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      Needless to say, the Afterthought didn’t agree with me; she always took Dad’s side. But I really didn’t see what excuses could be made for him this time. Mum had been scrimping and saving for months to buy herself a new cooker. She had been ever so looking forward to it! It was really mean of Dad to go and gamble all the money away at the race track. I said this to the Afterthought, but she just said that it wasn’t Dad’s fault if his horse had come in last, and that if Mum didn’t want him to spend the money why didn’t she keep it in a separate account? I said, “Because they’re married. Being married is about sharing.” The Afterthought said in that case, Mum oughtn’t to complain.

      “Dad was only trying to make some money for us!”

      I said, “He never makes money at the races.”

      “He does, too!” said the Afterthought. “What about that time he took us all out to dinner at that posh place and got champagne?”

      “Once,” I said. “He did it once. And anyway, Mum didn’t want champagne.”

      “No, she wanted something boring, like a new cooker,” said the Afterthought.

      I have to admit that a new cooker would not come high on my list of priorities, but we are all different, and if Mum wanted a cooker I thought she ought to be allowed to have one. As she pointed out to Dad just before she threw the frying pan, she was the one who did all the cooking.

      “You never lift a finger!”

      “Why should he?” whined the Afterthought, when we were talking about it later. “Cooking’s a woman’s job!”

      She doesn’t really think that; she was only saying it to stick up for Dad. She was the most terrible daddy’s girl.

      Dad always hated it when Mum got mad at him. He would rush out and do these awful things that upset her, then grow all crestfallen and sorry for himself. That used to make Mum madder than ever! But somehow or other Dad always managed to get round her. He always promised that he wouldn’t ever do it again. And Mum always believed him … until that day when he gambled away the money for her new cooker. That was what made her finally crack. She really blew her top!

      “How am I expected to provide for a family of four on this clapped-out piece of junk?” screamed Mum.

      I remember we all turned to look at the piece of junk. Half the burners had rotted away; one didn’t work at all. The oven was unreliable. It kept burning things to crisps. Really annoying! Mum was absolutely right. But it didn’t help when Dad, with a boyish grin at me and the Afterthought, suggested that we should all live on takeaways.

      “Suit me! Wouldn’t it suit you, girls?”

      The Afterthought cried, “Yesss!”

      Mum snapped, “Don’t avoid the issue!” The issue being, I suppose, that Dad had gone and wasted all Mum’s hard-earned money on a horse named Toasted Tea Cake that hadn’t even reached the finishing point.

      “Daniel Rose, you knew I was saving up for a new cooker!” screeched Mum.

      That was when she reached for the frying pan. Dad backed away, holding his hands out in front of him.

      “You can have a new cooker! You can have one! We’ll go out tomorrow and we’ll get you one … heavens alive, woman! Haven’t you ever heard of credit?”

      That was when Mum threw the frying pan. We didn’t buy things on credit any more; not since the car and the video got repossessed. We didn’t even have a store card. Mum never did anything by halves. I guess I have to admit that she sometimes went to extremes. But it was Dad who pushed her! She’d probably have been quite normal if it hadn’t been for him.

      I don’t know whether Dad was always the way he was. I mean, like, when he and Mum first met. I think from what Mum says he was just easygoing and fun. Dad was fun! He was more fun than Mum, but then it was Mum who had to look after us and provide for us and keep things going. Dad was really a bit of a walking disaster. He liked to say he was a free spirit, by which he meant that he couldn’t be tied down to a regular job the same as other people, which meant he sometimes earned money but more often didn’t, which meant it was all left to Mum, which was why she got so mad when he did some of the things that he did. Not just losing money on what he called “the gee-gees”, but suddenly taking it into his head to go out and buy stuff that Mum said we couldn’t afford and didn’t need. Like, for instance, the time he came home with a camcorder. The camcorder was brilliant! Me and the Afterthought both sulked like crazy when it had to go back. And then there was the trampoline. That was pretty good, too! At least, it would have been if we’d had anywhere to put it. We tried it in the garden but our garden is about the size of a tea tray and the Afterthought bounced too high and fell into a prickly bush and screamed the place down. Mum said she could have poked an eye out, so that was the end of the trampoline.

      These are just a few of the other things I remember Dad buying:

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