Praise for Virginia Macgregor

‘Undobutedly a future classic’ (Clare Mackintosh, author of Sunday Times Top Ten bestselling I Let You Go)

‘A life-affirming read… Warm, wise and insightful’ (Good Housekeeping)

‘Sharp, funny and hugely moving, this is a must read’ (Fabulous)

‘It is impossible not to fall in love with nine-year-old Milo in this touching novel’ (Stylist)

‘The characterisation and dialogue make it easy to feel empathy for the family and readers will cheer Milo on to achieve his goal’ (Sun)

‘[An] understated and likeable tale that just might restore your faith in human nature’ (Bella)

VIRGINIA MACGREGOR is the author of What Milo Saw, The Return of Norah Wells, Before I Was Yours and, most recently, the young adult novel Wishbones. Her work has been translated into over a dozen languages. After graduating from Oxford University, she worked as a teacher of English and Housemistress in three major British boarding schools. She holds an MA in Creative Writing, and was, for several years, Head of Creative Writing at Wellington College. She is married to Hugh and they live with their daughter, Tennessee Skye, in Concord, New Hampshire.

For my darling Hugh and my dearest little Tennessee Skye: thank you for teaching me, each day, what it means to be truly beautiful – and truly lucky.

Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul

And sings the tune without words And never stops at all.

Emily Dickinson

Contents

Cover

Praise

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

New Year’s Eve

Chapter 1

January

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

February

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

March

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

April

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

May

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

1 June

Chapter 37

September

A Word from the Author

Acknowledgements

Copyright

I was born seven weeks premature. An incubator baby. Tubes stuffed up my nose, eyes screwed shut, looked like a tiny wrinkly vole.

I wasn’t meant to survive.

When the nurse put me into Dad’s arms for the first time, he said: She’s light as a feather. That’s how I got my name.

Kids at school think it’s funny, the boys especially.

Featherweight champ, they say.

Quack quack, they chant, waddling with their feet turned out.

Tweet tweet, they chirp, flapping their arms.

I was so small that doctors came up from London and peered at me through the incubator walls and journalists sneaked onto the ward to ask questions and take photos.

I wonder whether that was what made Mum hospitalphobic – the scare she got from me being so small. And then I think about her other phobias too and where they came from, like her leaving-the-house phobia and her swimming phobia and her running-out-of-food phobia.

You were the tiniest baby Willingdon had ever seen, Dad’s told me more times than I can remember, like I’d won a prize. Anyway, it’s all turned out to be what Miss Pierce, my History teacher, calls ironic, because people say the same thing of Mum now – except the opposite: that she’s The Biggest Woman Willingdon Has Ever Seen. People sometimes ask me if I’m adopted. I know what they’re thinking: how can someone so small belong to someone who takes up as much space as Mum?

People are still really interested in Mum and her weight and the fact that she hasn’t come out of the house in years. Last summer, I found Allen, a reporter from the Newton News, hiding behind our hedge with his camera angled at Mum’s bedroom window. He said he’d give me twenty quid if I let him take a photo. I told him to get lost, obviously.

Anyway, Mum’s been chubby ever since I’ve known her, it’s just the way she is. What’s more important for you to know is that she’s the best mum in the world. A mum who’s funny and clever and always has time to listen and doesn’t obsess about stuff like homework and being tidy – or eating vegetables. And although she’s a little on the large side, she’s beautiful, like proper, old-fashioned movie-star beautiful: long, thick, wavy hair, a wide, dimply smile and big soulful eyes that change colour in different lights – sometimes they’re blue and sometimes they’re green and sometimes they’re a brown so light it’s like they’re filled with flecks of gold.

Whenever I think about Mum and how awesome she is and how close we are, I realise that there can’t be many daughters out there as lucky as me.

So Mum being overweight has never mattered to me. As far as I’m concerned, there are a million worse things a mum can be.

That is, it never mattered until last night, New Year’s Eve, when everything went wrong. Really, horribly wrong.

New Year’s Eve

1

‘You sure you don’t want to come out?’ Jake asks. ‘Rock the town together?’

Jake’s the only guy I know who can be cool and geeky at the same time. We’ve been best friends since we were a week old. My mum and Jake’s mum were pregnant with us at the same time and they went to this baby group, so we were destined to be together. Mum and Steph are really close too. Or they were until this Christmas when they had a blazing row. Now, Mum doesn’t want Steph coming round any more.

‘Rock the town in Willingdon?’ I ask.

Willingdon is the smallest village in England. Population 351 – blink and you’ll miss it. Jake and I are the only kids here.

Jake laughs. ‘Well, rock the village then.’

It’s 11.30pm, New Year’s Eve, and we’re lying on Jake’s bedroom floor, staring at the glow stars on his ceiling and listening to one of his Macklemore albums. Before his parents got divorced, Jake used to listen to hip-hop with his dad. He doesn’t really see his dad now so I guess listening to those albums is a way for Jake to feel like they’re still close.

‘I’ve got to get back to Mum.’ I get up and brush bits of popcorn off my jeans. Popcorn was the only thing that kept me going through Jake’s zombie invasion film.

Jake rolls over. ‘So you’re letting me go out all on my own?’

‘Why don’t you call Amy?’ I ask.

He shakes his head. Amy’s meant to be Jake’s girlfriend but he seems to spend more time avoiding her than actually going out with her.

At New Year, most people prefer to be in crowds: everyone pressing in, counting down, filling up their champagne flutes, music blaring. I like it quiet, just me and the person I love most in the whole world: Mum. I love Dad too, but he’s so busy zooming around on emergency plumbing jobs that he doesn’t have time to talk. Even on New Year’s, he’s out repairing people’s blocked loos and leaky drains and frozen pipes. So Mum and I see the New Year in together. In those last few seconds before the clock ticks over, we hold our hands and our breaths and send wishes out to the New Year.

I love it. The magic of it. The stillness. The feeling that anything could happen.

‘I’ll call you,’ I say to Jake.

‘At 12:01,’ he throws back.

That’s a tradition too, my 12:01 post-New Years Eve phone call to Jake.

‘12:01. I promise.’ I lean over and kiss his cheek – a bit too close to his mouth, which makes us both jolt back and stare in opposite directions. ‘You can tell me all about your resolutions,’ I say quickly.

Jake raises his eyebrows. ‘I’m not perfect already?’

‘Perfect’s overrated.’

He smiles.

The thing is, beside his bad taste in films, Jake’s as close to perfect as it gets. Next to Mum and Dad, he’s the best thing in my life.

There are loads of people out on Willingdon Green, standing on their front lawns with plastic champagne flutes looking at the sky. Behind the fireworks, droopy Christmas decorations hang from people’s houses and the shops on the parade, which makes the village look tired.

When I get to our cottage, which sits bang opposite St Mary’s Church, it’s the same as always. Dad’s Emergency Plumbing Van is missing from the drive and a blue light flickers through the lounge windows. It’s been Mum’s room ever since she got too large to manage the stairs. And to share a bed with Dad.

We’ve had to build ramps everywhere and to make all the doors bigger so that she can fit through them. Including the front door. Which is all a bit pointless because Mum hasn’t left the house in thirteen years.

So, the lounge is basically Mum’s world.

I’ve thought about ways to get her out of the house or to help her with a diet, but whenever I suggest going for a walk, she finds an excuse not to move from her armchair, which has the telly dead in front of it and the window that looks out to The Green to the right of it, so she can alternate between looking at a made-up world and a real world she’s left behind.

I suppose she’s happy enough. And if you love someone, you have to accept them how they are, right?

Alongside the extra-wide doors, Dad ordered Mum a supersize wheelchair. It came in a container ship from America and I sometimes take Mum for rides around the ground floor of the house in it. The wheelchair is so wide it nearly touches the walls. Mum’s so wide she nearly touches the walls.

If Willingdon is the smallest village in the UK, then our cottage must be the smallest house in the UK. When I was five, Steph, Jake’s mum, gave me this pop-up Alice in Wonderland book. One of the pop-ups is of Alice when she’s eaten the cake and got really, really big: her legs and arms and head stick out of the doors and windows and it looks like any moment now, her house is going to burst open. I’ve still got that book and every time I look at it, I think of Mum and how big she is and how little our cottage is and how maybe, one day, the walls and doors and windows will fly off and there’ll be nothing left but Mum sitting in her chair in the middle of Willingdon watching a re-run of Strictly Come Dancing.

On the way up the drive, I see Houdini, our pet goat, straining on his lead. He’s come out of the kennel Dad made for him, and he’s staring up at Mum’s window – and he’s screaming his head off.

‘It’s okay,’ I say, patting his belly. ‘The fireworks will stop soon.’

Houdini’s a local celebrity: people from the village come and rub his horns for luck. The vet reckons he’s about seventy years old but we can’t be sure. A few years before I was born, Dad found him wandering by the motorway that runs just outside Willingdon and brought him home and he’s been living in our front garden ever since.

‘It’s going to be the best year ever,’ I whisper into Houdini’s ear.

Houdini stops bleating, but he doesn’t take his eyes off Mum’s window.

‘You want to come in?’

He bows his head like he’s nodding.

‘Okay, just don’t chew anything.’

Houdini and Mum have one big thing in common: they’re always hungry. I reckon that if Mum ran out of food, she’d start chewing flowers and inanimate objects too.

I kiss the top of Houdini’s head, untie his lead from the post Dad drilled into the floor of his kennel, and take him inside.

He lets out a croaky bleat and his bell tinkles. It’s a huge cow-bell Dad ordered from Switzerland to help us find Houdini when he goes missing. Which happens about once a week. We usually find him in Rev Cootes’s garden or at the empty Lido in Willingdon Park.

I open the front door.

‘Mum!’ I call out.

No answer. Which is weird. Mum always answers. She’s got one of those deep, rich voices that make people stop and listen.

‘Mum!’ I push Houdini into the kitchen. ‘Stay there – and don’t eat anything.’ I close the kitchen door and go to the lounge. ‘Five minutes till midnight, Mum!’

I hear a groan.

I run to the door and throw it open.

‘Mum!’

And then I see her – lying on the carpet, packets of prawn cocktail crisps and Galaxy chocolate wrappers and sticky tins of pineapple strewn around her.

When I look closer, I see that her mouth is foaming and that her eyes are rolling behind their flickering lids.

You know that expression? The bottom fell out from under me? Well, I get it now, how, in a second, your whole life, everything you thought was safe and solid, just disappears and leaves you grasping at thin air.

I kneel down beside Mum’s body, shaking.

Mum’s re-run of Strictly Come Dancing is playing on the TV. A long-legged blonde and an old, squat, B-list celebrity are waltzing around the dance floor – they’re spinning and spinning and spinning under the glare of the studio lights, their mouths stretched into those manic smiles people put on for TV.

My attention shifts back to Mum. Apart from the fact that she’s massive, the woman lying in front of me doesn’t look anything like Mum. She’s one of those bodies the camera pans over after an invasion in Jake’s zombie movies: her limbs are sticking out at weird angles and her mouth is slack and her skin pale. When I touch her brow it’s sweaty but her skin feels cold.

Come on Feather, think.

I did a life-saving course at the pool, though most of the stuff was linked to pulling people out of the water.

Before I can do anything, I have to clear a whole load of Max’s Marvellous Adventures books that have fallen around Mum. She must have been reaching for one before she collapsed. They’re these old-fashioned, American stories about a boy who walks around in a red superhero outfit with a goat as his sidekick. I reckon that it’s a sign – that Houdini stepped right out of one of those books and started wandering alongside the motorway outside Willingdon because he was meant to be with us. Anyway, Mum loves those stories.

I snap back into the present.

Mum’s wheelchair is lying on its side.

Yanking Mum onto her back takes all the strength I’ve got. I have to use the weight of her body to get some leverage. I feel a thump in my chest when her back hits the carpet and I worry I’ve winded her.

