by Debi Gliori
Then we all got out and ran through the rain and squashed into Mum’s car. It started immediately, but made a very loud squealing sound when Dad drove round corners.
EEEEeeeEEEEEEeeeeeEEE-ee-ee-ee.
Daisy thought this was hilarious and squealed back, ‘Eeee-Eeeee-Eeee, silly ole car,’ until I began to wish Jack had a spare pair of earbuds for me. Then, when we were quite close to Jack’s school, Dad groaned and the car began to slow down. In front of us was a long queue of cars, none of them moving.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked. ‘Why have all those cars stopped?’
‘EeeEEE-ee? Ee-Eee-EE-ee?’ Daisy demanded.
Dad ignored us and pulled over to the side of the road and hauled on the handbrake.
Tss Tsss tssststsss, went Jack.
Dad flung open his door and got out to investigate what was going on. We waited as rain ran down the windows and the outside world began to vanish in the mist from our breath.
Tss Tsss tsss, went Jack.
‘Eeee-EE-eeeEE,’ replied Daisy.
I gritted my teeth. It was twenty past nine. I was really late now. Everybody would have started without me.
Tsss tsss tsstssss.
‘Eee-Eee-eee-EEe-EEEEEEEeeeeee. Not needa baffroom. Not dunna poo.’
The lying wee toad. The inside of the car began to smell horrible, but it was too wet outside to even think about opening any windows.
Jack’s nose wrinkled and he removed his earbuds to glare at Daisy. ‘Ewwww. Daiseeeeee,’ he gasped. ‘That is disGUSting.’
‘’GUSting,’ Daisy agreed cheerfully. ‘Notta poo. Dunna ewwww.’
This is shaping up to be one of those days when I wish I could press ‘rewind’ and find myself back under my bedcovers, instead of sitting in a cold metal box breathing in air that smells like it has been recently exhaled by the Stinky-Cheese Man and his friend, Week-Old-Warm-Prawn Boy.
After what felt like centuries had passed, the door opened and Dad climbed back inside. ‘The road’s flooded up ahead,’ he said, turning on the engine. ‘We’ll have to go the long way round,’ then, a second later, ‘EUGHHHHHH, Daisy Was that you?’
This was one of those questions which fortunately didn’t really need an answer. Daisy raked Dad with a withering stare and jammed her fingers in her ears.
‘Not lissnin’, Dada,’ she said. ‘Lissnin’ to moo sick. Lalala LALA la. Tiss TISSTISS. Not hearin’. La la LA. Wot sayin?’
By the time Dad had dropped Jack off at his school, changed Daisy’s nappy in the back of the car and finally arrived at our school, we were an hour and a half late. We splashed across the playground, trying to avoid the really deep puddles, before running inside. The cloakroom was full of wellies and raincoats and all the windows had steamed up. I could hear Miss McPhee playing the piano and the little ones practising their song. Soon they’ll be singing it for real. On the wall calendar it said:
TODAY IS MONDAY 23RD MARCH
THE WEATHER IS RAINY
Yikes. Only four days to go till the concert? AAAARGHHHHH. There was so much to do before then. Mrs McDonald is putting the finishing touches to Daisy’s monkey costume and our whole class is making masks and ears for the little ones’ costumes. For the previous month we’ve all been bringing in boxes and bags of things we thought might come in useful. There are old sheets, ancient velvet curtains and an entire flock of grubby sheepskin rugs. There’s a boxful of balls of orange knitting wool and a black plastic bin-bag crammed with scraps of fake fur that smell a bit weird. There’s one crate stuffed with rolls of wallpaper and another with hundreds of ping-pong balls layered inside. Jamie’s brought in a bag of pheasant feathers, and last week Annabel staggered in with a suitcase crammed with miles of wispy blue silk.
When I walk into class, hardly anyone looks up: they’re all working flat out, concentrating hard on getting the costumes completed in time for the concert. Shane and Craig have almost finished their elephant mask. It’s really brilliant: a long bendy trunk made out of one leg of a pair of woolly tights stuffed with wadding, and Craig’s cutting out the second of a pair of realistically wrinkly ears from a sheet of grey leather.
‘These are amazing,’ Vivaldi says, picking up the finished ear and stroking it.
‘Aye. Dead realistic, eh?’ Craig grins.
