depressed moods, she’d let us go on sleeping cos she’d be sleeping herself. But just lately she’d been on a high. What we called a big happy. When Mum was in a big happy she’d be up half the night, chatting on the phone to her friends, rearranging the furniture, even painting the walls a funny colour, which is what she did one time. We woke up to discover she’d painted the living room bright purple while we were asleep! Another time she’d spent the night baking things. The kitchen looked like a hurricane had blown through it. The sink was full of pots and pans, and everything was covered in flour. But Mum was so pleased with herself!

“See?” she said. “I’ve been cooking. Just like a real mum!”

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that the lovely cake she’d made tasted like lumpy porridge. Sammy spat it out, but Tizz and me were brave and forced ourselves to swallow it. After all, Mum had been up half the night making it for us. It would have hurt her if we hadn’t eaten it.

Even at weekends, she still got up at the crack of dawn. When she was in one of her big happies she didn’t seem to need very much sleep. We’d hear her, at six o’clock in the morning, dancing round the sitting room, playing music, or just clattering pans in the kitchen.

This morning, there was silence. Nothing but the sound of passing cars, and Sammy, snuffling. That’s how I knew that something was wrong.

I slipped out of bed and crept through to Mum’s room. I thought the worst would be that I’d find her asleep, which would mean she’d come out of her big happy and slipped into one of her depressions, and then I’d have to decide whether to shake her awake or just leave her. I wasn’t ever sure which it was best to do. But Mum’s bed was empty. It was difficult to tell whether she’d slept in it or not. The pillow was crumpled, and the duvet was thrown back, but that wasn’t anything to go by. Mum never bothered much with bed-making or housework. Either she was in one of her big happies, which meant she had more exciting things to do; or else she was depressed, in which case she didn’t have the energy. There were the odd moments in between, but not very many. Mostly she was either up or down.

I felt the sheet to see if it was warm, but it wasn’t. It was quite cold. My stomach did this churning thing. Where was Mum? I rushed through to the sitting room, burst into the kitchen, threw open the bathroom door. There wasn’t a sign of her. Not anywhere.

I shouted, “MUM?”

I don’t know why I shouted. All it did was wake up Tizz and Sammy. They appeared at the door together, in their nightdresses, Sammy still sucking her thumb. Tizz said, “What’s going on? Where’s Mum?”

I shook my head. “I dunno. She’s not here.”

“So where is she?”

“I said, I don’t know!”

“She’s prob’ly still asleep.”

“She’s not,” I said. “I’ve looked.”

“So where is she?”

I could hear the note of panic in Tizz’s voice. I knew that we were both remembering the last time this had happened, when we’d woken up to find Mum gone.

Sammy took her thumb out of her mouth. “Who’s going to get breakfast?”

Tizz snapped, “Shut up about breakfast! This is serious.”

It wasn’t fair to turn on Sammy. She was only little. Not quite six, which was far too young to have anything more than vague memories of that other time. Just a baby, really. Eighteen months, that’s all she’d been. I’d been eight, and Tizz had been the age Sammy was now. We could remember all too clearly.

“Maybe–” With a look of fierce determination, Tizz strode across to the door. “Maybe she’s gone to see Her Upstairs.”

“No! Tizz! Don’t!” I yelled at her, and she stopped.

“I’m only going to check whether she’s there.”

“But s’ppose she isn’t?”

Tizz bit her lip. She knew what I was thinking. Her Upstairs was a busybody at the best of times. She’d immediately want to know what was going on and why it was we were looking for Mum.

Tizz turned, reluctantly, and came back into the room. “She could just have gone up the shops.”

“She wouldn’t go without telling us.”

“She might. Let’s get dressed and go up there!”

Mum wasn’t up the shops. Well, shop, actually. There’s only the one she’d go to and that was the newsagent on the corner, where sometimes she’d send us for the odd carton of milk or loaf of bread if we ran out. But she wasn’t in there and after what had happened last time we knew better than to ask if anyone had seen her. If Mum had gone missing, we mustn’t let on. We left the shop, quickly, before we could draw attention to ourselves.

“She might have wanted something they didn’t have and gone on to Tesco” said Tizz.

“It’s Sunday,” I said. “Tesco wouldn’t have been open yet.”

Tizz said, “No, but you know what Mum’s like. She doesn’t always remember which day it is.”

I didn’t say anything to that. Tizz was just clutching at straws. She knew Mum hadn’t gone to Tesco.

Sammy was growing more and more agitated. She kept tugging at my sleeve and going, “Ruby, ask! Ask, Ruby!”

I hesitated. Mr and Mrs Petrides, who own the shop, aren’t as nosy as Her Upstairs. Maybe we could try asking if Mum had been in.

Tizz said, “No!” She obviously knew what I was thinking. “We don’t tell anybody.”

“Why not?” wailed Sammy. “Why can’t we?”

“Because we can’t,” I said. “Let’s just go home.”

