My Super Sister and the Birthday Party

by Gwyneth Rees

  ‘It had one of those irritating front wheels that keep getting stuck,’ Granny explained. ‘I gave it a kick to unjam it and it yelled, “HOW DARE YOU KICK MY WONKY WHEEL, YOU HORRIBLE OLD LADY!” I got such a fright I think I actually screamed.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Grandpa said, trying not to laugh as he told Granny that now she knew how he felt when she brought something of his to life unexpectedly.

  Granny ignored him and turned her attention to me. ‘Well, Emma, this afternoon it will be your turn to learn something new.’

  ‘Can you teach me “blind” animating?’ I asked before she had time to suggest anything else.

  ‘Of course!’ Granny looked pleased that I was so interested. ‘We’ll begin straight away after lunch.’ And she immediately brought the kitchen table to life and asked it to get on with laying itself while she prepared us something to eat.

  That afternoon, while Saffie continued to sulk in our room, Granny took me into the back garden and told me to have a good look at Cedric.

  ‘With blind animating the most important part is picturing the object in your head,’ Granny told me. ‘It can be quite difficult unless the object is one you know extremely well.’

  Afterwards, when I was ready, I had to go inside and sit on the sofa with my eyes shut, doing my best to see Cedric’s face in my mind’s eye as I focused my superpower on bringing him to life.

  I was amazed when I felt the familiar ‘ping’ inside my head that meant I was using my superpower. Soon Granny was telling me that Cedric had just thrown his fish into the garden pond and was now settling down happily to engage in his favourite pastime of trying to fish it out again.

  I went outside to have a look for myself and at the same time I glanced up at our bedroom window to see if Saffie was looking out. Briefly I thought I saw movement at the other window – the box-room one – but then I thought I must have imagined it.

  Grandpa was entering the back garden through the side gate, a strange smile on his face.

  ‘I have an announcement to make, ladies,’ he said in an important-sounding voice.

  ‘It’s never finished?’ Granny asked at once, looking as if that was the last thing she’d expected.

  ‘It is!’ Grandpa declared triumphantly.

  ‘You mean we’re actually allowed into the garage to see your secret project, Grandpa?’

  ‘That’s right, Emmeline . . . I mean, Emma.’

  ‘I’d better tell Saffie!’ I said excitedly.

  As Grandpa led Granny towards the garage I went back inside the house and yelled upstairs to my sister. ‘Saffie! We’re allowed to see what Grandpa’s been making! Are you coming?’

  ‘I’m busy,’ came the muffled reply.

  I sighed and decided to leave her to it.

  I hurried back outside and caught up with my grandparents at the side door of the garage, where Granny was standing absolutely still as she looked inside.

  ‘Oh, Henry!’ she exclaimed eventually, letting out a funny noise somewhere between a gasp of surprise and a delighted laugh. She didn’t seem able to say anything else.

  ‘WOW!’ I exclaimed after I had squeezed past her to have a look myself. Taking up one half of the garage was a massive model aeroplane. Grandpa had never made a model anywhere near as big or as detailed as this before. It wasn’t anything like the ones displayed in his cabinet. It didn’t really look like a model at all, but more like a mini version of a real plane – the old-fashioned kind you see in museums or being flown in air displays sometimes. It was a greeny-grey colour with red and blue targets painted on the wings and sides, and a big propeller on the front. There was a cockpit with seats for the pilot and one passenger sitting directly behind and it even had a proper sliding roof.

  ‘It’s a replica of a famous plane called the “Spitfire” which was flown in the Second World War,’ Grandpa explained proudly. ‘It’s exactly a sixth of the real size.’

  ‘It’s amazing!’ I blurted, briefly remembering Mum telling me that our great-grandfather had been killed in the Second World War when Grandpa was just a baby. ‘Grandpa, did you really make this all by yourself?’

  ‘I certainly did,’ he replied with a chuckle. ‘No gnomes are allowed in this garage, I can assure you!’

  ‘My gnomes couldn’t do this even if they were allowed in,’ Granny murmured.

  Grandpa promptly grinned from ear to ear, clearly delighted by her comment. ‘Not even Walter?’

