There was a pile of potatoes, sprouts on a stalk, and a box of frozen blackberries beside them.
‘Thank heavens for good friends,’ Mum sighed. ‘I was so bored not having any work to do, then Stella took me up to her allotment and gave me all these fresh veggies and blackberries from her freezer.’
I sat down on the rug and Dennis hopped over to me. He sniffed my feet for about ten hours, then rubbed his chin on them and jumped up onto my lap. I stroked his soft fur and velvety ears, which were always so much warmer than the rest of him.
Mr Kaminski said to Mum, ‘You can help Stella with allotment until work comes?’
‘I wish!’ She started peeling the potatoes. ‘The problem is, Stella’s so on top of it, there’s really nothing to do.’
Mum said, if only everyone kept on top of their gardening in the winter-time like Stella. ‘People seem to forget they’ve even got gardens until it’s hot enough to sit out in them.’
‘Then you shall remind them, yes?’
Mr Kaminski said Mum and Stella should make some leaflets about Garden Angels and put one through every single letterbox in the town. He rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a crumpled leaflet about winter swimming sessions at the leisure centre.
‘Leaflet like this, it comes today.’
Mr Kaminski said they could get Primrose to deliver them. It might take her mind off the Matt situation. He said Mum could pay her to do it.
‘I think my daughter should be able to help out without being bribed,’ said Mum.
‘Ha!’ I thought. ‘She’s going to love that!’
Dad came home with a bunch of library books and a face like thunder. It looked like he might still be cross with us for being such rotten guinea pigs, but it turned out the person he was cross with was Gran.
‘She phoned me first thing this morning and made me go up there “on my way to work”,’ he grumbled. ‘It isn’t on my way to work. It isn’t on anyone’s way to anywhere!’
‘What was the problem?’ asked Mum, hacking at the leeks.
‘A drippy tap!’ said Dad. ‘She wanted it sorted straight away before the party. “The party’s not for ages,” I said. “Can’t it at least wait until the weekend?” But oh, no – I had to go down to Harbourside Stores right then and there and get a new washer.’
Dad being Dad, he got the wrong size of washer, and Gran asked him to stop by for another one in his lunch-break.
‘I’ve been up and down to the blooming Harbourside Stores all blooming day,’ he said. ‘On a Monday! When I’m supposed to be in the office!’
Mum said Gran must be really grateful to have such a kind caring son. Dad scowled at her.
Mr Kaminski said no wonder she had a kind caring son – she was a very kind caring woman! Then Dad scowled at him.
Upstairs, Primrose’s music suddenly stopped. Finally! She must have been playing gloomy tunes the whole time since she got home from school. We heard her slow footsteps on the stairs, and she made her best tragedy-queen entrance, staring down at her phone.
Mum said, ‘Mr Kaminski has thought of a great way for me and Stella to drum up some business, Primrose.’
Primrose gave her the stare that says, ‘and I’m interested – why?’
‘We’re going to make some leaflets. I thought you might like to deliver them for us.’
‘You’re joking, yeah?’ said Primrose.
‘No – it might be good for you to have a project to take your mind off Matt.’
Bad move. As soon as she heard the M-word, Primrose squealed like a piglet in pain. Mum panicked.
‘We’ll pay you, of course,’ she said.
It was as if she had flicked off the squeal switch. Primrose thought about it. I didn’t need to think.
‘I’ll do it!’ I said.
Mum said I was too young to have that kind of responsibility and anyway, I didn’t need extra pocket-money at my age. A bit of spare cash could help Primrose save up for something – a new dress, perhaps.
‘Or, if she hasn’t completely blown it with Matt, the same one in a bigger size,’ I suggested.
I was only trying to be helpful but Primrose went off on one and I got the blame! Mum said, ‘What’s got into you today? How could you say something like that?’
‘Well, it’s not fair,’ I said. ‘I’ve got lumbered with walking Magnus for nothing, and now you’re going to pay Primrose to deliver some leaflets.’