We trailed back up the road, and down the basement steps. I think both me and Tizz were hoping that Mum might have come back while we were out, but there still wasn’t any sign of her. Sammy was starting to grizzle and complain that she was hungry. I tried to be patient with her cos I realised she was probably getting a bit frightened. Mum hadn’t just gone out, she simply wasn’t there.

It was Tizz, with her sharp eyes, who noticed the red light blinking on the telephone.

“There’s a message!”

She swooped on it. Immediately, Mum’s voice came swirling into the room.

“Darlings, darlings! Love you, darlings! Thinking of you! Always thinking of you! Don’t worry, my darlings! We’ll have lemonade sky! Lemonade sky! I promise you, poppets! That’s what we’ll have! Lemonade sky! Oh, darlings, such fun! Such fun it will be! Kissy kissy, mwah, mwah! Love you, darlings! Love you to bits! Always, always! Take care, my precious angels! Mummy loves you! Lemonade sky, don’t forget!”

My heart sank as I listened. This was how it had been before. Mum talking at a hundred miles an hour, not making any sense. I could remember her taking us to school, pushing Sammy in her buggy, calling after us as we went through the gates, “Love you, darlings! Love you, love you!” All the other kids had turned to look, and me and Tizz had been embarrassed. Then when school let out that afternoon Mum hadn’t been there, and we’d had to make our own way home. We’d found her whirling round the room, with Sammy in her arms, both of them made up with bright red lipstick and green eye shadow. She was whirling so fast that Sammy was growing scared and was starting to cry. We were quite scared, too. We’d begged and begged Mum to stop, but it seemed like she couldn’t. In the end she’d let us take Sammy and we’d shut ourselves in our bedroom, not knowing what to do. Hours later, when we’d crept back out, Mum had disappeared. Now it was happening all over again.

Me and Tizz stood, helplessly, looking at each other.

“Was that Mum talking?” said Sammy.

I said, “Yes, that was Mum.”

“Why’s she sound all funny?”

“She’s just being happy,” said Tizz.

“’bout what?”

“I don’t know! Cos she’s enjoying herself.”

“Sounds like she was in a club,” I said. “All that noise in the background.”

“So when did she ring?”

“Dunno.” I pressed the red button on the phone. We listened again to Mum’s voice, spilling excitedly into the room.

“Take care, my precious angels! Mummy loves you! Lemonade sky, don’t forget!”

“What’s lemonade pie?” said Sammy.

“Sky,” said Tizz. “Just be quiet!”

The mechanical answerphone voice took over to tell us that that was the final message: “Sunday, 2.15 am.”

“Oh,” I said. “I thought I heard the phone ring!”

“So why didn’t you answer it?” screamed Tizz.

“Cos I fell asleep again. Anyway, I thought Mum was here. I thought she’d answer it.”

“Is it something to eat?” said Sammy.

We both turned on her. “Is what something to eat?”

“Lemonade pie.”

“Sky,” said Tizz. “Sky, sky, sky!”

“What’s lemonade sky?”

“How should I know?” Tizz sounded exasperated. “Let’s ring her back!”

We tried, but all we got was voice-mail. Either Mum had switched her phone off, or, most likely, she had run out of credit. She was always forgetting to top up.

“Maybe it’s a treat,” said Sammy. She looked at us, hopefully. “Mum’s gone out to buy us a treat! For my birthday,” she added. “It could be my birthday present!”

I said, “Maybe. Who knows?”

“Cos next week,” said Sammy, “I’m going to be six.”

“You are,” I said. “It’s a big age.”

“When will she come back with it?”

“Soon,” I said. It had been ten days, last time. Mum had been away for ten whole days! But she had come back. That was what we had to hold on to. Plus she had rung and left a message. She hadn’t done that last time.

I said this to Tizz.

“But it’s just babble,” said Tizz. “It doesn’t make any sense!”

“That’s cos she’s confused.” It was what had happened before. Mum had become so hyper that her brain had run out of control. She’d told us, later, that she couldn’t remember anything about where she’d been or what she’d done.

“I was just buzzing with all this energy, you know? Like my head was full of bees.”

“At least this time,” I said, “we know she’s thinking about us.”

Tizz said, “Huh!”

She didn’t say it in her usual scoffing Tizz-like fashion. I had this feeling she was desperately trying not to show that she was every bit as scared as Sammy. I was scared, too, and I was desperately trying not to show it. With Tizz it was a matter of pride. Nothing frightens Tizz! With me it was more like one of us had to stay on top of things, and as I was the oldest, I didn’t really have much choice.

“We should have known,” said Tizz.

She meant we should have known that Mum was in danger of going over the edge. She’d been wound up, tight as a coiled spring, for days. She’s OK if she takes her meds, but sometimes she forgets. Or sometimes she doesn’t take them cos she reckons she can do without. It’s up to us to keep an eye on her. She’s our mum, we’re supposed to look after her.

