Dear Scarlett (6 page)

Glowing with good deeds, we sneak up the stairs to my room. Everything is just as we left it and although there’s light coming through the curtains, Syd seems to be asleep.

“What are we going to do with these?” Ellie pulls off her stinky pale blue jeans.

I have the brilliant idea of jamming them in a bin liner. I stick mine in there too and then stuff it under my bed. “We’ll wait for Mum to go out and put them in the washing machine later.”

Ellie goes to the bathroom and I wait by the window, watching the tank. There isn’t much to
see, but every now and again a black head bobs up.

I feel kind of warm and right. Here they are, the penguins, free and happy, able to swim deep in the tank and eat all the shrimps and crayfish that lurk at the bottom. We’ve been good – I’ve been good. I’ve used Dad’s tools in the right way. Tools and a little determination.

“Yes,” I say out loud. “Yes, I’ve done the right thing, Dad – I’ve done what you’d have done.”

I’m practically popping with the feeling of good things.

“Yes,” I say one more time.

The big penguin clambers out of the tank and stands on the side. He’s not looking at the big tank this time, he’s eyeing the watercress beds themselves; twelve green strips of fresh young watercress.

He waddles down the ramp from the tank towards the nearest bed and flops into the water. It’s less than ten centimetres deep, but he turns and wallows, and scratches his back in the little plants, leaving a scar right across the bed.

“No, don’t do that,” I mutter.

He pushes off from the side and swings himself right across the bed, mowing a dark stain.

The penguin throws himself back on to the bank
and pads up towards the big tank again.

Phew, but I’m thinking about that dustbin full of fish. Do they eat one of those every day? Every week? Every hour?

Where are we going to find enough fish?

Ellie joins me at the window. “What’s that big brown patch on the end watercress bed?” she asks.

“The big one got out of the tank and tried the beds, but he went back in, not too much damage, not really. They still look really happy,” I say. “It’s brilliant.” Although my happy feeling has a touch of grey creeping in around the edges.

“Yes,” says Ellie. “It’s fantastic.” But she sounds flat as she says it.

“Yeah,” I say, still staring from the window.

“Scarlett?”

“Yes?”

“What happens if they won’t stay in the tank?”

“Aaaaaaaarhghghghghghghg!”

It’s Mum, and her scream brings me wide awake. I must have fallen asleep on my bed because the sun’s streaming in through the window and I can hear Syd yelping in the garden in an I’ve-
been-awake
-for-ages kind of a way.

“What?” Ellie leaps out of bed.

I stay where I am. I think I can guess exactly what’s happened.

“Oh, Scarlett, look.”

Ellie pulls back the curtains so that there’s no way I can’t see what’s happened.

The twelve green watercress beds have now become twelve muddy pools surrounded by concrete. And there’s no sign of the penguins.

“Whoa,” I say. “Where have they gone?”

“There.” Ellie points straight down.

The three penguins lie in what’s left of Syd’s paddling pool, wallowing in the mud, tearing chunks of plastic from the sides. One of them’s got Mum’s flowery wellies in his mouth.

“Whoops,” says Ellie.

A string of much ruder words go through my head.

“Scarlett!?” Mum yells up the stairs.

“I’m dead,” I say to Ellie, stepping out on to the landing.

“Scarlett – has this got anything to do with you?”

For a moment I consider lying, but then I realise that it’s wrong to lie, and more importantly, that the fishy, slimy pushchair is still standing round the back of the house like a huge clue.

Rats.

“Um,” I say, and Mum beckons me down. She’s already got the phone in one hand and she’s flicking through the directory with the other.

Syd’s inside, his face pressed to the kitchen
window, watching the penguins.

“’Engy, art-lett, ’engy,” he says, looking about as excited as it’s possible to look.

“Blast,” says Mum. “They’re not there yet.”

“Who?”

“The zoo, no one’s answering the phone. I’ll have to ring Derek.”

Rats.

“Derek?” says Mum. “There are three penguins in Syd’s paddling pool, the zoo hasn’t opened yet, and they’re tearing the pool apart. We need help.” She listens to the phone again. “I don’t know how they got there.” She stares at me, very hard. “No – but they seem to think this is home, they’re quite big, and sort of savage, no, not like a tiger – please, come quick – oh, and, Derek, buy some fish on the way, yes, from anywhere, the corner shop’ll do – no – I’m sure they’ll manage the bones, they don’t seem to have had any trouble eating the watering can.”

Mum slams down the phone, turns to me and says, “Explain.”

There’s a fire engine parked in the middle of the watercress beds. It’s between the Dampmouth Bay Radio van, and Uncle Derek’s police car. Mr Hammond, the man who owns the watercress beds, is weeping into a microphone, while a cameraman films the devastation. Six zoo keepers stalk the little penguin with a large net, but he’s happy leaping from the tank into the beds and back again.

