Becky Bananas by Jean Ure Read Free Book Online Page A

don’t want to make long journeys.

    I don’t think he’d fly over specially. I shouldn’t think he would. Not just for me. He sends me a present at Christmas and on my birthday, the same as he does Danny, but we don’t ever see him. He’s married to an American lady and they have a baby of their own called Emerald.
    I think it must be sad for Danny, knowing his dad has another baby that he loves more than he loves him. If he didn’t love her more, he’d come to England and visit us. He does speak sometimes on the phone, but it isn’t the same. Sometimes the line is crackly and oncewe heard Emerald bawling in the background. And Danny is always tongue-tied and never knows what to say.
    Maybe Mum will get married again. Actresses often do.
    It was ever so posh, when she got married to Alan. “A really glitzy do” is what Uncle Eddy called it. Not like when Mum married my dad, when they didn’t have any money and just went up the road to the local registry office.
    Mum and Alan also got married in a registry office, because of both of them having been married before and not being allowed to do it in church, but their registry office was a smart one, in Kensington. We all got dressed up in our best clothes. I had a special new dress made, orange and rose-pink, with a bunch of flowers to carry and confetti to throw. And loads of photographers came to take photographs for the papers because now that Mum was in
Ask Auntie
she was famous.
    It was very strange at first, Mum being famous. It meant that everyone knew who she was and recognised her in the street so we couldn’t go anywhere without people coming up and asking her for her autograph.
    Sometimes it was really funny, like when we wereshopping in Safeway and this woman came rushing across the store and peered up at Mum and shouted, “It’s her! It is!” and this other woman that had been waiting immediately came flying over and asked Mum if she’d mind her looking in our trolley. She said, “I like to know what the stars are buying.”
    Mum and I giggled over that. For ages afterwards, whenever any of her friends came round, Mum used to act it out for them. She’d make me be her, pushing the trolley, and she’d be the two women. Everyone always went into shrieks of laughter.
    But later on, when Mum and Alan decided they didn’t love each other any more, it was horrible. There were all these headlines in the papers.

    And then underneath they went on about how Mum and Alan weren’t going to live together any more. They seemed to think it was amusing. Just because Mum played the part of an agony aunt on the telly.
    I can see now why they call them agony aunts. When people write them letters all about their problems, I expect they probably are in agony. Especially if they are quite well known and everyone recognises them and they are being written about in the newspapers. It isn’t very nice having to go into school and knowing that everyone knows all about what is happening in your life.
    Elinor Hodges was ever so nasty about it. She said she thought it was disgusting the way people in television kept getting married and divorced all the time. She said she thought they were immoral and that marriage should be for ever.
    It made me really upset, Elinor Hodges saying my mum was immoral. Sarah told me not to take any notice of her. She said, “Her mum and dad are religious nuts.”
    It is true that Elinor’s parents are rather peculiar. They won’t ever let her act in school plays and she always has to wear a scarf over her head, even though she is not a Muslim, but I think I sort of agree with her, just a little bit, about marriage being for ever.
    I know people can’t help falling out of love, any more than they can help falling in love. At least, I suppose they can’t. It is difficult to be certain when Ihave never actually been in love myself, though I cannot imagine Darcey, for instance, ever not being my favourite dancer or Sarah not being my best