“But they would really love it,” I heard Mum saying to him in the kitchen. “And it’s only a borrow. It’s not actually theirs. We can give it back in a week.”
“OK,” said Dad.
“OK,” said Mum. “You can look after the school hamster for half term.”
Iggy did a little hamster dance around the sitting room, with her paws up by her cheeks and her teeth sticking out. She looked exactly like one. It gave everyone the giggles.
On Friday it was time to take Gruffles to our house. We watched him through the bars of his cage in the classroom. He was sleeping in his yellow house, all curled up into a little ball with his nose in his bottom. He was breathing really fast and his eyes were very shut.
“He’s always doing that,” said Iggy.
“What?” I said.
“Sleeping. He sleeps all day at school and we get told off when we try and wake him up.”
“That’s because he’s nocturnal,” Mum said.
Nocturnal is when you like to be awake at night and asleep in the morning.
“A bit like Dad,” Iggy said.
“Yes, sometimes,” said Mum.
Gruffles was the nicest hamster ever. He was a sort of peachy brown with a white splodge on his back and a smaller white splodge on his head. His nose was the smallest, pinkest, twitchiest nose I have ever seen. His eyes were like tiny ink drops, watery black.
“He can’t see very well,” Mum said.
“How do you know,” said Iggy, waving at him.
“Because I know. Hamsters have bad eyesight, but they’re very good at smelling and listening.”
“OK,” said Iggy, and she whispered to Gruffles, “I’ll show you my special pens later. They smell of toothpaste and bubble gum and sun cream. You’ll like them.”
We put Gruffles’s cage on the landing between mine and Iggy’s rooms. Iggy wanted him in her room (“Because he’s my class hamster”) but Mum said it was out of the question. “He’ll keep you awake at night with all his scuttling about,’ she said.
“And your room will smell of wee,” said Dad.
“Ewww!” said Iggy. “Gross!”
“And poo,” Dad said, and she stuck her tongue out at him.
It was really fun having Gruffles. It was all Iggy and me wanted to do. Mum and Dad kept asking us if we wanted to go swimming, or shopping, or have a friend round for tea, but we didn’t.
Every night we listened to him rattling along on his little wheel and digging about in his sawdust.
Every morning we woke up extra early and we got the cage and took it into one of our rooms. We shut the door and sat in front of each other with our legs stretched out and our feet touching, and we took Gruffles out and put him in the middle between us. Our legs made a kind of a wall that he couldn’t get over in a hurry. Then we took it in turns to pick him up and give him a cuddle. He was soft and blinking and trembly.
“I love him,” Iggy said. “I just love love love him,” and she gave him a tiny kiss on his tiny nose.
Gruffles did scuttling about and sniffing and twitching. His whiskers were always moving and his feet were tiny and naily and sharp. He was perfect in every way.
We didn’t want to think about giving him back.
On the last day of half term, I got up and went to Gruffles’s cage. It was Iggy’s turn to have him in her room. I was yawning and stretching and walking, and then I stopped dead still in the middle of the landing because I’d just seen something that wasn’t right.
The door to Gruffles’s cage was open.
I said his name, “Gruffles?” just in case he was there and he would hear me.
I peeked into his house. There was lots of ripped up tissue and sawdust and droppings, but there wasn’t a ball of curled up breathing hamster.
“Oh no,” I said.
Just then, Iggy came out of her room. “What?” she said.
I told her. “Gruffles is gone!”
Iggy gasped and we both looked around the floor for a scuttling hamster.
“He could be anywhere,” I said.
“I know,” said Iggy. “We’ll never find him!”
We searched for ages, in the bookshelf, behind the piano, in the laundry basket, under our beds.
“Gruffles,” we whispered. “Come out wherever you are.”
“What’s going on?” Dad said. He was on his way downstairs to make coffee.
“We’re looking for Gruffles,” I said.
Dad said, “Oh,” and carried on going. Then he stopped. “What do you mean, you’re looking for him?” he said.
Iggy didn’t say anything. She bit her lip and stood with her toes together and played with her hands.
“We can’t find him,” I said, and my voice was a bit croaky because I was scared of getting told off. “He’s escaped.”
Dad was very awake suddenly. “He can’t have done,” he said. Dad went to have a look in the cage. “Did you leave the door open?” he said.
Iggy shrugged and pulled a face and wouldn’t
look at him.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t remember.”
“Brilliant,” said Dad. “B-rilliant.”
“What’s brilliant?” said Mum, smiling and expecting good news.
“They’ve lost the school hamster,” Dad said. “The school hamster is at large.”
“At large?” said Iggy? “He’s like that big,” and she put her hands apart to show how not-large Gruffles was.
“No,” said Dad. “He’s loose, he’s free, he’s wandering about. He’s missing.”
“What are we going to tell Rwaida?” I said. I was starting to really worry about that.
“We’re not going to tell her anything,” said Mum. “We are going to find it.”
“It?” said Iggy. “It? Gruffles is a he.”
“Then we’re going to find him,” said Mum. “There is no way we are losing a hamster that doesn’t belong to us. It is not happening.”
“It just did,” said Dad.
“Not helpful,” Mum said.