They came with a bath load of fish; Uncle Derek came with six boil-in-the-bag kippers and a packet of fish fingers.

The firemen look overdressed for the weather,
but I suppose they’re here because they’ve got big wellies, and yellow waterproofs that don’t mind the smell of fish.

Ellie and I offered to catch the little penguin with the cagoule and a sardine, but everyone just glared at us.

I think we’ve learned a lot about penguin behaviour this morning, I bet none of that lot have coaxed a penguin through a turnstile. We’re experts.

They let us visit the two larger ones, who are in a kind of pod, trailer thing.

“They’re very hungry,” says a woman who seems to be an official penguin feeder.

“Oh,” I say, thinking about the sticklebacks and minnows they’ve had in the tank. “Do they eat a lot?”

“Each penguin eats about three kilos of fish per day, often more.”

Ellie raises her eyebrows. “So how long would they have survived here?”

The woman shrugs. “A few hours? Your guess is as good as mine.”

A few hours? That explains why they didn’t stay in the big tank. But there can’t have been much to eat in the watercress beds, not unless they’d
become vegetarians overnight. They must have been starving.

Then there’s a load of shouting, and the little penguin takes a passing snap at Syd’s paddling pool and races into the house through the kitchen door.

“Yeouwwwwww!” That’s Houdini the cat. The penguin doesn’t make any sound at all. Perhaps he’s examining our kitchen, or maybe he’s eaten Houdini. Cat vs Penguin. Would Houdini even recognise that the penguin’s a bird?

The penguin doesn’t come out, but then, nor does the cat.

The fish-feeding woman starts towards the back door, and so do six firemen, five zoo keepers and Uncle Derek. As they cram in through the door, Houdini slips through their legs like a small stegosaurus, the fur on his back standing up in spikes. Close behind, the penguin tries to do the same thing, but he’s four times the size, slow and not as clever as the cat. He’s grabbed by a fireman.

“Gotcha!” the man shouts before the penguin bites him hard on the hand. “Ow!” And for a second the penguin’s free again, before a zoo keeper throws a net over his head and the great escape is stopped dead in its tracks.

More cars have arrived at the watercress beds: WCTV, the RSPCA and three unmarked vans with camera equipment. Uncle Derek’s turned into a parking warden, and Mum’s standing outside the house with an expression of apocalyptic rage on her face.

The TV people film us and Mum and the penguins.

The zoo people pack the last penguin into the trailer.

“Bye, ’engy,” says Syd.

I can’t actually speak. I was so sure we were doing the right thing, and it’s all ended like this.

The first thing we have to do is apologise to Mr Hammond.

“Sorry,” I say. “I’m really sorry.”

“Yes, so am I,” says Ellie.

Mr Hammond looks devastated and Uncle Derek leads us back into the house.

He doesn’t need to say anything to us.

We got the message.

Uncle Derek and Mum sit on one side of the table. Ellie and I sit on the other.

Syd’s drawing on the back of the kitchen door
with Mum’s lipstick, but Mum’s obviously not going to tell him off, she’s devoting every last scrap of fury to me.

Uncle Derek keeps clicking his stopwatch until Mum lays her hand over his.

“Sorry, Carole,” he says, and he starts to tap his foot on the ground under the table instead.

Mum’s pinched her lips so much that her mouth has almost disappeared. Her face is white with tiny pink circles on her cheeks. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen her this cross.

“Scarlett, Ellie,” she says so quietly that we strain forward to listen. “WHAT IN HADES DID YOU THINK YOU WERE DOING!”

We all jump, even Uncle Derek. Syd puts down the lipstick and tries to wipe the drawing from the door with a pair of Mum’s pants.

“Sorry, Auntie Carole,” says Ellie. “But we thought we were doing the right thing—”

“RIGHT THING, RIGHT THING?” Mum’s gone completely red now. “How could it possibly be the right thing with that circus going on out there? Penguins! Penguins, of all things? What on earth possessed you both?” She slams her hand on the table. Ellie jumps. “God only knows what
you’ve done to the poor creatures…”

“And the TV cameras,” says Uncle Derek, arranging the three hairs of his moustache in the mirror by the door. “They weren’t good.”

Mum stares at him. “Cameras? They’re the least of our worries, what about the actual damage? No wonder those penguins live in a concrete compound, they’re complete vandals. They’ve destroyed everything. We’ll have to pay hundreds of pounds for the watercress beds, probably thousands, and don’t firemen charge when you call them out these days? And there was the poor man that got bitten.”

No one’s mentioned the paddling pool or the watering can or Mum’s wellies.

Uncle Derek gets up and walks round the table so that he’s standing behind us. “I don’t think the fire boys’ll charge this time, not after what they did to your garden.” When the fire engine left, it had to reverse over Mum’s vegetable patch to get out. It drove off down the road with the runner bean poles sticking out of the hoses. Syd thought it was really funny. Mum didn’t.

