My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece Read Free Page A

to the shop to buy a present. Dad was watching me with his serious eyes though so I tore off the paper and tried not to look disappointed when I realised I’d already read it. I read a lot. I used to go to the school library at lunchtime in London. Books are better friends than people the librarian said. I don’t think that’s true. Luke Branston was my friend for four days when he fell out with Dillon Sykes for breaking his Arsenal ruler. He sat with me in the dining hall and we played Top Trumps in the playground and no one called me Maggot Dick for almost a whole week.
    Jas is waiting for me downstairs. We’re going to the park to play football in a second. She asked Dad too. Come and watch Jamie try out his new boots she said, but Dad just grunted and turned on the TV. He looked hung-over. Sure enough, I found another empty vodka bottle in the bin when I checked. Jas whispered We don’t need him anyway and then shouted Let’s go and play as if it was the most exciting thing in the world.
    Jas just yelled up the stairs to see if I’m ready. I shouted Nearly but I didn’t move from the windowsill. I want to wait for the post. It normally comes between ten and eleven. I don’t think Mum will forget. Important birthdays feel like they’re written on my brain in that permanent ink teachers sometimes use on whiteboards by mistake. But maybe Mum is different now she lives with Nigel. Maybe Nigel has children of his own and Mum remembers their birthdays instead.
    I’ll definitely get something from Granny even if I don’t get anything from Mum. Granny lives in Scotland, which is where Dad is from, and she never forgets anything even though she is eighty one. I wish I could see her more often ’cos she is the only person Dad is scared of and I reckon she is the only one who could make him stop drinking. Dad never takes us to see her and she is too old to drive so she can’t visit us. I think I am a lot like Granny. She has ginger hair and freckles and I have ginger hair and freckles and she is tough like me. At Rose’s funeral, she was the only other person in the whole church who didn’t cry. That’s what Jas told me anyway.

     
    The park is a mile away and we almost sprinted there. I could tell Jas was trying to burn calories. Sometimes when we watch TV, she jiggles her leg up and down for no reason and she does hundreds of sit-ups every day after school. She looked funny in her long dark coat with her bright pink hair, speeding past loads of sheep that stared and said Baaa . I kept looking for the postman ’cos it was almost eleven and he hadn’t arrived by the time we left the cottage.
    There were three girls on the swings when we got to the park and they stared at us as we walked in. Their eyes were like nettles, all full of sting, and my face went red as I paused by the gate. Jas wasn’t bothered. She ran right up to them and climbed on one of the swings, standing on the seat in her jet black boots. The girls looked at her as though she was a freak, but Jas swung really high and really fast and smiled at the sky like nothing in the world could frighten her.
    Music’s more Jas’s thing so I beat her easily, seven-two. My best goal was a volley with my left foot. Jas reckons I’ll get on the team this year. She said my boots are enchanted so they’ll make me as good as Wayne Rooney. My toes tingled as if there was magic inside them, and for a second I thought Jas was right until I realised my blood supply had been cut off and my feet had turned blue. Jas said Are your boots too small and I said No they are perfect .
    I felt excited on the way home. Jas was going on and on about getting more piercings but all I could think about was the mat in the hall in the cottage. In my head I saw a parcel on top of it. A fat parcel with a football card taped to the shiny wrapping paper. Nigel wouldn’t have signed it but Mum would have put lots of kisses inside.
    When I opened the front door, I knew something was