by Claire Craig
Cold air rushed onto Harriet Bright.
The tiny little hairs on her toes stood up in fright.
Harriet Bright opened her eyes in alarm.
It was Saturday.
NO SCHOOL.
Pancakes for breakfast.
‘You’ve got lots of chores to do today, Cinderella,’ said her mother.
CHORES!
Harriet Bright sat upright in bed.
HAD HER MOTHER WOKEN UP MAD?
‘I want you to unload the dishwasher, sweep the kitchen floor, and then wash the kitchen windows – inside and out,’ said Harriet Bright’s mother.
WHAT!
‘But – I’m a child,’ said Harriet Bright. ‘Children aren’t allowed to work. It’s illegal.’
‘I thought you were Cinderella,’ said her mother.
‘Well, I am but –’
‘Cinderella did chores all day,’ said her mother.
‘But Cinderella didn’t have a dishwasher,’ said Harriet Bright.
‘Well, she was very unlucky,’ said her mother. ‘And since we don’t have a gloomy grimy chimney for you to clean, or a cold stone floor for you to scrub, you’ll just have to use the modern appliances. So UPS-A-CINDERS!’ she chuckled. ‘Let the Cinderella day begin.’
Harriet Bright looked at her mother in shock.
Her mother always helped her get ready for school plays.
She stayed up late making Harriet Bright’s costumes and sewing on special bits.
She helped Harriet Bright learn her lines.
Harriet Bright needed to talk to her mother about how to beat Polly Manning to the part of Cinderella.
And other Important Things like what she should wear for the audition.
And if she should wear her hair in plaits or in pigtails.
Chores were not on Harriet Bright’s list of things to do today.
rhymes with she thought. (She was still having Poetic Moments even though she’d decided not to be a worldfamous poet anymore.)
‘I belong on the stage,’ announced Harriet Bright, standing on the bed.
‘Not in the kitchen!’
In the KITCHEN
It was 11 o’clock.
Harriet Bright had half-emptied the dishwasher, broken a plate from Aunty Beryl, and was filling a bucket with water and washing detergent.
There were soap suds everywhere.
shrieked Harriet Bright’s mother.
Harriet Bright had never noticed before what a very loud voice her mother had. It echoed around the walls in the kitchen.
Harriet Bright could see her mother sitting with her feet up on the sofa, reading a magazine. ‘I’ll have a cup of tea, please,’ shouted her mother. ‘Milk and one sugar. And a piece of that banana bread I baked yesterday.’
‘But I’m covered in soap suds,’ replied Harriet Bright, who was slopping water everywhere.
‘Well don’t traipse them all through the house,’ said her mother. ‘And I hope you’re wearing your old clothes. Working hard is a dirty job.’
Harriet Bright looked at the soap suds fizzing on her second-best pair of jeans. HONESTLY! she thought. Wicked stepmothers are SO demanding.
Harriet Bright made the tea and cut the banana bread. She put it all on a tray, with a bright red napkin and a yellow flower, and took it to her mother.
Her mother stretched her legs out on the sofa and fluffed up the cushions.
‘Delicious,’ she said, tucking the napkin under her chin and taking a huge bite out of the banana bread. ‘I’d like you to weed the flower garden at the side of the house once you’ve finished your other chores, please, Cinders. The weeds have just blossomed after all that rain last week.’
‘But I’ll get dirty fingernails,’ said Harriet Bright.
‘You can wear my gardening gloves,’ said her mother. ‘I’m feeling well rested and generous today.’
Harriet Bright frowned. I need a Responsible Adult to sort Mum out, she thought. Someone who won’t make me do one nasty chore after another. ‘What time is Dad coming home?’ she asked.
‘Not till this afternoon,’ said her mother. ‘And you’d better finish washing the front windows. I can see the soap suds drying from here.’ She handed Harriet Bright the tray and picked up her magazine. ‘Oh, and if you’re going back to the kitchen, I’d love another cup of tea, thanks.’