I said, “Omigod!”

I raced through to the bathroom and flung open the door of the bathroom cabinet. There, on the shelf, were Mum’s pills. My heart went into overdrive, thumping and banging in my chest.

“What is it?” Tizz and Sammy had followed me in. Tizz peered over my shoulder.

“Mum’s pills.” I held up the bottle. “She’s gone off without them!”

“Gimme!” Tizz wrenched the bottle away and wrestled with the top. I watched her with growing impatience.

“Here!” I snatched it back. “Let me.” It was supposed to be child proof, but I knew how to open it. Tizz was too impatient. I got the top off and stared in dismay. The bottle was full! I held it out to show Tizz. Her little pinched face turned pale beneath its freckles. We both knew that Mum had got a new prescription from the doctor over a month ago.

“She hasn’t been taking them,” I whispered.

There was a long silence, broken only by a plaintive wail from Sammy, “I want my breakfast! I’m hungry!”

“Oh, will you just SHUT UP!” screeched Tizz. “Don’t be so selfish all the time!”

Sammy’s face crumpled. Tears welled into her eyes. I screwed the cap back on Mum’s pills and shut the bottle away again in the cabinet. Then I sat on the edge of the bath and pulled Sammy into my arms.

“Don’t cry,” I said. “It’ll be OK. I’ll take care of us!”

“It’s all very well saying that,” said Tizz. “We don’t even know if—”

“Stop it!” I begged. “Please!” I took a breath, trying to make myself be calm. “Mum will come back. She came back last time, she’ll come back this time. But one thing we’ve not got to do, and that’s fight!” I wiped Sammy’s eyes with the edge of my T-shirt. “We’ll be all right,” I said, “so long as we look out for each other.”

“What’s important,” I said, “is keeping things normal.”

“Normal?” Tizz gave me this look, like, are you out of your mind? “How can things be normal, without Mum?”

“Normal as possible,” I said. “For Sammy.”

I’d sent her off to watch telly while I rooted about in the kitchen to see what I could find for breakfast. There had to be something! But there wasn’t.

“I don’t believe this,” I said.

Tizz said, “What?” in this rather grumpy tone.

“There’s nothing in the fridge!”

Grudgingly, she came over to look.

“What’s that?” She pointed to a carton of milk. I picked it up and shook it.

“It’s empty, practically. And there’s only a tiny bit of butter, and the bread’s almost gone.”

Tizz marched across to a cupboard and yanked it open.

“Cereal.” She banged the packet down on the table. “Marmalade.”

But the cereal packet was only a quarter full, and the marmalade jar, like the fridge, was almost empty. When Mum stopped taking her meds, she didn’t always notice that the cupboards were getting bare. Just like she didn’t sleep much, she didn’t eat much, either. If she’d been at home she’d have sent us up the road to the corner shop.

Me and Tizz stood, looking at each other. I knew that we were both thinking the same thing: how were we going to feed ourselves?

Tizz ran her fingers through her hair, sticking it up on end.

“D’you think she’s left any money?”

“Dunno.” I picked up the cereal packet and shook it, helplessly. “Let’s at least give Sammy something to eat.”

Well! We ran into trouble straight away. Sammy didn’t want cereal, she wanted a boiled egg.

“Bald egg and fingers!”

When I said we didn’t have any eggs and she should just eat what she was given, she complained because there wasn’t any juice.

“Mum gives me juice!”

We didn’t have any juice. I found a tiny dribble of squash, which I made up for her, but she spat it out, saying it was watery.

“Just think yourself lucky you’ve got anything at all,” scolded Tizz. “We haven’t got anything.”

Only tea bags, and we both hate tea. ’Specially without milk. We had to keep the milk to go with the cereal. There was just enough for Tizz and Sammy, but then we couldn’t find any sugar, so that got Sammy going again.

“I can’t eat Krispies without sugar!”

Tizz said, “Oh, for goodness’ sake!” She picked up the marmalade jar, spooned out a dollop and dumped it on top of Sammy’s bowl.

“There! Stir that in.”

“It’s marm’lade,” whined Sammy. “I don’t like marm’lade!”

“Just get on with it,” snarled Tizz.

Sniffling, Sammy did so.

There were five slices of bread in the bin, but they were all hard, so I had to toast them.

“You have two,” said Tizz, “cos you didn’t have any cereal.”

And now there wasn’t any marmalade left, which meant I had to eat toast and marge, which is horrible, but there was only a scraping of butter and I let Sammy have that cos she won’t eat marge at any price.

“Call this normal?” said Tizz, pulling a face.

“We’ll go up the road,” I said. “After breakfast. We’ll buy stuff.”

“What with?”

“Money!” chortled Sammy. I guess she thought it was a joke.

“Yeah, right,” said Tizz. “Money.”

I jumped up. “Let’s look first and check what’s in the cupboard.” There might just be enough to keep us going.