For a second she opens her eyes.

‘Mum!’

She’s still there. Thank God.

She stretches out her hand. I grip it and hold it to my chest.

‘You’re going to be okay, Mum,’ I say. ‘Everything’s going to be okay.’

But her eyelids drop closed again and her hand goes limp.

‘Mum… please – wake up!’

Outside, the fireworks bang. It feels like explosions detonating in my skull.

I tilt Mum’s head and check her airway.

This isn’t happening. That’s all I keep thinking. This can’t be happening.

I put my ear to her mouth, but my blood’s pounding so loud I can’t hear anything.

Leaning in closer to her mouth, I wait to feel her breath against my cheek, but there’s nothing.

I get out my mobile and speed dial Dad. It goes straight to answerphone.

‘Dad – you have to come home. It’s Mum.’

As I hang up, I realise I’m on my own. And if I don’t save Mum, it’ll be my fault.

I put one hand on top of the other, splay my fingers and place them on her sternum. I don’t even know whether this is what I should be doing and Mum’s so big I can’t tell whether I’ve found the right place, but I have to do something.

I push my hands up and down: one two three… I breathe into her mouth… one two three…

This is hopeless.

I grab my phone again to dial 999.

And then I pause.

Mum would hate it: the ambulance pulling up outside our house, everyone from the village staring at her being carried out on a stretcher. That is, if the stretcher will even hold her.

I don’t want to be gawped at, Mum says whenever I suggest we go out to the cinema or to the shops or for a walk in Willingdon Park. She won’t even come to watch me in my swimming galas. I tell her it doesn’t matter what people think, that she’s way prettier and cleverer and funnier than any of the stupid people who make comments. But I get why she finds it hard – when you’re as large as Mum, people can be mean. Really mean.

And then there’s her whole hospital-phobia thing.

But she’s dying. She’s actually dying. Why am I even considering not calling an ambulance?

I dial.

‘I have to do this Mum,’ I whisper. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘We’re going to have to call the Fire and Rescue Service,’ says one of the paramedics.

I was right about the stretcher. There was no chance Mum was going to fit on it.

I look over the paramedic’s shoulder. Everyone on The Green has forgotten all about New Year’s Eve and the fireworks: they’re huddled in clumps staring at the ambulance with its flashing lights.

‘They’ll have better equipment to get her out,’ he adds.

I wish Dad would come home.

And I wish they’d hurry up and get Mum to hospital. The paramedic said she’s stable but he won’t explain why she’s not waking up.

Plus, I’m angry that the 999 woman didn’t listen when I told her that they’d need extra manpower, that Mum wasn’t like a normal emergency patient. And because she didn’t listen, only two paramedics turned up. So they had to get help from Mr Ding, the owner of the Lucky Lantern Takeaway Van, and this other guy I don’t know who’s recently moved into the cottage next door. And even then they couldn’t lift Mum.

Dad’s plumbing van hurtles along The Green. He jumps out.

‘Feather!’

‘It’s Mum—’ I start but he’s already running inside.

By the time the fire engine turns up, Dad’s standing next to me on the pavement with a zoned-out look. He couldn’t cope with anything happening to Mum any more than I could. His hair’s sticking up and I notice that his faded blue overalls are hanging off him. He’s been losing weight just about as fast as Mum’s been putting it on.

And the number of people standing on The Green now, staring at us, has doubled.

I know Mum’s unconscious, so it’s not like she’s going to remember this, but I still feel bad. Really bad. Because I can see it. All of it. And I know she’d hate it:

The neighbours staring at her and cupping their hands over their mouths and whispering;

The police car plonked in the middle of the road, its blue lights flashing;

The fire engine parked right up to the front of the house with a mobile crane-like attachment sticking out the top.

After they take the lounge window out, I stand there watching, like everyone else, as a crane lifts Mum out of the cottage. Only it doesn’t look like Mum. It looks like a massive unconscious woman I’ve never seen before, a woman trapped in a huge net that’s being hauled out of our cottage like an enormous bloated, human fish.

And it’s true. Dangling unconscious in that net, Mum looks more like a wounded animal, a beached whale or a bear that’s been shot down, than a person. And you know what the worst bit is? As the crane lowers Mum onto the front lawn and as the firemen open the net, it’s like I’m seeing her for the first time – in 3D, HD, Technicolor:

The grease stains on the front of her sweatshirt.

The smears of chocolate on her sleeves.

The sticky splodges of pineapple syrup on her tracksuit bottoms.

Her stomach hanging over the waistband where her T-shirt has rucked up.

And her messed-up hair, matted and knotty. If there’s one thing Mum’s proud of, it’s her hair. That’s why, every night, I wash it for her in a bowl of hot water I bring in from the kitchen, and, every morning, before I go to school, I make sure it’s brushed. It doesn’t matter that no one will ever see it – it matters to her. And anything that matters to Mum matters to me.

I feel guilty for feeling embarrassed, and for letting the firemen haul Mum out here for everyone to gawp at.

As I watch the firemen and the paramedics lever Mum into the ambulance on this inflatable stretcher thing they call an Ice Path because it’s used for rescuing groups of people who get trapped in ice, or water or in mud, I realise that I’ve betrayed the most important person in my life.

I should have found another way to get her help.

Dad turns to me. ‘What happened, Feather?’

He doesn’t mean to, but the way it comes out, it sounds like it’s my fault.

‘I found Mum lying on the floor,’ I say. ‘I came back from Jake’s just before midnight…’

I look at the ambulance and think of Mum in there, all alone.

‘She wouldn’t breathe,’ I say, my voice shaky. ‘They think she’s had some kind of fit.’

Dad’s got bags under his eyes and he’s got that pale, shell-shocked look the soldiers have in the pictures Miss Pierce showed us at school.

‘I should have been with her. I shouldn’t have gone out.’

‘Feather… come on…’

Dad puts his arm around me but I push him away.

‘It’s true Dad. If she hadn’t tried to get up on her own…’

My hands are shaking. I wish I could turn back time, just by a few minutes, then I could have prevented this from happening.

Dad steps forward again and folds me into his arms and this time I don’t fight back.

He kisses my forehead and says: ‘It’ll be okay, Feather.’

I nod, because I want to believe him. Only right now my world feels a zillion miles from okay.

Dad tells the paramedics that we’ll follow in the car, which is his way of saving them from having to point out the obvious: that there’s no room for us in the back of the ambulance.

As we watch the ambulance turn out of The Green, followed by the fire engine and the police car, I realise that it’s already 1am. I’ve missed the New Year coming in.

And then I see Jake running across The Green, and I realise that I haven’t kept our 12:01 promise and that makes me feel worse.

‘I was worried…’ Jake says. ‘When you didn’t call. And then you didn’t answer your phone.’ He looks over at the people gathered on The Green, at our open front door and at the lounge window sitting on the drive. ‘What happened?’

I shake my head and then lean into his chest. He holds me and for a while, we just stay there, not saying anything.

Then Jake takes my hand and we go back into the house. When we get to the kitchen, we find Houdini standing with his front hooves up on the windowsill, his big bell clanging against his chest. He’s got the same zoned-out look as Dad did earlier, which makes me think that he must have known that something was up with Mum before anyone else did. Maybe Dad’s right. Maybe Houdini is a magic goat.

As the three of us stand watching the last of the fireworks petering out in the dark sky, I make the most important resolution of my life:

If Mum wakes up, I say to myself, to the sky and the stars and anything out there that might be listening, if she lives, I’m going to look after her better. I’m going to make her well again – for good.

January

2

I stand at the door and look at all these grown-up people sitting on tiddly chairs in the Year 4 classroom of Newton Primary.

‘I’m sorry we have to be in here.’ I recognise the man at the microphone. He helped the paramedics with the stretcher. He’s doing up Cuckoo Cottage next door.

Taped to the wall behind him, there’s a poster of a woman in a red dress with curly writing running up her body: Slim Skills: The Key to a Whole New You.

I’ve been reading up about being overweight on the NHS website and it said that joining a weight-loss group was a good first step, so I found the one closest to Willingdon and this is it: my first Slim Skills meeting.

I look around for Jake – he’s meant to be here for moral support – but there’s no sign of him.

‘There was a booking clash with the assembly hall,’ the man goes on. ‘I’ll make sure it’s sorted for next week.’ He spots me and juts out his chin. ‘It’s Feather, isn’t it?’ he asks.

Everyone turns to look at me.

There are a whole load of people from Newton that look vaguely familiar and then I notice Mr Ding, the owner of the Lucky Lantern Takeaway Van, which sits in the middle of Willingdon Green. He smiles at me and wobbles on his tiny Year 4 chair.

I’d never thought of Mr Ding as needing to lose weight. I mean, you’d be suspicious of someone in the Chinese-takeaway business being skinny, right?

A couple of places along from him sits Allen, the reporter from the Newton News who I found in our back garden a while back.

‘Are you lost?’ asks the microphone guy.

‘No…’ I begin.

I know what they’re thinking: what’s a scrawny kid doing at weight-loss meeting?

Be brave, I tell myself. If you’re going to take this resolution seriously, if you’re going to have everything in place for when Mum wakes up, you have to be proactive.

I take a breath. ‘No, I’m not lost.’

A door bangs somewhere in the corridor. A few seconds later, Jake rushes in. He smells of fresh air and Amy’s perfume.

‘Sorry… got caught up,’ Jake says, breathless.

Which means that Amy wouldn’t let him go.

Jake and I go and sign the register at the back of the room and then we sit down. I can feel people looking at me and I know it’s because they’ve heard about Mum. The day after she got taken to the hospital, there was an article in the Newton News with a fuzzy picture someone must have taken on their phone: it looks a polar bear under a green sheet is being stuffed into the back of the ambulance. I bet Allen took that photo.

Anyway, Jake does the paper round so he nicked all the copies he could get his hands on and we made a bonfire in the back garden.

‘You bearing up?’ Jake asks.

‘I’m fine.’ I squeeze his hand. ‘Now you’re here.’

The guy at the front clears his throat. ‘As I was saying.’ He smiles out at the room. ‘I’m Mitch Banks, your Slim Skills Counsellor. And I’ll be with you every step of the way.’

What if she can’t take steps yet? I think.

He walks away from the microphone, grabs a pair of scales off the floor and holds them above his head.

‘At the heart of every meeting is the weigh-in.’ He bangs the scales. ‘They’re our nemesis, right?’ He pauses for dramatic effect and then leans forward and eyeballs us. ‘Our truth teller?’

Half of the people in the room nod. The other half look like they’ve been asked to take their clothes off and run around Newton naked.

‘Well, these scales are about to become your best friend.’

‘Mum won’t fit on those in a million years,’ I whisper to Jake. Even if she did manage to get both feet on the standing bit, the digital numbers would go berserk. Mum’s in a whole other league.

‘We’ll work it out,’ Jake says.

That’s another reason I love Jake: he’s fixes stuff.

Mitch goes on. ‘So we start from where we are.’ He thumps the scales with his left hand. The numbers flash. ‘We’ll make a note of our weight in our personal journals. Charting our progress is a key part of the Slim Skills method.’

I’ve already made a weight chart: it’s on my bedroom wall. I’m aiming for Mum to lose twenty pounds a month. The point isn’t to get her all gaunt looking – I still want her to look like Mum. I just have to make sure she gets better. Once she wakes up, that is. Which she will.

The room’s so silent you can hear the Year 4 chairs creaking under all those grown-up bums.

‘So, who’s going first?’ Mitch scans the room.

Everyone stares at their feet, like we do at school when we don’t want to answer a question. I’m no expert but this guy doesn’t seem to be going about things quite the right way. I mean, if it took guts for me to come here, and I’m not here for me, think about how all the overweight people are feeling.

‘I’ll go,’ Mr Ding says, which I think is really brave.

