Lynne Banks - Stealing Stacey

There was a long silence and then she said, in a muffled sort of voice, “Stace, listen. Don’t tell Glendine this – she is still there?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, good. Well, don’t tell her, but Dad’s… he’s sort of on the run.”

“Mum! What’s he done?”

“I can’t tell you. But he’s hiding out and I have to stand by him and help him. He’s got no one else.”

“What about the slapper?”

“She’s gone.”

“Did you – did you know they went to Thailand?”

“Yes. That was where he… got into trouble. Where she got him into trouble. He managed to pinch his ticket back from her before she left him, and fly home, but the police there put the ones here on to him. Now, don’t think badly of him, Stace—”

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t do that!” I said, really sarky. I was feeling sick and scared. What could he have done? It had to be something to do with drugs. I’d heard plenty about men luring women into carrying drugs for them, but never the other way round. I hated to feel Dad was weak, that she’d used him.

“ It wasn’t his fault , ” Mum almost shouted, in a very strong voice. “It was her, that’s who it was, and then when she’d landed him in it, she ran out on him when he needed her most, the rotten little tramp. I knew she was no good, those tarted-up middle-class ones with their snooty voices are the worst! Stacey, I just want to ask you, can you manage for a bit longer till I sort things out for Dad? I wouldn’t ask, but this is a real emergency.”

All my helpless, angry thoughts suddenly came together to form one word. One answer.

Australia. On the other side of the world. An escape from everything: this lousy little flat; school; the miserable weather we were having, all muggy or else dark and pissing down with rain all the time; Christmas on our own with no money; Dad in a mess, Mum stuck with him… No. None of it was my fault. I didn’t have to put up with it or face it. I could get away from all of it. Australia!

I knew I should tell her. I knew it. But I thought she’d say I couldn’t go.

“I’ll be all right, Mum,” I said. And I even heard myself add, “Give Dad my love.” But I didn’t mean it. Not really. I was ready to clobber him for taking Mum away from me.

I didn’t tell Gran about the call.

That same day, she asked, sort of carelessly, “When does school break up?”

“On the seventeenth.”

“Oh, right.”

When I came home from school on the last day of term, I found the flat in, like, chaos . I thought at first we’d been done over. Then I looked closer and saw the suitcases. Her sunflower ones, open. One of them was full of summer clothes. Not her size. Mine.

I picked up a green and purple bikini and dropped it again. “Gran! What’s going on?” I shouted.

She popped out of her (my) room. She sort of sang, “Glen-dine’s been shop-ping!”

“I can see! What’s it all for?”

“It’s all for you, cookie. I hope you like it. I’d have taken you to help choose, but we’re leaving tomorrow, there was no time.”

“Leaving? Where are we going?” But I knew. And suddenly it was real. She was kidnapping me, just as she’d promised!

“We’re flying to Perth, love,” she said. “Not Perth, Scotland. Perth, Australia.”

“What? But we can’t! Don’t I need a passport?”

“You’ve got one, ducky!” she said, triumphant. She held up a new red passport. I took it from her and looked at it. There was a picture of me that we’d had taken in a booth one day when I was out with her, she’d said she wanted it for a souvenir.

It struck me a lot later that she must’ve been planning this for a long time. She’d have needed Mum’s signature on the form, so she must’ve forged it. But I never thought of any of it. Not at the time. I was too upset about Mum and Dad, and now there was something really exciting going to happen to make up for it.

I had my doubts – give me that much. That night while Gran was having one of her endless baths – she’d imported a big bottle of bubble bath, which I could hear her frothing up with her hands till it must’ve looked like she was lying in a huge milkshake – I phoned Nan and told her I was going to Australia with my other grandmother.

Nan was already in a state about Mum bombing off. She’d been round a few times to see I was all right. She didn’t like Glendine, I could tell. She always turned her head away, as if Gran was too bright for her eyes. Now Nan said, in her pursed-up-lips voice, “I don’t think it’s right, her carrying you off like that without so much as a by-your-leave.”

“How can we ask Mum, when she’s gone off?”

“She’ll be back. Then what’s she going to say?”

“I’m leaving her a note. And you can explain. Besides, I’ll be back before school starts. Nan, I want to go!”

Nan fussed and carried on. She didn’t want me to go, but I remembered Mum’d said she was jealous of Gran, because of her throwing her dosh around and giving us treats. In the end I just said, “Well I’m going. I’ll send you a postcard with a kangaroo on it, bye.” That was that, because I put down the phone. Yeah, rude. But if you don’t bring Nan’s phone calls to an end she can witter on at you for hours.

What bothered me much more, after I’d hung up, was that I hadn’t told her I’d heard from Mum. I just left her to worry. But wouldn’t she have worried even more if I’d told her about Dad being in trouble with the law?

I’d never flown before. It was a long flight but I didn’t care. I loved it. I wasn’t even impatient, because Gran told me her self-hypnosis technique for long flights.

“You settle down and put your seat belt on, and you think, ‘Nothing to do but sit here and read magazines and watch movies and eat and drink and sleep and look forward to Australia!’” I did that and it worked. I suppose I’m naturally lazy, like my teacher says (what she actually said was, I was seriously talented at laziness), because doing nothing for thirteen and a half hours didn’t bother me a bit.

I wanted to see if Gran would sleep on the floor again, but she didn’t. She got very uncomfortable though. She sighed and groaned and wriggled and said her legs were killing her. I felt really sorry for her with her long legs all cramped up, or out in the aisle where people kept kicking them, but not so much when she fell asleep sprawled all over me.

We landed in Singapore and had a wonderful Chinese meal in the airport. I wanted to go into the town (we had to wait three hours) but Gran said, “We’re not allowed, and anyway you wouldn’t like it. It’s the opposite of London, it’s the cleanest city on earth, and if you drop so much as a sweet wrapper they put you in jail and flog you.” Then we flew on to Perth.

I was already in my new clothes. Gran had different taste for me than for her. She’d bought me really cool gear. I was surprised about one thing – it was all casual stuff. She’d said we were going to stay at a hotel, and I supposed that meant dressing up (it didn’t, as it turned out), so what did I need two pairs of combat pants and three pairs of army-looking shorts for? Not to mention all those sleeveless tops.

When we got to Perth I liked it straight away. It was lovely and clean, even without jail and flogging. You could taste the air. The sea was blue and the weather was hot – there were loads of parks and flowers, and gumtrees like in the movies about Australia, that had smooth trunks all patchy green and white, and leaves that smelt like rubbing oil. Some beautiful coloured parrot-things were flying in them.