I pulled out everything I could find and stacked it up on the table. There wasn’t very much. A tin of baked beans, a tin of spaghetti, two tins of tomato soup, a tin of sausages and a tin of pilchards.

We sat there, staring at them.

“That’s not going to last ten days,” said Tizz. “Not even if we just have one tin a day. Between us.”

Sammy was looking worried. “Why’s it got to last ten days?” Her lip wobbled. “When’s Mum coming back?”

“Soon,” I said, “soon! But just in case – I mean, just in case she’s away for ten days–”

Ten days, like last time. Sammy’s face crumpled.

“Where is she? Where’s she gone?”

“See, we’re not actually sure,” I said. I said it as gently as I could, but there wasn’t any point in lying to her. “You know how sometimes Mum gets a bit, like… excitable? Like when she’s having one of her big happies?”

Sammy nodded, doubtfully, and stuck her thumb in her mouth.

“It can make her do things she wouldn’t normally do. Like—”

“Disappearing,” said Tizz.

“But it’s all right,” I said, quickly. “She’ll come back! It’s just that we have to take care of ourselves while she’s not here.

“And not tell anyone that she’s gone!”

I said, “Yes, we’ve not got to tell anybody. Not anybody.”

That was the mistake we’d made last time. We’d been living over the other side of town, then, in an upstairs flat, and we’d been so scared when Mum went off that we’d told the lady in the flat next to ours, and she’d rung the Social Services people, and they’d come and taken us away. Even when Mum had turned up again they wouldn’t let us go back to her. It had been months before they said she was well enough to take responsibility for us. And all that time me and Tizz had been in a children’s home and Sammy had been with foster parents. That had been the worst part, being split up. We weren’t going to let that happen again.

We’d still been quite little, then. Too young to look after ourselves. But I was twelve now, and Tizz was ten, and nobody, but nobody, was going to come and take us away!

“I don’t suppose you remember last time?” said Tizz.

Slowly, Sammy shook her head.

“She was only a baby,” I said. “But now she’s big – she’s nearly six! She can be trusted to keep a secret. Can’t you?”

Sammy said, “What secret?”

“About Mum not being here. We don’t want people knowing, cos if they know they’ll put us in a home, they’ll say we can’t take care of ourselves. But we can,” I said, “can’t we?”

Sammy sucked on her thumb. She seemed uncertain.

“Of course we can!” I said. “We’re not stupid. Just think how proud Mum will be when she gets back and we tell her all the things we’ve done!”

“Such as what?” said Tizz. “Eating toast and marge and Rice Krispies with marmalade?”

I scowled at her, over Sammy’s head.

“I only asked,” said Tizz.

I said, “Well, don’t! Have a bit of imagination.”

Tizz hunched a shoulder.

“Can we stay up late?” said Sammy. “And watch whatever we like on TV?”

“You’ve got it,” said Tizz.

She really wasn’t helping. I said, “Maybe just now and again. Not all the time, though, cos that wouldn’t be right. Mum wouldn’t like it if we did that.”

“Will she be here for my birthday?”

“She might,” I said. “But if not, we’ll have a big bash when she gets back.”

“Seems to me,” said Tizz, “before we start thinking about birthdays we ought to find out if there’s any money anywhere.”

I knew that she was right. If we didn’t have any money, I couldn’t think what we would do.

First off, we looked in the saucer on the kitchen windowsill where Mum sometimes kept bits and pieces of change. There was a little bit in there. We set Sammy to counting it. Proudly she announced that it came to “£3 and 20p.” Meanwhile, I had £2 in my purse, and Tizz produced a fiver. I said, “Wow!”

“I was saving it,” said Tizz.

“That’s all right,” I said. “Mum’ll give it back.”

Tizz said, “You reckon?”

I think it must be dreadful to be so untrusting. But Tizz is one of those people, she has a very dim view of human nature. Even though she knows Mum can’t help being sick, she gets impatient.

“Let’s go through pockets,” I said.

We went through all of Mum’s pockets, and all of our own, but all we came up with was a 5p piece.

Tizz said, “Try down the side of the sofa. That’s what they do in books. They always manage to find something.”

We didn’t find anything at all. Not unless you count an old button, plus a needle that stuck in my finger and made me yelp.

“Is that blood?” quavered Sammy.

Tizz said, “Yes, but it’s not yours, so you don’t have to start freaking out! Let’s go and see if there’s anything in Mum’s secret stash.”

She meant the old Smarties tube where Mum sometimes hoarded 20p pieces. We raced through to Mum’s bedroom and sure enough, in the top drawer of her dressing table, there was the Smarties tube and oh! Hooray! It had something in it.

We carried it through to the kitchen and upended it. 20p pieces rolled about the table. Greedily, we counted them off into piles.

“That’s £4.60,” said Tizz.

