How To Get What You Want by Peony Pinker

by Jenny Alexander

  ‘Get lost!’ she cried, kicking the door shut in my face.

  A few minutes later, after a lot of crashing and muttering, she flung the door open again. Her hair looked like a pile of knotted knitting slipping down the side of her head and she had her top on back-to-front. She still couldn’t storm out because she couldn’t find her shoes.

  ‘They’re in the sitting room,’ I said. ‘Mind you don’t slip on the stairs!’

  Bianca pushed past me. She marched down to the sitting room and came straight out again with her shoes in her hand.

  ‘Bye-bye, Bianca!’

  Bang, bang, bang, she stamped down the last flight of stairs to the kitchen. Crash! She slammed the front door behind her.

  Primrose came out of the bathroom. She was shaking like she’d just got off the fastest ride in the fun-park. She collapsed into her bedroom and shut the door. She was either going to get changed for the barbecue or dive under the duvet – it could go either way.

  I went back into my bedroom and looked out the window. The guests were beginning to arrive. Mum was moving among them pouring drinks and Dad was already busy burning things on the barbecue. I got changed and brushed my hair, ready to go down and join in.

  The doorbell rang. I bumped into Primrose coming out of her room. She had put on some make-up but I could tell that she’d been crying.

  ‘It’ll be Becky,’ I said.

  She followed me down the stairs and as I went to open the front door she slipped out the back so as to be ready to meet Becky and, as she thought, Matt at the barbecue.

  ‘It worked, then!’ said Becky, grinning from ear to ear. ‘I just passed Bianca steaming down the path with a face like a slapped haddock!’

  I tried to look pleased but I was beginning to wish we hadn’t played such a mean trick on Primrose. First she had faced up to Bianca and then she had somehow managed to pick herself up and pull herself together ready to meet the boy of her dreams… when all the time we knew he wasn’t coming.

  ‘Tell me what happened,’ Becky said. ‘I want all the details!’

  But I had only just begun when a loud cheery voice came wafting up the hill towards us.

  ‘Hi, Becky! Hi, Peony!’

  Matt was striding up the zig-zag path. I shut my eyes but when I opened them again he was still there.

  ‘I’ve brought your phone,’ he said, taking the steps two at a time. ‘You left it on the counter at lunchtime.’

  ‘Oh… well… thank you!’

  Becky and I exchanged a look. Could it be that we might get Matt to the barbecue after all? The words ‘icing’ and ‘cake’ came to mind!

  ‘Have you finished the fencing?’ Becky asked. ‘Can you come to the barbecue after all?’

  ‘We-ell…’ goes Matt.

  Me and Becky grabbed an arm each and started pulling him inside. He laughed and pretended to struggle. We were larking around on the doorstep when he suddenly stopped.

  ‘Something’s on fire!’ he yelled. I looked behind me. Outside the back windows the yard was filling up with smoke.

  ‘Don’t worry, that’s just – ’ I started, but Matt pushed past me, grabbed the fire extinguisher from the hook near the cooker and ran outside. Becky and me ran out after him.

  From somewhere above the smoke zone we heard Dad’s voice.

  ‘The sausages are done!’

  ‘That’s what I was trying to tell you,’ I said to Matt. ‘It’s just my dad doing a barbecue. Last time, somebody actually called the fire brigade.’

  Matt put the fire extinguisher down. Mum appeared on the other side of the fence. ‘Is that you, Peony?’ She flapped her hands to clear the smoke away. ‘Oh, and this must be Becky and Matt from the kennels. Hello!’

  I had forgotten that Primrose wasn’t the only one who thought Matt was coming – so did Mum. She told him and Becky to climb over the fence and come and get a drink.

  Matt hesitated. He probably realised that if he stepped over that fence, sooner or later he would be obliged to eat a lump of charcoal which had once been a sausage stuffed into a hot dog roll.

  ‘Come!’ cried Mr Kaminski, seeing us hovering. He reached over and shook Matt’s hand. ‘You friend of Pinker family, yes? They lovely people. They give me this cardigan! You like?’ He more or less pulled Matt over the fence. Then he offered Becky his hand, like an old-fashioned gentleman, and Matt joined in, offering me his. He had clearly decided the situation was funny and was starting to enjoy himself.

