Today is my thirteenth birthday. I am the first official teenager in the class. What’s more, I’m a teenager from a broken home.

As Granny Daly would say, A RECIPE FOR DISASTER.

Granny Daly knows a lot of recipes for disaster.

I got a Dunnes jumper and a twenty euro book token from Dad, and luckily he left the tag on the jumper, so I can bring it back after school tomorrow and swap it for something that doesn’t look like it was bought by someone who has NO IDEA what thirteen-year-old girls are wearing these days.

And I might be able to trade the book token for cash with Mary Sullivan, who always has her nose stuck in a book.

Dad’s cooking is as bad as ever. Last night we had potatoes with hard bits in the middle of them, and burnt fish fingers. Even I can do fish fingers without burning them. Tonight we’re going out for a Chinese, thank goodness.

I wonder if Dad would let me have some wine, now that I’m thirteen. It can’t taste any worse than the sherry I swiped from the sitting-room cabinet last month. God, that was BAD. It must have been past its sell-by-date, or something.

I got half a bottle of White Musk perfume from Bumble – I told him what I wanted and gave him half the money, because it’s a bit dear. Bumble is great at lots of things, but he’s useless at buying presents.

Last year he gave me a yellow Eminem baseball hat, which just goes to show. My best friend since we were four years old, and he gets me a hat in my least favourite colour. I HATE yellow anything – yellow buildings, yellow flowers, yellow cars. The only yellow things I like are the sun and bananas. Oh, and corn on the cob. And the yellow bit of a boiled egg, as long as it’s soft and runny.

Anyway, I had to wear the Eminem hat a few times so Bumble’s feelings wouldn’t be hurt – mostly around the house – and then I pretended that I’d left it in the garden and the Wallaces’ cat next door had peed in it, and I couldn’t bring myself to wear it again after that. He believed me, of course. Bumble’s nice like that.

So this year I was taking no chances. I love White Musk. It makes me feel sexy and dangerous. Pity it makes Bumble want to throw up, but you can’t have everything.

Bumble’s name isn’t really Bumble, of course – it’s Ben. When he was small someone shortened it to B, and then later someone else changed it to Bumble Bee, and now it’s just Bumble. He doesn’t mind; he’s very easy-going.

Granny Daly sent me a new hairbrush, which I thought was quite a good present for someone with hair that you can actually brush, unlike mine which is too curly for anything except one of those big wooden combs.

By the way, in case you’re wondering, I have reddish brown hair, just longer than my shoulders, and dark blue eyes and zillions of freckles, and a dimple in my chin that I absolutely HATE. I’m 156 centimetres tall and I wear size 38 shoes and my teeth are almost perfectly straight, with a tiny gap between the front two that’s great for spitting through, and I have no boobs yet, and I’m Eminem’s biggest fan, and I can’t bear Britney, and I think Colin Farrell is the sexiest man on the planet.

My favourite food is pizza – but I eat most things – and one of my biggest fears is getting stuck in a lift halfway up a skyscraper. And you’ve already figured that I’m an only child, and my parents are split up. So now you know.

I’ll offer the hairbrush to Bumble’s brother’s girlfriend, whose hair sure could use a bit of brushing. She might trade me one of her bangles for it – they’re really cool, and she has loads.

I got a fiver from Marjorie Maloney, a neighbour across the road, but that’s only because she has her eye on Dad since Mam left. She pestered us the first month, knocking on the back door at least twice a week with casseroles, and lemon meringue pie, which is one of the few foods I hate, and asking Dad if he’d have a look at her iron – probably broke it on purpose – and offering to take me shopping for clothes and stuff. As if.

A few times we pretended to be out, but she just came back half an hour later, so we gave that up. The Wallaces’ cat next door got a lot of leftover casseroles for a few weeks. He loved the tuna ones, but he turned up his nose at the chicken, probably because Marjorie Maloney put lots of herbs and stuff in, trying to impress Dad.

Honestly, the way she plays with her hair and giggles when Dad says anything makes me want to throw up in her face. As if he’d look at Marjorie Maloney in a million years, with her tight dresses that stretch across her behind and show the line of her knickers, which everyone knows is a fashion disaster.

Her hair is dyed too – it has to be. No way is anyone’s hair that black. And the perfume she wears is strong enough to knock out an elephant, and nowhere near as sexy as White Musk.

Oh, and I got a parcel.

It arrived a day early, which I suppose is OK seeing as how it came all the way from San Francisco. There was nobody here when the Post Office van delivered it, so Mrs Wallace from next door took it in, and her son Damien came around with it when I got home from school.

I haven’t opened it yet. It’s sitting on my desk in front of me, and it’s about twice the size of a shoebox and fairly heavy. It cost $14.25 to post, and on the back Mam has written her name and address. She lives in a part of San Francisco called The Mission, which she says is a good place to live as she can walk to the downtown area where she works.

