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“Who’s Cheeky Eric?” asked Chloe.
“He’s a puppy! You don’t even know their names. That shows how much you care.”
“Lay off, Trix,” said Dinah. “The only one you go on about is Bonzo. The others are always curled up on top of Harpo and it’s pretty hard to tell them apart.”
“But they’ve all got amazingly different characters,” I said. “Just like people. Eric’s mischievous and cheeky, Marigold’s cute and pretty like that actress who came to do puppet workshop, Fattypuff has big film-star eyes and is incredibly lazy, Gertrude is shy and kind, like Chloe, and her tail is just like a Curly-Wurly. And Bonzo…”
I tailed off. I could see I was losing them. It was a bit like Mum’s friend who pops in for a “quick cup of tea” and then bores on and on for hours about her horrible dribbling squawking baby.
“Of course, you never see them as individuals cos you’re not there all the time like me. And Harpo rules them with a paw of iron,” I added.
“Can anyone remember what any of this means?” said Dinah, turning our brainstorm paper upside down as though it might make more sense that way. “Looks like some of that poetry my mum writes when she’s in a mood.”
“Well, BEG and PLEAD were about trying to change my parents’ mind,” I said. “Oh, yeah, and DAD!!!! was because I can usually get round him so I had a brainwave of persuading him…”
“And PLAGUE and BITE were about telling people the puppies are dangerous, so no one will want them,” said Chloe.
“Excellent!” said Dinah. “That’s a good start. We’ll begin with you trying to persuade your dad to make your mum keep the puppies. If she won’t relent, you’ll do everything you can to make sure no one wants the puppies anyway.” She squinted at the piece of paper. “Oh yes, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll erm, either disguise the puppies as, erm, something else, or hide them, or run away from home with them! OK? This is the beginning of our campaign. We’ll get lots of support to save them from experiments. Let’s do a petition this evening and call it Puppies Are People Too.”
“YES. If we can persuade the whole neighbourhood your parents are trying to sell the puppies into slavery, we can probably get the RSPCA to help, or the police,” said Chloe.
“Don’t overdo it. If my folks go to jail, who’ll buy the dog food?”
“Of course, you couldn’t get anyone interested if you’d only lost your pet ant,” Chloe added sadly. I think since her last ant got hoovered up she is taking her new one, Anty, too seriously. She needs a new interest. And she needs to stop worrying about School.
“Maybe,” Chloe went on, “we could tie this in with our Pride of Bottomley project.”
There! What did I tell you??
“You have to be kidding, Chloe,” said Dinah, putting an arm around her. “Saving the Puppies will be an adventure. The Pride of Bottomley isn’t an adventure; it’s a punishment.”
“But Trixie’s puppies are part of the Pride of Bottomley,” Chloe protested. “She’s proud of them. We are too, even if we don’t know all their names.”
“Or which one can play the piano with its back paws, and which one can do Sudoko and speak Chinese,” cackled Dinah.
“Shut up,” I said. But an idea was beginning to hatch somewhere in the murky depths of my brain.
“We could bring in the science lab at Mandleton, where they do Animal Experiments and Testing,” Chloe said, getting excited. “That would come under ‘The Shame of Bottomley’.”
“Yeah,” said Dinah. “Animal rights. Save the Snail.”
I was cheered up, despite Dinah’s jokes. I knew that with Dinah and Chloe on my side, the puppies were in with a chance. And we were getting our Warty project done at the same time!
But when I got home, a nasty shock awaited me. A very flash car was parked outside the gate. And a very flash woman with bright pink hair and stiletto heels to match was teetering out of our house, carrying an enormous box and squealing to the driver, “They’re purrrrfect. Exactly what we were after! I’m taking them all!”
I couldn’t believe it! Mum had only just that morning mentioned the pups might have to go and she’d found a buyer already! They were going out of my life, squashed inside a cardboard box!
I flung myself in the way ofthe horrendous pink witch.
“Over my dead body!” I squeaked.
Unfortunately, what with the stiletto heels and the surprise at seeing a tiny furious girl barring her way, the pink witch tottered, squawked and then seemed to go in four different directions at once. One leg went south, one leg went north, her arms went out sideways, her pink hair blew off in a gust of wind revealing some quite ordinary hair underneath, and the box of puppies went soaring into the air.
“Ohmigod! The pups!” I squealed, leaping up to catch it on its way down.
