Jennifer's Diary
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Jennifer came rushing back in then, all red-faced, holding a great big carrier bag.
“You’re terribly late,” Miss Hardie scolded her. “The bell rang a long time ago.”
“Mum says she’s sorry and it will never happen again,” Jennifer panted. “It’s just that I had to get a frock for Iolanthe’s party. The traffic both ways was frightful. And it took us forever to find something the right colour.”
She fell in her seat, still panting.
“Which colour’s that, then?” I asked.
“Pink,” Jennifer said proudly.
Just as proudly, I pointed to the first line of my story.
“No! Not pink! Never pink!”
Jennifer snatched her diary and read through what I’d written. She was so cross again, she wouldn’t speak to me the whole afternoon. And I think she only came to my party because her mother made her.
She wore blue.
Chapter Six
I WANTED THE diary so much.
“Please!” I begged Jennifer. “It’s wasted on someone like you. You hardly use it. Please give it to me.”
“What will you give me for it?”
I lifted up my desk lid.
“Nothing,” I said sadly. “There’s nothing in here anyone would want.”
Jennifer shrugged.
“I’ll just keep it for now, then.”
“But you don’t write anything in it!”
“That’s because nothing happens.”
“No, it’s not.”
She let me fill in the empty pages, though. The back ones she hadn’t used. So on the January 2nd page, I wrote a horror story about a trumpet that could call freshly dead people out of their graves.
On the January 3rd page, I made a list of all my Unspoken Fears, in code. (Mind your own business.)
Two pages later, I wrote a poem called Stamping on Granny’s Daisies.
She wanted it back then, so I let her have it. But she couldn’t think of anything to write.
On the January 6th page, I put down my Private Worries in strict alphabetical order. (Mind your own business again.)
On the blank page of January 8th, I started on a list of Secret Hopes. But there was only one. (That Jennifer would give me the diary.) So I gave up, and started another ghost tale.
And it was as well I hadn’t used up the space, because the story got so complicated, it went on through blank pages January 9th and 10th. And even then I had to finish it in tiny writing, so as not to get tangled in “Help! Help!” on the 11th.
On the January 12th page, I wrote a letter begging for the diary.
Dear, sweet and lovely Jennifer,
All of my life, I have longed for a diary like this one to write all my ideas and thoughts in. It’s kind of you to lend it when I ask. But borrowing’s not like having. This diary and I were made for one another. We shouldn’t be parted for a single hour.
And I kept on, for the whole page, with Jennifer pretending she wasn’t reading it over my shoulder.
“What now?” I asked her. “I’ve run out of room until tomorrow.”
“Maybe I’ll use up tomorrow’s page myself.”
“I doubt it.”
“I might,” she snapped.
I didn’t want to argue. (I was still hoping she would give it to me.) So I went back and filled in all her old half-used days.
I stared at her January 1st (It was quite cold today.) and then picked up my pen.
But not cold enough to stop noble and kind lolanthe taking soup to the poor. From my window, I watched her pick her way over snow and ice to old Mrs Morris’s hovel. Inside that rude hut lie sixteen shivering children, all half-starved. If it weren’t for dear lolanthe –
Miss Hardie interrupted me in mid-flow.
“lolanthe! Come up to my desk, please. I want a little word with you.”
You couldn’t really call what she had with me ‘a little word’. It was more like a giant great lecture, all about ‘pushing my luck’, and ‘going too far’, and ‘the point at which imagination shades into simple rudeness’.
I had to say sorry about a million times, and then stick clean white paper over most of my Time Travel story and write in something else over the top. It took a lot of time, so it wasn’t till the next day that I got round to filling in Jennifer’s mostly-empty January 4th (Mum and I went to the shops.)
Mum and I went to the shops.
“Quick!” she said. “Stuff this up your pinny, Jennifer, and I’ll hide this in my bag.”
“Mother!” I said. “You mustn’t shoplift! It’s quite wrong!”
Her face cracked into an evil scowl.
“I’m not your mother!” she cried. “It’s time you knew, Jennifer. There was a mix-up at the hospital when you were born. This high-born lady and myself were sharing a room. The cots lay side by side. And in the middle of the night –
I broke off. I had to. Jennifer was stabbing me with her pen.
“Stop it!” she ordered. “Stop it!”
