to school. I thought the Head was probably giving her the same lecture she’d given me about smoking (as if no one else in the world’s ever been told about the dangers of smoking and it’s her duty, as the lone crusader, to spread the word). Then Mum said, ‘Well, we’ve been trying. We’ve done that.’ There was another long pause, another sigh, louder this time, like she was getting annoyed, then, ‘It isn’t easy, you know.’
I went into the sitting room and waited for her, watching a magpie stabbing a snail on the driveway with its beak. When she came in, she flopped into the chair, leaning her head back and closing her eyes like she was completely knackered. She’s a mystery shopper, which means she has to push a supermarket trolley round different supermarkets all day, pretending to shop when really she’s spying on people that hand out those tiny bits of cookies or cubes of cheese on toothpicks to make sure they’re doing their job and not playing on their phones. It’s hard work, even though Gary’s always making fun of it, going, ‘And who’s watching you? Who’s making sure you’re doing your job properly?’
‘I wasn’t smoking,’ I said.
She lifted her head and looked at me. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.
I wanted to say, You won’t tell Gary, will you? but it didn’t seem like the right moment. I said, ‘What d’you mean?’
She sighed again and picked up the Pizza Hut takeaway menu that was on the arm of the chair. ‘I’m just too tired,’ she said. She was looking at the menu, but I could tell she wasn’t really looking. She wasn’t reading it. I thought she probably didn’t even know what it was. It was making me hungry, though.
I said, ‘I didn’t have any lunch.’
She shot me a look to tell me 1) that she knew that was probably a lie; and 2) that she also knew exactly what I was doing and that, in the circumstances, it wasn’t really acceptable. Then she said, ‘We’ll talk about it tomorrow, OK? I’m not letting it slide, though.’
I nodded. I said, ‘Don’t tell Gary.’
She pursed her lips and gave me the look again, but I was pretty sure she wouldn’t. I don’t think she relished the thought of a Gary lecture either.
I went upstairs then. I didn’t have to tell her to get me the Deep Pan Stuffed Crust Hawaiian with extra Garlic and Herb Dip because that’s my number one favourite thing to eat (along with Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Turkish Delight and sweet ’n salty popcorn). And because Gary wasn’t home, it meant she’d probably order me one that was actually big enough to fill a hole.
One thing I love about Mum is that she never makes things into massive dramas like most people. She usually just shrugs and sighs or says ‘Ah well’ or ‘Never mind’. I suppose it’s because of losing Dad. Once you’ve been through something like that, it puts things into perspective – things like your teenage daughter possibly smoking a cigarette on a tree stump when she should be fifty metres away listening to someone so old he can only mumble in monotone.
I typed How to spot a paedophile into Google on my laptop. About a billion sites came up. I took a quiz on one. It showed pictures of people (men mostly) and you had to click Yes for paedophile or No for not a paedophile. I only got half of them right, which technically means there was a 50 per cent chance I was wrong about you. Except I knew I wasn’t. Anyway, I thought, you weren’t just a photo, you were real. You are real, and I deduced therefore that it’s a lot easier to tell a paedophile in the flesh than from a picture. It’s the same with telly or pop stars, isn’t it? They seem super-duper lovely on screen but then you hear they’re really vile and treat the people who work for them like crap. Hanna Latham at school said her friend’s cousin was a runner on this TV show and that there was a really horrible presenter who’d tip packets of mixed nuts all over his desk, then make her pick out the cashews because they were the only ones he liked. Hanna said you’d never know he was like that from watching him, all smiles and jokes and floppy fun-guy hair. I bet if you met him in real life, though, you could tell straight away he was mean.
This other site said to pay particular attention to the mouth, to look out for the paedo-smile: apparently paedophiles usually have thin lips and are often smiling – especially if you’re a child doing the looking. Obviously, you weren’t smiling when I saw you because you were on your own and too busy, I expect, imagining what you’d do with Alice when you got her.
The website said to look out for props too, meaning things that would interest kids and make them trust a person, like bikes or scooters or kittens. It didn’t mention dogs, but obviously dogs – especially one as scruffy and cute as yours.
The one thing all the sites did say was that predators like you are almost always known to their victims. I thought that bit didn’t really fit unless you did know Alice – which is possible, I suppose, but you didn’t look like you knew her. I mean, you weren’t exactly ready to wave at her if she happened to notice you. You were holding your dog’s lead with one hand and the other one was stuffed deep in the pocket of your jeans.
Mum brought me a tea at 9 o’clock the next morning. She said, ‘You awake, love?’ even though it was obvious I wasn’t, or at least hadn’t been, and sat on the bed. Because I was officially in trouble, I couldn’t tell her to pee off, so I pushed myself up, took the mug from her and had a couple of slurps.
She believed me about not smoking, but I had to come up with a reason for being on the path. Watching squirrels obviously wasn’t good enough (even though it ending up being the truth) and I couldn’t tell her about you, so I told her I was just feeling a bit down.
‘Oh love,’ she said. She leant forward and tucked my hair behind my ear. ‘You’ve not had an easy time of it, have you?’
I was thinking, stop tucking my hair behind my ear, Mum, but I said it was no big deal and that everything was fine really, I just had my period coming. But the way she was looking at me all sympathetically made it impossible not to think about Dad, which made me get tearful.
She patted my leg through the duvet. ‘Hey, c’mon,’ she said, ‘let’s go to the shop and get something nice.’
I reminded her I had to see Dr Bhatt in the afternoon, but she said she was sure he was going to be pleased with me. She didn’t know about the family-size Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Turkish Delight in my bedside table drawer or the other three in my suitcase on top of the wardrobe, or about the packet of chocolate Hobnobs I buy in the corner shop near school every day.
She said, ‘One treat won’t hurt.’ She said it was a treat for her too because she’d got the day off. She’d given the work to one of the other mystery shoppers.
She came out the Co-op with a box of Maltesers. ‘Look,’ she said, making me hold it when she got back in the car, ‘they’re so light they won’t even show up on the scales.’ We ate them there, sitting outside the shop. She told me she’d go on a diet too, but that Gary likes his ladies large. ‘Something to grab hold of,’ she chuckled, popping several Maltesers into her mouth at once with a naughty look in her eyes.
‘Mu-um,’ I said, because I really didn’t need to be hearing what Gary does or doesn’t like.
Then she said sorry, because she knew she wasn’t being very helpful, but that the point she wanted to make was that it’s what’s on the inside that counts.
She looked really happy inside and out.
Dr Bhatt wasn’t pleased with me. He never is because every