‘I hope this doesn’t mean he’ll stop making those amazing spring rolls,’ Jake whispers.

People come all the way from Newton for Mr Ding’s spring rolls. Dad gets them for us as a treat when he’s had a long day and is too busy to cook.

Mitch stands up and walks to the front and, one by one, Mr Ding and the other people from Newton heave themselves out of their Year 4 chairs and go and queue for their weigh-in.

‘So, what are your names?’ Mitch Banks stands over me and Jake, holding up a Sharpie and a white sticker.

‘Feather,’ I say, ‘Feather Grace Tucker.’

Mitch writes FEATHER in big capitals. ‘That’s a nice name.’

I shrug.

He turns to Jake.

‘And you?’

‘Jake.’

Mitch hands us our name stickers.

‘So, why are you here?’

‘You know why I’m here,’ I say.

‘I do?’

‘You helped Mum – on New Year’s.’ My cheeks are burning up.

‘Oh… yes.’

‘You live next door to us.’

‘Right.’ He scrunches up his brow. ‘Forgive me, but I still don’t understand.’

‘We need to get help for Feather’s mum,’ Jake says. ‘We thought you could help.’

‘She’s in a diabetic coma,’ I add.

It’s better to say things straight, that’s what Mum’s taught me. What she means is – it’s better not to be like Dad. Dad thinks that dodging things or joking about them will make them go away. Like Mum being overweight – and look how that worked out.

‘Oh… I’m sorry,’ Mitch says.

‘That’s why she went to the hospital. She had a fit. But it’s okay, she’s going to wake up,’ I add. ‘Isn’t she, Jake?’

Jake nods. ‘Of course she is. Mrs Tucker is the toughest woman I know.’

Mum and Jake get on really well. She sees him as the son she never had.

‘I’m glad to hear it.’ Mitch scratches his forehead. I guess his Slim Skills manual didn’t prepare him for this kind of situation.

‘And when she does, I’m going to help her lose weight. That’s why I’m here,’ I say.

‘That’s a kind thing to do, Feather,’ Mitch says. I can hear the but sitting on his lips. ‘A very kind thing indeed.’ He smiles. ‘Do you think she might need a bit more help… I mean, medical help?’

‘You get people to lose weight, right?’ Jake blurts out.

Jake feels just as strongly as I do about Mum getting better.

‘We help people help themselves, but Feather’s mum…’ Mitch says.

‘You’re discriminating against Mum because she’s too big?’ I ask.

‘No… not at all…’

‘She hates doctors and hospitals. When she wakes up, she’s going to freak out,’ I say.

He nods. ‘Well, maybe, once she’s back home and feeling stronger, you could come with her and then we can have a chat.’

‘She won’t be able to do that. Not at first, anyway.’

‘She won’t?’

‘Mum doesn’t leave the house.’

‘Oh—’

‘I thought I could learn stuff and tell her about it. And that maybe it would help her to know that other people are struggling too.’ I take a breath. ‘I’m coming here on her behalf. And Jake’s my best friend, so he’s going to help me.’

My plan was to pick out a few people who Mum might like and then invite them over to the cottage to show her that there are people who understand how she feels and can help her as she tries to get to a healthier weight.

Besides me and Dad and Jake and Jake’s mum, Mum hasn’t had a visitor in thirteen years. But if I’m going to keep to my resolution of helping her get well again, that’s going to have to change.

Mitch lets out a sigh and sits on one of the low tables next to the little chairs.

‘Even if Slim Skills can help your mother… she’s going to have to do this for herself.’

Mum can’t do anything for herself. She can’t get out of her chair or put on her clothes or clean her face or walk. Dad and I work on a rota to make sure she has everything she needs. Which was what led to her not being able to get any help the other night when she collapsed on the carpet. No, Mum needs someone to help her take the first steps.

‘The philosophy of the Slim Skills programme states that a person has to want to get better.’ Mitch smiles like he’s on a TV ad.

I brush my fringe out of my eyes. I’m beginning to feel that coming here was a mistake. Mitch doesn’t understand. But it’s okay – Jake and me have got a whole list of other things to try.

‘I think we’ll go,’ I say.

‘Feather…’ Jake starts. ‘We’re here now, let’s see how it goes…’

‘It’s not working!’ I snap.

Mitch stands up and says, ‘Feather—’

‘If you can’t help Mum, I’ll find someone else. Someone who understands.’

‘I do understand, Feather. I was just trying to make clear that it’s your mother’s journey—’

‘She’s not on a journey. She’s in hospital, in a coma – and it’s our job to help her.’

Mitch definitely doesn’t get it. He’s probably just doing this because he can’t get a proper job. What kind of guy runs a weight-loss group anyway?

I peel off my name sticker, hand it to him and head out of the door. Jake runs after me.

‘Hey, what happened in there?’ he asks.

I keep walking down the corridor.

‘We’ll try something else…’ I say.

‘I think you should give Mitch a chance.’

I ignore Jake. It’s one of the ways we’re different: when things aren’t going well, he thinks it’s worth waiting things out, whereas I just cut loose. Take Amy, for example: I think he should have dumped her ages ago.

As we walk past the assembly hall, I stop and stare at a poster by the swing doors:

THE WILLINGDON WALTZ, SUNDAY 1ST OF JUNE.

June 1 is Willingdon Day and the waltz competition is like the icing on the cake. Willingdon Day isn’t that big any more but everyone still looks forward to it. It’s my birthday too.

‘Hey, it’s Mrs Zas,’ Jake says. ‘Cool.’

Everyone calls her Mrs Zas because her real name is too long for anyone to remember. She’s only been in the village for a couple of months. She set up Bewitched, the fancy dress shop next to the church. Apparently, when I was too small to remember, there was this amazing dance teacher who more or less taught the whole village to dance, only she got ill and so had to stop working. There weren’t any dance classes for years and years and then Mrs Zas stepped in. People in the village are still adjusting. Willingdon is kind of old-fashioned and Mrs Zas goes around in these loud wooden clogs and brightly coloured headscarves – and she’s always in costume, which is a good form of publicity for her shop, but still a bit out there. Today, she’s got a black-and-red dress on with a million frilly bits and she has castanets tied to her wrists and she’s darting around the dance floor, straightening people’s backs and arms and giving them instructions in her gravelly Russian voice.

‘You must flow… floooow…’ Jake imitates her, sweeping his arms through the air like he’s painting on a gigantic canvas.

We watch Mrs Zas clip-clopping around in her clogs.

Dad said the Willingdon Waltz used to be so big that, one year, the BBC came to film it for a documentary. You were too young to remember, Dad said. It’s not really fair how all the good things seem to have happened when I was too young to remember.

‘Maybe your mum will come out and watch this year…’ Jake says. ‘If she’s feeling better.’

‘Maybe…’

Mum loves watching Strictly so much, you’d think she’d be really keen to see the Willingdon Waltz, especially as she’s got the best view of the Green from the lounge window. But it’s like she’s got a thing against Willingdon Day as a whole. Every year, when it comes round, she gets antsy and tells me to draw the curtains and to turn up the TV and, once we’ve had some birthday cake and I’ve opened my presents, she goes to bed early.

I take the flier and put it into the back pocket of my jeans.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ I say.

3

They put Mum in a single room and pressed two beds together so she’d fit. Dad’s asleep in the seat next to her, wrapped up in one of those white, holey hospital blankets. While I’ve been staying at Jake’s, Dad hasn’t left Mum’s side, which is a good thing. If Mum’s going to get better she needs to see how much Dad loves her. And how we couldn’t live without her.

‘She looks so peaceful,’ Jake whispers.

Steph dropped us off. She’s waiting in the car park. I told her to come in, that after everything that’s happened Mum will have forgotten all about the row they had at Christmas, but Steph said it was best not to crowd Mum.

I’m glad I’ve got Jake with me at least.

As I look at Mum’s sleeping face, I imagine what it must be like to lie there, my heart beating, my blood pumping, my brain sending its Morse code messages from synapse to unconscious synapse, and yet to be unconscious – being there and not there. Being both at once.

Jake’s right. She does look peaceful. Though, with her hospital-phobia thing, she’s going to be anything but peaceful when she wakes up.

‘I wish someone would tell me what’s going on,’ I say.

I asked the doctor to explain and he said I should ask Dad and Dad said that it was complicated, which basically means he thinks I’m too young to handle it. If Mum weren’t in a coma, she would have stood up for me. She says I’m more mature than most of the grown-ups she’s met.

So, I grab the clipboard at the end of Mum’s bed and flip through the notes.

‘Feather…’ Jake starts. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

‘If I’m going to help Mum, I’ve got to have the facts.’

I scan down the page. It’s mostly random scribbles from the doctors and nurses who’ve been doing her obs, notes on medication and blood pressure and temperature and stuff. And then I see it.

Weight: 37st 2lb.

‘What is it?’ Jake leans in.

I drop the clipboard. It clatters to the floor.

Dad stirs in his sleep.

Jake picks up the chart and puts it back in its holder.

‘Feather?’

‘We’ve never weighed Mum,’ I say to him. ‘I mean, I knew she was big, but thirty-seven stone? Can anyone even get that heavy?’

No wonder she got sick.

I look at Mum. It’s like she’s floated away in that big body of hers and I worry that maybe she won’t ever find her way back to me.

I go over and kiss her cheek and feel relieved: it’s warm and soft and alive.

‘We’re going to get you better, Mum, I promise,’ I whisper by her ear.

And then I put my arms around Mum’s body and give her a hug, because that’s what she always does to me when I’m feeling tired or sad or ill. Mum’s hugs are the best: her arms are so big they fold you up and make you feel like you’re in the safest place in the world. I’ve often thought how rubbish it would be to have to hug one of those bony, skinny mums I see sitting in their cars outside Newton Academy.

‘Here,’ says Jake, handing me the photo frame we picked up from home.

It’s basically the only photograph in the whole house. Mum hates photos just about as much as she hates water and hospitals and running out of food. She says that we should remember the past in our heads and in our hearts, rather than being frozen into bits of shiny paper or screens. She doesn’t seem to mind this one though. It’s of me sitting in the middle of The Green, hugging Houdini. I’m about ten and I’m wearing a pair of faded dungarees and I’ve got loads of freckles and Pippi Longstocking plaits and I’m grinning from ear to ear.

It was Jake’s idea to bring it. He said that even though Mum was unconscious and even though her eyes are screwed shut and her brain’s far away, it’s important to surround her with things she loves.

As I place the photograph on the bedside table, I hope that maybe in middle of the night, when none of us are here to notice, her eyelids will flicker open and, if they do, she’ll see my grinning, freckled face looking back at her and it might help her remember I’m here and that I want her to come back to me.

Before Jake and I leave the room, I take Mum’s brush and run it through her hair. I’m relieved to see that the nurses washed it. Like Mum’s eyes, Mum’s hair is beautiful. It’s a goldy-blonde and smooth and shiny and, when she lets it down, it goes all the way down her back. In all the time I’ve known her, Mum hasn’t had a single haircut. When I was little, it made me think of Rapunzel and I got this picture of Mum hanging her hair out of the lounge window and Dad dressed up as a prince scaling the side of the house to save her.

My hair’s like Dad’s: brown and straggly.

For a few minutes I get lost in brushing Mum’s hair. I think of all the times I’ve brushed it back home, mostly late at night, before I go to sleep, while I tell her about my day. One of the good things about having a mum who doesn’t ever leave the house and doesn’t have a job or anything to do except watch re-runs of Strictly is that she always has time to listen.

‘I love you, Mum,’ I whisper, and put the brush down.

‘We’d better go,’ says Jake, ‘Mum’s waiting.’

I nod. Though, if I could choose I would curl up next to Mum on the bed and stay with her until she wakes up. I want to be the first person she sees when she opens her eyes.

