Breakfast at Sadie's Read online

  ‘You'd better be talking on a hands-free, you naughty girl!’ shrieked a voice.

  Kathy said something else, but I didn't hear it. I was sitting bolt-upright by then, staring at the closed door between our lounge and the hallway.

  A form head hotshot.

  No. No way, it couldn't be. Fate could not have such a sick sense of humour.

  Feeling like I was walking underwater, I went over to the dining table, where Vampira's letter had been last seen. At first I couldn't find it, and I spent a few pointless minutes shuffling through flyers for pizza and stuff like that. Then I spotted a piece of paper lying on the floor, and ducked down to pick it up.

  Samantha Bodley, Head of Year Nine. Sam.

  My skin turned clammy. OK, calm down, this didn't mean anything! Samantha was a hugely common name. Just because this particular Sam was local, and was a form head, didn't mean—

  I stiffened as I heard the popping-gravel sound of a car pulling into our car park. Edging over to the window, I plucked the curtain aside the barest inch, squinting outside.

  An electric-blue Toyota was parked in our lot with its boot gaping open, and a slim, dark-haired woman was leaning into it, wearing faded jeans. My spine relaxed. Vampira would not wear jeans. It would be like the Queen shopping at The Gap.

  The woman straightened up and swung an overnight bag over her shoulder, slamming the boot shut. I sucked in a breath, and dropped the curtain like it was scorching my hand. No! This couldn't be true, it couldn't be happening!

  The doorbell rang, and a shrieking stampede raced to open it.

  ‘Sam! You're here!’

  ‘Sam, it's been ages since I've seen you!’

  And then Vampira's voice, which hardly sounded like her voice at all. ‘Hello, you lot! Here to paint the town red, are we?’

  I pressed tightly against the lounge door, my pulse crashing at my temples. Maybe I was hallucinating? But no, it was her.

  ‘Sorry I'm late, everyone,’ I heard her say. ‘Our school secretary was ill today, and we had a hopeless temp – it was complete end-of-term chaos—’

  ‘Leave it at work, you workaholic!’ laughed Kathy. ‘Come on, here's your key – now, let's go tart ourselves up and hit the nightspots of Brixham!’

  ‘Yeah, all two of them!’ called someone else, and the voices moved upstairs, laughing and chattering.

  Holding my head, I sank to the floor like my knees had turned to seaweed. Vampira, staying in my house.

  I was dead.

  Life in the Real World

  ‘Right, calm down,’ said Milly. ‘This is not the end of the world.’

  ‘Then tell me what is!’ I paced back and forth across the lounge, clutching the phone to my ear.

  I could just picture her giving me that half-smile of hers. ‘Um, nuclear war? Famine? Come on, we can handle this.’

  ‘How? Tell me how!’

  ‘They're all checking out tomorrow, right? So it's simple; she just can't see you.’

  ‘Then how am I going to serve them breakfast?’ My voice bounced around the room.

  ‘Well, I could come and help. Get in a bit of domestic service practice.’

  ‘No, she knows you. It would look too weird; she'd be suspicious . . . it has to be an adult.’ I sank down onto the sofa, gripping the phone so hard that my knuckles hurt.

  ‘OK, let's think. Who do we know that—?’

  ‘Milly, there isn't anyone. If I knew an adult who could serve breakfast to people and keep a big secret, I wouldn't be in this mess in the first place!’

  The doorbell rang. I ignored it. The hen party had left half an hour ago to descend upon Brixham, and if someone was looking for a room, they were out of luck.

  I threw myself back against the sofa. ‘Well, go on, then. Do you have a handy spare adult about who can magically save the day?’

  There was a long pause. I could practically hear the cogs in Milly's brain whirring away. ‘Um, no, actually,’ she said finally. ‘My sister would have done it, but she's at uni up in Newcastle.’

  ‘Very helpful.’

  ‘What about—?’

  The doorbell rang again, longer this time. And just in case I hadn't got the hint, the letterbox snapped open and shut a few times. ‘Hello?’ called a man's voice.

  I groaned, and sat up. ‘Milly, I'll have to ring you back, OK? Someone's at the door.’

  ‘Right, well, don't give up meanwhile. We'll think of something!’

