Steven’s looking worried. He obviously didn’t bargain for this when he said he’d come and meet Mohammed.
I tell them what happened before school. “So the police are already alerted. Now do you see why he has to stay in the hut all the time?”
Everyone nods, even Mohammed.
“What about that refugee group you said could help him?” I say to Samir.
“I haven’t had time to get on the Internet in the library,” Samir says with a shake of his head.
Then Steven says thoughtfully, “My mum knows a bit about refugee organizations . . .”
“Your mum?” I interrupt, and then I shut my mouth. Steven glares at me and I feel as though I’m in the principal’s office or something.
“What’s the problem?” he says.
“She always looks so . . .” Posh, I think, but I don’t want to say that out loud.
Kim shuffles a bit closer to Steven, and Samir has an arm under Mohammed’s shoulders, heaving him up. No one’s standing near me. “Do you always judge people by appearances?” says Steven in that cool voice.
That’s exactly what racists do, isn’t it? Kim is looking up at me and then at Steven with this sort of confused look on her face. I go bright red and mumble a sort of apology, feeling really small.
“Anyway,” goes on Steven, “I’m not going to tell Mum anything, it’s just that she’s a useful resource.” He makes her sound like a search engine on the Web.
We help Mohammed back to the hut and Samir says, “I had to leave my last school because of racist bullies like Terrence. I can’t keep changing schools.”
Steven says, “You’re not going anywhere, Samir. You have friends at Park Road,” and Mohammed repeats “friends” in a low mutter, as we all nod in agreement.
We walk together to the bus stop and Steven’s got his arm around Kim again. How did I miss that? Geeky Steven and my best friend—an item? Even though he’s a bit geeky, I feel happy for Kim. “Way to go, kid!” as Dad would say when he did his American accent.
Mum’s in the kitchen when I get home and as Trudy jumps up at me, desperate for a walk, Mum says, “You’re late; I was going to start on the sausages.”
She looks miserable, as if that’s anything new, but then she says in this really slow and sort of strange voice, “Where have you been this time?”
This time, what does she mean by that?
“I had a detention, the police coming this morning, they made me late for school.” Excellent. I skipped the detention. Yet another lie.
Mum snorts loudly and says, “Mr. Spicer wouldn’t give you a detention for being late just the once.”
Actually he would, he’s that mean, but all the parents think he’s wonderful because he wears a suit.
“So what have you really been up to, Alexandra?” and she stares at me with this totally suspicious look.
“Nothing, Mum, I don’t know what you mean.”
“Just because I’m stuck here at home all day,” she starts ranting on, “doesn’t mean you can just do whatever you want and come in all hours.”
She’s riffling through cupboards and the fridge, still leaning on her crutches, but she does seem more steady on her feet. “We seem to have gone through an awful lot of food this week.”
“Lots of people keep coming around, don’t they?” I say, quickly hiding my face as I open a can of dog food for Trudy. But I can feel myself getting all hot and bothered so I try to change the subject. “Do you know Steven Goddard’s mum?”
“Mmm, she does coffee mornings,” says Mum, absently staring at the last few slices of bread. “Charity stuff, for refugees I think, or is it the homeless?”
She’s going through the fridge again and she pulls out a full pack of bacon and the sausages. “Well, I suppose we won’t starve.”
“What’s she like?” I ask, still bending over Trudy’s dish.
“Val Goddard? Total nutcase,” says Mum. “Always campaigning for something and you wouldn’t think it—all those smart little suits and her leather briefcase. She’s a personal adviser in a bank, you know.”
So I’m not the only one who judges by appearances.
And then she cracks a smile, about the first one I’ve seen this millennium, and says, “It’s nice having people drop in.” For a second it feels a bit like the old times when Mum and me just used to have fun together. When did things begin to change? It’s like everything has sneaked up on us, Dad running off and leaving us like welfare cases and then Grandpa dying. I didn’t realize how old he really was, I thought he’d just go on forever. And then Mum breaking her leg and going completely horrible.
