Miss You (17 page)

The gates bleeped when Doll pointed the keys, and opened very slowly.

‘The garden’s still got to be landscaped,’ Doll said. ‘What do you think?’

Two tall white columns supported the porch, like the front of a temple.

‘Amazing!’

Mrs O’Neill often remarked that it was a miracle how well Fred had done if you’d seen him at primary school.

‘I thought you’d like the Roman theme,’ said Doll. ‘There’s a hot tub and a plunge pool in the gym.’

‘It’s got a gym?’

‘Well, it’s a room with mirrors at the moment, until they install the machines. There’s still so much to do!’

The hall was two storeys high with big Hollywood staircases going up to a balcony.

‘Hope, why don’t you go and explore?’ Doll suggested.

Hope ignored her.

‘Can Fred really afford this?’ I asked.

I knew Fred’s income had rocketed after the rumours about him being picked for the World Cup in France the previous summer. It was a good time to be a photogenic young English striker.
Even so, the house must have cost a fortune.

‘I bloody hope so,’ said Doll. ‘His agent does all the finances. It’s cheaper than buying in London and he says it’s great for Fred’s image that he still
loves his home town, and his childhood sweetheart, obviously. We’ve got
Hello!
magazine coming in two weeks! I’ve got my work cut out getting everything ready!’

‘What’s happened to your proper job?’ Since she’d been with Fred, Doll and I spoke on the phone more than hanging out. I couldn’t remember the last time she’d
mentioned the salon.

‘I just don’t have the time any more, Tess, with all these premieres and charity auctions. Have you seen the pink diamond Fred got me for breast cancer?’

She pulled the fine gold chain away from her throat to show me the sparkly stone.

‘
Against
breast cancer,’ said Hope.

Doll shot her a look.

‘I have to wear a different dress for each occasion, leg waxes, you name it, so I still spend half my life in the salon!’ she continued. ‘Should I get a couple of dogs, do you
think? They always have those little white dogs in
Hello!
, don’t they? Or a baby. I wouldn’t want them crapping on the floor, though. Marble absorbs stains, did you know that?
The interior decorator only told me after it was down, otherwise I might have gone for stripped oak. No red wine. Not downstairs, anyway.’

‘A baby would be tough to organize in a fortnight . . .’ I said, wondering whether she’d dropped that one into the conversation to get my reaction.

‘We’re not going there. Wouldn’t it kill my mother? Bad enough Fred and me moving in together. When she saw the brochure, she said, “Well, there’s five bedrooms
anyway.” She tells herself we’re waiting ’til we’re married.’

‘Are you getting married?’

‘Fred’s agent says to wait for the England call-up. That way, we won’t have to pay for the wedding!’

‘Fred’s agent decides?’

‘Don’t worry, he’s my number one fan, Tess. Doesn’t want Fred mucking around in clubs with kiss-and-tell slappers.’

I nodded discreetly in Hope’s direction. You never knew what she would repeat.

‘Oh my God! Hope!’ Doll yelled.

Hope’s ice cream was running down her hands.

‘Stop dripping on my marble!’ Doll shouted.

On another occasion, we would probably have giggled at the silliness of the words, but one of Hope’s moods descended. It was literally like a dark shadow coming down over her face. She
stood scowling at us. I think I preferred the screaming.

‘Is there something wrong with her, do you think?’ Doll whispered.

My protective hackles rose at her talking about my sister in the third person.

‘You bought her the bloody ice cream!’

‘I’m only saying what Fred says.’

‘Fred’s a paediatrician now, is he?’

I saw from Doll’s face she thought I was accusing him of something much worse.

‘It means children’s doctor.’

‘You and your big words!’

I hated it when Doll said that, trying to make out she was thick, because she wasn’t at all. It was actually just a way of making me feel bad.

‘She’s got to learn,’ said Doll.

‘Learn what – that marble absorbs stains? It’s not on the National Curriculum. You didn’t even know until your bloody decorator told you!’

‘I didn’t mean—’

‘It’s only vanilla,’ I said, getting out a tissue. ‘Look, you can’t even see it.’

I was on my knees, dabbing at the floor, close to tears.

Doll suddenly saw it had all got out of proportion. ‘Sorry, Tess . . .’

What had happened to Doll? It was as if she’d lost sight of the important things in her new world of polished-granite work surfaces and underfloor heating. Or maybe she
was really moving away from us, I thought, and not just to a new house. ‘I don’t like Doll,’ said Hope, as we walked back to the estate.

