Franklin's Emporium

by Gill Vickery

  When I got upstairs Maisie was waiting for me. ‘Well, did you burn them?’

  I hesitated.

  She stepped forward. ‘You didn’t, did you?’

  I shook my head. ‘I didn’t get the chance. I’ve put them in the shed. I’ll get rid of them later.’

  ‘You’d better,’ Maisie said.

  ‘Or what?’

  Maisie took another step forward, eyes squinting with hate.

  I needed an exit. I shot into the bathroom and slammed the door. I bolted it quickly as Maisie threw herself on it and hammered furiously. I rushed to the other door and bolted that too, just in time. Maisie began pounding on it with both fists.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Minty’s voice carried through Maisie’s demented shrieks and the thundering on the door.

  ‘Go away, Mummy!’ Maisie shouted.

  ‘I shall do as I please in my own house,’ Minty said. She was very calm. I suppose she thought Maisie was having one of her usual meltdowns.

  She tapped on the bathroom door. ‘Alex dear, are you in there?’

  I felt safe enough to come out.

  ‘Now girls,’ Minty said crisply, ‘why are you fighting?’

  ‘She doesn’t want to come to my party,’ Maisie said.

  ‘It’s not that...’ I clutched my stomach and was about to make pathetic groaning noises when Maisie said, ‘She was going to pretend she didn’t feel well so she could stay in bed and read her precious books.’

  ‘Is that true, dear?’ Minty looked disappointed.

  ‘Not exactly.’ I didn’t like lying. Apart from the fact that it was wrong, it wasn’t Minty and Adrian’s fault that Maisie had made my life miserable. I tried to sound reasonable. ‘I’m not really into parties.’

  Minty gave me an understanding look. ‘I know this kind of grand party might seem daunting if you’re not used to it but you’ll love it if you give yourself a chance.’

  I gave in. ‘All right, I’ll go.’

  ‘That’s settled then.’ Minty smiled brightly and left.

  As soon as she’d gone Maisie grabbed my arm. Her fingers were almost as powerful as when she was a mummy.

  ‘You are going to get rid of those gloves and I’m going to watch you.’

  I wrenched myself free. ‘All right, don’t get your knickers in a twist.’

  Maisie shoved me back into the bathroom. ‘You haven’t got long to get ready. Start scrubbing and try to dress less like a tramp. When the party starts, stay in the background and shut up till we get a chance to burn those gloves. Understand?’

  I nodded.

  She slammed the door shut.

  I was trapped.

  Chapter Eight

  THE PARTY

  I thought I was going to pass out with boredom at the party. Apart from random adults from Minty’s social groups or Adrian’s work, the guests were mostly Maisie’s holiday friends and their parents. After Minty had explained who I was, the adults ignored me.

  None of Maisie’s friends even tried to talk to me. A few glanced at me and sniggered behind their hands. I expect Maisie had told them I was the freaky kid who’d got dumped on her family for the summer. The other girls squealed over Maisie’s black dress and gold shoes. It was a good job she’d had a spare. The green dress was squashed at the bottom of the laundry basket, all scrumpled and wet.

  Quite a few of the girls were wearing lace gloves. Maisie flinched a bit when they did the huggy thing, though she disguised it with tinkly giggles and her friends didn’t notice.

  The boys mostly stood around trying to look cool. All of them fiddled with their mobiles, hoping to get a signal even though they knew it was dodgy in Golden Bay.

  I passed the time in a corner, behind two ferns, making up endings to The Curse of the Hunter’s Moon, mostly involving werewolves breaking into the marquee and eating the guests – messily.

  I finally managed to escape when it got dark and the dancing started. Adrian dimmed the main lights; the fairy lights twinkled in the marquee and the flares blazed out in the garden. While the guests ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ I eased out into the night.

  The garden was spectacular, full of fire licking at the darkness and casting bunches of shifting shadows. I leapt in front of the flares burning around the maze and sent a pulled-out shadow looming up the hedge walls. It looked horribly like the liftman. I started making up a rhyme about him gate-crashing the party and sending the guests stampeding out of the marquee like hysterical wildebeest on the Serengeti. What was I thinking? Rhyming was dangerous. I stopped fooling around and went to the Vermin Shed. Better to burn the gloves at once rather than start meddling with magic again.

