Elisabeth Carpenter - 99 Red Balloons

‘Do you want me to get it?’

‘No, thanks, Jim. It’s got to be me. It can’t go on like this.’

I’m talking to deaf ears – Jim is already sitting on my settee. I dash as fast as I can to the telephone.

My hands are shaking as I pick up the handset.

‘Scott? Scott? I’ve been trying to find you.’

‘Maggie? Can you hear me?’

‘Scott?’

There’s a silence. For a moment I think they’ve hung up again like last time.

‘It’s not Scott, Maggie,’ says the voice. ‘It’s me – David.’

They don’t have bacon and eggs every day. Yesterday and the day before that it was cornflakes and boiled eggs, which isn’t too bad. They have those little cereal boxes that Mummy won’t buy me, but we’ve not finished the big box. Catherine doesn’t like wasting things. She said the cornflakes’ll go soft if we leave them. I think it’s a waste having the mini boxes if no one’s going to eat them. I’ll be going home before they open one.

I haven’t been outside yet. Not even in their back garden. It has a swing and a tree house. It’s a bit mean to not let me play on them really, but I haven’t said that. Catherine cries if I say something she doesn’t like, which is most of the time.

I’ve tried really hard not to ask about Mummy. Last night I did, when Catherine turned the light off in the room I sleep in. I thought Catherine wouldn’t be too mad; I helped her dry the pots before bed. I was wrong.

‘Am I going to see my mummy tomorrow?’ I couldn’t help saying it. I’d been trying to say it since we got here and the words fell out of my mouth.

‘What did you just say?’

I covered my mouth with the quilt. ‘Nothing.’

She walked slowly towards me. In the dark, her eyes looked quite scary – wider than they usually are – brighter, darker.

‘I’ll tell you one last time. If I ever hear the word mummy come out of your mouth again, I’ll make you wish you hadn’t said it.’

She slammed the bedroom door shut – even though Michael was in the room next to me having an early night .

It took me ages to get to sleep after that. I kept the middle of the curtains open so I could see the sky. Everyone’s underneath the same sky; Gramps told me that. I pictured Mummy and Daddy watching telly, with me on the stairs peeking through the living-room door as they watched Coronation Street . That was when they were happy. It wasn’t like that when I left them. Now, they shout at each other like Catherine and Michael.

‘I was thinking.’ Catherine speaks to me now as though she’s singing, making me jump. We’re sitting round the dining table. Our empty shells are in front of us in Humpty Dumpty eggcups. I’ve still got the milk to drink from my cornflakes – it’s the best bit, with all the sugar at the bottom. ‘Perhaps I could take you out today.’

‘Really?’ I don’t want to get my hopes up. She changes her mind so fast.

Michael has gone to work, so he isn’t here to say if it’s a good plan or not.

‘I’ve said that I have a niece visiting from England. Actually… I told my friends that weeks ago… just in case we had a real visitor. And it is school holidays here. Perhaps you could play with children of your own age. We need to see if you’ll be all right mixing with others anyway. Did you have many friends?’

‘Yes. At school.’

I want to say that they’re still my friends, but she won’t like that.

‘Very good,’ she says. ‘So, you’ll be a good girl if I let you out?’

I don’t know how much happiness to give away. Usually when I let her know my feelings, she gets angry.

I just nod.

‘Would you like that?’

I nod again.

‘Well, if you don’t really want to go, then we shan’t. I can’t force you to go.’

She turns her back on me and goes back into the kitchen.

‘I’d love to go,’ I shout.

It takes her ages to come back in.

‘Well. There you go. It’s not hard to be nice, is it?’

I shake my head, to agree with her – even though I thought I was being nice.

‘Before we go, I think we should do something about your hair. It’s a bit too long for this heat, don’t you think?’

‘Maybe.’

If she cuts my hair, my mummy will go mad – she really will. I’ve been growing her hair since she was born , she always says. If Catherine cuts my hair, will Mummy recognise me?

I’ve only just finished my breakfast, and Catherine drags the chair I’m sitting on into the kitchen.

‘Easier to sweep up the mess,’ she says. ‘Wait there.’

She comes back a few minutes later with a towel and a pair of scissors. They’re not like scissors I cut things out with, or the orange ones Mummy uses for wrapping paper, but long, silver ones. She fills a cup with water, dunks a black comb into it and uses it to brush my hair. When she gets to a knot, my head burns, but I try not to make a sound. She puts her hand on the top of my head and she pulls the comb through it, again and again and again. My ears are throbbing.

‘He wouldn’t let me touch her hair,’ says Catherine.

I want to ask whose hair she means. The girl in the photos? I want to ask when she’s coming back from holiday. It would be so much nicer being in this house if she were here too.

By the time she’s combed my hair, drips are running down my face.

‘Don’t you look pretty with wet hair?’

No one has ever said that to me before.

She puts the towel on my shoulders too late. The dark blue t-shirt I’m wearing is already soaked at the back. She pulls the towel tight around me and fastens it with a clip at my chest.

Catherine combs my hair forward over my face. The scissors scrape together as she snips me a fringe. Rrrpp.

‘Close your eyes,’ she says.

I do, and she blows into my face. I feel the hair drop onto my hands; I try to keep them still in case it falls to the floor.

‘You look nicer like that,’ she says, still bent in front of me. This is the closest I’ve looked at her. Her freckles are hiding under the powder on her face, and her eyelashes are like thick spider legs. Mummy doesn’t wear much make-up – I’ve only ever seen her wear lipstick on parents’ evening.

She stands back up and cuts the rest of my hair so it only comes down to my chin. It’s the shortest it’s ever been. She snatches the towel away; it scrapes my neck.

‘What a transformation!’ she says. She’s in front of me, her hands resting on her hips. Her eyes narrow as she looks at me. ‘Would you like to see yourself?’

‘Okay,’ I say.

She tuts and walks away, coming back moments later with the big mirror off the living-room wall. She turns it around.

It’s not me any more.

Mummy won’t know it’s me – I look too different.

There must be hair in my eyes; they’re starting to water.

‘Do you like it?’ she says.

‘Yes,’ I say. Catherine doesn’t like me nodding.

She turns round, taking the mirror back to the other room.

I stare at the girl in the photograph on the cabinet. I look just like her now.

We’re in someone’s back garden. The mums are sitting round a plastic table on a patio and me and the kids are on a blanket on the grass. Catherine comes up to us all the time. ‘Everyone getting along? Are you all talking nicely?’

A boy with dark hair (he likes jumping into the round paddling pool and splashing everyone) is sitting opposite me in his swimming trunks. He’s called Mark. On each side of us are Faye and Beth, who are the quietest people I have ever met – they only talk to each other.

‘So,’ he says, chewing on a giant hot dog sausage that he’s holding up to his mouth, ‘have you ever been to London and seen Big Ben?’