by Holly Webb
“What’s the matter?” Lara demanded anxiously, grabbing her leg. “Is it going all wrong?”
“No! It’s fine. Don’t whinge— Ow, Lara, don’t do that, you made me spill the rest of that egg!”
“It got on me!” Lara wailed. “It’s slimy! It’s in my hair!”
Choc gave a little whine of excitement and started trying to lick Lara.
Lara howled.
“Amy, what are you doing?”
She jumped – Kate sounded completely horrified.
Amy stretched out a hand to the yellowish mess on the floor, and realized there wasn’t a lot she could do about it with just fingers. And Choc was doing his hoover impression now, licking it up gleefully. He liked her cake, anyway…
Amy looked up at Kate guiltily. “I was trying – Lara still wanted a mermaid cake. She went back under the table, and I didn’t think she’d come out. I was worried that if Mum came back, and we’d had to cancel the party because Lara was under the table, she’d be really upset.” She gave Kate a pleading look. “Sorry about the floor…”
“Look at my hair!” Lara crawled out and stood up in front of Kate, her face scarlet. “Egg in it!”
“Some people put egg on their hair on purpose, to make it shiny.” Kate sighed. “All right. If you want a mermaid, you can have a mermaid. It’s your birthday, after all. And Amy’s right, I don’t want to tell your mum you wouldn’t come to your own party. Come on.” She grabbed Lara’s hand.
“Where are we going?” Amy asked, following them into the hall.
“We’re putting a bandana on Lara, and then we’re going to the corner shop.”
“What are we going to do with the ones that aren’t green?” Lara asked hopefully, running ever-so-casual fingers through the mixing bowl. It was full of pink and red and purple and orange sweets, and it looked like a treasure chest.
Kate frowned at the cake. “You can eat them,” she told Lara. She wasn’t really paying attention, as she was trying to work out how to turn one square, slightly lumpy sponge cake (Amy’s creation) and one green caterpillar cake into a mermaid. She’d drawn out a plan on a piece of paper, but Amy wasn’t sure how they were going to get from paper to cake.
Lara half-closed her eyes and stared at the bowl of sweets, as though she didn’t know where to start. “Really all of them?” she whispered, just too quietly for Kate to hear. If Kate didn’t say no, that was almost as good as if she’d said yes…
The other mixing bowl was full of all the green and yellow fruit pastilles that they’d picked out once they’d put the cake in the oven and scrubbed the egg out of Lara’s hair. They’d bought eighteen tubes of fruit pastilles (all the newsagent’s had) and a large bag of green jelly turtles, which Amy was working her way through with the scissors from her pencil case. Once she’d chopped the little flippers off, they looked just like mermaid scales. And the flippery bits tasted even better than whole turtles, she’d discovered. She was doing two for her, one for Choc. He’d been sulking, because they didn’t take him to the corner shop.
Kate reckoned that if they were clever, they could cut the caterpillar cake into a tail shape and cover it with the green sweets, and it would be just like a mermaid. They’d also bought some strawberry bootlaces. Kate said that real mermaids all had red hair. It was a fact.
Amy had nearly spilled her bagful of turtles all over the shop floor when Kate said it. A sudden picture flashed in front of her eyes – the fronds of dark-red seaweedy hair waving around the pale mermaid face in the rock pool. She’d almost forgotten, with everything else that was going on.
Amy wondered for a moment when Kate had seen a mermaid. Then Lara nodded seriously and picked up two packets of bootlaces without even trying to argue that mermaids were blonde, and Kate’s face was so relieved, Amy saw she hadn’t really meant it.
“All right,” Kate muttered, picking up a kitchen knife and starting to cut into the sponge. “This actually looks like a nice cake, Amy, especially for a first attempt. Your mum’s got lots of food colouring in the cupboard, and a gold board to put the cake on, and even some pinkish sort of fondant stuff – looks like modelling clay. I reckon she was going to use that to make the mermaid with, so we’ll have a go. It’s just like a big art project…” She smiled at her.
“Only you can eat it,” Amy added helpfully. “Which is even better. Where are you going?”
Lara had suddenly scooted round Kate and dashed out into the hall, making for the loo.
“Is she all right?” Kate asked anxiously, looking from the cake to the hall and back again, as though she wasn’t sure what to worry about first.
Amy sighed and held up the mixing bowl, which was empty.
Kate swallowed. “She ate all of them?”
“You didn’t tell her not to…”
Lara trailed back into the kitchen, looking rather pale, and red under the eyes.
“Were you sick?” Amy asked her.
Lara nodded, and sat down on one of the stools, admiring the flourishing green tail that Kate had shaped. “I don’t care. I feel fine now.” She smiled faintly at Kate. “It was worth it.”
Choc was sitting next to Amy, wagging his tail hopefully. Dogs were not allowed on the bouncy castle – Kate had had to sign a piece of paper agreeing to all the rules, and that had been one of them. But now that it had stopped growing, Choc was desperate to get on it, Amy could tell. He was shivering with excitement, and he kept leaning closer and closer. Then he would wriggle his paws so the rest of him caught up with his nose.
Amy was sitting next to him to hold him back. She’d had a go before everyone else arrived, and anyway the castle looked a bit dangerous now. Lara’s mate from nursery, Ben, was running from one side of the castle to the other, and just ploughing through anybody who got in his way.
Kate had looked at them all bouncing and decided to change the timing plan slightly, so that tea was right at the end of the party. She said she loved Amy’s mum very much, but she wasn’t cleaning up a bouncy castle after ten children had been sick on it, even for her.