  Riinng. ‘ I'm coming,’ I muttered. I swung open the front door, and a tiny white-haired couple smiled up at me.

  ‘Oh, hello! This is Grace's Place, isn't it?’ asked the man.

  ‘Yes, but—’

  He beamed. ‘We were afraid we had the wrong one! I'm John Brochu, and this is my wife Helene.’

  Faint, unpleasant bells rang. I stared at him, trying to remember.

  ‘We booked a room for three nights through your website. Actually, our grandson did it for us – I hope it worked?’

  Mrs Brochu gave a little flutter, and dipped into her black leather handbag. ‘Oh! Here, we have a confirmation number.’

  She held out a piece of paper in her soft, creased hand. I gazed down at it. It was as though I had forgotten how to read.

  ‘Right,’ I heard myself say finally. ‘Yes, right, we were expecting you.’ I moved aside so they could come in, and a single, weary thought flickered through my mind: Marcus, I am going to rip the hard drive out of our computer and bash you over the head with it.

  I tried to smile. ‘Sorry, my aunt is running things, and she's out at the moment.’

  Mr Brochu's eyes twinkled. They really did, like the sun glistening on the bay. ‘Well, we're later than expected. Shall we go and have dinner in town until she's back?’

  ‘No,’ I said distantly. ‘No, that's OK, I can check you in. Only, the thing is—’

  I gulped – suddenly, stupidly, near tears. For a completely mad moment, I wanted to tell this sweet old couple everything, everything, and then maybe they'd decide to be my grandparents and swoop in and save the day.

  Yeah, right. Try life in the real world, Sadie.

  I took a breath. ‘Nothing. If you want to go and get your bags, I'll have your room ready in a moment.’

  So I put them in Mum's room.

  I had a quick tidy of our lounge while they were getting their things – which I kept pretty tidy anyway, because I can't stand having a mess around me – and banged the French doors leading to the kitchen shut. I had just put a lace placemat on Mum's bedside table, hiding the water stain, when I heard them come in again.

  ‘Hi, um – it's this way.’

  They blinked when I led them into the lounge. ‘Is this a newer section of the house?’ asked Mr Brochu.

  ‘No, it's the same age as the rest of it.’ I chewed on a nail. My dad had always meant to rip out the horrible seventies fireplace and replace the carpet with something that didn't look like it belonged in a pub, but then he'd think of some other fantastic thing he could do upstairs, and go and do that instead. It used to drive Mum spare.

  ‘It's our largest room, actually,’ I said, clearing my throat. ‘See, it has its own sitting area here. And it's an en-suite.’ I opened up the door to Mum's bedroom, and showed them her loo.

  The Brochus looked at each other, and I knew they were about to complain. To refuse to sleep in what was obviously someone's real bedroom, or sit in what was obviously someone's run-down lounge. They'd throw a strop and demand to speak to Aunt Leona, and you know what? I hardly even cared any more.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Mrs Brochu finally. ‘It's lovely.’

  Dad

  I dreamed about my dad that night.

  Just after he died, I used to dream about him all the time. Really ordinary dreams – he'd be out working in the garden, maybe, or painting a chair. And we'd just be talking, him asking about my day and what I had been doing.

  I hadn't had one of those dreams in years, and I really missed them. So even i
n my dream, I was all excited about seeing him again. We were standing on Breakwater Beach, skipping stones, and I said, Dad! I can't believe you're here!

  He grinned at me, and spun a stone so that it skimmed across the water like a flying fish. Of course I'm here, he said. I'm always here. I could see Grace's over his shoulder, shining whitely in the sunshine.

  That was it; it wasn't a long dream. But when I woke up I felt like I had been given a chest full of glittering rubies and diamonds. I had seen my dad again! His face, so clear – the laughter lines around his eyes, the crescent-shaped scar on his chin from where he crashed a motorbike when he was a teenager.

  ‘Thanks, Dad,’ I whispered, hugging myself and smiling. And suddenly everything seemed possible, even with Vampira sleeping somewhere upstairs.

  I was not going to give up. Not now.

