by Gwyneth Rees
‘Superman would have heard them,’ Saffie piped up, looking thoughtful, ‘because he has superhuman hearing.’ Saffie wasn’t poking fun at Granny. She was quite serious, having recently started to take a great interest in all fictional superheroes.
‘The trouble is, we were making too much noise ourselves,’ I put in quickly before Granny could take offence at the Superman reference.
But Granny wasn’t really listening to my sister. ‘Quite frankly, Marsha, I don’t know what planet you’re on in any case if you think that your last neighbours didn’t notice anything!’ she told Mum, having clearly had enough of being glared at accusingly. ‘From what I hear, Saffie played there unsupervised all the time – and don’t tell me Rosie never got to see her in action!’
‘Rosie’s family were our friends, Mother,’ Mum said hotly. ‘Yes, they found out that we weren’t a normal family, but they also knew how important it was to keep that a secret. Whereas with these new neighbours things are quite different.’
‘Our new neighbours are very dangerous,’ Saffie suddenly said. ‘If they find out what Emma and me can do they might take us away to a science laboratory and do experiments on us. That’s why Emma and me have to stay away from them.’
Granny looked horrified. ‘Really, Marsha, was it really necessary to—’
‘Yes, Mother, it was,’ Mum told her sharply, before turning and ushering Saffie in front of her out of the room.
After they had gone I turned to Granny, but she spoke before I could. ‘I’m afraid my visit hasn’t gone very well so far, Emma. I think it might be better if I leave tomorrow.’
‘Oh, no, Granny, please don’t go . . .’ I begged her.
‘I think I must. Though there is one other thing I intend to do before I leave . . .’
‘What thing?’ I asked, hearing distant alarm bells starting to ring.
‘I shall keep my promise about deactivating that wretched trampoline!’
I decided to go round to our neighbours’ garden later that afternoon to collect our frisbee. I could have asked Granny to get it back for us, but somehow I didn’t like the idea of Granny making our frisbee grow legs and scuttle back to us over the lawn. Besides, I wanted to rescue the teddy bear Saffie had binned before it was too late. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going. Mum was having a lie-down upstairs and Saffie was playing with her dolls in her bedroom. Granny had gone out for a walk after lunch and hadn’t come back yet, so I reckoned the coast was clear.
It’s easy to get into the back garden of Rosie’s old house because there’s no side gate. Our new neighbours’ car was in the drive, but there didn’t seem to be anybody about.
At the near end of the garden everything looked the same as usual – the large neat-looking lawn, the leafy bushes on either side of it that are great for playing hide-and-seek, and the two huge trees which Dad is always saying ought to be cropped. It was the far end of the garden that looked different. I could see the trampoline at the bottom of the garden next to the hedge, and where the shed had been there was a bit of debris and a rectangle of mud.
Suddenly I heard the back door opening and the sound of voices. Straight away I ran to the nearest bush, knowing it was the best one to hide inside.
‘It’s polite to ask before you enter someone else’s property,’ hissed the bush as I parted its leaves.
I nearly jumped out of my skin – and for the first time I realized how Dad must feel when his shoes suddenly start talking to him.
I instantly turned round to look for my sister. It must be Saffie who was making the bush talk, but there was no sign of her.
‘Come on in before they see you,’ hissed the bush again, and that’s when I realized that the voice wasn’t coming from the bush itself.
‘I’m sorry,’ I stammered as I recognized the boy who was already sitting on the ground inside the central hollow. ‘I was just coming to get my frisbee and—’
‘It’s OK,’ the boy whispered. ‘But hurry up and come inside. My mum and dad are going to see you in a minute if you don’t and then my hiding place will be ruined.’
I quickly scrambled to the middle and sat down cross-legged on the ground, flushing bright red as my knee bumped against his.
We waited in silence while his parents walked past. They seemed to be arguing about how unlikely it was that a garden shed could just disappear into thin air.
‘So what’s your name?’ the boy asked me when they were out of earshot.
‘Emmeline,’ I replied. ‘But I don’t like being called that. Everyone calls me Emma.’
