The Honeymoon Sisters Read online

  ‘Mrs Smee’s really got it in for you two, hasn’t she?’ I said with a grin.

  Josh pointed at my brooch. ‘Amy make you that?’

  ‘Yes. She was so sweet to me this morning.’ I tried not to get too emotional as I remembered how she’d hugged me, her strong little arms firmly clamped around my neck. Amy had been really skinny and delicate when she’d first come to us – not the solid little thing she was now.

  ‘My mum says she might not have been able to settle in to any other family if you guys hadn’t helped her so much,’ Josh said.

  ‘I know. And I’m happy for her. It’s just … it was really hard saying goodbye.’

  ‘But you’ll see her again, right?’

  ‘We’re going to visit her in two weeks, but after that it depends on what her new parents decide.’ Sometimes we get to keep in touch with the children we foster and sometimes we don’t. It all depends on their adoptive families – or their birth families if they end up going back to them. Mum had told me she didn’t want me getting my hopes up this time because Amy’s adoptive parents were in two minds about it.

  ‘Well, I’ll keep my fingers crossed,’ Josh said.

  ‘Thanks.’

  We walked on in silence for a bit until Josh asked, ‘So are you seeing your dad this weekend?’

  ‘Yep – and I’m finally getting to meet his new girlfriend.’ I pulled a pained face.

  ‘She’s probably just as nervous as you are.’

  ‘Doubt it. None of Dad’s girlfriends are the nervous type.’

  He grinned. ‘So what type are they, then?’

  ‘The super-confident type … plus they all have long legs and blonde hair …’ I was grinning too.

  ‘Wasn’t the last one really clever with some kickass job?’

  ‘You mean Penelope. She was the director of a pharmaceutical company. Mum and I called her the ice queen.’

  Suddenly something caught my attention on the other side of the road. Some older teenagers were hanging out at the bus shelter, shoving each other about and laughing loudly. A couple of them were smoking. There was one younger girl in school uniform standing in the middle.

  ‘Isn’t that the new girl in your class who everyone’s talking about?’ Josh said as his gaze followed mine.

  ‘Yeah … Sadie.’

  Although Mum had told Josh’s mum about Sadie, I’d said that I didn’t want Josh to know. It wasn’t that I thought he couldn’t keep a secret. It was just that I didn’t want to talk about Sadie at all – not with anyone. And I knew that if Josh found out he’d definitely want to talk about it because he’s pretty curious that way. If he didn’t know, it was easier to pretend to myself that Sadie was just any other girl in my school.

  ‘So do you think her dad really is a hitman?’ Josh asked, as I quickened my pace to pass them.

  ‘Oh yeah … right … like she’d be at our school if he was,’ I said.

  ‘Even hitmen’s kids have to get an education somewhere,’ he said. Then he launched into a hilarious description of some gangster movie he’d seen where the main character was both a hitman and a struggling single dad.

  Across the road we suddenly heard an angry shout and when I turned to look back I saw an older girl – she looked at least eighteen – walking rapidly down the road towards the others. She had short spiky black hair and wore jeans and a purple leather jacket. She looked furious. As soon as she reached the bus stop she grabbed Sadie by the arm and began to shake her. Then she smacked her over the head a couple of times while Sadie yelled ‘Ow!’ and ‘Gerroff!’ The other kids just watched and laughed.

  Josh and I looked at each other awkwardly, wondering if we ought to try and help.

  Just then a run-down old car pulled up at the bus stop and the driver (a boy who also looked at least eighteen) yelled at them to get in. The girl who’d hit Sadie let go of her abruptly and got into the front passenger seat while the others piled into the back. Sadie stood at the kerb scowling at them. I expected her to escape while she could – in any case there was no more room in the car – but instead she waited there sulkily for a few more moments before squeezing into the front of the car to share the passenger seat with the older girl. In fact, it looked like she was sitting on her lap!

  ‘They are so going to get pulled over by the police,’ Josh said in an incredulous voice as the car screeched away, windows down and music blaring.

