Muddle and Win Page 10

  And both girls knew it.

  ‘Pass the milk,’ said Sally quietly. Billie seemed not to hear.

  ‘Pass the milk, please,’ said Sally. Billie still seemed not to hear.

  Sally walked round the back of Billie to reach the milk. Whereupon Billie passed it to where she had been standing.

  ‘I had to get the goo off my fingers,’ Billie said.

  Howls broke out on the far side of the room, where a triple dough strike had just totalled a tray of raisins.

  Sally looked at the pulsating mass in Billie’s bowl. ‘She said butterflies, not elephants.’

  ‘Shuddup!’

  *

  ‘I don’t know why I said that,’ said Sally in her own mind. ‘I must have elephants on the brain.’

  (The elephant in Sally’s brain reached a floury trunk over her shoulder and whipped one of the raw dough muffins from her tray.)

  ‘Whoops!’ came Billie’s voice. The salt had somehow spilled over Sally’s tray of muffins. ‘Sorry.’

  Thin smoke started coming out of the Inner Sally’s ears.

  ‘Don’t react, Sally,’ cried Windleberry, desperately hosing her down with the idea of a handy fire extinguisher. ‘Don’t react!’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said the Inner Sally grimly.

  ‘That’s all right,’ said the Outer Sally’s voice.

  ‘ . . . I kept some extra back just in case . . .’

  ‘ . . . I kept some extra back just in case . . .’

  ‘ . . . You tried something like that,’ the Inner Sally finished.

  The Outer Sally left that bit unsaid.

  Quickly Sally reshaped her spare dough into muffins while Billie looked daggers into her left ear. And deftly Sally opened the door of the preheated oven with one hand, and shoved her tray into the top spot. She checked the clock: fifteen minutes to lunch. Just nice.

  Elsewhere around the room, chaos reigned. Amos was on his hands and knees coughing up half-digested batter. Kieran was feigning an epileptic fit in the corner. Flour dust hung like battle-smoke in the air.

  ‘Children!’ called Mrs Bunnidy. ‘Time to start clearing up!’

  Cries of pain greeted her words.

  ‘If you haven’t finished, you can let them bake over lunch. I will be here until quarter past. But all the ovens must be switched off by then. Is that clear?’

  ‘Oh, Mrs Bunnidy . . .!’

  ‘ . . . But we have to get our sandwiches!’

  ‘I’ve said all I’m going to say!’ Even Mrs Bunnidy was beginning to crack. ‘And don’t forget to clear up!’

  ‘I’m nearly finished,’ said Billie stoutly. ‘I’m definitely going to finish. They can do until I get back from lunch. Fresh muffins for pudding – yummy!’

  Sally looked at the lumps of porridge-like dough on Billie’s tray. She said nothing.

  ‘But I’ll have to make sure I’m first in the queue or they’ll burn,’ said Billie, putting them into the oven.

  ‘Don’t you dare leave me with your clearing—’ Sally began.

  ‘Just leave them to bake, right?’ said Billie. ‘Don’t touch them.’

  RIIIINNNGG!!! went the bell. At once, the sounds of a human avalanche began to rumble through the school.

  ‘ . . . At a quarter past, remember? And everything must be cleaned away, and all the surfaces wiped . . .’

  ‘YIPPPEEE!’ yelled Billie, disappearing into the general scrum of arms and legs at the exit, and leaving a moonscape of spilled flour, spilled egg, spilled egg mixed with flour and those little scraps of dough that are really difficult to get off once they’ve started to harden, uncleaned and unwiped on the work surface.

  Sally stayed where she was, watching the clock.

  After five more minutes she opened the oven door and took her own muffins out. She put them on the rack.

  She picked up a cloth.

  *

  ‘Well, just look,’ said Muddlespot in tones of surprise. ‘She’s left you to do all the clearing up.’

  ‘I know,’ said the Inner Sally.

  She began to make wiping motions. As she did so something else sauntered into the chamber. It was an idea. The idea was a pressure gauge on legs. The needle was on the red.

  ‘We have to let off steam,’ said Muddlespot.

  ‘No we don’t,’ said Windleberry. ‘That’s exactly what we don’t have to do. We know why she did it . . .’

  ‘Yes, we do,’ said Sally.

