Puppy Power Read online

  Normally I would have been severely irritated by my sister sticking her pointy nose into a Private Conversation, but this time I was actually quite relieved. Perhaps April would be able to De-Fuse the Tension of the situation.

  ‘Nick says we should think about letting Honey have puppies, and Mum says I must not hope for that happening at all EVER,’ I said, trying to put the emphasis on it being Nick’s idea, and also trying to put the emphasis on Mum’s meanness.

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ Mum cut in.

  April is never normally on my side of anything, but she does think, in a most cringesome manner, that everything Nick says and does is PRACTICALLY PERFECT IN EVERY WAY, as Mary Poppins would say.

  And for once things went According to Plan.

  ‘I think Nick’s got a point, Mum,’ said April. ‘I mean, he must know what he’s talking about. He is a vet.’

  Mum raised her eyebrows. ‘No! Really?’ she said, in a sarcastical manner, which was not at all mumlike, in my opinion.

  April frowned. ‘Mum,’ she said in her I’m-trying-oh-so-hard-to-be-patient-with-you-but-you-do-make-it-difficult voice, ‘tell me what Nick actually said. Did he say it would be good for Honey to have puppies?’

  Mum took a deep INHALATION, which means that she breathed in very noisily. And then she huffed moodily. ‘Now why do I get the feeling I am being ganged up on here?’ she said, tightly crossing her arms. I couldn’t help noticing, however, that there was a tiny bit of a smile flickering away in the corner of her mouth.

  ‘The thing is, Mum,’ April continued, as if she had also spotted the tiny bit of a smile and thought it might be worth Persevering, ‘Nick and I have really enjoyed walking Honey recently, and we thought, you know, if we got our own dog—’

  ‘What’s all this “we”?’ Mum asked. The tiny bit of a smile had disappeared rather quickly.

  April blushed. Well, we were thinking of getting a place together,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Oh,’ Mum said.

  Yippee! I thought. April’s going to move out! Hurrah! No more bathroom lock-ins so that no one else can get to the loo or the shower when they want it. No more face-pack gunkitis in the fridge! No more shrieking and hair flicking all about the place!

  ‘Nick didn’t mention anything about you two moving in together when we saw him this morning,’ said Mum.

  April sagged her shoulders and flopped her head back and rolled her eyes, which is her way of saying ‘DERRRRRR!’

  ‘MUM!’ she said. ‘As if Nick would talk to you about our private life!’

  I thought I ought to step in and try to De-Fuse this new bit of Tension, as April was not actually helping the Let’s Talk About Puppies plan. ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘we saw Nick in a Professional Capacity today, so he wouldn’t have wanted to talk about personal things, especially in front of his new nurse—’

  ‘New nurse?’ April said, in a sharp tone of speaking. ‘What new nurse?’ Mum shot me a Glance that seemed to involve a lot of eyebrow wiggling It made her look somewhat Demented. ‘Nick never said anything about a new nurse. Is she pretty? What’s her name?’

  ‘Yes,’ I carried on, ignoring Mum’s weird flickering facial movements. ‘She is kind of pretty in a long-blonde-hair sort of way – bit like you, actually – but get this: she’s got the looniest name you have ever heard of in the history of all things loony! She’s called Felicity Shufflebottom!’

  ‘I don’t care if she’s called Mavis Bumwiggle!’ April shouted. ‘Nick didn’t tell me he had a new nurse who is PRETTY!’

  At the sound of the shouting Honey zoomed into the kitchen and jumped around crazily at April’s feet. But April was Not In The Mood. In fact, she was suddenly in a Very Bad Mood indeed. She turned on her high heels and swooshed out of the room, leaving me with my mouth hanging open and Mum staring at me and shaking her head like I had just said the most insulting thing known to the human race. Whatever that might be.

  ‘Well done, Summer,’ said Mum. ‘You really know how to put your foot in it, don’t you?’

  ‘Why? What have I done?’ I cried in a protesting fashion. April is always spinning on her heels so fast you could probably plug her into a socket and make electricity from her. (It might solve all the world’s Global Greenhouse Problems actually, now I come to think of it.) Why should it suddenly be my fault that she had spun off in a huff this time?

