Jean Ure - Pumpkin Pie

for all Pumpkins, everywhere

Cover

Title Page

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Finale

Also by Jean Ure

Copyright

About the Publisher

THIS IS THE story of a drop-dead gorgeous girl called Pumpkin, who has long blonde hair and a figure to die for. Skinny as a rake, thin as a pin, with long luscious legs right up to her bum.

I wish!

It is my sister Petal who has long luscious legs and a figure to die for. I am Pumpkin, and I am plump. Dad, trying to make me feel better, says that I am cuddly. Some people (trying to make me feel worse) say that I am fat. I am not fat! But I did go through a phase of thinking I was and hating myself for it.

I am the middle one of three. There is my sister Petal (drop-dead gorgeous), whose real name is Louise and who is two years older than I am. And then there is Philip, known as Pip, who is two years younger. So you see I really am stuck in the middle. An uncomfortable position! Well, I think it is. Pip, being the youngest, and a boy, is spoilt rotten. (Mum would deny this, but it is true. She is the one who does the spoiling!) Petal, on the other hand, being the oldest, is treated practically as an adult and allowed to do just whatever she wants.

At the time I am writing about, when I got all fussed and bothered thinking I was fat, my sister Petal was fourteen, which may seem a big age when you are only, say, six or seven, but is nowhere near as grown up as she liked to make out. She was still only in Year 9. My Auntie Megan, who is a teacher, says that Year 9s are the pits.

“Think they know everything, and know absolutely nothing!”

Petal was certainly convinced that she knew everything, especially about boys. To hear her talk, you’d think she was the world’s authority. She was boy mad.

What do I mean, was! She still is! She’s worse than ever! I suppose it is hard to avoid it when you are so drop-dead gorgeous. Petal has only to widen her eyes, which are quite wide enough to begin with, and every boy on the block comes running. She ought by rights to be a dumb blonde airhead. I mean if there was any justice in the world, that is what she would be. But it is one of life’s great unfairnesses that some people have brains as well as bodies. That’s Petal for you. She is not a boffin, like Pip, but she can pass all her exams OK, no trouble at all, without doing so much as a single stroke of work, or so it seems to me. Well, I mean, the amount of socialising she does, she wouldn’t have time to do any work. Even in Year 9 she was busy buzzing about all over the place. This is what I’m saying: she’s the oldest, so she could get away with it. Nobody ever bothered to check where she was or who she was with.

Actually, I suppose, really and truly, nobody ever bothered to check a whole lot of things about any of us. About Petal and her boyfriends, me and my fatness, Pip and his secret worries. This is probably what comes of having a dad who is (in his words, not mine!) “just a slob”, and a mum who is a high flyer.

It was Dad who stayed home to look after us when we were little, while Mum clawed her way up the career ladder. It was what they both wanted. Dad enjoyed being a househusband; Mum enjoyed going out to work. She’s into real estate (I always think that sounds more impressive than estate agent) and she pushes herself really hard. Some days we hardly used to see her. It was always Dad who sent us off to school and was there for us when we came home at teatime. It was Dad who played with us and read to us and tucked us up in bed. I think he made a good job of it, even though he calls himself a slob. By this he means that he is lazy, and perhaps there may be just a little bit of truth in it. It is certainly true that he always considered it far more important to stop and have a cuddle, or play a game, or go up the park, than to do any housework. But that was OK, because so did we!

Mum used to despair that “the place is a pigsty!” Well, it wasn’t very tidy, and the washing-up didn’t always get done, and sometimes you could write your name in the dust, but we didn’t mind. We looked on it as one big playground. Poor Mum! She really likes everything to be neat and clean. And ordered. Dad has other priorities. His one big passion is food. Unfortunately, it is a passion which I share…

Petal is lucky: food leaves her completely cold. She can exist quite happily on a glass of milk and a lettuce leaf. She is a vegetarian and won’t eat anything that has a face. Which, according to Petal, even includes humble creatures such as prawns. I know that prawns have whiskers. But faces???

“They are alive,” says Petal. “They don’t want to be eaten any more than you do.”

In spite of her obsession with boys – and clothes, and make-up – I suppose she is really quite high-principled.

Pip is just downright picky. Where food is concerned, that is. He won’t eat skin, he won’t eat fat, he won’t eat eggs if they’re runny (he won’t eat eggs if they’re hard), he won’t eat Indian, he won’t eat Chinese, he won’t eat cheese and he won’t eat “anything red”. For example, tomatoes, radishes, beetroot. Red peppers. Certain types of cabbage. Actually, any type of cabbage. Oh, and he absolutely loathes cauliflower, mushrooms, Brussel sprouts and broccoli. It doesn’t really leave very much for him to eat. He is Dad’s worst nightmare.

Now, me, I am Dad’s dream come true. I would eat anything he put in front of me. And oh, boy! When he was at home, did he ever put a lot! It really pleased him to see me pile into great mounds of spaghetti or macaroni cheese.

“That’s my girl!” he’d go. “That’s my Pumpkin!”

When Pip started school full time, Dad went to work as a chef in a local pizza parlour, Pizza Romana, only we all know it as Giorgio’s, because Giorgio is the man who owns it. He is a friend of Dad’s and that is how Dad got the job. It means he has to work in the evenings, and quite often Mum does, too, so we are frequently left to our own devices. But it doesn’t stop Dad trying to pile up my plate! He brings home these enormous great pizzas, which Pip won’t eat (on account of the cheese) and Petal just picks at (on account of her sparrow-like appetite) so that I am expected to finish them off. If I don’t, Dad is disappointed.

“What’s all this?” he would cry, opening the fridge and seeing half a pizza still sitting there. “Come along, Pumpkin! Don’t let me down!”

Pumpkin is Dad’s pet name for me. Pumpkin, or Pumpkin Pie. My real name is Jenny. Jenny Josephine Penny. Dad calls us his three Ps: Petal, Pip and Pumpkin. I don’t know how Petal became Petal; probably because she is so beautiful, like a flower. Pip is short for Pipsqueak. Meaning (I think) something little. Pumpkin, I am afraid to say, rather speaks for itself.

It didn’t bother me so much being called Pumpkin when I was little, but it is not such fun when you are twelve years old. It is not dignified. It brings to mind a great round orange thing. Mum says it is a term of endearment and nothing whatsoever to do with great round orange things. Huh! I wonder how she would like it?

At school, thank goodness, I am usually just Jenny, or Jen. Nobody knows that at home I am Pumpkin. Only my best friend, Saffy, and she would never tell. We are hugely loyal to each other. Saffy is the only person in the entire world that I would tell my secrets to, because I know she can be trusted and would never betray me. Needless to say, I would never betray her, either, except maybe under torture, as I am not very brave. If people started pulling out my toenails with red hot pincers, or trying to drown me in buckets of water, I have this horrid feeling that I might perhaps talk. But not otherwise! Like the time in Juniors when she confided to me this big fear she had that she was not normal. She’d heard her mum telling someone how she’d been born in an incubator. Saffy, that is.