He grinned. ‘Ditto,’ he said.
‘Ditto?’
‘Ditto, I hate my stupid name. It’s Sigmund, but everyone calls me Ziggy.’
‘Oh.’ I couldn’t help liking him a tiny bit suddenly.
Then he said, ‘Great puppet show on your kid sister’s window ledge the other morning.’
I frowned, thinking back to what he had said that morning. ‘You didn’t seem to like it at the time.’
He pulled an apologetic face. ‘Sorry if I wasn’t very nice. I was in a bad mood because I really didn’t want to move here.’
‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you like Rosie’s house?’ Too late I realized how daft that sounded.
‘Oh, it’s not the new house so much as the new neighbours,’ he joked, giving me a teasing grin. ‘No, seriously . . . We moved partly because Mum’s got a job at the university here and she doesn’t want to commute and partly because Dad . . .’ He broke off. ‘Well, it’s a bit complicated, actually.’ He barely paused for breath before continuing, ‘So what’s all this about your family being some kind of super-mutants? My dad says he reckons you can control stuff with your minds or something like that. He even reckons you levitated our garden shed! Can you believe that?’
I immediately went cold inside. I did my best to fake a light-hearted laugh but it didn’t really come out right. I felt as if I was going to throw up.
Ziggy was staring at me intently. ‘What’s wrong? I thought you’d say my dad must be mad.’
In the last few years I’ve had to tell my fair share of lies in order to protect our family, but for some reason I found this lie really difficult. ‘Of course he must be mad,’ I murmured. ‘He sounds completely crazy.’
‘That’s what I said,’ Ziggy continued, still looking at me quite closely, ‘and so did Mum at first. But then Dad overheard something when he was on the trampoline this morning, something that got Mum excited too. It was something about genetic mutations turning people into super-beings. I told them they were both mad then, but Dad kept going on about how the weirdest things can sometimes turn out to be just on your doorstep.’
I swallowed. ‘So what would your mum do if she found someone with a . . . well . . . a special power, for instance?’
‘Oh, she’d want to study them forever, I guess, and run lots and lots of tests on them.’ He laughed. ‘A bit like she does with the mutant rats she keeps in her laboratory.’
I was trying really hard to keep my voice from trembling as I asked, ‘And what about your dad? Why is he so interested in us?’
‘Oh, Dad just gets a real buzz from tracking down really weird people and exposing them . . . sorry . . . interviewing them on his TV show. His programme is called Freaky Families on the Sofa. You’ve probably never seen it because it’s on late at night on a satellite channel, but he reckons Channel 4 would take it if he could find one really brilliant family.’
‘What sort of family?’ I croaked.
‘Well, a really long time ago he worked on a documentary series about aliens. Mum got really excited about that because she believes a lot of stuff that most other scientists don’t – that aliens and UFOs really do exist, for example. I know he’d love to do a programme about a family of aliens. Then Mum could investigate them from a scientific stance and she’d probably even get to appear on his programme. So would the aliens of course.’
‘Well we’re not aliens, in case
that’s what you’re thinking!’ I snapped defensively, then ran my tongue over my extremely dry lips and muttered, ‘Anyway, aliens don’t exist. Your mum sounds just as mad as your dad.’ I scrambled out from under the bush, not caring if Ziggy’s parents saw me. I was so upset that I forgot all about collecting our frisbee as I tore off in the direction of home.
And I also forgot about rescuing Ziggy’s teddy bear, even though I passed right by the bins and the following day was bin day.
I told Mum everything as soon as I got in.
For a minute or two she seemed too shocked to speak. She just sat down and hid her face in her hands.
‘We could always move house ourselves,’ I suggested when her silence started to scare me.
‘No,’ she said, looking up sharply. ‘I like our house and I don’t see why we should let some nosy neighbour run us out of it. Besides, if you start running away all the time then it never stops.’ Mum had hated having to move home all the time while she was growing up, I remembered now. My mother’s whole demeanour was changing as she spoke, as if she had suddenly decided that giving up wasn’t an option.
