Mo
‘Hurry up, Mo – they’re here!’ Mum called to me from the empty hallway.
‘I’m doing a check,’ I said, standing in what used to be my bedroom at 79 Morello Road, but was now just a room waiting to belong to someone who wasn’t me.
‘Just one more, my love. I know it’s hard to say goodbye, but we really have to go. We’ve got a new adventure ahead of us.’
After ten perfect years of just me, Mum and our cat, Schrodinger, the time had come for us to become part of a new ‘family’. We were leaving our house – the one I’d lived in since I was born; the one I knew as well as I knew myself – and moving into a house across the street. Even worse, we were going to be living with Mum’s – I don’t want to say boyfriend, because, one: she’s too old to have a boyfriend; and two: it’s gross – we were going to be living with Mum’s Spencer, and his daughters, Lottie and Sadie. I could talk for hours about how this was the worst thing that had happened in my life, but Lottie will use it as an excuse to interrupt, so I’ll just say that I wasn’t happy about it.
But Mum was. And my mum is the kindest, coolest, most awesome mum in the world. She has a smile that fills her whole face and she always smells like pancakes and strawberries. My dad disappeared before I was born; before Mum even knew she was having me. He just walked out one day and never came back. That made her sad for a long time. Not sad the whole time, but there were moments. Like when I was having trouble with some kids at school and my teacher called her in. She said she wished my dad was there to help us. And when we went on holiday, I could see her looking around, hoping she might see him. But then she met Spencer, and those moments happened less often.
Before I said goodbye, I had to complete one last check – to make sure I wasn’t leaving anything important. I knelt on the floorboards and crawled slowly across the room, back and forth until I’d covered every centimetre. My carpet had been worn out and torn in one corner where Schrodinger had scratched at it, so Mum thought it was best to pull it up and throw it out. The room looked so different without it. There were gaps between the wooden planks and I was worried that I might have dropped something; that something tiny might get left behind.
And that’s when I found the loose one. In the cat-clawed corner, one of the boards wobbled when I knelt on it. Through the crack at the edge, I could see something shining in the darkness underneath – a dull, silver colour. I squidged my fingers under the board and pulled.
Lottie
Sadie and I were desperate to see our new room, but Dad wouldn’t let us go into the house until the others arrived. So we stood outside 124 Morello Road – a big white house, with lots of wide windows, that stood out amongst the narrow brown brick houses surrounding it. It was at the top of the hill and set back from the road, up some steep steps, so it was higher and bolder and looked more important than the other houses on the street. It gave me the impression that it was keeping a lookout over Morello Road. We waited by the door while the peculiar ginger boy, who was going to be our new brother, and the pretty ginger lady, who was going to be our new mother, had an intense discussion in the doorway of their old house, which happened to be opposite our new house.
I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it ended with the boy waiting until his mum had turned her back and then putting something shiny grey into his pocket.
‘Hello again, girls – lovely to see you, as always! Isn’t this exciting?’ Our new mother smiled at us while Dad put his arm around her and kissed her (on the lips), which I still hadn’t got used to. ‘You remember Mo,’ she said.
‘Hi, Mo,’ I said.
‘Hi,’ said Mo, looking at me as though he wished I was dead.
‘Sadie, say hello,’ Dad said, pulling on one of her little pigtails.
‘Mew,’ said Sadie, which is her way of saying hello.
‘Try to use your words, Sadie,’ said Dad. ‘Emma and Mo can’t understand you like Lottie and I can.’
‘It’s OK, we’ve got plenty of time to get to know each other,’ Emma gave Sadie a bag of chocolate buttons. ‘Say hello to Sadie, Mo.’
‘Hello to Sadie,’ Mo said, looking at Sadie as if he wished she was dead.
‘Let’s do it, shall we?’ Dad said, putting the key in the lock of our new front door.
‘Yay!’ Emma laughed and clapped her hands.
Sadie munched on her buttons.
Mo kicked his shoes against the steps.
‘Pineapple,’ I said, to fill the silence and because it seemed appropriate.
We walked into the house.
