It’s at that moment that I realize ONE important person isn’t there. By that I mean, one important goat.
“Twinkle!” I hiss at Swan and her almond eyes widen.
We ran and ran and RAN out of the woods, without remembering that we’d left Twinkle behind. Zed’s going to KILL us!
“We saw the witch looking out of the tree-house window!” I vaguely hear Blossom say in my panic. “She had a CLAW around something and this BRIGHT RED hair and she was making this awful sort of ‘ARF! ARF! ARF!’ sound!”
A thought tries to wriggle and squiggle to the front of my frazzled mind. But just before it does, I hear a familiar voice.
“Um, excuse me? I think I’M your witch…”
I flip my head round and there’s Granny Viv, walking out of the woods in all her mad, red-haired glory. She smiles apologetically as she lifts the thermos mug in her “claw”.
Trotting happily by her side is Twinkle.
I’m just about to squawk, “What on EARTH are you DOING here?” when a big blur of fur and drool hurtles towards me at high speed.
*OOF!*
Two huge paws pin my shoulders to the ground and my face is covered in frantic shlurps.
Well, hello to you, too, Downboy!
“Ooh, this is nice, isn’t it?” says Granny Viv, sinking into the beanbag next to mine in Lulu’s office.
As Granny Viv stares admiringly at Swan’s artwork on the walls, I stare at her, not quite believing she’s actually here.
I’d have found out quicker, of course, if I’d paid attention to Twinkle.
Like a goat-shaped sniffer dog, she’d worked out that there was more than just some cushions and a bunch of spiders in the tree house and that’s why she’d been headbutting the door earlier.
Meanwhile, me, Swan and Zed were down at the campfire pit, goofing around about treasure maps, without realizing that BEHIND the thunked door lurked a spying gran with, as it turns out…
• a restrained pooch
• a thermos of tea
• a stash of snacks (for humans AND doggies)
• a pair of binoculars.
Back out on the lawn, Granny Viv said she’d had to hold on to Downboy’s snout very hard to stop him “ARF! ARF! ARF!”ing at the goat on the other side of the door and that he’d wriggled and squiggled like MAD when he’d heard my voice.
She tried to say some other stuff about what on earth she was doing in the tree house but it got jumbled up and lost in the confusion of happily hysterical Newts, dogs and goats.
That’s why Lulu shooed me and Granny Viv into her office, so we could have a proper chat in peace.
“Here you are!” says Lulu, breezing into the room and handing Granny Viv a cup of tea.
“Thank you! Is Downboy all right out there?” Granny Viv checks.
“Seems to be,” says Lulu, peering out of the window before she sits at her desk. “He’s having a lovely time being chased around the garden by Twinkle. They’re best of friends already. But, Viv, DO tell all! How long have you been spying on us?”
Lulu’s eyes are sparkling at the notion of Granny Viv living “wild” in the woods.
She threw her head back and laughed when Granny Viv said she’d used the tree house as a secret, biscuit-eating den where she could nosey at the school and check on me without being seen. (It’s a relief that Lulu thinks of Granny Viv’s antics more as an adventure and less like an issue that should involve calling the police.)
“Well, I didn’t set out to spy on you. It was all a bit of a whim, really, starting with the camper van,” Granny Viv says brightly. “I saw it in the local garage last weekend, with a ‘For Sale’ sign and thought what fun it would be to buy it. I imagined coming down here to take Dani away for the weekend now and again. Whisking her off for Granny and Grandaughter escapades!”
Lulu raises her eyebrows as if that does indeed sound like such fun.
“OK,” I say from the squidging comfort of the other beanbag, “you swapped your Mini for a camper van. But what’s that got to do with you hiding away in the tree house?”
“Hiding? Oh, that makes me sound like I ran away from home, doesn’t it? A runaway granny. Ha!” Granny Viv says, grinning. “But honestly, darling, it was all a bit of an accident. You see, once I bought Daisy—”
“Daisy?” I interrupt.
