I desperately wanted to message Sylvie and tell her what had happened. Not about the hoo-ha with my parents (seemed she already knew about that), but about Seth Cromby and how he had broken my arm. But she sure hadn’t felt like my friend that day on the beach, and she was way grumpier than she should have been about me not returning her dumb netball top. Especially when she was always boasting about how she could just go get any old thing she liked from Kingfisher Sports. Then I remembered Sylvie would actually be playing netball right then so what would be the point of messaging her anyway? I wasn’t going to get a reply. And I knew I should have been more concerned about how Mum had thrown Dad out of the house, but the throbbing pain in my arm wouldn’t let me concentrate on anything else. How was I going to cope with not going to the beach for the rest of the holidays? Why couldn’t I have broken my arm in the winter? At least I could have still gone out on the whale-watching boat with Dad like we had most weekends.
Still in the front room, Clementine had wrapped herself up in the curtains like a caterpillar. We used to both do it when we were younger, pretending we were in cocoons. But Mum would always catch us and make us unroll way before we had reached the butterfly stage. I could hear Clementine snivelling. The last thing we needed was for Mum to go nuts about Clementine’s snot all over the good curtains! I gently unravelled her.
‘Clementine, come out. I need your help.’ It was true. I actually needed my little sister for the very first time in my life. It was a total shock to her too.
‘What? How?’ she asked, wiping her nose with her sleeve.
‘Come with me, and promise you’ll stop being upset,’ I said. Clementine followed me down the hall.
‘Shut up, Birdy. It’s not every day you lose your dad!’
‘Hmph! He’s hardly lost, Clementine. I bet he’s all goo-goo eyed on Ursula Hoffman’s couch, sipping champagne. I bet he soon forgets about us completely.’
‘Don’t say that!’ cried Clementine.
The throb in my arm had taken on a life of its own. Like my arm had its own heartbeat. Dr Melendez had given Mum a box of tablets and said that when it came to pain the trick was to stop it before it started. Mum had left the box on my desk for me. The instructions said to take two tablets every four hours with meals. Fat chance! I thought. Dinner was nowhere in sight. I passed the box of tablets to Clementine.
‘Here, I need you to get two tablets out,’ I said. ‘Oh, can you get my phone out of my backpack and put it on the charger too? And I need a glass of water.’
Clementine hesitated, like it had just dawned on her the exact nature of the help I’d be needing. But I gave her my best wounded-bird eyes, and it seemed to work a treat. I was still all salty from the beach. My hair hung in stringy clumps but the thought of having a shower seemed all too much and I sure didn’t want Mum to help me. I managed to pull on my pyjama bottoms before Clementine got back with the water.
‘There you go,’ said Clementine. ‘Mum’s making tuna mornay.’
When my phone bounced back to life there were three missed calls from Dad.
‘Quick, Clemmy,’ I said. ‘I need a pic of me in my sling for Bella.’
‘I’m not your PA, Alberta!’ Clementine protested. ‘All you care about is your stupid friends!’ She was right, of course, but I still needed to get my news out there and Bella was the perfect person to do it for me. Bella was friends with everyone (including Seth Cromby) and maybe, just maybe, when Sylvie found out about my arm she’d forget about the netball top and about being weird and mean and life could go back to normal.
Clementine attached the picture to Bella’s message. ‘Okay, so write this: “Hey, Bella … so ended up spending three hours at the hospital thanks to Seth Cromby for breaking my arm”!’
Tuna mornay was Mum’s go-to comfort food dish and, according to Tammy Bracken’s Guide to Modern Manners, an ideal fork dish. Eating standing up or with one hand had never been so easy thanks to an ingenious invention known as the Splayd.
As far as I could see Splayds were a weird cross between a fork and a knife and a spoon. I used to love reading the blurb on the box about how some man called William McArthur in Sydney got the idea for Splayds in 1943. He felt sorry for ladies at barbecues who struggled to eat nicely from plates on their laps. Our Splayds were a wedding gift from Granny and Grandad and were usually kept in the sideboard in the good room, neatly filed in a special blue box.
Tammy’s Tips
#7 the splayd
Sometimes referred to as a ‘spork’, the Splayd is neither a fork nor a spoon. This clever hybrid enables one-handed eating in an elegant and efficient manner. It should not, however, be held like a pencil or used as a shovel.
‘Did you take your tablets, Alberta?’ Mum asked. ‘Has the pain eased off?’
‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘The tablets do seem to work.’
I didn’t know what to say to Mum. I knew she was in pain too, but trying her hardest to hide it. I was actually a bit scared of her – the way her eyes were flickering about. She felt like an active volcano. Who knew when she might next erupt? The best thing I could do was try not to annoy her. If only Clementine had come to the same conclusion. But no, she just had to raise the topic of her slumber party. Again! What was she thinking? Her birthday was over a month away. Did she really have to choose that moment?
Fact was, ever since Mum had posted a photo of Clementine’s friend Daisy as an example of how not to use a knife and fork on Tammy Bracken’s Guide to Modern Manners Instagram (only to an audience of about five million), Clementine had lost a lot of friends. I helped myself to another spoonful of tuna mornay and did my best to change the topic, a handy technique I’d learnt from Dad.
‘Mmm, delicious!’ I said. ‘I just love it when we use Splayds.’ Mum was pushing the food around on her plate. Maybe Splayds were just a sad reminder of her and Dad’s wedding day? The whole idea of getting married was to be faithful after all, not for Dad to be caught having a thing with Ursula Hoffman from Kingfisher Medical Centre. But Clementine just wouldn’t let up about the slumber party … or Daisy. I felt Mum’s inner volcano rumbling. Why couldn’t Clementine feel it too?
‘It’s just so unfair, Mum!’ Clementine whined. ‘Just one slumber party!’
‘I said “not now”!’ Mum snapped.
‘Then at least take down the post of Daisy,’ Clementine shrieked.
‘You’re being ridiculous, Clementine!’ Mum yelled. ‘You can’t even see that it’s Daisy. It could be any eight-year-old with ghastly table manners.’
Clementine’s eyes filled with tears.
‘You judge everyone! No wonder Aunt Robina didn’t want to come for dinner. No one cares about stupid manners! Soon I’ll have no friends and all because of you and your boring book!’
Mum slapped her palm against the table as the volcano inside exploded.
‘Enough, Clementine!’
There was a moment of absolute silence and stillness like the whole scene had been captured in a photograph. Then Mum picked up her plate, took a deep breath and walked out. Sascha trotted after her but the den door slammed before he made it down the hall.
‘Wow, Clementine! You sure know how to pick your moments,’ I said.
Clementine’s face crumpled. I should have felt sorry for her but it was hard when she behaved like such an idiot. I shovelled in more tuna mornay, free from any of Mum’s scrutiny about manners. It was like the more I ate, the hungrier and hungrier I got.
‘I hate her!’ Clementine cried. ‘If she wasn’t so annoying, Dad wouldn’t have run away.’
Soon I had finished my plate. ‘Come on, Clemmy. Want to sign your name on my cast?’