We looked all day. We put hamster food in corners and we listened carefully for scuttling and we looked in places only a hamster could squeeze into.
Iggy was a rubbish searcher. She kept wandering off and pretending to look in her room.
Dad said, “Why isn’t she helping? It’s her responsibility.”
Mum said, “Just leave her.”
Gruffles was nowhere. “What are we going to do?” I said.
Dad pulled a face and shook his head. Mum closed her eyes and sighed. Iggy shrugged again.
I said, “Will we have to own up?” I didn’t want to go into school in the morning and say we’d lost him. I was very scared about doing that.
“Or we could get another hamster and replace it and not tell anybody,” said Dad.
“Bad idea,” said Mum.
“Of course it is,” said Dad.
Iggy didn’t say anything.
“Maybe he’ll just come back in the night while we’re sleeping,” I said. “Maybe one of us should stay up all night and watch for him.”
“I will,” said Iggy.
“No you won’t,” said Dad.
At bedtime I lay and listened to the sound of Gruffles not rattling around on his little wheel and not digging about in his sawdust. It was very quiet. Missing hamster quiet.
And then I heard a sound.
The sound was Iggy. She was talking really quietly in a whisper. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but I could hear her through the wall.
“Who are you talking to?” I said.
“No one,” said Iggy.
She was quiet for a bit, but then I heard her again. It was her special, extra gentle voice. The voice she used for talking to teddies and babies and kittens and puppies. And hamsters.
I got out of bed and crept along the landing so Iggy wouldn’t hear me. I put my eye to the crack of her door like a proper spy.
She was sitting on her bed with a
shoebox. She had her hands in it. She was smiling at it. Then she lifted something out of it.
Gruffles.
She kissed his nose and gave him her best smile.
“Iggy!” I said.
Iggy jumped.
She dropped the hamster.
Gruffles scuttled under her bed.
We got down on the floor to look for him.
“You stole Gruffles,” I said.
“I didn’t mean to,” she said.
“You can’t steal him,” I said.
“I don’t want to give him back,” she said. “I love him!”
“I love him too,” I said. “I don’t want to give him back either. But we can’t steal him. We’ll be in big trouble.”
“I can’t own up now,” Iggy said. “Everyone searched all day. I’m in big trouble anyway.”
“Where is he?” I said. “Can you see him?”
Iggy wriggled a bit further under the bed. “He’s here,” she said, and she giggled. “He’s reading one of my magazines.”
“We mustn’t let him get away,” I said. “Don’t make any sudden movements.”
We got closer to Gruffles really slowly. He seemed quite happy under the bed. He didn’t seem too worried about us creeping up on him.
When we were really close, I reached out and grabbed him.
“Gotcha!” I said, and Iggy squealed with excitement.
“What’s going on up there?” Mum called up the stairs.
“Nothing!” we said at the same time.
“Don’t make me come up!” she said.
“We won’t,” I said back, and Iggy put her hand over her mouth to stop doing any more squealing.
“Let’s pretend he came back on his own,” I said. “I won’t tell.”
“Promise?” said Iggy.
“Promise.”
“OK,” she whispered. “You do it,” and she gave me the shoebox she’d hidden Gruffles in. “I don’t want that any more either,” she said.
I crept out on to the landing where Gruffles’s cage was glinting in the dark. I had him in a firm grip because I definitely did not want to drop him now and let him escape for real. I put him back in his cage and I shut the door properly, and then I hid the shoebox in the laundry basket and went to bed.
“I did it,” I said to Iggy through the wall.
“OK,” she said back.
I fell asleep listening to Gruffles rattling and digging just like normal.
In the morning, Iggy and me acted all surprised. “He’s back!” we shouted, and we rushed to tell Mum and Dad and we danced about the kitchen.
“He came back all by himself,” Iggy said.
“All by himself?” Mum said, and I said, “Yes, isn’t he clever?”
Dad said Gruffles was more than clever. He was actually a genius. “Not only did he find his way home,” he said, “but he also managed to shut the door behind him. That is a special hamster.”
“We know he’s special,” Iggy said. “That’s why we love him.”
We ate breakfast, and everyone was happy and relieved because the school hamster wasn’t missing after all and nobody was going to be in trouble.
I went upstairs and made my bed and took my pyjamas to the laundry basket.
It was empty.
No laundry.
No shoebox.
That meant Mum or Dad must have found it and must have known. But they never said.
And even though Iggy and me asked and asked, Gruffles never came to stay with us again.
About the author
Jenny Valentine moved house every two years when she was growing up. She worked in a wholefood shop in Primrose Hill for fifteen years where she met many extraordinary people and sold more organic loaves than there are words in her first novel, Finding Violet Park, which won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize. The Iggy and Me books are her first titles for younger readers.
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Also by Jenny Valentine
Iggy and Me
Copyright
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins
Children’s Books in 2010
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HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
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FIRST EDITION
Text copyright © Jenny Valentine 2010
Illustrations © Joe Berger 2010
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identified as the author and the illustrator of this work.
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EPub Edition © APRIL 2010 ISBN: 978-0-007-38103-6
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Iggy and Me and the Happy Birthday Page 5