“—the camper van, darling, her name’s Daisy,” Granny Viv breezes on. “As soon as I bought Daisy, I decided I’d take her for a spin, pack some picnic things and make a day of it with Downboy. And then I thought, what if I drive in the direction of Dani’s new school? What if I park nearby and then have a sneaky peek, just to make sure she’s OK?”
“So you got here this morning?” I ask, though I’m trying to work out why Granny Viv had washing hanging from tree branches if she’d only arrived shortly before me and Swan discovered her van on the foresters’ track.
“Oh, no! I was out for a Sunday drive!” laughs Granny Viv. “But then I got completely lost down these tracks in the woods and it was getting later and later. I parked up and was trying to figure out where I was – but when I tried to start Daisy up again, her engine clapped out. So Downboy and I ended up sleeping there all night – the benches in the back convert into comfy beds and there’s the sweetest little checked curtains! We were ever so snug in there.”
Granny Viv’s explanation is gently wandering off-course, and I’m worried it might get as lost as she was.
“Sunday? But it’s Tuesday now,” I point out. “What have you been doing all this time?”
“Well, I suppose I’ve been trying to contact Eric, trying to start the engine and trying to catch sight of you, sweetie,” Granny Viv answers, as if all of that is pretty straightforward and normal. Which it is, if you live in CRAZYVILLE.
“You got a really close sighting of me this morning,” I say with a little frown. “I mean, I was right below the tree house. Why didn’t you just come out and say hello?”
“Oh, Dani, darling... I so wanted to but I thought you might be cross with me,” Granny Viv replies, squishing round in her beanbag to look at me better. “You know, silly, old grandmother, embarrassing you in front of your new friends! So I just phoned you instead, once you’d walked away into the trees.”
Ah, that conversation when I was hurrying after Swan and Twinkle. No wonder Granny Viv had such excellent suggestions about what “magical” locations we might find in the woods. She wasn’t just imagining that there’d be carvings in trees and fairy rings and the rest – she’d actually found them!
“And I thought if Eric could help me get Daisy up and running, I’d be gone before anyone knew I’d been here – especially you, Dani!” Granny Viv adds with a shrug. “That’s till I managed to frighten all those sweet little girls. I’m so sorry about that, Lulu!”
“Oh, don’t worry about the Newts – they’re a hardy bunch,” says Lulu, with a wave of her hand. “But anyway, who’s Eric?”
“He’s my friend – and car mechanic,” Granny Viv explains. “He’s away this week but he’s been trying to give me tips over the phone to get Daisy going. None of them worked, unfortunately.”
“Oh dear,” Lulu murmurs sympathetically. “So what do you…”
As Lulu and Granny Viv chat about broken-down camper van issues, I tune out, and suddenly start to make sense of the two snatched conversations I’ve had with Granny Viv the last couple of mornings…
• yesterday, she’d sounded kerfuffled when I mentioned her Mini but of course, unknown to me, she’d traded it in for Daisy
• today, she’d asked why I wasn’t in normal lessons. That wasn’t down to “grandmother’s intuition” like she said – it was cos she was watching us from the tree house!
And then I suddenly have the funniest feeling I’m being stared at.
Possibly because Lulu and Granny Viv are both staring at me.
“What do you think?” Granny Viv asks me.
It’s obviously something I should be
pleased about or she wouldn’t be grinning like the Cheshire Cat.
“Would you like it if your grandmother stayed for a few days?” Lulu spells things out more clearly. “Till her friend can get here at the weekend and fix the camper van?”
I am so, so, SO pleased I go to throw my arms around Granny Viv.
But because leaping out of a beanbag is impossible, it turns into a sort of half-hearted lunge with arms flailing.
Still, Granny Viv understands and, anyway, she’s having the same problem as me.
So instead, she blows me a red-lipped *mwah* of a kiss and it feels almost as good as any hug.
Could this day get any better?
“Fantastic!” says Lulu, slapping her hands on the desk. “Well, you know how the old saying goes – there’s always room for a little one! How about you get your gran settled in one of the spare rooms on the third floor, Dani? There’re lots to choose from. Then maybe Viv could sit in on some of your lessons and get a feel for what goes on here at St Grizzle’s!”
What goes on at St Grizzle’s? A whole lot of bonkers.
