Clean Break Read online

  ‘Oh.’ I wasn’t sure this was such a good idea. It was so much easier just telling them. If I wrote them down I’d have to plan it all out and remember all the boring stuff about punctuation and paragraphs. And never beginning a sentence with ‘And’.

  Mum was looking at me anxiously.

  ‘Great,’ I said, sounding false. ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘You don’t have to write the stories,’ said Mum. ‘I just thought it might take your mind off things. But it’s not meant to be hard work, it’s meant to be fun.’

  ‘Do I have to do it like at school?’

  ‘No, you write it however you want,’ said Mum. ‘Draw pictures too, if you like.’

  I started to get more enthusiastic. I decided I’d do lots of pictures. I’d colour them in. I’d maybe use a certain nearly new set of beautiful felt-tip pens.

  Maxie never seemed to use them nowadays. He’d done a handful of his wonky doughnut people during the Christmas holidays, but then he scribbled over all of them with the black pen.

  Gran said she’d take them away from him if he just did silly scribbling, though she said it wasn’t Maxie’s fault, he was far too young to own such an expensive set of pens.

  Mum said Gran didn’t have the right to take them away from Maxie, though she did privately beg Maxie to use them properly. She’d found a lot of black scribble on the wall beside Maxie’s mattress and had spent ages scrubbing with Vim.

  Maxie didn’t use his pens at all after that, though he guarded the big tin carefully and shrieked if Vita or I went near them.

  I waited until he was fast asleep in his bear lair and Vita was snuggled up with Dancer. Then I crept out of bed, tiptoed across the carpet and very cautiously felt under Maxie’s mattress. I found the great big smooth tin of felt tips and gently eased them out, careful not to make them rattle. I took them to the bathroom with me. I put all the towels bunched up in the bath to cushion it and then hopped in with my new notebook and Maxie’s pens.

  I opened the red notebook up and smoothed out the first page. I selected the black pen, ready to write ‘Dancer the Reindeer’ in my best swirly handwriting. The black came out as a faint grey trickle. It was all used up.

  Maxie had obviously been doing a lot of secret scribbling somewhere or other. It looked like Mum was going to have to buy another can of scouring powder.

  I chose the scarlet pen instead. It came out the palest pink. Maxie had used the red up too! I tried the gold, the purple, the brightest blue. They were nearly all completely used up. The only pens still working were Maxie’s least favourite colours, the dark greens and all the browns.

  I couldn’t understand it. I’d not seen Maxie using them. How could they possibly all be used up already?

  I had to start my Dancer story using my own inferior gel pens. I didn’t know how to get started properly. It sounded so silly and babyish writing Dancer the Reindeer did this, did that. It was so much more interesting when she told her own story.

  I had a sudden idea. I crept back to the bedroom, eased Dancer out from under Vita, and went back to my special bath. I put Dancer on my right hand and tucked a pen between her paws.

  ‘What’s this?’ she said, twiddling it around.

  ‘You know what it is. It’s my special pink gel pen, to match your pretty pink nose. I want you to write your story for me, Dancer. Tell it like an autobiography, right from the beginning, when you were born.’

  ‘When I was a tiny fawn, all big eyes and no antlers?’ said Dancer.

  She breathed in deeply, wriggled the pen more comfortably in her paws, and began.

  I am Dancer, a reindeer. I was born in a blizzard, such a deeply snowy night that my poor mother could not find shelter for us. She did her best, arching her poor weary body over me, while I nuzzled up to her weakly, up to my snout in thick snow. You would think this chilly start in life would leave me susceptible to colds, but although I am of dainty build even now in my middle years, I have always prided myself on my stout constitution. I never have a cold or a chill or any bout of flu. My nose stays prettily pink, never ever red and shiny. I would feel I was seriously blemished if I was famous for being a red-nosed reindeer, and had a popular song written about me.

  I do not wish to boast but I am sure I am equally famous for my dancing skills. I can do ballroom, I can bop like a demon, I can tap up a storm, but my speciality is ballet. I am the Anna Pavlova of the reindeer kingdom.

  I pressed Dancer’s pink nose and made the ‘Sugar Plum Fairy’ music tinkle. Dancer twirled round and round, her net skirt whirling. She pirouetted up and down the bath and then jumped on and off the taps.

  ‘I’m doing my tap dance now!’ she announced.

  We both hooted with laughter.

  ‘Em?’ Mum knocked at the bathroom door. ‘Em, what are you up to in there? What are you doing out of bed? Who’s in there with you?’

  ‘Just Dancer, Mum,’ I said. I clambered out of the bath and let her in.

  ‘You and Dancer! You’re a daft girl,’ said Mum. ‘I can’t get over the way you kids act like she’s real. You’re daft as a brush, babe. Still, you’re good at making up her stories. Have you started writing them in your new book?’

  ‘Yep!’ I said, flashing a page at her.

  ‘You’ve been writing in the bath?’ said Mum, looking at the scrunched-up towels.

  ‘It’s my special writing couch, Mum,’ I said.

  ‘For goodness’ sake,’ she said. ‘You’re not meant to be writing now. You’re meant to be fast asleep in bed.’

  ‘Haven’t you heard of burning the midnight oil, Mum? I’m inspired!’

  ‘You’ve got an answer for everything, my Em,’ said Mum, giving me a hug. ‘Let’s read your story then.’

  ‘Not yet. Not till it’s all finished and I’ve filled the book right up.’

  ‘There, it was a good idea of mine, wasn’t it? I got blank pages instead of lined so you can do as many pictures as you like. Maybe Maxie will let you borrow his fancy felt tips if you ask him really nicely.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said.

  I decided not to tell on Maxie. I needed to do my own investigating first.

  I didn’t tackle him directly. I simply kept an eye on him the next day. I watched him sneak the dark brown pen out of his tin and stick it down his sock when he was getting dressed.

  I followed him round doggedly, though it was very tiring. Maxie dashed here, charged there, darted up and down the stairs, running riot everywhere. He jumped on Mum, he badgered Gran, he tugged my hair, he pinched Vita. He knocked the cornflakes packet over, he spilled his juice down his front, he tripped over the vacuum and screamed blue murder – but he didn’t take the felt pen out of his sock to scribble.

  I waited patiently, biding my time. Maxie went to the loo. I followed him upstairs to the bathroom and waited outside. I waited and waited and waited. Gran was right, Maxie had started to take an awfully long time in the loo.

  I was needing to go myself. I got fed up waiting. I knocked on the door. ‘Maxie? Come on out, you must be finished now.’

  ‘Go away, Em,’ Maxie said, the other side of the door.

  ‘Maxie, you’ve been in there fifteen minutes. What’s the matter? Have you got a tummy upset?’

  ‘No! Just bog off!’ Maxie yelled crossly.

  He knew he wasn’t meant to say this. It was an expression he’d picked up off a television programme and it drove Gran nuts.

  ‘I’m not bogging off anywhere, Maxie. You come out!’ I paused. ‘I know what you’re up to in there!’ I hissed through the keyhole.

  ‘No you don’t!’ said Maxie, but he sounded panicky.

  ‘You come out or I’ll tell,’ I threatened.

  Maxie went quiet. Then he suddenly unlocked the bathroom door and came out.

  ‘You’re not allowed to lock yourself in, you know that,’ I said. ‘What if you get stuck?’

  ‘I’d jump out the window,’ said Maxie. ‘Like this.’ He jumped along the hallwa