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Contents
Title Page
Chapter One
All I can say is, it wasn’t my fault! I…
Chapter Two
“So long as it is only a game,” said Skye.
Chapter Three
We watched like hawks all the rest of the week,…
Chapter Four
I took a deep breath, and swallowed. Jem waved her…
Chapter Five
While it is true that Jem is one of my…
Chapter Six
“I suppose –” Jem turned hopefully to Skye as we…
Chapter Seven
One of my teachers once wrote on my school report…
Chapter Eight
Although I say it myself, I am not the sort…
Chapter Nine
We watched in frozen horror as the dark shape moved…
Chapter Ten
It is very hard to admit this, but if it…
Chapter Eleven
We all agreed that that was the question: what did…
Other Books by Jean Ure
Copyright
About the Publisher
All I can say is, it wasn’t my fault! I wasn’t the one that let Rags in from the garden with muddy paws. I might have been the one that let him out, but I wasn’t the one that let him in…
All I can say is, it wasn’t my fault! I wasn’t the one that let Rags in from the garden with muddy paws. I might have been the one that let him out, but I wasn’t the one that let him in. Angel was the one that let him in. It was her responsibility, not mine.
She got all angry when I accused her of it. She said, “He was scraping at the door! What was I supposed to do? Let him ruin Dad’s paintwork?”
What she was supposed to do was clean up the floor. That is the rule: whoever lets him in with dirty paws has to clean up after him. It wasn’t any good her screeching that she was about to go out and was all dressed up. She is always dressed up. She works on the principle that a gorgeous boy could walk into her life at any moment and she has to be prepared. Like she might answer the front door and there he’d be, SuperGuy, and omigod, what a disaster if she was wearing tatty old jeans and a raggedy T-shirt!
Not that she would. She is obsessed with the way she looks. Like Mum is obsessed with the kitchen floor.
“Look at my floor!” she goes. “Covered in dog prints!”
It’s so weird, the things people get hung up about. My feelings are, a kitchen floor is a kitchen floor. It is there to get messed up. But it matters to Mum, and it doesn’t do to be small-minded about these things. I could just have left it; I’d have been within my rights. But I was thinking of Mum. Poor Mum! She and Dad work their fingers to the bone taking care of me and Angel and Tom. Well, that is what she always says.
“I don’t expect gratitude, but just now and again a bit of consideration wouldn’t go amiss.”
I think I am quite considerate on the whole. I do like to make Mum happy whenever I can. And I don’t mind getting down on my hands and knees, sploshing about on a wet floor. Wouldn’t bother me if SuperGuy suddenly appeared.
I filled a bowl with hot water and added a nice big dollop of washing-up liquid. I am one of those people, I believe in doing things properly. I thought while I was there I would give the whole floor a going-over, so when Mum came in she’d be, like, knocked out at the state of it.
“Oh!” she’d go. “Who’s cleaned the kitchen floor for me? Whoever it was, they’ve done an excellent job!”
I crawled all over, getting quite damp in the process. We used to have a mop thingie. A squeegee thing. I used to enjoy using that, but last time I’d used it, it hadn’t got put away properly. It had been left propped up against the side of the sink, and Dad had gone and trodden on it. He said it was lying on the floor. Don’t ask me how it got there. I didn’t leave it on the floor. But Dad trod on it and snapped it in two and as usual it was my fault. Everything is always my fault. Mum said it was time I learned to put things away after me. But I was going to!
I’d been on the point of shutting the mop back in the cupboard when my telephone rang and there was a text from Jem, something about Daisy Hooper, who is this girl at school that we all absolutely hate, so obviously I had to stop and text back – Wot u talkin bout? – and just as I’d done that the phone had gone and rung again. It had been Skye this time. I couldn’t help it if my friends wanted to talk to me! I got sort of sidetracked and wandered into the garden, talking about Daisy and this super-gigantic row she’d had with her best friend, Cara Thompson, and one thing sort of led to another, cos after speaking to Skye I felt I had to speak to Jem, who is, like, really talkative and practically never stops, plus Rags had come bundling out with me and wanted me to throw his ball, which I had to do cos you can’t just ignore him, and by the time I got back it was too late. Dad had gone and trodden on the mop and broken it.
So now we didn’t have a mop, which I just bet was the real reason Angel didn’t bother clearing up. Catch her down on her hands and knees!
The floor seemed a bit slippy when I’d finished. But at least it was clean. Quite sparkling, really. I reckoned Mum would be well happy. I ever so carefully emptied the water down the sink and wrung out the cloth, the way she likes it. She goes mad if you leave it all soggy and dripping. Another of her weird hang-ups!
I was so pleased with the job I’d done that I decided to sit down and read the local paper while I waited for Mum to appear. She’d only popped over the road, so I knew she wouldn’t be long. I really wanted to see her face when she opened the door and all the lovely bright shininess rose up before her!
One of my favourite bits in what Dad calls “the local rag” is the horoscope page with Crystal Ball. That is her real actual name. It says so at the top of the column: Your Horoscope Read by Crystal Ball. I think that is so neat! I also think there has to be something in it. Fortune telling and stuff. Crystal is really gifted, she can predict all sorts of things. Like once, for Capricorn, which is Dad’s star sign, she said, “A big change could be coming your way,” and that very same week Dad shaved off his moustache. And once for Gemini, which is Angel, she said, “Diet plays an important part in your life at the moment.” Well! You couldn’t get much more accurate than that.