Harriet Bright picked up the tray with a very big sigh. She made another cup of tea for her mother, and then hauled the bucket outside. But as she soaked her sponge in it, water started to spurt out the bottom.
‘Mum!’ shouted Harriet Bright. ‘There’s a hole in my bucket. My feet are getting wet!’
‘Well tip the water into another bucket,’ said her mother. ‘There’s one in the laundry.’
As Harriet Bright struggled back from the laundry with the heavy bucket, she saw Mr Hazel from next door unloading bags of shopping from his car.
‘Hello, Harriet,’ he said. ‘Lovely day.’
‘I’m Cinderella,’ said Harriet Bright. ‘And I’m not having a lovely day. I’ve been working since dawn. I have a very hard life and a really wicked stepmother. I need a Responsible Adult to help me.’
‘Hmmm,’ said Mr Hazel, scratching his chin. ‘You don’t see many of those around here.
Sorry, Harriet. I’ll let you know if I find one.’ He picked up his bags and went inside.
Harriet Bright sat down on the grass.
Her fingers were all old and crinkly from being in the water.
Her feet were cold. Her jeans were wet.
‘What would Cinderella do in this ’ she asked herself. ‘I really need a fairy godmother. But where do I get one of those?’
Then she remembered. The Yellow Pages!
Her mother said they were a good place to find unusual things.
Harriet Bright crept inside and found the Yellow Pages under the phone.
She looked under G. There were ads for:
Goalposts
Goat Farmers
and
Go-karts
but nothing for Godmothers.
She looked under F. There were ads for:
Fairy Floss
Fairy Parties
and
Fairy Shops
but nothing for Fairy Godmothers.
yelled her mother. ‘Have you finished the windows yet? I’m feeling a little peckish and …’
Harriet Bright put her hands over her ears.
She had had enough. It was time for:
DRASTIC ACTION.
She grabbed her mobile phone, bolted upstairs and climbed into a wardrobe.
Then she rang her father.
He answered immediately.
‘Dad, it’s me,’ she whispered.
‘Is that you, Harriet? You’re all muffled. I can’t hear you properly. Where are you?’
‘I’m in the wardrobe. Hiding from Mum. I need you to rescue me.’
‘What did you say? You need me to … test you? I’ll have to do it after the eighteenth hole, love. I’m headed for a birdie! Gotta go. BYE.’
And he hung up.
Harriet Bright couldn’t believe it.
Her own father. DEAF to her misfortune. And headed for a birdie. A poor little baby bird.
Her own mother. Demanding. Shrieking. Always hungry!
Her parents were officially Out of Control.
THERE WAS ONLY ONE THING TO DO.
Fairy godmother stage RIGHT
Harriet Bright had to run away from home.
But first, she wrote her mother a note.
Harriet Bright tiptoed out of the house with her backpack. Her mother was dozing on the sofa.
Melly Fanshawe was standing at the front door, wearing a bright pink dress and a silver tiara. She was waving a wand at Mr Hazel’s cat, which was snoozing in the driveway.
‘Hello, Melly,’ said Harriet Bright. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m practising my fairy godmother said Melly Fanshawe. ‘I’ve been
looking everywhere for a mouse. I found one in the pet shop but they wouldn’t let me turn it into a Peruvian pelican. They said there wasn’t a big demand for those.’
She waved her wand above the cat’s head and said some back-to-front words in a loud voice.
The cat’s tail went straight up in the air and it down the street in a hurry.
Melly Fanshawe sat down on the grass. ‘I think this magic stuff is harder than I thought,’ she said.
She looked at Harriet Bright’s backpack. ‘What are you doing, Harriet?’
‘I’m running away from my wicked stepmother,’ said Harriet Bright.
‘But Cinderella didn’t run away from her wicked stepmother,’ said Melly Fanshawe.
‘But I’m totally and indescribably exhausted,’ said Harriet Bright. ‘And I’ve still got chores to do.’