“And the zoo – will they prosecute?” She turns to Uncle Derek.

He shrugs. “Breaking and entering, strictly speaking. And you are old enough to take criminal responsibility. But I doubt it. I’ll give them a ring in a bit.”

I suddenly feel sick. I’d never thought that we’d broken the law.

There’s a silence at the table that’s as thick as porridge.

Ellie’s in tears next to me. I don’t suppose she’s ever been told off like this.

Mum’s off again. “Did it never occur to you that penguins are wild animals that need to eat a shed load of fish every day, and that they’re in a zoo because a zoo has people who are trained to look after them? Eh?”

Ellie shakes her head. I do too. I really don’t think I can speak any more.

“And have either of you idiots ever read the notice next to the penguin enclosure?”

We shake our heads again.

“Well, if you’d ever bothered, it would have told you that the zoo’s trying to raise money to send them to a fabulous animal park in Canada, where they’ll have vast amounts of space and as much salmon as they can eat. Money that it’s now going
to take longer to raise because they’ve wasted some of it on this morning’s escapade.”

Mum stands up and sits down again. She puts her glasses on and takes them off as if she’s so cross she can’t even remember why she was wearing them.

“So why? Why did you do it?” Mum’s all staring and mad now. I really don’t want to say anything.

“Because the penguins were in a tiny pen, without any water?” Ellie offers.

“Because it was cruel to keep them there?” I chip in as quietly as I can.

Mum gazes at us as if we’re the most stupid people she’s ever seen. “Go on.”

“We were trying to do what Dad did,” I say.

“Yeah,” says Ellie. “We just thought we could put things right. Like Scarlett’s dad did.”

Mum looks puzzled.

I hear Uncle Derek let out a long sigh behind us. “Did you use your dad’s tools to get into the zoo?”

I nod.

“What?” says Mum, staring from Uncle Derek to me and back again. “Tools?”

Uncle Derek takes a huge breath in. “Scarlett,” he says. “Have you told your mum about the tools?”

I shake my head, reach into my backpack, which is under the table, and pull out the tools.

Mum gasps. “Where did they come from?”

It doesn’t go down well, the whole tools business, and I can see that Ellie’s dying to blurt out that there were other things in the box too, but somehow, she stays silent.

Mum confiscates the tools and then can’t work out whether she’s more furious with me or Uncle Derek, or even Dad. She sends us to bed ridiculously early, which is just as well because I feel such an idiot that hiding under my duvet is the only thing I can face. We don’t even talk to each other. Instead we lie in silence, listening to the summer sounds outside and to Mum and Uncle Derek having their
first row.

I think it’s supposed to be a secret row, but they’re in the garden and the window’s open and they’re rubbish at whispering.

“I still can’t believe you told her about her father. You idiot!”

“She’s got a perfect right to know.” Uncle Derek’s jogging, I can hear his feet. “In fact, I thought she already knew. I’m sorry, but she gave me that impression. Anyway, it’s awful living all your life thinking your dad’s a criminal.”

Mum’s digging, I can hear the spade hitting the earth too hard. “But she was fine, just fine before that. If you hadn’t told her she’d never have had such a silly idea.”

“Well, I’m sure you know her best, she’s your daughter, but she wasn’t all right.” Uncle Derek clicks his stopwatch. “She’d got the tools, and wanted to use them.” He stops clicking his stopwatch. “At least she just did something stupid. In fact, Carole, they were only trying to do something good – it was just horribly misjudged.”

“Misjudged?” squeals Mum. “It was mad! I didn’t think she could do anything so stupid.”

“I didn’t think Ellie could either, but they might
have done something much worse with those tools … something criminal.”

I flush under my bedclothes.

“What was Dick thinking of?” says Mum. “Giving them to her? I mean, honestly.”

Uncle Derek speaks, but one of them drags a bucket over the gravel so I can’t hear his answer. I strain to hear any more conversation.

“Well, it was up to me to tell her about her dad,” says Mum. “Not you.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” says Uncle Derek.

For a while all I hear is the trickle of the stream into the watercress beds and the sound of Mum’s spade.

“But you didn’t tell her all that nonsense about the diamonds?”

“I did,” says Uncle Derek.

“What?” Something loud and heavy hits the ground. “Why?”

“Every little girl’s got to believe in something, haven’t they? She’s a bit old for fairies – anyway, it might all be true.”

“Pigs might fly,” mutters Mum.

“Fair enough, but it’s only what the rest of the world thinks.”

“Maybe you’re right. I’m just worried about her.”

Uncle Derek must have walked over to Mum, because the next bit’s muffled. “I’ll keep an eye,” he says. “A closer eye.”

I lie there waiting for more, but they’ve gone quiet now. Instead I listen to Syd singing to his teddy.