“Ohmigod! The pups!” screamed Wigless Witch, struggling to get up and catch the box as well.
We collided of course, and the box landed on our heads with a horrible crashing, tinkling sound. Then it slid to the ground and split open.
I stared. There were no bruised, whimpering, terrified puppies to be seen.
There were a lot of cups and saucers and plates. Or what had once been cups and saucers and plates. What had once been, in fact, the valuable tea set belonging to my gran that Mum was selling for a lot of money. Even I could see that no amount of superglue was going to save it.
I looked at Wigless Witch accusingly. Why had she made me do that? Hadn’t she yelled “Ohmigod! The pups!” when she dropped them?
Obviously not, said another part of my brain. Obviously she’d said “cups”.
Dad came out looking miserable. He doesn’t really do cross, my dad. My mum does cross, but Dad does sad, which makes you feel worse. He took a wad of cash out of his pocket and picked up the witch’s once-pink-and-now-mud-spattered wig, and solemnly returned both to her. I looked shamefully down at the ground.
I was well and truly in the dog house. Bonzo came to comfort me as I lay on my Bed of Pain, but his warm furry presence only succeeded in reminding me of what I was about to lose…I didn’t have the heart to nag Dad any more about the puppies. He said Mum would see the funny side of it eventually, but I couldn’t see how.
Dinah and Chloe both rang me during the evening. I was supposed to be in solitary confinement, but Mum had either forgotten or relented, most probably the first. Dinah was her usual bouncy self, said it would have all blown over by morning, which I doubted. Chloe was sweet, and talked to me about the puppies as if they were hers too.
“I don’t want them to get turned into coats, Chloe,” I sniffled to her. “Tell me they won’t be.”
“They won’t. We’ll find a way,” Chloe said. “Don’t you worry. Most people usually buy puppies to play with, not to make into coats.”
“But I can’t bear to lose them!”
“No. And of course…” She hesitated.
“What?”
“It’s obviously a bad world out there for little animals. I saw a notice pinned on a tree in our street from somebody looking for their missing cat. That’s the third one I’ve seen round here in a week. Strange, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said glumly, remembering Dad’s words from this morning. “Thanks, Chloe.”
“Don’t mention it. Sleep tight.”
I didn’t, of course.
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The very next morning, Mum was huddled over the kitchen table scribbling on a piece of paper. When I came in, she covered it up in a sneaky manner.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Writing to Father Christmas,” Mum said. “He’s the only one left to turn to since you’ve smashed our only means of raising a bit of extra cash.”
“I’m really sorry about that,” I said, trying to put an arm round her. “I said I was sorry. It was an accident.”
I could see the edge of the piece of paper Mum had tried to cover up. It said DELICIOUS PUPPIES FOR.
“Delicious puppies for what?” I demanded, wrestling with Mum to pull the paper out. No prizes for guessing what it said.
DELICIOUS PUPPIES FOR SALE
“MUM! We haven’t discussed this properly! You said you were going to have another think about it!”
Mum sighed. “No, I didn’t. And if I had, what happened yesterday settles it. Look, Trix, you’re being really silly about this. All puppies have to leave home and we’ve already kept them too long. They’ll eat us out of house and home – and who’s going to take SIX huge dogs for a walk? They won’t be puppies for ever you know. Soon they’ll be huge, like Harpo. Just imagine!”
I looked at humungous Harpo. It was hard to imagine six of her in one room, but I managed. “It’ll save on electricity,” I said hopefully.
“What ARE you talking about?” Mum looked exasperated.
“Well, I read that seven people in a room make so much heat you don’t have to have the central heating on. So six Harpos would keep the kitchen cosy all through winter…”
“What about all the rest of the house?” Mum asked, rather sarkily. I couldn’t think of an answer to that.
“I haven’t got time to argue about this and I’m surprised you’re worrying about the bills for the first time in your life, especially after what happened yesterday.”
“But you CAN’T write that!” I shrieked. “Not DELICIOUS puppies!”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“They’ll be bought by dog thieves and baked in a pie!”
Mum struggled not to laugh. “Maybe delicious is a bit silly, but everyone always puts ‘adorable’ or ‘cute’. I wanted to make it different, so people would—”
“Be more likely to take them! Mum! We’ve raised them from the day they were born. How can you be so UNFEELING?”
But she was looking at her watch and scooping up Tomato and heading for the door.