It’s the first time she’s ever written to me.

It’s the first time she hasn’t been here for my birthday.

I’m wondering why it’s so hard to open the box.

She’s sharing an apartment with a couple called Enda and George. She still tells me she misses me every time she phones, and she hopes I’m eating properly. I don’t mention the pizzas, or the Coke. She asks me about school, and Bumble, and how my painting is coming along, and she never, ever mentions Dad.

It’s easier now, talking to her on the phone, even if she’s still the one doing most of the talking. Dad always gets out of the way, which is nice of him. It still makes me sad that she’s so far away, of course, and I hate the time right after I hang up. I usually make straight for the freezer. I’m getting through a tub and a half of Ben & Jerry’s every week.

And now it’s getting near time to go out to dinner, and I heard Dad coming home a while ago, and I’m sitting in my room looking at the box on my desk, trying to pluck up the courage to open it.

You’d swear there was a bomb inside it.

I couldn’t think about anything else all day. For once, Santa didn’t have to give out to me for anything. And at break, Bumble asked me why I was so quiet. He’d just given me the White Musk, and I’d dabbed it on my wrists, and I could see him breathing through his mouth to stop himself from throwing up.

And for once, I couldn’t tell him. Even though he’s the only person I told about Mam walking out on us, I just couldn’t mention the box. I muttered something about missing Mam, and he nodded, and spent the rest of the break trying to cheer me up with his awful jokes, and I smiled to keep him happy.

And now I can’t put it off any more, so here goes.

Half past seven

Dad was brilliant. He didn’t say anything, which was exactly what I wanted, just put down the newspaper and held out his arms when I came into the sitting room, and held me until I was totally out of tears. And that took a while, believe me.

When I finally dried up, Dad said, ‘What about doing the Chinese meal tomorrow night instead?’ and when I nodded, he went into the kitchen and came back with a tub of Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk that was only half-empty, and two spoons. And while we ate it, he told me that he knew how hard it was for me without Mam being here, and that he thought I was coping brilliantly, and that he was really proud of me.

It was the first time he talked to me as if I was a grown-up, which was what I’d been waiting for forever.

And guess what? All I wanted was to be five years old again, so I didn’t have to face all this horrible grown-up stuff.

I asked him why Mam had left, why they couldn’t have sorted it out, whatever it was, and he shook his head and said that some things just couldn’t be sorted out.

And then, without thinking, I said, ‘Well then, why couldn’t she have taken me with her?’ And straight away I was sorry I asked that, because Dad’s face kind of crumpled a bit, and I knew I’d hurt him. But he thought about it for a bit, and then he said, ‘Maybe because she didn’t want me to be left with nobody.’ And I thought how much I would have missed him, if Mam had taken me with her.

I was really afraid then that he’d ask me if I’d rather have gone and lived with Mam, which would have been impossible to answer. I mean, I think I probably would rather be with her, if I absolutely had to choose – maybe because Mam and I are both females – but whoever I lived with, I’d end up missing the other one terribly.

He didn’t ask me, though. Maybe he already knew the answer. Maybe parents know more than we think.

The phone rang when we were almost finished the ice cream, and I put down my spoon and walked out to the hall. I knew if I didn’t answer it she’d just call back later.

It was awful. As soon as I heard her voice, I wanted to cry again. I had to pinch my arm hard all the way through, while I was trying to sound happy, and thank her for the presents, and tell her the other presents I’d got.

In the end, I said dinner was ready and I had to go. I suppose she knew something was up, but she said nothing. What was there to say?

I took a few deep breaths and went into the kitchen, where I found Dad scrambling some eggs, which sounds strange right after a load of ice cream, but I ate every bit. I suppose it was just dinner the wrong way around. And soon after that I came upstairs again.

My face is hot, and my cheeks feel tight from all the salty water they’ve had to put up with, and my nose is sore from blowing it so much, but in some kind of a funny way, I feel lighter. I had no idea tears could weigh anything at all. Dad’s jumper must be pretty heavy right now, with all the ones I left in it earlier.

Things in the box:

1. A birthday card with a letter folded up inside

2. A box of chocolates called See’s Candies

3. A blue t-shirt with a giant ice cream cone on it

4. A pair of green and blue check pyjama bottoms

5. A set of three lipsticks

6. A silver neck chain with a heart on it.

There’s a verse on the inside of the card. It reads:

And here’s the letter that fell out of the card:

The card has a picture of a girl with long straight brown hair, wearing a pink t-shirt and blue jeans and platform shoes, and balancing a load of shopping in one hand. She’s holding a leash in her other hand, and there’s a little dog at the end of it with a pink bow in his hair.

I think I’ll go to bed now.