  ‘Not even Walter,’ she said firmly. ‘I have to admit that I’m amazed, Henry. Really amazed.’ And she was looking at Grandpa in an entirely new way – as if she had just discovered that he had a special power too.

  When I eventually decided to go upstairs and check on Saffie I found her trying to hide something under her bed.

  ‘Saffie, what are you doing?’ I asked suspiciously.

  ‘Oh . . . nothing really . . .’

  ‘Saffie . . .’ I began sternly.

  ‘Oh, all right, but you have to promise not to tell.’ And she slid out Queenie-May.

  ‘Saffie!’ I almost shrieked. ‘What are you doing with that doll?’

  She looked surprised by my reaction. ‘I was looking for Elvira and Dorothy. The little spare room wasn’t locked, so I went inside. I found her in one of the boxes. Isn’t she beautiful?’ Saffie was stroking the doll’s hair lovingly.

  ‘Oh, Saffie . . . you’ll have to put her back,’ I said. ‘Granny says we’re not allowed to play with her.’ And I told her everything Granny had told me about Queenie-May.

  ‘But that’s just silly,’ Saffie challenged at once. ‘Even if she is a very strong-willed doll we can always just de-animate her if she starts doing something really bad.’

  ‘I know, but . . .’ I broke off because Saffie was right. We could just de-animate her.

  My sister was hugging the doll possessively now. ‘It’s not fair, Emma. All I want to do is play with her. I think it’s really cruel of Granny to shut her away like that, even if she has been naughty.’ Saffie sniffed and I knew she was imagining herself in the doll’s place.

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ I said. ‘You can keep Queenie-May here if you promise you won’t bring her to life until I’ve asked Granny a bit more about her.’

  Saffie beamed. ‘Emma, you’re the best big sister in the whole world!’ And she came over and gave me a big hug.

  I grinned. She really can be very sweet when she gets what she wants.

  Grandpa was wheeling his plane outside and up on to the front lawn, where it looked even more impressive with the sun shining down on its gleaming paintwork.

  ‘WOW! Can it fly?’ Saffie wanted to know as soon as she saw it.

  ‘With an engine it can, yes,’ Grandpa replied. ‘But that’s something that costs an awful lot of money, so I’ll have to discuss it with your Granny first.’

  ‘Oh.’ Saffie didn’t bother to hide her disappointment.

  Grandpa didn’t seem to mind though. He just chuckled. ‘Don’t worry. At least the hard part’s done.’ As a car drew up outside the house he said, ‘Oh look . . . here’s Donald. He has a plane that does have an engine. Maybe he’ll let you see it fly if you ask him nicely, Saffie.’ (Donald was Grandpa’s friend and fellow model-maker and he’d been the only person allowed in the garage the whole time Grandpa was building his plane.)

  As we hadn’t seen Donald in over a year it took a while for him to stop going on about how much Saffie and I had grown. Then Saffie asked if it was OK to ask him a question that wasn’t about models.

  Donald gave a little laugh and said of course.

  ‘Donald, did you have a birthday party when you were seventy?’ my sister asked in her most serious grown-up voice.

  Donald told her with a smile that he was only sixty-three.

  ‘Oh . . .’ But Saffie wasn’t deterred for long. ‘I bet you like birthday parties though, don’t you? Not like Grandpa!’

  Donald looked at our grandfather in amusement. ‘Don’t you like a party the
n, Henry?’ he teased.

  ‘I hated them even when I was a lad,’ Grandpa replied with feeling, looking more at Saffie and me than at Donald. ‘I was really shy, you see, and I found it a bit scary mixing with lots of other children who all seemed much more confident than me. And then there was the jelly problem.’

  ‘The jelly problem?’ Saffie and I queried in unison.

  ‘Yes. You see you nearly always got given jelly at children’s parties in those days and my older brother had once told me that jelly was made from boiled slugs.’

  ‘Yuck!’ Saffie and I burst out.

  ‘Of course, I didn’t really believe him once I got older, but by then I couldn’t put a spoonful of jelly in my mouth without it turning my stomach.’

  ‘Grandpa, that’s horrible!’ I exclaimed, while Saffie just looked at him wide-eyed.

