My Sister Jodie (10 page)

‘Good heavens, I'm not sure the budget will run to such gorgeous big grills for the little ones,' he said.

‘I'd like to feed them up and make a bit of a fuss of them during the holidays,' said Mum, putting vast plates in front of all of us.

I got one too, even though Mum's always despaired that I'm finicky with food, unable to swallow runny egg or bacon fat or tomato skin. Sakura looked equally wary. She sat staring at her food for a long time until Jodie slid along the bench and cut it all up for her in case she couldn't manage it herself.

‘Eat it all up now, yum yum!' Jodie commanded.

Sakura picked up her fried bread with her thumb and forefinger, smeared the tip with yellow yolk and nibbled at it delicately. Dan was anything but delicate. He held his fork in one hand but ate determinedly with the other, shovelling it up and aiming at his mouth, not always accurately. Zeph
ate properly with a knife and fork but played his own little game with his meal, separating each sort of food so that they didn't touch. He finished one before starting the next. I imagined his stomach with a layer of dark brown mushroom, light brown fried bread, red tomato, pink bacon and yellow egg, like those tubes of coloured sand you get from the Isle of Wight.

Harley wolfed his own plateful. Mum glanced at him approvingly as she doled out racks of toast.

‘That's right, lad, you set them a good example,' she said.

She gave him a second glance, taking in his length, and looked astonished. I frowned at her, willing her not to say anything about him being a growing lad. Mum frowned back at me, taking in my still-heaped plate.

‘Come on now, Pearl, you're not a baby. Eat up, dear. Don't let me down.'

I cut my bacon into tiny pieces the size of my thumbnail and balanced one on the end of my fork. It looked horribly fatty. Dad was watching me. When Mum had turned her back, I made out my fork was an aeroplane, flew it through the air and made it land in Dan's mouth. He swallowed happily and opened his mouth for more. I got rid of half my breakfast before Miss Ponsonby clacked over to our table in her flip-flop sandals.

‘Don't give him any more, dear, or he'll be sick,' she said, attacking Dan's face vigorously with a wet wipe, as if she was cleaning a window. He squirmed and whined but didn't put up much of a struggle. I felt sorry for Sakura, who got the wet wipe next. Her face was pristine before and ended up smeared
with Dan's slurpy crumbs. Zeph ducked his head out of the way.

‘I'm not a baby. I'm absolutely
clean
,' he said, folding his arms, his lower lip sticking out.

‘OK, Zephaniah,' said Miss Ponsonby, knowing when she was beaten.

I folded my arms too, just in case she thought
I
was a baby. She smiled at me.

‘I wonder if you'd like to join the others for our holiday play club?' she said brightly. ‘We do all sorts of craft work. We made puppets yesterday, didn't we, children?'

‘My puppet
died
,' said Dan mournfully.

‘His head just fell off, darling. We'll fix it back on today,' said Miss Ponsonby.

‘No, keep it off, then he could be a headless ghost,' said Zeph. ‘Yeah, and I'll make a skellington and then they can fight each other.'

‘No fighting, Zeph, you know the rules,' said Miss Ponsonby. She looked entreatingly at me. ‘The boys get a little boisterous at times. It would be lovely for Sakura to have another girl around. You could paint together or do some sewing or knitting, or perhaps you could do a little sculpting with clay, Jodie?'

I fidgeted on the bench, trying hard to think up a polite excuse. I didn't want to go off with all these strange children!

‘She's Pearl.
I
'm Jodie,' said Jodie. ‘It's lovely of you to invite Pearl, Miss Ponsonby, but I'm afraid she can't. We have to help our parents with all sorts of stuff, and we're decorating our new bedroom, and Pearl had this very important reading project set by Mrs Wilberforce so she's going to be
ever
so busy
for the next few weeks. Still, thank you very much indeed for asking her.'

I smiled up at Jodie, my sister, my saviour. Miss Ponsonby led Zeph and Sakura and Dan away and I was left with Jodie. And Harley.

