Little Darlings Read online

  ‘What’s she doing? Is she being sick?’ asked Mark, kneeling down beside me.

  I blushed in case he thought I was being rude. ‘She’s saying goodbye to the house,’ I whispered.

  ‘Doesn’t she want to live there any more?’

  ‘Yes, it’s her absolute dream home!’ I said, which made him laugh.

  ‘Then tell her she can stay there. It looks like the doll’s house is yours to keep.’

  ‘Really!’

  ‘We tried to hire it, but it was going to cost so much we bought it outright. I don’t see the point of lumbering it back to the studio. You keep it, sweetie.’

  I thought for one stomach-churning moment that he meant it was my baby sister’s doll’s house. ‘I’m not Sweetie, I’m Sunset,’ I said, crestfallen.

  ‘I know, darling. I call everyone sweetie.’ He very gently pinched the end of my nose. ‘And you’re a total sweetie.’

  Oh, I loved Mark so much. For a long time I pretended that he and I lived in the pink and white house together, with Mrs Furry as our housekeeper.

  Mum bought me two doll’s house dolls but I never liked them very much. They had china heads and stiff white cloth bodies so they couldn’t sit down properly. I had to prop them up or let them lie flat on the floor as if they’d suddenly fainted. They were dressed in Victorian clothes, the lady in a purple crinoline and the man in a grey frock coat and pinstripe trousers. Mum said I should call them Victoria and Albert. I didn’t really want to. It made them seem stiffer and stranger than ever. I started having bad dreams about six-foot monster dolls with painted heads and staring eyes, ready to fell me with one flick of their stiffly stuffed arms. I banished Victoria and Albert to the very bottom of my sock-and-knicker drawer.

  I invited the next-size-up teddy into the doll’s house to keep Mrs Furry company. This was Mr Fat Bruin, a tubby bear with a big smile who told jolly stories, especially after I’d given him a drink out of a miniature liqueur bottle.

  I decided Mrs Furry and Mr Fat Bruin might like some children, so I gave them Chop Suey, a tiny Chinese cat permanently waving his paw, and Trotty, a pink glass horse, and a baby, Peanut, specially made out of pink Plasticine.

  Mum got cross with me when she found me playing with my new family.

  ‘Why are you cluttering up your lovely doll’s house with all this junk? I bought you proper dollies to play with. These silly things aren’t dolls. They look all wrong. They’re too big or too little. And you know I hate you playing with Plasticine – it gets everywhere.’ She squeezed Peanut, mangling her terribly.

  I said I was sorry and agreed I was silly and took my family out of the doll’s house – but as soon as Mum had gone out of the room I brought them all back. I asked Mrs Furry to stand by the stove to cook them my favourite meal of sausage and mash and baked beans. Mr Fat Bruin flopped on the sofa with a tiny folded-up scrap of newspaper. Chop Suey played marbles with tiny beads. Trotty did her ballet exercises wearing a wisp of pink feather. I tenderly moulded Peanut back into shape and tucked her up in her matchbox cot. I’d keep my family safe and splendidly housed no matter what.

  They still live in the doll’s house now, years and years later. I’ve got new dolls, little sturdy smiling ones, and five tiny felt mice, all in different outfits, but they’re just friends and cousins to my proper family. I’ve got lots more furniture now too: a four-poster bed with a set of rose-silk covers, a television, a tiny bird in a white cage, rugs in every room, pictures hanging on the walls, curtains at each window, but the original key pieces are still my favourites. Mrs Furry has a whole set of saucepans and can serve her meals on special miniature willow-pattern plates. Mr Fat Bruin’s sofa has velvet cushions with little braid tassels. Chop Suey and Trotty and Peanut have roomfuls of tiny toys, including a perfect miniature doll’s house. It has a little hook at the side so it can swing open. I’ve made minute Plasticine replicas of my family inside, playing with another even smaller doll’s house. I like to imagine that inside that one there’s another weeny family playing with a crumb-size doll’s house, on and on until it makes me feel giddy.

  The doll’s house is still my favourite possession, even though I suppose I’m much too old to play with dolls now. Sweetie wanted to play with the doll’s house too as soon as she could crawl, but she just chewed on the furniture. She very nearly swallowed Peanut.

  I tried gently distracting her, but it only made her more determined. She started using the doll’s house to pull herself up, hanging onto the little window ledges and buckling them. I couldn’t bear it and tapped her little scrabbling fingers – and Mum saw and shouted that I was a bad, jealous, selfish sister and I must learn to share my toys with Sweetie. I was willing to share most things with her, but not the doll’s house. So I dragged it laboriously inside my wardrobe and shut the door on it, so that Sweetie couldn’t get at it.

  I kept the doll’s house in the wardrobe, very sensibly, because Ace proved to be a total menace when it came to wrecking my things. In this week alone he’s spoiled the points of every single one of my felt pens and pulled the head right off Suma, my biggest teddy bear.

  But Wardrobe City is safe behind locked doors. I only open up my world when Sweetie and Ace are out or asleep. I’ve made three more houses out of shoe boxes stuck together, furnishing them all myself, and built a towering apartment building out of wooden bricks. After various terrible castrophes I had to use up several tubes of Evostik cementing the bricks together.

  There’s also two shops. One sells little packets of cereal and small pots of jam and miniature alcohol bottles and a variety of Plasticine ready-meals. The other is a clothes shop specializing in a denim range – lots of little jackets and jeans that I made out of an old pair of dungarees. There’s also a small farm so everyone has fresh milk and eggs every day, and a garage with a fleet of Dinky cars. I’m secretly saving up for a castle, though it’s going to be a bit of a squash fitting it in.

  I don’t ever tell anyone about Wardrobe City. They’d think me weirder than ever at school. I hate school. I’ve been to four different schools already and they’re all horrible. I didn’t mind lesson time at my last school, but Ridgemount House is awful because there aren’t any rules. We don’t even have to do proper lessons if we don’t feel like it. The other kids mess around all the time. I don’t fit in at all. They don’t like me. They call me Wonky Gob. I haven’t got a single friend.

  I can’t tell Mum or Dad. They’ll just go on about the tough schools they attended when they were little kids and say I have to learn to lighten up and join in with the fun and then I’ll soon make friends. Like Sweetie. She is in Year One at my school and every single child in her class wants to be her best friend.

  I hear a howl and a scratch-scratch-scratching outside my door.

  ‘Go back to sleep, it’s too early,’ I hiss.

  I want to rearrange the bedrooms in my doll’s house in peace – but Bessie grumbles and moans and complains so bitterly that I have to shut Wardrobe City up and go to her.

  I open my bedroom door and pick her up. She’s an old lady cat now, but she’s still beautiful, a big fat black cat with white paws. Someone gave her to Mum after she’s done a modelling job with kittens, but Mum doesn’t really look after her, and Dad doesn’t like cats. Sweetie’s supposed to be allergic to them, and Bessie avoids Ace because he chases her, so basically I’m the one who looks after her now.

  ‘It’s not breakfast time yet, Bessie,’ I whisper, rubbing my cheek against her soft furry head.

  Bessie disagrees. It’s always breakfast time as far as she’s concerned. I carry her downstairs to the kitchen and empty a tin of her wet goo into a bowl. She gollops it down eagerly while I keep her company with a bowl of cornflakes. No one else is stirring. Claudia lies in as long as Ace will let her. Margaret, our housekeeper, doesn’t come to do breakfast until late on a Sunday. Her husband, John, doesn’t start mowing the lawn or fixing stuff till midday so that Dad isn’t disturbed. It’s very peaceful in th