‘Sorry, Peony – sometimes life just isn’t fair,’ said Mum, absent-mindedly picking up Mr Kaminski’s leaflet. ‘Swimming,’ she pondered. ‘I used to love that. I might give it a go until the work picks up.’
I was spitting feathers all the next day and by the time I got to Jane’s I felt fit to explode. It didn’t help when Magnus wedged himself behind the bar and we had to go through the whole chip palaver again, but at least once Jane had got the lead on him he seemed to submit. She didn’t have to push and pull him out the door.
‘I get it – you don’t want to do this,’ I muttered at him, through gritted teeth. ‘Well, you’re not the only one.’
He plodded along, head down, not stopping this time. You got the feeling he was just trying to get it over and done with as quickly as possible.
It was nothing like walking Sam. Sam’s as blind as a bat and he’s got stiff hips but he loves his walk. His nose goes into overdrive, and that makes you notice things, such as sweet peas in a tub and cigarette ends in the gutter, sunshine on a damp gate and rusty iron rings where the boats tie up.
Magnus wasn’t listening to me but I talked to him anyway. I had to talk to someone and at least he was better than Mum, who got panicked into offering to pay Primrose for posting her leaflets, or Gran, who lumbered me with Magnus, or Dad, who had gone all weird, or Primrose, who gets everything on a plate from basically being a pain.
‘It’s not fair,’ I said to Magnus’s back. ‘Mum says I can’t be responsible for a bunch of stupid leaflets, but then they put me in charge of a big stroppy dog – no offense.’
Could leaflets slip their lead? I didn’t think so! Could leaflets tread on a thorn, fling themselves at a cat or choke on a passing fly?
‘Mum says Primrose needs extra pocket money. Why? To stop her going off on one. If she was a dog, she’d be just like you, Magnus. She’d be under the table in a massive sulk until somebody gave her a chip!’
I thought Magnus might not like being compared with Primrose, but he didn’t care. He plod-plod-plodded on until we got to the lookout hut, and then he plod-plod-plodded back.
Chapter 15
Stickers and secret codes
Mum asked Primrose to write the number of leaflets she delivered each day on the family organiser, and at the end of the week, she would tot them up and work out what to pay.
On the first day, that number was twenty-three, which wasn’t great considering that Polgotherick is a lot bigger than you think. There’s a whole town of bungalows on the other side of the top road that you can’t see from the harbour.
Mum said at that rate, by the time Primrose got round all the houses the summer would have come and gone, and so would all the gardening jobs. Primrose promised she would speed up. She had only been so slow on the first day because it was freezing cold and she had forgotten her hat and gloves.
‘I would have turned into a block of ice if I’d stayed out there a second longer,’ she said.
On the second day, the number dropped to twenty. Mum said maybe she should get someone to help her – a school friend, perhaps? The problem was, Primrose didn’t really have any school friends. She was a one-friend-or-boyfriend-at-a-time kind of person. She had been joined at the hip with Mushy Marcus for months; then there was Bianca, and straight after her, there was Matt.
‘It’s a shame you still haven’t sorted things out with Matt,’ said Mum. ‘He would be happy to help you.’
Primrose said how could she sort things out with Matt? It was too late now. It would be too embarrassing to even try!
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‘OK, well, here’s the thing,’ said Mum. ‘If you think you’ve offended someone, act like nothing’s happened. Text Matt just as if things are completely normal between you.’
Primrose looked confused. I was feeling puzzled myself – weren’t you supposed to say sorry if you’d been a pain?
‘Ask him over. Say you’re missing him,’ Mum suggested. ‘Tell him you wish you had given him a chance to explain why he didn’t bring Sam the other day. Say you can see now that it was because the weather wasn’t warm enough, and it would be much more sensible to recreate your first date on your nine-month anniversary, when it’s warmer!’
You could see Primrose thinking about it. You could almost hear her brain ticking over. Eventually, she said, ‘Maybe that is why he didn’t bring Sam.’
