Gone Missing. Jean Ure

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      For Sarah Mason and Rachel Woolford

      Contents

      One

      “Eat”

      Two

      “But where would we go?”

      Three

      Sunday was looming, with its roast and two veg. Dad…

      Four

      When we got to New Street, I said to Honey…

      Five

      It was seven o’clock when we got on the brown…

      Six

      It was kind of a weird evening. We started off…

      Seven

      There wasn’t anything! Not even so much as a mention.

      Eight

      I really couldn’t see what good it was going to…

      Also by Jean Ure

      Copyright

      About the Publisher

      one

      “Eat.”

      “I won’t!”

      “You’ll either do as you’re told or you’ll sit there for the rest of the day! Do I make myself clear?”

      Crash. Bang. Wallop.

      That’s Dad, striking the table. This is me, shrieking at him: “I’d sooner starve!”

      Whonk.

      Me again, slamming the door as I rush from the room.

      “Jade Rutherford, you come back here!”

      Dad thunders after me, followed by Mum. (Kirsty just sits there, carrying on eating.)

      “I will not have my meal times disrupted by tantrums!”

      “Alec, leave her! It’s not worth all this upset!”

      Mum pleads, Dad bellows, I shriek.

      “You can’t force me!”

      “Alec, please.” Now she’s clutching at him. I wish she wouldn’t! It’s so degrading. “Let her be! She’ll eat when she’s hungry.”

      I yell that I am hungry. “But I’m not shovelling stinking, rotten flesh into myself! It’s disgusting, it’s unhygienic, it’s repulsive!”

      Dad bellows, again, that I will eat what I am given. “We don’t have food fads in this house! We eat what the Lord has provided!”

      I’m tempted to be smart and say that I thought it was Mum who’d provided. Instead I shriek, “Some weird kind of Lord, wanting us to eat dead stuff!”

      I shouldn’t have said it; I’ve gone too far. Dad’s face turns slowly purple, like a big shiny aubergine. He shouts, “Right! That is enough! You get back in there and you sit yourself down and you eat.”

      He can’t force me. Nobody can force me.

      We stand there, facing each other, for what seems like minutes. Dad is breathing, very heavily.

      “I’m warning you, my girl! You either eat what the rest of us eat, or you eat nothing.”

      “So I’ll eat nothing! I’ll get anorexic and I’ll probably die. Then perhaps you’ll be happy!”

      Mum bleats, “Alec…”

      “Veronica, you stay out of this!”

      Dad stands firm. He’s a great believer in standing firm. He will not be dictated to by a fourteen-year-old girl-especially not in his own house.

      “If she feels that strongly,” says Mum.

      “She doesn’t,” snarls Dad. “It’s all done to rile me!”

      There may be a nugget of truth in what he says. Just a tiny little insy winsy nugget. At any rate, that’s all I’m admitting to.

      “Jade, please!” begs Mum. “Let’s talk about this later. Come back, now, and eat your dinner.”

      “No way!” I turn, and gallop up the stairs three at a time. “He can take his lump of flesh and guzzle it himself!”

      “Jade!”

      “You’ll have to put me in a straitjacket and use a feeding tube before you get it down me!”

      “I wouldn’t joke about it, if I were you!” bawls Dad. “It may yet come to that.”

      “In your dreams! I’d kill myself first.”

      Etc., etc. Day after day, same old thing. Dad bawling, me yelling, Mum humbling herself. Jade, please! Alec, please! And all to no avail, cos neither of us ever took the least bit of notice.

      This is just one example of the rows that I used to have with my dad. Well, stepdad, actually, but Mum married him when I was only four, so you’d have thought by the time I was fourteen we’d have grown used to each other. It was OK when I was little. Fairly OK. He was always a whole lot stricter than anyone else’s dad, but you accept that when you’re a kid. You can’t really do much else, it’s just the way things are. It was when I got to be, like, twelve, thirteen, that the problems started. See, my dad is a very self-opinionated sort of person. Whatever he says is right, and if anyone says different then they are wrong, and that is all there is to it. No room for discussion. They are simply WRONG.

      Unfortunately, I am somewhat that way inclined myself. Not that I automatically think everyone else is wrong, I like to believe that I have a reasonably open mind, but I do have these very strong opinions about all kinds of things. I think you have to have opinions, because, I mean, without them you are nothing but a mindless blob. The trouble is when your dad has one lot of opinions and you have another and they are just, like, at opposite ends of the spectrum, and neither of you will budge by so much as a centimetre.

      Mum used to fall over backwards to keep Dad happy. Ask your father. Listen to your father. Your father knows best. Anything for a quiet life. My sister Kirsty, she’s two years younger than me, she just used to keep her head down and say nothing. That way, she and Dad got on really well. She didn’t cosy up to him, she wasn’t that much of a creep, but if ever he said anything that I knew for a fact she disagreed with, cos like we’d discussed it together, she’d just go into silent mode. I guess it’s one way of coping. It’s just not my way! I think it’s a bit dishonest, to tell you the truth. Like somebody once said, though I cannot now remember who, we all have to stand up СКАЧАТЬ