Jo told me to write a list of ten things I’d like to happen and treasure it along with the medal of Saint Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows. I said I couldn’t write a list because it would be silly, but she said if I wrote a list Saint Gabriel would read it and heal me by making one of my dreams come true.
“Do not make the list completely ridiculous,” she warned.
“Why?” I asked. “Is it because saints can’t work miracles?”
“Oh, Dan.” Jo shook her head with the look of a weary mastermind on all matters religious. “You know nothing of their mystical ways. You cannot pick them up, ask them for things and then put them down again. Again, I repeat, do not ask for the Crown Jewels because Saint Gabriel will not get them for you. Pick ten things he can do and he’ll choose one from the list of ten and make it happen. It will be the most important one.”
“How will he know which one is most important?”
Jo listened carefully then punched at her heart. “He knows because he can see inside you.”
I figure out that if he can see inside me then there’s no point in writing a list, but I don’t tell Jo.
- Money
- A new sister who doesn’t say horrible things
- A dog with a strong stomach
- An email
- A new bike
- A swimming pool full of chocolate cereal
- To go to a school for wizards instead of Our Lady of the Portal
- To live at 221b Baker Street
- My own rocket called Hope 1
- A dad
I fold the list around Saint Gabriel, then place him under my bed in a treasure chest on my toy pirate island. I say, “I’m not doing this because I believe you can heal me or anything. I don’t. And if I’m a teeny bit sad it’s because I’ve got a lot of homework to do and nothing else. Anyway, I’m doing this so Jo will shut up about me needing help.” I pause. “But if you could…nah…” Then I spill out, “If you could see your way to making Dad send me an email, then that would be okay.”
I rush over and fire up the computer.
No email.
Thin splinters of anger drive into my heart as I click on the mouse at least ten times. I even double-check that I used the right email address. Of course I did. I look in the spam folder – Dad’s not there either. It is now a fact that my cunning plan to make contact with Dad has failed and he’s ignoring me. So is Saint Gabriel by the looks of things.
The second email I send isn’t quite as chatty as the first. I tell Dad I’ve been getting loads of gold stars at school and if he’d like to know more he has to email me back. Yes, I realize he is a celebrity and therefore a busy man but I hope he has time to contact his only son. With a finger like a speeding bullet, I hit send and go downstairs for those potato alphabet letters that Mum’s always getting with her staff discount from Aladdin’s Supermarket.
Big Dave is sitting at the table with a potato X clenched between his teeth. “Sit beside me,” he says, swallowing it and pulling out a chair. Today is Tuesday and for the last three months Big Dave has been eating with us on a Tuesday. I don’t mind because Mum always makes sure we have a good pudding when he’s here. On the days he’s not here we get limp tubes of yogurt, but on Tuesdays we get puddings straight from the big freezers at Aladdin’s. To be honest, it’s not only about my stomach. I like Big Dave because he makes Mum happy. For a long time after Dad left we were all sad. Then I got a dog but Mum got nothing. When Big Dave turned up he was as good as a puppy for her because she started laughing again. That’s when I got my old mum back.
“Want some more alphabet shapes?” says Mum, offering round the bowl.
Big Dave manages to spell NO with the alphabet shapes left on his plate and shows this to Mum.
I almost fall off my chair laughing but then have to stop abruptly when Ninja Grace starts sighing and letting her eyeballs do a three-sixty. When she’s like this it means she’s about to go off on one. Ten seconds later, I can report, she does.
“The recession hasn’t hit you,” says Grace, putting a Q in her mouth and letting it squelch through her teeth.
Big Dave scratches at the tattoo on his left arm, leaving tiny traces of grease on the big inked heart. Then he shrugs, flexes his arm and goes back to mopping up his leftover brown sauce with some garlic bread. The tattooed heart pumps and, underneath, the thin scroll saying Caroline 1973 wobbles.
“What I’m trying to say is that you’re so busy you’ve only got one or two evenings free per week. So the recession has passed you by.” Satisfied, Grace picks up an O and puts it between her lips before sucking it in. “You must have a lot of commitments that stop you seeing Mum.”