Primrose sent the text. Matt was round our house in less than an hour. She was so right, he declared. That was exactly why he hadn’t brought Sam, and he should have explained. Primrose stuck one of her red smileys on the family organiser and wrote ‘Matt and Primrose – nine months anniversary’ beside it.
After that, Primrose’s leaflet-count went right up. It was still freezing cold – ‘too cold for snow,’ everyone said – but they had love to keep them warm. She actually said that! Whenever Primrose falls out with a boyfriend and makes up again, the mush-factor goes through the roof.
By the time Matt got to our house every day it was already getting dark, so they ended up delivering the leaflets by moonlight. After the last leaflet was delivered, they went for a walk on the beach to celebrate, and Matt gave her the silver necklace. Primrose said it was sooo romantic.
They decided to keep going out for moonlit walks even though they didn’t have any leaflets left, and instead of numbers on the family organiser, they drew a star for every night-time walk. At least it wasn’t hearts and kisses.
When Primrose is a pain, she’s appalling, but when she’s in love she’s really nice. She doesn’t keep going off the deep end over nothing, plus she talks to me.
‘On frosty nights, the stars are really twinkly. Matt says they’re like my eyes,’ she said.
She attempted a twinkle but I couldn’t quite see it. I was thinking about midnight orienteering. That would have been my chance to go out at night, under the twinkly starry sky.
‘Are you all right?’ said Primrose.
I told her I was supposed to be going midnight orienteering with Toby’s family and Jess, but it was the night before Gran’s party so I’d decided not to go.
‘Don’t be daft,’ Primrose said. ‘You can have a lie-in and get up at lunch-time. You’ll be fine.’
I straight away saw she was right – that excuse didn’t hold up at all. So I had to tell her the truth about Beacon Hill, how I just plain couldn’t keep up. Orienteering was like a race, I said. If I couldn’t keep up with them walking, how was I ever going to keep up running?
Primrose said, if I had never been orienteering, how could I really know what it was like? You might get lots of rests. It might be easy! She stuck one of my gold smileys on the family organiser and wrote ‘Midnight orienteering’ next to it.
‘Stop worrying,’ she said. ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’
‘What’s the worst that could happen?’ was the sort of thing that Dad might say, if he wasn’t too busy grumbling about Gran. She was driving him mad, making him do odd jobs, fetching and carrying. She was determined to get Nash House looking like something off Your Perfect Home before the big party.
‘I’ve got a full-time job,’ he complained. ‘Just because I work at home most of the time, that doesn’t mean I can drop everything and be at her beck and call. I preferred it when she lived in St Ives!’
Mum said, was he perhaps making a mountain out of a molehill?
Dad was exasperated.
‘Well, let’s see,’ he said. ‘I’ll draw a triangle on the family organiser every time she makes me go up there. We can decide whether it’s a mountain or a molehill when we see how many there are!’
‘Talking about the family organiser,’ goes Mum, ‘what do all those tens mean?’
Dad had been writing tens on every day beside my dog sticker and Primrose’s leaflet-count and stars.
‘Pages,’ Dad said. ‘I’m trying to write ten pages of my book every day, but what with Gran’s shenanigans, I have to write in the night sometimes to hit my target.’
Considering the way he cheated by hiding when he should have been running, the surprising thing was, I believed him. I said that to Magnus when we were walking. ‘My dad’s acting weird,’ I said. ‘He’s actually getting up in the middle of the night sometimes to make his ten pages. Whatever happened to “When the going gets tough, there’s always TV?”’
Magnus still didn’t seem the slightest bit interested, but at least he had stopped being grumpy with me since the first few walks. It started with a grudging flick of his tail when I arrived at the Happy Haddock on the third day. By the end of the first week, he was actually sitting in the doorway, waiting for me.
By the end of the second week, Magnus had stepped up a gear from plodding to trotting, and Jane said he had a real spring in his step. By the end of the third week, I actually found I was looking forward to taking him out for his walk.
The family organiser was filling up with dog stickers, leaflet numbers, stars, tens and triangles, as well as Mum’s green smileys for her swimming sessions. Then someone phoned about the leaflet and offered her a job clearing one of the steep gardens behind the houses in Ship Lane, and building some terraces. It was a big job because Ship Lane isn’t really a lane but a path, so you couldn’t get a mechanical digger in.