  He nodded in agreement. ‘What made it worse was that I was too shy to actually say I didn’t like jelly, so I always got it dished out to me at birthday parties. And since my mother had taught me that it was rude not to clear my plate, I always got very stressed about what to do with it.’

  ‘What did you do with it?’ Saffie asked curiously.

  ‘If I was lucky another child might eat it for me. Or if not I’d secretly spoon it into my trouser pockets.’

  ‘Yuck!’ Saffie and I said again as Donald let out an amused snort.

  ‘That’s nothing compared to the time I actually forced myself to eat some,’ Grandpa continued. ‘I tried not to think about slugs as I was swallowing it, but I quickly started to feel queasy. I was too shy to tell anyone of course, and I ended up being sick all over the table in the middle of everybody singing “Happy Birthday”.’

  ‘Grandpa, that’s disgusting!’ I declared, pulling a face.

  ‘I’m surprised anyone invited you to a party again after that,’ Donald said with a frown.

  My sister was looking at Grandpa in astonishment. She clearly couldn’t imagine any little boy being too shy to say that he didn’t like jelly – or that he felt sick and needed to leave the table.

  ‘Poor Grandpa,’ she suddenly burst out passionately, rushing over to give him a sympathetic hug. As he hugged her back she confided, ‘I was sick all over the bed once when we were having a midnight feast at home, wasn’t I, Emma? It was horrible!’

  ‘It was,’ I agreed. ‘Especially as it was my bed. That’s why I’ve told Saffie I’m not having any more midnight feasts with her.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Grandpa said with a twinkle in his eye. ‘I must say I always loved midnight feasts when I was a youngster.’

  ‘Really?’ Saffie immediately looked super-interested. She seemed to be thinking very hard before finally letting out a contented sigh, then smiling at Grandpa as if she had just had a very pleasing idea.

  CHAPTER 7

  After Donald had gone home, Grandpa stayed outside to polish up his plane a bit more and Saffie stayed with him to help. I decided now was a good time to try and speak to Granny. ‘Granny, can I ask you a bit more about Queenie-May?’ I asked, trying to sound as casual as I could.

  ‘Of course, Emma. What do you want to know?’

  ‘Well . . . did she do any really bad things when you were little?’

  ‘Oh, quite dreadful things sometimes,’ Granny replied without hesitation. ‘I’ve never forgotten what she did to my lovely panda bear just because she was jealous of him. It’s true I preferred him to her and probably showed it, but it shouldn’t have mattered because she was Penelope’s doll in any case. That was the trouble with Queenie-May – she wanted to be everybody’s favourite.’

  ‘So what did she do?’ I prompted, starting to get a bit of a sinking feeling in my stomach.

  ‘Well, we were at the seaside and Penelope had brought Queenie-May with us – she took her everywhere back then. We were on the pier waiting for our mother to come out of the Ladies. It was a cold day and the pier was almost deserted apart from us, so Penelope thought it would be safe to bring Queenie-May to life. That awful doll grabbed my darling Paddy and ran off along the pier with him, shouting that she was going to throw him over the rail.’

  ‘That’s terrible,’ I exclaimed, thinking how I’d feel if something like that happened to Howard. ‘But why didn’t you just de-animate her?’

  ‘Because we couldn’t! Once we’d brought her to life we couldn’t control her any more. She was so powerful we could only de-animate her when she let us.’

  I gaped at Granny, totally stunned, wondering for a moment if I had heard her correctly.

  Granny meanwhile was continuing with the story. ‘My poor panda bear would have been lost forever if it hadn’t been for my quick-thinking mother. She came back outside just as Queenie-May threw Paddy into the water. There were two men fishing off the pier a little further along – fortunately they had their backs turned to us and hadn’t seen Queenie-May. Mother asked if they would help us and one of them had a net and managed to fish Paddy out.’

  ‘Phew,’ I said, relieved that at least there was a happy ending. ‘But what happened to Queenie-May?’