‘Yeah, but you’d better hope your big brother disnae come to the concert, eh no?’ Shane mutters, stuffing more wadding down the elephant’s trunk and adding, ‘He’ll mollicate* you if he sees what you’ve done to his leather jacket.’
Crikey. Let’s hope Craig’s big brother stays at home grinding his knives on Friday night. If he’s bigger than Craig, he must be enormous. Thanks to Yoshito, Annabel is busy stapling each end of a pile of long strips of blue silk onto thin lengths of wood. When Yoshito saw the blue silk emptied out all over the floor, it gave her the beginning of an idea.
‘It’s the sea, Annabel. You have brought the sea in your suitcase.’
Annabel’s nose wrinkled. ‘Don’t be silly. It’s Mummy’s silk that she bought cheap in Hong Kong.’
Yoshito wasn’t in the least discouraged by this, and insisted the blue silk would make a perfect sea for the ark to float on. For once Annabel didn’t sneer or say something crushing. Instead, she picked up a length of silk and wafted it gently back and forth, frowning as she thought.
‘You’re absolutely right,’ she said, a faint hint of a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. ‘And I’ve just had an idea for how we can make it work.’
I have to admit it: Annabel’s idea is stunning. On the night, the blue silk is going to look exactly like the sea. Vivaldi and I are making the wasp, ant and bumblebee costumes, which means our desks are covered with ping-pong balls and bendy wool-wrapped feelers and legs. We’ve made giant pom-poms for the bee and wasp bodies, and we’re just about to start on the ant’s body when the bell rings for lunch. A huge groan goes up from everyone.
‘Not yet,’ moans Jamie. ‘I’ve still got tons to do before lunch.’
‘We’ll never get it all finished in time,’ Vivaldi sighs, looking down at our pile of carefully cut-out ant segments all lined up and waiting to be painted.
‘We’re gonny have to come in at night to get it all done,’ Shane groans as we head into the hall for lunch. At the far end of the room, behind the tables where the dinner lady dishes out the food, are all our bits of scenery for the play, propped up against the wall. From a distance they look really convincing, just as grey and stormy as the weather outside. Yoshito’s second batch of purply-grey paint was even better than the first one that Shane spilled, and Craig made a fantastic job of painting the storm clouds. They look so realistic, I can almost feel the rain dripping on my head.
Uh-oh. I can feel the rain.
Drip, drip. There it is again. Drops of cold water are falling off the ceiling and landing on me. Somewhere over our heads, the school roof is leaking. This is not good news. In fact, this is such bad news that I decide there and then that it hasn’t happened. What rain? What leak? What drips? I’m not going to tell anyone that the roof is leaking – because if I do, then we’ll probably be sent home till the roof is mended, and that would mean we’d have to cancel the concert. All of a sudden I realize how much we’ve all been looking forward to our concert – especially the little ones, who have been growing more and more excited, the closer Friday comes.
I look up at the ceiling and cross my fingers tightly behind my back. Please, I beg silently. Don’t leak. Please stop dripping.
‘Soup, Lily?’ the dinner lady asks. ‘LEEK and potato today.’
*Ancient Scottish for murrrderrr.
Eleven:
The Toad takes charge
In the kitchen at Arkon House, the telephone begins to ring.
‘Cominggggg,’ the Toad carols, dropping her whisk into the bowl of meringue mix she’s been beating. She picks up the receiver just as the Nose appears in the kitchen doorway.
‘Helloooo?’ the Toad says. ‘Arkon
House. How can I help you?’
The Nose strains to hear but can only make out a distant chittering sound, like the cheeping of far-off birds.
‘No,’ the Toad sighs. ‘But I can give her a message if you like.’
For me? the Nose mimes, but the Toad shakes her head and sketches a vast chin in the air with one webbed foot.
‘I’ll make sure she gets that when she returns,’ the Toad continues, beaming happily. ‘And yes … how kind. We’d love to come too.’ She replaces the receiver and is and about to return to her meringue mix, but the Nose has scuttled across the kitchen and is now standing in her way.
‘Sssso?’ she demands. ‘Who was that? Who rang?’
Mind full of cooking thoughts, the Toad shakes her head. ‘No, dear. It’s a mirr-ang, not a who-rang.’
The Nose stares at her Sister in puzzlement. What on earth is the Toad wittering on about?
