Free Second Fiddle by Siobhan Parkinson Page B

though, I woke again and shot up in bed, slapping myself across the mouth to stop myself shouting out. This was the moment of inspiration, the one I just told you about if you were paying attention.
    That’s why! was what I had to stop myself shouting. It had come to me in a dream, I thought, or else just as I woke up. I knew, suddenly, what my dad would do if he got an e-mail from a friend of his daughter’s that he had never heard of. I had no idea why I hadn’t been able to imagine it during the daytime, since it was so obvious.
    â€œWho the blazes is that? ” he’d have muttered irritably. “Macla, what sort of a name is that?”
    Macla is my e-mail username. In case you can’t work it out for yourself, I will explain that it is made up from the first few letters of my real name and surname. It’s cool, isn’t it? Like a Celtic goddess, or a saint who was dead holy and built a lot of monasteries and led an army to defeat the heathen. Of course, my father knew what my e-mail name was, but Gillian’s dad obviously wouldn’t know that. It was Gillian’s dad who would scrunch over his computer screen and mutter about the unknown Macla.
    I snuggled down again under the duvet with a smile, pleased as punch with myself that I’d worked it out. I hadn’t forgotten my dad after all.
    As I drifted toward sleep, I remembered what Gillian had said about having a teddy. I did have a teddy: Teddy Murphy he was called, after a cat we used to have, only the cat was called Murphy, not Teddy Murphy, obviously. I hadn’t seen the old fellow since the move. I’m too big for a teddy, of course, but still, I’d like to know where he is. I’d like to be able to put him on a shelf in my bedroom, just for decoration, and look at him sometimes. I wouldn’t like to think of him being squashed in the bottom of a leftover tea chest or with his coat all dusty in the garden shed.

Gillian
    She really has no sense, Mags. I suppose I have to make allowances for her age. But she comes out with things all jumbled up, and it can be very confusing. I didn’t mean to go stomping all over her feelings in my size 12s, but how was I to know what she was on about? (She doesn’t really wear size 12 shoes, by the way, but this is just the kind of very obvious figure of speech Gillian uses. To be quite fair, since we’re on the subject, her feet are not her worst point. I’d say they’re about a size 5, if you want to know. Signed: Mags )
    â€œMy dad got a virus,” she said excitedly to me a couple of days after we’d sent the e-mail, when we met in this place she calls her den. It’s just a clearing by the stream in the woods, with a sort of hidey-hole beside it. Very childish.
    I was just opening up my lunch: peanut-butter sandwiches, because I was experimenting with vegetarianism.
    â€œAbout a year and a half ago,” she was burbling on.
    â€œWhat sort of virus?” I asked. I know you shouldn’t ask questions about other people’s illnesses, but for goodness’ sake, she was volunteering this information; she obviously needed to tell me. The least I could do was show a bit of interest.
    â€œOh, I don’t know.” She shook her hair in that impatient way she has. “That’s not the point.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to intrude. You don’t have to tell me about it, if it’s private.” I think that was fair enough. I wasn’t going to poke my nose into her family’s business, even if she insisted on taking a magnifying glass to mine.
    â€œIt’s not private,” she said. “It was one of the ones you get by e-mail.”
    â€œE-mail!” My God, I thought, she is all over the place, this child. “You can’t die of an e-mail virus!”
    OK, OK, I made a mistake, but I ask you, what would you think if someone’s dad has died, and