Dad hadn’t believed that the chocolates were for all of us.Take these, Joyce. Share them out with the kiddies.A big flat golden box with drawings of the different chocolate varieties on the inside of the lid.
Sometime after Christmas I’d found a Rum Truffle gummed to the base of the standard lamp and a Chartreuse Cream (whatwasChartreuse? It sounded impossibly glamorous!) squished into the rug after our nice, respectable, golf-playing dad had booted the box across the room.
You’re saying he gave you those chocolates for nothing?
This baffled me. What had Dad meant? What kind of exchange could have taken place?
Our house was a scary place in the evenings he was home. He’d chain-smoke and drink red wine from a giant bottle at the kitchen table – no glass swirling there – meaning we couldn’t go in. We’d have tinned spaghetti and macaroni cheese – stuff that could be microwaved quickly and cleared away before he came in from work.
Once, late at night, I heard him yelling and Mum crying and screaming at him. Next morning I found a broken chair, a big dent in the living room wall and Mum’s favourite horse ornament lying on the carpet in pieces.
And now the three of us were in a taxi, without him. We’d left without warning – like the Famous Five inFive Run Away Together. Was this an adventure? Or something else?
The taxi pulled up at Buchanan Street bus station in the middle of town. ‘Are we going on holiday?’ George asked.
‘Kind of,’ Mum said distractedly. She handed me some of the bags and chivvied us through the station where there was a big board with all the departures on it.
‘Will there be donkeys?’ George perked up now. He remembered our holiday in Blackpool, where Dad had gone ‘for a pint’ and not returned to our B&B until the following day.
‘Let me think for a minute, son,’ Mum said.
‘What about Dad?’ I asked.
‘Never mind Dad, Kate. It’s just us now.’
‘What’s our plan, then?’ I was an organised child who enjoyed timetables and lists. I kept my light brown hair clipped back from my earnest face, and my pencils ferociously sharpened.
‘You and your plans,’ Mum murmured, frowning at the departures board. There was no plan, I realised. She was making it up as she went along. ‘You two wait here,’ she added, then rushed off to the ticket office.
‘Where are wegoing?’ I asked when she reappeared.
‘London,’ she replied.
‘What?’ All I knew about London were the photographs in a school library book. Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, the Post Office Tower, which apparently spun round and round while you were eating your dinner in the restaurant at the top.
‘I’ve bought our tickets,’ she announced. ‘C’mon, it’s leaving in a minute...’
‘Why are we going to London?’ George exclaimed.
I grabbed his hand. ‘For an adventure.’
‘Will the queen be there?’ His eyes widened. ‘Can we see the crown jewels?’
‘Let’s just get on the bus,’ I told him as the three of us hurried across the concourse. Itwasan adventure, I’d decided. People in London probably ate Chartreuse Creams every day.
On the bus Mum grabbed a seat for her and George and told me to sit across the aisle.
‘We’re going on a really long trip, Kate,’ my brother announced.
‘Yeah, we are, George.’ I nodded.
‘Will there be slippers there, like my ones?’
‘’Course there will be.’ I reached across the aisle to squeeze his hand and tried not to think about leaving my best friend Tash, and my Famous Five books lined up neatly on my shelf.
‘How d’you know?’ George asked.
‘London haseverything,’ I told him firmly.