As Jake holds open the door for me, I hear a couple of nurses chatting in the corridor. We saw them on our way in, an old one with a square jaw and a young one with a sharp black bob. They were sitting at the nurses’ station drinking their tea and filling in their charts and listening to slushy stuff on the radio. I should lend them Jake’s Macklemore albums.

‘Done her meds?’ the old one says.

A rustle of paper.

‘Yeah. Crazy doses,’ the young one says.

Ever since Mum got to be the size she is now, she’s had to take triple-strength medicines: her body’s so big and it’s got so much blood in it that she has to overdose on paracetamols just to make a dent in her headaches.

‘Ever seen one this big?’ the young nurse says.

I hear Jake gasp beside me.

Blood rushes to my cheeks. Nurses shouldn’t be allowed to talk about patients like that. No one should be allowed to talk about anyone like that.

‘Come on, Feather, let’s go.’ Jake takes my arm.

I shake him off and yank open the door. I’m standing in the middle of the corridor now. The nurses don’t notice that I’m staring right at them and that I can hear every word they’re saying.

‘How long do you reckon she has?’ the younger nurse adds. ‘I mean, when she wakes up?’

My body freezes.

‘Feather…’ Jake says.

‘Shhh!’

‘Six months – if she’s lucky,’ the older nurse says. ‘I mean, at that size, any number of things could get her.’

‘Don’t listen to them, Feather. They don’t know what they’re talking about.’

‘They’re nurses, Jake,’ I hiss. ‘They know exactly what they’re talking about.’

I charge to the nurses’ station and stand in front of them, my hands on my hips. Jake hangs back.

‘What did you say?’ I look from one nurse to the other.

‘Oh!’ The younger nurse steps back like I’ve trodden on her toes.

The older nurse shoots her a glance. Then she turns to me. ‘Nothing, my dear.’

‘It didn’t sound like nothing.’

‘Sorry we disturbed you,’ the older nurse says.

‘You didn’t disturb me. You were saying, about Mum—’

‘Feather, let’s go,’ I hear Jake say from behind me.

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ I say. ‘I want you to explain why you said those things about Mum.’

‘It’s okay, dear,’ the older nurse says, smiling one of those fake, there, there, dear smiles. I’m beginning to realise why Mum hates hospitals so much.

‘No. It’s not okay. You said…’

The older nurse looks down at me. ‘You look tired, dear.’

‘I’m not tired. I want to know about Mum not making it.’

The young nurse goes red.

The older nurse puts her hand on my arm.

Jake’s standing beside me now.

‘Maybe you should talk to your dad.’

And then a call bell buzzes from one of the other rooms and the older nurse says, ‘Excuse me’, and then the younger one says, ‘Sorry’ and walks back to the nurses’ station and I’m left standing there.

I feel Jake taking my hand. ‘Come on, Feather, let’s get out of here. Like they said, you can talk to your dad. We’ll come back tomorrow morning.’

But I don’t need to talk to Dad. I know what they meant: that it’s lose–lose. That even if Mum wakes up from her coma, she’s going to die anyway. And that, if we don’t do anything about it, and fast, she’ll be gone in six months.

4

After swim practice, I go to the Willingdon Mobile Library to use the internet. The day after Mum went into hospital, I ripped the Wi-Fi router out of the wall in the lounge and hid her laptop in the garage. Stopping her from being able to do online food deliveries is the first stage of my get-Mum-well plan.

I scan through the NHS website looking for articles on gastric bands. I’m worried Mum’s got too big for them to even be an option. Apparently the NHS pays for dangerously overweight patients to have bands fitted around their stomachs so they feel full and stop eating as much. Only Mum’s never wanted to see a doctor about her weight so we didn’t even get that choice and now I’m worried it’s too late.

My phone buzzes. It’s one of those cheap ones that only calls and texts.

‘Mum’s woken up.’ Dad’s voice is all choked up.

Steph’s at work and Jake’s with Amy, so I get the first bus to Newton Hospital. I run into Mum’s room and throw my arms around her and hold her so tight she gasps.

‘Steady on, Feather, or you’ll send me into another coma…’ She gives me a tired laugh. I can tell she’s trying to hold it in, how freaked out she is by being in hospital.

Dad sits on the other side of the bed, grinning.

‘We missed you, Josie,’ he says.

Mum’s eyes dart around the room. The drips. The white walls. The heater hissing under the window. I can feel her nerves fizzing.

‘It’s okay, Mum,’ I say and lean over and kiss her cheek.

Mum’s eyes focus on me and she seems to calm down a bit. ‘It’s good to see you, My Little Feather.’

Dad and I spend ages sitting on Mum’s bed holding her hands and stroking her hair and giving her hugs. I know Dad’s thinking the same as me: that this time we’re going to be more careful; that we’re going to grasp onto her so tight that she never slips away again.

‘What was it like?’ I ask. ‘Being in a coma?’

Mum smiles. ‘I don’t really remember much, Feather. But it felt quite nice actually – floating around in this nowhere, no-time place.’

I guess that for someone as big as Mum, feeling floaty must be quite cool.

‘I heard you calling me, Feather,’ she adds. ‘And when I woke up, I saw your photo.’ She shifts her head to the picture of me on her bedside table.

‘So you’re glad you’re back?’ I ask.

‘I’ll be glad when I’m home.’ Mum yawns. ‘I’m really tired.’

I want to make a comment about the fact that she’s been sleeping for days but maybe sleeping isn’t the same as being in a coma.

‘Come on, let’s leave Mum to have a rest,’ Dad says.

I give Mum a kiss, jump off the bed and then Dad and I head to the hospital canteen for a hot chocolate and a sandwich.

‘We’ve got to make some changes,’ I say to Dad.

He rubs his eyes. ‘Let’s take a day at a time, Feather.’

I shake my head. ‘We can’t afford to take a day at a time. Mum’s really sick.’

Dad pokes at a bit of gherkin in his sandwich and then puts it down. He hasn’t eaten properly in months.

‘I know that,’ he says.

I take a breath.

‘It was our fault, Dad.’

He doesn’t answer.

‘Dad?’

He pushes his sandwich back into its packet and scrunches it up.

‘Let’s not talk about this now, Feather.’

‘You can’t bury your head in the sand about this, Dad.’

It’s the first time I’ve been this blunt with him but I have to keep going, otherwise I’ll lose my nerve.

‘It’s our fault that Mum got sick.’

He goes quiet again.

‘Did you think we were helping her, Dad? Making her fry-ups, letting her guzzle tins of pineapple syrup, bulk-buying Galaxy bars and crisps…?’

‘It’s not just about food, Feather.’

‘Of course it’s about food, Dad. Haven’t you noticed how much she eats? That’s why she’s got so big. That’s why she’s sick.’

Dad stands up. ‘Come on, Feather, let’s go home and get things ready for Mum.’

I grab his arm and yank him back down into his chair. ‘No, Dad, you have to listen—’

He sits down slowly.

‘Everything we do for your mum is because we love her.’

‘Love her?’ I clench my jaw. ‘Feeding Mum rubbish wasn’t kind or generous – or loving: it made her sick.’

From the way people are looking over at us, I realise I’ve been shouting. But I don’t care. All that matters is Mum. We’ve got six months and I’m not going to waste a minute of it.

Dad hangs his head and looks into his calloused palms. After a long silence he says:

‘I understand what you’re saying, Feather. And I know you mean well…’

‘It’s not about meaning well, Dad—’

Dad looks up, leans forward and puts his hands over mine. He’s done this since I was little: wrapped my little fists in his big palms. Usually, it’s the best feeling in the world – like nothing can ever be wrong with the world when Dad’s holding me. But it doesn’t feel like that today.

‘This is something even you can’t fix, Feather.’

I take a breath and say:

‘We made her ill, Dad. And now it’s our job to make her better.’

Dad pulls his hands away from mine.

I grab his hands again, pull them towards me and squeeze them tight. ‘I can’t do this on my own, Dad. You have to help me.’

He doesn’t answer.

‘Dad?’

Dad stares blankly at my hands, gripping his. Very slowly, he nods. But I’m not sure it’s gone in. Not properly.

5

I settle Mum into her armchair. And that’s when she notices.

‘Where’s the TV?’

If the lounge is Mum’s world, the TV is her sun. A fifty-inch, flat-screen, HD, surround-sound sun which Dad got Mum for her fortieth birthday two years ago.

Steph and Jake helped me carry the TV to the garage. Jake said he’d put it on eBay, which will help my get-Mum-healthy fund.

I kiss the top of Mum’s head. ‘We thought you could have a break from it.’

Mum stares into the space where the TV used to be.

I feel kind of bad. Mum’s been looking forward to coming home and I know part of what she’s looked forward to is going back to the things that have filled her days up to now, which are basically food and TV. And me.

‘We’ll find other things to do, Mum.’

Mum closes her eyes. She looks knackered. The trip back from the hospital took ages and the nurse with the square jaw made Mum walk from her hospital bed to the ambulance – because she wouldn’t fit on the front bench of Dad’s van. Anyway, it’s the furthest Mum’s walked in years. Plus, she hadn’t been eating much in hospital because the doctor’s put her on a diet, so she’s feeling a bit wobbly. But it’s a good thing because it means she’s lost weight. I saw on the notes in her medical chart that she’d lost one stone. Now I need to make sure the weight keeps going down.

Mum coughs. And then she stares up at the wall.

‘And what happened to our router? And where’s my laptop?’

‘You shouldn’t have to worry about doing the shopping. Dad and I are going to do it from now on.’

She looks at me and blinks and then goes back to scanning the room for all the changes.

‘And why’s Dad’s bed in my room?’

I thought that if it was just a matter of not having space for both of them in Mum’s bed, then we could bring Dad’s bed down too. They could be together again, like old times.

Mum keeps scanning the room – frowning. She looks at the two beds pressed up against each other and her wheelchair and her armchair and her medical equipment.

‘There’s no room to swing a cat in here,’ Mum says.

Steph warned me that the beds might be taking it a bit far but I told her it would be fine, that Mum would get used to it.

As we pushed Mum’s wheelchair out of Newton Hospital, the young nurse (the one who said Mum was going to die) ran after us and gave Mum a pile of leaflets on how to get healthy. Mum dumped them in the car park bin muttering:

‘Waste of trees.’

I wish she hadn’t done that. But I agree with her to this extent: it’s going to take more than a bunch of leaflets to stop her eating so much. It’s going to take someone who loves her and won’t give up on her, even when things get really hard. In other words, it’s going to take me. And getting rid of the TV and putting Dad’s bed in the lounge is the first step.

‘Where’s my bed?’ Dad calls down from the landing.

I go out to the hallway and look up at him. He’s got bags under his eyes that make him look one of those droopy-faced dogs.

‘I thought it would be nice for you guys to be together. After everything.’

It took Steph, Jake and me ages to get the bed down, but it’ll be worth it. When I drew up a timeline of when things started getting really bad with Mum, I worked out that Mum coming to live in the lounge downstairs four years ago made both of them go sad. I mean, Dad still does everything for Mum and you can tell that he totally adores her, but that’s not the same as being happy or loving each other romantically. I thought that maybe if I could bring them closer again, then Mum would get better faster.

‘This isn’t your business, Feather,’ Dad shouts down the stairs.

‘It’s completely my business!’ I yell back.

It’s the second time in twenty-four hours that I’ve shouted at Dad. But then Dad never shouts at me either. I guess we’re both a bit stressed out.

I keep going:

‘You’re my parents. And Mum nearly died. I had to do something.’

It feels weird, standing there in the hall between Mum, sitting in her chair in the lounge, and Dad upstairs.

‘There’s no room in the lounge,’ Dad says.

‘There’s plenty of room,’ I lie.

Because Mum and Dad being squished up together in the lounge is the plan. It’s what will make them close again.

This is how I see it:

Mum + Dad happy together = Mum happy.