  Favour to Humanity

  ‘Sadie!’ Mrs Marcus held her dressing gown closed with one hand. She wasn't wearing her round praying-mantis glasses, and her face looked raw without them. ‘What brings you here so early?’

  I shifted on her doorstep. The day already felt warm, even in my sleeveless T-shirt. ‘I'm sorry to bother you, but – I sort of need your help.’

  ‘Oh?’ She frowned, and stepped back. ‘Here, come in. What's wrong?’

  Marcus's house was the same size as ours, but it looked like it was trying to be a library, with high wooden shelves crammed with dusty books everywhere. Even the front hallway had a bookshelf in it.

  ‘Um – it's my aunt. She's ill, she's been throwing up – she can't cook the breakfasts this morning, there's just no way. And I've never done them; I don't know what to do.’

  Her pale eyes bulged slightly, like I had asked her to fling her robe off and dance the can-can. ‘You want me to come and do them?’

  I let my eyes fill with tears, which wasn't hard. ‘Please, I don't know who else to ask! People are going to be downstairs wanting their breakfast any second now, and my mum will get into trouble if—’

  Mrs Marcus winced. ‘Yes, I see. I'll— I'll go and get changed.’

  I could hear a computer game going somewhere in the house, so once she disappeared upstairs, I followed the noise, picking my way around piles of books on the floor. I couldn't believe the mess. No wonder Marcus hadn't known how to make a bed.

  The noise was coming from a door beside the kitchen, which was full of plates with food caked on them, and teetering pots and pans beside the sink. I wrinkled my nose and opened the door – and found a room that looked like it might be a study, if you mucked out all the papers on the floor and fumigated it. And sure enough, there was the techno-genius himself, clicking away at a keyboard.

  He jerked his head back when he saw me. ‘Sadie! What are you doing here?’

  I ducked under the desk and unplugged the computer, wriggling the plug out of the socket.

  Marcus yelped as though I had ripped him off life support. ‘What are you doing? That was Battlestar Warriors!’

  ‘A favour to humanity! Because guess what – the Brochus checked in last night.’

  Marcus had fallen straight to his knees, scrambling to plug the computer back in, and now his head peered up slowly over the desk. ‘The Brochus?’

  ‘Name sound familiar?’

  He stood up, blinking rapidly. ‘But I cancelled their reservation; they couldn't have!’

  ‘Oh, silly me, they must be a hallucination. One that's staying in Mum's bedroom.’

  ‘Well – well, at least you had a room for them, right . . . ?’

  I could actually feel my nostrils flare as I glared at him. Thankfully for him, Mrs Marcus appeared in the doorway just then, wearing a pair of baggy trousers and a short-sleeved jumper.

  ‘Sadie, are you ready?’

  ‘Where are you going?’ Marcus scrambled back up onto his chair.

  She sighed, jingling her house keys in her hand. ‘Sadie's aunt is ill, so I have to go help out at Grace's. You stay here – remember to start your interactive French programme at nine o’clock.’

  Marcus's eyes widened as he looked at me.

  ‘I'll tell you later,’ I muttered as Mrs Marcus left the room. Because maybe he had done his best to ruin my life with his stupid website . . . but I suppose he was all right, really.

  When It's Not Coming Out One End . . .

  Now that school had finished I'd changed the times for breakfast again, so people could order until half-nine. The hen party had asked to have theirs served as late as possible, which didn't surprise me since it had been two o’clock in the morning before they rolled back to Grace's, singing some song about getting married in the morning. I imagined Vampira with a hangover, and shuddered.

  ‘Does your aunt need anything?’ asked Mrs Marcus as I opened the back door. We went into the kitchen, and she glanced at the closed French doors. ‘Some dry toast, maybe, or—’

  I shook my head. ‘No, I think she's sleeping. When she's not being ill. She was up most of the night – she said when it wasn't coming out one end, it was coming out the other.’

  Mrs Marcus paled. ‘I see. Well, let's just let her sleep, then, shall we?’ She read the list above the hob, and her eyes stretched wide behind her glasses. ‘Good heavens. We have to cook all this?’

  I frowned, wondering what she meant. ‘Well, it's a Full English Breakfast.’

  She bit her lip, not moving. I took out the frying pan and showed her where the spatula was, and she rubbed her palms on her trousers.

