Broken Soup Read Free Page A

Stroma. He’s never coming back.”
    I could feel this weight, this downward pressure in my head, and I thought it was possible I could cave in or implode because I had just said that out loud.
    Stroma was quiet for a minute. Then she sighed, looked right at me, and said, “Can I have something to eat now? I’m starving.”
    And that was how it started, how I ended up looking after her.
    I went into the kitchen to make some toast and there wasn’t any bread, not even a crumb. I knocked on the door of Mum’s room and got some money and I took Stroma with me to the shop. And all the time I was putting stuff into the basket and working out what we could afford, and saying no to marshmallows, but yes to chocolate biscuits, and planning what we’d have for supper and then breakfast. I didn’t have time to lose it. I didn’t have time to lie down in the corner shopand scream and beat the floor until my hands bled. I didn’t have time to miss Jack. Stroma kept on chattering away and getting excited over novelty spaghetti shapes and finding the joy in every little thing, and it occurred to me even then that she was probably looking after me, too.

Four
    Believe it or not, school was one of my favorite places back then. Everywhere else seemed like hard work, so school was a distraction. I didn’t have to worry about where Stroma was. I didn’t have to handle Mum. I didn’t have to think about the obvious unless I wanted to.
    The gap Jack left at school got filled pretty quickly by someone else clever and good at running and a bit of a flirt. It was like a day off. Because of course that didn’t happen at home. There was no room for anything else. I sometimes thought that if Jack was looking down on us all, he’d be feeling majorly hassled, not free to enjoy the afterlife at all.
    I think Mum and Dad drove each other crazy with it in the end. They stopped talking altogether about three months before Dad moved out. There was this odd, loaded quiet around them. We kept out of their way.
    Maybe they split up because of Jack, because when they looked at each other they only saw him.
    Maybe they blamed one another for stuff.
    Maybe they were headed that way already. Maybe him dying kept them together a bit longer. I have no idea.
    When Dad finally came clean about leaving, he wasn’t telling us anything we didn’t already know. He’d been staying on other people’s sofas for a while, pretending he was at the office, basically avoiding us. He shouldn’t have bothered to pluck up the courage to break old news. Even Stroma had worked that one out, aged five.
    He was gone a long time before he was gone, if you know what I mean. And when he left, things just got worse. Because then we had him to miss too.
    So, anyway, school was like a vacation, if you can imagine that.
    I don’t know how I’d overlooked Bee there before, because after that day she spoke to me she was the first face I saw in any crowd. It didn’t matter who I was with—I’d suddenly be aware that she was around. It was like a special light went on that made her easy to find.
    The thing is, once you start looking at Bee you almost have to tell yourself to stop. We aren’t so different on paper: same height, same coloring maybe, at astretch. But Bee has something I don’t. Her skin and hair are different shades of the same honey. The way she holds herself is so precise and effortless and graceful I still wonder how she does it. And it isn’t just me who thinks that. I see other people watching her all the time, trying to work out how come they aren’t put together the same way Bee is.
    It was after school the next time I bumped into her. She acted all surprised, but I had this quiet feeling she’d been waiting for me. I had to pick up Stroma and Bee asked if we wanted to get an ice cream or something.
    We went to this place at the top of Chalk Farm Road