Mostly Sunny with a Chance of Storms

by Marion Roberts

  He started barking and barking and darting to and fro in front of me, trying to cut me off. ‘Shoo, Banjo!’ I yelled. ‘Go catch up with the others.’

  He took one almighty lunge and nipped me square on my stripy-socked ankle. The pain, I tell you! ‘Ouuuuuuuch!’

  Willow and Woolfie raced up behind me and ran past for another lap. Banjo didn’t even notice them. He didn’t take his eyes off me, but crouched low, ready to pounce again if I moved even a muscle.

  ‘Lyaaaaaaaalll!’ I hollered. ‘Saaaaaaaaaskiaaaaa! Will somebody get this dog AWAY from me! Willow!’

  But it was no use. Lyall and Saskia had taken off after Sophia and were already down by the dogstacle course. I figured that if I stayed statue-still, Banjo might get bored and run off to the join others.

  But no, it seemed Banjo was willing to keep guarding me endlessly. I made myself so still that I could have qualified as a museum exhibit. ‘Shoo, Banjo!’ I said, without even moving my lips.

  Then I noticed Settimio hobbling through the orchard on his crutches, holding his plastered leg away from the wet grass. You could actually see the cogs of Banjo’s mind ticking over, thinking he should round the both of us up into one cluster. He darted away from me over to Settimio and made a good solid lunge at Settimio’s ankle.

  For an old guy, Settimio sure had good reflexes. He managed to whack Banjo right across the nose with the end of one of his crutches, making Banjo run off yelping.

  ‘Cane stupido!’ Settimio called out after him.

  And I said, ‘Stupid dog!’ Just in case Banjo couldn’t understand Italian.

  ‘Thanks, Settimio,’ I said, bending down to inspect my ankle, which still hurt like anything and was even oozing blood.

  ‘Come with me, Sunday. You need alcohol spirit for disinfecting. I fix for you.’

  Settimio’s cottage was toasty warm, and as he sat me down at the kitchen table I promised myself I wouldn’t spy on him any more through Granny Carmelene’s telescope.

  It seemed kind of strange: an old man on crutches with a bandaged nose patching up a kid with a hole in her ankle, and it occurred to me that I still didn’t know how Settimio had hurt himself in the first place. He was filling a small bowl with water and soaking a wad of cotton wool when I asked him.

  ‘I can’t tell you, Sunny. You might laugh at me.’

  ‘Really, Settimio, I wouldn’t laugh. That’d be rude,’ I said taking off my sock and rolling up my jeans a little. You could see one big Banjo tooth-hole with a bruise already forming around it.

  ‘Maybe I tell you another time,’ he said, dabbing the wound clean. ‘I’m sure your grandmother laughs, too. God bless her soul.’

  And I was tempted to ask Settimio exactly where he thought she was laughing, but I managed to restrain myself in case my question resulted in tears. I wasn’t certain if those tears would be just mine either, nor whether Bruce and Terry could find me all the way out in Settimio’s cottage.

  To be successful in completely changing the topic, I focused my attention on the stone mantle above his kitchen fireplace. There were all sorts of little ornaments up there, as well as a candle burning, a small arrangement of roses from the garden and a photo of Granny Carmelene.

  ‘Is how I honour her memory,’ he said. Then he upturned a brown glass bottle onto a fresh wad of cotton wool and positioned himself on the chair next to mine.

  ‘This hurt a little bit maybe,’ he said as he dabbed it on my sore ankle.

  He was right; it hurt.

  But luckily I was distracted by the sound of Saskia screaming hysterically from down by the river.

  I jumped up and looked out the window. It was Sophia. She was right in the middle of the river all right, dog paddling around in circles. Lyall and Saskia were kneeling on the jetty trying to encourage her to swim back to shore. Before I could even think about getting my shoes back on I saw Woolfie and Banjo jump in after her. The only sensible dog was Willow, who (understanding that her skinny greyhound legs would be totally naff at dog paddle) had positioned herself safely on the jetty, where she could bark along with the others.

  ‘Do something, Lyall!’ I heard Saskia shouting. ‘All our customers are going to drown!’

  ‘I’ve got to go, Settimio,’ I said. ‘Thanks so much for the rescue mission.’

  ‘Is okay, Sunny. But you should show your mother. You maybe need to visit doctor for injection.’

