B irthday cake for breakfast is almost always a good thing … unless the cake is sunken and solid, with all the flavour of a wholemeal house brick. I gnaw on my slice politely, curled up on the sofa playing Pictionary with Beth and Pixie while Willow stretches out on the carpet, playing a computer game on Dad’s laptop.
If Mum was here, she’d dispose of the cake quickly and quietly and whip up something yummy, but sadly, she’s on early shift at the hospital today.
‘This looks delicious …’ Beth tells Pixie kindly, selecting the smallest possible piece. ‘You are clever!’
‘It’s easy,’ Pixie shrugs. ‘Just like making mud pies, really!’
‘Mud pies?’ Beth blinks, then slides her plate out of sight behind the sofa when she thinks nobody is looking.
‘But with stewed dates and roasted linseeds instead of mud, of course,’ Pixie reassures her. ‘Dad says they are superfoods, designed to make you glow with health. I’m glad you like it.’
‘It’s very … um … unusual,’ Beth says weakly.
My little sister takes a piece of cake and bites into it, grinning. Then her face crumples. ‘It’s all gritty!’ she howls, throwing down the cake in disgust. ‘Ugh!’
‘That’ll be the roasted linseeds,’ I sigh. ‘Never mind, Pixie. This healthy-eating kick of Dad’s is a nightmare. I wish he’d just get back to normal.’
‘Normal’ is not a word you could use about my dad, though. Not lately, anyhow. Ever since he packed in his job as a geography teacher at a local secondary school a while back, he has been acting very strangely indeed.
My big sister Becca says it is a mid-life crisis.
If you don’t know what a mid-life crisis is, then trust me, you are very, very lucky, because it is NOT a good thing. It’s actually quite sad and tragic, and deeply annoying at the same time.
Becca says that some men have a mid-life crisis when they get to about forty and realize they are getting old and grey and wrinkly, so I expect that’s what has happened to Dad. He keeps having these deeply scary ideas for making his dreams come true, which is bad news because Dad’s dreams are a bit like everyone else’s nightmares.
‘Let’s bin it,’ Pixie decides. ‘Dad will never know!’
Dad is out on his morning run, which means we are safe for a while, so I tip the remains of the yucky cake into the outside bin. I hope that this won’t affect my birthday wish coming true.
I run upstairs and knock on Becca’s bedroom door.
‘Yeah?’ she yells over the racket of clashy, trashy punk music. I step inside. Becca’s room is a twilight zone of black and red net and wall-to-wall posters of scary-looking bands. Becca is sitting on the bed, painting her fingernails black.
‘Becca …’ I say. ‘Bit of a problem. We tried to eat the cake Dad and Pixie made …’
‘Ouch,’ Becca says, rolling her eyes. She reaches under the bed and pulls out her emergency jar of instant hot chocolate, along with a bag of marshmallows. My big sister is a great believer in the healing powers of hot chocolate, and luckily she is also very good at sharing.
The two of us are in the kitchen, dropping marshmallows on to steaming mugs of hot chocolate, when the doorbell rings.
‘Surprise!’ says Murphy Malone, my best boy mate. He is standing on the doorstep carrying a plate piled high with custard doughnuts, with random birthday candles flickering in the November breeze. ‘I wasn’t sure what to get you, so I just took the easy option …’
‘It’s perfect!’ I tell him. I blow the candles out because I am not about to miss a second chance to make my wish come true and discover my star quality. Then I drag Murphy into the living room where Beth, Willow and Pixie fall on the doughnut mountain like a pack of starving wolves, with Becca and me close behind.
Custard doughnuts and hot chocolate … now that’s a birthday breakfast.
Murphy lives just over the street from me – we’ve been
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