Chocolate Box Girls: Sweet Honey by Cathy Cassidy

here.’
    ‘It’ll be on
Watch-Again
, afterwards,’ Mum says. ‘Ask Greg to let you
     watch on his laptop. You can’t miss your own TV debut!’
    ‘I won’t,’ I promise.
     ‘Remember those funny Edwardian costumes we had to wear?’
    ‘I’m going through a
     Victorian phase just now,’ Skye tells me, leaning in to show me her new hat, a
     little blue velvet number with a CND badge pinned to the side. ‘I found a
     stash of old lace petticoats in the Oxfam shop in Minehead – how cool? I’m
     wearing them to school and the teachers haven’t said
     anything …’
    ‘I bet you look great,’ I
     tell her. ‘Have you seen my uniform? It’s a crime against
     humanity!’
    I take the freshly washed and ironed
     tent dress and hideous yellow neckerchief down from their coat-hanger, holding them
     up against me, doing a wiggle for the webcam. Skye and Summer recoil, pretending to
     make themselves sick.
    ‘But … I thought the
     school was non-uniform?’ Mum asks, confused, and too late I realize I’ve
     put my foot in it big style.
    ‘Um … they’ve had
     a radical change of policy,’ I say, thinking quickly. ‘Brought back
     uniform, so that everyone is … equal. Just my luck, huh?’
    Mum frowns. ‘How strange! It just
     seems such a turnaround for them, against their whole free expression
     ethos …’
    Miraculously, Coco chooses that exact
     moment to elbow her way in front of the screen with her pet sheep Humbug in her
     arms, and Mum’s words are lost in the resulting chaos. Summer lifts Fred the
     dog up so I can see him and even Cherry and Paddy appear, crowding in at the edges
     of my screen, waving.
    Suddenly my bedroom door swings open and
     Dad stands there in his PJs, arms folded, face stern. Oops. Busted.
    ‘I have to go,’ I say
     abruptly. ‘Look, I’ll Skype again soon, promise.’
    ‘Hang on!’ Skye is saying.
     ‘There’s loads I wanted to say. You can’t go yet!’
    ‘Wait!’ Coco screeches.
     ‘I was going to bring Caramel in to say hello –’
    The call disintegrates as Mum tells Coco
     she can’t bring a pony into the kitchen, and the screen is a mess of leaping
     dogs and sheep and sisters, everything pixellated and blurry. I cut the call
     abruptly.
    ‘Honey?’ Dad says calmly.
     ‘What’s going on?’
    ‘I was awake,’ I bluster.
     ‘Talking to my sisters on SpiderWeb. And I just thought I’d Skype. I
     didn’t think you’d mind …’
    Dad closes the lid of his laptop
     firmly.
    ‘Of course you can Skype your
     sisters,’ he says. ‘That’s not an issue. But not in the middle of
     the night, when Emma and I have work tomorrow, and you have school.’
    He shakes his head. ‘You need to
     think before you act, consider how your actions might affect others. Your chatter
     woke me up, and I need to be fresh for work because I have a very busy day ahead.
     And you’ve taken my laptop without permission, which really isn’t on.
     What happened to the new start, Honey?’
    I try to answer, but without warning my
     throat tightens and my eyes brim with tears. Letting Dad down is the last thing I
     wanted. I want him to see the best in me, not the worst; I want him to see how
     similar we are.
    ‘Sorry,’ I whisper.
     ‘I’ll try harder, I promise.’
    Dad sighs. ‘Look, you know how I
     feel about this now,’ he says. ‘Let’s leave it at that, start
     over. I can see that you need to talk to your sisters now and then … and I
     imagine a laptop might be useful for schoolwork too. I expect you could do with one
     of your own.’
    I blink. Is Dad offering to buy me my
     own laptop?
    ‘C’mon, Princess,’ he
     says gruffly, putting an arm round my shoulders. ‘No more tears – you’re
     a tough cookie. Now, let’s both grab some sleep before those darned alarms go
     off, right?’
    ‘R-right,’ I agree.
    I dredge up a wobbly smile.
    Seriously, even when he’s angry,
     my dad is pretty awesome.
     

     

 
    Coco