How To Get The Family You Want by Peony Pinker

by Jenny Alexander

  I wished I could train him to let me pick him up. I still had to grab him from above because if he saw me coming he would thump his foot and try to nip me. Once I had got him he would only stay on my knee for a few seconds before he hopped off, shaking his bottom like someone who’s sat on a garden chair with a puddle of rainwater on it.

  But although Dennis wasn’t exactly cuddly, he had at least stopped going for Primrose all the time. He tried to chase her once or twice but when she didn’t react in the usual way by getting stroppy and making a lot of noise he didn’t seem to know what to do.

  Primrose had gone all quiet and droopy. It was partly because she had exams every day that week, but it was mostly because she was convinced it was over with Matt, whatever he’d said exactly. ‘I really loved him,’ she told me one day. ‘And now I’ve lost him.’

  I tried to imagine how it must feel to be like Primrose, one minute all fired up and angry and the next minute all fizzled-out and sad. I felt sorry for her, even though she was nuts to give up on Matt when she really didn’t have to.

  I knew what it felt like to lose someone you really loved. I remembered what it had felt like losing Sam – I still missed taking him for our walks even though I had Dennis now. I couldn’t bear to think how I would feel if I was ever to lose Dennis.

  The weather had turned baking hot. ‘Typical,’ Primrose said. ‘It’s always sunny when I’ve got exams.’ The sky was bright blue and the sun sparkled on the sea. The town was full of tourists. Some people call them emmets, which means ants, but they were more like snails now we had a heat-wave, moving super-slowly under their sun-hats and shades.

  I was going super-slowly too, as I walked down the zig-zag path on Friday after school. All the doors and windows along the terrace were open and you could hear sounds of music and chatting from inside.

  Dad was at the table reading the paper. He had both the front and back doors open to try and get a bit of a breeze. Dennis was lying in the sunny patch under the radiator, dozing. Rabbits don’t usually do that according to You and Your Rabbit. They don’t completely go to sleep because they might get grabbed by a passing fox or cat. Or someone picking them up from above, I guess.

  It seemed a shame to disturb him so I went upstairs to change out of my school uniform first. Primrose was lying on the settee watching TV. She had done her last exam now so she wasn’t stressing about her revision; she was stressing about her results instead. The sitting room’s got a huge window so it was quite cool in there and I decided to hang around for a while.

  We must have both dozed off – two million degrees of heat plus The Story of Coal Mining on the History Channel can do that to you. I have no idea why we were watching that.

  Anyway, what woke us was Dad hollering up the stairs at us.

  ‘Dennis has disappeared!’

  We ran downstairs. Dad was in a right state.

  ‘I dropped my biscuit on the floor and he didn’t come and grab it,’ he said. ‘You know what he’s like. I thought there must be something wrong with him. I’ve searched high and low but I can’t find him!’

  ‘He’ll be out in the yard,’ Primrose said. We didn’t bother with the barrier on the back door any more because we thought he’d never be able to get out of the yard, the walls were too high. ‘Have you looked behind the pots?’

  Dad said of course he had looked behind the pots, and under the sun loungers and everywhere else. Dennis was definitely not in the yard.

  ‘He must be in his bungalow,’ I said, lifting one end up. But it was too light. No Dennis in there.

  We all looked at the barrier across the front door. Was it possible he could have jumped over it? He wasn’t a very athletic sort of rabbit, but on the other hand it wasn’t a very big barrier.

  We stepped over it onto the wide top step, which is more like a balcony really, with the stairs going sideways down the wall from the door. There used to be a pot of geraniums in one corner but it looked as if someone had come along and snipped all the flowers and leaves off with some scissors. Now it was just a pot of stalks.

  Beside the base of the pot there was a cluster of little round poos. We saw one or two more on the steps, but then the trail ran out. We knew he had got past the barrier but it was impossible to tell which way up or down the zig-zag path Dennis had gone.

  ‘Well, that’s it,’ said Primrose. ‘We’ve lost him.’

  I glared at her.

  ‘He’s a rabbit,’ she said. ‘Running and hiding are the things he does best. Get real, Peony, we’re never going to find him, are we?’