  I just stared after them, wondering if Sadie’s dad knew what she was doing. I knew that my mum and dad would have two separate fits in their two separate houses if they found out I was hanging out with a crowd like that.

  ‘Come on.’ Josh’s voice suddenly broke into my thoughts. ‘Let’s go home.’

  I briefly wondered if Sadie would get home OK. Not that I had any special reason to care …

  Chapter Three

  After I’d left Josh behind at the corner of his road I started to think some more about Sadie. She was so different to how I’d imagined her whenever Mum had mentioned her in the past. I mean, I don’t know about you, but if I’d just started at a new school where everyone else knew each other except me, I’d be doing my best to fit in and make friends. I certainly wouldn’t be acting the way Sadie had been acting ever since she’d arrived.

  I’ve already told you about the whole anti-taxidermy protest she started up in art. Well, it turns out she’s also a very passionate vegetarian. Actually Olivia was vegetarian too, but the difference with Sadie is that she gets really angry at other people for being meat eaters. Whenever Olivia came to mine Mum always made a vegetarian lasagne or something like that. But at school I’d eat sausages and mash, or shepherd’s pie, and Olivia would still sit next to me while she ate the veggie option. She never refused to sit next to a person who had meat on their plate, and she never glared at me as if I was a murderer if she spotted me eating a packet of smoky bacon crisps.

  The worst time was two weeks ago when Sadie caused a huge scene at lunchtime. We were in the dinner hall standing in line with our trays and Sadie was only a couple of people ahead of me in the queue. Our school dinners are generally pretty good and there’s always a nice vegetarian option. Today it was macaroni cheese and I was just deciding whether to go for it or stick with the meat lasagne when there was a big commotion in the bit of the queue getting served. Sadie’s voice rose above the others, asking lots of questions about the cheese sauce that was on the macaroni.

  ‘If you can’t show me some proof that it’s vegetarian cheddar, then I’m not eating it,’ Sadie said forcefully.

  Katy Clarkson told her to stop holding everybody up with her stupid questions. Sadie whirled round on the spot to glare at her. ‘It’s not a stupid question, Katy! Non-vegetarian cheese is made using the enzymes from calves’ stomachs – the enzymes that are meant to help them digest their mother’s milk.’

  ‘You’re making that up!’

  ‘No, I’m not! The poor little calves get slaughtered and the enzymes from their stomachs get put into cheese,’ Sadie said.

  ‘That’s disgusting!’ Katy exclaimed. ‘Is that really true?’

  ‘Google it if you don’t believe me.’

  Katy nodded at the tray of beef lasagne next to the macaroni cheese. It had a layer of cooked cheese on top. ‘So has that got calf enzymes in it too, then?’

  ‘Of course! It’s basically a chopped-up cow topped with the contents of a little calf’s stomach.’

  ‘Yuck!’ several people exclaimed at once, and suddenly Mrs Doyle, our head dinner lady, came to the hatch to see what was happening. She found she had a mutiny on her hands, as loads of people started complaining loudly about her food and refusing to eat it.

  ‘I’m not eating that macaroni cheese until I check the packaging,’ Sadie said firmly.

  ‘Neither am I,’ Katy agreed loudly, and lots of people shouted out their support.

  ‘I’m not eating anything that’s been inside a calf’s stomach!’ someone called out from behind me. Even further b
ack in the queue there was a lot of chatter going on about how a calf’s stomach had somehow got into today’s vegetarian option.

  Sadie was looking triumphant.

  Mrs Doyle stood with her arms crossed in front of her and beads of sweat on her forehead. ‘Well, you’ll all just have to go hungry then, because I haven’t got any packaging to show you.’

  Miss Benkowski and Mr Christie, who were on dinner duty, came over to try and sort things out while Mrs Doyle got increasingly cross that nobody was getting fed. Another dinner lady joined her at the hatch, saying she couldn’t be expected to know what went into the food, as her job was just to serve it – which seemed to make Mrs Doyle even crosser.

  Hardly anyone chose the macaroni cheese or the lasagne that day, including me. (Thankfully I managed to get to the hatch before the baked potatoes ran out but I know a lot of people went hungry.)