It did seem wrong to be taking Mum’s money, especially when I had this unhappy feeling she’d probably been keeping it to buy something for Sammy’s birthday, but it couldn’t be helped.

“So how much have we got altogether?” I said. I waited for Tizz to add things up, cos she is good at arithmetic. She did some sums on a bit of paper.

“£14.75.”

Sammy’s face lit up. “That’s a lot,” she said.

It sounded like a lot. But was it? I wasn’t sure. I realised that I simply didn’t know. I had no idea what anything cost! When Mum sent us up the road it was usually just for bread, or milk, or maybe a tin of something. She’d give us a couple of pounds, and we’d hand it over and come back with the change, but I’d never properly bothered to count how much change. I’d always just accepted whatever Mrs Petrides gave us. It had never occurred to me to check prices. If Mum said buy a large loaf, I bought a large loaf. I picked it off the shelf and took it to the checkout and that was that.

I wished, now, that I’d paid a bit more attention.

Tizz was busy on another load of sums. She looked up and glared, fiercely, across the table.

“I don’t think,” she said, “that a person can live on 49p a day.”

I said, “What are you talking about?”

“49p,” said Tizz. “That’s how much we’ll each have to live on if Mum is away for ten days.”

I looked at her, doubtfully. I wasn’t sure what you could actually buy for 49p. Just bars of chocolate, maybe, or packets of crisps. But they weren’t healthy! Even I knew that.

“We’ve got all this stuff,” I said, pointing at the tins we’d taken out of the cupboard.

“Yeah.” Tizz barely glanced at them. “That’ll go a long way.”

I did wish she would stop being so negative all the time. It really didn’t help. I pointed out that people had been known to survive on nothing but bread and water for days on end.

“Just so long as you have enough to drink,” I said. “That’s the main thing.”

“We’ll starve,” said Tizz.

“We won’t starve!” Didn’t she listen to a word I said? “Watch my lips: we are not going to starve. I won’t let us!”

“Dunno what you think you’re gonna do about it,” said Tizz. She scrunched up the paper she’d been doing her sums on and hurled it savagely across the room. “Mum might at least have left us some money!”

I said, “She didn’t know.” It wasn’t like Mum planned these things. She just got overwhelmed. “Anyway,” I said, “after yesterday she probably doesn’t have any money.”

Yesterday had been such a good day. Mum’s friend Nikki had come round with her boyfriend and we’d all gone off to the Carnival on the Common. It’s held every year, but this was the first time we’d ever been. There were all kinds of stalls, where you could play Guess the Weight or have a lucky dip or throw hoop-las, and lots of different rides, some of them quite scary. Well, I found them scary! I am a bit of a cowardy custard like that. Tizz was eager to try everything, and Mum let her. Like she let Sammy have three goes at the lucky dip, until she managed to pick something she really wanted.

We were so busy enjoying ourselves we didn’t ever stop to wonder where the money was coming from. Mum just kept laughing, and spending, and Nikki and her boyfriend kept saying, “Go for it!” Like egging her on. Encouraging her. Mum doesn’t need encouragement! Not when she’s all hyper. She needs someone to take charge and be responsible.

I should have taken charge. I should have been responsible. I knew Mum couldn’t afford to pay for all those rides, and all those goes on the lucky dip. Plus we all had vegeburgers, and doughnuts, and fizzy drinks. And Mum paid for Nikki and her boyfriend. And they let her. Just taking advantage of Mum’s good nature. They know when she’s on a high she loses all control.

She’d gone off again, that evening, to meet them. She’d been in a mad whirl, all laughing and flying about from room to room, trying on clothes then tearing them off again.

“Darlings, how do I look? Do I look like a hag?”

Like she ever could! Mum is really pretty. Very slim and delicate, with big blue eyes and a foaming mass of hair, red as the setting sun.

“I feel haglike,” she said. “I can’t go out feeling haglike!”

How I wished, now, that she hadn’t gone out. But we’d assured her she looked beautiful, and we’d even helped her, in the end, choose which clothes to wear. She’d gone waltzing off, as happy as could be. But I couldn’t help wondering how much money she’d had left. It couldn’t have been very much; not after her mad spending spree. Almost nothing, I’d have thought. How was she going to manage, without any money?

Tizz could obviously sense what was going through my mind.

“It’s that Nikki,” she said. “She leads Mum astray.”

“She’s supposed to be Mum’s friend,” I said.

Tizz snorted. “Some friend!”

I wondered if Nikki knew that Mum hadn’t come home. I couldn’t ring her cos I didn’t have her number. I didn’t even know where she lived.

“Her and that stupid Zak.” Tizz said it vengefully. “They’re the ones that made Mum spend all her money!”

They certainly hadn’t done anything to stop her. But then neither had I. On the other hand, even if I’d tried I doubt Mum would have taken any notice. She’d just have laughed and cried, “Oh, darling, don’t be such a bore! You take life far too seriously. Try to have a bit of fun, for once.”

