The Yoghurt Plot (11 page)

‘Granddad,' I say, opening the door. ‘How are you?'

‘Grand, Sky, never been grander.' He leans forward and pats me on the head. ‘Get out the sparkly glasses, Oliver, and we can have a toast – it's our anniversary.'

Dilan and I stare at each other.

‘Oliver?' I say.

‘Your brother, Sky,' says Miss Golightly, skipping past into the lounge. ‘Get your brother to do it. Hello, Lorna, dear, are you going to join us?'

‘Doreen, Arnold,' says Mum, springing up from the sofa, which is when I realise she's pregnant.

‘Stay there, pet,' says Miss Golightly. ‘Sky'll sort some snacks, won't you, dear?' she looks at me, so I turn and walk mechanically into the kitchen. Sky? My name is Sky? I like that – it's about a million times better than Bugg.

I open the noodle cupboard, and instead of packets of instant noodles there are crisps and cheese straws. I open a bag and empty them into a bowl.

Sky.

Sky.

Sky Wells.

It really is a whole lot better than Bugg Wells.

And then Dad appears holding a bottle of champagne, and we all get some, and we clink glasses, and Dad says, ‘Forty years! Here's to Dad and lovely Doreen and forty fantastic years.' And Granddad gives Doreen a peck on the cheek, and she kisses him back properly on the mouth and I have to sit down.

‘Speech!' says Mum.

‘Speech!' says Dad, hugging Doreen as if she was his real mum.

‘Oh yes, Arnold, dear, do give us a few words,' says Miss Golightly.

Granddad clears his throat, takes a sip of his champagne and points at a faded colour photograph on the wall, which I have never seen before.

‘2nd July 1974.' He lifts the photo from the wall and holds it in his hand as if it could transfer the memory to his fingertips. ‘What an evening! What a competition!'

‘Go on then, love,' says Miss Golightly. ‘Tell them. Tell them all about it.'

‘It was a clear evening. A capacity crowd. The hairspray was thick  … '

‘And the make-up,' says Miss Golightly with a giggle.

‘Ted Mildenhall was there judging, and that woman Anita Smears, and the ballroom looked magnificent.'

‘Oh, it did.' Miss Golightly smiles, remembering, so that the make-up in the corner of her eyes cracks.

Granddad gazes at Miss Golightly. ‘And so did you, Doreen.'

‘And you, Arnold.'

‘And then they stopped us,' says Granddad. ‘Because of the fire.'

I nearly choke on a cheese straw. ‘The fire?'

‘That idiot Eddie Henderson, the one that works on the petrol pumps out at Asco, he was just a boy, thought he'd do for the pier so that the family garage could open up on the seafront. He'd vandalised the phone boxes too, done a proper job of it. Regular delinquent. It all came out in court, loads of witnesses, old John Dando saw him rowing away, but they'd never have caught him if it wasn't for the kids.'

‘Kids?' says Lorna.

‘Oh yes,' says Miss Golightly. ‘There were two children on the pier. They let off a flare, so the firemen knew something was going on, and the firemen were only there because of a girl stuck on the rocks when the tide came in. All terribly lucky.'

Lorna goes bright red and splutters over a crisp.

‘Imagine what would have happened otherwise,' says Dad, topping up the champagne glasses. ‘It would have been an awful accident – all those people in the ballroom, and the whole thing made of wood.'

The adults stare into the middle distance as if imagining the town without a pier.

‘Anyway, no one ever knew who those children were – they were never seen again,' says Granddad, with another mouthful of champagne.

‘Really?' asks Dilan/Oliver. ‘They had no idea?'

Granddad shakes his head. ‘No – and the only person that might have known was Dave Dando, and he left town as soon as he could to go into fashion
. Police talked to him of course, but he made no sense. His brother runs that surf shop in town. They've made a fortune from shorts, I believe.'

Dilan/Oliver turns and shows me the label on the side of his shorts.
Dando.
I nearly drop my thimbleful of champagne.

‘Anyway, if it wasn't for those kids, we'd never have won, because when they let us all back into the building, Verity and Derek were off like they'd been wound up. They danced beautifully, I could barely fault them. Maybe his second lift was a trifle wobbly, but I think I'm picking holes.'

