Moon Pie by Simon Mason

spoke their minds about Dad, who had forgotten Sunday lunch even though he had been reminded several times.
    ‘I know, I’m sorry,’ he said, again. His high spirits had vanished. He looked ashamed.
    ‘At one o’clock we telephoned,’ Grandma said. ‘There was no answer, of course. When it got to two o’clock we came round and naturally you weren’t in. The beef’s ruined,’ she said. ‘We shall have to make do with salad.’
    ‘Salad for Sunday lunch,’ Grandpa said. ‘Wouldn’t be my choice.’
    ‘It’s the thoughtlessness that makes me cross,’Grandma went on. ‘Though why I should expect anything else I don’t know. Anyway, we shall have salad, and then we shall have our little talk. You haven’t forgotten about that, I hope.’
    Dad didn’t say anything. Grandma and Grandpa walked ahead, and Dad walked behind on his own, and Martha and Tug walked at the back, holding hands.
    ‘What’s she saying, Martha?’ Tug whispered.
    Martha whispered back, ‘Dad forgot about us going to Grandma’s for lunch.’
    ‘So will he have to talk to her?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Will I have to talk to her?’
    ‘Only a bit.’
    They went down the street, and along the side of the park until they came to the road where Grandma and Grandpa lived. The houses in the road were all quite big, like Grandma’s. They had front gardens and garages. Some gardens had rockeries with little waterfalls, and some had miniature windmills painted red or brown.
    ‘Martha?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Will there be those glass things?’
    ‘You know there will. Grandma collects them.’
    ‘I don’t like them. They break when you touch them.’
    ‘You’re not to touch them. Grandma will be cross. If you touch them she’ll talk to you.’
    He began to sniff. ‘I don’t like Grandma talking to me,’ he said.
    ‘Shh, Tug.’
    They walked on.
    ‘I don’t like salad either,’ he added quietly.
    They had their salad at the big table in the dining room. Along one side of the room was a large window looking out onto an immaculate lawn, and along the other was a sideboard covered with glass ornaments. These were the Swarovski crystal figurines that Grandma collected – glass teddy bears holding up glass love-hearts, and glass koala bears playing glass cellos, and dozens of tiny kittens and rocking horses, and two huge kingfishers perching on a glass branch, and, worst of all, a row of five tall glass flamingos coloured pink with elegant breakable necks.
    ‘You aren’t eating your salad, Christopher,’ Grandma said. Christopher was Tug’s proper name.
    He carried on staring at his plate until Marthanudged him, and then he turned to her in surprise. ‘I didn’t do anything,’ he said in an injured voice.
    ‘Christopher,’ Grandma said. ‘Salad.’
    ‘He doesn’t like salad,’ Dad said.
    ‘It’s not a question of him liking it. It’s good for him.’
    ‘Does he look unhealthy to you?’
    ‘Looks,’ Grandpa said, ‘can deceive.’
    Dad made a noise, and they all fell silent again.
    After salad they had fruit salad.
    ‘And now,’ Grandma said to Dad, ‘it’s time for us to talk. I suggest the children play in the garden. Martha,’ she said. ‘You’re a sensible girl. Please make sure Christopher doesn’t climb any of the trees, or go on the rockery, or in the greenhouse. And of course neither of you should go near the water feature.’
    The garden was very neat, sloping down from the house past the rockery towards a line of fir trees, where the greenhouse was. Flowerbeds and ornamental trees bordered the lawn, and in the middle of the grass was a tiny fountain. Martha and Tug sat together on the lawn as far away from everything else as possible.
    ‘Martha, I’m hungry.’
    ‘How can you be hungry? You’ve had two lunches.’
    ‘It’s the salad. It’s made me hungry again. Salad does that.’
    Searching through her pockets, she found the biscuits that she had saved from the swimming pool café and gave them to