Dear Scarlett (5 page)

It's dark when I prod Ellie awake.

“Are you ready for this?” I ask.

“Totally,” she says, in a way that doesn't convince me.

We slip down the stairs and into the kitchen. I've got Dad's tools in an old shoulder bag and I slip my feet into Mum's slightly big flowery wellies.

I'm taking both my parents on this trip but I still feel absolutely terrified.

We need Syd's pushchair for the job, but it's buried under a pile of junk in the hall. Ellie lifts up the badminton set, and a load of marbles skiddle
across the floor.

We freeze.

There's a creak from Mum's room. I hold my breath as she comes out on to the landing and goes into the bathroom.

We hear her wash her hands, then without even looking down the stairs, she goes back to bed, shutting the bedroom door behind her.

I breathe again.

This time, Ellie pulls the pushchair while I take the blankets off the heap and lay them on the floor, so that anything that escapes will fall silently.

Outside, there's a sliver of moon lighting our way. I can see pretty well in the dark, but Ellie's hopeless and she has to watch the reflective strip on Mum's wellies to work out where she's going.

The footpath seems lumpier by moonlight, and longer, and Syd's rubbish pushchair weighs a ton.

By the time we reach the edge of town, there's a faint glimmer of light over the sea.

“Is that dawn?” asks Ellie.

“Suppose so.”

“I've never seen dawn,” she says. “That's quite exciting.”

I'm amazed by the things that Ellie finds exciting.

The white walls of the zoo glow faintly, but otherwise everything's in a grainy black and white.

I walk up to the main gate.

“Why have you stopped?” hisses Ellie. “I'm scared, Scarlett. Suppose someone sees us.”

“Don't worry, it'll be fine,” I say, wishing I believed it.

To our left, there's an office building with alarms and shiny glass doors, but the door for the general public is just a big padlock and a gate.

I take Dad's tools out of my bag and start to fiddle with the padlock.

“What are you doing?” she hisses.

“Unlocking it, how else are we supposed to get in?”

I wriggle the long pick inside the lock, but nothing happens.

“What are you doing now?”

“Still trying to unlock it.”

I try all the picks and the bump key and then a long, hooked thing that's in a different part of the pouch.

Ping
.

“I've done it! We're in.”

But we aren't, because although we're through the outer gate, I've forgotten about the turnstiles inside. They're set on letting people out, or letting people with pound coins in, and I haven't got a pound coin. I stare at them for a minute, there's no lock, no way to break in. You can't climb under them.

“Now what?” says Ellie, measuring herself against the turnstile. It stops just below her chin.

I put one hand on top and vault over. Ellie stands outside with the pushchair, looking confused.

“Jump over,” I say.

“I can't, Scarlett, it's too high.”

“You've got to, there's no other way – I can't unlock them.”

There's this silence, and I can hear her cagoule rustling.

“Come on, Ellie, give it a go.”

“Ah – there we are,” she says. “I've found a pound in my pocket.”

She slots the coin into the turnstile, and it swings round, allowing her through, holding the pushchair above her head.

“There,” she says. “Now what?”

The zoo's creepy in the early morning. Things stamp up and down in their pens, growling, while other things chirrup and whoop. It's too dark to see in properly, so we can only guess at what's going on. We have to walk through this almost completely black tunnel to the rest of the zoo. It's lined with cages, and I can sense animals racing up and down the bars.

“Whooooooohoooooo,” something howls to the left.

“Yikes,” squeals Ellie.

Something else lets out a scream like a banshee.

“Monkey?” she asks, her voice shaking.

“Hoo hoo hoo,” laughs something large and dark. I can feel the wind as it leaps along the bars of a big pen.

This time I jump.

We creep through the dark patch. I can't see anything; my eyeballs are practically popping out, I'm trying so hard. But I can certainly hear, and smell, and that smell is pretty rough – poo, wee and animal bad breath.

It's hot down here too, so when we break out of the dark into the main part of the zoo, the air seems cool and fragrant.

“Whoa,” says Ellie.

“Whoa,” I agree.