Mum happy = Mum motivated to get healthy.

Mum motivated to get healthy = Mum stays alive.

We hear the creaking sound Mum makes when she heaves her legs up onto the footrest that goes with the armchair. Dad got the chair and footrest for her at the same time as the TV. Officially, it’s a love seat, which means it’s meant to hold two people, but Mum hardly fits all by herself. It’s the ugliest chair you’ve ever seen. Think of a gigantic, padded purple cabbage – with a slightly smaller padded purple cabbage for your feet.

My phone goes and I slip into the kitchen. It’s Steph.

‘How’s it all going?’ she asks. ‘How’s Jo taking the changes?’

Like I said earlier, Mum and Steph had a barney at Christmas and since then Mum’s been ignoring her. They won’t tell me what it’s about. Mum + Steph being friends is another plan I need to put into action if I’m going to get Mum happy again and motivated to lose weight.

‘Not well,’ I say.

I hear Dad close the door to his room upstairs.

‘And I think we should have told Dad. About the bed.’ I sigh. ‘I wish you and Jake were here. I’m not sure I can cope with being in the house alone with Mum and Dad.’

There’s a pause. Which makes me feel guilty because I know that it’s probably Mum’s fault that she and Steph fell out and that Steph’s really cut up about it and that she’s still been doing all this stuff to help Mum. Plus, Steph is divorced so she doesn’t even have the option of sharing a room with her husband.

‘I’ll be fine,’ I say to Steph. ‘I’ll be fine.’

‘I’ll send Jake over when he gets back.’

‘He’s with Amy?’

‘Yeah.’

Jake’s basically had a girlfriend since we were in nursery. He’s one of those guys that girls fancy: floppy, sandy hair that he has to keep flicking out of his blue eyes; dimples; a big smile. And for some reason, he seems to go along with it, picking up a new girl as soon as an old girlfriend gets bored or angry because he doesn’t give her more attention.

None of those girls looked right with Jake. You know how, when you see a couple that are meant to be together, their edges go blurry and they kind of meld together and become more like one person than two? Well, Jake’s never had the blurry-edged thing: he and his girlfriends always looked like two people.

Steph once told me: Jake needs to have a girl around… And when I asked her, What about me, aren’t I a girl? Steph had laughed and given me a hug and said, You’re different, Feather. Which made me feel kind of hurt and happy at the same time.

Anyway, Steph and I are on the same page about Amy. I think she secretly hopes Jake and me will get together and get married and have loads of grandchildren she can coo over, which is kind of embarrassing but it’s nice to know that she’d want me as part of her family.

‘Hope everything works out,’ Steph says.

‘Thanks, Steph.’

I go back out into the hall. It’s really quiet. I imagine Dad sitting in the middle of his bedroom floor in the place where the bed used to be.

‘Dinner’s in half an hour,’ I call out to them both.

I borrowed Cook. Eat. Live. from the mobile library and Steph took me shopping for ingredients. I’m going to make Mum the best salad in the world.

As I go back into the kitchen and pull out the chopping board and get the vegetables out of the fridge, I tell myself: It’s going to be okay. It’s all going to be okay. And I say it over and over until it begins to sound a bit true.

6

‘Mum?’ I knock on the lounge door.

She’s lying in bed, staring at a damp patch on the ceiling that Dad’s been going on about fixing for years. Dad must have helped her out of her armchair.

When she sees me, she smiles, which makes me think that maybe she’s forgiven me for taking out the TV.

‘It’s good to have you home, Mum.’

‘Why don’t you put that down and come and have a chat.’ Mum smiles and pats her armrest.

Our chats are the best things in my day. You two could natter for England, Dad says. And it’s true. There’s nothing we don’t talk about. But right now, getting Mum healthy is more important.

I carry over the tray with the massive salad I’ve made: a big pile of lettuce and peppers and cucumber.

‘That plate’s so green it’s giving me a headache,’ Mum says.

‘You’ll love it, Mum. It’s called The Green Goddess Salad.’

‘Quite a grand name for a few salad leaves, don’t you think?’ Mum stares at the plate and then she shakes her head. ‘I’m sorry, lovely, I’m not hungry.’

Mum’s always hungry.

I put the tray on her bedside table and then notice a scrunched-up packet of prawn cocktail crisps on the floor. I dig my nails into my palms. I did a sweep of the whole house. Dad must have given it to her.

‘I read on the internet that it takes twenty-eight days to break a habit,’ I say as I pick up the crisp packets and put them in the bin. ‘Twenty-eight days is not even a month. You can do it, Mum.’

I’ve put targets on the six-month timeline in my room. Those nurses said that if Mum doesn’t get to a healthier weight, she’ll die in six months – well, I’m going to make sure that, by the end of every month, she’s lost a whole load of weight.

‘Twenty-eight days to do what, my love?’ Mum asks.

Mum’s slouched right down in her bed so I grab her elbow, help her to sit up and wedge a pillow in her back.

I perch beside her on the edge of the bed.

‘To get you well again,’ I say.

Mum leans forward and brushes my fringe out of my eyes.

‘I am well, my love. I’ve got you, and Dad; that’s all the good health I need.’

I shake off Mum’s hand and tuck a napkin into her sweatshirt.

‘You need to get your body healthy, Mum.’

Mum grabs at her napkin and throws it onto the bed sheets.

‘What I need, is the TV back.’

I stand up. Mum never talks to me like that.

‘We could do fun things instead,’ I say. ‘We could go on walks. Little ones at first…’

‘You know I don’t like walking.’

By that, Mum means she doesn’t like walking outside, where there are people.

Mum stretches her arm out. I let her take my hand. ‘Why do we need to go out, Feather?’ She glances at the slit in the curtains, which is just wide enough to let her see out and just small enough to make sure no one can look in, not unless they’re standing right under it. ‘We’ve got everything we need right here,’ Mum adds.

I take my hand out of Mum’s and lift the tray onto her lap.

‘I just thought that a few changes might do you some good.’ I pick up the fork and the plate. ‘The salad’s organic. It’s full of good vitamins and nutrients. The book says…’

‘The book?’

‘Cook. Eat. Live. I borrowed it from the library. It’s not about dieting, it’s about eating food that’s good for you, that makes you healthy and happy.’ I pause. ‘I’ve told Dad I’m doing the cooking from now on.’

Dad has always done the cooking. It’s Tucker legend that when Mum first tasted Dad’s roast chicken, she decided he was the man she was going to marry.

Mum smiles. ‘You can’t boil an egg, love.’

‘Well, I’m going to learn. And I’ve already made a start – with this salad.’ I spear a bit of lettuce onto the fork.

Beads of sweat have gathered along Mum’s hairline. Her body’s like an old heater – either stone cold or scalding hot and nothing in between.

I hold the fork closer to Mum’s mouth, which makes me think about the stories Mum told me about when I was little and hated eating. I’d throw things off the side of the high chair and laugh.

Mum pushes the salad away. ‘I’m groggy from the hospital, Feather. I’m sure my appetite will come back later.’

I hold the fork closer to Mum’s mouth. ‘I’m not going until you’ve had a bite.’

‘Please, Feather, I just need a bit of a rest.’

When I was little, I didn’t see Mum locking herself indoors as unusual. Staying inside was just what Mum did. And then, when I got older and kids at school made comments, I always defended Mum. I said that it was Mum’s choice and that it was just as good a choice as going out and that, anyway, she was perfectly happy and busy doing things inside.

But over the years, she started eating more and more. And she got bigger. Much bigger. By the time I was in secondary school, Mum couldn’t fit through the front door any more and she’d stopped going upstairs to sleep: her legs were too weak to carry her body. And then she stopped walking altogether.

The funny thing is that Dad and me just went with it. To us, Mum was Mum: funny and kind and always there for us and beautiful too, with her long hair and her soft skin and her big, sparkly eyes. It’s only now, after Mum nearly died, that I realise that she wasn’t okay at all, and that she must have known it, and if she knew it, I want to know why she let herself get so sick.

‘You won’t be all right,’ I say. ‘Not if you don’t get to a healthy weight.’

‘I lost two stone while I was in hospital.’ Mum pats her belly and smiles. ‘It’s a start, Feather.’

I smile back at Mum because I don’t want to rain on her parade, but two stone is a drop in the ocean when you’re Mum’s size.

‘Nurse Heidi’s coming to weigh you tomorrow,’ I say. ‘So you’ve got to keep making an effort.’

Nurse Heidi is the community nurse. She works with the GP in Newton and she popped in earlier when I was sorting out the house with Steph and Jake.

‘I don’t need to be weighed,’ Mum says.

‘Losing weight at home is going to be harder than losing weight in hospital, Mum. Mitch said it has to be your journey.’

‘Who’s Mitch?’

I feel my cheeks flushing. ‘He lives next door. He helped—’ I stop. Mum doesn’t know about what happened on New Year’s Eve. ‘He runs this club.’

‘What club?’

‘A support group for people who want to get healthy.’

Mum’s smile drops.

I know Mum would find it hard to sit with a bunch of strangers talking about being overweight. I mean, she won’t even talk to me about being overweight.

‘Why don’t I get Dad and we could all eat the salad together.’

‘Your dad needs to eat more than a salad. He’s fading away.’

Mum looks out through the slit in the curtains again. Dad’s giving Houdini his tea. I take advantage of her being distracted by lifting the fork back to her lips.

She snaps her head back and knocks the fork out of my hand. A piece of lettuce catapults over Mum’s duvet and lands on the floor.

My eyes sting.

‘Darling.’ Mum touches my hand. ‘I know you mean well…’

I pull my hand away. She doesn’t get it, how serious her condition is.

‘It’ll all be fine,’ Mum says. ‘I’m fine.’

‘You’re not fine. You’re sick. Really sick. And if you don’t get healthy…’ I gulp.

They haven’t told her. Just like they tried to keep it from me. That if she doesn’t do something to get to a healthy weight, she’s going to die.

I take a breath. ‘If you don’t make an effort, you’ll have to go back to hospital, Mum.’

I know it’s mean to say that, with her hating hospitals, but she has to understand how serious this is.

I put the plate of salad back on the tray and walk to the door.

‘Feather…’

I look back at her.

‘You have to try.’ My voice trembles. ‘We need you – I do and so does Dad and Steph and all the friends you haven’t seen in years. We all want you to be well again.’ I pause. ‘It’s not fair, Mum.’

It’s the first time I feel like one of those teenage girls who yell at their mums. It’s never been like that between us. We’re friends, best friends. We understand each other. But it’s not fair, is it? To keep eating crisps, to pretend everything’s going to be okay.

I have to get through to her: if she doesn’t make changes right now, I’m going to lose the person I love more than anyone in the whole world.

I slam the door and walk out.

7

I find Dad outside scraping some earth out of one of Houdini’s hooves. Sometimes I think he loves Houdini more than he loves anyone, including me and Mum.

‘Here, Houdini may as well have this,’ I say, handing him the plate of salad I made for Mum.

Dad lets go of Houdini’s leg and Houdini hoovers up the lettuce and the bits of tomato and pepper. His bell rings out through the village.

‘Mum didn’t want it?’ Dad asks.

I shake my head.

‘Give her time, love,’ Dad says.

I ignore his comment and take a piece of paper out of my pocket. ‘I’ve made a list, Dad.’ I hold it out to him. ‘Things I think we should do to help Mum.’

Dad pulls his reading glasses out of his overall pocket and holds the paper up to the light above the front door.

I watch him scan down the items:

1. Go to Slim Skills and get tips for making Mum healthy.

2. Get Mum to go to Slim Skills.

3. Get Mum and Dad to be happy with each other again.

I notice Dad pause after this one.

4. Get Mum and Steph to make up.

5. Take Mum for a walk around The Green every day, even if it’s only a few steps.

6. Look into alternative weight-loss programmes: hypnosis, acupuncture, Chinese medicine, diet pills, reflexology and gastric bands.