  Mum sighed. ‘You will find out only too soon that love is a complicated and many splendoured thing,’ she said dramatically.

  If Molly had been there, I would have rolled my eyes at her from under my fringe a curled my top lip to show her that I was not responsible in any way for my mum’s FLIP-DI-DOO-DAH nonsense way of talking. ‘Mum,’ I said, ‘I’m going to call Molly, OK?’

  Mum nodded and looked sadly at Honey, who was still whizzing around in circles in a random and slightly annoying fashion.

  Welcome to the House of Extreme Looniness, I thought. I had to get out of there. Fast.

  Phew! Molly answered the phone, which meant I did not have to have a polite yet time-wasting conversation with her mum or dad along the lines of, ‘Hello, Mrs/Mr Cook (delete as appropriate). How are you? Really? I’m so glad. Fine. Thank you. Yes, it is warm for the time of year . . . blah-di-blah-di-blah-di-blah . . .’

  ‘Hey, Molls!’ I shouted.

  ‘Summer!’ she shouted back. ‘I’m so glad you’ve called. You’ll never guess what I’ve just got!’

  ‘You’ll never believe it, but Nick says

  Honey should possibly definitely maybe have pup—’

  I was forced to stop suddenly in mid-tracks. Molly was actually screaming at me down the phone and sounded even more excited than I was. Surely she was not getting a puppy or a dog that could have puppies or—

  I had to pull the phone away from my ear because the level of shrieking was in danger of bursting my ear’s drum, which I have heard is a very dangerous thing indeed if it happens, because you could end up with only one ear working, which would be very UNSETTLING as it could make you lose your balance and feel wobbly – in other words, FREAKSOME.

  With the phone away from my ear in this manner, Molly’s voice was so distant and high pitched that it sounded like those voices in cartoons when someone is babbling on the other end of the phone and you can’t quite hear what they are saying. Molly in a cartoon would be a fab idea, I thought, as she squeaked away. How would she be drawn, I wondered? Maybe she would look like that character with the vastly tall hairstyle that is blue?

  ‘Summer! Summer?’

  I put the phone back to my ear.

  ‘Yes?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, I thought we’d been cut off for a moment,’ said Molly. ‘So, what do you think?’

  ‘I can’t wait!’ I said, thinking Molly was asking me what I thought about Honey possibly becoming a mum.

  ‘Can’t wait for what?’ said Molly in a puzzled tone.

  ‘For Honey to have puppies,’ I said, also in a puzzled tone. Had she not listened to what I said?

  ‘HONEY HAVING PUPPIES?! OH HOW FABEROONY!’ she shrieked again.

  ‘MOLLY,’ I shrieked back, ‘PLEASE STOP SHRIEKING! YOU ARE SEVERELY WOUNDING THE DRUMS IN MY EARS!

  ‘Sorry,’ she said in her normal voice. ‘But it’s just such mega-fantastic news! And now that I have Puppy Power, we can get all kinds of information from that which will be astonishingly useful for the puppies.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, realizing that I had not in fact been listening to Molly properly because of all the shrieking, and I had not one iota of an idea of what Puppy Power actually was.

  ‘I’m coming right over!’ said Molly. ‘Do NOT move, under any circumstances.’

  I didn’t have time to move far as Molly was at the door literally four minutes and thirty-four seconds later. She was jumping up and down, which is what she does when she is OVER THE TOP OF THE MOON with excitability.

  ‘Look what I got from my auntie as a late birthday present!’ she yelled.


  All I could see was a little pink thing in her hand that looked rather like an oblong wallet or box.

  Not another totally yawnsome addition to my already overflowingly BORING life, I thought . . .

  I told Molly to come in, as she was starting to create quite a palaver of a spectacle and it was risking being totally attention-making if a neighbour or someone from school saw her. Rosie Chubb was the person I was most thinking of. Rosie thought we had all become the bestest mates after the Talent Contest, when Molly and I had saved her from one hundred and million per cent social death on the dance floor. But since then she had seemed dead set on having Molly for herself- in other words, making sure I was well and truly Out of the Picture. But it was bad luck for her because she did not Get the Message that Molly and I were a DYNAMIC DUO, and we had learned pretty quickly that there was no way we wanted our Duo to become a Trio. So we were always trying to avoid Rosie Chubb.