  ‘She was having trouble with her dough . . .’

  ‘Mum makes dough,’ said Sally. ‘She’s always ready for us to make it with her. That’s how I learned. Billie could never be bothered.’

  ‘Then let’s just leave her share of the clearing up . . .’

  ‘I’m not going to. I’m going to clean it up for her.’

  ‘But why, Sally?’

  ‘To show her what she is.’

  ‘That’s not a good answer, Sally.’

  ‘Good?’ cried Muddlespot. ‘Just a moment! What do you mean, “good”?’

  *

  Sally finished wiping away all the mess. She tried one of her muffins. It tasted quite – well – quite nice, actually.

  It was unnaturally quiet, now. The only other people in the room were Richard and David, who were clearing up the devastation left by the food-fight of the century. Mrs Bunnidy was standing over them. They were taking one hundred per cent of her attention. Sally could have lobbed fifty flour bombs behind Mrs Bunnidy’s back, but she didn’t. She waited.

  She watched the clock.

  After a little while, she ate another muffin. Somehow it didn’t taste quite as good as the first.

  ‘ . . . And that’s always the way, isn’t it?’ Muddlespot was working himself up into a frenzy. ‘It’s always Sally who has to clear up! It’s always Sally who has to understand! It’s always Sally who has to – er . . .’

  ‘Make my bed,’ said Sally.

  ‘ . . . Make her bed, and . . .’

  ‘Practise my music.’

  ‘ . . . Practise her music, and . . .’

  ‘Get the grades.’

  ‘ . . . Get the gr— Hang on! Who’s tempting who here?’

  ‘You’re just so good at it, you see?’ said Sally sweetly. ‘But you left out the vegetables.’

  ‘Vegetables?’ said Windleberry.

  ‘Billie makes a fuss about eating vegetables,’ said Sally. ‘So she gets small portions. I don’t.’

  ‘Isn’t that typical?’ cried Muddlespot. ‘And why? Because Sally’s good at everything! She’s good at being good. And everybody’s got used to it!’

  ‘Don’t listen to him, Sally!’

  ‘I thought he was doing really well . . .’

  Sally took another mouthful of muffin. She looked at the clock. Eight minutes past.

  Carefully, she stowed her remaining muffins in an airtight Tupperware box.

  She looked at the clock again. Still eight minutes past. Time was moving as slowly as a sandwich queue.

  ‘There’s no way she’ll get back in time,’ she said aloud. ‘They’ll just burn.’

  ‘It’s that or . . .’

  She bent down.

  ‘No, Sally!’ cried Windleberry desperately. ‘No, no, NO!’

  *

  Click, went the oven dial.

  To ‘0’.

  Somewhere, something else also went click.

  To ‘1’.

  On a scrap of paper Sally wrote, If you’re hungry, you can have one of mine. She propped the note up by the Tupperware box.

  She left the room.

  MUDDLESPOT LEFT THE room too – the one in Sally’s mind. He slipped quietly away around the statue of Reason. Behind him, Windleberry was protesting.

  ‘You switched her oven off!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sally.

  ‘Her muffins will be spoiled!’

  ‘They’d have been ruined anyway.’

  Muddlespot tiptoed down the first set of stairs.

 
‘You could have waited and taken them out . . .’

  ‘Yeah. That’s what everybody thinks I’ll do.’

  Muddlespot ran for it. He ran down corridors and across courts. He skittered past fountains and frowning statues. He found a series of narrow passages that he didn’t remember (maybe they hadn’t been there before) and he hurried down them. He came to a quiet corner where – unusually in Sally’s mind – it was also rather dark.

  He pulled out his communications dish and set it on its tripod. He scattered brown powder into the dish. He spat upon the powder.

  Huff! it went, and burst into light.

  Muddlespot waited, glancing nervously over his shoulder.

  Slowly the flames died to embers. The embers faded from bright gold to orange, except for two spots like eyes that seemed to glow more brightly. The eyes fixed themselves on the little imp.

  ‘Corozin here. Report, Muddlespot.’

  Muddlespot gabbled out his story.

  ‘You did what? I see. And did she . . .? Sssuper! You have done well, Muddlespot. I am pleased.’

  ‘Thank you, Your Serenity!’

