Contents

Cover

Title Page

Chapter One

All I can say is, it wasn’t my fault! I…

Chapter Two

“So long as it is only a game,” said Skye.

Chapter Three

We watched like hawks all the rest of the week,…

Chapter Four

I took a deep breath, and swallowed. Jem waved her…

Chapter Five

While it is true that Jem is one of my…

Chapter Six

“I suppose –” Jem turned hopefully to Skye as we…

Chapter Seven

One of my teachers once wrote on my school report…

Chapter Eight

Although I say it myself, I am not the sort…

Chapter Nine

We watched in frozen horror as the dark shape moved…

Chapter Ten

It is very hard to admit this, but if it…

Chapter Eleven

We all agreed that that was the question: what did…

Other Books by Jean Ure

Copyright

About the Publisher

All I can say is, it wasn’t my fault! I wasn’t the one that let Rags in from the garden with muddy paws. I might have been the one that let him out, but I wasn’t the one that let him in…

All I can say is, it wasn’t my fault! I wasn’t the one that let Rags in from the garden with muddy paws. I might have been the one that let him out, but I wasn’t the one that let him in. Angel was the one that let him in. It was her responsibility, not mine.

She got all angry when I accused her of it. She said, “He was scraping at the door! What was I supposed to do? Let him ruin Dad’s paintwork?”

What she was supposed to do was clean up the floor. That is the rule: whoever lets him in with dirty paws has to clean up after him. It wasn’t any good her screeching that she was about to go out and was all dressed up. She is always dressed up. She works on the principle that a gorgeous boy could walk into her life at any moment and she has to be prepared. Like she might answer the front door and there he’d be, SuperGuy, and omigod, what a disaster if she was wearing tatty old jeans and a raggedy T-shirt!

Not that she would. She is obsessed with the way she looks. Like Mum is obsessed with the kitchen floor.

“Look at my floor!” she goes. “Covered in dog prints!”

It’s so weird, the things people get hung up about. My feelings are, a kitchen floor is a kitchen floor. It is there to get messed up. But it matters to Mum, and it doesn’t do to be small-minded about these things. I could just have left it; I’d have been within my rights. But I was thinking of Mum. Poor Mum! She and Dad work their fingers to the bone taking care of me and Angel and Tom. Well, that is what she always says.

“I don’t expect gratitude, but just now and again a bit of consideration wouldn’t go amiss.”

I think I am quite considerate on the whole. I do like to make Mum happy whenever I can. And I don’t mind getting down on my hands and knees, sploshing about on a wet floor. Wouldn’t bother me if SuperGuy suddenly appeared.

I filled a bowl with hot water and added a nice big dollop of washing-up liquid. I am one of those people, I believe in doing things properly. I thought while I was there I would give the whole floor a going-over, so when Mum came in she’d be, like, knocked out at the state of it.

“Oh!” she’d go. “Who’s cleaned the kitchen floor for me? Whoever it was, they’ve done an excellent job!”

I crawled all over, getting quite damp in the process. We used to have a mop thingie. A squeegee thing. I used to enjoy using that, but last time I’d used it, it hadn’t got put away properly. It had been left propped up against the side of the sink, and Dad had gone and trodden on it. He said it was lying on the floor. Don’t ask me how it got there. I didn’t leave it on the floor. But Dad trod on it and snapped it in two and as usual it was my fault. Everything is always my fault. Mum said it was time I learned to put things away after me. But I was going to!

I’d been on the point of shutting the mop back in the cupboard when my telephone rang and there was a text from Jem, something about Daisy Hooper, who is this girl at school that we all absolutely hate, so obviously I had to stop and text back – Wot u talkin bout? – and just as I’d done that the phone had gone and rung again. It had been Skye this time. I couldn’t help it if my friends wanted to talk to me! I got sort of sidetracked and wandered into the garden, talking about Daisy and this super-gigantic row she’d had with her best friend, Cara Thompson, and one thing sort of led to another, cos after speaking to Skye I felt I had to speak to Jem, who is, like, really talkative and practically never stops, plus Rags had come bundling out with me and wanted me to throw his ball, which I had to do cos you can’t just ignore him, and by the time I got back it was too late. Dad had gone and trodden on the mop and broken it.

So now we didn’t have a mop, which I just bet was the real reason Angel didn’t bother clearing up. Catch her down on her hands and knees!