“You’re always in a hurry! There’s never time for a proper conversation,” I complained. Then, to make her feel really guilty, I added, “Except you always have time to talk to parents at parents’ evening, or the silly headmistress!”
“This isn’t a conversation, Trix. That’s when two people listen to each other. You’re just trying to bully me into doing what you want. When you’re a grown-up, you can decide to keep a hundred Harpos and their puppies if you want to, and pay for their food and vet bills and all the rest. But for now, I make the decisions. I will write out the advertisement tonight and it will be in the newsagent’s window tomorrow, and that’s final.” And off she went.
I turned to Dad, who was pretending to examine a tap.
“Don’t know why it’s always dripping,” he muttered when he caught me staring at him.
“It’s not,” I said. “You’re just trying to keep out of the arguments as usual. Surely YOU don’t want to sell the pups, do you?”
“Erm…um. Let’s talk about it later. You’ll be late for school.”
It’s always the same. School just plonks itself in the way of real life every single day. Horrible looming boring school with stupid sums and tests, and Orrible Orange Orson lurking in the toilets and Ghastly Grey Griselda waiting to slam doors on your fingers, and the gimletty laser-eye of Warty-Beak waiting to BORE a hole into your soul as if you are a useless worm. I am going to create a world without school where children and puppies can run free and play all day and the streets are made of grass and sweeties grow on trees…
On the way to school next day I kept seeing notices for lost cats stuck to lampposts.
“Do you think someone is cat-napping them and turning them into hats? Like when Grandad was a lad?” I asked Chloe later in the playground.
“I don’t think so,” she replied in her usual cautious way. “Although come to think of it…”
“What? Come to think of what?”
“The dog next door to us has gone missing.”
“See? There’s a pet-napper on the prowl! If Mum advertises the puppies it’s like pointing an arrow straight at their hearts, saying ‘Get your new fur coat here’!”
“But it’s uncool to be seen in a fur coat these days, isn’t it? What with Animal Rights and all. People in woolly hats with banners would chase them down the street calling them nasty names.”
“What would they be doing in woolly hats?” I wondered. “They’re from animals too.”
“Well, they don’t have to be in woolly hats,” Chloe said. “Anyway, you just have to give sheep a haircut to get wool. You don’t have to murder them. It’s supportive. Probably Animal Rights people wear them to keep the sheep population in work.”
“Fur coat people wouldn’t worry about all that,” I said. “You never see them walking down the street, or at the checkout or whatever. They’re always behind darkened windows in a stretch limo.”
“Aren’t you two getting off the point?” said Dinah, who had joined us. “We need a plan. Where’s your mum going to advertise the puppies?”
“Mr Drugg’s noticeboard in his window,” I told her. Mr Drugg was the newsagent and sweetie man, not that he is very sweet himself.
“OK,” Dinah said. “Why don’t we just go down there and hide it? Chloe could keep Mr Drugg talking, he likes her. She pretty much keeps his shop going all by herself.”
Chloe gave Dinah an annoyed look. Well, as annoyed as she’s capable of, which isn’t very. “No good,” she said. “Your mum would notice.” (This would be Very Extremely soon, since Mum nips into Mr Drugg’s on a daily basis.)
“What about putting a sign saying SOLD on top of it?” I suggested.
“No good,” said Chloe again. “Your mum would see it and if the puppies weren’t sold she’d know it was us.”
We all shuffled about in silence, until Chloe squeaked, “I’ve got it! We’ll change one digit of the phone number. It would be easy to change 1189 to 7189. And your mum won’t notice for ages because the ad will still look nearly the same.”
“Chloe, you are a GENIUS!”
Chloe went red-as-a-beetroot and gazed at her feet. “I don’t know…” she murmured. “It’s breaking the law, really.”
“What law?” I demanded. “William The Conqueror’s Sweetie Man Protection Act of 1071? There’s no law that says you can get your head chopped off for making a mistake on an advert.”
“Yes, but it’s not a mistake, it’s a scam by us. We’ll be criminals,” Chloe moaned.
“Look,” Dinah said impatiently, “do we want to save these puppies or not? You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”
Chloe and I looked blank.
“We’re not making an omelet, we’re saving my puppies,” I said. “What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know. It’s something my dad says,” Dinah replied. “Anyway,” (she gave Chloe a big hug, which made her blush even more), “it’s an amazing idea. I had exactly the same one at the same time, actually.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Chloe and I went. Dinah hates to be beaten at problem-solving.