I had had fun! It had been the best day I could remember for a long time. And now I was feeling guilty.

I thrust my hair back, behind my ears.

“We’ll manage,” I said. “Don’t worry!” I leaned over and gave Sammy a hug. She had been listening, solemnly, darting anxious glances from one to the other of us. “What we have to do,” I said, “is decide what’s most important. Stuff we need to keep us going. Like bread, and milk, and stuff.”

Sammy brightened. “Fishy fingers!”

“Chips,” said Tizz.

I said, “Chips aren’t good for you. We’ve got to have stuff that’s healthy. Like pasta,” I said. “That’s supposed to be good for you.”

Tizz pulled a face. “Bo-ring!”

“Doesn’t matter if it’s boring. You don’t think when people go to the North Pole they worry about stuff being boring? They worry about what’s good for them, like – I don’t know! Dried fish, and stuff.”

“You gotta be joking,” said Tizz, “if you think we’re going to eat dried fish!”

I could see that my task was not going to be easy. Tizz is just so difficult at times.

“Wait there,” I said. I went back to the bedroom and dug a notebook out of my school bag. “Right!” I slapped it down on the table. Tizz eyed it suspiciously.

“What’s that for?”

“We need to work things out,” I said.

“You mean, you’re going to get all bossy?”

I said, “Well, someone has to. Would you rather it was you?”

Tizz hunched a shoulder.

“You want to take over?” I pushed the pad towards her, but she shoved it back at me.

“I don’t want it!”

I knew she wouldn’t. The thing about Tizz, she may be sharp as needles and full of mouth, but she is far too impatient to ever sit down and actually plan anything. She also hates being told what to do. It is a constant battle! I know that I am not as bright as she is, but I do usually get things done in the end. Slow but sure, is what Mum says.

“OK!” I reached out for a pen. “We’re going to sit here,” I said, “and make a shopping list.”

In the end, we made two lists. The first was things we had to have:

Bread

Milk

Marge

Cheese

Eggs

Cereal

Mostly chosen by me.

The second was things we’d like to have:

Pizza

Fish Fingers

Chocolate Biscuits

Orange Squash

Sugar

Jam

Meatballs

All of them chosen by Tizz and Sammy.

“We’ll have to go to Tesco,” I said. “You can get stuff cheaper there.”

Tizz didn’t like that idea. She complained that it was a long way to walk and we’d have to carry heavy bags back with us. I told her that couldn’t be helped.

“We’ve got to go where it’s cheapest.”

Tizz said, “That’s not fair on Mr Petrides. He’s a small shopkeeper. He has to be saved! It’s people like you,” said Tizz, “that put people like him out of business.”

I did feel a slight twinge of guilt, cos in the past Mr and Mrs Petrides had been really good to us. Sometimes when Mum ran out of money they’d actually let us take stuff and pay for it later. You couldn’t do that at Tesco. But I hardened my heart. I had to! It was a question of survival.

“I bet if we asked him,” said Tizz, “he’d let us have things on tick.”

On tick was what Mum called it when she couldn’t afford to pay. I think maybe it meant that Mr Petrides put a tick by the side of her name in his account book.

“We’ll only do that if we get desperate,” I said. “Otherwise he might ask questions, like where’s your mum or why hasn’t she been in?”

“Mm… I s’ppose.” Tizz said it reluctantly, but at least it stopped her arguing. The one thing we were terrified of was people asking questions. We’d be safe in Tesco cos nobody knew us.

I put all the money in my purse except for five £1 coins and five 20p pieces. Tizz watched, suspiciously.

“What are you doing with that lot?”

I said, “Saving it. I’m going to put this –” I scooped up the 20p pieces – “in here.” I dropped them into the saucer that Mum kept on the windowsill. “They’re in case we need a bit extra. And this –” the five pound coins – “is our emergency fund. I’m going to leave it indoors so we can’t spend it. I’m going to hide it somewhere. Somewhere safe. Like…” I roamed about the kitchen, looking for a hiding place. “In with the flour!”

There was a half packet of flour in the cupboard, with an elastic band wrapped round it. I pushed the coins in there and put the flour back on the shelf.

Tizz said, “I bet that’s the first place a burglar would think of looking.”

I told her that I wasn’t scared of burglars. “I’m scared of it getting lost.”

“Like it absolutely would,” said Tizz, “if it wasn’t hidden in a bag of flour. I mean, if it was just put in an ordinary purse like any normal person would put it.”

“I just don’t want us being tempted into spending it,” I said. “We’ve got to have something to fall back on.”

Tizz said, “Yeah, like living on bread and marge. Yuck!”

Sammy said, “Ugh! Yuck! Bluurgh.”

They both bent over and pretended to be sick.

“We want chips,” said Tizz. “We want pizza! We want—”

“Fishy fingers!”

“Yay!”