  I stopped by the pond. A breeze wavered the metre high flares burning round it and sent reflections streaming out across the black water. The pond looked like it was catching fire.

  ‘Why aren’t you inside?’ a familiar voice said.

  ‘I’m getting some fresh air,’ I told Minty. I didn’t think she needed to know that I was also busy imagining the pool as a lake of fire that the liftman was herding the charging guests into.

  Minty frog-marched me back to the marquee. ‘It’s time for Maisie to open her presents. You should be there.’

  She parked me next to Adrian who was inviting his boss to give the first gift to the birthday girl.

  ‘Darling.’ She air-kissed Maisie and pressed an oblong present into her hands.

  Maisie tore off the expensive wrapping paper and gasped in delight when she saw the leather box inside. It had gold lettering embossed on it, under a silver unicorn. It was the logo of a very, very exclusive designer. Maisie flicked up the clasp, looked inside and screamed.

  She hurled the box to the floor and a pair of white lace gloves fell out. Maisie screamed again and then she jumped on them.

  ‘Whatever’s the matter?’ Minty rescued the gloves and held them out to Maisie.

  ‘No!’ Maisie slapped at her mum’s hand. ‘Get rid of them, they’re horrible.’

  ‘Just try them on, Maisie,’ Adrian said. I’d never heard him sound angry with her before. She burst into tears and ran out of the marquee and into the house.

  ‘Go after her, Araminta, for goodness sake,’ said Adrian. Only he didn’t say ‘goodness’.

  Minty left while Adrian did his best to soothe his boss. It didn’t work and she left. The other guests practically fell over themselves in their hurry to follow her. They weren’t wildebeest any more – they were rats deserting a sinking ship. I felt sorry for Minty and Adrian.

  When everyone had gone, Adrian and I surveyed the deserted marquee and the pile of tastefully arranged presents on the table. It looked like the bridge of the Mary Celeste.

  Adrian picked up one of the presents. ‘I wonder if we should send them back,’ he said.

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so. It’s not a cancelled wedding and Maisie hasn’t been jilted. She’s still had an actual birthday. She’s entitled to presents.’

  I was being practical but it didn’t help.

  ‘She made me into a complete fool.’

  Minty came back. ‘She’s distraught.’

  ‘I’m distraught,’ Adrian said.

  Minty’s mouth pursed up as though someone had stitched a thread round it and pulled it up tight. It was an expression I’d never seen before. Adrian took one look and headed for the garden mumbling that he was going to douse the flares.

  Minty turned her special stare on me.

  ‘What do you know about this?’

  ‘Nothing.’ I scrambled after Adrian before Minty could zap me with her death-ray expression. Adrian and I got as far as snuffing out the last of the flares before Minty caught up with us.

  ‘Adrian, you need to talk to Maisie.’ She glared and pursed her mouth up again.

  He stared back. It was a standoff. I half expected them to whip out weapons and have a full on battle.

  Adrian turned to me. ‘Finish off here. Remember what I said about safety precautions.’<
br />
  I nodded, glad to have a chance to avoid the row I saw brewing.

  I carted the snuffed out flares to the kitchen garden, double-checked that they were completely dead, and dropped them into the fire pit.

  At last I had a chance to get the gloves though I knew burning them wasn’t an option now. If Adrian decided to come and check that I’d sorted the flares properly and caught me lighting a fire I’d be in big trouble. And I daren’t leave the bag in the shed in case Adrian or the gardener found it by accident. I had to get it back and bring it into the house where I could keep an eye on it.

  It was dark inside the shed. I groped my way to the shelf with the jar of nails and fished out the paper bag. There’s not much room to hide things in a dress. In the end I stuffed the bag down my back. It made a bulge and was a bit uncomfortable though I was glad to feel the scratchy paper against my skin. I didn’t like the thought of a glove touching me. Even the lightest contact might be enough to make me old, or a baby. And what if all three pairs touched me at the same time? Would I keep changing ages or maybe turn into a shrivelled baby?

