1
Meet the Family
My mum is a witch. I know this to be a fact, as does my little sister Lois, though Lois just takes everything in her stride as she’s only five. If you told her Mum was a member of MI5 she’d just shrug nonchalantly and ask for another digestive biscuit.
The reason I know my mum is a witch is because:
a) She has a broomstick by the front door.
I remember asking her whether she was able to fly it, and she just laughed and ruffled my hair, saying, “What do you think?”
I think I wouldn’t have asked her if I knew the answer to that. The truth is I've never seen her fly on it, but I’ve never seen Edith (my cousin) do a backwards roll, and yet she’s got badges in Gymnastics, so I guess anything is possible.
b) She does spells sometimes.
She does the spells in “Dad’s office” (the box room next to the garage that Mum wanted to be a downstairs loo), and he gets furious as he’s forever having to vacuum up her tiny pieces of glitter or snippets of paper. I don’t exactly know what her spells do, but I know they are good spells and lots of people are always asking my mum to help them if they are sad or want to find a new boyfriend. Mum often makes us all go out and collect weird stuff that she needs for them, like oak leaves or elderberries.
c) There are four other witches who sort of “live” with us that me, Mum, and Lois see, but no one else seems to, including my dad.
Ever since I can remember, Mr Foggerty has been coming and going from our house. He is a very tall untidy-looking man with lots of wiry grey hair that is very frizzy. He has huge feet and smells funny, a bit like the chaise longue in Miss Ulwin’s office (our headmistress). He doesn’t have much time for children and is always in a desperate hurry.
Now I know he “lives” with us because if I ask Mum where Mr Foggerty is, she always says, “He’s in his room.” Yet we live in a modest three-bedroom house. My room, Lois’, and my parents’. There ARE no other bedrooms, so where is he hiding?
I know Dad never sees him. Dad likes to vet all our house guests after Mum put up her friend’s friend for one night and he was sick all over the bathroom floor. So, I know Dad would have something to say about Mr Foggerty. Well, he would smell him first.
We have an unspoken rule never to talk about any of our visitors when Dad is around, and funnily enough they never seem to come and go when Dad is here.
Mr Foggerty isn’t the only one. We have Frances and Phyllis, the two elderly “Aunts” who always seem to be together, finishing each other’s sentences. (They aren’t really our aunts, but we refer to them as this.) Frances loves to watch me dance; she tries to copy it, her short pudgy frame swaying and shimmering like a fabulous glitter ball. She is as short and fat as Phyllis is tall and thin. They look like they should be a comedy act on Britain’s Got Talent, except I’m not sure they have any talent. Phyllis likes to sing. Badly. You can often hear her before you see her, and this always indicates what sort of mood she is in. “One Banana, Two Banana, Three Banana, Four” for a good mood, but beware if you hear “How Much Is That Doggy in the Window?”.
Then there is Uncle Vic, a small stout man with crossed eyes so you never quite know where to look. I had to clamp my hands over Lois’ mouth when she first saw him as she shouted out, “Rosie, that man’s got his eyes the wrong way round.”
These are four people who we just accept as part of our “family”. We don’t really question their comings and goings. It is just normal to us, or it was, until THINGS STARTED HAPPENING.
2
Mum and Dad
Before I tell you about the things that happened, let me give you a bit more of an idea of my life.
As well as our mum being a “witch” she was also an actress, mostly out of work though. Dad used to joke about it and say there was enough drama in his job (he worked behind the scenes in the theatre) without Mum having any too. I think he said this to try and make her feel better when she wasn’t working.
Mum gets quite sad about not getting much work. She says that her talent is wasted and she should be in Hollywood doing films. This year Mum has had only a couple of jobs. One was wearing a chicken costume to promote a supermarket’s new “Hot ’n’ Spicy” chicken nuggets range but the costume got muddled in the factory and she ended up with the head of a parrot. For the other, she had to dress up as Elsa from Frozen for a children’s party at Jungle Jaunts, a kids’ indoor-play area. That one didn’t go so well, as they didn’t tell Mum that she was supposed to be able to sing. If I tell you she’s not quite as good as Phyllis, you’ll know how badly that job went. I don’t think either of those things have made her feel like an actress. It’s a bit like selling lots of chocolate and not being able to eat any yourself.
Mum is always having lots of ideas about how she could get more acting work. But mostly she writes lots of letters to famous directors.
No one has replied.
Yet.
Mum can’t really understand it because, years ago, she met an actress at a radio-play recording. This lady was a BIG NAME in the 70s and 80s, and she told Mum that the key to success in “the business” was having a man’s name as your first name and surname.
Famous people who have this:
Ray Charles (singer)
Bob Dylan (singer/songwriter/poet)
Terry Scott (actor)
Jamie Lee Curtis (actress)
Mum was very impressed with this piece of advice. She was halfway there with her first name, Rae (spelt Ray for a man), and so she just made up a surname and became Rae Anthony.
It all sounds highly illegal to me, but apparently if you are an actor you can call yourself ANYTHING! Imagine that? Even so, I still don’t want to be an actor. Personally, I think that’s WHY Mum doesn’t get much work, people don’t know if a man or a woman’s going to turn up. I prefer it when Mum is known as her family name, i.e., the same surname as us, Rae Pellow.
Dad doesn’t seem to be that happy with what he is doing either. I think he might be a bit sad, and he can be quite grumpy, too. He’s always moaning about the awful train journey to work and how his “to do” list keeps getting longer.
I notice when Dad’s sad and when he’s happy. When he’s happy, he laughs and jokes and really looks at us when he talks to us. He has this greeny-blue light that sparkles and fizzes all around him. When he’s sad, he has this grey mist that circles his entire body and finishes with a little tiny cloud above his head. Sometimes I even see rain coming down from the cloud, but the funny thing is his hair never seems to get wet. His eyes look dark and tired, and he sort of seems to walk slower. He bats Mum away when she tries to cuddle him, and then her purply colour around her seems to dull and shrink.
I’ve always been able to see colours around people. I thought everyone could until I asked Lois what colours she saw around me and she wrinkled up her face and said, “If I say pink can I have a biscuit?” I haven’t ever told anyone, even though I think my mum would understand. I’m scared if I tell her then it might go away.