We wheel the pushchair round past the sleeping panda, and the flamingos, who are doing what flamingos do in the mornings, until we reach the butterfly house. It looks horribly dark.

“You go first,” says Ellie.

So I push open the flaps and run past all the sleeping butterflies, the creeping frogs and the floppy tendrils that brush my face.

“Ugh,” says Ellie behind me. “That went right round my neck.”

But it's not far to the end of the butterfly house, and we break out into the fresh air, which is when I suddenly feel really sick.

Penguins stink.

Few things can possibly smell as bad as a penguin – maybe a wheelie bin, or the boys’ toilets at school – but I don’t believe it. I think when we normally see them at a zoo or somewhere, someone’s been round with a broom and a high-powered hose, because at five o’clock in the morning, they’re toxic.

“Whew,” says Ellie.

I nearly throw up last night’s supper, but swallow, and step over the side of the penguin enclosure as if I was used to mucking out fish-eating birds on a daily basis.

The penguins stand in their little pool, staring at me.

“Here, little penguin,” I say to the smallest. He steps towards me, and I notice that he’s looking at my hand as if it’s a fish.

We should have brought gloves.

“Here,” says Ellie. “Try this.” She takes the lid from a dustbin that’s been left in the corner of their pen. A new smell, like a fishmonger’s mixed with boys’ toilets and drains, wafts into the still, morning air. Ellie hands me a pair of thick orange rubber gloves. Breathing only through my mouth, I reach in and take something that might once have been a sardine. I throw it on the ground.

The little penguin gobbles it up and the two bigger penguins move in for a closer look.

“Quick,” says Ellie, grabbing the biggest one from behind. It squawks, poos and snaps at her. I hold its beak shut, while Ellie lifts it up, and between us, we carry it over to Syd’s pushchair, and using all of Syd’s straps, pin it until it stops struggling.

“One down, two to go.”

“But how are we going to carry them?” she asks.

The little penguin fits my sweatshirt surprisingly
well, and Ellie’s cagoule does a neat job of containing the other large one. I fill my bag with putrid bits of fish, take the pushchair and the small penguin while Ellie takes the other big one, and it’s all fine until we reach the turnstiles.

It’s not that we can’t walk out through the turnstiles, they work perfectly well when you’re trying to get out; it’s just that they aren’t big enough for a pushchair. Or a child and a penguin, or a child and a pushchair and a penguin.

It’s one of those chicken, fox, slug, lettuce crossing the river things. I really don’t know what to do first. The idea of letting a penguin loose on the streets of Dampmouth Bay makes my blood run cold.

Rats.

Perhaps we’re mad, completely bonkers, if we think we can do this. Perhaps we should have gone to Amnesty International or the World Wildlife Fund or someone like that.

Then Ellie has an almost brilliant idea.

“Why don’t they just walk through the turnstiles themselves – either one at a time, or all three at once?”

I gaze at the penguins. They’ve been very
accommodating so far; perhaps they’d like nothing better than a walk through a turnstile. “Maybe if you wave a sardine at them.”

Ellie goes through first, and I slot the three penguins into the turnstile. They stop and look up at me hopefully.

“Go on,” I say to them. “Freedom is that way.” I point out of the zoo, through the turnstile, but the penguins just snap at my hand as if it was battered cod.

“Hand me some fish,” says Ellie.

I reach into the bag and something slimy slips into my fingers.

“Ugh,” I say.

“Ugh,” says Ellie, when I hand it to her.

I fold up the pushchair and use it to block the back of the turnstile, so that the penguins can’t suddenly decide they want to go back to their miserable pond.

“Here, pengy, pengy, here’s some lovely stinky fish,” says Ellie from the other side.

Like people watching tennis, all three penguins turn in her direction but they don’t move.

“Come on, pretty pengies, come to Auntie Ellie.”

They still don’t move. It’s perfectly true that
you can’t expect a creature born to live in the wide cold Antarctic to understand that when you push against this particular iron bar it rolls forward and lets you through.

I nudge the turnstile and it knocks into the big penguin at the back. He shuffles forward into the smaller penguin, who stamps on the little penguin. They all move forward a nanometre.