The floor seemed a bit slippy when I’d finished. But at least it was clean. Quite sparkling, really. I reckoned Mum would be well happy. I ever so carefully emptied the water down the sink and wrung out the cloth, the way she likes it. She goes mad if you leave it all soggy and dripping. Another of her weird hang-ups!

I was so pleased with the job I’d done that I decided to sit down and read the local paper while I waited for Mum to appear. She’d only popped over the road, so I knew she wouldn’t be long. I really wanted to see her face when she opened the door and all the lovely bright shininess rose up before her!

One of my favourite bits in what Dad calls “the local rag” is the horoscope page with Crystal Ball. That is her real actual name. It says so at the top of the column: Your Horoscope Read by Crystal Ball. I think that is so neat! I also think there has to be something in it. Fortune telling and stuff. Crystal is really gifted, she can predict all sorts of things. Like once, for Capricorn, which is Dad’s star sign, she said, “A big change could be coming your way,” and that very same week Dad shaved off his moustache. And once for Gemini, which is Angel, she said, “Diet plays an important part in your life at the moment.” Well! You couldn’t get much more accurate than that.

Tom said it didn’t count since diet always plays an important part in Angel’s life. He also said that Dad’s didn’t count cos he shaved off his moustache himself.

“Wasn’t like it was something that just happened.”

I said, “Well, it hardly could, could it? A moustache can’t just fall off by itself.”

“Be more impressive if it had,” said Tom; and he sniggered, as if he had said something clever.

The trouble with my brother is that he has no imagination. None whatsoever. He says horoscopes are nothing but piffle and bunk. Dunno where he got those words from, but anyway he is wrong, wrong, wrong! Crystal Ball knows what she is talking about. I proved it that morning, without a shadow of a doubt.

I’d just been reading the horoscope for Taurus, which means bull and is me, which Mum says is fitting cos it’s a perfect description.

“Like a bull in a china shop! Only have to come through the door for things to start crashing down.”

Like I said, I get the blame for everything. But guess what? My horoscope was sympathetic! This is what it said:

Not for the first time, you run the risk of being falsely accused. Try to stay calm. Matters will be resolved.

I couldn’t help wondering what I was going to be accused of this time. What had I done? I hadn’t done anything! Then Mum came in and slipped on my beautiful sparkly floor and nearly broke her neck, or so she said. She screamed, “Good God, Frankie, what have you been up to? This floor’s like a skating rink!”

I felt really hurt. After all my hard work!

“I cleaned it for you,” I said.

“Well, I’m sure that’s very sweet of you,” said Mum, pressing both hands into the small of her back, “but what on earth did you use? Furniture polish?”

I said, “No!” Who’d use furniture polish for cleaning a kitchen floor? That would be just stupid. I told her proudly that I’d used washing-up liquid.

“Like about half a litre of it,” said Mum. “Do we still have any left?”

Of course we had some left! What was she on about?

Mum just shook her head, like she was feeling defeated.

“What?” I said. “What have I done?”

It seemed I’d used a bit more than I should have.

“All you need –” Mum said it almost pleadingly – “is just the tiniest, weeniest little drop. If any!”

How was I supposed to know? They don’t give you measurements.

“The floor was in a right mess,” I said. “There were muddy pawprints everywhere.”

“Yes, you did a splendid job,” said Mum.

Well, I reckoned I had, specially as it shouldn’t have been up to me in the first place.

“I wasn’t the one that let Rags in,” I said. “She did. She never cleans up after him.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Mum. “You’ll know better next time.”

Pardon me? If this was the way I was going to be treated, there wouldn’t be any next time.

I watched as Mum grabbed a bunch of kitchen roll and set about drying the floor. I guess it was still a bit wet. I thought of saying how we needed a new mop, but decided against it on account of that was yet another thing I’d got the blame for. She’d only start on about me not putting things away. Probably best to change the subject.

“Mum,” I said, “what’s your star sign? Is it Virgo? I’ll read your horoscope… A very bad accident narrowly averted.” I wrinkled my nose. “What’s that mean?”

Mum said it meant that she could have broken her neck and ended up totally paralysed, while as it was she had merely ricked her back. “Which is quite bad enough.”

“So, like, something nearly happened, but then it didn’t.”

“In a manner of speaking,” said Mum.

Wow! That was two things Crystal Ball had predicted: me getting falsely accused and Mum almost breaking her neck.

I said, “You know Tom thinks that horoscopes are rubbish? Do you think they’re rubbish?”

“Absolutely,” said Mum.

“Even when they say things that come true, like about you not having an accident?”

“I did have an accident.”