Normally, I’d have argued. But I’d been in such trouble already that week that I just shrugged, and moved on to her January 7th. (Nothing much happened today.)
Nothing much happened today. After the spaceship landed and all the blobmen had blobbled down the ladder into the woods –
“Iolanthe!”
Yes, Miss Hardie?”
That’s not your workbook you’re writing in, is it?”
“No, Miss Hardie. It’s Jennifer’s diary.”
“Give it back.”
Does no one want me to be happy?
No one at all? I sulked for the rest of the day. I tried to tell myself that pretty rainbow-coloured books don’t matter. It’s the stories that count. But I wanted Jennifer’s diary so much. If I could get her to give it to me, for keeps, I could start off from January 15th. That would mean three hundred and fifty pages left.
All blank and gleaming and glossy.
And all mine.
What I needed was something to trade. But I had nothing Jennifer might want. My desk was full of rubbish. Most of the stuff I have at home has to be shared with my sister. And I owe pocket money for a hundred years.
But “Curly hair, curly thoughts” says my granny.
Let’s hope she’s right…
Chapter Seven
THE VERY NEXT morning, I opened Jennifer’s diary to January 15th.
“Don’t you start writing on today’s page,” she told me. “I might want to use it myself later.”
See how this sharing isn’t working out?
I flicked back to the last only slightly-used page.
Jan 13th. The sky’s a bit pink today.
I gazed at it, chewing my pen and screwing up my face. I drummed my fingers on the desk. I rolled my eyes.
“What’s the matter?” asked Jennifer.
“I can’t think of anything to write,” I told her.
Jennifer stared.
“What? You?”
“Yes,” I said snappily. “Me.”
Jennifer looked anxious.
“Are you ill, Iolanthe?”
“No. I’m not ill.”
“Then what’s happened?”
“Nothing’s happened,” I told her.
“It’s just that I don’t seem to have any ideas.”
“That’s strange, for you.”
“Yes, isn’t it?”
We stared at it together for a while.
The sky’s a bit pink today.
Then Jennifer said guiltily, “Maybe it’s my fault. I was the one who wrote it, after all. And it is a bit boring.”
Bit boring? The sky’s a bit pink today is START ME OFF WITH A YAWN.
But I was too canny to say so.
“Not at all. And, anyhow, I ought to be able to think of something.”
We both stared some more. I felt it was important to keep her attention, so:
“Suppose…?” I said hesitantly.
Then, shaking my head, “No. Forget it.”<
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That set her off.
“What about…?” As usual, she stopped. “No. That’s no good.”
It’s not my style, but I was getting in the swing of it.
“What if…?” I broke off. “No. That’s stupid.”
Encouraged, she tried again herself.
“Could you…?” Sadly, she brushed the idea aside. “No. That’s hopeless, too.”
I turned to look at her with wide, sincere eyes.
“Jennifer,” I said. “I want to tell you I’m sorry. I’ve been a brute. A horrid, impatient brute. I never thought about how awful it must feel to be a person who has no ideas. I promise I’ll never again tease you, or get crabby when you can’t think of anything to write.”
Her eyes lit up.
“Really?”
“Really,” I said. “In fact, I almost feel that if I ever had two ideas in future, and you had none, I’d give you one of mine.”
She turned to look at me closely.
“You almost think that?”
“Yes, almost:’
She picked up the diary and gazed at it thoughtfully.
“Do you think having this might just push you over?”
“Push me over?”
“From almost to definitely.’
“Yes, it might.” I laid a finger on it and shut my eyes. “In fact, I have a feeling it might even help me get my ideas back.”
She shoved it into my hand.
“Here. Take it. It’s yours.”
“Really? For keeps?”
“For keeps.”
I held it tightly, and stared into space.
“I think it’s working,” I said hopefully. “Yes. Yes! I believe it’s working. In fact, at this very moment, I feel an idea welling up.”
“Two,” Jennifer said firmly.
“Yes. Two ideas,” I agreed hastily. “One for me, one for you.”
“That’s better,” she said tartly.
I’m keeping hers, of course, until she needs it. I’ve started off on mine.
The sky’s a bit pink today. Ever since Venus exploded, and shattered Mars, the colours have been startling. The few of us who weren’t blinded by the flashes sit by the fire –
And it’s a good idea. But pretending I’d run out of ideas was even better.
I can’t write that one in the diary, though.
Jennifer might see.