“S’working,” says Ellie. “Crikey,” she says. “Look at that.” She points to the sky. She’s right, everything’s turning from black and white to colour, like someone’s turned on a switch. Morning won’t be long.

The penguins shuffle through the turnstile and I jam myself in the slot behind them, clutching the folded pushchair that now whiffs of pilchard.

“Ow!” Ellie yowls. “More fish, Scarlett, quick.”

“I can’t move, not until the penguins move.”

I push a little harder, and the turnstile gives way, throwing me out of the gate on to the pavement. The penguins surround Ellie; they’re studying her, expecting more fish. Perhaps they even think she is a fish, a pale blue grubby fish with glasses.

She looks awesome, and I don’t mean in a good way. Her clothes are coated with silver fish scales
and blood, suggesting a mermaid that’s been caught in a hideous seaside accident, and I can’t believe she can see anything through her
steamed-up
glasses. The penguins look pretty special too: Ellie’s cagoule fits the middle one quite well, although something’s going on with the hood. The little one’s managed to smear a fishy slick all down the front of my sweatshirt, much like Syd after breakfast. The big one’s eyeing the builder’s yard next door, wondering whether to eat Ellie first, or dive into a pile of sand.

They all decide to eat Ellie first.

“Do something!” she yelps.

I fumble in my bag. There’s practically nothing left, just some slime and crunchy bits. Tails? I hold the bag upside down, and a few flakes land on the concrete. The penguins take their eyes off Ellie and scrabble to pick up the fish.

“Quick!” I yell. “Get them!” The big one gets right down on his belly and snuffles at the concrete, so we grab him and truss him in the pushchair.

I swoop on the baby, and Ellie pins the
middle-sized
one down.

The penguins don’t seem to be a bit bothered.

There’s another thing I’ve discovered about penguins this morning, and that is that they’re heavy.

It takes us about a year to get back to the watercress beds. I expect Syd’s nearly awake by now,

“Come on, Ellie,” I say, looking back. She’s red in the face, but the penguin looks quite comfy.

The other thing with the penguins is that they’re slippery, which makes them hard to hold on to; it looks like fur on the outside, but it isn’t, it’s feathers, because after all, they are birds.

We struggle up over the stile, and at last I can see
the big tank behind the watercress beds.

So, I think, can my penguins.

The little one’s really wriggling now. “Stop it!” I say, tying the arms of the sweatshirt around him for the millionth time. “Stop it – I’m not doing this for fun, you know, it’s for your own good.”

He looks up at me and I could swear he smirks.

The last fifteen metres is grim. The pushchair gets stuck in every rut, my hair keeps falling over my eyes, my nose is itching, I’m hot and everything smells awful.

I break it down into paces.
One two three four, one two three four
. Past the airfield control tower.

One two three four, one
…

Yay! The watercress beds at last.

I undo the straps on the pushchair and lift the big penguin out, avoiding his beak.

“Well, go on, then,” says Ellie, taking the cagoule off the middle one, and untying the sweatshirt from the little one. “Have a swim.”

I splash my hand in the water.

The penguins stand there watching me like I’m a telly.

“Perhaps they can’t swim?” I say.

“All penguins can swim, like fish, of course they can.” But I can tell from Ellie’s voice that she’s not so sure.

I reach into the bag. There are some scraps, so I empty it over the tank, and like synchronised swimmers, all three dive in.

It’s amazing.

Fantastic.

Awesome.

“Whoa,” says Ellie.

“Whoa, whoa,” I say.

The penguins plunge around each other, like swallows diving. The water’s deep here, but
glass-clear
, so I can see them at the bottom, darting down and swooping up. I can’t tell, because penguins don’t really do facial expressions, but I’m sure they’re smiling.

The big one swoops up on to the concrete side of the tank, waddles out and dives back in, sliding past the other two to pop out on the far side.

“Yay!” squeals Ellie.

“We did it,” I say.

“We made a difference,” she says.

Bong
, says the town hall clock.
Bong bong bong bong bong
.

“Argh,” I say, and dragging the pushchair across the garden, we wave goodbye to the penguins and creep back inside.