“Yes, but you could have had a really bad one.”

“Tell me about it!”

“No, but really,” I said.

“Really,” said Mum, “take it from me, horoscopes are a total nonsense. Completely made up.”

“You mean, like, people just invent stuff? Like, what shall I say for Virgo? Oh, I know! You nearly have a bad accident, but in the end you don’t, sort of thing. And then it just happens to come true, and you and Tom say it’s all rubbish.”

“Coincidence,” said Mum. “It’s bound to happen occasionally. Then gullible people like you think it’s some kind of magic.”

I frowned. “What’s gull’ble?”

“Easily taken in,” said Mum. “You’d believe any old nonsense!”

What Mum didn’t realise was that Crystal Ball had made two correct predictions, not just one. But I didn’t bother arguing with her. I have noticed before that when people close their minds there is nothing you can do to convince them. It’s like Dad and UFOs.

“Flying saucers?” he says. “Load of claptrap!”

He would still say it was claptrap even if one landed in the back garden and a crowd of aliens got out. Fortunately, I am the sort of person who is always open to new ideas; I think it is the way one develops. If we were all like Mum and Dad, we would still be living in caves.

I tore out the horoscope page and put it in my bag to show Jem and Skye as we walked into school.

“Just no way,” I said, “no way was it my fault!”

Jem and Skye are my two best mates in all the world, but I have to say they are not always as supportive as they could be. You would think they would automatically be on my side. I mean, that is what mates are for. They are not supposed to jeer and make stupid remarks.

I told them in great detail about Rags coming in from the garden with muddy feet. I told them what the rule was. But when I read out my horoscope, about being falsely accused, they treated it like it was some kind of joke.

Well, Jem did. Skye was more like, “Oh, please!” Skye can be just a little bit superior at times. She said, “Yawn, yawn! What’s new? You’re always being falsely accused.”

“Yeah, right,” said Jem. She went off into a peal of idiotic giggles. “Nothing isn’t ever her fault!”

Crossly, I said, “It wasn’t my job to clean the kitchen floor.”

“But whoever did clean it,” said Jem, “left it soaking wet and nearly broke your mum’s neck!”

I said, “So? It still doesn’t make it my fault. Does it?”

Jem giggled again. Skye just hunched a shoulder. I really didn’t know what was wrong with Skye these days. She was behaving very oddly. Not depressed, exactly, but certainly not her usual self. She’s never been what you’d call a bouncy sort of person, but just suddenly she’d stopped being fun.

“Anyway,” I said, “that’s not all. Guess what Crystal Ball wrote for Mum? A bad accident, narrowly averted.”

Jem cackled. She sounded like a hen that’s just laid a square egg. “Living with you, I should think your mum spends her life having bad accidents narrowly averted!”

I decided to ignore the uncouth cackling.

“Seriously,” I said, “it can’t just be coincidence that she got it right for both of us. And both on the same day!”

“What’s my one?” said Jem. “What’s she say for Leo?”

“Leo… Take action now to start de-cluttering.”

“Oh!” Jem gave a high-pitched squeal. “Mum told me only yesterday that my bedroom was too cluttered and I really ought to see if I’d got any stuff we could give to charity.”

Well. So much for her and her silly giggling.

“I reckon that just about proves it,” I said.

“What’s she say for Skye? Read what she says for Skye!”

“Sagittarius… You need to face a fear and conquer it.”

We turned expectantly to Skye.

“I don’t have any fears,” said Skye.

“You must have some,” I said. “Everybody has some.”

“Well, I don’t!” She said it quite angrily. “It’s all rubbish! What have I got to be scared of?”

“Spiders?” said Jem.

“I’m not scared of spiders!”

“I know, I know!” I clapped my hands. “Not getting A+ for her maths homework!”

“And for her French homework!”

“And for geography!”

“And for history!”

Now I was going off into giggles myself. Skye is like the class brain; it would frighten the life out of her if she ever got a B for anything. She once got A-for an essay and it threw her into total depression for a whole week.

“You are such morons,” she said.

I suppose it is not quite fair to laugh at a person, especially if they are one of your best friends, but all the same I do think people should be able to take a joke now and again. I know I can. I am always being laughed at. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Even if it does, I don’t make a big thing of it.

“Where are you going?” said Jem.

“I’m going to school, if that’s all right with you.” Skye flung it at us over her shoulder. “I want to get there on time.”

We watched as she went stalking on ahead of us, her legs, long and spindly, clacking to and fro like a pair of animated chopsticks.