  ‘Oh no. Thank you, Muddlespot. And . . .’

  People say eyes smile. Eyes don’t smile, because they don’t have mouths to smile with. All that happens is that they change shape. Corozin’s eyes changed shape now (they were just careful not to show their teeth).

  ‘ . . . Keep up the good work.’

  *

  ‘Yes!’ cried Corozin gleefully, in his chamber of brass.

  The glow in his communications dish was fading (taking the ridiculous, not to say repulsive, little face of Muddlespot with it). Quickly he conjured up more powder and scattered it over the embers. Huff! went the flames. Corozin leaned forward. His immaculate fingers were trembling with excitement.

  There was the face of Sally Jones, looking calmly at him through the flames.

  And there, written in figures of fire, was the LDC.

  Lifetime Good Deeds: 3,971,756

  Lifetime Bad Deeds: 1

  ‘YES!’ cried Corozin.

  Breakthrough! At last! When everything else had failed!

  ‘Switched off her sister’s oven!’ He chuckled. ‘I like that . . .’

  He always liked it when they played with fire.

  ‘Guards!’ he called. His voice flowed down the corridors like lava down a mountainside. When he rose from his seat, all the palace trembled. And he stood before a mirror.

  The figure in the mirror was beautiful. It smiled back at him. As he watched, the red robes it wore vanished, to be replaced by a dull red woolly jumper, artfully baggy and unravelling just a little at the elbow. And jeans, with the beginnings of a rip at one knee. He nodded. Yes, that would do.

  ‘Guards!’ he called again, and was answered by the distant rattle of knuckles along polished floors.

  In the mirror, a red-brown scarf wove itself nonchalantly around his reflection’s neck. Scuffed white trainers cloaked the hooves.

  ‘Cool,’ he said, experimentally.

  The rattle of knuckles was coming closer.

  Corozin stepped forward, into the mirror. At the same time his reflection stepped out to meet him. They seemed to blur into one another at the mirror’s surface. When the guards entered, gawping, they found their master standing before them in a woolly jumper, scarf and jeans, while his red-robed reflection looked on benignly from the mirror.

  ‘We are going up,’ he said. ‘To take charge.’

  The guards looked at each other, and then at their lord.

  ‘To take charge,’ they answered dutifully.

  (If in doubt, it was safest just to repeat what the boss had said. Even the hint of a question mark could have dire consequences. They had learned this from experience – mostly that of some of their former, less fortunate colleagues.)

  ‘Of Things,’ Corozin said.

  He was not worried that the LDC registered only ‘1’. What mattered was that it registered anything at all. He knew, as well as any Archangel in Heaven, how enormous the possibilities were when someone who had been straight all along began for the first time to stray. Yes, he knew how to use shame. He knew how to make people hate themselves, and then how to use it when they did. He knew how to look for the little things, the things that didn’t seem to matter at the time you did them.

  He was particularly fond of the sort of little thing that, without anybody intending it, turned out to be very big afterwards. So big that nobody ever mentioned it, and nobody could ever forget it. Like causing damage to the house without meaning to. Or the maiming of a pet. Or the accidental death of a sister.

  He had done it before.

  Which left just one little problem. One little and rather warty problem. He knew the first question Low Command would ask when they heard the good news. It would be, ‘Who had made the breakthrough?’ And it would be unfortunate (not to say downright dangerous) for Corozin if the name they heard happened to be the wrong one.

  But again, it wasn’t the sort of problem that he couldn’t solve. He’d had, after all, quite a lot of practice with this sort of problem recently. He twirled his brass hammer and smiled affectionately at his guards.

  ‘I think our time has come.’

  Some things just came naturally to Billie. She could achieve Modest Grades with No Effort in her sleep (and frequently did). She could achieve a Room so Untidy She Would Never Have to Clean It, with results that were truly impressive. And when she set out to Stir Up A Row, she was just world standard.

  The aftermath of the Food Tech lesson, when the school authorities had woken up to the fact that the thing had been a complete disaster and were preparing to come down hard on anyone whose name got mentioned in connection with it, gave her the perfect opportunity.

  ‘Sally!’ said Mrs Bunnidy, who had been hauled along the corridor by a red-faced Billie. ‘Is this true? Did you switch off Billie’s oven?’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ said Sally.