  A few days later we all got a letter to take home from school. It basically went on about the high quality of our school dinners and guaranteed the vegetarian-ness of the vegetarian meals, the halal-ness of the halal meals, the allergen-free-ness of the non-allergenic meals and so on and so on. (And apparently the vegetarian meals do contain vegetarian cheese, which Mum says most normal people would just take for granted in any case.)

  Dad of course was thoroughly amused by the whole story. Unlike Mum, he never worries about offending people by questioning things. He said Sadie had every right to ask questions about the cheese, though she should have chosen a more appropriate way of doing so.

  The thing about Sadie is she never worries about how whatever she does affects anyone else. If she suddenly feels the urge to do something or say something then she just does it. If she wants to complain about something in class, she’ll never just have a quiet word with our teacher. She always tries to kick up as much of a stink in front of as many people as possible. And sometimes it’s as if she seeks out ways to annoy people – especially people who never get into trouble at school, like Anne-Marie and me.

  It was only about a week ago – after the school dinner incident – when Sadie very nearly got herself suspended. In our school if anyone is caught hitting anyone else they usually get suspended even if they weren’t the one who started the fight.

  On this particular day Anne-Marie and I had ambled out into the playground at breaktime, heading for our normal bit of wall to perch on, when we saw Sadie already there, lying along the wall with her head on her rolled-up cardigan as if she was sunbathing.

  ‘What’s she doing? She knows that’s our spot,’ Anne-Marie grumbled under her breath.

  As we stopped to stare at her she must have seen us out of the corner of her eye because she suddenly swung her feet off the wall and sat up. ‘What are you two gawping at?’ she snapped.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said quickly. I could tell she wanted to pick a fight. ‘Come on, Anne-Marie. Let’s go.’

  ‘You’re a bit of a scaredy-cat, aren’t you, Poppy?’ Sadie said with a sly grin.

  I didn’t reply but I found myself feeling glad Anne-Marie was with me – right up until the second she opened her mouth, that is.

  ‘Well, you are famous, you know!’ Anne-Marie babbled. ‘So of course other kids in school are gonna stare!’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Sadie snarled.

  ‘Come away, Anne-Marie!’ I repeated more urgently. But she ignored me and carried on standing there like some suicidal idiot.

  Sadie sprang to her feet to stand right in front of us. She seemed taller and more menacing all of a sudden. ‘I said, what do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, well, if the rumours are true …’ Anne-Marie mumbled in a half-teasing, half-thinking-better-of-it sort of voice.

  ‘Rumours? What rumours?’

  ‘About your dad! I mean, is it true –’

  But before she could continue, Sadie’s eyes flashed and she lunged forward as if she was about to hit Anne-Marie.

  ‘SADIE!’ a voice shouted from across the playground, and thankfully she turned for a second, giving Anne-Marie the chance to duck away.

  The yell had come from our headmaster, who was now heading towards us looking grim as he waved Sadie over to speak to him.

  ‘You shut up about my dad!’ Sadie hissed at Anne-Marie. Her body was shaking and her face had turned bright red. ‘And as for you …’ She shot us both a look of utter hatred before turning on her heels and storming off towards Mr Jamieson.

  As we waited nervously to see if we would be summoned as well, Anne-Marie whispered, ‘So do you think her dad really is a hitman?’

  ‘Don’t be daft!’

  ‘If he isn’t, why did she freak out like that?’

  I frowned. It was true that Sadie had reacted like she had something to hide.

  Chapter Four

  Anyway, here I was arriving home on Friday afternoon (after Josh and I had seen Sadie go off in that car) to find Mum unpacking shopping bags in the kitchen.

  It felt weird to not have Amy hurling herself at me the second I walked through the door. Amy had been really quiet and withdrawn when she’d first come to live with us, but that had gradually changed and she’d turned into quite an energetic chatterbox by the end.

  ‘So how did it go with Amy this morning?’ I asked, carefully watching Mum’s face.

  ‘It was OK,’ Mum assured me. ‘No tears. They brought the puppy with them. She was so excited to see it again, bless her!’