So Granny Viv should fit right in…
“…and I just LOVE the colour of Miss Amethyst’s hair!” says Granny Viv as we walk along the village high street with Downboy and Twinkle.
I knew Granny Viv would adore Miss Amethyst’s powder puff of mauve hair. Just like I knew she’d adore Miss Amethyst. She sat knitting a multi-coloured scarf at the back of Miss Amethyst’s science lesson earlier this morning but soon threw her knitting needles aside and had her hand up in the air, desperate to answer questions along with the rest of us.
And in our art lesson, Granny Viv ended up drumming the desk softly in time to the prettily sad strumming of Mademoiselle Fabienne’s guitar. Then she got as excited as everyone else about making a papier-mâché model. Granny Viv’s is of Daisy the camper van and is really quite good. Mine is of Downboy but looks more like a potato cow.
“But anyway, enough about the school. Tell me more about this fantastic-sounding film project,” Granny Viv says. “Your mother will be so proud when she hears you’re the director!”
With her full-on schedule in the freezing Antarctic, I don’t know when I’ll next get a chance to talk to Mum. I sent her a link to the rolling-green-hills film with its grazing potato-cows and giant-mutant-goat but I don’t think she’s seen it yet (at least she hasn’t given me a “Like” yet).
“Don’t get too excited,” I tell Granny Viv. “It’s not for Hollywood – just for the local council’s new website.”
“Well, it’s all good experience for you, Dani,” my grandmother says matter-of-factly. “But what are you looking so down about? You usually love making mini-movies.”
“I do … it’s just the deadline is teatime tomorrow. We’ve seen some pretty spots in the woods but we haven’t finally settled on any locations yet,” I explain, “let alone started filming.”
“Hmm. Whatever you do, please don’t use that monstrosity,” says Granny Viv, pointing to the ugly car park opposite the supermarket. “I mean, was the architect who built that blindfolded when they designed it? Or did they just get a kick out of making people grumpy?”
Once Granny Viv heard about our lack of dinner lady – and food in general – she offered to make a giant vat of veggie chilli for everyone’s lunch and that’s why we’re here, hunting and gathering kidney beans. It’s the least she could do to repay Lulu’s hospitality, she says.
I think Lulu thought it would be nice to let me and Granny Viv catch up, too.
And so far on the way here, I’ve pointed out St Grizzle (wearing striped oven gloves today), told Granny Viv what happened with Mrs Hedges (i.e. that she didn’t enjoy her ghostly makeover) and explained to her why the Newts have been a bit funny towards her so far this morning (they’re disappointed she wasn’t really a witch).
And now that Granny Viv’s got a bit of background on the school and everyone in it, it’s nice to show her the village, cos Huddleton is very pretty, apart from the parts that aren’t.
“It’s as if architects build new stuff without looking at what’s already there,” I say, gazing around at the cute old buildings that line most of the street.
“True, true… Like a zookeeper sticking a buffalo in the otter enclosure and thinking it’s a close enough match,” Granny Viv muses. “Can you picture how the village would’ve looked when St Grizelda’s School for Girls was first built, Dani? Can you imagine the first ever head teacher strolling along here with her pupils fanning out behind her?”
Granny Viv stands straight, nose in the air, imitating some grand and strict head teacher from a hundred years or so ago. Though the only thing we have fanning behind us is a shopping trolley, a goat and a tongue-lolling dog. (After a few experimental headbutts, Twinkle decided Downboy was OK and now they’re trotting along like a pair of small, freaky-looking ponies.)
“What would Miss— what did you say her name was again?” Granny asks, continuing with her funny, proud-peacock strutting.
“Miss Augusta Wilberbuttle,” I tell her, remembering what Yas had said during the Conkers’ attempt at a film.
“Ah, yes! Now what do you suppose the fine, upstanding Miss Augusta Wilberbuttle would make of some of these clunky modern horrors?”
I’m just about to answer Granny Viv when we hear a shout.
“Ooh, hold your nose, guys – it’s some smelly Grizzlers! Ha ha ha!”
Uh-oh.