  She forbore to remind Mrs Bunnidy that she had said all ovens had to be off by a quarter past. She also did not bother to say that the forlorn and lumpy set of half-baked muffins Billie had tearfully produced as Exhibit A were about averagely good for Billie’s baking. Had she switched off the oven? She had. Had she meant to spoil Billie’s muffins? She had. Guilty as charged.

  ‘Well!’ cried Mrs Bunnidy. ‘I’m – I’m shocked, Sally. Shocked and disappointed. I don’t know what to say. You’ll have to see your Head of Year . . .’

  Sally said nothing.

  ‘ . . . Well!’ said Mr Singh, Head of Year. ‘Sally, I’m surprised at you! Surprised and disappointed. We expect pupils in this school to respect each other. Do you have anything to say?’

  Sally said nothing. There was no point.

  ‘You will join Richard and David and Charlie B in detention. And before the next Food Tech period I am going to speak with the whole class. The general level of behaviour was disgraceful.’

  Still Sally said nothing, though maybe she went a little pale. She had never, ever had a detention before. She had never, ever been bracketed with boys like Richard and David or even Charlie B.

  And detention, she realized, meant she would get home late.

  Billie would get there first.

  With her muffins.

  ‘Sally!’ cried Mum that evening. ‘I – I don’t know what to say. That was just – spiteful! Wasn’t it? I’m – I’m very disappointed . . .’

  Sally stood in the hallway with her bag over one shoulder. The bag was heavy. Her shoes and tights were wet from coming home in the latest shower of rain, and her knee was scraped and sore and still throbbing slightly from when she had fallen on the hockey pitch. Still she didn’t say anything. But maybe her face hardened a little. Maybe she let her eyes say a little of what she felt.

  And Mum, tired, dismayed, bewildered, lost it.

  ‘Don’t be like that with me! You never give Billie a chance! You never let her get it right! What’s the matter with you
? You don’t do anything to help her . . .’

  Pale-faced, Sally stood it for about eight seconds. Then she turned for the stairs.

  ‘Go to your room!’ said Mum hurriedly, before Sally could hit the first step with a stomp. ‘Go to your room! And don’t come down until you can be nice to your sister!’

  Sally did not stomp. She just climbed the stairs.

  ‘She – (sob) – ruined my – muffins!’ Billie wailed.

  ‘Never mind, sweetheart,’ Sally heard Mum say. ‘We can make some more. Would you like that?’

  ‘It won’t be the sa-a-a-ame!’ cried Billie.

  ‘Look, I was going to bake something later anyway. You can help me. And you can lick the bowl afterwards.’

  ‘Sniff,’ said Billie.

  Sally closed her bedroom door.

  The evening drew on. Shadows fell around the Jones household. Other shadows moved within them.

  ‘No Sally?’ said Greg at supper.

  ‘She’s having a sulk,’ said Billie.

  ‘Sally’s having a sulk?’ said Greg, incredulous.

  In the hallway, Shades tensed. His eyes narrowed.

  ‘ . . . So I sent her upstairs,’ said Mum. ‘And she’s decided to stay there. It’s a battle of wills, I suppose.’

  ‘Well done,’ said Greg.

  ‘Are we going to do those muffins now?’ asked Billie hopefully.

  ‘In a moment, sweetheart. We’ll start them tonight and have them for breakf—Oh.’ She turned to Greg. ‘Did you call the electrician?’

  ‘Er . . . no. I was going to . . .’

  ‘Uuuurgh!’ groaned Mum in despair. ‘Can’t you do anything? One day we’re going to wake up with the house on fire!’

  ‘Ovens are metal,’ said Greg reasonably. ‘Even if something burns, there’s not too much that can go wrong as long as you don’t open the oven door.’

  Billie, with some effort, was persuaded to go and stack the dishwasher. While she was clattering in the kitchen, Mum put her head in her hands.

  ‘I didn’t handle it well,’ she said. ‘I just wasn’t ready for it. I got home shattered . . .’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Greg.

  ‘ . . . Billie was so upset. She’s like me. She takes everything to heart. She doesn’t react well when things go wrong for her . . .’

  ‘You were never like that?’ said Greg, his eyes widening diplomatically.