A Tiger Tale

by Holly Webb

  “If we were there we’d be able to see the sea, Lara, wouldn’t we?” Mum sighed.

  “Not if there was something in the way,” Lara muttered. “Like a wall. Or trees. Houses.”

  “Lara, don’t,” Dad said firmly. “Ten more minutes.”

  “That’s what you said last time,” Amy couldn’t help putting in. Dad seemed to think they wouldn’t notice. He’d been saying ten more minutes for ages. “Oh! Did you see? That was a sign for Sandmouth! Five, it said, five miles.”

  “There you are, then. Ten minutes,” Dad agreed smugly. “Like I said.”

  “It’s pink!” Amy stared at the cottage as they pulled up outside.

  Her mother nodded, a little doubtfully. “When they said it was called Shrimp Cottage, I didn’t realize it would be painted shrimp pink. It’s a bit bright…”

  Amy smiled. “I like it.” The cottage was the same colour as pink candy shrimps, the ones on the penny sweets shelf at the sweetshop they went to after school sometimes. She loved those. She always had to save one for Choc, though, otherwise he knew she’d had them – he had a nose like a sniffer dog. If she didn’t give him a shrimp, he’d sit there and howl at her until she said she was sorry.

  Amy had to be very careful what she fed him. Choc didn’t only have eyes like Maltesers, he’d happily wolf down half a packet of them too, and dogs weren’t supposed to have chocolate; it was really bad for their insides. Choc just didn’t seem to think so. Amy could understand why – after all, they had named him Chocolate, so why couldn’t he eat it?

  Mum and Amy and Lara had made an emergency appointment at the vet’s last Christmas, after they’d come down in the morning and found that Choc had eaten all the chocolate Christmas decorations. And the foil, unless he’d carefully taken it off and binned it. He must have climbed on the arm of the sofa to reach the top ones, Amy reckoned.

  The vet had said he thought Choc would be fine, he’d probably just be really sick, because milk chocolate wasn’t as bad as the dark kind. But Choc hadn’t even burped. He came home from the vet’s sulking like he always did (he would duck right down in the car and try to dig his claws into the floor of his car crate if they even drove past). Then when they got in the house, he whisked past Mum, who was trying to head him off into the kitchen – she would rather he was sick on a tiled floor – and back into the living room to see if the tree had grown any more chocolate. It hadn’t, so he had a peppermint candy cane instead.

  Choc was whining in his car crate now. He knew they’d stopped, and he couldn’t stand being shut up in the boot for much longer.

  “We’d better get him out.” Dad took his seat belt off and stretched wearily. “Poor dog sounds as though he’s got his legs crossed. Why don’t you girls take him for a quick run round that patch of grass over there? He can have a proper walk later, once we’ve unpacked. I need to go and pick up the keys from the cottage next door.”

  “Can’t we go to the beach?” Amy asked hopefully, but Dad was already making for the next-door cottage.

  The beach was so close – just down a long flight of stone steps on the other side of the road. Amy could hear the sea, and see it. It was almost blue. Not blue like on a postcard, where the sea was a shiny jewel colour. More of a greenish, brownish, blueish thing, heaving up and down like a blanket someone was shaking. She wanted to go and stand at the edge of it. Dip her toes in it. And she could tell Choc wanted to do the same. His ears were blowing in the sea-smelling breeze, and he kept looking up at her hopefully. Every time they went to the park, he tried to jump in the duck pond, and this was the biggest duck pond he’d ever seen. Amy crouched down next to him. “It doesn’t have enormous ducks to match,” she murmured, running her fingers down the curls of his ears. “But there might be fish, I suppose,” she added doubtfully. “Oh, and seagulls. But they look mean. I’d leave them alone.”

  Choc quivered with excitement. He was quite well trained – Dad had taken him to classes – so he stayed sitting, but he was sitting and leaning forward about as much as he possibly could without falling over. His nose was stretched out towards those steps. It didn’t help that Lara was dancing up and down on the edge of the pavement, trying to get a better view of the sea. Her little sister wasn’t as well trained as Choc, Amy thought, grinning to herself. She needed a lead more than he did.

  Dad was coming back now, clutching a set of keys and a folder. Mum had been leaning against the front of the car, having a drink of water, but now she turned to look out at the sea. “Isn’t it lovely?” she murmured. “We’ll go down for a walk later, you two. Let’s just get settled in first.”

  As Dad unlocked the door, the two girls raced in. There was something fascinating about the cottage – just because it was so different to home. Their house was like all the others in the street, a semi, painted white, with a square of garden at the front and a long thin strip at the back. Over the fence at the end of their back garden was another garden, and a whole street that mirrored theirs. If Amy went to tea with a friend who lived anywhere near, she pretty much knew where all the rooms were without asking. Although sometimes the stairs were on the wrong side of the hallway, which just looked weird.