  With thoughts like that I was glad to get back to my bed. It was bad luck that Maisie was sitting on it, waiting. She turned her swollen red eyes on me. ‘Have you burnt them?’

  The paper crackled faintly against my back. Maisie would have hysterics again if she knew the gloves were close to her.

  ‘No, I still haven’t had a chance to get them out of the shed. I’ll do it tomorrow, I promise, first thing.’

  ‘I’ll get you for this,’ Maisie said softly. It was more threatening than the sneers, the jibes and the hysterics.

  I grabbed my PJs and fled into the bathroom. By the time I came out again, cautiously, Maisie had gone. I looked for The Curse of the Hunter’s Moon, and that was gone too. There was no point in looking for it; I was sure Maisie had hidden it, or trashed it just to get back at me. I felt under the bed for one of the stash I kept there. The first one I touched was PYROMANIAC! It’s not one of my favourites and I hadn’t read it in a while. It’s about a boy who can start fires just by pointing. It was dull and I fell asleep quickly, dreaming of flames. The flames wavered, orange and yellow and red, filling my eyes with light.

  Smoke drifted around me, filled my nose with the smell of burning.

  I woke up.

  The orange glow and smell of smoke were still there. They were coming from the open window. I leaped out of bed, yanked the window wide and leaned out. Behind the copse at the end of the garden, where the Vermin Shed was, a fire burned madly, flames reaching up to the sky.

  Chapter Nine

  DISGRACE

  The Vermin Shed burned to the ground. I was sorry about it. The gardener had lost all his special gardening tools, Adrian had lost his expensive ones and I’d lost my books. Worse than that though, was that I got the blame.

  The fire fighter said the blaze had definitely started with a smouldering flare left against the side of the shed. It had slowly burned its way through the walls and heated the cans of paint inside. Pressure had built up in the tins and eventually the whole lot had exploded with a boom.

  As Adrian kept reminding me, I was the one who’d been told to put the flares in the fire pit. He reminded me when the fire brigade had gone, leaving black smoke trickling into the dawn sky. He reminded me over breakfast and again mid-morning, after he’d tried to contact my mum and dad and failed. He blamed me for that as well. I was grateful to Minty when she said that wasn’t my fault.

  Adrian grunted and went off to use the landline to try and raise my brothers. There wasn’t much chance of that before the afternoon; they work all night and get up at about two in the afternoon. It gave Adrian more time to remind me over lunch that I was an arsonist.

  ‘What I really can’t understand,’ he said between mouthfuls of broccoli, ‘is why you took one flare to the shed when you’d put all the others in the fire pit as I asked you.’

  Maisie piped up, ‘I bet she wanted to get one of her precious books and used the flare to see inside the shed. Then when she came out, she threw it down without bothering to check if it was properly out.’

  It sounded so plausible I couldn’t think what to say except, ‘I didn’t!’

  ‘You must’ve done,’ Maisie said with a self-satisfied smirk. At that moment I knew for sure Maisie was the real culprit. She’d been more scared of the gloves than going into the garden at night and burning the shed down.

  ‘That’s enough!’ Minty said. I don’t know who was more surprised, Maisie or me.

  Adrian opened his mouth to protest. Minty did her death-ray stare and he closed it again. We finished the meal in silence.

  I knew I was going to be sent home and I didn’t want to hang around the house. I decided to go to Franklin’s one more time – to get rid of the gloves once and for all.

  I fished the bag out from the bottom of the laundry basket where I’d put it, wrapped up in my party dress and sneaked down to the garden. There was a door in the wall enclosing the kitchen garden and using it meant I was less likely to be seen.

  Maisie was already there, staring hard at the steaming mound of wet, black ash which was all that was left of the Vermin Shed. She stood well back, as if she was expecting mutant spiders to leap out from the cinders.

  ‘Just checking it’s all burned to a crisp, are you?’ I said. ‘I’m surprised you had the guts to come down here in the dark last night. Why didn’t you just bring a torch to look for the gloves?’