“What’s her problem?” said Jem.

I shook my head. It is a known fact that Skye doesn’t have the hugest sense of humour. Unlike me and Jem, who have been known to giggle ourselves senseless, Skye is a very serious-minded person. But still there was something not right.

I said, “I dunno. In some kind of a mood. Thing is, about horoscopes –” I folded up Crystal Ball and put her back in my bag – “they might just be all made up, but that doesn’t mean they’re rubbish. Loads of what they say actually does come true.”

“This is it,” said Jem. “I remember once my auntie was told she was going to have a shake-up in her career, and the very next day she shook a bottle of tomato ketchup and the top flew off and it went everywhere, all over the place, and look what happened!”

“What?” I said. “What happened?”

“She got a new job!”

“What, because of the tomato ketchup?”

“No, cos she went down the job centre.”

“Because of the ketchup.”

“No. She was going there anyway. The ketchup didn’t have anything to do with it.”

Excuse me?

“Just that she shook it,” said Jem. “Like it said in her horoscope… a shake-up. And then she got a job. See what I mean?”

I nodded slowly. I do sometimes find that I have a bit of difficulty following Jem’s train of thought. She has a brain that hops about all over the place.

“My auntie was really miffed about the ketchup,” she said. “It went all down her blouse, and she couldn’t get it out. You can’t, with ketchup. But if it hadn’t been for that, she might never have got the job. Least, that’s what she told Mum, so I reckon you’re right. There’s got to be something in it.”

That was better. At least I’d got one of them to agree with me.

“Know what?” I said. “We could do horoscopes. We could ask everyone what their star signs are, and then we could make up horoscopes for them, and wait and see if they come true.”

Jem liked that idea. I could tell, already, that her brain was whizzing into overdrive, thinking what sort of things she could make up.

“What about Skye?” she said. “Are we going to tell her?”

I said yes, we had to. She was our friend; we didn’t do things separately. Besides, it might cheer her up. Stop her being so glumpy.

“Even though she thinks it’s rubbish?”

“We’ll tell her it’s just a game,” I said. “After all, it’s not like we’re really expecting things to happen.”

“So long as it is only a game,” said Skye.

I assured her that it was. “Just a bit of fun!”

“So long as that’s all.”

“It is. I just said.”

“Cos I think it’s really stupid, when people take this sort of stuff seriously.”

I laughed, as if the very idea was absurd. “Whoever would?”

“You’d be surprised,” said Skye.

“Well, but sometimes –” Jem jumped in eagerly – “sometimes they get it right. It’s just a question of working out what they mean. It’s not always straightforward. Like if your horoscope said ’Beware of big hairy monsters!’ and later that night a bunch of spiders went marching across your bedroom ceiling, well, you mightn’t realise that that’s what it had meant. You might have been expecting something more, like, a load of big hairy muggers coming along and…” Her voice faltered slightly under Skye’s withering gaze. “And mugging you,” she said. “Or something.”

“You might,” agreed Skye, “if you were dumb enough.”

“No, honestly,” said Jem, “they can predict things! Like with my auntie. There was this one time—”

Omigod! She was going to go on about the tomato ketchup again.

“I think we should get started,” I said.

“But I want to tell Skye about my auntie! See, her horosc—”

“Later!” It’s important, with Jem, to stop her before she gets going. Preferably as soon as she opens her mouth. Mr Hargreaves, our maths teacher, once said that if uncontrolled babble was an Olympic discipline, Jem could babble for England. And get a gold medal. “We don’t have time for all that now,” I said. “We’ve got horoscopes to write.”

Jem looked at me, hurt. “Just because you’ve already heard it!”

Just because I didn’t want Skye hearing it. Fortunately, Skye came to my rescue.

“No, Frankie’s right,” she said. “If we don’t get started we’ll never get anywhere. Everybody pay attention! First we need to get organised.”

Jem pulled a face. Normally I’d have pulled one too, and even given an inward gro-o-an, cos when Skye starts organising she turns into this really evil dictator type, bossing and bullying and laying down the law, but at least she’d managed to stop Jem going on about her auntie all over again.

If Skye had heard the tale of the tomato ketchup she’d have gone into full boffin mode and started lecturing Jem about being gullible, cos you can just bet she’d know what gullible meant. Jem would then have got upset, and then they’d have had words, and then they’d have tried dragging me into it, both of them wanting me to be on their side, like, “Frankie, tell her! You heard about my auntie,” and “Frankie, for goodness’ sake! You don’t believe in all that rubbish?”