  ‘We’ve got to find him!’ I said, looking frantically up and down the path.

  ‘He can’t have been gone more than a few minutes,’ said Dad.

  Primrose said there was no need to worry about Dennis. He would be all right. He would like being free. He would find some wild rabbits to live with and have a lovely life.

  ‘Don’t be stupid!’ I cried. ‘He’ll never survive in the wild. He’s grey and white! Foxes and dogs will see him a mile off, and wild rabbits won’t have anything to do with him. They’ll think he’s weird! And anyway, this isn’t the wild, it’s Polgotherick! There are cars and buses and...and... What if he falls in the sea?’

  I started to shake. It felt as if I had an engine vibrating inside me. I couldn’t stop it. It must have looked as bad as it felt because Primrose said, ‘Stop it, Peony! You’re freaking me out!’

  ‘I c-c-can’t lose him, Primrose.’

  Dad said, ‘I’ll search down towards the town, Primrose can search up towards the top road and Peony, you knock on some doors and ask if anyone’s seen him.’

  ‘That’s no good, it’ll take too long,’ said Primrose. ‘He’ll be half-way to Truro before we’ve searched the terrace.’

  She opened her mouth and let out the loudest shout I had ever heard.

  ‘HE-E-E-LP!’

  It was a shout that could blow your head off. It shocked the shakes right out of me and left me standing there, gawping like a goldfish.

  Chapter 16

  A Scary Scream and a Surprising Skill

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Primrose ignored me.

  ‘Help! Help!’ she yelled at the top of her lungs.

  Mr Kaminski burst out of his house brandishing a broom. Dad had his back to him and he must have thought he was a strange man attacking Primrose. He surged down the steps and would have hit Dad over the head with his broom if he hadn’t turned round in the nick of time.

  ‘Dave!’ Mr Kaminski stopped in his tracks. ‘Is problem?’

  ‘We’ve lost Dennis,’ said Dad.

  ‘Is that your rabbit?’ asked Mrs Robertson from number 5. All the neighbours were coming out to see what was going on. From the top of his ladder, the man mending the gutters at number 7 called over, ‘Is he a big fellow? White?’

  Everyone turned to look up at him.

  ‘Have you seen him?’ asked Dad.

  ‘I reckon I might have,’ said the man. ‘Just out of the corner of my eye, like. I thought he was a funny-looking cat.’

  ‘Which way did he go?’

  The man pointed up the path. There was no sign of Dennis but Mum had just turned the bend and was haring down the hill towards us. She nearly crashed into a family in beach shorts who had strolled onto the path from the grassy track that leads out towards Nash House and the cliffs. They speeded up and followed her to find out what was going on.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ called Mum. She must have heard Primrose yelling all the way up at the Medical Centre where she was doing the hanging baskets.

  ‘Dennis has disappeared,’ said Dad. ‘That chap up the ladder said he saw him going up the hill.’

  ‘He isn’t on the path,’ said Mum. ‘I would have seen him.’

  ‘He must have got all the way to the road then,’ I cried. ‘He’ll get run over!’

  ‘Unless he went onto the coastal path,’ suggested the woman in the beach shorts. ‘We didn’t see him, but h
e could be anywhere up there amongst the gorse and bracken.’

  Everyone offered to help us search. Some people said they would go to the top and look around near the road and in the fields on the far side. Some people said they would take the coastal path and search the cliffs.

  Just as we were heading up the hill we heard a shout behind us. It was Matt. He had heard Primrose screaming for help and run all the way up from the beach with two of his mates.

  ‘Are you alright?’ he gasped. He looked really worried.

  Primrose explained about Dennis going missing, and how we needed a search party quick-smart because we’d never find him on our own. Anyone else might have felt annoyed about being hauled off from the beach when it wasn’t a matter of life or death, but Matt was such an animal-lover he totally got it.

  ‘We’ll help,’ he said. ‘This is Jonno and Squid.’

  We all strode up the hill until we came to the place where the coast path split off. Then Primrose, Matt and his mates went on up to the road with Mr Kaminski, Mrs Robertson, James and Cath from number 11, the man who was mending the gutter and two ladies in sunhats who happened to be passing by.