“Grizzlers…” repeats Granny Viv, her ears pricking up. “Do they mean St Grizzle’s?”
“Yep,” I reply. “Anyway, here’s the supermarket.”
It’s time to get on with the shopping and away from the teasing. But first we need to tie Twinkle and Downboy to the nearest lamppost.
“Oi! OI!” comes a shout, from a shouter who clearly wants our attention “SHE’S a bit old to be a Grizzler, isn’t she?”
There’s only one person who’d have the nerve to be that cheeky about a grown-up.
“Friend of yours?” asks Granny Viv, looking across the road at Spencer and his gaggle of sniggering mates.
Spencer’s holding a camera in his hand – the school’s new bit of kit that he was boasting about yesterday.
“Couldn’t be less of a friend,” I tell her, though Granny Viv is obviously smart enough to know an idiot when she sees one. “Spencer goes to the local village school. He likes to act as if his school and St Grizzle’s are big rivals, even though we couldn’t care less.”
“Wait a minute – is it that SWAN girl, with a new look?” Spencer carries on, not knowing when to stop. “Red hair and wrinkles … interesting way to go. Ha ha ha ha!”
“Wow, he really is quite something,” mutters Granny Viv, as if that something is the sort of something you might find stuck on your shoe if you’re very unlucky.
“They’re entering the council’s competition, too,” I tell her. “He told me and Swan yesterday that they’ve claimed all the best locations around here and that we can’t use them in our film.”
“Best locations like what?” asks Granny Viv, bending to tie Downboy’s lead to the lamppost, while I do the same with Twinkle’s.
“Like the war memorial over there and the bridge down the side street here and the market cross and the pretty old church and the duck pond on the green at the other end of the road…”
“Hmm,” Granny Viv murmurs thoughtfully but I have no idea what those thoughts might be.
“So, shall we ignore them? Shall we get our shopping?” I suggest, turning my back on the still-sniggering Spencer and co.
“Absolutely!” Granny Viv says cheerfully – then hands me the shopping list. “You start without me, Dani. I just want to have a quick look around the village and then join you. Won’t be long! All right?”
Saying no to Granny Viv is virtually impossible. Mind you, she’s usually saying stuff like, “Shall we eat ALL the cake, Dani?” or “Let’s do roly-polys down the hill and see who gets there first!”
So this time I’m kind of confused. Doing shopping on my own while she sightsees doesn’t sound a whole lot of fun.
I’d quite like to say, “No, it’s not all right.”
But instead, I mumble a disappointed and useless “Mneh…” as Granny Viv strides off.
If she’s been so keen to see me all this time, why is she so keen to get away from me all of a sudden…?
Help!
I have gone past the point of no return.
I have entered the danger zone.
I have ignored the sign at the door that reads:
And the reason I have dared to risk the wrath of the Newts?
Well, it’s because I need to put their clean bedding on, since that was the deal with the laundry today.
Zed is ferrying all the sheets and duvet sets to the bottom of the stairs, and me and Swan are gathering them up and getting busy up on the first floor. We tossed a coin and I lost – she’s doing the Conkers, Otters and Fungi dorms (nine beds) and I’m doing the Newts (ten beds).
“Urgh … gross,” says Arch as I hold my phone up and scan the room so my friend back home can see how incredibly brave I am.
It is very gross.
Every Newt has scrawled a self-portrait of themselves on the wall behind their beds and every one of them looks like a version of some evil Halloween pumpkin-head.
And then there’s the socks. So many socks. Floppy, worn socks ALL over the floor of the dorm. How can ten girls have THAT many socks? Is it even possible, or allowed?
“Just be glad you can only see and not smell,” I tell Arch as I prop him up on the nearest bedside cabinet, so he can keep me company while I wrestle with duvet covers.
It’s so good to catch up with Arch at last, even if I am stuck in Smelly-Sock Land. I’ve just filled him in on all the dramas of the last couple of days and he’s found it highly entertaining, especially since the only drama he’s had was at lunchtime today, when the dinner hut ran out of sticky toffee pudding. (Noooo!)
St Grizzle's School for Girls, Ghosts and Runaway Grannies Page 5