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    Holly: Rejacketed
    Holly: Rejacketed
    Holly: Rejacketed
    Ebook132 pages1 hour

    Holly: Rejacketed

    By Mary Hooper

    3/5

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    About this ebook

    'Holly. I hope you won't mind me buying you this. I think it's the sort of thing you'll like. Am I right? And I think it matches your eyes. This comes with best wishes from (and I know it's corny). A Friend.' And that was how it all started.

    Holly starts receiving anonymous gifts at the café where she works. She can't believe it - how romantic can you get? But when Holly finds out the identity of her admirer she is in for a shock - her admirer is not a potential boyfriend: her admirer is her father. Holly has to come to terms with the fact that her father is not the man who lives at home with her, who she loves and calls her father. Her father is a man who has lived all her life on the other side of the world, not even knowing of her existence. Holly and her mother have some talking to do.

    Mary Hooper tackles this emotionally fraught situation with tenderness and compassion, yet still with her trademark pacy readability that has proved so popular with the young teen girls' market.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateJan 31, 2013
    ISBN9781408836767
    Holly: Rejacketed
    Author

    Mary Hooper

    Mary Hooper is the author of more than 60 children’s and young adult books. She has two grown children and lives with her husband Richard in Oxfordshire, England, the same area Anne Green came from.

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    3/5

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    • 4/5
      A short, gripping book with an important message for younger teens.

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    Holly - Mary Hooper

    Thanks to my friends at National Missing Persons Helpline

    Contents

    Chapter One

    Chapter Two

    Chapter Three

    Chapter Four

    Chapter Five

    Chapter Six

    Chapter Seven

    Chapter Eight

    Chapter Nine

    Chapter Ten

    Chapter Eleven

    Chapter Twelve

    Chapter Thirteen

    Chapter Fourteen

    Chapter Fifteen

    Chapter Sixteen

    Epilogue

    Also by Mary Hooper

    Chapter One

    I remember the day the first parcel arrived. I remember it because the brown paper package came with the rest of the post for the shop and then just sat on the shelf, waiting for someone to bother to take it downstairs to the office, which is next to the staffroom. And because Mrs Potter, who’s the shop manager, didn’t come in until late afternoon, it was only then that I found out it was for me. It was a dead boring day and the customers had been playing up something rotten, so I was a bit miffed – thinking that I could have had this exciting thing, this surprise parcel, to open and think and gloat about all day if only I’d known about it earlier.

    As it was, the day was dominated by – well, tiresome customers, of course, but mostly by Ella’s phone call. By midday she and I had had our lunch, which had been a sandwich from the Tempting Treats menu, and were sitting staring at the payphone in the staffroom downstairs from the shop.

    ‘Oooh-er,’ she wailed, ‘I can’t do it!’

    ‘Go on!’ I urged. ‘You must. Now that you’ve got this far.’

    ‘Oooh … what if he doesn’t want to … I mean, what if they find him and he just says he’s not interested in me?’

    ‘He will be interested!’ I said, pretending to sound certain.

    She gave a squeal and clutched at her tummy. ‘I don’t know if I can.’ She looked up at me and asked pathetically, ‘Will you phone for me?’

    I shook my head. ‘Suppose they ask me something I don’t know the answer to. Look – ’ I took her hand – ‘I’ll hold your hand. I’ll dial the number for you!’

    ‘Go on, then.’ She pushed the piece of paper towards me and I dialled the Freephone number and then gave her the receiver.

    Ella made a strangled noise sounding like ‘Help!’

    I didn’t mind all this fuss because Ella’s my best friend and anyway, it was quite exciting and something different to think about. It was the school summer holidays – we were both going back into Year 11 in September. Ella and I had temporary jobs in a big tea shop near where we live. Well, to be quite accurate, it was an Olde Tea Shoppe and a tourist trap. The town where we live is just outside London and it’s got a palace with Henry VIII connections, so it gets a million visitors a year. Or it might be two million, I forget. Anyhow, there were a lot of tourists and as they were mostly American we called them doodles – from Yankee-doodles – and loads of them came into the tea shop, and there we were dressed all Olde Englishe in long blue check dresses and big white aprons, with soppy bits of hats stuck on our heads. We felt really stupid. Or we did at first, but in the end I kind of got used to looking like a cross between a nurse and a crinoline doll. At least the uniforms were kept at work, so we could change when we got there and didn’t have to walk through the streets looking daft.

