Читать книгу Sarah Lean - 3 Book Collection - Sarah Lean, Sarah Lean - Страница 18

DAD STILL HADN’T NOTICED I WASN’T TALKING, didn’t say anything when I pointed at the picture of the ham and mushroom pizza on the menu.

“Why did you bring us here?” said Luke, chomping tomato mush.

“You like pizza, don’t you?” said Dad, not looking up.

“Yeah, but I mean we don’t normally go out for pizza.”

Dad wiped his mouth and hands with his napkin, took ages to answer. Eventually he said, “Just thought you needed a treat, that’s all.”

“Why, what’s happened?”

“Can’t I just take you out?” Dad snapped.

“I’m just saying!” moaned Luke. “Unlike some people.”

He swung his leg under the table until it nudged my shin. I swung my foot back. I dodged him and screwed my mouth tight. We scuffled under the table, kicking each other.

“Hey! What’s with you two?” Dad snapped as I hit his leg by mistake.

“It’s her,” said Luke. “She’s being weird!”

“Pack it in, the pair of you!”

I didn’t finish my pizza. I slid the last quarter under the table, wrapped it in my napkin and squashed it into my jeans pocket. Just in case I saw Jed again.

The waitress arrived with the bill. Dad pinned on a smile for her. His flat smile. The one that said, I’m trying to be cheerful.

“Dad?” Luke said as Dad took his wallet out. “You know we’re not supposed to give money to tramps?”

I leaned back, folded my arms, silently dared him to tell.

“Well, what if you give food to a tramp, like a pie or a pizza, does that count?” Luke said the words pie and pizza loudly and spat wet crumbs across the table. He can be so disgusting.

“First we’ve got to make sure we’ve got enough,” Dad said, pulling out his wallet.

It was bulging with money. Both of us noticed. His wallet had never, ever looked like that before. I thought he’d won the lottery, but he couldn’t have. We’d be buying the biggest flat-screen HD TV you’ve ever seen, and every episode of Inspector Morse on DVD.

“But is it all right?” Luke pressed, still staring at the cash.

Dad wasn’t looking at him. “No, it’s not all right,” he snapped. “I don’t want you giving them money, food or anything.”

Luke swung his leg at me again.

Dad carried on. “There are some people in this world who don’t have much, but they still manage to feed their kids and put a roof over their heads. Even if it’s a small roof.”

He stood up, looked us both in the eye.

“Come on,” he said, “we’re going to the park.”

We’d sort of grown out of going to the park and if you haven’t been for a long time, you feel like it doesn’t belong to you any more. You let other people have a turn on the swings even though they’re not bigger than you and they’ve only been leaning on the bars for a minute.

I went over to the garden area where adults usually go to sit away from the noisy kids. Luke climbed a tree. Dad sat on a bench by the tree, leaning on his knees, unrolling and rolling his papers. Sometimes you can be a family and not all want to sit together.

And I was just thinking about things, like how come Mum was with Jed the tramp, and did he see her too, when I heard some rustling in the bushes behind me.

The huge silver-grey dog came bounding out, the same one I saw with Mum on the school playing fields.

I sucked in my breath, held my arms in tight. The dog nudged my hand, pushing his nose under so I’d have to stroke him. He circled round and round. Then he sat down, his tail sweeping the gravel side to side, side to side. His head was as high as my chest; his small brown eyes sparkled like a million stars. His eyebrows and beardy chin and whiskers twitched so you could tell what his face was saying. And it was saying, I want to be with you!

I very, very nearly called out. Not because I was afraid, but because sometimes you just can’t help it. And I could feel the words bubbling up – Look, Mum, look! Isn’t he beautiful? And it made me laugh, even though she wasn’t there.

Just then I made my one and only rule for not speaking. I was allowed to laugh. Because laughing isn’t words. Nobody knows what you are saying, but everyone knows what you mean. Even a dog.