Free Little Darlings by Jacqueline Wilson Page A

my door.
    â€˜Go back to sleep, it’s too early,’ I hiss.
    I want to rearrange the bedrooms in my doll’s house in peace – but Bessie grumbles and moans and complains so bitterly that I have to shut Wardrobe City up and go to her.
    I open my bedroom door and pick her up. She’s an old lady cat now, but she’s still beautiful, a big fat black cat with white paws. Someone gave her to Mum after she’s done a modelling job with kittens, but Mum doesn’t really look after her, and Dad doesn’t like cats. Sweetie’s supposed to be allergicto them, and Bessie avoids Ace because he chases her, so basically I’m the one who looks after her now.
    â€˜It’s not breakfast time yet, Bessie,’ I whisper, rubbing my cheek against her soft furry head.
    Bessie disagrees. It’s
always
breakfast time as far as she’s concerned. I carry her downstairs to the kitchen and empty a tin of her wet goo into a bowl. She gollops it down eagerly while I keep her company with a bowl of cornflakes. No one else is stirring. Claudia lies in as long as Ace will let her. Margaret, our housekeeper, doesn’t come to do breakfast until late on a Sunday. Her husband, John, doesn’t start mowing the lawn or fixing stuff till midday so that Dad isn’t disturbed. It’s very peaceful in the early morning.
    Bessie finishes her bowl before I finish mine. She goes to the back door and starts yowling again to be let out. It’s hard working getting all the locks and bolts sorted but I’m a dab hand at it now. I open the door and Bessie shoots out, across the long lawn, round the pool, under the trampoline, up the path to the wild woody part where the grass is high and she can hide.
    I follow her out in my pyjamas, snatching John’s old gardening fleece from the peg on the back door. I feel less inclined to stick my feet into hisgardening boots so I wander out barefoot. The grass is wet and tickly. It feels a bit like paddling. I skip about, waving my arms in the air, kicking my legs out, being a ballet dancer.
    Mum once sent me to dancing classes when I was about five. Maybe it was to get me out of the way when Sweetie was born. Mum said it would help me to look graceful. I stuck it out for a whole year. I liked Miss Lucy, who taught us. She was very kind and never ever got cross even when I kept starting on the wrong foot and twirling the wrong way. I was the only child in the class who couldn’t skip. I’d feel myself getting hot and red, and I could see all the other little girls sniggering as I staggered about. But Miss Lucy always said, ‘Well done, Sunset. I can see you’re trying hard, dear.’
    Then one day Mum couldn’t take me because she was having extensions at the hairdresser’s and the nanny had to take Sweetie to the doctor’s, and Margaret and John were having a weekend off, and the temp girl from the agency didn’t turn up – so Dad took me dancing.
    He sat with all the other mums while they twittered and fussed because they were actually sitting next to Danny Kilman, and most of them had had crushes on him since they were little kids. Dad just sat basking in the attention, leaningback, hands behind his head, his long skinny legs stretched out, his cowboy boots pointing upwards – and I was so proud that he was
my
dad. But when I started dancing he sat up straight. After a while he hunched over, head bent, as if he couldn’t bear to look at me any more.
    As soon as the dancing lesson finished, while I was still doing a wobbly curtsy with all the other little girls, Dad took me by the hand and hauled me out of the room.
    â€˜Do you like dancing, Sunset?’ he asked.
    â€˜I don’t know,’ I mumbled.
    â€˜Well, I don’t see the point of you going, darling, because you’re absolute rubbish at it,’ Dad said – and I never went back.
    I know I’m still rubbish, I’m not daft, but I