a pessimist! If I listened to what she had to say I would never go anywhere or do anything. I suppose it is what comes of having this massive great brain, like a computer. Instead of just looking straight ahead, she whizzes frantically about, all up and down the side roads, in and out of blind alleys, searching for things that could go wrong. A bit too complicated for my liking. I think I am quite a straightforward type, though Mum would probably say I tend to act without thinking, which is what she said when I accidentally set fire to Dad’s garden shed and almost certainly what she was going to say when I tried to explain why I’d cut a hole in my carpet…
I gulped as we reached Sunnybrook Gardens, which is where the three of us go our different ways.
“Wish me luck,” I said.
“What for?” said Jem. “Oh! Yes. Your carpet.” She giggled. “Hope your mum doesn’t get too mad!”
“Blame it on Rags,” urged Skye.
Maybe I could. After all, it was sort of his fault. If he hadn’t chewed the fronds I could have snipped them off and nobody would ever have known. I could tell Mum that I’d cut the hole after he’d done his chewing. I could say I’d been trying to tidy things up and the knife had slipped, so then I’d thought I might as well make the hole triangle-shaped and put the cabinet on top of it. Yes! That would work.
I crashed through the front door, all prepared with my story (in case Mum had already made the dreaded discovery and was waiting for me like a great hovering cloud at the top of the stairs). But then Rags came bounding down the hall, full of his usual doggy ecstasy at seeing me again, and I knew that I just couldn’t do it.
“It’s all right,” I whispered. “I won’t blame you!”
While me and Rags were having a hug-in, the door of the front room opened and Mum looked out.
“Oh, Frankie, there you are. I’ll be with you in a minute, I’m just seeing one of my ladies. You and Angel go and make a start on your bedrooms. Tell Angel she doesn’t have to move every last item… concentrate on clothes.”
I said, “OK.” Trying to make like it was no big deal and that my heart wasn’t already starting to sink like a lead balloon.
Angel was in the kitchen, texting someone. She is always texting. I said, “Mum wants us to get on with moving things.”
Angel pulled a face.
“She says not every last item. Just clothes, mainly.”
Angel said, “If you think I’m leaving all my stuff for you to get your grubby hands on—”
There was a pause, while she went on texting.
I said, “What if I do?”
Irritably, she said, “Do what?”
“Think what you just said.”
“Then you’d better think again!” Angel snapped her phone shut and went flouncing ahead of me, up the hall. “Let’s get this over with. And you can clear up all your mess,” she added.
I said, “What mess?”
“The mess in your room.”
“How do you know there’s any mess in my room?”
“Cos there always is. Just because I have to exist in a cupboard for the next few weeks doesn’t mean I have to live in a tip.”
I sniffed as I went up the extra little flight of stairs to my room. The clothes were still on the floor, where I’d left them. I was about to pick them up when I had another of my bright ideas. It just struck me suddenly, as these things do. I think I must have a very active sort of brain.
I left the clothes where they were, seized an armful of stuff from the wardrobe and went plunging down to Angel’s room, crossing paths with Angel on the way back up.
“Mess,” she said, as she came back down. “What are you doing with that rug?”
“I thought you ought to take it with you. Cos, you know, I might spill stuff on it or something.”
“Good thinking,” said Angel.
I galloped back up, kicked the clothes out of the way, and carefully laid the rug on top of the bald patch. It looked a bit odd, cos of sticking out at an angle, but at least it covered things up. It would have been perfectly all right if Angel hadn’t gone and interfered. She came in with another load of clothes, took one look at the rug and said, “It’s supposed to go here, by the side of the bed.”
“That’s boring,” I said. “That’s where everybody has them.”
“Yes, for a reason,” said Angel. “It’s where they go.”
“Not if you’re being creative.”
She isn’t creative; that is the problem. I don’t think she has very much in the way of imagination. Before I could stop her she’d snatched up the rug, revealing the bald patch in all its horror. I cringed. I’d been secretly hoping that by some miracle it might have shrunk a bit during the day, but if anything it seemed to have grown even worse.
Angel shrieked, “Oh my God!”
That was the moment when Mum appeared in the doorway.
“Now what?” she said. There was a distinct note of tetchiness in her voice – and that was before she’d seen the bald patch. It didn’t bode well. “Don’t tell me you two are at it already?”
Angel said nothing; just pointed, with quivering finger. Mum walked to the end of the bed. She looked. There was a rather nasty moment of silence.
“All right,” said Mum. She took a long, deep breath, like she was counting to ten. “So how did it happen?”
“It wasn’t Rags’ fault!” I said. “He found some loose ends and he tugged on them!”
Mum’s eyes followed the trail from the edge of the bed to the base of the cabinet.
“These loose ends?” More fronds had sprouted overnight; a whole forest of them, short and bristly. “Frankie,” said Mum, “what have you been doing?”
I tried my best to explain. All about the cabinet and the lack of corners. How I hadn’t actually set out to cut a hole.
“You mean, it just happened? All by itself?” Mum shook her head. She didn’t sound cross; just kind of… defeated. “Words fail me,” she said.
It’s a pity they can’t fail Angel occasionally. I have never known anyone go on like she does.
“Well, that’s it,” she said. “I’m not living in this tip! You can just get your stinky clothes out of my room and bring them back up here. Look at it! Look at the state of it! How could I invite any of my friends round? They’d think we were too poor to have decent carpets!”
“We are,” said Mum. “That’s what I find so depressing. I don’t know what your dad’s
