Puppy Party

by Anna Wilson

  Puppy Party

  Anna Wilson

  MACMILLAN CHILDREN’S BOOKS

  For Malika, with love

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  hen my sister April got married and left home, my first thought was that I would be ----- . In mean, what eleven-year-old girl would not be happy to finally get rid of a big sister who was DECIDEDLY more ancient than she was, and who was really quite a severely huge Bossy Boots?

  I had spent very many of my years on this planet wishing that April would find a place of her own. So when Nick, her boyfriend, asked her to marry him, and then they did actually really get married (which was quite a shock for me and Mum as, between us, we were not sure that April was mature enough to do such a grown-up thing), I was quite a bit excited about what life would be like Without April. In fact, while she was away on her post-wedding holiday thing, I did a bit of dreaming and Planning For the Future.

  Even my pet Labrador, Honey, looked rather perky at the thought of April leaving. Maybe she was thinking that she would no longer have to put up with being called ‘that mutt’ and other such names of a non-complimentary and OFFENSIVE nature.

  ‘Hey, Honey,’ I said to my ever-such-a-gorgeous pooch on April’s wedding day (and obviously I said this very quietly so that April did not hear): ‘Won’t it be great without Bossy Boots Big Sister around? It’s just you and me now!’

  ‘Life will be gloriously quiet and a sense of freedom will fill the air every single day of my life from now until the end of eternity,’ I said. I was feeling really quite poetical about how utterly marvellous my life would finally be now that I would have some Personal Space. ‘It will be like as if I was a butterfly,’ I added.

  Mum was extra-specially nice to me around the wedding time, which I at first thought was mightily suspicious. Normally Mum is only extra-specially nice to me if she wants me to do something horrid, like go to the dentist’s or eat spinach or have tea with a old person who is a friend of hers but who I don’t know or even want to get to know in any way whatsoever. But nothing like that appeared to be on the horizon.

  She kept saying things like, ‘I know life will seem a bit strange to start with once April’s gone, but we’ll be all right,’ and, ‘I will make sure you don’t feel lonely, Summer,’ and, the most mysterious comment of all, ‘Don’t you go growing up too fast, now, will you?’

  As if I, a mere human, have any control over how fast I grow! If people could control how fast they grew, then think of the IMPLICATIONS: in other words, think of what that would mean! Really small people who were fed up with being really small could think extra hard about being tall and make themselves shoot up a whole metre over night. And really big people could shrink themselves just by Sheer Willpower so that they could fit into the clothes they had always wanted to fit into. And so on and so forth, so that you might actually be able to watch people growing and shrinking all over the place, even on the bus in front of your very eyes! It would be wickedly astounding. Or maybe it wouldn’t if it was just Normal Everyday Life . . . Anyway, the fact of the matter was that Mum kept saying cryptical things and being extra-specially nice to me.

  I told my Bestest Friend Molly about this.

  ‘Aha!’ she said, with a Beady Look in her eye (which does not mean that her eyes had turned into glass ornaments of a jewellery-type nature, but that she looked and alert and full of ideas). ‘If your mum is behaving like this, you should take Full Advantage, you know.’

  ‘What?’ I asked, puzzled.

  ‘You know what they say: when the cat is away, the mouse will play!’ said Molly, wiggling her eyebrows in a mysterious fashion.

  ‘They may well say that,’ I said, ‘but the cats are not away: Cheese is sitting on the radiator and Toast is sitting on Cheese’s head. And as far as I know we do not have any mice in this house anyway, so what in all the earth are you talking about in such riddlesome manner?’

  Molly did her immensely exaggerated eye-rolling thing she does when she thinks I am being Dense and Stupid, and said, ‘Once April’s gone, you’ll have to grab your chance to get what you have always wanted!’

  The Light Dawned, which is a poetical way of saying that I then in that instant realized what it was that Molly was going on about. I looked at her with my face all beamy and we both said in Unison, ‘April’s room!’

  I had always complained that I had the smallest room in the house. (Well, not as small as the cupboard under the stairs, or the downstairs loo – but obviously those are not proper rooms such as a real person can actually sleep in. I do know this as I once did try to sleep in the cupboard under the stairs when I was exceptionally cross and in a bad frame of mood and wanted to Prove a Point. It was not a comfortable or particularly cosy experience.)

  Whenever I tried to Broach the Subject of my extremely small room, in other words talk about it, all Mum would say was, ‘When April leaves home, you can have her room.’

  But the trouble was, it had never looked as though April ever would leave home. She was certainly old enough to, and she had a job, so it was not as if money was an issue. In my opinion, the problem was that Mum had made it too comfy for April at home: she got all her laundry done and all her meals cooked and she could use Mum’s car whenever she wanted and she had even been known to with Mum’s credit card on occasions, so of course April was not in a tearing hurry to leave.

  And Mum was equally, most of the time, not in a tearing hurry to make her leave, for reasons which frankly escaped me.

  Mum would even say things like, ‘I do love having my two girls with me. I would miss you so much if you moved out, April.’