    We were both pleased to have the jobs, as we were desperate for money for clothes and stuff. It wasn’t all that brilliantly paid, but we got tips, sometimes really good ones from the Americans, who – because they were only in England for a couple of days – often didn’t bother to work out the money and just gave us whatever came to hand, which was usually a pound coin or three. We usually worked Monday to Friday, because although the shop was open at the weekends there was a regular weekend staff that worked throughout the year.

    That morning, as the phone rang on, Ella stared at me, terror written all over her face. It rang about five times, then I heard the person on the other end say, ‘Missing Persons Helpline.’

    Ella’s eyes widened, but she didn’t say anything.

    I nudged her hard. ‘Say something!’

    ‘Can I help you?’ the woman’s voice asked. It sounded quite posh, but friendly and concerned as well. As if she really did want to help.

    ‘I … want … ’ Ella began falteringly.

    I squeezed her hand encouragingly.

    ‘Yes?’ the voice asked.

    ‘I want to contact my dad,’ Ella said in a rush.

    ‘And how long has he been missing?’ I heard the voice say.

    Ella made frantic eyes at me. ‘Since I was two.’

    ‘And how old are you now?’

    Ella looked at me again and raised her eyebrows. She was ready for this one. ‘Eighteen,’ she lied. She knew that you had to be eighteen.

    ‘And has there been any contact between you and your dad since he left home?’

    Ella swallowed. ‘No. At least, I don’t know. My mum and dad are divorced and she always said that she’d burn anything that came from him. So … ’

    ‘All right. What’s your name?’ the voice asked kindly, and when Ella told her, said, ‘Do you have any details about your dad? His date of birth, for instance?’

    Ella stared down at the piece of paper she held. ‘Eleventh September 1953.’

    ‘And do you know anything else about him? Did he marry again after your mum and dad divorced?’

    ‘I’m not sure … ’ Slowly, Ella started giving the information, her voice sounding less strained and scratchy with every word. I knew she was pleased to be talking about her dad and telling someone about him.

    Ella’s mum had recently got married again, for the third time. The first husband, Ella’s dad, had walked out on them (or been driven out, Ella always said), the second one had spent most of his time drunk, and the third one, this new one, Ella hated with a passion. He bossed her about and told tales to her mum about her and was altogether a complete pillock. I’d only met him a few times but I thought he was snidey. Once I went round there in a short skirt and he looked at me in a funny way and said something about little girls not wearing short skirts unless they meant it. I told my mum about him and she said I should take care not to be alone with him, not under any circumstances.

    I couldn’t understand Ella’s mum marrying someone like that, but – well, she was a bit dodgy too, actually. She had hair that was bleached as white as straw, and was the only mum I knew who had a tattoo of a Harley-Davidson motorbike badge on her arm.

    I knew that Ella desperately wanted to find her real dad. She’d been talking about him for ages but since her mum had married the pillock, as we usually called him, it had become really important to her. I know what she was hoping, of course: that he’d come and get her and take her away from her mum and the pillock, then she and her dad would live together happily ever after. It all sounded a bit fairy-tale to me, but I wasn’t going to say so. And, well, he might come along, and he might have a big car and a beautiful house with an indoor swimming pool, like she dreamed about.

    I listened as Ella gave her address to the woman at the helpline. She then put the phone down and beamed at me. ‘They’re sending forms!’ she said. ‘They’ve put me on the database and are sending forms.’

    ‘And then what?’

    ‘I’ve got to fill them in, giving as many details as possible about where he came from and what he might be doing for a job, and then when I return the forms to them they’ll start looking for him.’

    I stood up and readjusted my mobcap thingy, because it was nearly time to go back to work. ‘But that doesn’t mean to say that they’ll definitely find him, does it?’

    Her face fell.

    ‘I mean, I’m not being horrible but I don’t think you should get your hopes up too much.’

    ‘But if he knows that I’m looking for him! He must want to know about me.’

    ‘Yes, but he might have … ’ I paused. ‘He might have got married again and have another family.’

    She frowned. ‘That’s what the woman on the phone said. She told me he might have a new family now and that I might cause him embarrassment.’ She brightened up a little. ‘That’s nothing, though, is it? He’ll soon get over a bit of embarrassment. I mean, he’ll have to. He must want to know about me. I need him. He’s got to come and rescue me from pillock attack.’

    I giggled.

    ‘I bet he’s nice,’ she said wistfully. ‘I bet he’s really nice. One of them’s got to be, haven’t they? It’s not fair if I have a mum and dad who’re both horrible. I bet he’s done all right for himself, too. I bet he lives in a decent house and not just some grotty old council flat.’ She heaved a sigh. ‘I wish I had your mum and dad!’ she said, not for the first time.

    I pulled a face. This wasn’t to say that I didn’t think I had a decent mum and

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