Free Opal Plumstead by Jacqueline Wilson

further ten minutes, which was a terrible bore.
    I couldn’t concentrate all day. I didn’t even want to dawdle at the sweetshop with Olivia after school. I felt I had to get back home immediately to check on Father. He was acting so strangely now, I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d discovered him perching on the chimney stack pretending to be Father Christmas, or banging a drum in the parlour in his under-drawers. But when I got home, he was neatly dressed, writing decorously in the parlour. Mother had decided that being banished to the bedroom with a tea tray was ignominious. She had set him up at the parlour table. We only used it at Christmas time. It was generally shrouded with a fringed chenille cloth. Father was writing rapidly in his manuscript book. He paused to nod his head at me. ‘Hello, my dear,’ he said, and then carried on writing.
    ‘May I join you, Father?’ I asked. ‘I could do my homework while you write.’
    I knew Mother wouldn’t trust me not to spill ink or somehow scratch the polished table, but she was busy preparing a rabbit stew in the kitchen so couldn’t intervene. I settled down at the other side of the table with my schoolbooks. Father nodded again and smiled at me, hunched over his work. The table was a fair size and I couldn’t read what he was writing, but I was impressed by the fluency of his hand.
    Then Mother came tiptoeing in with a cup of tea and exclaimed crossly when she saw me. ‘For goodness’ sake, Opal, leave your father in peace. Gather your things and go on up to your bedroom.’
    She patted Father’s shoulder and set his tea down beside him. He had covered his page protectively, but when I squeezed past his chair, I dropped my ruler and he lifted his hand to retrieve it for me. In that split second I saw what he’d written:
Oh dear Lord, what am I going to do?
He’d written it over and over again, as if he were doing lines for Miss Mountbank.

I DIDN’T SAY anything to Father. If only I’d had the courage to confront him! I might have been able to help in some way. I could have devised some desperate plan. At the very least I would have urged him to run away. But I said nothing because I was too worried and embarrassed. Perhaps I thought, like Father, that if I said nothing, then somehow it wouldn’t become real.
    We both tried to act as if everything was normal that long evening, while Mother and Cassie prattled away, making plans for a grand holiday for the four of us. When we all went to bed, I put my arms around Father and hugged him hard instead of just brushing his cheek with my usual quick kiss. He hugged me back too, his hands icy cold on my back through my school tunic. I’m so glad we had that last close embrace.
    We were all late again in the morning. Mother didn’t have the same incentive to get Cassie and me out on time now that Father was choosing not to go to work. I was in more trouble with Miss Mountbank. She was outraged that I dared be late two days in a row. She said I was an idle, lazy girl who couldn’t drag herself out of bed in the morning, and I must write five hundred lines in detention:
Procrastination is the thief of all time
.
    ‘Poor poor you, Opie. And what on earth does pro-whatsit mean, and how do you spell it anyway?’ said Olivia.
    ‘Don’t know and don’t care,’ I said. I couldn’t be bothered to explain.
    ‘It’ll take you
hours
to write all that. But don’t worry, I’ll still wait for you.’
    ‘You needn’t, Olivia.’
    ‘That’s what friends are for. And you’re my absolute best friend, Opal. I was thinking – we should start our own select club. We could call ourselves the two “O”s, after our names. We could make badges with two “O”s intertwined. It would look
ultra
select.’
    I wasn’t so sure. It was the sort of thing that little girls did, not great girls already in their teens. But I was very fond of Olivia, so I went along with this idea, furtively designing a heraldic sign for