Dad hands the piece of paper back to me.

‘We should leave it to the doctors, Feather.’

‘The doctors aren’t going to do anything. They just gave her a bunch of leaflets. Leaflets won’t help. We have to help her, Dad.’

‘It’s complicated with your mum, Feather.’

I’m sick of hearing that word: complicated. And I’m sick of what it implies: that because something’s hard, we shouldn’t do anything about it. Or that because something’s difficult to understand, I won’t get it.

Dad takes off his glasses and puts them away.

‘And they’re expensive, Feather. Those things you wrote down.’

‘I’ve got some money saved up. And I’ll get a job. Plus, you’ve got so many call-outs at the moment, you must be making some money.’

‘I know you mean well, Feather…’

‘Of course I mean well,’ I say, ‘I want to help Mum. Don’t you?’

I want to shake him. Doesn’t he realise that Mum nearly died? That she might still die?

‘You’re acting like none of this has happened, Dad. Don’t you remember what it felt like to sit next to Mum while she was in a coma, not knowing whether she was going to wake up? I thought that if anyone would understand…’

He gives Houdini a pat and starts to walk up the ramp to the front door.

‘Do you love Mum?’ I ask Dad.

He looks up at me, his eyes dark and shiny. Houdini head-butts my shins like he’s trying to tell me something. His bell tinkles.

‘Of course I love her, Feather.’ His Adam’s apple slides up and down his throat. ‘Of course I do.’

And then I don’t say anything because I know that if I do I’ll regret it. I just get up and go back into the house.

Jake swipes the screen. His face glows.

We’re sitting on my bedroom floor using his mobile to surf the Internet. His dad gave it to him to make up for never being around.

‘It says you need to work out your BMI,’ he reads from the obesity section of the NHS website.

‘What’s that?’

‘Body Mass Index.’ He taps the screen. ‘Here, there’s a calculator. Your mum’s forty, right?’

‘Forty-two.’

‘And she’s what, five foot two?’

‘Yeah, roughly that.’ We’ve never measured Mum but she’s a bit taller than me and I’m five feet.

‘And her chart at the hospital said she was thirty-seven stone?’

I nod. My stomach churns. I’m not sure I’m ready to have a calculator tell me how overweight Mum is. Though I guess I’ve heard the worst of it from the nurses already.

Jake shakes his head. ‘Wow.’

‘What?’

‘She’s 97.2.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Well, put it like this: if your BMI is over 40, you’re classified as obese.’

‘Mum’s not obese.’ I’d seen pictures of women who were obese when I was doing research on the Internet the other day. Obese people have massive rolls of fat that hang over each other and tummies that swung between their legs and they have ten thousand wobbling chins and they can’t go on airplanes because they wouldn’t be able to fit on the seats. Mum isn’t like them.

‘I think she is, Feather.’

‘Let me see that.’ I snatch his phone and scroll down. And then I see a paragraph that makes me freeze:

An individual is considered morbidly obese if he or she is 7 stone over his/her ideal body weight, has a BMI of 40 or more, or 35 or more, and experiencing obesity-related health conditions, such as high blood pressure or diabetes.

‘Morbidly…’ I say under my breath. ‘That means dead, right?’

Jake doesn’t answer.

‘Maybe it’s not a good idea to read too much of this stuff,’ Jake says, holding out his hand for his phone.

I grip the phone harder. ‘It means dead – dead-like?’

‘Yeah, but your mum’s going to be fine. We’ll make sure of it.’

I keep looking down the article…

Symptoms of morbid obesity:

• osteoarthritis

• heart disease

• stroke

• diabetes

• sleep apnea (when you periodically stop breathing during sleep)

The list goes on and on.

Jake grabs his phone back and switches it off.

‘We’ll work it out, Feather.’

There’s a creaking on the stairs. We look towards the door.

‘Your dad?’ Jake asks.

I nod. Dad’s been hiding away in his bedroom all evening. The fact that he’s going downstairs can mean only one thing: he’s given in and decided to spend the night in his bed in the lounge next to Mum. My heart does a little jump. Maybe he’s beginning to realise that he has to help her. Maybe he does still love her.

The lounge is just under my bedroom, so I can hear everything that goes on in there. Including Mum’s snoring and, until we put the TV in the garage, her re-runs of Strictly.

I close my eyes and imagine Dad getting into his stripy PJs and slipping into his bed pressed up against Mum’s double bed. I even imagine him curling up to Mum, putting his arm across her – even if he can’t quite reach all the way round.

The backs of my eyes go hot and prickly: he does still love her, I know he does.

A few moments later, I hear banging.

‘What was that?’

We stand up and go to the landing.

More banging comes from the lounge.

I shake my head. ‘I’m an idiot. Dad hasn’t gone to join Mum, he’s gone downstairs to get his bed.’

‘You can’t be sure…’ Jake says.

‘I’m sure.’

The banging goes on for a while and then, when Jake and I go back to my bedroom and squeeze onto my bed and stare up at the ceiling, we hear Dad stomping up and down the stairs as he carries the bed back upstairs, a plank at a time.

And you know the worst of it? He and Mum don’t say a word to each other. Our cottage is so small you can hear everything. And I know it’s not because Mum’s asleep because she doesn’t sleep at night: she has naps in the day in front of the telly. Or she did when she had the telly. And anyway, she’d have been woken up by all his banging.

No, they don’t exchange a single word.

‘Your parents are made for each other,’ Jake says. ‘They’ll work it out.’

I shake my head. ‘Dad’s not going to help me. After everything that’s happened in the last few days, he’s not even going to make an effort to get closer to Mum.’

I don’t know how I’m going to help Mum get better on my own. Even Steph, who usually always makes things better, can’t help because Mum’s blanking her. And Mum won’t help herself because she doesn’t get it, how sick she is.

‘I’m here, Feather,’ Jake says.

I turn to face him. His eyes look glassy in the blue shadows of my bedroom.

‘I’m not going to sit back and risk losing Mum,’ I say.

‘I know. We’re going to work on this together. We’ll do whatever it takes.’

‘You really mean that?’

He nods. ‘I really mean that. It’s going to be okay, Feather. It’s all going to be okay.’

I lean my head on his shoulder and close my eyes and my heartbeat slows and I try really hard to believe him.

8

On Saturday morning my alarm goes off at 5.30am. It’s dark outside and the cars along The Green look like white ice-lollies. There’s ice on the inside of my window too. I asked Dad, once, why we couldn’t have the windows replaced, and he said the same old thing that he says to any of my suggestions about fixing things or replacing things or buying new things to make the cottage nicer: We’re a mend-and-make-do kind of family, Feather. Well, sometimes, mending and making do doesn’t cut it. I’m freezing.

I get into my tracksuit and grab my swim bag. If we don’t go early, the pool gets too full to practise properly.

There’s no sound coming from the lounge, which feels weird. I’m used to hearing the buzz of Mum’s cookery programmes or the music from her re-runs of Strictly.

I think about popping my head round the door to say Hi, like I usually do before my swim practice, but I’ve had this hollow feeling in my stomach since the salad incident last night. Mum should be the one to say sorry, otherwise she’ll think I’m not serious about getting her to lose weight.

I walk past Dad’s open door and my heart sinks. I really thought he might give it a go, sleeping downstairs with Mum.

Dad and I take it in turns to do mornings. When he’s got an early plumbing job, he helps Mum get ready and when he needs a lie-in because he’s been out on a late job, I do it.

Everyone in Willingdon knows Dad’s white van with GEORGE AND JO’S EMERGENCY PLUMBING written in red letters along the side. Dad told me that before Mum stopped leaving the house, she was his PA. She did all the accounting and the paperwork and the advertising and telephone calls. She was good at keeping people happy and had all these creative ideas for how to get new customers. Mum’s got a clever reading and writing brain. She trained to be a lawyer but then decided she wanted to be a full-time mum and ended up helping Dad with the business instead. Dad and I have the non-writing and reading brains. We’re better at fixing things than reading things.

Without your mum, I’d have gone out of business years ago, Dad says. She’s the magic-maker. He used to say that all the time, that she was the magic-maker. And she was. Steph told me that, as well as helping Dad and looking after me, she did bits and bobs around the village, like first aid training. She ran weekly workshops in Newton Primary.

When I was little, Dad joked that Mum had magical powers. He told me about how she was always in the right place at the right time when someone needed her, like when one of the fryers exploded in Mr Ding’s restaurant and burnt his arms and when Steph got stung by a bee and went into anaphylactic shock and when some random guy visiting the village had a heart attack right in the middle of The Green. Mum was better than a magic-maker: she brought people back to life. I wish I’d been a bit older when Mum still walked around the village, so I could have seen her doing all those cool things.

She stopped doing Dad’s paperwork about five years ago, said it made her tired. I sometimes wonder how Dad’s been coping all this time without her. I went into his room once and there was paperwork lying everywhere; most of the envelopes looked like bills and some of them had words like URGENT and LAST REMINDER stamped across the top. But I knew Dad would take care of it. He might not be the best at admin, but he works harder than anyone I know. This last year he’s been doing call-outs every hour of the night and day. So the business must be doing okay.

‘Hi, Houdini,’ I say as I walk down the front steps. He steps out of his kennel and gives me a bleat. Dad’s put a yellow woolly coat on him because of the cold weather, which makes him look like a fuzzy egg yolk. Houdini nudges my swim bag.

When I give his beard a stroke, Houdini looks up and holds my gaze for a moment. I reckon that animals have life more sussed than we do: I bet he’d think of a good plan to get Mum healthy.

As I look across The Green to the rectory, I notice a suitcase sitting on Rev Cootes’s front doorstep. Rev Cootes is really old and wrinkly and lives alone and never has any visitors; and he doesn’t have family either, or any family that drop by anyway. And no one really goes to his services, except Steph, who started going after the divorce. So, basically, Rev Cootes is weird. And not cool-weird: he’s scary-weird. I wouldn’t ever go to see Rev Cootes alone. He’s probably got those children from the kids’ bit of the cemetery chopped up and pickled in jars in his basement.

I check to make sure he’s not crouching behind one of the gravestones and then walk across The Green to the vicarage until I’m close enough to get a good look at the suitcase. It’s got an American Airlines tag on it and an I LOVE NYC sticker on the side. Rev Cootes knowing someone from New York is about as likely as Mum coming out to do pirouettes in the middle of The Green.

The front door flies open. Rev Cootes stands in the doorway, holding his watering can, glaring at me. It’s the same glare he uses whenever we have to come over and get Houdini from his front garden. No matter what system Dad puts in place to keep Houdini fenced in, he finds a way to wriggle out of his collar and climb out of our garden and scamper over to nibble on his graveyard flowers. Rev Cootes treats the St Mary’s Cemetery like it’s an exhibit in the Chelsea Flower Show. Which means he hates Houdini. And you know the crazy thing? Houdini loves Rev Cootes. I’ve told Houdini about my theory that Rev Cootes is an axe-murderer or a child-abductor, but Houdini doesn’t listen, he just goes up to him and head-butts his shins and tries to nuzzle his hand. It’s properly weird.

I turn to go but before I do, I look past Rev Cootes into the vicarage. There’s someone standing behind him. I see a shimmer of short blond hair under the hall lamp.

The regional swim heats are coming up soon and what with Mum being in a coma and all the plans I’ve been making to get her healthy, I neglected my training. Swimming hasn’t seemed very important next to keeping Mum alive. But I know I shouldn’t throw away all the work I’ve put into making the team and I’ve got this secret hope that if I make it to the regionals, Mum will be so proud of me that she’ll come and watch. I think she’d be proud of how fast I’ve got with my butterfly. But whenever I talk about swimming, she goes quiet and then she changes the subject.