Tizz and Sammy smacked their hands together in a triumphant high five. I was glad that Sammy had cheered up, but I did hope we weren’t going to have scenes in Tesco. I wasn’t sure I could cope with that. It would be just so embarrassing! Everyone would look at us, especially if Sammy worked herself up into one of her states. Just now and again, if she can’t get what she wants, she’ll throw herself on the ground and drum her heels and refuse to get up. Mum is the only one who knows how to deal with her.

“I think,” said Tizz, “if you want my opinion, we ought to be allowed to have whatever we want to have. Without you dictating to us!”

“Just buy nice things,” said Sammy.

“Yeah! Right. ‘Stead of all that boring muck!” Tizz waved a hand at my list of things we had to have.

I felt quite cross with her. She wasn’t being at all helpful.

“Let’s put down some other stuff.” Tizz snatched up the second list and added CRISPS in big capital letters at the bottom of it.

“Sweeties!” shouted Sammy.

“SWEETIES,” wrote Tizz.

She was being deliberately provoking. I almost felt like throwing my purse at her and telling her to get on with it. Let her take the responsibility. But of course she wouldn’t; not when it came to it. She just wanted to challenge my authority. It is very difficult, sometimes, being the oldest, especially when you have a sister who refuses to do what she’s told. And keeps getting the littlest one all worked up. I could see that Sammy was well on the way to having one of her screaming fits.

“Listen,” I said. I squatted down beside her. Even a five-year-old can be made to see reason. “We’ll try to buy some nice things, I promise you! But nice things are expensive and we can’t afford too many of them, so—”

That was as far as I got because at that point someone hammered on the front door and we all froze. Well, me and Tizz froze. Sammy hesitated for just a second, then with a joyous cry of, “Mum!” went galloping off.

It wasn’t Mum. It was Her Upstairs. Mrs Bagley. Mum calls her ‘that woman’. We call her Her Upstairs. We don’t like her.

She came pounding into the room with a scared-looking Sammy trailing behind her. She is such a huge great woman that the floor trembles as she walks.

“Where is your mother?” she said, in this big booming voice that practically made the walls shake.

I was about to say in quavering tones that Mum wasn’t here when Tizz jumped in ahead of me.

“She’s out,” she said.

It is just as well that Tizz is so quick. The way she said it – “She’s OUT” – was like, what’s it to do with you? If I’d told her that Mum wasn’t home, you can just bet she’d have demanded to know where she was, and then I wouldn’t have known what to say. I don’t think as fast as Tizz. She can always be relied on to come up with a smart answer.

Her Upstairs did this huffing thing. Sort of ‘Pouf!’ With her lips billowing out and her nostrils flaring, like she suspected Tizz of being impertinent. Tizz faced up to her, boldly.

“Can we give her a message?”

“You can indeed.” Her Upstairs has these big bosoms. I mean, like, really really big. Like massive. Mum says you could lay a dinner table on them. When she gets indignant, which is what she was now, she kind of inflates them. I watched them heave and wondered what we’d done to upset her this time.

“You can tell your mother,” she said, “that I have called for my flour.”

I said, “F-flour?”

Even Tizz looked a bit taken aback. At any rate, she didn’t say anything.

“My flour. My self-raising! I should like to have it back. If, of course –” her lip curled – “there is anything left to have back. Shall we go into the kitchen and see?”

She set off across the room. Thud, bang, stamp, across the floor. Tizz sprang into action.

“It’s all right! Ruby’ll get it for you.”

“I will,” I said. “I’ll get it for you!”

I rushed into the kitchen, grabbed the bag of flour and scrabbled frantically in search of our pound coins. I had to plunge my hand in so deep that great white clouds came puffing out all over me. And then, in my panic, I went and dropped the bag and loads of flour went and spilt over the floor.

But at least I had the coins! All five of them. I stuffed them into the back pocket of my jeans and wiped my top with the dish rag. Unfortunately, by now, there didn’t seem to be very much flour left in the bag. Hardly any, in fact. Most of it was on the kitchen floor.

Hastily, I seized a tablespoon out of the drawer, scooped up as much as I could and poured it back into the bag. It probably wasn’t very hygienic cos I didn’t know when Mum had last had a cleaning session, but the way I saw it, flour was used for cooking and cooking killed germs. Anyhow, it was only Her Upstairs.

I went back into the sitting room. Her Upstairs was standing there, with her arms folded. Tizz was looking defiant. Sammy had rushed off to hide behind the sofa.

“I found it,” I said. “There’s still some left.”

I held out the bag. Her Upstairs took it, rather grimly. She removed the elastic band, looked in the bag and went, “Huh!” Then she looked at my top and went, “Hmph!”

“Mum was going to give it back,” I said.

“Not before she managed to get through three quarters of it, I see. What on earth was she making?”

I looked helplessly at Tizz.

“Can’t remember,” said Tizz.

“I was under the impression she merely wanted a sprinkle. Perhaps you would be kind enough to inform her, when she gets back, that I should appreciate it, in future, if she would not come to me when she runs out of something.”

