Lemonade Sky

Contents

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

Also by Jean Ure

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I shouted, “MUM?”

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

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

“So where is she?”

“I said, I don’t know!”

“She’s prob’ly still asleep.”

“She’s not,” I said. “I’ve looked.”

“So where is she?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But s’ppose she isn’t?”

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

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

“She wouldn’t go without telling us.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“There’s a message!”

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

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

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

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

“Was that Mum talking?” said Sammy.

I said, “Yes, that was Mum.”

“Why’s she sound all funny?”

“She’s just being happy,” said Tizz.

“’bout what?”

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

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

“So when did she ring?”

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

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

“What’s lemonade pie?” said Sammy.

“Sky,” said Tizz. “Just be quiet!”

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

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

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

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

“Is it something to eat?” said Sammy.

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

“Lemonade pie.”

“Sky,” said Tizz. “Sky, sky, sky!”

“What’s lemonade sky?”

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

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

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

I said, “Maybe. Who knows?”

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

“You are,” I said. “It’s a big age.”

“When will she come back with it?”

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

I said this to Tizz.

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

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

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

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

Tizz said, “Huh!”

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

“We should have known,” said Tizz.

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

I said, “Omigod!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I don’t believe this,” I said.

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

“There’s nothing in the fridge!”

Grudgingly, she came over to look.

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

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

Tizz marched across to a cupboard and yanked it open.

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

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

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

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

“D’you think she’s left any money?”

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

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

“Bald egg and fingers!”

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

“Mum gives me juice!”

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

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

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

“I can’t eat Krispies without sugar!”

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

“There! Stir that in.”

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

“Just get on with it,” snarled Tizz.

Sniffling, Sammy did so.

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

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

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

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

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

“What with?”

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

“Yeah, right,” said Tizz. “Money.”

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

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

We sat there, staring at them.

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

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

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

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

“Where is she? Where’s she gone?”

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

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

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

“Disappearing,” said Tizz.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Slowly, Sammy shook her head.

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

Sammy said, “What secret?”

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

Sammy sucked on her thumb. She seemed uncertain.

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

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

I scowled at her, over Sammy’s head.

“I only asked,” said Tizz.

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

Tizz hunched a shoulder.

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

“You’ve got it,” said Tizz.

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

“Will she be here for my birthday?”

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

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

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

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

“I was saving it,” said Tizz.

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

Tizz said, “You reckon?”

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

“Let’s go through pockets,” I said.

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

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

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

“Is that blood?” quavered Sammy.

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

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

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

“That’s £4.60,” said Tizz.

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

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

“£14.75.”

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