  We went to get a drink and there, behind the fruit punch and jugs of lemonade, was Primrose. She looked as if she could either fall apart or do a runner at any moment.

  ‘This is my sister, Primrose,’ I said quickly, before she had a chance to bolt.

  Matt offered her his hand.

  ‘What a lovely name!’ he said.

  Chapter 17

  Dad in the shed, not hiding from the dog, and the return of the Pekinese

  Dad was in an exceptionally good mood at Mr Kaminski’s barbecue, even better than usual when he’s outside burning burgers and scorching sausages.

  ‘It’s been a good-news, bad-news kind of day,’ he said, ‘and the good news won!’

  The bad news was that Daphne had phoned Ed to tell him she was never coming back. She had fallen in love with her water-skiing instructor.

  ‘The good news is… I was right!’ Dad said. ‘There were plenty more fish in the sea!’

  The bad news was that Ed wanted Dad to take over the problem page permanently since he finally seemed to have got the hang of it.

  ‘The good news is… Mr Kaminski has agreed to do it for me!’

  Mr Kaminski grinned and nodded. He looked bright and happy in his brand new cardigan, not at all like a sad old snail any more.

  Mum was also in an exceptionally good mood because everyone kept saying what a great job she had done on his garden. Lots of people asked if she would come and sort out their gardens for them.

  Mum said maybe she and Stella should think about starting up their own gardening business.

  ‘We could call it Garden Angels,’ she said.

  ‘That’s a brilliant idea,’ goes Stella. ‘Then I can tell that plant-poisoner Price what he can do with his job!’

  Primrose was in an ecstatic mood because of Matt. Obviously, me and Becky didn’t crowd them or anything, but we couldn’t help sometimes overhearing what they were talking about. It was slow going at first – I mean, all they really had in common was me.

  ‘Peony’s a great kid, isn’t she?’ goes Matt.

  ‘She’s lovely,’ Primrose agreed, mushily.

  ‘Ma says she works really hard with the dogs. She’s dog-crazy, that girl!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Primrose. ‘It’s such a pity for Peony that we can’t ever have one of our own.’

  She explained about Dad being scared of dogs, and about her plan to try and help him get over it by visiting the un-scary dogs at the kennels, such as old Sam. She didn’t mention the fact that she’d had an ulterior motive, of course.

  ‘If your dad won’t come to the kennels,’ said Matt, ‘maybe I could bring Sam to your house some time.’

  ‘That’s a brilliant idea!’ goes Primrose. ‘How about tomorrow?’

  ‘I’m at the cafe tomorrow…’

  ‘When you’ve finished work, then? We could hang around here for a bit and then maybe take Sam for a walk on the cliff path.’

  So now they had a shared project – getting a dog for me! – and they’d also fixed up their first date.

  All day Sunday, Primrose was on her mobile sending messages, pics and texts to Matt. She spent about a billion hours trying to make up her mind what to wear. By the time he arrived her whole bed had disappeared under a mountain of clothes she had tried on and rejected.

  I don’t know how the rest of the date went but the getting-Dad-used-to-dogs-by-bringing-friendly-old-Sam-round could definitely have gone better. When Matt and Sam arrived, Dad was sitting on the bottom step oiling the sque
aky wheel of the wheelbarrow. The minute he clapped eyes on Sam he leapt off the steps and dived into the shed.

  ‘It’s only Sam,’ goes Matt. ‘He’s very old and not at all scary!’

  ‘I’m not scared. I’m just looking for…’ Dad scanned the inside of the shed but we don’t keep anything in there except the wheelbarrow. ‘… for this lolly wrapper to wipe the spare oil off with!’ He hung around under there like a mole in a hole until Matt and Sam had gone on up the steps and were safely in the house.

  Matt and Primrose agreed they should not give up. If needs be, Matt said, he was prepared to bring old Sam up every day after school until Dad stopped being scared of him. Primrose somehow managed not to jump up and down for joy.

  By the end of the weekend everything was looking good, but I couldn’t help worrying about what might happen when Primrose went back to school. Supposing Bianca was really horrible to her… or even worse, supposing she decided to forgive her and be friends again?

