“Dad was worried about you,” says Holly.
It seems that after reading my note, Uncle Mark immediately rang Stevie to see if I was there. When we hear this, me and Andrea exchange glances. In spite of being scared, it’s all I can do not to giggle. Stevie is always so rude on the phone.
“She gave me very short shrift,” says Uncle Mark. “Practically boxed my ears…but at least I knew you were on your way back. Thank you for that,” he adds, turning to Andrea. “It made me feel a bit better, knowing she was with you.” He looks at me, reproachfully, like how could you? “You and I,” he says, “are obviously going to have to have a bit of a chat.”
Michael wants to know where Mr Pooter is. I tell him that he’s with Stevie. “Just for the moment.”
“Should have been left there in the first place,” says Auntie Ellen. “It’s what I’ve said all along.”
My hand reaches out again for Andrea’s. She gives it a reassuring squeeze. “Mark, I wonder,” she says, “whether we could have that chat right now…just you and me. Could we do that?”
I clutch, rather desperately, at her arm. I don’t want to be left alone with Auntie Ellen!
“Well, and maybe Laurel, too,” says Andrea. “After all, she’s the one it most concerns.”
I don’t think Auntie Ellen’s very pleased at being excluded, but nobody invites her to join us so she gives one of her sniffs and takes her money pot out of the cupboard to check how much I’ve stolen.
“I’ll pay you back!” I cry.
“I’ll pay your aunt back,” says Andrea. “Let’s go, now, and thrash things out. See if we can’t come to some arrangement.”
So that is what we do. Uncle Mark reads Mum’s letter, nodding now and again and pursing his lips. I wait anxiously for his response.
“Right,” he says. “Well!” Carefully, he folds the letter and gives it back to Andrea. “It’s not such a bad idea, I suppose. It’s true that Laurel’s never really settled with us, and since it’s what Sue wanted…I’d be quite agreeable, assuming you’re both OK with it?”
“Oh, I think we are,” says Andrea. “Aren’t we?” She smiles at me, and I nod, vigorously.
“Well, in that case,” says Uncle Mark, “let’s give it a go. We’ll see how it works out.”
He’s obviously relieved that he won’t have to be responsible for me any more, though I don’t have the feeling he actually wants to be rid of me. Just that he wants me to be happy, and he knows I never could be with him and Auntie Ellen.
He insists that we stay for a meal, which I don’t really want to and I’m not sure that Andrea does, either, but you have to be a little bit polite.
“Are you going?” says Holly.
Holly is not at all polite. Even Auntie Ellen tries to pretend that she’s sad things didn’t work out.
“It’s just…you know…Laurel really didn’t have what I would call a normal upbringing. But of course, you were Sue’s friend, you knew what she was like. You’ll be able to cope.”
“I’m sure I shall,” says Andrea.
As soon as we’ve eaten, we pack up a few more of my things and Uncle Mark takes us back to the station.
“Now, don’t forget,” he says, as he kisses me goodbye, “if things don’t work out, you can always come back.”
But I know, I just know, that they will work out. It’s just this feeling I have.
I’m right. They do! I stay with Andi all through the summer, in her flat near the university where she teaches. We get Mr Pooter back from Stevie, and he’s on his special diet, and he’s taking his tablets, and he’s not being sick any more, though even if he was, Andi wouldn’t get mad at him. She loves Mr Pooter as much as I do. I’m never tired of hearing how she and Mum went to the local animal shelter to adopt a kitten, and how it was Mr Pooter who adopted them.
“He was such a tiny scrap, the smallest of the litter. But he stretched out his scrawny little arms and made these funny little squeaking noises, and we just knew that he was the one for us. We always meant to adopt another one, so he’d have a companion, but somehow we never got around to it, and then…well! It was all too late.”
But it wasn’t too late, cos now Mr Pooter has two catty companions. When we collected him from Stevie we found that a stray she had rescued had just had kittens, and she told us rather crossly that we had better take two of them.
“I don’t want kittens getting under my feet! Not at my age.”
So it was like we didn’t really have much choice. As Andi says, you don’t argue with Stevie. They are both black, which sometimes makes it quite difficult to tell them apart. “Is that Carrie?” we go. “Or is it Lupin?” I was the one who chose their names! They already answer to them.
We’re all so happy together in Andi’s flat, but the new school year is looming and I’m dreading what might be going to happen. Will I have to start all over again at yet another school? Or, worse still, will I have to go and live with Uncle Mark and Auntie Ellen again? I think to myself that I just couldn’t bear it! But Andi has a surprise. She’s rented a house near to Uncle Mark so that I can continue at the same school and we don’t have to be separated. Hooray! It means that Andi has quite a long drive every day to get to work, but she says that she thinks it will be better if I don’t have to cope with any more changes.