“I will,” I said. “I’ll tell her.”

“Thank you. I should be grateful.”

Her Upstairs moved off, towards the door. I followed her, anxiously. Please, just let her go.

As she passed the table, where we’d laid out the stuff we’d found in the cupboard, she paused for a moment. I could almost hear her nosy parker brain ticking over.

What are they doing with all those tins? Where is their mother? What is going on?

It was Tizz, again, who came to the rescue.

“We’re tidying up the cupboard,” she said.

“Hm!” Her Upstairs gave a sniff. “Not before time, I dare say.”

I resented that! It was criticism of Mum. Like saying she wasn’t good at keeping things in order. Maybe she wasn’t, but so what? She was our mum and we loved her! We didn’t mind if the cupboards were in a mess. And what was it to do with Her Upstairs anyway?

“I hate that woman,” said Tizz, when the door was safely closed.

I didn’t like her very much either, especially when she was so mean about Mum, though I could sort of understand why she didn’t want Mum asking for stuff any more. Cos I didn’t think, really, that Mum had been going to give the flour back. Not that she would have kept it on purpose; just that it would have slipped her mind.

I said this to Tizz, but she got all angry and snapped, “Don’t defend her, she’s horrible! And you—” she whizzed round on Sammy, crawling out from behind the sofa. “Don’t go running off to answer the door when you don’t know who it is! You don’t want us all to be split up, do you? Cos that’s what’ll happen if Her Upstairs finds out!”

Sammy’s lower lip started to wobble. Tears came into her eyes. “I thought it was Mum!”

“If it had been Mum, she’d have used her key.”

I thought, yes, if she hadn’t lost it or had her bag stolen. I told Sammy to cheer up.

“We’ll go shopping in a minute. That’ll be fun!”

“Buy nice things?” said Sammy.

“We’ll see.”

“Fishy fingers!”

“Maybe.”

Sammy glanced slyly at Tizz. “– Fishy fingers! We want fishy fingers!”

But Tizz wasn’t playing any more. “Don’t keep on,” she said. “It’s a question of what we can afford.”

At last! She was beginning to give me some support. She didn’t even grumble when I insisted on finding a new hiding place for our emergency fund.

“I’m just scared,” I said, “that if we take it with us we might be tempted to spend it, and then we’ll be left with nothing.”

Tizz said, “Right.”

“I mean, I know Mum could be back at any moment—”

She could! She really could! She could be there waiting for us when we got back from Tesco.

“It’s just… you know! In case she isn’t.”

“This is it,” said Tizz. “Got to be prepared.”

Life was so much easier when Tizz decided to cooperate.

“We’ve absolutely got to watch what we’re spending,” I said, as we wheeled our trolley into Tesco. It did make me feel a bit important, being in charge of the shopping. I told Tizz that she was to add things up as we went round.

“Make sure we don’t overspend.”

Tizz said, “OK.”

“We’ve got £9.75. So when we get up to £9 you’ve got to let me know.”

“OK,” said Tizz.

We set off down the first aisle, heading for the bread counter. We’d been to Tesco loads of times with Mum, which was just as well cos otherwise it would have been really confusing. I picked up two large loaves and put them in the trolley.

“That’s two at 55p,” I said.

“Got it,” said Tizz.

Sammy’s hand was already reaching out towards the cakes. She likes the little squishy ones covered in green and pink goo. Mum sometimes lets her have one as a treat.

“Rubeee!” She tugged at my arm. “Cakies!”

“Not now,” I said.

“Mum would let me!”

“Mum’s not here,” said Tizz.

“And anyway,” I said, “they’re not good for you.”

Sammy’s face crumpled. A woman walking past smiled, sympathetically.

“They are nice, though,” she said, “aren’t they?”

Well! That wasn’t a very helpful remark. I hastily hauled Sammy off towards the milk and eggs. I reached out for two cartons of milk and stared in outrage.

“£1.18?” Just for a carton of milk?

“That’s £3.36,” said Tizz.

“Just for milk?”

Tizz shrugged.

“That’ll only leave us…” I did some frantic finger work.

“£6.39,” said Tizz.

I was beginning to understand how it was that Mum kept running out of money and having to buy things on tick and borrow stuff from Her Upstairs. Rather grimly, I marched on down the aisle.

“Marge.”

Sammy opened her mouth and let out a wail. “Don’t like marge!”

“Nobody does,” said Tizz. “We’ve all just got to put up with it.”

I was so thankful that Tizz was being supportive at last. It was like the reality of the situation had suddenly hit her. Mum had disappeared and we were on our own. And if we didn’t want to be split up, we had to learn how to take care of ourselves. It wasn’t any use splurging on pink cakes and chocolate biscuits, then being forced to throw ourselves on the mercy of Her Upstairs cos we’d run out of money and there wasn’t any food left.

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