  ‘Right, well . . . I suppose we start by asking everybody what they want?’

  ‘I already know that.’ I gave her the order sheets I had collected the night before, and glanced at the clock. Why wasn't she getting on with it? Everyone was probably already in there, waiting!

  Mrs Marcus flicked through the sheets. ‘Oh, that's a clever idea of your mum's. OK, right, so we know what each person wants . . . and let's see, they all want eggs, it looks like, so we'll need . . .’

  ‘Here.’ I handed her two cartons of eggs from the fridge, and two packs of bacon. ‘This should be enough.’

  She looked at them, her lips tight in concentration, and then stared back at the orders. ‘OK, right. And hash browns . . . oh dear, how do you cook those? Do you have any potatoes?’

  I stared at her. ‘No, you cook them from frozen.’ I took a pack out of the freezer and opened it. ‘You can fry them, or just grill them while you do the bacon and sausage – that's probably faster; it's what I— what my mum usually does.’

  It was like that for everything on the list. I even had to open up the can of baked beans for her, and stop her from dumping them in the frying pan with the eggs. I stood twitching to one side while she tried to cook, aching to just jump in and do it myself. Poor Marcus! No wonder he was so scrawny.

  I cringed as she accidentally broke one of the egg yolks with the spatula. ‘Um – you know, I think maybe I could do the cooking.’

  ‘No, no, don't be silly,’ she muttered, prodding at the streaming yellow river.

  ‘Yes, but I think I know how. From watching my mum.’

  She ignored me, and ruined a few more of the eggs. Finally I couldn't take it any more, and I edged in beside her, flipping the bacon over before it burned.

  ‘There!’ Mrs Marcus smiled triumphantly as she slipped an underdone egg onto a plate. ‘That's the first two finished – if you take them in, I'll get the next two ready.’

  The breath felt kicked out of me. ‘No, you need to do that!’ I blurted.

  ‘Sadie, I'm busy cooking.’

  ‘I'm underage; I'm not allowed! Please, you have to do it – my mum might really get in trouble otherwise.’

  Mrs Marcus's mouth thinned, and she rolled her eyes a bit. ‘All right, fine. Where's the dining room, in through there?’

  She carried the plates out, and I sagged with relief. Then, while she was gone, I quickly turned the heat down on the grill and threw out the mess in the frying pan, cracking fresh eggs into it.

  Ti
ming

  I thought it would get easier for her after that, but instead she got more and more flustered with each breakfast she did, until finally her hands were shaking and she looked near tears.

  ‘Oh, this is hopeless!’ Mrs Marcus jumped back as one of the sausages popped, hissing grease. ‘It's the timing that's so impossible! How do you get everything to come out at the same time?’

  The timing? But that wasn't even hard! ‘Well, if you just . . .’ I trailed off, realizing that I didn't know how to explain it. The timing just happened, that was all.

  Mrs Marcus stabbed the sausages onto two more plates, and thrust them at me. ‘Here, take these in.’

  ‘But—’

  Her hair clung to her forehead as she sliced more mushrooms. ‘Go on! Silly girl, no one's going to report you.’

  I gripped the plates hard enough to shatter them. ‘No, really, my mum would get into trouble—’

  ‘Sadie!’ She spun towards me. ‘I'm going to lose patience in a moment! Just take the plates out.’

  I stared at the door. ‘Is it . . . still the hen night out there?’

  ‘Yes, and half of them don't have their breakfast! Honestly, Sadie, what's wrong with you?’

  I swallowed. I had to either tell her, or go.

  So I went.

  Every step I took felt like a knife gouging into my chest. I shook my head frantically as I walked down the corridor, so that my hair would cover my face. My blonde, impossible-to-miss hair!

  My nerves screamed as I backed into the dining room, keeping my head down. Glancing up under my hair, I could see Vampira sitting with three other women at Table Six, clutching her forehead as she took a sip of coffee. She already had a plate of food in front of her, even if it looked like she had hardly touched it.

  Kathy sat at Table Three, looking just as miserable. Turning quickly away from Vampira, I set the plates down in front of her and the plump brown-haired woman beside her. ‘Here you go,’ I smiled.