I am grateful for this as I am not good at changes, and I’ve sort of got used to Bennington. Also it means that I can still see Michael. He is a really nice boy. Some of the girls in my class tease me and say he’s my boyfriend, but that is just totally not true. I am not into boys yet. Andrea says I will be, soon. Then, she says, there will be TROUBLE. I will be a regular, tiresome teenager!
I’m still a library assistant. I still have long talks about books with Mrs Caton, but I don’t spend as much time in the library as I used to, mainly because I have now made some friends. Proper friends. two new girls were put into our class, Janis and Elvi, and we have become quite close. Being new, they didn’t realise that I was weird! Maybe I’m not, any more; at any rate, they don’t seem to think so. I’m not called Dalek any more, either. Most people seem to call me Lol. That’s OK! I don’t mind.
Andi calls me Lollipop. Or sometimes Lolly. I feel as if I have known Andi all my life. We are hoping that next year she will be able to adopt me; then if I want I can be Laurel Stafford. I think I would rather have Andi’s name than the name of my dad. I think it is what Mum would have liked. She would have been really pleased if she knew how things had turned out.
We now have all her books back. Michael got them down from the attic, and Uncle Mark and Auntie Ellen brought them over. Now that I am not living with her any more, Auntie Ellen doesn’t seem to find me so irritating. She has become almost quite friendly. I will never be her sort of person; there is nothing much I can do about that. But when she kisses me hello or goodbye I no longer feel that she is gritting her teeth and just doing it as a duty. Last time she visited she said, “Well, things seem to be working out for you at last. I’m pleased about that. It really used to upset me, you were such a sad little ghost of a creature.” So I think perhaps she is not so bad after all. Except for not liking cats!
Andi and me have put all Mum’s books back in the open. they are free-range again! We are going out next week to buy a bookcase for them, as they are mostly on the floor at the moment. Andi has lots of books of her own, which I am exploring. She has also written one! It is rather learned; it is called The Female Psyche in Time of War. She was delighted to find that Mum had a copy of it. It was one of the ones that Michael brought down from the attic. I said that Mum used to keep it by the side of her bed, like it was something special.
“But it wasn’t one we read together.” To be honest, I can’t really understand it. I’ve looked at it loads of times, but it is full of words I have never met before. Andi laughs and says, “Later!” And then she says, “Funny to think that I’d originally planned to write novels.” I tell her that she should.
�
�You could write one about you and Mum! And me, when I was a baby.”
I reckon that would make a really neat story. andi has promised that she will think about it.
“Or if I don’t do it,” she says, “how about you?”
Hmm…I suppose I could.
I am sitting here now, on the sofa, with my laptop, wondering how to begin. Mr Pooter is curled up beside me. He is such a sweet old cat! When we got the kittens we were worried in case he felt that he was being pushed aside, but he is like a big daddy to them. They climb all over him, and just occasionally, when they are too rough or he has had enough, he smacks at them with his paw and they go skittering off.
One of them, Carrie, is sitting on top of my head. It is not very comfortable, as she keeps overbalancing and digging her claws in, which is actually quite painful, but I haven’t the heart to move her. the other one, Lupin, is very interested in my laptop. He keeps dabbing with his paw and wer709yfoj62kouyh6#[1
That was Lupin, typing a row of nonsense. He is very interested in computers. Heq’#mhjnwp
That was him again! This obviously isn’t going to work. Maybe I’ll give up for now, and play with the kittens instead. It’s not like there is any rush. But I will write the story. All about Andi and Sue who had a baby girl called Lollipop and a cat called Mr Pooter. I’ll start it tomorrow…
Also by Jean Ure
Love and Kisses
Fortune Cookie
Star Crazy Me!
Over the Moon
Boys Beware
Sugar and Spice
Is Anybody There?
Secret Meeting
Passion Flower
Shrinking Violet
Boys on the Brain
Skinny Melon and Me
Becky Bananas, This is Your Life!
Fruit and Nutcase
The Secret Life of Sally Tomato
Family Fan Club
Special three-in-one editions
The Tutti-Frutti Collection
The Flower Power Collection
The Friends Forever Collection
And for younger readers
Dazzling Danny
Daisy May
Monster in the Mirror
Copyright
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2010
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FIRST EDITION
Ice Lolly
Text © Jean Ure 2010
Illustrations © HarperCollinsPublishers 2010
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