my crush harry styles:)

~chapter 4~

~chapter 4~

mum found jack your step dad on one of those Internet sites where friends from hundreds of years ago hook up and catch up on what they've been up to. faceboook it was. She was an old friend from his cooking school days - the days before dad, before me.

mum had big ideas, back then. she wanted to change the world, bake different kind of deserts, chocolates .be different to other. that everyone would love to eat.

And jack your step dad ... he'd studied graphic design. he was divorced and living in homes chapel, running his own house as a half cafe and bakery.

Pretty soon, mum and jack were chatting the whole time, remembering the old days. mum was glued to her laptop every evening, flirting and messaging and falling in love.

jack had brown hair, but more importantly he looked kind, as if he laughed a lot. he looked like a dad material.

'I like him' I told mum, and she grinned and said she liked him too. The two of them started meeting up for mushy weekends, sharing hopes and dreams, making plans for the future. I would stay at my friends in the flat next door, wishing, hoping, praying things would all work out.

'Have you ever wondered if there could be more to life than this?' mum asked, one evening, looking around the dingy house. 'If you're letting life pass you by?'

I frowned. 'Not really,' I replied.

But things were changing, even though I didn't know it.

jack came to australia and the three of us went out on a date, to the park, to the museum, to a restaurant. mum bought a new outfit. I thought she looked great, my smiley, lovely gorgeous mum, i wished i looked like her.

he laughed a lot. The three of us stayed up past midnight, squashed on to the sofa drinking mocktails jack had invented out of things like peach juice and Irn-Bru and pineapple slices. The next day, at the railway station, he hugged me tight, told me to look after nicole my mum and said that he'd miss me, and I was so happy I felt like I could fly.

So what if mum was in love?.

'How would you feel,' mum had asked carefully, 'about leaving australia? Going down to England to live with jack? We could help him run the bakery and actually get this bakery business off the ground. And ... (y/n) we could be a proper family again ...'

How would I feel? Like all my Christmases and birthdays had been rolled into one.

Only now it's actually happening, I'm not so sure.

What if it doesn't work out the way I've imagined? What if playing happy families is a whole lot harder than it looks?

It doesn't take long to pack the house up . The stack of boxes and bin bags by the door gets bigger and bigger. Towards the end of the week, the old lady from next door comes round, armed with furniture polish and dusters and a mop and a bucket filled to the brim with soapy water. She puts us to work dusting and polishing and mopping the flat, from top to bottom.

'I'll miss you, you know,' she tells us gruffly, as mum scrubs, scours and bleaches the sink and I polish the taps to a high gleam. 'You were never any trouble, as neighbours.'

'We'll miss you too,,' mum says.

We have been up since six, loading the van, struggling up and down the tenement stairs and out into the lashing rain. Every box, every suitcase and bin bag, is shoe-horned in.

We abandon the brown corduroy sofa, post the keys through the letterbox for the landlord, and by nine o'clock we are on our way.

'I won't miss the rain,' mum says, trying to be chirpy.

But I think it's raining because we are leaving, because it's the end of something, and the city is sad to see us go.

By eleven, we have covered more than a hundred miles and it is still chucking down. The downpour is starting to feel less like a sad farewell and more like a really, really bad omen. What if this whole move south and find-a-new-family adventure turns out to be a disaster?

I huddle in the passenger seat, holding fluffy i couldnt leave her behind now could i?, the box of treasures at my feet. My cheek rests against the window, and outside the rain slides down the glass like tears.

'This summer ... we'll try to see it as a trial,' mum is saying. 'See whether we can make things work. I think we can, but I want you to know that you come first, whatever happens. If you're not happy ... if you don't settle ... well, we will think again. You're still my number-one (y/n) You know that.'

'I know,' I say softly, but I'm not sure if I do any more, or how long that might last.

jack is cool. he laughs a lot, but ... there is one tiny problem. jack doesn't need a new family because he already has one ... four bright, beautiful daughters.

I stare out of the window as the little van heads south, leaving australia- and life as I know it - behind.

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