  ‘Mother got hold of her and threatened to throw her in the sea if she didn’t let us de-animate her at once. Queenie-May was scared of our mother so she agreed. Mother confiscated her after that and we always thought she was gone for good. We could hardly believe it when we found her at the bottom of an old trunk in our mother’s loft when we were sorting through her things after she died. We were both grown-ups by then of course, but Penelope was still delighted to see her old doll again. And years later when Penelope died I couldn’t quite bring myself to part with Queenie-May either. She felt like a last connection with my sister I suppose.’ She paused. ‘But I’d certainly never risk bringing her to life again. And I don’t want you girls being tempted to either, which is why I’ve kept her locked away for all this time.’ She paused again. ‘Now do you understand?’

  I nodded. I did understand and I felt extremely worried as I hurried out to the front garden to find my sister.

  Grandpa was standing on the front lawn talking to the neighbour from across the road, who had come to have a closer look at the plane. It was the first time I’d ever seen Grandpa chatting away like that with one of their neighbours.

  ‘Saffie went back inside,’ Grandpa told me. ‘She was getting bored, so I told her to go and find something else to do.’

  I went back into the house and ran up the stairs as fast as I could. Saffie being bored is never a good thing.

  I pushed open our bedroom door to find my sister sitting cross-legged on her bed.

  Queenie-May was sitting next to her with her legs stretched out in front of her. ‘Ooh – you are a dear,’ the doll was saying as she wiggled her toes. ‘You’ve no idea how gorgeous it feels to stretch out one’s limbs after all this time.’

  I just glared at Saffie.

  ‘Hi, Emma!’ Saffie greeted me, looking a bit sheepish. ‘I know you said to wait before I brought Queenie-May to life, but you were taking ages.’

  Queenie-May turned her perfectly painted face in my direction and gave me a smile. ‘You may play with me too if you like, Emma. I always encourage sisters to share. The last little girls I lived with – Penelope and Harriet – used to play with me together all the time.’

  Saffie giggled. ‘Harriet is our granny. And Penelope would have been our great-aunt if she hadn’t got killed by a dinosaur in a museum!’

  ‘Killed by a dinosaur! How splendid!’ Queenie-May exclaimed in delight. ‘Penny always was the adventurous one – that’s why she and I got along so well! Now —’ she looked from me to Saffie – ‘which of you is the more adventurous, do you think?’

  ‘I am,’ Saffie answered straight away. ‘Emma’s the sensible one and I’m the adventurous one! Everybody says so, don’t they, Emma?’

  Before I could reply, Queenie-May said with a laugh, ‘Excellent! Well, you and I are going to have lots of fun together, Saffie!’

  I suddenly found myself feeling extremel
y protective of my little sister. ‘Saffie, I need to talk to you in private,’ I said. ‘Come out on to the landing for a minute, will you?’

  ‘I’m not sure if I can keep you animated once I leave the room,’ Saffie said apologetically to Queenie-May. ‘I did with Emma’s teddy bear, but I’ve known him a really long time.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ Queenie-May replied smoothly. ‘I can stay animated all on my own.’

  ‘Really?’ Saffie looked shocked.

  ‘Come on, Saffie,’ I hissed, pulling her towards the door. ‘We need to talk now.’

  I told Saffie in a whisper everything Granny had told me about what had happened all those years ago on the pier – and also what she had said about not being able to de-animate Queenie-May.

  Saffie was wide-eyed when I’d finished the story.

  ‘I still think you should go back in there and try to de-animate her,’ I said.

  Saffie nodded and we opened the bedroom door and went back inside, but Queenie-May seemed to have vanished.

  ‘Look,’ Saffie said rushing over to the window, which was wide open.

  ‘Saffie, be careful!’ I hissed, grabbing hold of her Supergirl cape as she leaned out. The cape came off in my hand and I quickly grabbed on to the back of her leotard instead.

  ‘I bet she climbed down that ivy,’ Saffie said, pointing at the tangle of green tendrils growing up the wall.

  I pulled my sister back inside the room so that I could have a look myself. The ivy she had spotted was close to the window, but it didn’t look strong enough to take even a child’s weight. However, Queenie-May was much lighter than a child.

  ‘Emma, where’s Howard?’ Saffie suddenly asked, looking round the room.

  ‘Isn’t he here?’ I turned my head quickly to look too.

  ‘Maybe we left him downstairs,’ Saffie said.

  ‘No, he was definitely here before. She must have taken him.’ My eyes were pricking with tears as I remembered what had happened to Granny’s panda bear.