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