I wouldn’t have known what to say. I mean, I did sort of believe. Sort of. Just not in the tomato-ketchup story. What we needed was some kind of definite proof, which was exactly the reason I was conducting my experiment. Cos that was what it was, I suddenly realised. Not just a game or a bit of fun, but a proper bony fido experiment. Or whatever the expression was.

“What’s that thing you say when you mean something’s, like, real?” I said.

“You mean, like, real?” said Skye.

“I mean like bony fido, or whatever it is.”

“Bona fide. It’s Latin,” said Skye. God, she’s like an encyclopaedia, that girl! I guess it’s cos of her mum and dad both being teachers. Always telling her to find things out and look things up. “Bona means good and fide means faith, and what’s it got to do with anything, anyway? I thought we were going to get started?”

“We are, we are!”

“Then let’s work out the ground rules.”

“What ground rules?” Jem was sitting cross-legged on my bed, cuddling Rags. She was obviously in a bit of a sulk. “What do we want ground rules for? Why can’t we just make up horoscopes like we said?”

Oh, but it wasn’t that simple! Nothing is ever simple, with Skye. First off, she made me Google “Star Signs” on my laptop. Then she told me to write them all down.

“Neatly.”

Jem and I exchanged glances. Jem put a finger to her forehead and tapped. I just did what I was told. It seemed easier, somehow.

These are the star signs:

Aries (ram)

Taurus (bull)

Gemini (twins)

Cancer (crab)

Leo (lion)

Virgo (virgin)

Libra (scales)

Scorpio (scorpion)

Sagittarius (archer)

Capricorn (goat)

Aquarius (water carrier)

Pisces (fish)

Now, said Skye, we would cut them up.

Excuse me?

“Cut them up!”

She held out her hand for the scissors. I passed them across. Me and Jem watched without saying anything, as Skye turned my list into a load of shredded strips.

“What we do is take out our own star signs – well, go on! Take them!” Meekly, we did so. “Put those to one side. Then fold the others over, so we can’t see what they are. Now we do our horoscopes. Four each!”

“You mean –” I said it slowly, trying to fathom the workings of her superior brain – “you mean we won’t actually know which star sign we’re writing stuff for?”

“Exactly!”

“What’s the point of that?” said Jem.

The point, said Skye, was that nobody would be tempted to write nice things for some star signs – like if they knew who the sign belonged to – and nasty things for others.

“Though personally,” she added, “I’m only going to write nice things, anyway.”

“Why?” Jem said it aggressively. I guess she was still pretty mad at Skye for siding with me and not letting her tell the tomato-ketchup story. Not to mention bossing us around. “If you think it’s all rubbish, what’s it matter what you write?”

“Cos I’d feel awful,” said Skye, “if I wrote something nasty and then it actually came true. Even though I’d know it was only coincidence.”

I saw Jem’s mouth open, and quickly shoved my elbow in her ribs. We didn’t have all day. We’d come back to my place after school and Skye and Jem would have to be getting home pretty soon.

“Just write,” I said.

These are my four that I did:

An exciting new opportunity will arise. It should be grasped with both hands.

Big changes are coming your way. They will take your life in a different direction.

A treasured possession will be lost, but do not despair. It will turn up.

Be on the lookout: trouble ahead!

“OK, I’ve finished,” I said.

“Me too,” said Skye.

Jem was still sitting hunched up like a little gnome, furiously scribbling. Now and again, a giggle would burst out of her.

“I hope you’re not being gross,” said Skye.

“What’s it to you if I am?” Jem threw down her pen. “Now what d’you want us to do?”

“Cut them into strips,” said Skye, “then fold them up and shuffle them about so you don’t know which is which.”

Jem rolled her eyes.

“Do it!”

“Yes, do it,” I said.

“All right,” said Jem. “I’m doing it!”

Skye said that now we would each take one for ourselves. “I’ll take one from Frankie, and Frankie can take one from Jem, and Jem can take one from me… go!”

“Can we look?” said Jem. “Well, I’m going to, anyway!”

We all opened our bits of paper. On mine, in Jem’s round squiggly handwriting, it said: Things will happen. Hm! It didn’t make much sense, but at least she hadn’t said bad things.

I asked Skye which one of mine she’d picked, but she wouldn’t tell me. She said, “It’s got to be secret. Like a secret ballot.”

“So what happens to all the rest?” Jem wanted to know.

“We randomly assign them,” said Skye.

