Dear Scarlett Read Free

key, the sort you use on a rubbish padlock from a cracker.
    “I came up to see where you’d gone,” she says,peering into the stuff lying on the floor. “What’s this?”
    She reaches her pale freckly arm into the balls of newspaper from the top of the box and pulls out a black plastic canister that I hadn’t noticed. Before I can stop her, she pops off the top and turns the canister upside down.
    A metal roll falls at my feet.
    “Oh,” says Ellie.
    I glare at her.
    “I’m only trying to help,” she says.
    I pick it up and slip off a red elastic band. I hold the roll in my fingers, turning it round and round. It’s a little metal film roll, like old-fashioned cameras used. There’s a small tab of shiny stuff poking out of the middle between black brushes.
    Ellie’s got these baby-blue eyes, which look enormous behind her glasses. They’re fixed on me now. “What is it?” she asks. “Where did it come from?”
    She looks so pathetic I have to tell her.
    “But your dad’s dead?”
    “Yes,” I say. “But he left me this lot for when I was eleven. And I am eleven, now.”
    She gazes at it all.
    “What a weird collection of stuff.” She picks up
Gone with the Wind
and flicks through it and I have an unreasonable desire to rip it out of her fat fingers. It might be a weird collection of stuff, but it’s mine and it was from my dad, not her stinky fabric-conditioned dad, my tough burglar dad.
    But I have to be nice to her, for Mum’s sake.
    I’m so close to tears, I stand up and stare out of the window at Mr Hammond bunching up watercress. There’s a big black car out there, and you can tell that it’s really clean, because of the way the rain’s sliding off it. Right now, I’d like nothing better than a wet walk.
    Fat chance.
    “Are these all the postcards you and your mum sent him in prison?” Ellie peers at them. “Cute drawings you did, Scarlett.”
    I turn round, put my hands to the floor and flip my legs up against the top bunk.
    “Yes, he must have kept them all,” I say between my teeth. “Mum’s got a matching set.” I try to turn my head towards her, but all the blood’s gone to my scalp so it prickles and feels like my eyebrows are going to fall off. Handstands are a good way to stop crying.
    “And this?” she says, holding the roll in front of my nose.
    “I don’t know,” I say. I don’t want to look. I don’t want to hope, because I hate the disappointment.
    She shakes it. It doesn’t make any noise.
    “Well, I’m going to open it,” she says, so I crash my legs down to the floor and grab it out of her hands.
    In the end both of us open it. She holds one end and I drag the other out across the room. About halfway I have this horrible feeling that it might be an undeveloped film, but within a centimetre or two, it turns to card and then to a long strip of paper.
    We spread it across the floor and stare at it.
    Keep looking up, Scarlett, keep up the gym, and don’t trust just ANYONE
.
    That’s it, that’s all it says.
    Ellie’s big blue eyes blink and stare behind the glasses. Mine almost fill with tears, but I swallow hard, roll the message back inside the container and throw it back in the box.
    I do another handstand, and keep doing them until lunchtime.

Doing What Dad Did
    I’m lying in bed watching this long shadow stretch across the floor. It’s the control tower from the old airfield next door. It means there’s a full moon. Ellie’s snoring on the top bunk but I’m wide awake.
    I’m looking up, at Ellie’s mattress above me; I’ve stuck Dad’s message to the underneath of the top bunk.
    Keep looking up, Scarlett, keep up the gym, and don’t trust just ANYONE
.
    Useless.
    Absolutely useless.
    All of it. Even the postcards. They’ll mean moreto Mum than to me.
    As for telling no one – Ellie already knows.
    I turn over and face the wall. I scrunch up my knees and pull the duvet really close.
    I try to remember Dad’s face, but Ellie’s made my