“Just me and Pete,” she said.
“How?” I asked.
“Mammy gets cross with Da for spending so much time in the shed and not picking me up from school. And they fight about my reading. Because Da says don’t worry about it and Mammy says do worry. And sometimes they fight about Pete’s wonky foot. That kind of stuff.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Do yours?” she asked.
“Sometimes,” I said.
“What about?”
“Just about me,” I said. “Like about which one of them gets to pick me up from school. They really both want to do it. So they fight.”
“But no one ever picks you up from school,” she said.
“Sometimes you’re so stupid it makes me think I’m dying,” I said.
“Oh. Sorry,” she said.
Linda’s mammy brought in her birthday cake on a china plate, and her da came in with Pete on his hip, and we all sang “Happy Birthday.” I watched the candles until I had yellow flickers in my eyes when I blinked. Me and Linda took our cake into the garden and sat on the bricks by the shed.
“What did you wish for?” I asked.
“Can’t tell you,” she said.
“It still comes true if you only tell one person,” I said.
“Are you sure?” she asked. I wasn’t sure, but I did want to know, so I nodded.
“I wished for another brother or sister,” she said. She licked some icing off her finger.
“Why would you wish for that?” I asked. “They cry all the time. And they smell.”
“Pete doesn’t smell,” she said. “I like babies. Pete’s big now. I want a new baby.”
I was glad Linda had told me her birthday wish, because that meant it wouldn’t come true, and it was a silly waste of a wish. I didn’t know why anyone would want even one brother or sister, let alone two. As soon as you had a brother or sister your mammy and da could only care about you half as much, because the other half had to be for the baby. If Mam had another kid the bit of care she had left for me would be so small you’d have to have a magnifying glass to see it. Luckily she really hated kids, so it was really not likely she would ever try to get another one.
“If you could only have one out of Pete or me, who would you have?” I asked Linda.
She frowned. “Pete’s my brother.”
“You can only have one.”
“Pete, then.”
I didn’t think she had properly understood the question. That was another thing that unfortunately happened a lot with Linda: she didn’t understand perfectly easy questions.
“I mean if you could only have one of us. Me or Pete. You could have me, and I’d still be your best friend and the best at almost everything, or you could have Pete, who’s just a stupid old baby who can’t do handstands or walk on walls or stop people being mean to you at school.”
“I said. Pete.”
“But I’m your best friend.”
“He’s my brother.”
Something cold slithered down inside me, like winter water running down the inside of a drainpipe. I quite wanted to go home, but I knew if I left there was no chance I would get another piece of birthday cake. It wasn’t a risk worth taking. Sunday meant no school, and that meant no school dinner.
“I think you should probably try to love Pete a bit less,” I said.
“Why?” asked Linda.
“Make it easier for you when he’s not here anymore,” I said.
“Why’s he not going to be here anymore?” she asked.
“Might get lost or dead.”
“That won’t happen. We take too much care of him.”
“Yeah. Exactly. You do. Going to make it really sad for you when he dies.”
“What’ll you wish for on your birthday?” she asked, scratching a bug bite on her leg.
“Mine’s not for ages,” I said. I wiped my finger around my plate to pick up the last cake crumbs. If my birthday had been right then, right that second, I would have wished that Linda would give me the rest of her piece of cake.
“But what’ll you wish for when it is?” she asked.
“Don’t know,” I said. “Probably just to be able to fly or have an ice cream van. Something like that.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Those are good wishes.”
It wasn’t true. I would wish Mam and Da fought about me when I was in bed at night.
A few weeks after Linda’s birthday it was half term, and she went to the seaside to visit her nana. The day she came back I sat on her doorstep from very early in the morning, and when I saw her car coming down the road I stood up and waved. She opened the car door, shouted, “Chrissie!” and ran up the path to stand next to me. She smelled different to usual, less like laundry and more like an old woman’s house, but that did make sense, because her nana was an old woman and she had been staying in her house. I didn’t mind the different smell. It had felt funny her being away, like a bit of me had been missing. Not a big bit. Just like a finger or thumb. I had still missed it.
• • •
Chrissie,” said Linda’s mammy, coming up the path. “Would have been nice to have had a bit of time to unpack and get settled before we had any visitors.” She unlocked the door and carried Pete inside.
“Too bad I’m already here, then,” I said, following her.
When me and Linda had had a biscuit and some orange squash, we went upstairs and lay on her bedroom floor with her sea glass collection spread all around us. Whenever Linda went to her nana’s she came home with clatters of fresh sea glass, and we sorted it by color into jars under her bed. I always snuck some for myself while we were sorting, as much as I could stuff in my pockets without making clinking sounds when I walked. I didn’t have much of a place to put sea glass that day, because