Steph’s my swim coach and she and Jake come along to support me at all my races, which makes up a bit for Mum not being there. I know Steph will be waiting for me this morning, but I take the long way to her house because I want to drop off some notes in the shops on Willingdon Green.

The notes read:

Feather Tucker

Looking for work as a part-time Sales Assistant.

Hard-working. Shows initiative. Good at counting.

Salary negotiable.

Mobile: 07598 223456

If I’m going to save up for Mum’s gastric band and her personal trainer, I’m going to have to start earning some serious money.

When I get to Bewitched, Mrs Zas is kneeling in her front window with a pile of clothes and three naked mannequins. She’s puffing on an electric cigarette and between the puffs she’s humming. Her door sign is flipped to OPEN, which is weird – I can’t imagine anyone wanting to rent a fancy-dress costume at six in the morning. Anyway, I decide it can’t hurt to pop in.

‘Good to see you, Feather,’ Mrs Zas says. She puts down her cigarette and pulls a nun outfit over the plastic boobs of one of her mannequins.

Mrs Zas is wearing a black headscarf and a hoopy gold earring and a pirate outfit, which she’s kind of bursting out of. She’s in bare feet, her clogs tossed behind her.

I hand her one of my leaflets. She takes her purple-rimmed plastic glasses off from the top of her head and peers at my note.

‘I thought you might need some help,’ I explain.

People come from all over to rent Mrs Zas’s fancy dress costumes, plus she has a big rack of ballroom dancing outfits that people use for The Willingdon Waltz competition. And she never seems to have anyone else working in the shop.

Mrs Zas gets up and slips into her heels. ‘I’ll give it some thought.’

‘When do you think you’ll know?’

Mrs Zas raises her eyebrows. ‘You’re – what do they call it in England? Dogged?’

I’m not sure it’s a compliment so I don’t answer.

‘I like it,’ she says, and smiles. ‘You need to take life by the throat.’ She puts her fingers around the neck of a mannequin and shakes it dramatically to make the point. She drops her hands from the mannequin and smiles with her big, red lipsticked mouth. ‘I’ll give it some thought, Feather.’ She taps a bit of forehead through her headscarf.

I wonder why she always wears headscarves – and what her hair’s like underneath. I can picture it being really long and black and shiny, like a witch’s.

‘If you do think of something, I’m afraid I’ll have to be paid,’ I say. I know it’s a bit rude but the whole point of getting a job is earning money and, despite the shop being busy a lot of the time, Mrs Zas always looks strapped for cash. I mean, otherwise she’d buy her own clothes, right?

Mrs Zas nods. ‘Of course.’

I sometimes wonder why, of all the villages in England, Mrs Zas ended up in Willingdon, the place where nothing ever happens. And from all the evidence I’ve seen, she lives alone, which must get pretty lonely. So maybe it will be nice having me around.

‘Thank you for considering giving me a job.’

I head to the door.

Mrs Zas smiles and nods, goes back to putting a Frankenstein’s monster outfit on the mannequin she throttled and starts humming again, mumbling a few words between her hums: turn… turn… turn…

By the time I get to Jake’s house, he and Steph are already by the car. I want to hug them both. They feel more like family than Mum and Dad right now. Jake says he likes being an only child but I wish I had brothers and sisters. It gets lonely being stuck between Mum and Dad. I mean, I love them, but I wish that there were someone to share stuff with, especially the bad stuff. I once asked Mum why she didn’t have any more kids and she went quiet and then she kissed me and gave me one of her big, warm hugs and said: I have my Feather – and she’s worth a million children – which I didn’t think was a proper answer, but it made me feel good anyway.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ I say.

I’m late for most things. By my reasoning, late people get more out of life because they squeeze extra things in. Anyway, Steph usually has a go at me, because she’s an on-time kind of person, but this time she just gives me a hug. I know she feels sorry for me after everything that’s happened with Mum. I think I’d rather have been told off.

‘Ready to beat your PB?’ Jake asks. He’s Steph’s assistant coach and my timekeeper.

‘I’ll try,’ I say. I’m going to do this for Mum.

I jump into the back.

It was through Steph that I got into swimming. When Mum and Dad were busy with the plumbing business, she’d take Jake and me to the pool on Saturday mornings and she got so into it that she did a coaching qualification and started coaching the Newton team. Jake and I would come and watch her training the older children and then, one summer, Mum and I spent weeks doing nothing but watching the Olympics on TV and, when I saw those amazing swimmers doing butterfly stroke, I knew that I wanted to swim like them. So I asked Steph if I could try out for the team.

They’re holding the Junior UK Championships at the Newton pool this summer and if I make it through the regionals, I’ll be there competing with the best Junior Fly swimmers in the UK.

‘Go! Go! Go!’ I hear Jake’s voice above me as I turn and kick off the end of the pool. ‘Faster!’

My arms and legs feel like they’re pinned to the bottom of the pool by lead weights. If I’m going to make it through the regional heats in March, I’ll have to get a whole lot faster.

‘Focus!’ Steph yells as I push my arms over my head. ‘Arms out… kick harder…’

Usually, swimming’s the only thing guaranteed to get me out of my head. As I pull myself in and out of the water and propel my arms over my head and feel the rush of water along my body, my breath syncs into some weird energy and I disappear into another place, a place where it’s just me and the water. And the more I let myself go to that somewhere place, the better I swim. It’s the best feeling in the world.

But today, all I can think about is Mum.

When I finish, I can tell from Jake’s face that I’m closer to my Personal Worst than my Personal Best. I don’t even ask him to give me my time.

In the changing room, I turn to Steph.

‘What did you and Mum fight about? At Christmas, I mean?’

As usual, she doesn’t answer.

‘Can’t you patch things up?’ I ask.

Steph fiddles with the locker key. ‘Damn thing.’

‘Steph?’

She looks at me. ‘It’s complicated, Feather.’

‘She needs you. Like, really needs you. Now more than ever.’

‘She’ll let me know when she’s ready.’

‘Ready for what?’ I ask.

‘Ow!’

I notice a small droplet of blood on Steph’s thumb. She’s jabbed herself with the safety pin.

‘It’s about something that happened a long time ago.’ Steph’s voice is all jagged.

‘Well, if it happened so long ago,’ I say, ‘it can’t be that important any more, can it?’

‘Just talk to your mum, Feather. It’s not for me to say.’

‘Not for you to say what?’

She shakes her head.

‘Mum won’t talk, Steph. You know she won’t. Not about anything except who’s doing what on Strictly, which is like the least important thing in the world – and now that we’ve taken her TV away, she won’t even talk about that.’

‘It’s not up to you to fix your mum,’ Steph says.

And that’s the end of our conversation.

If Steph won’t tell me what happened, I’ll have to find out some other way. And then I’ll figure out a way to get them to be friends again. If I’m going to get Mum better, I’m going to need all the help I can get.

9

I push through the front door, drop my swim bag in the entrance and run down the hall.

As I stand in the kitchen doorway, my hair dripping down my shoulders, I can’t believe what I’m seeing: Mitch is sitting at the kitchen table next to Mum, who’s sitting in her wheelchair.

‘You opened the door, Mum?’

Mum laughs. ‘You’re looking at me like I let in an axe-murderer.’

‘But you never answer the door.’ I pause. ‘Ever.’

The last time we had guests in the house was four years ago, for my birthday. And it didn’t end well. One of the boys took pictures of Mum on his mobile and sent them to my class. When I worked out what he’d done I punched him on the nose, grabbed his phone, dropped it into his glass of Coke and told him to leave. He ran home and told his parents and, within half an hour, all the kids at my party had been picked up.

Apart from Jake, I haven’t had any friends round since. I don’t really mind – in some ways it’s easier, it means I don’t have to keep explaining about Mum or worrying how people will react. And anyway, I feel about Jake a bit like Mum feels about me: he’s worth a million friends.

‘It took a while for me to get to the front door,’ Mum says. ‘Mitch was already halfway down the drive. But I made it.’ Mum winks at me. ‘I thought you’d approve.’

Every muscle in my body relaxes. So Mum’s finally decided to make an effort. Me ignoring her this morning and showing her that I’m not going to back down must have worked.

I spin round to face Mitch.

‘So why did you come over?’

‘Feather, love, be polite. Mitch is our neighbour. He’s doing up Cuckoo Cottage.’

‘I know.’

People from London and other posh places have been buying up the cottages on The Green as holiday houses. It’s pushed lots of the locals out of their homes and businesses. It’s why Mr Ding had to sell his restaurant space and get a takeaway van. Sometimes, I have dreams about how no one lives on The Green any more except for us, that it’s like a ghost town or a place after there’s been some kind of natural disaster and everyone’s moved out. Our cottage is too small for rich people to be interested in. And anyway, Dad wouldn’t sell, not in a million years.

‘I thought it couldn’t hurt to pop by and see how your mother was doing,’ Mitch says.

‘Mitch was telling me about the meeting you went to.’

She’s going to kill me.

‘Mum, I’m sorry,’ I blurt out. ‘I didn’t mean to. Not without asking you first. I thought I’d just go and check it out—’

Mum holds out her hand and I come over and kneel next to her chair on the kitchen tiles.

‘It’s okay, my darling, I know you meant well.’ Mum turns to Mitch Banks. ‘The group sounds interesting.’

I feel my eyebrows shoot up. ‘It does?’

I still can’t quite believe that Mum’s going along with all this. All Mum’s been talking about since she got back from hospital is that she wants things to go back to normal. And what she means by normal is before New Year’s Eve, when she would spend her days eating and watching TV.

Sometimes I have the same wish: I love how easy things used to be, how we’d spend hours laughing and talking, snuggled up watching TV and eating Chunky Monkey ice cream straight from the tub, as if the rest of the world didn’t exist.

Only I’m determined that Mum won’t slip back into the habits that made her sick.

‘So you don’t mind, Mum?’

‘No, I don’t mind.’

Mum threads her fingers through my wet hair. She’s told me that when I was born my hair was blonde, not brown, and that when she held me in her arms for the first time, stroking my downy hair, she thought: Light as a feather with hair like washed-out sunshine.

Mum leans over and kisses the top of my head.

Mitch Banks clears his throat. ‘When you walked in, I was inviting your mother to join the group.’ He beams.

‘Seriously?’ I jump up and skip around the table. ‘Really, Mum?’

Mum nods again.

‘We can go together. Steph could drive you—’

‘Let’s not bother Steph,’ Mum says.

The only other option is Dad’s van, except Mum wouldn’t fit on the front bench. I get this picture of Mum sitting in the back, surrounded by sinks and toilet bowls and pipes and screws, the van leaning to one side, one of its tyres hissing because it’s collapsed from carrying so much weight.

‘Or you could walk,’ I suggest. ‘We could take it really slow.’

It took hours for the swelling in Mum’s ankles to go down after the walk from the car to the lounge on the day she came home from hospital. Her feet had bulged out of her slippers, her tracksuits was drenched in sweat. But that just proved that she had to do it more, didn’t it?

‘We’ll see, my darling.’

‘Did you eat my bran muffins, Mum? Nurse Heidi said you have to eat regularly. Healthy things. Low GI. Slow-burning.’

Mum licks her lips, in the way she does when she’s just had a packet of crisps. I really hope Dad hasn’t been feeding her again.

‘I did. They tasted like upholstery.’ Mum laughs.

‘Hey!’

‘I’m just saying it like it is, love. And anyway, Houdini enjoyed the leftovers.’

Mum feeds Houdini things through the lounge window. ‘He didn’t look too impressed either.’ Mum turns to Mitch. ‘Is there anything I can eat that tastes like proper food?’

‘There sure is,’ says Mitch. ‘I’ll drop in some recipes.’

My heart’s going to explode I’m so happy at how positive Mum’s being.