The Toad smiles kindly at the Nose. ‘You know,’ she explains. ‘I mean a meringue, as in lemon meringue pie.’
‘No,’ the Nose groans. ‘I mean, who rang – as in: who just rang us on the telephone?’
‘Ahhhhh,’ the Toad says, finally understanding what her Sister is talking about. ‘That was Mr Harukashi. It’s so exciting! Hoorah, hoorah for Mr Harukashi! Because of him, we’re going to get to see our precious little Witch Baby. He has invited all of us to his daughter’s school concert.’
The Nose frowned. ‘All of us?’ she sneered. ‘ALL of us? I don’t think so. I can go, and the Chin can go – but you, you twit of a toad, if you think for one minute that you can come too, you’re living in a fairytale.’
‘Why NOT?’ squawked the Toad. ‘Why can’t I go? What’s wrong with me coming to the concert? I NEVER get to do ANYTHING. It’s always you and the Chin who go out, while I’m left at home, cooking and cleaning and mending like … like CINDERELLA.’ There’s a chatter, a ger-doink then a sproingy, sproingy twonk as the egg-whisk bounces across the kitchen and comes to rest I at the Nose’s feet.
‘Oh, do get a grip, Toad,’ snaps the Nose. ‘You know exactly why you can’t come to the concert: we’re trying to disguise the fact that we’re witches – yes? While we’re forced to live here in order to keep an eye on our Witch Baby, we have to pretend to be normal humans just like our neighbours – yes? With me so far? Right – pay attention because I’m not going to say it again – NORMAL HUMANS DO NOT BRING THEIR TALKING TOADS ALONG WITH THEM TO CONCERTS—’
Just then, the kitchen door opens and in comes the Chin. Her hair is plastered to her head and her shoes are making squelching sounds.
‘Eughhhh,’ she groans, kicking off her shoes and sinking into a chair. ‘What filthy weather. I’m soaked to the skin.’
The Nose stares at her wet sibling. ‘Tssssk. You look like a drowned rat, Sister dear,’ she remarks nastily, twirling a strand of her own hair around her finger. ‘You’ll have to smarten up your appearance because we’ve been invited to a concert this Friday.’
It’s on the tip of the Chin’s tongue to say that she’s already been invited to a concert on Friday, but she stops herself just in time. If she said that, the Nose would demand to know who had invited her, and when, and then the secret letter from Yoshito would be a secret no longer. Wisely the Chin keeps silent, smiling and nodding at her sister as if to say, Gosh! A concert! How wonderful!
‘Yerrrrs,’ the Nose adds. ‘It’s your admirer, Hare Harukashi, who invited us. Apparently it’s his daughter’s school concert.’
The Chin grits her teeth. I know, she wants to say. I know because she invited me. Just me, not you, you foul hag. Somehow she manages to keep the smile on her face as the Nose continues.
‘Thank goodness I had my hair done, but poor old you, Chin – your hair’s a mess and you look like an ancient granny.’
‘Thanks,’ mutters the Chin, standing up and heading for the door.
‘You really ought to make more of an effort with your appearance,’ the Nose says, grinning like a wolf. ‘I cannot imagine why Mr Harukashi likes you so much. You never dress up or wear make-up or—’
‘SHUT UP!’ the Chin shrieks. ‘Read my pale lipstick-free lips. I don’t CARE what you think about my appearance. Mr Harukashi likes me perfectly well as a witch, not some kind of dress-up dolly. Witches are supposed to look like me. We’re the Sisters of HiSS, not the Frillies of Kiss. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to squeeze my chin warts.’ And with that, she sweeps out of the kitchen. Moments later the Nose and the Toad hear a bedroom door slam upstairs.
‘Dear, dear,’ the Nose remarks. ‘What a grumpy old troll she’s turning into. If she’s not careful, Mr Harukashi will decide she’s too old and ugly and fall in love with somebody else.’*
‘Rubbish!’ yelps the Toad, rising to the Chin’s defence. ‘You’re just jealous. Mr Harukashi loves our Sister, and nothing and nobody will change that.’