  ‘You have got to see this!’ Molly was still shrieking. She whizzed ahead of me into the room which Mum still calls the playroom even though I stopped Playing in it about a hundred years ago (I call it the Den – much more sophisticateder), slammed the door and bounded on to a beanbag with the pink thing in her hand. She opened it up like it was a little treasure box, and that’s when I realized what it was – a GameGirl!

  ‘Oh my giddy aunts!’ I said in an EXCLAMATORY manner, completely forgetting that I had wanted to talk to Molly about Honey becoming a mum.

  ‘Exactly!’ shrieked Molly. ‘She is a pretty dudey giddy aunt too.’ (‘Dudey’ is Molly’s newest word. Apparently it means something is mega-faberoony.) ‘And yes, this is indeed what I think you think this is – a GAMEGIRL!’ I was going to have to tell her to Put A Lid on it if she did not stop the shrieking thing. ‘But not only that, the game on it is . . .’ She tapped the screen, and suddenly I knew what all the shrieking excitability was about.

  ‘PUPPY POWER!’ we yelled together.

  I had finally got on to the length of wave that Molly was on. And what a huge smasher of a wave it was. ‘You are so lucky!’ I cried. ‘Let’s have a look.’ Mum does not ‘believe in’ computer games, so I’m not allowed one. I’ve always thought this is daft of her, as they obviously do exist so how can she not believe in them? They aren’t like fairies or dragons, for instance.

  Molly opened the pink box, which had controls on one side and a screen on the other. As she turned it on and waited for it to sort of wake up, like all computerified things have to do, I thought about how, no matter how many faberoony presents she got, Molly always moaned about her birthday because it was right at the beginning of September when school had not started yet. This meant no one could ever come to her party. Except me, of course. That year we had gone out with Molly’s mum and dad, which Molly said was totally un-cool and in no way dudey.

  I had personally thought it was an Outstandingly Good Deal in the way of a birthday treat as we had gone to the cinema and had a pizza, and Molly’s parents had sat a million miles away from us so that we could be ‘on our own’. I wondered if in nine months’ time I could persuade Mum to take me out for my birthday and not sit anywhere near me?

  ‘Look,’ said Molly, snapping me out of my thinking about the non-parental pizza party.

  The screen on the GameGirl had woken up, and the Puppy Power game was ready to roll!

  ‘Honestly, this is just so dudey,’ said Molly. ‘You get to choose what kind of dog you want to own, and there are all these competitions you can do to win money! When you win you can go and buy another dog. I already have two. They are called Flurries and Midget. I mean obviously I wanted a REAL dog for my birthday, but Mum said, “No Way Ho-Zay”.’

  I did think a computer game was a Poor Substitute for a real dog, i.e. not as good, but I suppose if I had not had my Honey, I might possibly have thought that this toy was the best dog-type thing in the world.

  ‘What kind of breed are they?’ I asked.

  ‘Flumes is a miniature poodle, and Midget is a Border terrier,’ she said, as they yapped and yelped and jumped up and down on the screen. Honey’s ears twitched when she heard the ting little barks.

  Molly had not chosen the kind of breeds that I would choose, I have to say. They were small dogs, which are not my favourite, and she had bought bows to put in their fur and weird toys like humongous beach balls and massive chewy bones that were far too big for the dogs. It was all rather over-the-top and not realistic for how a real-life owner of those kind of breeds would be.

  ‘Watch this!’ Molly shrieked. She started wibbling about how she could take the dogs for a walk in the game. ‘You say “walkies” and they jump up and get all excited!’

  ‘See that map?’ Molly said. ‘Before you walk your dog, you must plan the route by drawing it on the map with the pencil thing. Then you click back to get your dog, and then you walk the dog.’

  I actually thought this was really quite yawnsome. I had to drag the lead along as if I was an invisible person so the dog was walking along with this lead sort of floating above it in the air. It was der-brainish really.

  And in the end it made me even more determined to persuade Mum to let Honey have real live baby poochicals of her own.