Mitch stands up. ‘I’d better get going.’ He holds out his hand to Mum. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

I get up too. ‘I’m sorry I was rude. We’ll see you on Tuesday, won’t we, Mum?’

I put my arms around Mum’s neck and give her a hug.

‘We’re all going to help you get better.’

And then I squeeze Mum tight and close my eyes and feel so grateful that she’s making an effort.

Only, just as I’m holding her close, my face close up to hers, I can smell prawn cocktail crisps on her breath.

10

Although it’s the first day of school after the holidays and although I know that everyone’s going to be talking about New Year’s Eve and Mum being carried out of the house like a beached whale, I woke up feeling springy. Mum’s agreed to take part in a Slim Skills meeting and that’s a first step, right? And maybe, by the meeting on Tuesday, I’ll have found a way to get Mum and Steph to talk and then Steph can come too, for moral support. And maybe I’ll be able to persuade Mum to walk there, or at least walk part of the way, which would be a humungous step.

I knock on Mum’s door.

‘Mum? It’s me.’

When she doesn’t answer, I go in. I find her asleep, her feet poking out of the end of her duvet. Knots of spider veins circle her ankles and her toes are swollen like pale cocktail sausages. And she’s snoring.

I go and kiss Mum’s cheek and whisper in her ear: ‘I’ve made you a yummy breakfast, Mum.’

She stirs but doesn’t wake up, so I run downstairs to get the Bircher muesli I put together last night. I found the recipe in Cook. Eat. Live. It’s this gloopy mix of yoghurt and nuts and dried fruit and oats and grated apple that melds together overnight. Swiss people eat it before they go zooming up mountains and it keeps them going for ages. My plan is to fill Mum up with food that keeps her going for longer, that way she won’t stuff herself with prawn cocktail crisps and Galaxy bars and pineapple syrup.

Except, when I get to the kitchen, I smell frying.

And then I see Dad emptying a pan of greasy sausages and buttery mushrooms and fried eggs onto a plate.

‘Dad!’

He jumps. A mushroom slips off the side of the dish; it looks like a slug lying there on the kitchen tiles.

‘You scared the life out of me, Feather.’

‘I’ve made Mum’s breakfast already,’ I say.

I go to the fridge and take out the muesli.

‘Your mum’s not going to eat that.’ Dad puts the serving dish on Mum’s tray. Then he tucks a wad of kitchen paper under the plate.

‘And she is going to eat crisps, right?’

‘Sorry?’

‘I know you gave her crisps, Dad. You can’t keep doing this.’

‘We’ll put your breakfast on the tray too,’ Dad says. ‘Then she can choose.’

I shake my head.

‘No, Dad. If you give Mum a choice, you know what she’s going to pick.’ I take a breath. ‘We have to make sure that Mum doesn’t take in more calories than she burns.’

‘It’s going to take more than salad and muesli to get your mum well, Feather.’

‘I know, Dad. But we have to start somewhere.’ I must be the only teenager on the planet who’s trying to convince her parents to eat healthily.

Dad nods like he always does when he disagrees but doesn’t want a fight. I look at his tufty hair and at the wrinkles on his forehead and at the puffy baggy bits under his eyes because he’s been out on so many night shifts. And, for a second, I think he’s going to give in. But then he just comes over and takes my bowl of muesli and puts it on the tray and goes to Mum’s room.

That’s another classic Dad move: when he doesn’t want to fight back, he goes quiet and does what he wants anyway.

‘It’s not right, Dad!’ I yell after him.

But he doesn’t turn round.

Maybe I can get Mitch to talk to Dad. Or Nurse Heidi. He needs facts and statistics, hard evidence. Like the fact that when people as big as Mum don’t get to a healthy weight, they could die.

As I walk past the vicarage, I notice that the suitcase has disappeared from Rev Cootes’s front steps. I go and stand by the school minibus stop; it’s next to the row of graves where the little kids are buried. Rev Cootes fusses more over the flowers on those graves than over the old people ones. In the summer, they’re so full of roses and pansies and dahlias that you can hardly read the inscriptions any more.

Looming over the children’s graves stands the stone statue of an angel with droopy wings and an inscription that reads:

Our Little Angels. You’ll always be with us.

A few of the gravestones have photographs of the children tucked behind glass frames, but mostly, there are just names and dates, especially on the really old ones. Some of the graves date back hundreds of years. Miss Pierce, my History teacher, explained that in the old days kids got more diseases than they do now and that it was harder to save them because medical science wasn’t as advanced.

Although I’ve stood next to those small graves a million times waiting for the school minibus, the tight feeling across my chest never goes away. There’s something wrong about kids dying before they’ve had the chance to do anything with their lives. Plus, looking at the graves makes me think about Mum and how she nearly died, and that makes me even more determined to get her better – and to make sure Dad stops feeding her rubbish.

‘Morning, Feather!’

I look up. It’s Mrs Zas standing on the doorstep of her fancy-dress shop, waving at me.

I wave back.

‘Morning, Reverend Cootes!’ Mrs Zas says. She rolls her Rs like she’s about to burst into song.

Reverend Cootes bows his head over one of the kids’ graves, pretending he hasn’t heard. I bet he disapproves of Mrs Zas, because she’s the exact opposite of him in her bright colours and noisy high heels and loud voice, but also because of the costumes in her shop. Mum told me that religious people believe witches and ghosts and monsters and werewolves are evil.

The funny thing is that Rev Cootes ignoring Mrs Zas never stops Mrs Zas from being nice to him.

‘I think I might have a job for you, Feather,’ she calls over. ‘Come and see me soon.’

‘Thank you!’ I call back.

A moment later, Jake’s at my side. He puts down his school bag and punches me on the arm. ‘Hey, Feather!’

I give him a massive hug and hold onto him for a bit longer than usual. Jake’s the one constant, happy thing in my life right now.

‘I need you to help me get your mum and my mum back together,’ I whisper, still holding on.

He stands back and holds up his hands.

‘I don’t get involved in girl stuff.’

‘It’s not girl stuff. It’s Mum needing her best friend because getting better’s going to be really hard.’

The school minibus rattles down the road. It’s white and rusty and the N from NEWTON ACADEMY has faded away.

‘You have to find out what they rowed about and then we have to sort it out.’

‘You can’t solve the world’s problems, Feather.’

‘I’m not trying to solve the world’s problems. I’m trying to help my mum. And I need some support from you.’

‘Okay, okay. I’ll see what I can find out.’

Jake looks past me – his eyes are so wide, I wonder whether a UFO has just landed in the middle of St Mary’s Cemetery.

‘Who’s that?’ Jake asks.

I spin round.

There’s a guy stomping through the cemetery. He’s got headphones, which makes him look like he’s lost in some other world, and his hair’s really light and even at this distance he looks so thin you wonder how his body stays pinned to the ground.

Jake and I are the only teenagers in Willingdon: the school bus does a detour especially for us. Whoever this guy is, he’s not from around here. But this is the really weird thing: he looks as though he’s meant to be here; when I look at him I feel like I’m meant to know him.

Just as the bus pulls in, the guy jumps on, gives the driver a note, then goes to sit at the back and takes out an old battered paperback. No one’s ever read a book on the school bus before, not unless it’s cramming before an exam.

Everyone else on the bus fixes their eyes on him, like Jake and I did, but he doesn’t seem to notice – or to care. He just sinks into his seat and stares at his paperback.

I keep wondering whether maybe he came here one summer with his parents, whether maybe they’re one of the rich families from London who bought a cottage on The Green and now leave it empty for most of the year.

The guy looks a couple of years older than Jake and me. He’s so thin that his collarbones stick out. In fact, the whole of him looks hollow, like there’s something missing. I’m almost grateful that Mum’s the weight she is, it would be worse to have her look like this – like a ghost.

‘Weird, hey?’ I whisper. ‘Do you think he’s sick?’

Jake shrugs.

‘He looks interesting though,’ I add.

‘Interesting?’ Jake pokes me in the ribs.

I blush. ‘Not like that, I just mean that there’s something about him – he looks kind of familiar, don’t you think?’

‘I hope you’re not going to feed him that line,’ Jake grins.

‘What line?’

‘Haven’t we met before?’ Jake says in a voice that’s obviously meant to be mine but that sounds totally lame.

‘Just forget it.’

Jake leans over and gives me a loud kiss on the cheek. ‘Just teasing, Feather.’

Sometimes it totally feels like Jake’s my brother.

There’s another thing that’s different between me and Jake: I can’t ever remember him not being in a relationship; I’ve never even been out on a date. Or kissed anyone. Or received a Valentine’s card. On my birthday a year ago I asked Jake whether he would kiss me just so that I could stop worrying about it, but he got all embarrassed and then refused and said, It’s meant to be special. He paused. Plus, I’d be cheating on Amy. And I know he’s right, but it would still make me feel like less of freak to know that I’ve at least kissed one boy before I die.

We have made a pact though: if we’re still living in Willingdon when we’re fifty (and if Jake hasn’t been an idiot and married someone like Amy), we’re going to buy a house and live there together and get old and wrinkly together. It’s kind of a relief to know that when Mum and Dad aren’t around any more, I’ll always have Jake.

Jake looks back at the guy. ‘I know what you mean. He’s cool.’

By which, Jake means that the guy’s way too cool to be seen hanging around with us. Or rather me. Which kind of sucks, because he does look interesting – more interesting than any other guy that’s stepped onto the Newton Academy minibus.

It’s the longest Monday ever. I find it hard to concentrate in lessons because my brain keeps buzzing all over the place: I make up healthy recipes for Mum and think about the Slim Skills meeting on Tuesday and how Mum’s actually coming and about how Jake’s promised to sort things out between our mums and about how I have to work out a way to get Dad on board. Anyway, thinking about Mum makes quadratic equations and Mount Vesuvius and iambic pentameter seem pretty pointless. The only lesson that I feel remotely interested in is Miss Pierce’s History class.

‘I thought we’d do some poetry today,’ Miss Pierce says.

The class groans.

‘Aren’t poems for English?’ Jake calls out.

That’s another reason girls like Jake: he makes them laugh and he’s not afraid to stand up to teachers. Take Amy: for a second, she’s stopped drawing hearts on the back of her file and is looking at Jake like he’s some kind of hero.

Sometimes I worry that if I wasn’t the only person Jake’s age living in the village, if our mums hadn’t brought us together when we were babies, he wouldn’t even notice me.

‘Poems are for every occasion Jake,’ Miss Pierce looks straight at him with her sharp, blue eyes. ‘And in the case of the First World War, poetry was one of the only ways that the men could truly express what they were going through.’

Jake has some teachers totally wound round his little finger, but Miss Pierce wins every time. And Jake doesn’t mind because he likes her just as much as I do. She’s one of those teachers who cares more about pupils than about impressing the Head or his millions of deputies, which means she actually talks to us like she’s interested in hearing what we have to say rather than waiting for us to come up with the right answer.

‘Don’t we have textbooks for that?’ Jake asks.

‘Textbooks tell us facts, Jake, poems tell us the truth. And they bring us together: they teach us about our common humanity, about how the past and the present are connected, about how a man sitting in a trench a hundred years ago writing a love letter to his girlfriend back home might feel the very same thing as you feel when you pass notes to Amy under the desk.’

The class erupts in laughter.

That’s another thing about Miss Pierce: she always knows exactly what’s going on.

Jake blushes and stares down at his desk.

Amy grins stupidly because she’s got attention, even though she probably doesn’t understand what she got attention for.

‘These two men have given us the greatest treasures from the First World War,’ Miss Pierce says, switching on the projector. The black and white faces of two young men flash onto the whiteboard. ‘Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon.’

‘Didn’t they meet in a loony bin?’ Matt calls out from the back of the class.

‘They met at Craiglockhart Hospital, Matt, where soldiers were recovering from shell-shock.’

I’ve heard that term before but I’ve never really got my head round it. I put my hand up.

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