  I smiled inwardly at the idea of actually volunteering information that might possibly lead to getting an injection. Was he for real?

  ‘Good idea, Settimio,’ I lied. ‘I’ll tell Mum as soon as she finishes work.’

  By the time I got down to the river, Lyall and Saskia had all three dogs out of the water and back on their leashes.

  ‘Gee, guys,’ I said. ‘Thanks for all your concern.’ I showed them my ankle. ‘Banjo’s a delinquent; I vote he gets expelled from Boredom Control. And these are my favourite socks, too. Ruined!’

  ‘Ow, Sunny,’ said Saskia in empathy. ‘I had no idea you got bitten.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Lyall. ‘We’ve got to give him another chance. I’ll handle him better next time, I promise.’

  Carl seemed to be in a super-good mood at dinner that night. He didn’t even notice that Saskia licked her knife with practically every mouthful, or that I fed most of my broccoli to Willow under the table.

  ‘So, Lyall,’ Mum said. ‘What did the Archers’ have to say about Banjo when you dropped him back. Did you happen to mention that he’d bitten Sunny?’ (I’d had to tell Mum about the bite, but luckily she hadn’t jumped on the injection idea.)

  ‘Sort of,’ said Lyall sheepishly.

  Mum gave him an impatient glare. What exactly does sort of mean, Lyall? What did you sort of say?’

  ‘Just that Banjo was very spirited,’ Lyall said, making a focused effort to avoid eye contact with absolutely everyone.

  ‘Spirited?’ I shouted. ‘He’s mental, Lyall.’

  ‘Aw, come on, Sunny, it was our first day. I didn’t want to lose business. Banjo will settle down. We’ll do some obedience training.’

  ‘The whole thing was a disaster, Lyall. It’s all right for you, you didn’t get a hole in your ankle. Boredom Control? Give me a break; we had no control at all.’

  ‘And we didn’t even get to use the dogstacle course,’ said Saskia.

  ‘At least we got a new member for the environment group. When I dropped Woolfie back, Ritchie said he’d come for sure,’ said Lyall, trying desperately to find a positive angle.’

  Mum and Carl both looked delighted.

  ‘Well done, Lyall,’ Mum said. ‘We really appreciate your help. Don’t we, Carl?’

  ‘I’m seriously thinking Boredom Control isn’t the business for me,’ I broke in. Entrepreneurs shouldn’t have to deal with dog bites. That’s what postmen are for.’

  ‘Richard Branson’s a billionaire entrepreneur,’ said Saskia, enthusiastically. ‘And he’s dyslexic.’

  ‘Care factor zero, Saskia,’ said Lyall. ‘Unless someone comes up with a better idea, we’re sticking with Boredom Control. You can’t bail before we’ve even properly started. Can she, Dad?’ Lyall knew Carl would have to agree with him because he’s always banging on about commitment and seeing things through.

  ‘Lyall’s right,’ said Carl. ‘At least see it through as a good holiday job.’

  Later in the evening, when were supposed to be in bed, Saskia and I snuck into Lyall’s room. He had the surveillance monitor set up on his desk and the screen was alight with a full view of the library. It was perfectly silent and black-and-white, like an old movie.

  ‘We’ll just sit and wait,’ said Lyall. ‘Like detectives.’

  ‘Who’s in charge of coffee and doughnuts?’ I asked as I picked up a book (Slam by Nick Hornby) that was next to Lyall’s bed. ‘When did you get this?’

  ‘Ritchie said I could borrow it,’ said Lyall. ‘He’s such a cool guy. When I dropped Woolfie home he showed me ins
ide. He’s got a huge plasma and one of those fridges with an icemaker.’

  ‘You just don’t get it, do you, Lyall?’ I said. ‘The guy simply can’t be cool if he wears Crocs. Cool Crocs. It’s an oxymoron.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Saskia, sitting down beside me and leaning against Lyall’s bed. ‘What a moron!’

  Lyall punched Saskia’s arm. ‘She said oxymoron, stupid.’

  ‘Ow! I don’t care what sort of moron he is.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Lyall, ‘When did Kara Bleakly become an authority on what’s cool? So what if she doesn’t like Crocs. She’s just a hung-up kind of person.’

  ‘She is not hung-up,’ I said. ‘I think she’s just a little lonely.