‘I’ll help you,’ said Melly Fanshawe, standing up and gathering her pink folds around her.
The fairy godmother washed the outside of the kitchen windows and Cinderella washed the inside.
Then they weeded the flower garden at the side of the house.
‘I think you’re pulling out flowers, Cinderella,’ said the fairy godmother. ‘Weeds are green.’
‘Well, I think it looks much better without all those flowers,’ said Cinderella.
Then Cinderella emptied the rest of the dishwasher, and the fairy godmother swept up the pieces of Aunty Beryl’s plate.
Soon, the windows were gleaming, the garden was neatly weeded and the kitchen floor sparkled.
‘It’s just like magic,’ said the fairy godmother.
When the wicked stepmother woke up from her afternoon sleep, she stretched her arms and legs out wide.
‘You two have been very busy,’ she said, looking pleased. ‘I’m going to make us date scones with raspberry jam and whipped cream for afternoon tea.’
Harriet Bright smiled. The really wicked stepmother sounded just like her mother again.
AUDITION Monday
Melly Fanshawe and Harriet Bright were eating their sandwiches in the courtyard.
‘I’m too nervous to eat,’ said Harriet Bright. ‘But Mum said you shouldn’t act on an empty stomach.’
‘You’ll be the best Cinderella,’ said Melly Fanshawe.
‘And you’ll be the best fairy godmother,’ said Harriet Bright.
They looked at each other and crossed their fingers at the same time.
Then Paul Picklebottom scampered past chasing a cat.
‘He’s auditioning for the four white mice,’ said Melly Fanshawe. ‘He ate cheese all Saturday.’
Then Polly Manning walked towards them, flicking her ponytail.
She was auditioning for a mother-and-daughter hair commercial after school.
‘Harriet Bright and Melly Fanshawe,’ said Polly Manning. ‘Eating as usual.’ She crinkled up her nose as she looked at their sandwiches. Polly Manning ate sushi on Mondays.
‘I guess you both want to be an ugly stepsister,’ she said. ‘It’s a good thing there are two in Cinderella because I really don’t know which of you would be best.’
She smiled sweetly and kept walking.
‘She’s too nasty to be Cinderella,’ said Melly Fanshawe.
Harriet Bright nodded.
Then she looked at Polly Manning’s long blonde hair shining in the sun.
It was Cinderella hair.
Harriet Bright could feel an anti-Polly poem forming in her head.
It was going to be full of P words because Mrs Glossia was teaching them all about alliteration.
She said that P was a Particularly INDIGNANT letter because it had
Harriet Bright was just about to think of a really explosive P word when, suddenly, she had …
A REVELATION!
She knew what it was because her mother had them all the time. Her mother said that sometimes they kept her awake at night.
A revelation, said her mother, was like a light suddenly switching on in your head, showing you what you really wanted.
And it was true. Because, just like that, Harriet Bright knew exactly what she wanted.
She didn’t want to be:
cold
x
moaning
x
hard-worked
x
dressed in rags.
x
She wanted to be:
eating fine food
√
drinking cups of tea
√
snoozing on the sofa.
√
She wanted to shriek and carry on – just like her mother had.
She wanted to order Cinderella around all day – thinking up new chores for her to do.
Harriet Bright didn’t want to be Cinderella anymore.
She wanted to be …
the wicked
stepmother.
Wash the dishes, dry the dishes, scrub those floors.
You’ve only done 3 of your 101 chores.
Don’t stand there idly dreaming of a prince.
My hair’s all soapy and ready for a rinse!
Harriet Bright could see it all clearly.
The wicked stepmother was the one having a BALL.
Harriet Bright would have much more fun being
Especially if Polly Manning was Cinderella!
SECRET squirrel
‘I’ve got a secret,’ said Melly Fanshawe.
‘Have you?’ said Harriet Bright, looking up from her science project on clouds.