  Here, it was different. Shrimp Cottage was squashed up between two other houses, and neither of them matched. Inside, it opened up a little, somehow getting wider at the back, like a little burrow. Tunnels opened out here and there. The girls ran into a living room with fat, sagging sofas and a small stove in the fireplace, then a kitchen with a long wooden table, and last, a little glass sunroom full of wicker chairs, and one huge spider plant that seemed to be trying to take over the world.

  A twisting wooden staircase led up to the bedrooms. A huge one for their parents, with a great big bed – Mum would be pleased. She said she needed a bed and a half now. Then there was a pretty blue-and-white room with striped wallpaper and fussy patchwork bedcovers.

  “You can have this one,” Amy said quickly to Lara, even though there was a view of the sea. It looked wonderful from the high window, much bluer somehow, with late afternoon sun streaming golden across it. She loved the wide window sill too. But perhaps the other room would have an even better view, and this one was just too frilly.

  Mum had struggled up the stairs behind them with an armful of Lara’s soft toys. “There’s only one room, girls. We did say, don’t you remember? We booked late; with the baby, everything was a bit disorganized. I wasn’t sure I was up to going away, and then there weren’t many places that would take Choc as well. The cottage is a bit small, but we’ll manage.”

  Amy gaped at her. “One room? You mean I have to share with Lara?”

  “I’m having this bed!” Lara bounced on to the bed by the window, seizing her mermaid doll from Mum. She sat cross-legged on the bed, clutching the doll and smirking at Amy.

  “But Mum…” Amy gulped. She remembered now, but it hadn’t seemed to matter that much a few weeks before. She’d been so excited about going on holiday that she’d forgotten it meant a whole week in the same bedroom as Lara. “She talks in her sleep!”

  Her mum sighed and eased herself down on to the other bed. Amy’s bed. “I know. But not very often.”

  “And she sleepwalks.” Amy slumped down next to Mum on the bed. Her bed now. “I’ll wake up and she’ll be standing next to me looking all spooky. It makes me go shivery when she does that!”

  Lara sniggered and made a ghostly, toothy face at Amy.

  Amy lay backwards, gazing up at the ceiling. She could hear paws scrabbling on the wooden stairs – Choc was coming to see where they’d got to.

  Choc peered whiskerily round the bedroom door and flapped his ears happily at Amy and Lara.

  Amy laughed. He had his red fleece blanket in his teeth, the one that usually lined his basket at home. It had been in the dog crate with him, to make him feel better about the journey. Now he gazed lovingly at Amy’s mum, doing his
best big-eyed look. The one that said You know I am clean, loving and perfectly house-trained…

  “Where’s Choc sleeping?” Amy asked thoughtfully.

  “In the kitchen, like he does at home.” Her mum sounded surprised.

  “Couldn’t he sleep up here with us? As a holiday treat?” She turned over, squinting hopefully up at Mum. She’d tried asking for Choc in her room before, but Mum hadn’t liked the idea. If it was just for the holidays, though… She’d rather share a room with Choc than Lara, any day. But she’d settle for both.

  Lara bounced up and down on her bed excitedly. “Yes, yes! Please, Mum!”

  Choc danced over to her, dropping his blanket and licking her bare toes lovingly.

  Lara pulled her feet back up on to the bed with a squealing giggle, and Amy laughed too.

  “Well, I suppose…” her mum started to say, smiling at them all, and Amy hugged her. (Carefully.)

  “Yes! Thanks, Mum!”

  “I want him on my bed!” Lara crouched down next to Choc, and he licked her ear.

  “He can choose,” Amy said hurriedly. She didn’t want Mum changing her mind because they were squabbling.

  “Girls, you do realize…” Mum trailed off, and then started getting up, as if she’d changed her mind about what she was going to say.

  “What?” Amy bounced up to help pull. “What is it?”

  “Thank you, sweetheart.” Mum looked down at her worriedly. “When the new baby comes – it’ll need somewhere to sleep.”

  “Won’t the baby go in your room? In the Moses basket?” Amy asked slowly.

  “Maybe for the first few weeks,” her mum agreed. “But we need to get the room ready. Put the cot somewhere.”

  Lara looked up at her and frowned. “Somewhere where?”

  “The smallest room. Your room, Lara,” Mum said gently. “Amy’s room is really big. There’s room for both of you.”

  “There isn’t!” Amy shook her head, her eyes panicky. There just wasn’t!

  Her lovely bedroom. Full of Lara. How was there going to be any room left for her?

  HOLLY has always loved animals. As a child, she had two dogs, a cat, and at one point, nine gerbils (an accident). Holly’s other love is books. Holly now lives in Reading with her husband, three sons and a very spoilt cat.

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  First published in the UK by Scholastic Ltd, 2014

  This electronic edition published by Scholastic Ltd, 2014

  Text copyright © Holly Webb, 2014

  Illustration copyright © Catherine Rayner, 2014

  The rights of Holly Webb and Catherine Rayner to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work have been asserted by them.

  Cover illustration copyright © Catherine Rayner, 2014

  eISBN 978 1407 14725 3

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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