  ‘Shh! said Saskia, still clutching her arm. ‘Look!’

  There was movement on the monitor as Mum and Carl came into the library. Willow followed close behind and immediately lay down in front of the fire. Mum had a folded newspaper under her arm and sat down on one of the reading chairs.

  ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘They’re going to do the crossword. They’ll be there for hours!’

  ‘Boring!’ said Lyall. ‘Dad’s even got his glasses on.’

  ‘I’d seriously rather watch washing dry,’ I said.

  ‘Or grass grow,’ piped in Saskia.

  ‘Or do Theodore Costa’s homework,’ I said.

  ‘Or go to confession,’ said Saskia.

  ‘As if an angel is going to appear in front of two middle-aged crossword junkies and a greyhound,’ said Lyall.

  Mum had opened the paper out onto a small side table next to one of the reading chairs. Carl warmed himself by the fire for a moment before suddenly taking off his glasses. He stood right in front of Mum’s chair. She was madly scrawling a clue she’d obviously just cracked on the crossword grid. It looked as though she hadn’t even finished the word when Carl grabbed the pen out of her hand.

  We couldn’t hear what she said, but you could tell she was annoyed as. Carl held out his hand and took one of hers, pulling her up out of her chair. He led her over to the fireplace and nudged Willow out of the way with one foot. Then, still holding Mum’s hand, he reached into his pocket, as if he were looking for some small change. Out came a small box.

  ‘Get out of here!’ said Lyall. ‘Is Dad, like, proposing?’

  If we were the ones who were being spied on right then, instead of Mum and Carl, you would have seen three kids all in a row, with their jaws dropped and their mouths wide open.

  ‘Turn it off!’ I said, but at the same time I really didn’t want to, and it was too late because Carl was taking a ring out of the box and you could tell Mum said something like, It’s just beautiful.

  ‘Oh my god, he actually is proposing!’ I said.

  ‘Ewwww!’ squealed Saskia. And then, ‘Turn it off!’ And then, ‘Bags be flower girl!’

  For a few moments I was frozen still. What were the odds of seeing that, right in the middle of trying to prove the existence of angels? Who would have thought? We just sat there staring, all three of us.

  Until – you guessed it – Mum and Carl started kissing! Can you imagine? It was enough to have me on my feet in an instant pulling the plug to that surveillance monitor clean out of the wall.

  18.

  When I got back up to bed I found that my pillow had become a Willow. She was lying on it, fast asleep.

  ‘Willow!’ I said, clapping my hands. ‘Off!’

  She jumped down, looked at me guiltily for a moment and flopped onto the floor with a groan. She was asleep again in seconds.

  I turned my pillow over to the other side and lay down. I was feeling a little strange, not that Mum marrying Carl would change anything much; we were already a blended family. There was just something about it being made official. Lyall and Saskia would by my official stepsiblings and Carl would be my official stepfather. You can’t blame me for feeling a little uneasy. I mean, what if my stepfather turned bad? You read about it all the time in the paper.

  And don’t parents understand that kids might need things to be a little more gradual? Like how you grow out of your favourite jeans so slowly that you don’t even notice. And what if Saskia does get to be the flower girl? This is my mother we’re talking about, not hers.

  I wasn’t exactly jumping for joy, I can tell you, and really not looking forward to doing fake jumping for joy when Mum and Carl broke the news (probably at breakfast), and we had to pretend we had no idea. Or, worse still, if they acted all considerate and concerned and asked how we all felt about it, as if what we thought was actually going to change anything anyway.

  By morning, Willow had snuck back up on the bed and was curled into a greyhound-ball at my feet. I had a panicky feeling that I was missing out on something. It was only when I caught a waft of cooking smells that I knew it was true. Pancakes!

  ‘Come on, Willow,’ I said, sweeping off the covers. ‘Pancake frisbee, your favourite thing!’

  The problem with Willow sneaking up to my room at night wasn’t just that she got on the bed. It was also that she was still scared of going downstairs. I’d pulled my slippers on and thumped down to the landing before I noticed Willow hadn’t followed me.

  ‘Come on, girl!’ I called, but she didn’t appear. All I heard was sulking from the top of the narrow stairs. I ran back up, taking the stairs two by two.

