Broken Soup by Jenny Valentine Page A

speak. I could hear Stroma ferreting around in the coats and then she was in the hallway shouting, “And me! And me!”
    Dad was coming out of the room behind me. He said, “Rowan, you don’t have to—” And then he stopped dead in his tracks and stared at Harper. “Who’s this?” he said, and he sounded scared or angry or both, I couldn’t tell.
    I looked at Harper and for a second I saw what Dad could see—this tall, skinny, scruffy guy with a shaved head and a broken smile. I saw Trouble.
    Trouble held out his hand, smiled his best smile, and said, “Hello, Mr. Clark. I’m Harper Greene.”
    Dad wasn’t sure what to do. He shifted a little on his feet and cleared his throat. He didn’t smile when they shook hands. Stroma and I looked at each other.
    â€œAre you taking us to Sainsbury’s?” Stroma asked, flaunting her bandage to be sure Harper saw it, stroking it like a little mouse.
    He wavered for less than an instant. “Yes, yes I am.”
    Dad said, “Are you the one with the van?”
    â€œAmbulance,” Harper said. The smile was still glued on his face.
    Dad looked at me and back at Harper. He told Stroma she wasn’t going, and she turned away from him and made a face, but there wasn’t a lot she could do about it. He said, “We’re going out now anyway, Stroma. That’s why I’m here, remember?”
    Then he said to Mum, “Is this friend of hers OK, then? Have you met him?”
    I counted to ten and I could picture Mum looking at Dad like she barely knew who he was, never mind what he was talking about. God, I thought. Anything could happen.
    â€œI’m just helping Mum out,” I called from the hallway. “She’s worn out. She does everything around here.”
    Mum came out of the room and she looked pretty normal with her hair brushed and clean clothes on and everything. Dad was behind her. “You’re a good girl, Rowan,” she said. And then to my dad, “It’s fine.”
    â€œCome straight back,” he said. “Phone me when you do.”
    I could have kissed Mum. Except that would have given the game away because she wouldn’t have taken it well.
    Harper and I walked to the van. We drove past Stroma and Dad holding hands, on their way to the playground. Harper wound down the window and asked Stroma if she got in a fight with a shark.
    â€œNo,” she said. “A smoothie.”
    He watched them disappear in his rearview mirror and laughed.
    â€œCan you believe my mum?” I said. “She hasn’t said anything nice to me for months. She hasn’t actually said much at all.”
    â€œLike you say”—Harper smiled at me—“she’s in there somewhere.”
    â€œYep. So nice to get a glimpse.”
    I said he really didn’t have to take me shopping and he told me not to say another word and how long would it take, anyway? When we stopped in the underground parking lot, I handed him my postcard.
    â€œWhat’s this?” he said, turning it over, scanning Jack’s handwriting, reading his name. He looked at me and then again at the picture.
    â€œBee’s got one,” I said quietly. “I saw it. Exactly the same.”
    â€œFrom Jack?” Harper said, and I said I didn’t know, I hadn’t seen the back of it, but what were the odds?
    â€œHave you spoken to her?” He turned around in his chair to face me. I shook my head. “You have to ask.”
    â€œShe can’t have known him. That would be too weird. She’d have said something. She’d have told me.”
    â€œYou’d think,” he said, reading the postcard, putting it back in my bag.
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    Sainsbury’s was too orange and shiny and loud and full. I felt like we were playing at being grown-ups. I felt uncomfortable. Harper kept trying to put things in the cart for Stroma—gingerbread people and