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been looking forward to it for SO long but now everything’s AWFUL and RUINED. Firstly it was school . . . I didn’t see Sam Edwards but some year ten girls
giggled and pointed when I walked past and I wondered if it had got out that he liked me. Which would be bad OBVIOUSLY because I’m, like, two years below Sam and if his friends laugh at him
it might put him off seeing me. So that’s not a ruined thing yet, but with my luck I expect it will be and I kept hoping I’d bump into Sam but I didn’t and then I had to come home
cos Mum was picking me up early after school to go to tea at Craven’s which we always do on family birthdays except we didn’t for Dad’s in April and Dad wasn’t there for
Lish’s in May and so everything is different and THAT tradition is gone so I don’t know why Mum still wants to do it.
    Anyway, Lishy wasn’t there because he’s away at uni and I know Mum was sad about that. Then Daddy was supposed to come around in the evening to have dinner and
cake with us and Mum was getting it ready for an hour and then he was late. Not that much late, just half an hour, and I wasn’t worried because he always comes when he says and he’s
often late if it’s after work and this was Friday when he’s ALWAYS at his latest and I was watching an old Gossip Girl anyway. But Mum was angry. You could tell because she did that
slitty thing with her eyes and her mouth when he arrived and she didn’t smile AT ALL which I noticed because she had put lipstick on and her arms were folded and first off Daddy didn’t
see and he gave me a hug and my present which was a mini iPad which was OBVIOUSLY AMAZING. And Mum muttered something about ‘buying her affection with gifts’ and Daddy turned to look at
her properly and saw she was angry and I was praying and praying he’d just smile and say let’s have dinner and cake but instead he asked what her problem was and Mum exploded that he
shouldn’t keep me waiting, ESPECIALLY on my birthday, and Daddy said he hadn’t been that late and it wasn’t a fixed time and we weren’t eating until eight anyway and he was
sure I couldn’t have been as upset as Mum said because I was thirteen now, not three. And then he looked at me and said ‘are you, Dee Dee?’ and Mum was looking at me too and I
knew she wanted me to say I WAS upset. And I wasn’t, but I didn’t want her to be angry so I said nothing. Then Daddy got cross and he stood up. And suddenly they were shouting at each
other. Which they haven’t done the last three times and which I was hoping was over. And Mum was all red-faced and yelling he was a loser and put his whore before his family and Daddy was
spitting tiny bits out of his mouth and YELLING ‘Emily isn’t a whore, how dare you say that, why are you shouting in front of Dee Dee, now she WILL get upset.’ Which was true, but
again, I didn’t want to show them so I just went out of the room and went upstairs and got under the duvet and next thing the front door slams and Mum says ‘bastard’ and I could
hear her coming up the stairs so I pretended to be asleep under the duvet which OBVIOUSLY wasn’t going to fool Mum.
    She sat down beside me and pulled back the covers and said she was sorry but she meant sorry Daddy was a bastard, not sorry that she’d got angry with him. And I thought that but I
didn’t say it. Then she asked if I was okay and I could hear in her voice she really, REALLY wanted me to be okay so I said that I was and we went downstairs and she asked about my day and I
said it had been cool at school (which wasn’t true because of the year ten girls and not seeing Sam though at least Ava and Poppy who sometimes leave me out of things wanted to sit next to me
in the canteen because it was my birthday). And after that Mum cheered up a bit and she and I ate the dinner and had the cake which was like a gigantic cupcake with thirteen candles and I blew them
all out in one breath and I told Mum I