‘No, they did,' agrees Miss Golightly. ‘They danced like a dream. I remember thinking we couldn't possibly outdo them. But  … '

‘Then it was our turn, and I remember feeling the heat of the lights  … '

‘And the slight smell of petrol,' says Miss Golightly.

‘Yes, that too. Maybe because we'd had to stop and start, we really went for it. We danced  …  we danced our socks off – I wish you kids could have seen us.' Miss Golightly nods her head in agreement. ‘Verity and Derek's tango was a nine out of ten, but ours  … ' Granddad grasps a cheese straw and waves it, like a conductor. ‘My heart was in my mouth when we set off – I tried not to look at Ted Mildenhall. I knew if I saw him I'd miss a beat, but we danced out of our skins, left them standing.'

‘Perfect tens,' says Miss Golightly, sipping from her glass. ‘Never happened before.'

‘Our foxtrot was a nine,' says Granddad.

‘And the paso doble,' says Miss Golightly.

‘We swept the floor with the cha-cha – won the prize, won the money, won the whole series.' Granddad coughs and looks away.

‘It was wonderful,' says Miss Golightly, springing to her feet and hugging Granddad's elbow.

‘It was the beginning of the TV career of course,' says Granddad. ‘We never looked back after that, did we, dear?'

‘No,' says Miss Golightly. ‘And forty years of married life later, you can still take my breath away.'

Granddad married to the school secretary. I have to sit down again.

I think back to the last few hours, or days depending on which way you look at it. So much has changed. Everything's changed. I look at Mum's great pregnant bump. That wasn't part of the plan. I wasn't expecting a new baby in the family. I suppose it'll mean I'm not the youngest any more, which will be quite nice. There should be someone more scared than me, someone to keep me company behind the sofa. And Granddad's not living with us – he's living with Miss Golightly, except I suppose she's Mrs Wells.

I still can't get used to how young they look.

Mum goes over to the stereo and puts on a CD. It's a waltz.

Miss Golightly puts down her handbag and puts one hand on Granddad's shoulder and another on his arm. Granddad puts his free arm around her waist and together they dance the most perfect circle around the coffee table.

Dad holds Mum's arm and they blunder into an uncomfortable shuffling.

Lorna stuffs another cheese straw in her mouth.

I realise I haven't worried about anything for at least an hour and go out to check on the fridge.

It's not humming. It's utterly silent.

I open the door. The light stays off. And there are no yoghurt pots, only ordinary recent shopping.

A trickle of water slips from underneath the vegetable compartment at the bottom and pools on the floor.

I press the button for the light, but no matter how hard I try, I can't make it come on.

‘C'mon, fridge,' I say. ‘Wake up.'

Still no hum.

I slam the door shut. In case it brings the fridge to life, but nothing happens except that some of the plastic letters from the door fall to the floor.

SHNAKT
.

KNASHT
.

I place them back onto the door, and the fridge lets out a long shuddering sigh.

T H A N K S

Born in Chobham, by an airfield, and raised in Winchester on the banks of the River Itchen, Fleur Hitchcock grew up as the youngest child of three. When she was eight, she wrote a story about an alien and a jelly. It was called THE ALIEN AND THE JELLY and filled four exercise books. She grew up a little, went away to school near Farnham, studied English in Wales, and, for the next twenty years, sold Applied Art in the city of Bath. When her younger child was seven, she embarked on the Writing for Young People MA at Bath Spa and graduated with a distinction. Now living outside Bath, between parenting and writing, Fleur works with her husband, a toy-maker, looks after other people's gardens and grows vegetables.

Fleur's debut novel SHRUNK! was The Sunday Times ‘Book of the Week', and you can follow her at:
http://www.fleurhitchcock.wordpress.com
or on Twitter:
@fleurhitchcock

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Hot Key Books

Northburgh House, 10 Northburgh Street, London EC1V 0AT

Text © Fleur Hitchcock 2014 Cover illustration © Ross Collins 2014

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-4714-0325-5

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