‘First we need to explain away what our neighbours have already seen, which means that basically we have to think up a really good cover story,’ she told me. ‘That shouldn’t be too difficult since most people are desperate to be offered a sensible explanation after they’ve seen such weird goings-on. The second part is going to be harder. We have to find a way of motivating Saffie to be more cautious. The trouble is she’s too young to really understand the full extent of what could happen if the truth came out.’ She sighed. ‘At least we don’t have to worry about the trampoline for much longer. Your grandmother is going to deal with that.’
‘What will Granny do to it?’ I asked curiously.
Mum smiled ever so slightly. ‘Just wait and see.’
‘But, Mum,’ I reminded her, thinking about the look on our new neighbour’s face as he had bounced up and down while taking in everything in our garden. ‘Ziggy’s dad actually saw Cedric come to life!’
‘I’m afraid that’s going to be very tricky to explain away,’ Mum agreed. She was about to continue when we heard a commotion that sounded like it was coming from Saffie’s room.
‘It’s those dolls again,’ Mum said, frowning. ‘You know, I really don’t like the way Elvira and Dorothy are turning out. Saffie is having a very bad influence on both of them, I’m afraid, and Dorothy had a very cheeky personality in the first place, which doesn’t help.’
‘Do you want me to go upstairs and speak to them?’ I asked.
‘No, thank you, Emma.’ Mum looked more determined than I had seen her in a long while. ‘I think I’ll go and sort out those dolls myself. And while I’m up there I’ll have a go at sorting out your little sister as well. I think it’s time I started to threaten her with the kind of consequences she does understand.’
And with that Mum left the room.
By the time Dad got home Saffie was in bed having cried – or more accurately tantrummed – herself to sleep. Mum had confiscated Elvira and Dorothy and told my sister that she could only have them back when she was prepared to make them come to life in a more responsible manner.
‘Jim, could you help Mother put her gnomes back in the van straight away?’ Mum asked after she had related everything that had taken place. ‘I’m afraid they might prove too much of a temptation for Saffie if they’re left where she can see them out in the garden.’
‘A temptation for Saffie? What about for your mother?’ Dad joked just as Granny came into the room with a tray of drinks for all of us. Avoiding her scowl he quickly went on, ‘Anyway, isn’t it a bit late to hide the fact that our gnomes can come to life when Godfrey has already seen Cedric in action?’
‘And we still have to explain away what Saffie did to their shed,’ I reminded everybody.
‘Maybe we should think about the shed issue first,’ Mum said.
Mum and Granny looked at each other, both of them frowning, as if they were now consulting a joint mental database of suitable excuses.
‘It was vandals!’ Mum declared almost at once. ‘Some very strong and high-spirited vandals who thought it would be funny to toss the remains of the shed into our garden after they’d knocked it down.’
Granny immediately nodded her approval. ‘Vandals can be used to explain away a large variety of different things, Emma,’ she told me. ‘In fact the letter “V” should always come to mind whenever a problem arises. V for Vandals, V for Ventriloquism, V for Vivid imagination. These are three of your first-line excuses and you’ll remember them if you remember the letter “V”.’
‘But what about the stuff Ziggy’s dad overheard me saying?’ I asked them, not seeing how they could possibly explain away everything. ‘About how our ancestor got mutated into a super-being by a stroke of lightning?’
Before Mum and Granny could answer, Dad jumped straight in. ‘You’ve got a very vivid imagination, Emma. And you’ve been watching too many Superman films.’
Mum smiled and Granny nodded approvingly.
‘Very good, Jim,’ Granny said. ‘I can see you’re starting to think like one of us at last. Now . . . let’s think about how to tackle our most difficult problem – the fact that that hideous man actually saw Cedric come to life.’
‘I’ve got an idea about that,’ I said shyly. ‘But it’s quite risky . . . You see, it involves Cedric again.’
The next morning my mother took me with her to go and call on our new neighbours. It was to be my job to put my plan into action when the time came. For now, Cedric was standing on the doorstep next to us while we waited for someone to answer the bell.