  It seemed a long way down the zig-zag path after school on Monday, not knowing what I would find when I got to the house. I couldn’t quite bring myself to believe that Bianca had gone for good.

  Well, you know when something bad has been happening every single day, such as your sister Primrose bringing her horrible new best friend home after school? On that Monday afternoon, it didn’t!

  I walked in to find Primrose making pancakes. There were two plates on the table, two half-lemons and a bowl of sugar… and Bianca was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Hurry up, Peony,’ she said. ‘This one’s yours and it’s ready.’

  I dropped my bag on the floor and grabbed a plate. Primrose tossed the pancake up in the air and I lunged forward to catch it.

  ‘How was school?’ I said, as I drenched it in sugar and lemon.

  ‘So-so,’ shrugged Primrose, pouring another cup of batter into the pan.

  She told me Bianca had been really mean to her all day, spreading nasty rumours and everything, but she didn’t care – she was in love!

  ‘I never really liked her, you know,’ she said.

  ‘Why were you friends with her, then?’

  Primrose said the reason she’d wanted us to call her Annabel was because at that time she really did hate her name. All the kids at school had been teasing her about it. That was why she first got friendly with Bianca. ‘No-one teases you when you’re hanging out with someone like her.’

  The trouble was, Bianca made her do all kinds of things she didn’t want to, such as bunking off school and trying to get invited to the lifeguards’ beach parties, and pretending to think they could be pop stars when she knew very well that neither of them could sing. Most of all, she didn’t want to join in being horrible to me. She just kind of got sucked in, and then she couldn’t get out again.

  ‘Bianca isn’t the kind of person you want to not be friends with,’ she said.

  I told her it seemed to me that if Bianca was a dog she would be a Pit Bull. Nobody gives you bother if you’ve got one of those by your side but the problem with having a fighting dog is it can turn against its owner.

  Primrose nodded thoughtfully. ‘That’s an interesting way of looking at it,’ she said.

  She flipped her pancake onto a plate and poured some more batter into the pan for me.

  I said if Mum was a dog she’d be a Shetland sheepdog, quick and keen to work – if Dad was a dog he’d be a comfy old Labrador lolling on the settee.

  ‘If I was a dog,’ said Primrose, rolling her pancake up and chomping a bit off the end, ‘what do you think I would be?’

  ‘We-ell…’

  ‘Go on – say it! I know you’ve thought of one.’

  I had a feeling things might be about to go horribly wrong, but she did ask.

  ‘Before you got snarly with Bianca, I always thought you would be a Pekinese.’

  ‘A Pekinese?’ goes Primrose. ‘Why? What are they like?’

  I told her they came from China and the legend said they were a cross between a lion and a monkey. I read that in the Bumper Book of Dogs.

  ‘They’re brave and bossy, that’s the lion part,’ I said. ‘But they’re also friendly and fun.’

  Primrose laughed. ‘Fair enough!’ she said. ‘What do they look like – more lion or more monkey?’

  ‘They’re kind of hard to describe.’

  ‘Show me a picture, then.’

  It was too late to get out of it so I went and got the Bumper Book of Dogs. I opened it at the right page and handed it to Primrose. I could see she wasn’t impressed.

  ‘What’s that supposed to be?’ she demanded. ‘It looks like a cat that’s crashed into a window!’

  ‘I didn’t say you looked like a Pekinese, Primrose…’

  ‘Whatever!’ she interrupted me. She didn’t want us to fall out again so soon, but you could tell she was cross. ‘I can’t hang around here anyway! Matt’s coming in half an hour and I don’t know what I’m going to wear.’

  With that, she flounced off, leaving me to clear up the mess and wash the dishes. I grinned to myself. That was a Pekinese for you – sometimes amazing and sometimes annoying. It was good to have the old Primrose back.

  This electronic edition published in February 2013 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  Text copyright © 2011 Jenny Alexander

  Illustrations copyright © 2011 Ella Okstad

  First published 2011 by A & C Black

  Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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  The right of Jenny Alexander and Ella Okstad to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work respectively has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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  eISBN 978-1-4081-6588-1

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  Will Peony get a dog? Will Primrose and Matt live happily ever after? Find out what happens next in

  How to Get the Family You Want by Peony Pinker.