Something was going on at the Friday night family dinner. We were having fish and chips and no peas. I could taste the anguish of the Icelanders as I chewed. My mother and father were giving each other sideways glances like horses eyeing the fence.
‘Well, girls, we have something to tell you,’ Dad said finally, after the last chip on his plate had gone.
‘I hate fish,’ said Emily.
‘No one cares what you like Emily,’ said Maggie.
I had a weird feeling and it was nothing to do with fish.
‘We—that is to say, your mother and I—have made a decision that is going to affect us all.’
‘Dad’s joined the Liberal Party,’ said Maggie.
‘Maggie, do please listen to your father.’ Mum put her knife and fork together very neatly on her plate.
My father cleared his throat. ‘There is a position vacant in a Buckinghamshire parish, for which I have been interviewed and offered the job.’
‘Without asking us first?’ said Maggie.
‘What does that mean?’ asked Emily, her innocent little head looking from father to mother.
Mum looked at us. ‘Girls, just please listen to what your father has to say.’
‘That means,’ continued my father, ‘that we will be moving to Br—’
‘No! No! No!’ I slammed my hand flat against the table and my knife clattered from the plate to the floor, smeared with fish. ‘I am not moving anywhere. I’ve got my A-levels—my A-levels.’ I was practically screaming. I meant Dave, I didn’t give a shit about my A-levels.
‘Abes, you don’t even care about your O-levels.’
‘Shut up, Maggie.’
‘Now, now Rebecca, sit down and calm down, please. First things first. We haven’t even seen the place yet.’
‘You mean you haven’t even been there?’ said Maggie. ‘But we’re moving there anyway? I can’t believe you’d do that.’
‘There are some things, Maggie, that you don’t know.’
‘Calm down, Abes. Didn’t you hear what Dad said? They haven’t even seen the place yet, and when they do they won’t want to go there—will you?’ Maggie now looked from parent to parent as if expecting them to nod in agreement and say, Of course, Margaret Elizabeth Budde, how right you are.
‘Where will I go to school, Mum?’
‘We’ll have to sort that out, Emily. Don’t worry.’
‘I’m not worrying. I just won’t go to school then. I don’t care where we live.’
‘Glad someone is happy,’ said Dad. ‘Rebecca, come back to the table.’
I stood there, my body full of anger, heat rising in my face. How dare they make a decision like that.
‘How can you think that’s all right for even one minute, Mum? Mum?’
Mum said, ‘Let her go, Bob, she’ll calm down.’
How wrong could they be? I headed for the garage, yanked open the gates, ran through without shutting them. I will never shut the garage gates again and all the dogs and all the cats in the whole world can come into the garden and eat everything and crap everywhere and I won’t care. I ran down the road to Dave’s; he would save me from this madness. Knock, knock, knock, pound on the door, the number twenty-three shaking on the wood. No one home. I could see the glimmer of the pond, the nearly dark sky, there were no newts, no frogs, no tadpoles. No stars.