Grinning crookedly, the hollow head casts flickering shadows around the room. Step-Dad left it too late for a pumpkin like all the other kids. The turnip grimaces at Libby from the centre of the table while the cheap bunting flutters overhead.
Stepsister’s friends have devoured the Limited Edition Mini Rolls and pigs in blankets. Libby asks Stepsister if she can reach her a Jammy Dodger. Stepsister shoulder-barges past her, snatches the last one, and crams it into a mouth smeared with sticky purple lipgloss.
Libby is six today and she is sharing her birthday party.
Mum pretends not to see. This will be the year Libby starts calling her ‘Actual Mum’. Real Dad has remarried. Step-Mum is stuck up, with limp hair and a lipless smile. She doesn’t like it when crayons aren’t put away before Play-Doh comes out.
Step-Dad is laughing loudly with his friends. Actual Mum passes Step-Dad another lager, then opens one herself. Actual Mum never used to do that when she was with Real Dad. She was too busy making sure he didn’t drink too much. Sky TV is blaring loudly in the sitting room; Stepsister always has the music channels on when she gets in from school. Sometimes she brings her friends round and they smoke Actual Mum’s cigarettes. Actual Mum doesn’t notice when they go missing anymore.
Libby stays in her room when they do this because it makes her cough. One time, Stepsister’s Best Friend burned her arm with the cigarette. Libby screamed and cried and Stepsister slapped her face, pinned her against the wall.
‘You tell anyone she did that and you’re dead, hear me? Dead.’
The Best Friend narrows her eyes at Libby as the others flail around to Katy Perry. Libby watches as she slides Actual Mum’s china angel figurine into her sequinned bag.
Step-Dad is watching Libby hover in the doorway and he shakes his head. He gestures with his lager can and his friends nod. Actual Mum joins in. She never used to do that.
‘Takes after your ex, she does. Always moping about. It’s not normal, love. Not in a little kid.’
Libby unconsciously rubs the place on her arm where bruises are fading and Step-Dad flinches.
Libby hurries into the kitchen, hoping there might be some food left. Actual Mum has left a jar of pickled onions out. The vinegar has sloshed onto the benches, all over a block of cheese. Libby reaches up and wipes the cheese down on her birthday present from Actual Mum and Step-Dad, a glittery black dress. It was Stepsister’s Halloween costume last year and is still two sizes too big for her. She breaks off a lump of cheese and eats it hungrily.
That’s when she notices the cake packaging poking out of the bin. The flickering shadows from the grimacing turnip Jack O’Lantern illuminate the shiny ‘6’ on the side. Actual Mum had thrown the birthday cake out because Libby didn’t want Stepsister to blow out her candles.
She checks over her shoulder but the party is in full swing in the sitting room. She tiptoes to the bin, opens the lid, and pulls her birthday cake out. She sets it on the floor and scoops handfuls, cramming it in before Actual Mum and Step-Dad run out of beer.
Except it’s not them who catch her. It’s Mobile Hairdresser. She stands staring at Libby, her mouth open, her long red fingernails clutching her empty can of lager.
Actual Mum comes to see what’s taking so long and Libby is too hungry and tired and frightened and sad to coordinate her response. She just sits there. Actual Mum pushes past Mobile Hairdresser and smiles that tight, fake smile she did when Libby told her teacher that Stepsister had just pushed her playfully off the garden wall and everyone at home had laughed.
‘You know what sisters are like, always playing games!’
Libby knows she’ll spend the next night and day in her bedroom so she keeps hold of a handful of cake. The Jack O’Lantern seems to smirk as she’s dragged past it, and Libby feels that she’s been tricked.
Once she’s upstairs, she lifts the loose plank in the corner of her bedroom and listens.
‘She’s already had two lots of birthday cake at her dad’s today.’
‘Nah, she loves having a big sister!’
‘It’s not the first time we’ve caught her doing something like this.’
‘Well, of course they fight, but that’s just kids, isn’t it?’
‘You’d think she never got fed, she must have hollow legs!’
‘The bruises? She got those fighting with a boy at school.’
Libby feels hot and angry and the cake squashes together as she balls her fists up in rage.
She waits half an hour, counting time by the songs Stepsister is playing. All the grown-ups have had lots to drink now and hardly anyone is going to the kitchen. She pulls on two jumpers over Stepsister’s old dress and wriggles her feet into her too-small wellies.
Libby creeps downstairs and peers through the banister spindles. Actual Mum is asleep and snoring, her can lolling in her lap.
Step-Dad is on the karaoke machine singing ‘The Time Warp’ with Mobile Hairdresser.
Stepsister is listening to her new Walkman, powered by batteries she screamed for until Step-Dad took them out of the smoke alarm.
Stepsister’s best friend slides Actual Mum’s emergency tenner out of its hiding place in the Fleetwood Mac album in the CD rack, and stuffs it in her pocket.
Once in the kitchen, Libby picks up the witches’ broom Actual Mum was carrying at the start of the night. Libby nudges the bunting down from off the cupboards, and grabs hold of one flailing end.
Libby remembers the back door – she checks, sees the key in the lock.
Lifting the lid off the hideous carved turnip, Libby dangles the bunting inside. It catches fire instantly, orange flames licking and swirling through the jagged carvings Step-Dad attempted while Libby thought he might have been wrapping her birthday presents.
The Jack O’Lantern’s mouth twists and collapses as the lantern becomes a fireball. The flames flicker their way along the rest of the bunting, setting fire to some paper plates that somebody has dumped on the bench. Smoke fills the kitchen quicker than Libby thought it would, so she lifts her birthday cake back out of the bin, and walks out into the garden.
About the Author:
Frances Mulholland lives and writes in Northumberland, and is a graduate of Newcastle University’s Creative Writing MA Programme. Her work has previously been published in Mslexia, Litro, The Manchester Review, and Horla Horror, among others. Her debut chapbook, ‘Indifferent Deserts’, was published by Bottlecap Press in 2022. She teaches English at a local school, where she is also writer-in-residence.
