The Butterfly Club Read online

  There was just one butterfly cake left that had got a bit bashed. Selma and I shared it. It still tasted good.

  Miss Lovejoy let us count up our fifty pences during our maths lesson. We’d made £32.50!

  ‘Wow, that’s a fortune!’ I said. ‘That’s enough for at least two bags of compost.’

  ‘Yeah, but haven’t we got to pay your mum for all the flour and sugar and butter and stuff we used to make the cakes?’ asked Selma. ‘My mum said they must have cost a bomb. She said your mum must have more money than sense. She thinks she’s stupid.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, taken aback.

  ‘But I think your mum’s nice. And I love your grandad. You’re so lucky. I haven’t got a grandad.’

  ‘Well, maybe you can have a share of mine, because he likes you too,’ I said.

  I was still worrying about Mum. I didn’t like her being insulted. And I hadn’t even thought about how much the ingredients must have cost.

  ‘Perhaps we ought to give my mum . . . half our profits from the cake sale?’ I said.

  ‘It’s up to you. You’re the one in charge of the money,’ said Selma.

  I’d offered to share it out but Selma shook her head.

  ‘Don’t be mad. I’m not taking any of that money home. Someone would nick it straight away. My stepdad would be down the pub or the betting shop with it.’

  ‘Even if you explained that it was our money and we’re saving it for compost and plants?’

  ‘Yep. Wouldn’t make any difference. They’d say I was soft in the head anyway, spending it on muck and weeds.’

  ‘But it’s for a butterfly garden!’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, but my mum and them don’t reckon butterflies the way you do. They just think they’re silly bugs and try to swat them.’

  ‘You reckon butterflies though, don’t you, Selma?’

  ‘Not quite as much as you – but yeah, they’re OK. And I want to make this garden. Imagine if I’ve done all this digging for nothing!’

  ‘You’ve been a champion digger, Selma,’ I said, and I clapped her on the back.

  I did offer Mum half the cake money as I proudly carried the heavy Quality Street tin home.

  ‘Oh, that’s sweet of you, Tina,’ she said.

  ‘Well, it was actually Selma’s idea, not mine,’ I admitted.

  ‘My goodness. Selma’s quite a thoughtful girl when she wants to be,’ said Mum. ‘But anyway, you two keep the money for your garden. Dad got a discount on all the cake ingredients because he bought them from his supermarket. And we were happy to let you have a little party. It was good fun – wasn’t it, Phil and Maddie?’

  ‘Yes, it was quite good fun,’ said Phil. ‘But I think it would only be fair for me to have a cake-making party with Neera so we can buy stuff for our club.’

  ‘And I want a cake-making party with Harry so we can buy cool new football stuff,’ said Maddie.

  ‘You girls!’ said Mum. ‘I want a cake-making party with all my friends so I can buy some new clothes! Now quit nagging me. At least Tina’s cake sale was a big success and she can buy stuff for her butterfly garden.’

  Phil gave a big yawn. ‘I’m actually getting a bit fed up with hearing about this boring old butterfly garden.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Maddie. ‘And I’m especially fed up with everyone praising yucky old Selma all the time. She mightn’t be quite so mean now, but she’s still pretty horrible. I don’t get you, Tina. There you are, being all best friendies with her now, when she was the girl who flushed your Baby down the toilet!’

  ‘I keep saying, she’s not my best friend. You shut up!’ I said.

  ‘No, you shut up,’ said Maddie.

  ‘Don’t say shut up, say be quiet,’ said Mum. ‘And all three of you, be quiet!’

  We squabbled most of the evening. It was awful, because we don’t usually fight. Phil and Maddie didn’t even say goodnight to me properly when we went to bed.

  I pretended I didn’t care, but I did. I couldn’t get to sleep. I lay on my tummy with my head under my pillow, thinking about Baby and missing her badly.

  Then Phil pattered across the carpet and climbed into my bed. ‘Sorry, Tina! I don’t really think butterfly gardens are boring,’ she whispered.

  Maddie came and climbed into my bed on the other side. ‘Sorry, Tina! I won’t go on about Selma any more, even though I still can’t stand her,’ she said.

  It was a bit of a squash, but I didn’t mind a bit. We cuddled up close and went to sleep together, Phil and Maddie and me.

  Chapter Seventeen

  WE STARTED TO collect things for our white elephant stall at the Christmas fete.

  ‘What sort of things?’ asked Selma.

  ‘We’ll make stuff. And we’ll collect up old stuff and sell that too,’ I said.

  ‘I can’t make stuff. And I haven’t got any old stuff,’ she said.

  Miss Lovejoy overheard. ‘It will be my pleasure to teach you to make something, girls,’ she said.

  The next day she came into our classroom carrying some thick cream material, little skeins of different coloured wool, and two big thick needles.

  ‘Cross-stitch purses!’ she said.

  Oh, those purses! At first they made us very cross as we stitched.

  But we slowly got better at it. We couldn’t always dig because it was too cold or too wet, so we sat and stitched instead.

  Selma made a rainbow purse. It was a little bit wobbly, but she did the colours in the right order and it looked very pretty.

  ‘What’s that yellow blobby thing on the ground?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s the crock of gold. You get that at the end of the rainbow,’ she told me.

  I made a butterfly purse. Two butterfly purses. I made a blue morpho butterfly purse and an emerald swallowtail purse. I knew two girls who might want to buy them!

  Miss Lovejoy lined the purses and stitched up the sides for us, but we sewed on the big press studs.

  I drew butterfly pictures too – little ones on good white paper – colouring them in very carefully. Miss Lovejoy let us have some pink and blue card from the store cupboard. Selma cut it into rectangles, measuring very carefully so the sides didn’t go wonky. She stuck my butterfly pictures on them and little calendar booklets underneath. Miss Lovejoy provided the calendar booklets too.

  Phil and Neera made necklaces and bracelets for our stall.

  Maddie and Harry tried to make plasticine footballers, but they went all lumpy so they squashed them up again.

  They donated some old things instead. Maddie gave a few books and a pretend make-up set and her rabbit with the silly face. Harry gave a ball and an old football strip. Kayleigh donated some dance DVDs. She didn’t want to donate anything at all, but Selma said she must, because she was on our table and had to support us.

  Peter donated a small box of Lego. He admitted it probably had a few pieces missing.

  Mick donated a Jolly Octopus game. Selma and I played it with him before we put it in the store cupboard for our stall.

  Alistair donated a dark brown cake.

  ‘Oh, Alistair, not another date loaf,’ Selma groaned. ‘There are only two people in the whole world who like your date loaf. You and weirdo Miss Simpson.’

  ‘That’s not one hundred per cent accurate,’ he said. ‘My mum likes my date loaf – well, she likes the version with nuts in. And so does my dad. And anyway, this isn’t a date loaf. It’s an organic healthy version of a Christmas cake.’

  ‘Where’s the icing and that yellow stuff?’ asked Selma.

  ‘Marzipan . . . I said this is a healthy version that won’t rot your teeth. And it’s got excellent keeping qualities, especially if you put it in a tin.’

  ‘It’s very kind of you, Alistair, but the thing is, we weren’t really going to have another cake stall,’ I said, trying to be more tactful. ‘We’re not having anything you can eat. We’re going to sell all sorts of things, old and new. It’s a white elephant stall. That means—’