  Me, Mum, Dad, Mr Adlin from number 4, the beach-shorts family and Mrs Stubbs from the shop went over the stile onto the grassy path towards the cliffs. Some woman who was walking her dog came to help us too.

  Our group got as far as Nash House and then stopped. There was nothing ahead except miles and miles of bracken and gorse. It just seemed hopeless. But Mrs Robertson said we couldn’t give up. Dennis was big, he was mostly white, and if he was out here we had an excellent chance of spotting him.

  The band of neighbours and passers-by fanned out from the path and began searching through the undergrowth. Me, Mum and Dad stood by the boarded-up gate of Nash House. Mum squeezed my hand. She must have guessed what I was thinking.

  Dad said, ‘There’s no chance Dennis could have gone into Nash House is there? I mean, this wall does go all the way round?’

  Mum said it did. But then she suddenly remembered there was one place on the far side of the house where a tree had grown against the wall and pushed it in. The stones had shifted and made a narrow split.

  ‘But it’s very narrow,’ she said. ‘I don’t think Dennis could get through.’

  ‘He did squeeze through the gap beside the fridge,’ Dad pointed out.

  ‘Oh!’ gasped Mum. ‘I’ve just remembered what’s on the other side of that bit of wall. An old herb garden with a massive patch of parsley!’

  Dennis would squeeze through a pinhole to get at some parsley – it was his favourite food in the world. If he had got a whiff of it on his travels out towards the cliffs he would definitely have made a diversion.

  There were big brambles and nettles growing against the wall but we pushed our way through. Even Dad couldn’t see over the top because it was so high. We came to the corner.

  As we picked our way along the back of the wall we heard a terrible sound. It was frightening, high, eerie; it was like nothing I had ever heard before.

  We stopped and stared at each other. I had read in You and Your Rabbit that rabbits can scream. ‘A rabbit’s scream is a sound you would never want to hear,’ it said. I wished I never had heard it.

  Dad set off again, faster now, with Mum and me close behind. We could see the tree up ahead. It was stunted and thorny, leaning into the wall like a ragged old witch. When we reached it we saw the crack. It was barely wider than my arm and it ran right down the wall.

  I pushed my face up to it and peered through. I could see the edge of the parsley patch, a bit of brick path, a broken wheelbarrow. There was no sign of Dennis. But then I caught sight of something that made my blood run cold. Hidden in a patch of long grass, still as stone, there was a big brown cat.

  The cat’s yellow eyes were fixed on a spot to one side of the crack, and I knew that was where Dennis must be. But the wall was so thick and the crack was so narrow, we would never be able to get to him. I started to shake again, even worse than before.

  Mum and Dad were looking through the crack higher up. ‘W-w-what are we g-g-going to do?’ I whispered. I didn’t want to alarm Dennis because if he tried to make a dash for it, the cat would pounce.

  I thought Mum would know what to do – she always knew. But she looked as lost as me. She tried to pull me away from the wall. I knew she didn’t want me to see what would happen next.

  All of a sudden, Dad leapt into action. He grabbed some stones that had fallen out of the wall and shinned straight up the tree. His feet were higher than my head before I realised what was happening. Me and Mum looked at each other in astonishment.

  Dad got a toe-hold high on the wall and heaved himself up to the top. We peered through the gap again and saw the cat glaring up at Dad. It didn’t look scared, just cross, and it wasn’t moving.

  Dad threw a stone at it. It was a great shot. It flew through the air like a deadly missile and would have hit the cat right between the eyes if it hadn’t jumped out of the way.

  We heard a thump behind the wall and a rustle of leaves and suddenly Dennis appeared in the gap. His eyes were wide open and his nose was going nuts. He pushed himself into the crack and tried to wriggle through. He wriggled and wriggled but the gap was too tight.

  The cat saw Dennis was trying to escape. It leapt at him. I screamed – and with a mighty roar, Dad jumped down off the wall. Thump! The cat stopped in its tracks. Its yellow eyes flashed in anger but it stood its ground.

