Don't Even Think About It Read Free

the phone feeling mad as hell. I let it ring six times, and then I picked it up and put it down again without even listening. And then I took it off the hook and went straight to the freezer.
    After half an hour I put it back, and she called ten minutes later, and I just about managed not to tell her what I thought of her brilliant plan.
    I told Dad she was moving, because I thought he should know. It was the first time I mentioned Mam to him since she’d left. Dad just nodded and went on eating Marjorie Maloney’s tuna casserole.
    I’ll get to Marjorie Maloney later.
    And now Mam has been in San Francisco for about two months, and she still rings me every day, and her voice still sounds as near as when she was ringing from Granny Daly’s house.
    But she’s not in Granny Daly’s house – she’s ten hours on a plane away from here, and I have no idea when I’ll see her again.
    OK, I have to stop for a while now.
A quarter to one
    The day after Mam’s bombshell about San Francisco, the Christmas holidays ended and I went back to school (I’m in sixth, by the way). I couldn’t tell anyone what had happened, I just couldn’t – except for Bumble, of course. So I told the rest of the class thatMam had gone off to be a nun in one of those convents where they aren’t allowed to talk to anyone from the outside world, which was why Dad and I couldn’t visit her.
    Naturally, Catherine Eggleston had something to say. She said, ‘Married women aren’t allowed to become nuns’. So I said, quick as a flash, ‘Oh, didn’t you know? The Pope changed that law two years ago, when there was a shortage of nuns.’
    Well, that shut Catherine Eggleston up, and everyone else too, because of course nobody had a clue whether that was true or not. They all looked a bit sorry for me, and Chloe Nelligan offered me her Penguin bar at break, which I refused – I could see that really impressed them all. I didn’t tell them that I hate Penguins, and that I’d been hoping that Tessa Ryan would offer me her mini Bounty bar. I love Bounty bars.
    Of course, I’m still hoping like mad that Mam will realise that she made a terrible mistake and come home. I try to pray for it to happen, but I’m not very good at praying. Whenever I try, I can’t stop other things jumping into my head, like whether I remembered to bring home my maths copy, or how many days left to my birthday, things like that.
    But I really, really hope she comes back.
    I wonder if Dad misses her as much as I do. No, of course he doesn’t.
Ten past one
    God, I am SO starving right now. I could eat a slice of stale bread that fell on a carpet, buttery side up. Iwouldn’t even pick off the bits of hair and stuff – I’d just cram it all into my mouth.
    This must be what it’s like to go on hunger strike. Oh God, I smell food. It can’t be coming from downstairs – he never cooks anything that smells this good. Must be the Wallace’s lunch next door. Smells like melting cheese – oh God, I think I’m going to start dribbling.
    My stomach is making incredibly loud gurgly noises. When I get out of here I’m going to look up the Childline number in the phone book and report my father for starving his only child.
    OK, he just knocked on the door after I wrote that last bit and told me he was leaving my lunch on a tray outside. I didn’t bother answering him. He must be dreaming if he thinks I’m going anywhere near it.
    I am SO starving though. Bugger, bugger, bugger.
Twenty-five past one
    Listen, the only reason I ate it was because I thought there was a really strong chance that I was going to collapse with starvation, which would mean never seeing Mam again. Imagine how she’d feel if she came back from America and found me dead.
    I did it for her, not for me.
    It turned out to be a pizza, one of those frozen ones. Simple enough for even