Miss You by Kate Eberlen

Author:Kate Eberlen [Eberlen, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781509819966
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

16

2003

TESS

I think it’s called the mile-high club. That’s definitely what was going on, but I don’t suppose it was much fun with Hope banging on the door. I’d thought the business-class toilet would have more room – I couldn’t risk letting Hope go in on her own and locking herself in – but we couldn’t wait, so we ended up walking all the way back through the dimmed economy section, where people were trying to sleep, with Hope loudly declaring, ‘My knickers are wet!’

‘Why didn’t you go at the airport when I told you?’

‘I didn’t need to.’

It was so long since Hope had had ‘an accident’, I hadn’t packed a change of clothes in my hand luggage and I was dreading asking the stewardess for a towel for the seat, but it got worse in the cubicle when Hope pulled down her knickers and saw the blood.

None of the books gives any advice about how to tell a mildly autistic child in an aeroplane loo that they’re having their first period. Hope was only just eleven, so I hadn’t expected it to happen yet, even though I knew that plumper girls sometimes got theirs before they went to big school. It’s a difficult enough process to explain at the best of times, especially to someone as literal as Hope. The only upside was that by the time I got her out of there, with a wad of tissues stuffed into her knickers, Hope was so exhausted from screaming she slept the rest of the flight.

Kevin and Shaun were waiting for us in the arrivals hall with a sign saying: Céad míle fáilte Teresa and Hope Costello.

Which shows it’s true what they say about Irish people becoming even more Irish when they’re living abroad.

It’s funny when you haven’t seen someone for several years, because there’s always a bit of awkwardness at first, when you’re looking at each other wondering if they’re thinking how much older you look too.

I’ve never quite understood why men with a fear of going bald elect to go completely bald at the first sign of losing their hair, but it can’t be nice seeing a shiny dome relentlessly stretching back from your brow, even worse if it’s a bit patchy. I suppose the thinking is that shaven is cooler than comb-over, and I’d have to agree with that. Did Kev have to wear a wig when he was performing, I wondered? I’d never seen a bald ballet dancer, not that I’d seen a lot of ballet dancers apart from on BBC2 on Boxing Day and the all-male swans at the end of Billy Elliot, and you couldn’t see their heads for feathers.

I’ve no idea what Kevin was thinking about me. Or perhaps I have, because he and Shaun discussed the idea of getting me a ‘makeover’ long before Shaun suggested it later on in the holiday.

‘Good flight?’ Kev asked.

‘Blood is coming out of my room because I’m not going to have a baby,’ Hope announced.

I think even Kev had to admit at that point that Hope wasn’t like most girls her age.

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