Amy looked at her watch. Another quarter of an hour. She couldn’t wait for tea time – she wanted to see the mermaid cake in all its glory, with the candles in the sugar seashells that Kate had modelled out of the spare pink icing. Amy was so proud of it. She kept nipping back into the kitchen and sneaking little looks under the silver foil they’d covered it up with. Twice, she’d found Lara there admiring it too. The cake was probably the nicest thing she’d ever done for Lara, she thought.
She got up, clicking her fingers to call Choc to follow her. If she left him in the garden, he’d be on that bouncy castle before she’d even got in the house. Choc and Ben together would be a lethal combination.
“Ooh, Amy, are you coming to help?” Kate stuffed a plate of sausages into her hands. “Can you put that in the middle of the table for me?”
As soon as she went out into the garden again, the castle seemed to empty itself by magic.
“Is it tea now?” about three small girls asked her, reaching for sausages.
Amy nodded, holding the sausages out of their way. “Yes. Um, Kate?”
“Oh! Sit down first. No food for anyone who isn’t sitting down!” Kate ran out into the garden with more sausages and a slopping jug of squash.
“When is it birthday cake?” Lara hissed to her. “Now? Can we have it now?”
“No. You have to eat other stuff first.” Kate nudged Amy. “That little girl next to Lara is licking the icing off the biscuits, and then she’s putting them back!”
Amy nodded. “That’s what they do at parties, Kate. Lara’s doing it too, but she’s feeding the biscuits to Choc after she’s licked the icing. Choc, here, come here!” Amy crouched down by the party table, and Choc crept out reluctantly, looking hard done by and licking biscuit off his whiskers.
“I’ve fini
shed!” Ben stood up and made for the bouncy castle, and a couple of the others got up to follow him.
“Birthday cake?” Lara asked hopefully, and Kate looked at the half-eaten food scattered all over the table and sighed and nodded, and turned back to the kitchen. “Yes, now it’s all right, Lara.”
Amy ran round in front of Ben and the other two, and tried to herd them back towards the table. “Don’t you want to see the cake?”
The two girls went obediently back to the table, but Ben looked mulish. “No. I want to go on the castle.”
Amy folded her arms. This was Lara’s big moment. “No cake, no party bag!” she hissed at Ben.
Ben stared back, obviously trying to decide if she meant it or not.
Amy glared at him, and he ducked his head and hurried to sit down. Then she raced back to the kitchen door to see if Kate was all right carrying the cake. Choc gazed after her for a second, and then shot back under the table – he could smell the sausages.
“Oh, look at it! It looks so good…” Amy said happily, meeting Kate at the door. “You’re Lara’s favourite person for ever now, you know. You might have to make her next birthday cake as well.”
“I’m going to be on holiday next September,” Kate said firmly. “Your mum can do Lara’s party and one for the baby, on the same day, without me.”
Lara stood up on her chair as they rounded the corner from the kitchen door, and squeaked, “Look, look, my cake! It’s a mermaid!”
“Amy, I’ve just thought – get my phone out of my shorts pocket!” Kate said hastily, leaning towards her and frantically trying to balance the cake. “We need to take a photo for your mum and dad, of Lara blowing her candles out.”
But Amy was staring round her, into the living-room window. “No, we don’t! Look! They’re here!”
Her mum was waving excitedly, while Dad came behind her with the baby car seat that had been sitting in the hall for weeks. Now there was actually a baby in it, instead of one of Lara’s mermaids. Choc emerged from under the tea table and sniffed at it curiously. The baby was wrapped in a blanket, despite the heat, and Choc had no idea what it was.
“You made a cake!” Amy’s mum said to Kate, wide-eyed, as she came out into the garden. “I thought you were just going to buy one. It’s beautiful. I never thought of using sweets on the tail.”
“Well, there weren’t any mermaids in the shop, so … we all made it. It was Amy’s idea.”
Amy looked proudly down at the fat green tail.
“She’d better blow these candles out,” Kate said as she put the mermaid down in front of Lara, who was still far more excited about the cake than the new baby, and Lara blew out the candles in one pent-up breath, wobbling on her chair.
Amy sighed and put her arm round her mum, who hugged her back. Something inside her stomach seemed to flutter and disappear. They were back. Lara liked her cake. If Lara went back under the table, it wasn’t just up to Amy to get her out. Amy looked thoughtfully at the baby. He seemed very small and reddish and quiet. Not at all as she’d expected, for someone who’d caused so much trouble.
Choc pressed against her leg, quivering with curiosity and sniffing at the thing in the blanket. Dad hitched the car seat higher up, making shhing noises, and the baby wriggled a little and went back to sleep.
“You can’t lick it,” Amy muttered, catching Choc’s collar. “Look, cake,” she added, trying to distract him, and Choc wagged his tail, thumping it happily against her bare leg.
Lara’s friends stared at the cake admiringly – even Ben, who was impressed by the number of sweets all over it. The red bootlace hair glimmered in the afternoon sun, and Amy smiled. All mermaids had red hair; it was a fact…
“My sister made my cake for me,” Lara said proudly. “Almost all by herself.”
HOLLY has always loved animals. As a child, she had two dogs, a cat, and at one point, nine gerbils (an accident). Holly’s other love is books. Holly now lives in Reading with her husband, three sons and a very spoilt cat.
Scholastic Children’s Books
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First published in the UK by Scholastic Ltd, 2012
This electronic edition published by Scholastic Ltd, 2014
Text copyright © Holly Webb, 2012
Illustration copyright © Sharon Rentta, 2012
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Cover illustration copyright © Sharon Rentta, 2012
eISBN 978 1407 14675 1
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