‘Next weekend’s going to be a good one!’ she said happily, putting her green sticker beside my orienteering and Gran’s party.
I hoped she was right. I mean, in answer to Primrose’s question, the worst that could happen would be if I couldn’t keep up, and that meant our team fell behind. Toby’s family is lots of fun and really, really nice – but they really, seriously do not like coming last.
Chapter 16
Geared up to go and the moon on the snow
In Finland, they’ve got forty words for snow. I saw that on The Plight of the Polar Bears. Here in Polgotherick, we’ve only got one, and we hardly ever use it.
For weeks, it had been trying to snow but not managing. Then, the very day me and Mum didn’t want it to, it succeeded. It was only flecks at first, floating in the glow of light from the kitchen window.
‘I hope this doesn’t get worse,’ Mum said, peering out into the darkness. ‘The ground’s too frozen for Stella and me to do any digging, but at least if the snow holds off we’ll be able to clear the site.’
They weren’t supposed to start until nine o’clock but she was so happy to finally have some work, she couldn’t wait, so she left the house at quarter to seven. I got ready to go to the kennels. If we had lots of snow, me and Becky could build a snowman when we had finished cleaning the pens and walking the dogs. That would be brilliant!
But on the other hand, would lots of snow mean that midnight orienteering might be cancelled? That would be horrible now I’d geared myself up to it, although at least if it was cancelled I couldn’t mess it up, like Beacon Hill.
‘Why the frown?’ said Dad.
I blinked. Then I blinked again but he was still there.
‘It’s Saturday!’ I said. ‘It’s not even seven o’clock yet.’
‘I know.’ He picked up a pen to write on the family organiser. ‘I got up at five to finish my ten pages.’
Dad’s triangles had turned out to be mountains rather than molehills. There was a whole range of them filling up the month of February, and it was getting worse every day. The closer we got to the house-warming party, the more Gran was making Dad run up and down.
The previous day, she had sent him down to the Harbourside Stores with a list of food for the party and then, when he’d walked all the way down there and back up
again, she made him go back for some cocktail sticks because she had forgotten to put them on the list.
She had been doing that all week. Dad said why couldn’t he go to the cash-and-carry on the edge of town instead? At least then he could take the car. But Gran wouldn’t hear of it. Her grandmother had done all her shopping at the Harbourside Stores; her mother had always shopped there too. ‘Use it or lose it,’ she said.
Dad’s mobile rang. He took it out of his dressing-gown pocket and squinted at the screen. You could tell it was Gran. I heard him saying, ‘Yes… yes, that’s fine… OK… Well, I’ll have to shower and get dressed first…’
I put my hat and gloves on, and gave him a wave goodbye as I went out the door. There was thick frost on the zig-zag path that sparkled under the street lights, and specks of snow in the air. By the time I met Becky outside her house, the snowflakes had got bigger, though there still weren’t many of them, but as we arrived at the kennels they stopped.
It didn’t snow any more all day. Mum would be pleased. Dad would pleased too, as he was bound to be out and about fetching and carrying for Gran. Primrose was holed-up in the living-room with Matt. They had a day’s worth of DVDs and chocs, so she wouldn’t notice either way.
There was no-one around to talk to in the afternoon so I went down to the Happy Haddock to take Magnus for a walk. It was OK talking to Magnus now that I had given up expecting him to listen. It only occurred to me when I was slogging back up the zig-zag path two hours later that it probably wasn’t the best idea to spend virtually the whole day walking dogs when I was going to need a super-lot of energy for running round all night.
At ten o’clock, when I would normally be in bed, Dad walked up to the top road with me. The frost on the path crunched under our feet. There wasn’t a single star up above, nor any sign of the moon. Dad said that was because of the snow clouds covering the sky. After all that build-up from Primrose, it felt like a bit of a let-down.
How to Get the Body You Want by Peony Pinker Page 7