  Dad ran at the cat, yelling and waving his arms, and it saw he meant business. It yowled and dived back into the long grass, with Dad on its tail. We saw them race away across the garden and disappear out of sight.

  Dennis, wriggling like fury, finally managed to squeeze his way out of the crack. I thought he would try to get away but he just stood there looking up at me. I picked him up and held on to him.

  ‘Small problem,’ gasped Dad, arriving back on the other side of the wall. ‘How am I going to get back over?’

  Mum laughed. She said she had seen an old step-ladder in the potting-shed. Five minutes later, Dad appeared at the top of the wall. He scrambled back down the tree. He was covered in scratches and had twigs and leaves in his hair.

  Mum grinned at him. She gave him a big hug.

  I said, ‘I didn’t know you could climb trees, Dad!’

  Dad kissed Mum’s cheek and smiled at me over her shoulder.

  ‘I used to be a champion scrumper in my young days, I’ll have you know.’

  I suddenly imagined my dad as a boy, out scrumping for apples and plums with his friends. Fishing, crabbing, playing hide-and-seek in the bracken.

  ‘It’s surprising what skills you can pick up just messing around!’ he said.

  Mum called everyone over. They were delighted that we’d found Dennis. Some of them tried to stroke him, and he nestled deeper into my arms as if he was backing into a burrow.

  Dad called Primrose on his mobile. ‘We’ve found him...up at Nash House...yes... Say thank you to everyone up there for us...’

  When we finally got home I put Dennis down near his hutch. I expected him to hop up and hide in the bedroom end for a while. But he put his front paws on my leg and looked up at me as if to say, ‘Don’t put me down! I need another cuddle!’

  Chapter 17

  The Friends you Choose and the Family you Want

  It was Saturday afternoon and Gran was coming for supper. She said she had some news for us. That was always slightly worrying. If her old bones were fed up with surfing, maybe she had decided to take off on a round-the-world trip or be a bird warden or go and teach English in Africa.

  Mum was cooking beetroot lasagne. It looks worse than it tastes because the beetroot turns everything red, but that’s not saying much. Beetroot is bad enough cold with salad – no-one should have to eat it hot.

  Still, Mum was happy. At least we would be getting some proper meals again now, she said. She had talked to Stella about cutting down on he
r work and it turned out Stella’s son was home from university for the summer and couldn’t find a job, so he was dead keen to take over half Mum’s lawns and hedges.

  Dad was making a better barrier for the front door. It was like a gate across the bottom half, made of chicken-wire on a wooden frame. It was too high to step over so you had to open and shut it, but at least it meant we could leave the front door open to get a bit of air through and not have to worry about Dennis going walkabout.

  Dennis was in his house happily munching out a new window. There were lots of holes in it now and he would stick his head through one and then another, nibbling them bigger. Dad said it reminded him of Squeaky, the little mouse he found in the garden shed when he was a boy. He kept it in a shoe-box until it chewed a hole in the side and ran away. We’ve learnt a lot of things about Dad since we got Dennis.

  Primrose was doing her nails at the kitchen table ‘just in case’. Look how quickly Matt had come running when he heard her shout for help, she said. There was only one explanation for that: he must still like her.

  Just as Dad was ready to test his new safety gate, Gran arrived. Mum was putting the lasagne in the oven. ‘What perfect timing!’ she said. Primrose was blowing on her nails and Dennis had just discovered his window was finally big enough to stick his whole head through.

  ‘What’s with the new barrier?’ asked Gran, carefully hooking it shut after her. We had half an hour before supper to tell her the story of Dennis’s great adventure and the massive search operation we had to organise to get him back.

  Dennis came out of his house to sniff Gran’s toes. I wondered if he knew we were talking about him. It didn’t seem likely. The more you got to know Dennis, the more you had to think maybe the book was right. Rabbits were gorgeous, funny and sweet, plus they were fully house-trainable. But they didn’t understand things, like a dog. Sam would definitely know if you were talking about him.

  I felt bad about having those kinds of thoughts so I picked Dennis up and gave him a cuddle, which he seemed to like now. He wasn’t the same as Sam but he was lovely in his own way. Gran reached over and stroked him.