‘OK,' said Jodie, grinning. ‘So what are
we
going to do today?'

‘Don't you have to help your parents and decorate and all that stuff?' said Harley.

Jodie peered over at the end table. Dad was talking to Miss French. Mum had poured herself a cup of tea and was sitting at the end, in Miss Ponsonby's place, deep in conversation with Mr Wilberforce.

‘Not if we clear off sharpish!' said Jodie. ‘Come on, quick, while they're not looking!'

The three of us slid off the bench and made it out of the main door without being spotted.

WE STOOD IN
the middle of the main hallway, portraits peering down at us. Grim men with jutting chins and women in profile with long noses.

‘God, who are they? Old teachers?' said Jodie.

‘They look like relatives. I suppose they're Mrs Wilberforce's ancestors. This used to be her family house,' said Harley.

‘Wow, some family! Like they go back centuries! They must be really really rich and posh.'

‘Posh, yes. Rich, mm, maybe not any more. Melchester College is falling to bits.'

‘But my dad can fix it up now,' said Jodie.

‘You'd need a hundred dads to fix this dump,' said Harley.

‘You call this a
dump
?' said Jodie, gesturing at the chandelier above us.

‘You wait till you see behind the scenes,' said Harley.

‘Well, come on, then. Show us around,' said Jodie.

Harley hesitated. He looked down at his book.

‘You don't have to,' I said quickly. ‘You probably want to get on with stuff.'

‘No, it's OK,' he said.

‘What's your book?' Jodie asked.

‘Oh.' Harley looked embarrassed, going pink.

‘Hey, is it a dirty book!' said Jodie.

‘No, it's a classic. You'd hate it,' he said.

‘Let's see, then.' She squinted at the spine. ‘
Jude the Obscure.
Have you read that one, Pearl?'

I shook my head.

‘It's not a children's book,' said Harley.

‘Pearl's a great reader – she reads all sorts,
lots
of classics,' said Jodie loftily.

It was my turn to blush now.

‘No I don't,' I mumbled. ‘Just one or two easy ones.'

‘I'll show you the library if you like,' said Harley. ‘Don't get excited, it's pretty crap though.'

He led us along the corridor into a big room with handsome wall-to-wall shelving. The books themselves looked sparse and flimsy on the deep shelves, mostly cheap tattered paperbacks mixed up with old Enid Blytons and Biggles and mock-leather children's encyclopaedias. Jodie wrinkled her nose and sat down at one of the computers, starting to fiddle.

I peered at the books.

‘See, I told you,' said Harley. ‘I thought there'd be wonderful old leather-bound volumes going back donkey's years.'

‘There are!' I said shyly. ‘But not here. They're in Mrs Wilberforce's house.'

‘So you've been in there? I haven't! She's got lots of books, has she?'

‘She says I can borrow some,' I said. I took a deep breath. ‘I could ask if you could borrow some too if you like, Harley.'

‘Cool,' said Harley.

He was flipping his way through the books. ‘Have you read this?' he asked, holding up
The Wind in the Willows.

‘Yes, it's great,' I said. ‘I like Moley.' I paused, glancing at Jodie. She was frowning at the computer keyboard, tapping keys impatiently. ‘And Badger,' I added.

Harley smiled at me. It was as if we were talking in our own secret code.

‘You haven't told her, have you?' he mouthed at me.

I shook my head.

Harley put his head very close to mine. ‘We'll go and watch again, at night. You and me. OK?'

‘OK!' I said.

‘What are you two whispering about?' Jodie called. ‘Hey, this is a totally rubbish computer, you can't access anything.'

‘They don't want to enlighten the kiddywinks,' said Harley. ‘Keep them ignorant and unsuspecting.'

‘Is that what you are, Harley Not Davidson?' said Jodie, shutting the computer down in disgust.

‘No, no, I'm very knowledgeable and highly suspicious,' said Harley.