  But then there were times when even Mum could see that April was Taking the Biscuit, which does not mean that she had helped herself to Honey’s snacks, but that she was behaving in a rather unacceptable manner. Like the time April had borrowed Mum’s special smart jacket out of the wardrobe without asking and had put it back covered in marks of a strange and unremovable nature.

  After that particular incident Mum had said, ‘The day you find your own place, April Lydia Love, is a day that cannot come quickly enough for my liking!’

  But somehow, both April and I knew deep down that Mum did not mean such things.

  And on the day when April did marry Nick, Mum blubbed an awful lot, so that proved that she only said the rather Negative Things when April was being a pain.

  That was the difference between me and Mum. I most definitely did mean the Negative Things that I thought in my head when April was being a pain – and that was most of the time as far as I was concerned.

  She was always acting as if I was an irritating little squirt who had to be put up with and was generally in the way and under her feet. And she was such a dramatical drama queen about every single thing in her life, so that Mum and I had to listen to all the Ups and Downs of Life Being April, which frankly wore me out to a frazzle and gave me a headache.

  And so I had spent quite a lot of years of time planning what I would do when she finally got Out Of My Hair. (I have actually often wondered about that particular expression, as it is a bit weird. I mean, how could anybody ever really get stuck in your hair in the first place? They would have to be extremely tiny to do it, if you stop to think about it. And although my sister is about as irritating as the average flea in my own personal , she is unfortunately a lot bigger than even the b
iggest flea, and causes an awful lot more trouble.)

  In fact, over the years I had even made a secret list of my reasonings in one of my notebooks. It went something like this:

  And I have to say that Reason Number Six was always in actual fact the most important reason of all. So you can see how much I was looking forward to April jolly well going Once And For All.

  uring, and indeed after, The Event of the Year, that is to say the wedding, life was pretty hectic. It was also actually stomach-churningly exciting. I should say that in the Normal Run of Things I have never been very interested in marriages and people’s love-lives and that sort of general nonsense. But out of the number of possible people in the world for my sister to fall head-over-heels in love with, Nick Harris was quite probably the best. And this was not just because he is a kind and friendly sort of man who does not ever say those super-cringeworthy or boring things like, ‘Oh, haven’t you grown!’ or ‘How is school coming along?’, but also (and mainly) because he is a vet.

  Now you might well ask, ‘What exactly is so mind-gogglingly fascinating about being a vet? It is not a mega-cool job like being a celebrity singer or someone on the telly who does those Reality Shows where they put you in a house and watch you turn into a loony.’ And you would be right about that last bit. Being a vet is not in the slightest bit like that.

  Thank the high heavens above it is much more exciting! But then I would say that as I am what some people might call a dog person, which means that I am ----- about anything dog-related, and that includes vets. Especially vets like Nick Harris who are extremely knowledgeable and wise when it comes to the subject of the average CANINE, in other words, dog.

  So, as I said, it was really what my best friend Molly Cook would call FORTUITOUS that my sister had had the good sense to marry Nick Harris and not some other useless type of man like the boyfriends she’d had in the past. I will not go into those types. Mum has said it is best that we Draw a Veil over them. I asked Molly what that meant, as she is super-intelligent when it comes to difficult words and expressions. She explained that it did not mean, as I had thought, that we needed to find all of April’s old boyfriends and cover them up with some kind of fabric, but that ‘to draw a veil over’ something means that it is best to forget about it.

  Back to the wedding.

  Even though I was quite insanely happy to think that I would be able to say, ‘My brother-in-law is a vet, don’t you know?’, the most exciting thing about the Big Day was that Honey, my most gorgeous-est pooch, was allowed to be a bridesdog!

  I know, it’s bonkers doolally-crazy, isn’t it? But she was! And if you want to see a picture of her and her mum, Meatball (a pooch of extreme adorable-ness who has the misfortune to be owned by sock-stinker extraordinaire, Mr Frank Gritter himself) then you really should go and get yourself a copy of Puppy Power and turn to the back. (Actually what am I saying? You shouldn’t just turn to the back, you should read the whole thing through from page number one right to the end, obviously!)

  Honey and Meatball were the chief bridesdogs, and they had help from two of Honey’s own cute pups, Titch (who now belongs to my totally bestest friend in the entire world, Molly Cook) and Cupid (who belongs to Nick and April – yes, they finally got their own dog at last).

  ‘Cupid?’ I hear you ask. ‘Isn’t that the most idiotic of names for a golden Labrador?’ And you would be right, which is why, thank the high heavens above, Nick managed in the end to gendy persuade April that actually it might be better if they called her something else. He did this very cleverly. He waited until April had had the most type of wedding she could ever have dreamed of, and he said the most romantic and icky-sloppy stuff about how much he loved her in his speech, and he whirled her around the dance floor as if she was a princess and he was Prince Charming and THEN he very cleverly chose to announce in public (well, in front of me and Mum and the people sitting on our table) so that April couldn’t go too goggle-eye-mad-as-a-mongoose with anger at him: ‘You know, I’ve been thinking. I don’t think Cupid really looks like a Cupid.’

