There's Something About Alex.

Summer Holiday

A summer holiday normally constitutes a family travelling to somewhere warm and sunny, spending hours lounging by the sea and feeling the warmth of the golden sand trickling between their fingertips. Then, after a week or even two if they're lucky, they'll make their way back to normality - the dreary, rainy days of routine life.

I guess you could say my family isn't normal.

This year, instead of making the surprise announcement that we would be spending summer somewhere really cool like Disneyland, or flying on a plane to somewhere exotic far far away, he instead decided that a fun summer activity would be to change where we live. And I don't just mean moving house - oh no, that would be nowhere near extravagant enough for my dear father - I mean moving to the other side of the country!!
The journey to our new place was so long that we may as well have travelled to another planet!
Okay, maybe that was a slight exaggeration, but seven hours in a tiny, hot car with your older sister crying because she doesn't have enough signal to text her new boyfriend, your baby sister crying for no reason, and your dad ignoring the fact that all three of his daughters are crying and instead focusing on belting out opera songs instead certainly feels longer than it should!!

In my defence, I was actually only slightly teary-eyed, but for a very valid reason; my whole life was spent in our little house by the sea, and now it was just being taken away from me! It was fine for my sisters- Crystal had moved house twice already, before I was born, so she was used to it, and Lily couldn't even talk yet, let alone understand what was happening!

Dad calls this new house a 'fresh start' but Crystal says he's 'in denial' and wants to 'keep the past in the past'. Basically, what she means is that Dad wants to forget all about the fact that his wife, our mum, cheated on him with another lady. She's also now in prison. Pretty brutal on him, I know. He wants to pretend she never existed, but surely he'll be reminded of her every time he looks at one of his daughters. After all, she did help him to make us...

If our mum was with us now, we would certainly not be travelling to live on the other side of the country! She always knew how to keep Dad under control. Especially when he came up with crazy ideas like this one! I just wish I knew what was going through his mind!

But, until I figure that out, I start my new school next Monday.