And now my big fat secret is hanging in the air between us, like a bloated belly. I hate all the lies and taking food without asking, even though I actually pay for stuff around here these days, well, I give Mum eight pounds a week. But I know she’s been getting Bert to help her with benefit forms so we must be really short of money. I feel like Oliver Twist, on the verge of being thrown in the workhouse. Grandpa never claimed any benefits, did he?
But Mum is a tad more cheerful when other people are around. She loved all the attention from Bert and Kevin and Kim and even the police.
“We’ll just have to invite more people over then, won’t we?” I grin, and I give her a hug for the first time in ages. And it’s so scary. She feels like a midget in my arms. It’s as though I’ve grown taller, like I’m sitting on an elephant or something and I’ve outgrown my own mum and the cottage. My whole life. When did that happen?
Mum clings to me for a minute and I smell her Passion Fruit facial scrub from the Body Shop, which I always give her at Christmas.
Then she pulls away and snaps, “I don’t know what you’re up to, my girl, but if you get another detention I’ll ground you.”
I feel myself beginning to get all angry and upset again but I manage to persuade myself to keep calm. I need to keep Mum happy at the moment until things are sorted out with our man.
So I say, “Sorry, look, why don’t you go online and do some shopping? Fill up the fridge in case we have some more unexpected visitors, and I’ll make dinner?”
“I suppose so,” she grumbles, and she stomps off into the living room on her crutches. Our computer’s on a desk next to the TV. I use it for my homework and Mum uses it mainly to email Uncle Peter in New York.
I hear the computer booting up and call out, “Order some hummus and pita bread.”
“Ooh, going all healthy on me now.” Mum laughs. “Anything else you fancy?”
“Loads of bread and cheese, then we can make everyone sandwiches, right?”
She doesn’t say anything but I can hear her tapping away furiously so I relax and put on the sausages.
“We had hummus and pita bread every day at home,” Samir had said on the beach, when he was remembering all about his life in Iraq, the life he misses so much it’s turned him to ice. “And in our garden we didn’t have roses and apple trees. We had orange trees and one lemon tree.”
“Wow,” I said. “Fresh oranges every day.”
“Only in winter,” said Samir. “But the best was the red watermelon. I used to help my mum bring it home from the Shorjah market. I always moaned about going shopping with her. I wanted to go out and play with Daoud. I’d give anything to be able to go shopping with my mum again.”
It was another one of those tricky moments, so I said, “Do you get snow in Iraq?”
“No. I’ve never seen snow,” he said. “But you wouldn’t stand the heat in summer. It gets up to fifty degrees or more, even. You’d go mad.”
“Didn’t you have air-conditioning?”
Samir throws me a scornful look. “Of course. But the best times were when we were allowed to sleep on the roof, like my grandparents always did before air-conditioning. Me and Naazim used to lie awake all night counting stars. Some people keep pigeons on their roofs in bamboo cages and you would hear them cooing all night.”
“Bit like camping.”
“Except you don’t need a tent, it’s so hot.”
“You see the best stars on cold winter nights here. But you couldn’t sleep on the beach in winter,” I said.
“I wouldn’t sleep on a British beach in summer!” Samir laughed.
Sleeping on the roof—they must have flat roofs in Baghdad—seeing all the stars, listening to the pigeons, eating red watermelon made me want to jump on a plane and see for myself.
“It sounds amazing. I’d love to sleep out on the roof. Maybe the school will organize a trip when everything settles down.”
“People have tried sleeping on their roofs again. The air-conditioning keeps shutting off because the electricity supply is so bad. But it’s very dangerous. Uncle Sayeed said the neighbor’s little girl was killed by a stray bullet coming across the roof last summer. She was only four.”
There was a long pause and I didn’t know what to say. But then Samir said, “Sometimes I think we will never go home.”
But never is a long time, Grandpa used to say.
I’ve laid the table properly for once. I’m sick of crouching in front of the telly, well, I’m sick of the telly really. I’m just about to call Mum into the kitchen for dinner when the house phone goes. I go to answer it but Mum has already picked up. It could be Kim because my cell phone is dead and maybe she’s got some news from Steven, so I go into the living room, but as soon as Mum sees me she clicks off and turns back quickly to the computer.
But not before I’ve seen this dead guilty look on her face. So I’m not the only one hiding stuff in this house, am I?