‘That's cool,' said Jodie. ‘Come on, then, the library's boring. Show us the rest of this place. How long have you been shut up here?'

‘Only since last year. I get moved around a lot.
I've been to so many schools I've lost count,' said Harley.

‘Why?'

‘I don't fit in.'

‘We don't fit in either,' said Jodie. ‘Pearl gets teased because she's so weirdly brainy—'

‘I'm
not
,' I said, squirming.

‘And I'm the bad girl,' said Jodie, spinning round on one foot and throwing her arms out, going,
‘Ta da!'

‘Maybe you'll both fit in here. Most of the kids are weird or bad,' said Harley.

‘Aren't they all little posh-nob boffins?' said Jodie.

‘No, this is a kind of last-ditch dumping ground for kids no one wants,' said Harley.

‘You're kidding,' said Jodie. ‘This is dead posh, anyone can see that.' She gestured to the cream walls in the corridor. ‘Look, no graffiti! You should see the walls of my old school. Kids sprayed their tags all over, and wrote dirty stuff about the teachers.'

‘Oh well, at least it showed they were literate. Half the kids at Melchester are so dyslexic they can't even spell four-letter words,' said Harley.

‘Don't be so snotty,' said Jodie. ‘Just because you're obviously a goody-goody brainbox.'

‘I'm hopefully a brainbox but I'm considered a baddy-baddy,' said Harley. ‘I've been expelled twice. And the last school I was at said they thought I'd be happier elsewhere so that's almost an expulsion too.'

‘What did you
do
?' I asked, staring up at him.

‘He didn't do anything, he's just kidding,' said Jodie.

‘I'm not,' said Harley. ‘Though I didn't do anything interesting. One time it was for insubordination. The headteacher kept yelling at this sad little kid so I yelled back on his behalf. I wouldn't apologize because I felt I was in the right, so eventually they expelled me. And the other time it was supposedly arson—'

‘Wow!' said Jodie. ‘You set the place on fire?'

‘I didn't mean to. I was just trying out a pack of cigarettes, seeing if I could acquire a decadent illicit habit, and I failed to stub one out properly and it set fire to my wastepaper basket and then the whole wretched bed caught fire. No one was
hurt
but the school decided to get shot of me all the same.'

‘That figures,' said Jodie. ‘So, have you got any fags on you now?'

‘I gave it up. Not good for my general fitness,' said Harley, flexing his long spidery arms.

Jodie laughed. ‘You
are
joking, I take it? You're not exactly the spitting image of a sports jock, are you, mate? What do they do for sports here, anyway?'

‘There's a gym. I'll show you.'

‘I
hate
gyms,' I said.

‘Me too,' said Harley.

‘Wimps!' said Jodie.

When Harley led us inside the Melchester College gym, Jodie let out a whoop at the sight of the ropes and the wall bars and the horse.

‘Yeah!' she said, unhooking the ropes and letting them swing. She leaped onto one and swung herself backwards and forwards.

She made it look so easy, I tried too. I couldn't
climb up high enough and bumped back to the floor, looking a fool. Harley was sensible enough not to try. Jodie swung wildly above us, her thin legs wrapped round the rope.

‘Wheeee!'
she sang.

‘We hear you, Tarzan,' said Harley. He looked at me sympathetically. ‘You're not sporty, Pearl?'

‘No. Absolutely not.'

‘Me neither. Apart from basketball. I just reach out and dunk the ball through the hoop.'

‘Will I have to do basketball here?'

‘Maybe. You get a choice of three different sporty things, winter and summer.'

‘Can't you just choose not to?'

‘I wish.'

‘Hey, you two down there! Look at me!' Jodie called.

‘I can't or I'll be staring straight up your skirt,' said Harley.

She stuck her tongue out at him. ‘Do you think I could jump from one rope to the other?'

‘No.'

‘I bet I can. Watch!'

‘No, don't, Jodie, you'll fall!' I shouted.