‘Good morning,’ Mum said as Ziggy’s mother opened the door.
Professor Seaton was a tall thin woman with straight dark blonde hair like Ziggy’s, and she looked extremely surprised to see us.
‘I do hope you don’t mind us calling round uninvited like this,’ Mum gushed, ‘but we wanted to welcome you to the street and Emma thought your son might like to see her new remote-controlled gnome.’
At that point I fought back a fit of the giggles as Professor Seaton invited us in.
Mum carried Cedric inside, still in his statue form, and left him standing just inside the door. Ziggy’s mum was calling out for her husband to join us with what sounded like a note of panic in her voice.
‘What is it, Iris? You know I’m on my way to observe our neighbours!’ Mr Seaton grumbled from upstairs.
‘Our neighbours are here, dear!’ his wife called out, giving Mum and me a self-conscious smile.
‘Oh.’ Ziggy’s dad arrived downstairs dressed in a jumper and baggy jogging bottoms with a pair of binoculars in his hand. He flushed bright red when he saw us. ‘Why on earth didn’t you say who it was, my dear? Shouldn’t we be getting them a cup of tea or something . . .’
‘Do you drink tea?’ Ziggy’s mother asked us, her tone of voice implying that she thought we might only be able to ingest some other kind of drink from our own planet.
Mum nodded, smiling, ‘But please don’t worry about that now. We won’t stay long. Is your son in? Emma wanted to show him Cedric.’
‘Cedric?’ Mr Seaton asked.
‘Her remote-controlled gnome.’ Mum pointed back to the front door where Cedric was standing. ‘Show them how he works, Emma.’
Trying to stop my hand from trembling, I took the remote-control box we’d borrowed from Saffie’s toy robot out of my jacket pocket. Now I had to do two things at once. I had to bring Cedric to life while pretending to operate the remote control. Cedric and I had practised what was to happen next over and over, but I was still terrified something would go wrong.
Cedric had been given strict instructions to remain still to start with, even after he had been brought to life. When I started pressing buttons on the remote control and telling everyone what I was doing, then he was to move in a slightly jerky manner in accordance with what I said.
&nb
sp; So as I said, ‘He can walk forwards when I press this button,’ he was meant to walk briskly towards me.
I inwardly breathed a sigh of relief as Cedric walked robot-like across the carpet.
‘He can speak too,’ I said, making a big thing of pressing a different button.
‘Where – is – the – gar – den – pond?’ Cedric said in a stilted voice. He was still walking and, as Godfrey stepped aside, Cedric marched past him and through the open door into the lounge.
Ziggy’s mum was smiling. ‘See, Godfrey! I told you there must be a simple explanation,’ she said.
But Mr Seaton was shaking his head. ‘That is not the gnome that I saw. The one I saw was walking and talking quite naturally – not at all like this little robot.’
At that Cedric twirled round, clearly furious. ‘Robot? Who are you calling a robot?’ he shouted.
The Seatons instantly froze with their mouths hanging open, and Mum looked at me with panic in her eyes. Cedric was standing absolutely still again, but his face looked cross.
I felt a bit sick because I couldn’t think how we were ever going to explain our way out of this one.
Suddenly I thought of the toy hamster Saffie had been given for Christmas – you turned it on by pressing its paw and then it repeated back everything you said to it in its own funny squeaky voice.
‘You can press a button that makes him repeat back the last word you say to him,’ I explained. ‘And . . . and he can do even more than that. It’s really clever! If I say,“You’re a garden gnome,” he’ll say, “Gnome? Who are you calling a gnome?” Or if I say, “You’re being an idiot!” he’ll say, “Idiot? Who are you calling an idiot?” Or I can say, “You little monkey!” and he’ll say, “Monkey? Who are you calling a monkey?” Or if I say—’
‘Thank you, Emma, I think we get the idea,’ Mum said swiftly, though I could tell she was impressed by my ingenuity. ‘Why don’t you make him dance for us now?’