This conversation is going in a direction I don’t like, and it doesn’t help when Grace’s foot connects with my shinbone. I disguise the agony by pretending I’m choking on a B. Grace didn’t have to break my tibia for me to realize what she’s getting at. A few days ago, Nina Biddolpho the newsagent told me Big Dave was married and had a little boy. “Heard it through the grapevine, innit,” said Nina. “Don’t know much about the kid. But that’s what the grapevine told me.” As I’d pondered how big this grapevine must be, she told me the name of Big Dave’s wife.
“Caz, innit,” she said.
I didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to work out that Caz was short for Caroline and Caroline 1973 were the words lovingly inked on Big Dave’s bulging bicep. All the pieces of the jigsaw started to fit. Big Dave couldn’t be with Mum every night of the week because he was still with his wife, Caroline. I’d told Grace. We’d jumped to conclusions. Well, she did really. She was on a super-sized trampoline with springs on her feet, she was jumping so high. Grace said she knew it all along. Big Dave, it seems, was too good to be true.
From this point on, Ninja Grace was out to get Big Dave. Apparently, he was Mr Wrong and not Mr Right. I wanted to give him a chance but Grace said no, men wanted to have their cake and eat it. To be honest, I thought that sounded okay but Grace said it wasn’t.
“Big Dave,” Grace continues, sticking her fingernail in between her teeth. “The heart of a cheater is like one of those hollow chocolate Easter eggs.” Grace makes one long hairy slug with her eyebrows. “It’s empty. Mum doesn’t like that. She’s had it happen before and expects more. Frankly, she deserves better.”
A light bulb flashes above Big Dave’s head ashe realizes what she’s talking about. He touches his nose knowingly as I crunch down in my chair. “Don’t you worry, pet, I’ll make sure I don’t buy your mother a hollow egg.”
Grace starts and her bottom lip quivers. “I wasn’t talking about eggs,” she says. “What I actually meant…”
To stop Grace going any further I jump into the conversation and begin talking about all the different types of chocolates you can get in Easter eggs. Praline. Fudge. Caramel swirls. Orange creams. By the time I get to sticky toffee, Grace’s eyes have turned into razors and her heel connects with my other shinbone. I let out this “Yeeouch”, which Mum takes to mean yuk and that I don’t like sticky toffee much. I do, but at this moment I’m more worried that Grace has put an end to my premiership football career.
To save my shins from further injury I announce I’ve got to take Charles Scallybones for a walk. Mum thinks about protesting but Scallybones comes to the rescue. He starts stretching his mouth and yawning. This is usually a signal that the sick express is fast approaching. Mum says she’ll save me a piece of sticky toffee pudding for when I get back. I’m about to say I’d like that very much when she says actually she won’t bother, because she’s just remembered I’m not a fan of sticky toffee.
To be honest, I’m still thinking about how I can get Ninja Grace back when Charles Scallybones stops and pees up the side of the Paradise scout hut. Usually this isn’t a problem as it’s one of his ten nightly pee stops, but tonight there’s someone in a white dressing gown resting by the open door. Tonight of all nights, Charles Scallybones’s bladder is holding a yellow swimming pool and when I try to drag him away he resists and pees some more. Dressing Gown Man says when my dog is quite finished using the hut as a toilet, maybe I’d like to watch what’s going on inside. Maybe even join in.
Watch what? Join in where? Nothing good can come of watching people in dressing gowns. I hear a grunt from inside the hut and consider running away – right up to the point where Charles Scallybones pees on Dressing Gown Man’s feet. After that I feel sort of obliged to do what he tells me.
When I get inside I see the small wooden hut is full of more Dressing Gown People, all different shapes and sizes, and all kneeling on the floor. At first I think they’re praying, but then they all jump up and start punching the living daylights out of the air. Mind you, I reckon I could punch air, if I had to.
Startled by what’s happening, Charles Scallybones stops chewing the black belt he found discarded on the floor. He stares up at me, eyes like wet buttons, and whimpers. Hugging the edges of the hall, I try to drag him back towards the exit. That’s when I hear someone hissing my name, but trying to disguise it as a grunt. I look around, ping-pong-ball eyed. Another hissy grunt follows. Turns out it’s coming from my mate Christopher. He gives me a little wave as a woman instructor shouts at him to concentrate on the five tenets of tae kwon do.
