Free Lemonade Sky by Jean Ure Page A

nasty in it!”
    “It’s only a speck of blood,” said Tizz.
    “ Blood? ” Sammy shrieked and shoved the egg away so violently it spilled across the table. I had to open some pilchards for her. Our one and only tin! Tizz calmly spooned up the spilt egg and then, without asking, helped herself to a cheese triangle. I ate tomatoes. I think some of them must have been going putrid cos they tasted really disgusting, but we couldn’t afford to just chuck them out. The food situation was really starting to get serious. It was frightening how a cupboard that had been quite full on Sunday could suddenly look half empty only three days later. It wasn’t even like we’d been pigging out. I wasn’t surprised when Tizz announced that she was still hungry.
    “I can feel the sides of my stomach flapping!”
    Sammy said that the sides of her stomach were flapping, too.
    “What have we got?” Tizz marched across to the cupboard. “ Cornflakes. Soup. Baked beans. Yuck, yuck, double yuck! There’s nothing here worth eating.”
    I told her she could have an apple. “I’ll cut one up and we’ll all share it.”
    “Oh, big deal ,” said Tizz.
    I did wish she would stop saying that. I didn’t know what it meant, but it sounded really sarcastic.
    The apple was OK; sort of. I glared at Tizz, daring her to say anything, but she just chewed, in silence. Sammy whined that it was sour, which I have to admit it was, so we tried dipping it in jam.
    “There,” I said. “That’s quite nice, isn’t it?”
    Sammy nodded, doubtfully. Tizz, meanwhile, had pushed back her chair and was heading for the door.
    “Where are you going?” I said.
    “Out,” said Tizz.
    “Out where?”
    “Just out. I won’t be long.”
    I couldn’t really stop her. I left Sammy sitting on the sofa watching television and went into the bedroom. I’d decided that if I couldn’t afford to buy her a present I would have to give her something that belonged to me. Something that I knew she liked, such as…
    My fan! My Spanish fan! I took it out and flicked it open. It was made of paper and was quite fragile, which was why I never let Sammy play with it even though she was always begging me. She’d been after that fan for simply ages.
    I sank down on to my bed, wondering if I could bear to part with it. It had been a present from Cal; he’d brought it back from Spain with him. I loved it for its own sake, but I loved it even more cos of it being Cal that had given it to me.
    Cal really, truly was the best boyfriend Mum had ever had. THE BEST. I had known Cal ever since I could remember. He’d been around before Sammy was born. He didn’t actually live with us in those days, though me and Tizz would have liked him to. But he was just always there. And then Mum had taken up with Sammy’s dad, the one me and Tizz referred to as the Hunk, and for a while we didn’t see Cal any more. Mum said he’d gone off on his travels.
    The Hunk was OK, I suppose, and we didn’t actually mind him, except that he wasn’t Cal; but he drank too much and was always getting into fights, so really it wasn’t surprising that he came to a sad end, though that didn’t stop it being upsetting for Mum.
    It was after the Hunk had gone that Cal came back into our lives. He actually moved in for a bit, just for a few short months. He took care of Mum, and he took care of me and Tizz and Sammy. It was like having a proper dad for the first time. Me and Tizz had really hoped that he was there to stay. We even had this dream of him and Mum getting married, so that we could all settle down and be like a real family. But for some reason things didn’t work out. Mum said that Cal wasn’t really a settling-down kind of person. It was because of him having these itchy feet, which kept making him want to get up and go.
    “Can’t manage to stay in one place for more than five minutes.”
    Cal’s fan was one of my most treasured possessions. I knew if I gave it to Sammy it would only