Mrs Glossia was teaching them all about the weather and the different types of clouds.
Harriet Bright was making a height chart of the sky to help her remember which cloud was which.
‘What is it?’ asked Harriet Bright, leaning in closer.
‘I can’t tell you,’ said Melly Fanshawe, looking around suspiciously. ‘It wouldn’t be a secret then.’
Harriet Bright looked around suspiciously too.
Mrs Glossia was drawing a big puffy cumulus cloud on the blackboard.
She said that when these clouds piled higher and higher in the sky as if they were about to boil over, cumulonimbus was on the way: RAIN!
Harriet Bright folded her arms.
‘So, it’s a secret secret then,’ she said.
‘What’s a secret secret?’ said Melly Fanshawe.
‘It’s a secret that’s so secret you won’t even tell your best friend in the whole world even though she always tells you everything – EVEN things that she’s been told not to tell anyone!’ Harriet Bright added in a rush. Because, thought Harriet Bright, a best friend in the whole world wasn’t just anyone. A best friend in the whole world was the person you wanted to tell everything to.
‘Yes, that’s what it is!’ said Melly Fanshawe, looking very pleased. ‘It’s definitely a secret secret.’
Harriet Bright chewed the end of her pencil.
She and Melly Fanshawe always shared secrets.
Once they made up a secret language and wrote invisible notes with milk and lemon juice that nobody could read.
They couldn’t read them either.
Why did Melly Fanshawe have a secret?
Why wouldn’t Melly Fanshawe tell her the secret?
Why was Melly Fanshawe being so SECRETIVE?
Harriet Bright hated not knowing things.
She needed more information.
‘What kind of secret is it?’ she asked.
‘A big one,’ said Melly Fanshawe, looking excited.
‘How big?’ said Harriet Bright, looking alarmed.
‘Bigger than any secret I’ve ever had before,’ said Melly Fanshawe, standing on tippy toes and reaching up to the ceiling.
Harriet Bright was getting agitated.
Not only was there a secret she didn’t know.
It was an
enormous
secret.
Melly Fanshawe was rapidly fading from view as a secret the size of Mount Everest grew up between them.
&n
bsp; Melly Fanshawe was on one side of the mountain and Harriet Bright was on the other, trapped in swirling mists and freezing temperatures.
Frostbite was nipping at her toes and fingers.
Harriet Bright was being frozen out!
A secret this size was too big for just Melly Fanshawe.
Didn’t people always climb mountains in teams? thought Harriet Bright.
Like Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay.
Harriet Bright had read all about them in her Lives and Times of Famous People. They climbed the highest mountain in the world – Mount Everest – together!
It was positively to climb a mountain on your own, thought Harriet Bright.
‘Where did you get the secret?’ asked Harriet Bright.
‘Somewhere,’ said Melly Fanshawe.
‘Where?’ asked Harriet Bright.
‘I can’t tell you,’ said Melly Fanshawe. ‘That’s a secret too. I crossed my heart and hoped to die. Twice!’
‘Why did you tell me you have a secret if you won’t tell me what the secret is?’ said Harriet Bright, feeling more and more like a boiling cumulonimbus.
‘Because we always tell each other everything so I didn’t want you to feel completely left out,’ said Melly Fanshawe.
‘Hmnpfh,’ puffed Harriet Bright. ‘Well … I’ve got a secret too.’
‘No you haven’t,’ said Melly Fanshawe. ‘You’d tell me if you did. You’re not very good at keeping secrets. You go all red in the face like you’re about to burst! I always know when you’ve got a secret.’
Harriet Bright felt her cheeks.
They were very red and hot.
But it wasn’t because she had a secret.
It was because Melly Fanshawe had a secret.
A secret that Harriet Bright just had to know!
Tell me a SECRET
Harriet Bright walked all the way home from school thinking about
That Secret!
Even her feet were talking about it:
Maybe if I was better at keeping secrets, she thought, Melly might tell me hers.