  She shuddered – a little delicate shudder. ‘I wasn’t going to risk touching vermin looking for those... things. It’s bad enough in the daylight – spiders and rats...’

  ‘There aren’t any rats.’

  She laughed. ‘Only you.’

  ‘You still didn’t need to burn the shed down.’

  ‘I had to make sure they were destroyed.’

  ‘I told you I’d do it.’

  ‘And I should trust you why exactly?’

  I didn’t bother trying to explain; she’d never believe me.

  ‘Besides,’ she said, ‘burning down the shed means I get rid of you as well as those... things.’

  I didn’t care anymore. I’d had enough of Maisie and Minty and Adrian and the whole of Golden Bay. The only thing that bothered me was Mum and Dad having to cut short their magical mystery tour of the east. They’d waited for it for years.

  I left Maisie and her smugness and banged through the green door into the cobbled street. I ran down the twisting lanes to Franklin’s Emporium. Harriette was going to take the gloves back. My attempts to get rid of them kept going wrong – she could do it instead.

  I ran along the promenade and stopped in front of Franklin’s. The sun washed over the blue and white frontage, highlighting the seedy, peeling, blue-and-white paintwork. I hesitated. Maybe going in wasn’t such a good idea. What if magic started backfiring on me again?

  Don’t be a wuss, I told myself. The gloves have got to go. Just don’t make up any rhymes.

  I pushed through the revolving doors and into the marble lobby. It was busy, as usual. I went to the lift where a whole crowd of people waited. The doors slid open, the liftman drew the grille back and we surged in, squashing the old man to one side. He only just had room to press the buttons.

  ‘First floor,’ a woman said.

  ‘Second... third... fourth,’ called a chorus of voices.

  I waited while people poured in and out. It took a while before I was alone with the liftman. I ignored the buzzing and the flashing lights on the call sign, folded my arms and glared. It didn’t bother the old man.

  ‘Which floor do you wish?’ he asked.

  ‘Whichever one Harriette’s Haberdashery is on,’

  I said.

  ‘The Haberdashery is gone.’

  Noooo! ‘Where?’

  The liftman shrugged.

  I held up the blue and white striped bag with its three gold crowns. ‘What about these gloves?’

  ‘You bough
t them. They are yours to do with as you please.’

  I didn’t say what I’d have liked to do with them. ‘Basement please,’ I said. If Harriette was in Franklin’s, I was going to find her.

  The lift sank smoothly downwards. The liftman opened the doors and pulled back the grille. ‘Basement.’

  I moved forward.

  ‘Wait,’ the old man said.

  I turned.

  ‘Till the next time.’

  ‘There won’t be a next time. After this I’m going home and I’m never, ever, coming back here.’

  ‘I’ll see you again, soon.’ He pulled the grille across and closed the doors. The lift glided upwards.

  I covered almost every square centimetre of Franklin’s seven floors and unless Harriette was hiding in the Gents she was definitely not there. I was stuck with the gloves.

  I ended up in the Terrace Restaurant. The windows were open wide and the room was full of sunshine, lighting up every corner. It had a new unit serving cream teas. Why not? I thought. I’d earned a cream tea.

  I sat down and stared out over Golden Bay and the glittering sea. Boats bobbed in the harbour and donkeys with small children on their backs plodded patiently up and down the beach. It was very peaceful. And boring. If you didn’t find yourself accidentally making magic.

  The paper bag was on the table and when the waitress came to clear up my empty plate and mug, she reached for it. I snatched it away before she got the chance to touch it.

  ‘Sorry love, thought it was empty,’ she said.

  I hesitated. What if she did take it? She’d only dump it in the refuse bin. On the other hand, she might look inside, like the gloves and put them on. That wasn’t fair to her. The gloves were my responsibility and I had to deal with them.

  ‘It’s a present,’ I said.

  The waitress smiled. ‘Lucky thing,’ she said and went off to clear another table.

  Chapter Ten

  GOODBYE, GOLDEN BAY

  When I got back to the house Minty and Adrian were waiting for me. They had solemn expressions on their faces. I knew it – I was being sent home in disgrace.