Virginia Macgregor - Wishbones

Praise for Virginia Macgregor

‘Undobutedly a future classic’ (Clare Mackintosh, author of Sunday Times Top Ten bestselling I Let You Go )

‘A life-affirming read… Warm, wise and insightful’ (Good Housekeeping)

‘Sharp, funny and hugely moving, this is a must read’ (Fabulous)

‘It is impossible not to fall in love with nine-year-old Milo in this touching novel’ (Stylist)

‘The characterisation and dialogue make it easy to feel empathy for the family and readers will cheer Milo on to achieve his goal’ (Sun)

‘[An] understated and likeable tale that just might restore your faith in human nature’ (Bella)

VIRGINIA MACGREGORis the author of What Milo Saw , The Return of Norah Wells , Before I Was Yours and, most recently, the young adult novel Wishbones . Her work has been translated into over a dozen languages. After graduating from Oxford University, she worked as a teacher of English and Housemistress in three major British boarding schools. She holds an MA in Creative Writing, and was, for several years, Head of Creative Writing at Wellington College. She is married to Hugh and they live with their daughter, Tennessee Skye, in Concord, New Hampshire.

For my darling Hugh and my dearest little Tennessee Skye: thank you for teaching me, each day, what it means to be truly beautiful – and truly lucky.

Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul

And sings the tune without words And never stops at all.

Emily Dickinson

Contents

Cover

Praise

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

New Year’s Eve

Chapter 1

January

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

February

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

March

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

April

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

May

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

1 June

Chapter 37

September

A Word from the Author

Acknowledgements

Copyright

I was born seven weeks premature. An incubator baby. Tubes stuffed up my nose, eyes screwed shut, looked like a tiny wrinkly vole.

I wasn’t meant to survive.

When the nurse put me into Dad’s arms for the first time, he said: She’s light as a feather . That’s how I got my name.

Kids at school think it’s funny, the boys especially.

Featherweight champ , they say.

Quack quack , they chant, waddling with their feet turned out.

Tweet tweet , they chirp, flapping their arms.

I was so small that doctors came up from London and peered at me through the incubator walls and journalists sneaked onto the ward to ask questions and take photos.

I wonder whether that was what made Mum hospitalphobic – the scare she got from me being so small. And then I think about her other phobias too and where they came from, like her leaving-the-house phobia and her swimming phobia and her running-out-of-food phobia.

You were the tiniest baby Willingdon had ever seen , Dad’s told me more times than I can remember, like I’d won a prize. Anyway, it’s all turned out to be what Miss Pierce, my History teacher, calls ironic , because people say the same thing of Mum now – except the opposite: that she’s The Biggest Woman Willingdon Has Ever Seen . People sometimes ask me if I’m adopted. I know what they’re thinking: how can someone so small belong to someone who takes up as much space as Mum?

People are still really interested in Mum and her weight and the fact that she hasn’t come out of the house in years. Last summer, I found Allen, a reporter from the Newton News , hiding behind our hedge with his camera angled at Mum’s bedroom window. He said he’d give me twenty quid if I let him take a photo. I told him to get lost, obviously.

Anyway, Mum’s been chubby ever since I’ve known her, it’s just the way she is. What’s more important for you to know is that she’s the best mum in the world. A mum who’s funny and clever and always has time to listen and doesn’t obsess about stuff like homework and being tidy – or eating vegetables. And although she’s a little on the large side, she’s beautiful, like proper, old-fashioned movie-star beautiful: long, thick, wavy hair, a wide, dimply smile and big soulful eyes that change colour in different lights – sometimes they’re blue and sometimes they’re green and sometimes they’re a brown so light it’s like they’re filled with flecks of gold.

Whenever I think about Mum and how awesome she is and how close we are, I realise that there can’t be many daughters out there as lucky as me.

So Mum being overweight has never mattered to me. As far as I’m concerned, there are a million worse things a mum can be.

That is, it never mattered until last night, New Year’s Eve, when everything went wrong. Really, horribly wrong.

New Year’s Eve

1

‘You sure you don’t want to come out?’ Jake asks. ‘Rock the town together?’

Jake’s the only guy I know who can be cool and geeky at the same time. We’ve been best friends since we were a week old. My mum and Jake’s mum were pregnant with us at the same time and they went to this baby group, so we were destined to be together. Mum and Steph are really close too. Or they were until this Christmas when they had a blazing row. Now, Mum doesn’t want Steph coming round any more.

‘Rock the town in Willingdon ?’ I ask.

Willingdon is the smallest village in England. Population 351 – blink and you’ll miss it. Jake and I are the only kids here.

Jake laughs. ‘Well, rock the village then.’

It’s 11.30pm, New Year’s Eve, and we’re lying on Jake’s bedroom floor, staring at the glow stars on his ceiling and listening to one of his Macklemore albums. Before his parents got divorced, Jake used to listen to hip-hop with his dad. He doesn’t really see his dad now so I guess listening to those albums is a way for Jake to feel like they’re still close.

‘I’ve got to get back to Mum.’ I get up and brush bits of popcorn off my jeans. Popcorn was the only thing that kept me going through Jake’s zombie invasion film.

Jake rolls over. ‘So you’re letting me go out all on my own?’

‘Why don’t you call Amy?’ I ask.

He shakes his head. Amy’s meant to be Jake’s girlfriend but he seems to spend more time avoiding her than actually going out with her.

At New Year, most people prefer to be in crowds: everyone pressing in, counting down, filling up their champagne flutes, music blaring. I like it quiet, just me and the person I love most in the whole world: Mum. I love Dad too, but he’s so busy zooming around on emergency plumbing jobs that he doesn’t have time to talk. Even on New Year’s, he’s out repairing people’s blocked loos and leaky drains and frozen pipes. So Mum and I see the New Year in together. In those last few seconds before the clock ticks over, we hold our hands and our breaths and send wishes out to the New Year.

I love it. The magic of it. The stillness. The feeling that anything could happen.

‘I’ll call you,’ I say to Jake.

‘At 12:01,’ he throws back.