  But how was I going to get Mum to agree?

  That evening I lay on the sofa staring at the telly without really watching it and stroked Honey with my feet.

  ‘I can’t really believe that Mum is totally unpersuadable,’ I said in a musing sort of way. ‘After all, it was not that long ago in the history of our family that she had said that she would not have a dog at all! And then she met you, gorgeous Honey-Bun . . . and now look at us – a truly fully fledged dog-owning family.’

  Honey lifted up her head and put it in my lap.

  I tickled my soppy pooch’s velvety ears. Surely it was only a matter of being persistent and thinking up some very good reasons for letting Honey have puppies.

  In circumstances such as these, I would normally have turned to my Bestest Friend. After all, Molly was usually the Bee’s Knees when it came to thinking up a Masterly Plan to get me out of a crisis. (This does not mean that she became small and knobbly and furry and covered in pollen, but that she was the best.) But this time around, Molly was looking distinctively useless on the Masterly Plan front, as she was so completely fixationed on Puppy Power. She hadn’t even asked me any questions about Honey and the Potential Puppy Problem.

  ‘What I need,’ I told Honey, who was looking at me with her head on one side in a concerned and understanding fashion, ‘is a Masterly Plan of my very own to emerge out of Thin Air and pop into my head.’

  On the way home from school the next day I went to the library and borrowed a copy of Perfect Puppies by the skilled-yet-scary dog-trainer celebrity Monica Sitstill.

  If there was anyone who would have persuasive arguments about breeding and puppies and so on, it would be Ms Sitstill, the Guru of all things Dog-Related.

  When I got home I took the book into the kitchen and sat down to read while I drank a cup of hot chocolate. Honey had followed me into the kitchen and was now lying under the table so I massaged her with my slipper-socked feet. It really was getting quite chilly now that the season of autumn was here, and Honey’s soft fur made a lovely cosy footrest.

  I flicked through the book, looking at the pictures of Ms Sits till to start with. She was what Mum called a FORMIDABLE lady, which means that she was strict and bossy and ordered people around a lot – in other words, she generally got her own way. It would be nice to get my own way for a change, I thought. I decided to get myself a leaf out of her book and use it To My Own Advantage. I started reading:

  Breeding from your female is a joy! It is a miracle to see new life unfolding before your eyes, and to watch Nature take its course.

  This was exactly the kind of spot-on information I was looking for, I thought to myself! After all, you cannot argue with Nature.

  If, after considering all the pros and cons, you decide to go ahead with
breeding, the first thing you must do is find the right mate.

  This sounded sensible, I thought. I was soon so engrossed in flicking through the pages that I hardly noticed when Mum came into the kitchen with the Ironing Pile.

  Mum hates ironing almost as much as I hate the eight times table. It is one of those things in life that you wonder who could have possibly invented, as it seems like the biggest waste of time imaginable.

  As far as I can see, you stand there for hours, HUFFING AND PUFFING about how horrible it is, and in the end all that happens is you have a huge pile of clothes which are nice and smooth, but which will only get wrinkled again the minute you put them on. Honestly, grown-ups seem to actually prefer to make things complicated for themselves.

  ‘Hi, Summer. What are you reading?’ Mum asked, peering over the Mount Everest of wrinkled clothes. She was obviously PROCRASTINATING, which is a posh word I have learnt for ‘wasting time instead of working/doing something else which is more urgent’. (I love saying, ‘I am PROCRASTINATING,’ because it sounds like I’m doing something important, instead of just wasting time.)

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, quickly covering the book with my hands.

  Mum shrugged and went to get the ironing board.

  I was not yet quite ready to Bring Up the Subject of puppies until I had all the facts at the tips of my fingers. (It is always more effective in a persuading situation if you do this, I have found.)

  But I felt a bit bad for not telling her what I was doing, especially as she was so clearly in a procrastinatory mood, so in an effort to involve Mum a tiny bit, I called out:

  ‘Mum, what are Pros and Cons?’

  She came back into the room, smiling. ‘It means “good things and bad things”,’ she said. ‘Before you make a big decision, it’s wise to think carefully about both the good things and the bad things that could happen.’