The Butterfly Club Read online

  The last lesson was art. Miss Lovejoy showed us a painting of people in a park – when you looked closely, you could see that they were all made of little coloured dots.

  Then we had to do our own dotty pictures.

  ‘I bet you do a butterfly, Little Bug,’ said Selma. She still called me that, but it was just a habit now.

  ‘You bet wrong, Big Bug,’ I said. ‘I’m going to draw a dotty sponge cake. And dotty cupcakes. And dotty chocolate brownies. And dotty cookies. And dotty flapjacks.’

  ‘Are you extra hungry or something?’

  ‘No, I’m making plans. We’re going to have a cake sale to raise money for compost and plants. Are you any good at making cakes, Selma?’

  ‘Don’t know. Never tried,’ she said.

  ‘I made a cake out of a packet once. Phil and Maddie and me did. And we get to stir the mixture when Mum makes cupcakes. And lick out the bowl – that’s the best bit. Let’s make lots and lots of cakes and cookies,’ I said.

  ‘Where are we going to make them?’

  ‘At home,’ I said. ‘I’ll make some and you make some too.’

  Selma hesitated. ‘Can’t be bothered,’ she said.

  ‘Oh go on, Selma! I can’t make enough for everyone, even with Phil and Maddie helping,’ I said.

  ‘Tough,’ said Selma, and she wouldn’t talk to me any more, even though I kept leaning across Alistair to try to persuade her.

  ‘If you don’t mind my saying, it’s extremely annoying having a person talking right through me,’ he said. ‘And you keep jogging me, Tina, and turning my dots into splodges. But I’ll make you a date and walnut loaf for your cake sale. Daddy and I often make one. As a matter of fact, Mummy says my date loaves are better than Daddy’s. She says she’s one hundred per cent certain of it.’

  ‘We don’t need you to do your weirdo date loaves,’ said Selma rudely. ‘This cake sale is just for Tina and me.’

  ‘But I thought you didn’t want to be bothered, Selma,’ I said. ‘And we need all the cakes we can get. Thank you very much, Alistair. We’d love to have one of your date and walnut loaves.’

  I wasn’t so sure about that. I’d seen Alistair eating buttered slices of his date and walnut loaf at lunch time and it looked very dark and treacly, but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. ‘I like walnuts,’ I said politely.

  ‘On second thoughts, maybe I’ll leave out the walnuts, because some children have nut allergies,’ said Alistair.

  ‘That’s very thoughtful of you, Alistair,’ I managed to say.

  I looked at Selma. ‘Are you sure you won’t even make one cake, Selma? What about chocolate crispy cakes – they’re ever so easy-peasy.’

  ‘I’m not messing around making stupid cakes,’ she said. ‘Now shut up about it.’

  So I did.

  When we were going home, I told Mum and Phil and Maddie all about Miss Lovejoy’s cake sale suggestion.

  ‘I can make some cakes, can’t I, Mum?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And do you want us to make cakes too? Or is this just for you and Selma?’ asked Phil.

  ‘Your new bestie Selma?’ Maddie mocked.

  ‘Selma isn’t my best friend, silly! And of course I want you to make the cakes too,’ I said, giving Maddie and Phil a poke. ‘Especially as Selma can’t be bothered – which I think is very mean of her. She’s weird. She can be almost nice, especially when we’re digging in our garden, but then she suddenly goes back to being mean. And imagine not wanting to make cakes when it’s such fun, especially when you can lick out the bowl afterwards.’

  ‘Maybe Selma never makes cakes at home,’ said Mum. ‘Tell you what – would you like to invite her to tea, Tina, and then she can make cakes with you? What about this Thursday? Then you could have your cake sale on Friday.’

  ‘Mum! Have you gone crazy!’ said Phil.

  ‘We don’t want Selma Johnson to come to tea! She’s still our worst enemy,’ said Maddie.

  ‘I wasn’t asking you two, I was asking Tina,’ said Mum. ‘Would you like Selma to come to tea, Tina?’

  I thought about it for a few seconds, walking with one foot in the gutter and one on the pavement to help me concentrate.

  Selma wasn’t really my worst enemy any more, even though she certainly wasn’t my best friend. But I wasn’t at all sure about inviting her to tea. What if she came into our bedroom? She’d tease terribly about our china dolls. That made me think about Baby and all the old pain came back.

  ‘No, of course I don’t want Selma to come to tea! No one ever, ever, ever asks Selma to tea,’ I said.

  ‘Then maybe that’s all the more reason to invite her,’ said Mum. ‘I think it would be a good idea, Tina.’

  I started wavering.

  ‘That’s not really fair, Mum,’ said Phil. ‘Why can Tina have Selma to tea – I kept asking if I could have Neera and all our club to tea and you said you were too busy.’

  ‘All right, you ask Neera to tea on Thursday. I’m sure she’d like to make cakes too. But not all those other girls or it’ll turn into a proper party and I really am too busy for that.’

  ‘It’s not fair if Phil and Tina have people to tea and I can’t,’ said Maddie.

  ‘You can. Who would you like to invite?’ Mum asked.

  ‘Harry!’

  ‘You can’t ask Harry!’ said Phil. ‘This is going to be a girls’ cake-making party.’

  ‘It’s not a party,’ said Mum. ‘And Maddie can invite Harry if she likes.’

  ‘Boys don’t make cakes,’ said Phil.

  ‘They do, actually,’ I said. ‘Alistair is going to make me a date loaf for my cake stall.’

  ‘Look, if you invite Alistair too, I’ll know you’ve gone nuts,’ said Phil.

  ‘Not nuts. Alistair is leaving the walnuts out of his date loaf in case some children have nut allergies,’ I said. ‘And I’m not inviting Alistair because he’d boss us about and tell us we weren’t doing it properly.’

  ‘But you think you’d like to invite Selma?’ Mum asked.

  ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Let me think about it a bit more.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  I INVITED SELMA to tea. Her face screwed up, and I thought at first that she was going to say something really horrid, maybe even hit me. Then I wondered if she might be going to cry – though of course that was silly. Selma never ever cried. She just made other people cry.

  ‘Can you come? I know you don’t really like making cakes, but perhaps we could make some together so we can have a cake sale on Friday. I’ll let you lick out the bowl,’ I said, making a supremely generous offer.

  Selma didn’t thank me. She didn’t say I was very kind. She didn’t say anything at all. She just shrugged her shoulders and nodded.

  Phil invited Neera to tea. Neera squealed and threw her arms round Phil.

  Maddie invited Harry to tea. He said, ‘Yay!’ and did keepy-uppies with his football.

  Selma didn’t look too happy to hear that Neera and Harry were coming. ‘I thought it was going to be just us,’ she said, frowning.

  ‘Yes, but Phil invited Neera because she’s her friend. And Maddie invited Harry because he’s her friend. And I invited you,’ I said.

  ‘Because I’m your friend?’ asked Selma.

  ‘Well. Sort of,’ I said, wondering if she’d object.

  But weirdly she didn’t object at all. She smiled.

  For once we didn’t do gardening at playtime and lunch time. We made a poster about our Friday cake sale instead. I drew lots of cakes and buns and cookies, properly this time, not with funny little dots. Selma coloured part of it in, and I let her do the lettering too. She went over the lines a bit and her printing went sideways, but it didn’t really matter.

  Miss Lovejoy let us pin it up on the big notice board by the school entrance.

  I was still rather worried about tea and the cake-making session. We were such a weird mixture. I thought Neera might want to go off with Phil and