‘I am so not jealous,’ the Nose lies, adding, ANYWAY, she doesn’t love him. And she never will, so there. Nya-nya …’
But the Toad isn’t listening any more. She’s suddenly had an idea that is so wonderful, so fluffy and pink and perfect, that she can barely stop herself from laughing out loud and dancing round the kitchen. Her head is filling up with bubbles, her chest is full of warm flower-scented air and she feels as if any second she might float right up off the ground and be carried up to the ceiling on a tide of white lacy froth.
What is needed, she realizes, is a love potion. Something to make the Chin fall head over heels in love with Hare Harukashi. And then, she thinks, hugging herself with delight, then we can have a wedding, and that means I’ll get to be a bridesmaid, just like I’ve always, always wanted. The Toad’s eyes soften into toffee-coloured pools of bliss. It is, she decides, one of the best ideas she’s ever had. It is utterly, totally—
The Toad blinks and drags herself back to the present. From across the kitchen, the Nose is giving her a very searching stare. The Toad gulps. Careful, she tells herself. Making a love potion is a brilliant idea, but it mustn’t fall into the wrong hands. Or, she adds, down the wrong throat …
‘I think I’ll start making supper,’ she says, knowing that the Nose will immediately find something else to do rather than offer to help with the cooking. Sure enough, the Nose’s eyes swivel wildly and she starts looking very uncomfortable. Perfect, the Toad thinks. Soon she’ll be off, and then there’ll be no interruptions while I assemble the ingredients for my potion.
‘I, um, think I’ll just go for a … an, uh … swim,’ the Nose mumbles, backing out of the kitchen. ‘Erm … when’s supper?’
‘Give me a couple of hours,’ the Toad says, turning her back on the Nose in an attempt to hide the huge grin sweeping across her face. ‘I’m cooking up something really, really special for tonight.’
* Inside the Nose’s head, a little voice cackled, ‘Like me, for instance,’ and then the same little voice added waspishly, ‘Not that I care one jot for that silly little man but … if he fell in love with wonderful, beautiful MEEEE, it would annoy the pantaloons off my grumpy troll of a Sister.’
Twelve:
Total toddler meltdown
Through the open door I can see that Mum and Dad have arranged buckets and pails all over Jack’s bedroom floor. Outside it’s still raining and inside it’s still leaking, and there’s a terrific din of plinks and plonks and splishes and sploshes as drips fall from Jack’s ceiling into the buckets. Tomorrow a team of roofers will arrive and try to fix our leaky roof, but for tonight, Jack will have to carry on camping in Daisy’s room and Daisy in mine. When we came home from school, Jack moved a mountain of furry toys out of Daisy’s room and into mine because he said he couldn’t concentrate on his homework with all those goggly eyes staring at him. Great. With the arrival of a ton of teddies, plus Daisy and WayWoof, and Daisy’s bed and all her picture books, my bedroom feels as if it’s shrunk to half its normal size. Daisy may be the smallest person in our house but she seems to take up the most
space. Tonight she ate the most supper as well. Somehow she managed to cram in three helpings of apple and raspberry crumble before Mum decided she’d had enough and hauled her off for a bath.
Daisy’s already in bed with WayWoof asleep at her feet when I go upstairs to change into my pee-jays.
‘What doon, Lil-Lil?’ she demands as I dump a herd of teddies off my bed and onto the carpet.
‘Trying to get into my bed,’ I mutter, turning my back on her while I take my clothes off.
‘Oooooo,’ she cackles, standing up in bed to get a better view. ‘Bumbum, Lilybum, Daisybum—’
‘DAISY!’ I roar. ‘Be-HAVE. You’re really embarrassing me.’
‘Not hayve. Not embassing you.’
‘Yes you are.’ I turn round and fling a teddy at her – at least, I fling it at where Daisy was half a second ago.
She’s not there any more. The teddy sails across the space where my little sister was standing and bounces off the wall before falling onto Daisy’s empty bed. Way Woof whimpers in her sleep and turns over.
‘Daisy?’ I’m dragging on my pyjama bottoms, wondering if she’s hiding behind the curtains or if I’m going to have to go out in the cold and rain to find her.
I pull back the curtains. Nope. No Daisy.
Under the bed? Not there either.
In the cupboard? Not a sign.
Oh, for heaven’s sake. Where is she?
Downstairs I hear Dad saying, ‘I’ll just go up and empty all the buckets, then I’ll go and say goodnight to Lily and Daisy,’ then there’s the steady thump-thump of his footsteps climbing the stairs.