  Mum had the radio blaring out in the kitchen. The first few days after a foster-kid leaves us the house always feels way too quiet, and I know that’s one of the most difficult parts for Mum.

  I eyed the shopping bag nearest to me, seeing major evidence of comfort food. There were chocolate brownies, doughnuts, and was that a giant Toblerone? Mum had to be feeling bad because she was meant to be on a diet.

  ‘Did they say if they’d decided about letting us keep in touch?’ I asked.

  ‘No, but our visit is all set up for two weeks tomorrow. They’ve invited us to their house for lunch.’

  ‘Right.’ I tried not to sound churlish as I asked, ‘So did she really not cry at all when they took her?’

  Mum put her arm around me. ‘No, darling. But she did cry a little after you left for school. I had to remind her that she’d see you again in two weeks and that you’d want to hear all about what she’d been doing …’

  I swallowed over the lump in my throat. I knew it was much better for Amy to be adopted instead of staying in foster care. Plus we’d done plenty of preparation work, including meeting her new parents and sister, who were really lovely. I knew Amy had a sweet little bedroom in her new house, all decorated and waiting for her, and a big garden to play in.

  The trouble was I still found it hard to imagine life in our house without her.

  ‘So how was school today?’ Mum asked, not fooling me for a moment with her bright voice.

  ‘Same as usual,’ I told her as I helped myself to a brownie. ‘Except for science … something went wrong with Mr Gillespie’s experiment and all this green liquid bubbled up and spilt over on to the workbench. It was so Harry Potter!’

  Mum smiled at that. ‘Sounds it. Listen, your father phoned this morning. He asked if he could pick you up on his way home this evening instead of tomorrow because his car has to go to the garage tonight. I asked him to bring you back tomorrow evening instead of Sunday though. That way it’s just the one night. That’s OK, isn’t it?’

  I nodded, not liking to tell her that it no longer bothered me spending two nights at Dad’s like it had when I was younger. And that I actually wouldn’t have minded spending Sunday with him as well. ‘Am I still meeting her?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh yes … it’s scheduled for tomorrow, apparently.’ She pulled a sympathetic face. ‘I’m sorry, darling, but you’d better go upstairs now and pack a bag. He’ll be here soon and I don’t want to have to invite him in.’

  I nearly rolled my eyes at that. Who was she kidding? I couldn’t even remember the last time
she’d invited Dad inside our house. She gets into a major flap just interacting with him on the doorstep.

  Mum and Dad split up when I was six and I can’t ever remember being in the same room as the two of them without there being an argument. I can still remember the tense feeling I’d get if they started to argue while we were at the table eating dinner. Sometimes I couldn’t swallow my food and Mum would start fussing about it and Dad would tell her to calm down and then their arguing would get even worse.

  After Dad moved out things were better. I still saw him every week, though I didn’t stay the night with him for a few years. I always knew he loved me, but I’ve also always had the feeling that Mum loves me more. But then Mum has always been a lot more openly affectionate than Dad.

  Mum began fostering two years after they split up – apparently after I started saying that I wanted a little brother or sister, though I don’t remember that. Mum says that mostly what we do is provide a sort of practice family for children who’ve been taken into care – a chance to experience a ‘normal’ family life and work on any problems before they go to their new forever homes. An adoption is a second chance to have a family, Mum says, and that’s way too precious to waste by not being ready for it. Of course sometimes we’re just a safe place for a child to live while their own family gets themselves sorted out, which Mum says is a really nice job to have too.

  Mum has always fostered preschoolers – usually girls. Most people think my mum does an amazing job, but needless to say Dad is more critical. He says he worries that I don’t get enough of Mum’s attention and he’s asked me a few times how I feel about it. Once, when I was in a bad mood about something one of our foster-kids had done, I complained to him that Mum always took their side rather than mine. I soon wished I hadn’t though, because he kicked up a huge fuss and accused Mum of putting her role as a foster-mum before the needs of her own daughter. After that I vowed I’d never complain to Dad about Mum again.