How To Survive Summer Camp (ePub) Read online

  ‘All right. I promise. I won’t breathe a word,’ I said, sighing.

  It would have been so wonderful to boast about Foxy to Karen and Louise but it couldn’t be helped.

  ‘I’ll only have him a few days more anyway,’ said Nylon Nightie, and she reached out and patted him regretfully.

  ‘Can’t you keep him? Make him a proper pet?’

  ‘Oh no, that wouldn’t be fair. Foxes are meant to be wild. And he’s getting a right handful already. He keeps getting into scrapes.’ She gave me a funny sideways look. ‘I suppose I might as well tell you now. It was Foxy who chewed up your nice story book.’

  ‘He didn’t!’

  ‘Although it was really my fault, I suppose. I shouldn’t have let him out of my room. But he gets so cooped up in here all day and all night that he tears round chasing his own tail, going barmy for lack of exercise. He makes such a mess, you wouldn’t believe. I thought it might calm him down a bit if I took him for a little walk. So I took him with me when I vacuumed all the dormis, using my dressing gown cord as a sort of lead. So there I was, cleaning your dormi with Foxy safely tied to the bedpost, or so I thought. But the little devil wriggles free, doesn’t he, and gets his head into your chest of drawers and mistakes your book for a big bite of dinner.’

  ‘You bad little boy,’ I said, pretending to tap Foxy on the back. ‘Oh well. It’s all mended now, so it doesn’t really matter.’

  One thing mattered. I’d been so sure Karen had spoilt my book. I’d said some awful things to her. She’d cried all night—and it hadn’t been her fault after all.

  I felt hot and fidgety when I thought about it. I’d have to try to make it up to her somehow. But I didn’t want to think about it now. I concentrated on Foxy instead.

  ‘Do you think I could actually have him on my lap for a minute?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t see why not. Go gently though.’

  I lifted him and cradled him almost like a baby. He whined and scrabbled a bit, but I held on to him and begged him to be a good boy—and he suddenly stopped trying to get away.

  ‘He’s snuggling into me, look! He likes me,’ I whispered.

  ‘Mind he doesn’t pee on you. He’s worse than a baby,’ said Nylon Nightie, chuckling.

  I remembered Dora’s bed and the damp patch and knew who was the culprit!

  ‘I wish we could keep him,’ I said wistfully. ‘Couldn’t we make some sort of cage for him?’

  ‘You wouldn’t like to be cooped up in a cage, would you? Well, neither would he.’

  ‘But how’s he going to manage when you let him go again? Do you think he’ll be able to find his mother?’

  ‘Maybe. Yes, I expect she’ll come when she hears him wailing. He’s obviously been missing her a lot.’

  ‘I miss my mum,’ I said.

  ‘Of course you do, pet,’ said Nylon Nightie, and she put her arm round me. ‘Still, she’ll be coming to collect you soon. And you’re having a good time here, aren’t you?’

  ‘Well. Sometimes,’ I mumbled.

  ‘You’d better get back to your dormi now, eh? It’s ever so late. And remember, you’ll keep quiet about Foxy, won’t you?’

  I kept my word—although it was agony. The others were all desperate to know where I’d been. Rosemary was crying, and Marzipan had been all set to go and tell Miss Hamer-Cotton I was missing.

  ‘You mad twit! You couldn’t tell on me, you’re supposed to be my friend,’ I said indignantly.

  ‘Well, I was so worried about you. You weren’t in the bathroom. We looked all over the place for you but you’d just disappeared.’

  ‘So where did you go, Baldy? You didn’t hear that wailing noise again, did you?’ asked Karen.

  ‘What wailing noise?’ I said vaguely. ‘No, I didn’t hear any noise. I just decided to go for a little walk, so I did.’

  ‘In the pitch dark?’

  ‘Mmm. I dared myself.’

  ‘You’re mad, Baldy,’ said Karen—but she sounded a little bit impressed.

  I got another parcel from Mum and Uncle Bill the next day. They were in Italy now so they’d sent me a gilt gondola crammed with chocolate lire coins and a new T-shirt. I thought the gondola was very grand but I’d rather gone off chocolate since the midnight feast, so I wondered about offering it as a prize for my Super Star magazine quiz. I’d had a lot of entries, mostly because I’d promised a Super Star prize for the winner, and I was getting a bit bothered about what it was going to be.

  I certainly didn’t want to donate my new T-shirt. It was emerald green with silver stars patterned all over it. I loved the stars although I was a bit sick of Emerald green. Louise pointed out the designer label and actually seemed impressed. Karen said nothing but she looked at my T-shirt longingly.

  Karen didn’t have any nice T-shirts of her own. She had the giveaway Evergreen one and some old baggy things that had gone out of shape. Some girls wouldn’t bother about it but Karen cared desperately about clothes.

  I still hadn’t made it up to Karen for thinking that she’d ripped my book.

  I thought it over. I shuffled several thoughts.

  ‘I think I’ll keep my gondola and offer my new Italian T-shirt as the Super Star prize,’ I said.

  ‘You’re mad, Baldy,’ said Karen. ‘Giving away that fabulous T-shirt! What if someone like James wins it? He couldn’t even get it over his big fat head—and anyway, it would be wasted on a boy.’

  ‘So why don’t you try and win the T-shirt for yourself?’ I suggested.

  ‘I’m not doing your daft competition,’ said Karen. ‘Besides, I can’t, can I? The Emerald girls aren’t allowed to enter because we made up some of the questions.’

  ‘You didn’t,’ I said. ‘You wouldn’t join in. So I can’t stop you entering, can I?’

  So Karen bought a copy of the magazine and got busy. She handed in her competition entry the next morning. She’d made heaps of silly guesses. She didn’t really do very well at all. But I was the editor and I was the one who marked all the entries.

  ‘You’ll never guess who’s won,’ I announced at the end of the week.

  Karen put on her new emerald green starry T-shirt and stared at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were as shiny as the stars.

  ‘Even Louise hasn’t got a T-shirt as posh as this,’ she said softly. ‘You’re mad to give it away, Baldy, but thanks all the same.’

  Marzipan grinned at me.

  ‘That was ever so good of you, Stella,’ she said privately.

  I got a bit unnerved. I was used to being bad, not good. And yet I seemed to have got into the habit of being good now. I didn’t muck about so much in all the activities and Jimbo said I was practically black belt standard at judo now, although he might have been joking.

  I’d made friends with Miss Hamer-Cotton and coloured her a big picture of Tinkypoo. She was very pleased with it and pinned it up on her wall, although she said it was a pity about the little orange smudge. It wasn’t a smudge. It was a very very tiny picture of Foxy with his teeth bared ready to bite Tinkypoo in a very rude place indeed—but of course I didn’t explain that.

  I was even making progress in macramé. I got Jilly to show me how to make a watchchain. It just looked like a long piece of tangled string when I’d finished, but when I gave it to the Brigadier and explained what it was he seemed delighted. I wondered about making a watchchain for Uncle Bill too because they were really easy to do, but I decided against the idea. I set about making myself a wig instead.

  ‘I’m going to start a new fashion. String hair! You don’t have to wash it or comb it so it’s a great improvement on the real thing. And you can wear little brown paper bows for the complete parcel look,’ I said, plaiting away.

  The others all thought I was mad but Jilly said it was a very original idea.

  But I still couldn’t swim. I did try. But I knew it wasn’t going to work.

  ‘I can’t do it, Uncle Ron. Can’t we just give up?’ I said, struggling, desper