Is there something wrong with her?
Doll’s words kept repeating in my head. I knew it was what some people thought. Sometimes I thought it myself, but Hope was so clever in lots of
ways, there couldn’t be anything wrong with her, could there? She knew all the lyrics to the CDs in our house. We all did now, including the funny changes Hope made if she didn’t
understand a word. I’d even caught Dad singing ‘Chicken Tikka’ to himself in the bathroom mirror while he was shaving. His face went all bashful at me through the bright white
foam beard.

It’s a funny word, ‘bashful’, isn’t it? You’d think it should be ‘bashless’ really, but the dictionary says it’s from the old word
‘abash’, which means to cause to feel embarrassed, not from the usual kind of bash.

Mum always used to say, ‘Hope’s just who she is.’

And, ‘Wouldn’t the world be a boring place if we were all the same?’

But I sometimes wished I could just ask her, honestly, if she’d worried too.

The Music Man rang that evening. I liked it that he put his cards on the table. It was much more grown up than playing those
leaving-it-a-couple-of-days-in-case-he-looked-too-keen kind of games. His name was Dave Newbury and he was a plumber by trade, I learned. So no problem with Dad, I thought, getting ahead of myself
again.

When we met under the clock tower the following afternoon, it occurred to me that I’d never been on a date, if that’s what it was, with anyone I hadn’t known since primary
school. I was very nervous and uncharacteristically out of ideas for conversation. I tried to imagine what someone looking at us would think. Did we look like a couple or was it obvious that we
didn’t really know each other?

‘You look nice in that dress,’ said Dave.

It was a hot day, so I’d gone with a sleeveless printed dress that I’d got in Principles’ sale, but the fact that he’d remarked made me instantly wonder if I should have
stuck to jeans. Or did he mean that I didn’t look nice in the trousers I wore for work? What was I supposed to say? ‘You look nice in that shirt’ might sound like I was taking the
piss. He did, though. It was short sleeved with broad blue-and-white stripes that made his eyes look bluer than I remembered. It looked like someone had ironed it carefully. I wondered if he still
lived at home and let his mother do his washing, or whether he had a place of his own.

‘Hope loved the dance competition,’ I said, as we walked on either side of my sister, who had a giant lollipop Dave had bought her in one hand and the string of a dolphin-shaped
helium balloon in the other.

‘You’re a big S Club 7 fan, aren’t you, Hope?’ said Dave, launching into the chorus of their recent hit ‘Bring it all Back’ and doing all the moves alongside
her.

In the split second before Hope’s arms stretched into the air, I foresaw what would happen, but wasn’t quick enough to prevent it. Freed from the tether of Hope’s hand, the
balloon soared into the sky. We all watched it rising and then, as if she suddenly realized it wasn’t going to turn round and come back, Hope started jumping up and down with her hands in the
air, wailing at her inability to retrieve it.

‘Don’t worry,’ Dave tried to soothe her. ‘We’ll get you another.’

‘No, really, it’s fine!’ I told him.

It had been over-generous of him to buy her two things in the first place. I didn’t want him paying for a third, but now that Hope had heard the offer, she did her
gluing-herself-to-the-pavement thing, which was bad enough when it was just the two of us, but so much worse with someone we hardly knew. Now people really were looking at us because Hope was too
old for that kind of behaviour. Worse still, the balloon-seller didn’t have another dolphin and Hope was not prepared to be appeased with a fish, a pirate ship, or even My Little Pony.

‘Hope, stop it! Just stop it!’ I was fed up with her, and embarrassed in front of Dave, who, having offered a twirly windmill, a stick of rock, even a beach ball in a net, was now
standing a little way away from us with Hope’s giant lollipop in his hand and defeat on his face.

The only thing that worked with Hope was distracting her, so I crouched down next to her on the promenade.

‘You know where I think that dolphin’s going . . .’

Hope stopped instantly, in the expectation of a story.

‘I think he’s going to the zoo. He was probably lonely being a dolphin all on his own with all those My Little Ponies, so he decided to go back home.’

‘Dolphins don’t live in a zoo,’ Hope pointed out.

I looked up at Dave who shrugged, as if to say, ‘She’s got you there!’

‘You know what, Hope, you’re right,’ I said, dredging my brain for dolphin facts. ‘Dolphins don’t live in a zoo. Where do they live?’