  ‘Willow,’ I said, standing at the bottom of the turret stairs. ‘You’ve got down there heaps of times.’ But she just made a whiny noise and barked at me.

  ‘Willow, you have to learn how to get downstairs. What if there was a fire?’ I said, climbing back up to the top. ‘I’ll do it just this one last time, but that’s it. Promise?’

  I promise, said Willow by the way she wagged her tail, along with her whole bendy body.

  It wasn’t so easy to carry a greyhound down two flights of stairs, I can tell you. Especially as I had to keep one arm on the hand-rail. I reached around under Willow’s chest and she held her legs straight down, all stiff, like a wooden rocking horse. I had to put her down halfway and readjust my grip. ‘I mean, seriously, Willow,’ I said heaving her up again, ‘this is just not dignified.’

  But Willow didn’t seem to mind at all. It was like when she was a puppy and I used to push her around in my old pram. She loved it, and didn’t mind one iota if other dogs were watching.

  ‘Seriously, Willow, imagine if any of your dog relatives could see you now.’

  ‘Here she is,’ said Mum, when I finally made it to the kitchen.

  I suddenly remembered that she and Carl might be going to make some type of cringeable announcement about the engagement. I managed to shoot a glance over Mum’s left hand to see if there was a new piece of jewellery on her ring finger, but there wasn’t.

  Lyall and Saskia were sitting at the table eating pancakes, and they both gave me the eyebrow as if to let me know I wasn’t the only one to think of doing a ring check.

  ‘Morning, Sunny,’ said Carl. He was looking at the answers to yesterday’s cryptic. ‘Well, whoever this DA person is, I just don’t like him.’

  He was talking about the initials that the crossword author signs under each grid. Mum and Carl were sadly so addicted to crosswords that they even had their favourite crossword authors, even though they knew nothing about them other than their initials.

  ‘Really, parmesan, what’s that got to do with plateau? Seriously, darl, if you and I actually met DA I can tell you right now, he’s just not our sort of person. Oh, and for crying out loud, look at six across. Dead Reckoning, how is anybody meant to get that?’

  ‘Morning, Carl,’ I said, checking if there was enough pancake mixture left for me. ‘Can I go next?’ I cut a splodge of butter and watched it sizzle in the pan. I was planning on making a super-thin one for me and a good thick one for Willow. I was also planning on making sure there were no awkward silences, just in case Mum and Carl tried to fill one with their announcement.

  ‘Sunny, I thought we could sort through so
me of Granny Carmelene’s things today. It would be nice to get that room set up for guests, and we can store anything you like up in the attic.’ Mum helped me adjust the flame on the stove.

  ‘What about you two?’ said Carl to Lyall and Saskia. ‘How about giving me a hand in the garden? We’ve got to get all those vegie beds mulched so they’ll be ready for spring.’

  ‘Um, I’m going to a friend’s, Dad,’ said Lyall.

  ‘So am I, Dad, honest,’ said Saskia. ‘What did you two do last night?’

  Both Lyall and I gave Saskia a look, while Mum and Carl smiled coyly at one another and looked all embarrassed. Then Mum started clearing the table without even telling me it was my job.

  ‘Oh, we just relaxed in the library,’ replied Carl. ‘Didn’t we, darl?’

  Willow was under the table, resting her head on my leg as I finished my pancake (with butter, brown sugar, cinnamon and lemon), because she knew that hers would be coming next. I got up and sizzled some more butter in the pan.

  Willow’s pancake was thick and fat and I let some extra butter soak into it before making a dash for the back door with Willow right behind me nudging my bum. She ran down the back steps onto the grass.

  ‘One, two, three!’ I said, and flung the pancake frisbee as far as I could without making it break. Willow darted out and circled around and around, looking up in the air, until she heard it land in the middle of the frosty grass. I don’t think Willow’s eyesight is too good, even though she belongs to a class of dogs called sight hounds. She pounced on the pancake and it disappeared in two swift gulps. Then she ran straight back to me and sat up tall at my feet, hoping to have another turn.

  ‘That’s it, Willow. Sorry. Pancake frisbee is the world’s shortest game.’

  I’d successfully managed to avoid Granny Carmelene’s bedroom since moving to Windermere. It was spooky as, and all still set up just as though nothing had ever happened. It made me feel as if she could walk back in at any moment, in one of her perfectly co-ordinated outfits.