Four Children and It Read online

  I drew little flowers and trees and bluebirds and squirrels and rabbits in my frieze. Robbie drew lions and tigers and elephants and giraffes. His animals were so big their necks and paws and trunks and tails burst right out of the frieze, but he was good at drawing so it still looked reasonably artistic.

  Smash stood over us and commented caustically.

  ‘Who do you two fancy yourselves as, Walt Disney?’ she said. ‘Honestly, Rosalind, exactly how old are you? Still drawing cute little bunnie-wunnies!’

  ‘Shut up. I’m not drawing them for me. It’s to charm my dad. And he always thinks of me as much younger than I actually am. He gave me a doll last Christmas.’

  ‘He didn’t!’

  ‘Well, it might have been the Christmas before. But still,’ I said, drawing steadily. I didn’t feel the need to tell Smash that I’d been secretly thrilled with this beautiful American doll and I’d dressed and undressed her and combed her long hair and played tentative little games with her in secret.

  ‘My dad gives me really cool presents, like designer clothes and my iPod and my phone. Can I have it back, Robbie? I need to see if there are any texts from him. He’s been sending me heaps from the Seychelles.’

  Smash consulted her phone and looked disappointed – but read out several texts even so. It was obvious even to Robbie that she was making them up.

  ‘Heaps and heaps of texts,’ Smash mumbled.

  ‘Your mum sent you heaps and heaps of texts last night,’ I said meanly.

  ‘Stupid old bag,’ said Smash, busy deleting them.

  ‘Why don’t you try writing her a letter?’ I said. ‘You don’t have to mean what you put.’

  ‘I’m not a creep like you two,’ said Smash.

  ‘Okay, we’re creeps – and if it works they’ll take Robbie and me to the sandpit and we’ll get the next Psammead wish all to ourselves while you stay stuck at home,’ I said.

  Smash considered this.

  ‘Give us one of your pages then,’ she said, sitting down on the floor beside us.

  She drew a very big frieze and spent a very long time filling it in with little pictures of herself. She drew a small Smash climbing a tree all the way up the page, another jumping on the trampoline at the gym, another dancing in high heels, and yet another wearing a black and silver costume, singing into a microphone.

  ‘She’ll think I’m simply fantasizing,’ said Smash, sighing. ‘But tomorrow when I wish I’m rich and famous all over again I’m going to have Mum right at the front of the auditorium. And Dad. And your boring old dad and my dad’s silly new wife. And all my old schoolteachers and that stupid therapist and everyone else who’s ever nagged and moaned at me. They’ll all goggle at my performance and say, “Oh, now I understand. It’s just Smash’s artistic temperament – isn’t she wonderful!”’

  ‘You do talk drivel at times,’ said Robbie, adding delicate stripes to his tiger.

  ‘I’m ready to do my letter now,’ I said. I drafted it out carefully on a rough piece of paper so I wouldn’t make a mess of it.

  Dear Dad and Alice

  I am so so sorry we worried you so much yesterday and wasted everyone’s time, including the police. We truly didn’t get lost on purpose but I suppose it was our fault for wandering off.

  We just love going to the woods so much but if we’re ever lucky enough to go there again we solemnly promise we’ll stay by the sandpit. It’s so good of you to take time off work to look after us and it’s been such fun to stay in your house.

  Please can we keep on coming to stay because you are such a special dad and stepmother.

  Love from Rosalind

  ‘Oh yuck!’ said Smash, reading over my shoulder. She did a pretend vomit all over my head.

  ‘I agree,’ I said. ‘I don’t mean it.’

  Robbie’s letter was much briefer, but covered the same ground.

  Dear Dad and Alice

  I’m ever so sorry. I won’t get lost again. I really am ever so ever so sorry.

  Love from Robbie

  Smash decided her letter would be briefer still. It consisted of one word: Sorry. But she wrote it over and over again in all different handwritings, using a new coloured pencil each time, so that it irritatingly looked most effective.

  ‘There! See, I’m making my point without doing any loathsome grovelling,’ she said. ‘That’s what you are, Rosalind. The Loathsome Groveller.’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ I said.

  ‘The Loathsome Groveller,’ Smash repeated in a silly affected voice, and she started doing a very unkind imitation of me, with her lips stuck right out revoltingly.

  ‘Stop it! Why are you pulling that stupid face? I don’t look anything like that,’ I said. ‘Especially not my lips.’

  ‘Yes, you do. These are your sucky lips because you keep sucking up to my mum and your dad even though you don’t like them any more than I do. You’re just a gutless creep.’

  ‘I am not,’ I said, though my heart was banging in my chest.

  ‘It’s a waste of time anyway, because it doesn’t work,’ said Smash. ‘They just think you’re pathetic. You’re so stuck up and nerdy and boring. No wonder your dad walked out on you. He got sick of you and your stupid brother. My dad wanted me.’

  ‘You shut up about my dad,’ I said.

  I couldn’t believe she was being so horrible, especially after I’d done my best to comfort her last night. I knew it wasn’t really true – or was it? Smash was just being horrid because she was bored and fed up that her precious dad still hadn’t contacted her – but somehow her words seemed to have crawled right into my head. They wriggled around there, making me feel scared and panicky.

  I picked up Five Children and It again to distract myself. I needed to reread it to remind myself how Cyril, Anthea, their Robert and Jane had coped with the Psammead. It was hard concentrating, because Smash made up a Loathsome Groveller song, circling round me, sucking and smacking her lips and doing a special bent-over creep walk.

  When we were called downstairs for lunch, we gave Dad and Alice our letters.

  ‘You mustn’t think you’re getting round us just like that,’ Dad said gruffly – but then he gave us a big hug.

  He was careful not to leave Smash out this time. In fact he made a huge fuss of her, saying her letter was incredibly artistic. Smash grinned smugly and I wanted to slap her.

  We were allowed to stay downstairs in the afternoon, although Smash’s computer was still confiscated.

  ‘See if I care,’ she said to Alice, and she took my coloured pencils again – without asking – and started crayoning all sorts of pictures for Maudie.

  ‘Draw Monkey!’ Maudie begged.

  So Smash drew a reasonably accurate picture of the Psammead, much to Maudie’s delight.

  ‘That’s not a very good monkey. It’s much too fat and it’s got weird things sticking out of its head,’ said Alice.

  ‘Nobody asked your opinion,’ said Smash crossly, and she scribbled all over her picture with the brown pencil until it broke.

  ‘Smash! That’s my pencil,’ I said.

  She pulled a face at me, and when Alice wasn’t looking she deliberately broke a green and a blue pencil too.

  ‘You pig! Give them back. I never said you could borrow them,’ I said, snatching them back.

  ‘Hey, hey,’ said Dad, coming into the room. ‘Rosalind, what are you doing? Can’t Smash share your pencils?’

  ‘No, she can’t – they’re mine,’ I said, knowing I sounded like a spoilt baby. ‘She’s ruining them all, look.’ I was a telltale now, which was even worse.

  ‘Keep your silly crayons then,’ said Smash. ‘Come on, Maudie, shall we play with all your teddies? Let’s give them a plasticine picnic. We’re sick of silly crayoning anyway, aren’t we?’

  Smash played an inventive game of Teddy Bears’ Picnic with Maudie. Robbie helped make all the plasticine food, which I thought was intensely disloyal of him. I sharpened all my coloured pencils until