‘In the sea?’ Hope offered.

‘That’s right. Did I ever tell you that I met a dolphin once? It was in a place called Dingle, in Ireland, and there’s a dolphin who lives in the bay, and his name is Fungi and
he likes to swim with people. I was too small to swim with him, but I saw him from a boat. Perhaps your dolphin has gone off to see Fungi?’

Hope was still suspicious.

‘Is my dolphin really a dolphin, or is he a balloon?’ she asked.

‘Well, he’s actually a balloon dolphin. Which is quite rare, because instead of swimming, like most dolphins, he flies instead. What’s his name, by the way?’

‘Balloon Dolphin,’ said Hope.

She was like that with names. The giraffe we’d bought in Hamleys was called Raffe.

‘So where do you think Balloon Dolphin is going?’ I asked.

We both looked up. I could still see the glint of the sun on the shiny surface far up in the sky. Would he keep rising until he got to space, I wondered, like one of those weather balloons you
sometimes see them sending up on the local news?

‘Heaven?’ Hope suggested.

I pictured Balloon Dolphin’s smiling face alongside the trinity of Princess Diana, Mother Teresa and Mum, who Hope prayed for every night.

‘He was heading towards Herne Bay,’ said Dave.

The balloon was actually going in the other direction, but I didn’t mention that.

‘What’s Herne Bay?’ Hope asked, calm enough now not to notice being pulled to her feet.

‘Along the coast. If you like, we could follow Dolphin Balloon in my van,’ Dave said.

‘Balloon Dolphin,’ I corrected him.

Hope sat in the passenger seat and I sat in the back on the floor, which was probably illegal, but Dave was a careful driver, and with the windows open and
Now That’s
What I Call Music!
turned up loud, Hope appeared to forget about Balloon Dolphin.

I looked at Dave’s face in the rear-view mirror as he concentrated on the road and occasionally joined in a few bars of the chorus of a song with Hope. Had he known that playing music
would solve the problem, or was the suggestion of driving somewhere instinctive? Either way, it had worked. Suddenly aware of his reflection smiling at me, I felt myself blush, as if he’d
caught me secretly checking him out.

Herne Bay is one of those faded English seaside resorts that has suffered badly from cheap flights to warmer places – I mean, given the choice, why would you opt for pebbles and the cold
dirty water of the Thames estuary? – though some, like Whitstable just along the coast, were becoming fashionable weekend retreats for trendy Londoners.

‘People say Herne’ll be next to come up,’ Dave said, as we walked along the seafront.

‘No sign of Balloon Dolphin,’ said Hope, despondently.

‘Maybe Balloon Dolphin decided to go to France instead,’ I said, thinking on my feet.

‘Where’s France?’

‘Across the sea.’ I gestured in the general direction. ‘There’s a beautiful city there called Paris. Maybe Balloon Dolphin wanted to see the Eiffel Tower, or fly over the
rooftops of Notre Dame.’

‘Or Euro Disney,’ Dave joined in.

‘Can I go to France?’ asked Hope.

‘One day,’ I said, because it was wiser not to say no to her.

I found myself thinking that Balloon Dolphin’s escape might be an opportunity rather than a setback. We could make up Balloon Dolphin stories at bedtime and maybe Hope would learn a bit of
geography along the way. Balloon Dolphin could visit the Pyramids when her class did the Egyptians. He could go to Rome or even Florence. The adventures of Balloon Dolphin might wean Hope away from
James and the Giant Peach
, which we were currently reading for the fifth time, because Hope was intrigued about Kev living in New York, and that we might go and see him one day – in a
plane, though, not a peach.

There were a couple of children’s roundabouts near the entrance to the pier.

‘How about a ride in the fire engine?’ Dave suggested. ‘I’ll be back in a mo.’

I assumed he was going to the loo.

The ride was designed for children smaller than Hope and she sat wedged in the vehicle, very still and suspicious as it started moving, frowning at me as I urged her to ring the bell each time
she passed.

‘The Music Man found Balloon Dolphin!’ she suddenly shouted, seeing Dave jogging towards us.

This time, he tied the balloon ribbon twice round Hope’s wrist to secure it.

The sun was beginning to set, and the sky was layered coral and turquoise and grey. Hope was trotting along happily ahead of us, with the new Balloon Dolphin floating above her.