“Yes, we have a visitor, but that doesn’t mean you can forget courtesy, integrity, perseverance, self-control and indomitable spirit,” she shouts. I consider sticking my hand up and asking if they drink indomitable spirits down the precinct on a Friday night, but think better of it when she screams that it means never giving up. Trust me, I think the men at the precinct never give up their spirits either.
After watching for ten minutes I accept that Christopher is a master at this air-fighting. What’s more, there’s this sheen of sweat on his forehead, so it’s not as easy as I first thought. He catches my eye a few times before doing these kicky-flicky foot snaps. I imagine they’re actually called something more impressive, but I can’t understand a word the instructor is saying. Anyway, I don’t have time to try and figure it out, because Charles Scallybones appears to be having a fight of his own with the discarded black belt. And now it has a wound the size of the Eurotunnel. (By the way, it’s not really the size of a tunnel. That is me exaggerating for dramatic effect. According to Mrs Parfitt, this is an example of hyperbole.)
Realizing we might have to pay for the destroyed belt, Charles Scallybones and I run away at the speed of light. (Or maybe it’s greased lightning. I can’t decide which. Anyway, both are hyperbole.)
When I get home, things go from bad to worse. For a start, Charles brings up some black threads. And, instead of lovely sticky toffee pudding, Mum has left me a tube of yogurt on a plate in the kitchen. Then Grace grabs me and pins me against the wall in the bathroom. She waves her toothbrush in my face. “Why did you let him off the hook?” Minty foam spills from her mouth as if she’s a rabid dog. “We could have told Mum the truth earlier. Big Dave is just like Dad. Do you want to end up sitting on the stairs while they’re in the kitchen with Mum screaming about Caroline 1973?” Grace stalks up and down the bathroom, which takes about 0.001 seconds. Every so often she blows out clouds of peppermint.
“Big Dave seems alright,” I mutter. “He got me that planet mobile.”
“You’re easily bought.” Grace snaps a strand of dental floss from the container. “You need to get your priorities right. Big Dave is not going to be a good substitute father because he’s just like our own father and our own father is as much use as a waterproof teabag.” Grace slides the floss through the gaps in her teeth.
“Indomitable spirit,” I mutter, folding my arms.
“You what?” asks Grace, a jungle vine of floss dangling from her mouth.
I tell Grace it’s nothing, but its meaning sticks in my head: never giving up. And I’m never giving up on Dad. Yes, he might have run off with Busty Babs, but there has to be more to it. Mum always says there are two sides to every story. And a part of me is clinging to the idea that Dad didn’t abandon us and I’m going to send him email number three and then he’ll prove it. When Dad replies I’m going to make Grace Hope eat her words, and this time they won’t be alphabet shapes from Aladdin’s.
My third email is unlike the other two. For a start, I don’t bother telling Dad all the things going on at school. No more I’ve got a gold star and I’m really clever stuff. Instead, I write the whole email in caps and ask him why he left us and didn’t send birthday cards. The birthday cards thing is important.
When I was eight, I wanted a card from Dad that said It’s great when you’re eight. I hoped it would have a red rocket with Hope 1 on it. There would have been an astronaut wearing a bubble helmet looking out of the little round rocket window, and inside Dad would have written a message saying he was sorry he couldn’t be with me. He’d say it was because he was a journalist on a secret mission to the Back of Beyond and he hoped I understood.
No birthday card ever turned up.
On my ninth birthday, I hoped for a card from Dad that said It’s fine to be nine. It would have had a shiny bike on it, the colour of a red admiral’s wings, and a boy freewheeling down a hill with sparks coming from his tyres because he’s zooming so fast.
Again there was no card.
The following year there was still no card from Dad, and on my last birthday, when I wanted a card that said It’s heaven to be eleven, I got nothing more than a flyer telling me to get down to Jason’s Donervan and try out their new royally delicious feast, The King Kebab.
I finish my email by telling Dad I want him to respond within twenty-four hours, or else. I hit send.
Within ten seconds, an email from the TV station pops into my inbox.
There is nothing between Dad and our future together except the click of a mouse. My stomach twists and knots as if a magician is making a balloon giraffe out of it. For ages I stare at the screen, before screwing up my courage. This is it, I tell myself. This is the beginning of our new lives together. I open the email and inhale. Two seconds later I feel water leak down my cheek and splatter onto my lap. When I look down, I notice my tears have left a stain in the shape of a broken heart.