Chapter Two
Natalie carries a drunken Mik into the house, laying her down in the spare room, next to hers. The door opens and Elizabeth comes in.
"Nat?" she asks, quietly. "Are you ok?"
"Sure," Natalie replies, turning round to face her step-mother. "Mik's passed out, so I thought it better to not take her home." Elizabeth looked down at the sleeping Mik.
"Good idea, in the meantime, what time do you call this?" she says, not quite in the angry parent tone but not quite in the casual I Don't Care When You Come Home voice. Natalie takes her mothers wrist and inspects the watch on it.
"Half past one," she replies, walking round her mother, but stopping at the door of the spare room. "Who's Fred?"
"Fred?"
"Yeah, Dead Fred, or something," says Natalie.
"Drop Dead Fred? How do you know about Drop Dead Fred, you can't remember him," she says, both girls walk out of the room onto the landing, and then into Natalie's room, filled with the normal teenage crap.
"Yeah, I met him at the club," explains Natalie. Elizabeth stifles a laugh.
"Fred? At a club?" Just after this comment, Fred appears between Natalie and Elizabeth, quite a hard thing to do as there was only about a foot between them, sitting on the bed. But Elizabeth couldn't see him.
"Yeah, at a club!" Fred almost shouts at her, maybe two inches from her face. "What's wrong with that? Drop Dead Fred can go clubbing if Drop Dead Fred wants to go clubbing."
"Fred's not really the clubbing type," Elizabeth says.
"Yes he is, and I can say that your daughter has a lot more fun that you do," says Fred, getting from between them and walking round the room. Natalie tries to ignore him while talking to her mother.
"Who is he?"
"I'm Fred! Drop Dead Fred," says Fred, exasperatedly. "Look, why are we hanging round here? You've got a car, we could go to DisneyWorld, or Idaho, or the moon!"
"He's the imaginary friend I had when I was young, and, he appeared to me to sort out my marriage problems with my first husband, and he appeared to you when you were little," Elizabeth explains. Fred disappears in Natalie's closet and comes out holding a black thong between his thumb and forefinger, as if it's about to explode.
"What's this?" he asks, disgusted, shaking it about. Natalie glares daggers at him. Elizabeth notices.
"He's here, isn't he?" she asks. Natalie gets up and snatches her underwear from him. Fred looks a bit indignant.
"Yes, he's here alright. How do I get him to go away?"
"You can't, ha! I'm here, to stay," Fred sings, jumping around the room, then disappearing into the closet again, reappearing with a black feather boa round his neck and a pair of stilettos on his feet.
"You can't," Elizabeth says. "He's here for a purpose, and he can't go away until it's all sorted out." She strokes Natalie's hair, and Natalie shrugs out of it.
"And I'll be screwed if I know what this purpose is," says Fred, wobbling over to them in the shoes. "You've got awful shoes. Poo shoes! Poo shoes! When you were little, we used to walk around in dog poo together, and I did that with Elizabeth too." Fred sticks out his chest like a proud penguin.
"Do you know what the purpose is?" asks Natalie, not bothering to take the things off him, knowing that if she did he'd just get more.
"Nope."
"So, he could be here, for a while?" asks Natalie.
"He could," Elizabeth agrees, "And it's two in the morning so lets get to bed." Elizabeth gets off the bed and leaves Natalie to get changed and get into bed.