  ‘Oh?’ said April. Even though she was having the Time of Her Life, she still managed to sound pretty scary and her eyes were and her lip curled stiffly.

  ‘Mmm,’ said Nick, keeping his voice light and airy. ‘I think it’s because there’s this huge beast of a cat who keeps coming into the surgery who’s called Cupid. His owner is a teenage girl who’s crazy about him and can’t see that the name doesn’t really suit him. Anyway, it doesn’t feel right to me, treating this bruiser of a cat and then coming home and having to call our lovely pup by the same name. Do you think we could call him something else?’

  It was pretty obvious from the puzzlement in April’s expression that she did not like the idea of a soppy teenage girl calling her cat the same name as their beloved pupsicle. And obviously a Cat Name is not good for a Dog Name. She thought for a moment and said, ‘Yes, well. I can see your point.’

  And so, thank goodness to gracious, from that day forward Cupid was no longer called by that stupid and frankly outrageously embarrassing name.

  No, he has a much more embarrassing name now.

  Custard.

  Still, embarrassing name or not, Custard was a gorgeous bundle of poochiness. And I got to know him a whole lot better after the wedding, as he came to stay with us while April and Nick were on honeymoon! It was , as it was like having my own new puppy all over again (except that we knew we would be giving him back in a couple of weeks, so Mum was not even one tiny bit stressed out about it like she had been when Honey was a pup).

  Honey loved having Custard around the place, although I did think it sometimes looked as if she was feeling slightly like Mum does when the holidays have been going on a bit and Mum starts to say things like, ‘Much as I love you, Summer . . . ’ and ‘The holidays are lovely, but it will be nice to get back to normal,’ and ‘I do miss a bit of a routine,’ and ‘Will you PLEASE shut up?’

  Custard would jump on top of Honey all the time and barge into her as if she was trying to knock her over, and if Honey had a stick she particularly wanted to have a good chew on, Custard would grab the other end of it and tug and tug. And if Cheese and Toast were being quiet and for once, Custard would pounce on them and make them hiss and spit and sometimes scratch Honey if she happened to be in the way.

  Honey was quite Understanding and Patient when Custard was being irritating like this and sometimes even seemed to like playing his games with him. But it was always Honey who got tired first, and that was when Custard would Resort to Ear-Biting.

  And of course, who in the wide world would like having their ears bitten? I know I certainly would not. And Honey did not either. In fact, she made her feelings Very Clear Indeed. She snapped back.

  I was shocked the first time that it happened. I had never seen Honey bite anything that was not food or a special dog toy. She had never bitten me or Molly or even Frank Gritter (who is possibly the only human I would actually myself consider biting, he is sooo annoying sometimes).

  When this ear-biting started, Mum began to get a bit with having Custard around the place too.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t love him,’ said Mum one morning. (Here we go, I thought.) ‘But I do feel sorry for poor Honey, and this house is not really big enough for two dogs to be constantly careering around the place. I have to say I will be glad when April and Nick are back.’

  I could see what Mum meant, but I was not that keen on the idea of Custard leaving us. And at the time I wasn’t that thrilled about April coming back either as I thought she would walk right back in and be her usual Bossy Boots self and go on and on about how amazing her honeymoon had been.

  However, when I complained about these things to Molly, she did point out the one majorly good thing about April coming back from honeymoon.

  ‘Now’s your chance, Summer,’ she said in a Conspiratorial Moment the day before April got back. ‘The bedroom is all yours!’

  And though I am now
ashamed to say it, I beamed and stuck both my thumbs up in a

  owever, I didn’t get to move into April’s room the day she got back from honeymoon. I was quite cross about this, but Mum said, ‘I’m afraid there is no way you can until April has cleared out all her stuff.’

  Now April had promised to do this straight away after coming back, but as with a lot of my sister’s promises, they never get carried out exactly To The Letter. In other words, April is very good at saying one thing and doing another.

  For a start, when she and Nick came back, they wanted to redecorate Nick’s flat, ‘And to make the job easier, we need to keep the rooms clear of stuff,’ April explained. ‘I cannot possibly take boxes of stuff back to the flat and leave them lying around while we decorate. It is bad enough having a puppy about the place.’

  What April did not explain, was that it would take her and Nick weeks and utterly weeks to do their redecorating. But at last and after an entire , the day came when April took the last box of her stuff away from the house and her room was empty.

  The minute she had left the building, I was on the phone to Molly.

  ‘She’s done it! She’s gone!’ I squealed. ‘The room is mine, all mine!’ I cackled in a type of a way.

  ‘I’m coming round right this minute!’ Molly squealed back.

  And she did.

  ‘Do you know what kind of a Look you want to go for?’ was her first question.

  We were standing in April’s room, which was by now completely empty apart from her bed and a chest of drawers and Cheese, who had taken to hiding in there from Toast and Honey (except there wasn’t anywhere really for him to hide, so he was just a cat in a room).