The Mixed-Up Summer of Lily McLean Read Free

out the word LOVE, which would be mega-mortifying if my pals saw it, but Rowan and David are never here so it isn’t a worry. My cupboard will stay top secret, even from them.
    My friend David’s house has three bedrooms like mine, but a lot fewer kids to cram into it. And they have two bathrooms and a kitchen that my whole house would fit into quite nicely. You could swing several cats in there, maybe even a puma or a leopard. And he has a big bedroom all to himself, painted cobalt blue – David was very specific about it being cobalt blue. When I was at his place, Iwas mega-jealous of everything in it, except his enormous collection of Star Wars memorabilia. He can keep that.
    David’s dad is an accountant and his mum’s a teacher and they go somewhere like Turkey or Menorca every summer for a fortnight. I’ll bet Jenna would not be carrying on like this if Gran had suggested Menorca instead of Millport, internet connection or not. She would be upstairs packing her case right now.
    I take my earphones out to check that my crazy family haven’t chosen today, a long, dull Sunday, to kill each other or something. I’d seriously have to intervene then.
    “Jenna, come out your room right now! You can’t stay in there forever, madam! We need to discuss this calmly!”
    My mum is sounding a long way from calm. There’s no reply from Jenna, but I can hear a squeaky battle going on between Bronx and Hudson over control of the remote, and Summer is wailing loudly.
    “It’s my turn. Gimme it!”
    “No way, you watched three programmes yesterday and I only got to watch one. Mummmm, Hudson took the batteries out!”
    Excellent, everyone’s still alive. I put my earphones back in and go back to thinking about David, who isn’t going to be invited to my house any time soon. Even though I’m sure he wouldn’t sneer at the mess. He has nice manners, drilled into him by his mum, who teaches gym, so that tells you what she’s like. And David isn’t the tidiest person himself. His hair is always sticking up at funny angles, as though he has slept on it, and his clothes look permanently dishevelled and ill fitting, probably because he is a bit of a tricky shape. David is shorter than the average eleven-year-old boy, a fact which worries him a lot, and he’s a little overweight, which doesn’t bother him at all.
    But I wouldn’t want to watch him stepping over the broken toys and dirty laundry and the pushchair in the hall. And then wherewould we go? We wouldn’t get any peace in the cramped pigsty of a bedroom I share with Hudson and Bronx. And I wouldn’t want to take him into our cluttered, untidy living room. Even the newish table lamp has a bash in it now, thanks to Jenna’s latest meltdown. Nope, it’s not happening.
    And Rowan’s parents won’t let her through the door of my house. Her mum came round to our old house in Kelvin Street one evening last October. I think she was selling tickets for the PTA Halloween disco or something. My step-dad had started early on the vodka. He was totally off his face and pretty unpleasant.
    Rowan has explained repeatedly to her mum that my step-dad has gone for good, but she is still not allowed to visit, which is fine with me, even if I’m mortified by the reason for it.
    So, at this precise moment, I’m in the cupboard in the hall, earplugs in and the radio blaring, reading Anne of Green Gables for the umpteenth time. Anne always says exactly what she’s thinking, which both impresses and appals me, and I can totally sympathise with her red hair issues. The words are bouncing about on the page though, as they always do when I’ve got a headache, so I close the book and sit and think about my troublesome family.
    Jenna is probably still stropping about being forced to go to Millport for her summer holidays, leaving her beloved ‘bezzies’ behind. Bronx and Hudson will be squabbling over the remote or sitting glassy-eyed on the couch, watching Sponge Bob or Scooby Doo.