As Mum and I drive to Granddad’s, I think about what’s just happened. Mum’s car is a good place to think. She drives like a granny and keeps within the speed limit even when there isn’t a sign or a safety camera. I can turn off reality and overthink things.
Yes. This has been very … civilized, really. That’s the word to use when everyone behaves themselves and acts in a way that won’t get them on daytime telly yelling at each other. My family is like that, really. We have slightly barking streaks of loon (Aunty Teresa), but mainly “the team works,” as Dad says. This is because:
@parents:
My parents are divorced but in the loveliest way possible. Dad and Mum met in Ibiza when they were partying 24⁄7. Mum used to wear neon bikinis and cowboy hats. But after I turned four, Mum and I came back here for school. Dad stayed in Spain and ran a club, then a tapas bar, and then a bungee-jumping business. He came back a year ago and is still looking for something permanent, so he lives with Granddad. Mum and Dad still seem to really like each other—they just don’t want to live with each other. I know! It’s really unusual, but it’s good for me. Dad seems to understand how difficult it is to be my age. I think Mum has forgotten. And Gary Woolton was never young at all. I bet he’s never even been to a party. Except maybe to clean up afterward.
@Granddad:
Granddad is my dad’s dad and is basically okay. He’s a massive sexist. This is because he was born practically before feminism was actually invented. BUT he loves me and sort of doesn’t think of me as a girl. He always says, “You’re different from most women, Millie. You don’t nag, you don’t cry, and you don’t shout at me for having muddy fingernails.” This is shocking, and you’ll be thinking, How do you even deal with that man? Look—you just have to remember that he’s ancient and that occasionally he gives me five pounds from his pension money to buy something nice. HA!
@AuntyTeresa:
Aunty Teresa is La Diva Loca. She got this nickname from a Spanish man called Juan she was engaged to until she found out he was married to someone else from Estonia. She is SO unlucky with guys and work, so she lives with my granddad, too. Occasionally. She’s also lived in a garage, in her friend’s conservatory for six months, and even in a tent in a field near Glastonbury. She thought that if she pitched up there and lived off the land, she’d eventually get free entry to the festival. She lasted five days and made herself ill eating poisonous berries. I’ve basically looked after her since I was born, even though she is twenty-four years older than me. At a job interview once, they asked her if she had any questions and she said, “What’s the best way to get rid of verrucas?” You see—I have to be sensible, as a lot of the so-called adults around me are not.
@Dave:
Dave the cat is actually a girl. Don’t ask. I was three. My mum asked me what I’d like to call her, and I said Dave. It’s the stupidest thing I’ve done, but it sort of suits her. She’s a feline rebel who lives on the edge. Actually, she mainly just sleeps and tries to pinch your crisps, but she’s my cat, and we understand each other.
So things were working okay until Gary came along. I lived with Mum, and we would go to Granddad’s every week for Sunday lunch and after school on Fridays. But now I’m going to Granddad’s for much more than that. I just need to look on the positive side of all of this: no more iron rules, no more set bedtimes, no more homework times, no more Gary following me around with a dustpan and brush and a can of furniture polish …
Oh, why do I feel so … nervous? I keep getting this feeling in my tummy like a knot. A big lump of worry.
Dave is not happy inside the cat carrier. She looks very grumpy. Cages don’t fit with her rebel credentials. I tickle her chin through the grate. She pushes all her gray tabby fur through the wire and does a massive tuna-breath hiss at me. I have to be strong. For Dave. She’s going to miss the hedge where she waits for wild-bird burgers.
Come on, Millie. Pull it together.
That’s me talking to me, by the way. Dave can’t talk. Yet.