Jem blinked. “You what?”

“We randomly assign them!”

There was a pause.

“I do wish, just occasionally, she would speak in normal English,” said Jem.

Skye made an impatient tutting sound. “It’s perfectly simple! What we’re left with is nine horoscopes and nine star signs.” She laid them out in two rows on the floor. “We’re going to staple one horoscope to each star sign.” She clicked her fingers. “Stapler!”

“Haven’t got one.”

“Paper clips!”

“Haven’t got any.”

Skye breathed heavily, like Mr Hargreaves when he’s about to blow up.

“Sellotape?”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “I’ve got some of that.”

Just as well! It doesn’t do to cross Skye when she’s in one of her schoolteacherly moods.

With brisk efficiency, she began picking up horoscopes and picking up star signs, folding them over and sticking them together. Jem immediately began bleating.

“If they’re all going to be secret, how are we supposed to know if any of them come true?”

Skye said we would wait till the end of term, and then we would open all the bits of paper and see.

“But we don’t know what people’s star signs are!”

“We know what our mums’ and dads’ are.”

“I’m talking about people at school. I thought we were supposed to be asking them?”

“You can ask, if you want,” said Skye. “No one’s stopping you. Honestly, I’ve never known anyone make such a fuss! It’s only a game.”

“So if it’s only a game, why can’t we look?”

“Cos even games have rules. There’s no point playing, if you don’t have rules. I’m going to go now, I promised Mum I’d be back by five. You coming?”

“In a minute,” said Jem.

“I’ve got to go now. I’ll take these with me.” Skye scooped up all the bits of paper, neatly stuck with Sellotape. “Cos I know what you two are like.”

“Are you saying we’d cheat?” said Jem.

“Well, you would, wouldn’t you?” Skye opened her schoolbag and stuffed the bits of paper into one of the inside pockets. “They’ll be safe there. I won’t look.”

To be fair to Skye, we knew that she wouldn’t. After she’d gone, Jem giggled and said, “D’you want to know what I picked?”

I struggled for a few seconds with my conscience. There wasn’t any reason I shouldn’t know. Just cos Skye had decided it had to be kept secret. Me and Jem hadn’t decided. But it was true that Skye was honourable, and we weren’t, so I very nobly said no.

“Better not tell me.”

“Don’t see why not,” said Jem. “What right’s she got to dictate?”

None at all, really, except that she was our friend and if she wanted to make up rules – well! That was just Skye. At least she’d joined in.

“Wouldn’t be fair to go behind her back,” I said.

Jem looked for a minute as if she might go off into a sulk again, but then she gave me this mischievous grin and said, “If I was doing your horoscope now, know what I’d say? I’d say, Keep an eye on Daisy Hooper.”

“Why?” I couldn’t resist asking.

“See if she gets a clonk on the head!”

“Is she likely to?”

“Well…” Jem cackled. “Someone’s going to. Hope it’s not you! You didn’t pick that one, did you?”

Before I could stop myself I said, “No.”

“That’s good,” said Jem. “Means it could be her!”

Me and Jem watched eagerly the next couple of days, waiting to see if Daisy Hooper would get clonked on the head. See if anyone got clonked on the head. Just cos Jem had written it for one of her horoscopes, didn’t necessarily mean it was going to happen.

“Skye could be right,” I said. And Mum, and Tom. And Dad. “Could all just be coincidence.”

It wasn’t what I wanted to believe, cos I like to think there’s stuff going on that’s a bit mysterious. But if you’re conducting a scientific experiment it’s important to keep an open mind. Jem already seemed to have made hers up.

“If it’s all just coincidence,” she said, “why would anyone bother? There’s got to be something in it. I mean, look at my auntie! You’re not telling me that was just coincidence?”

I didn’t wish to talk about Jem’s auntie. Rather sternly I said, “We are conducting an experiment. We must wait for proof.”

“But that is proof!”

“More proof.”

Jem giggled. “Want to know another one I wrote? Beware the hairy monsters… I thought I might as well use it. Wonder who got that one? Wasn’t you, was it?”

“We’re not supposed to be telling,” I said.

“Oh, pooh!” Jem tossed her head. “What’s it matter?” She danced round me, waggling her fingers. “Big hairy monsters! It was you, wasn’t it?”

“Not saying.”

“It was, it was! You’re going to get a bunch of huge enormous spiders marching across the ceiling!”

“Yeah, or I might get mugged by a load of huge hairy muggers. Might end up in hospital. Then what’d you have to say?”

Jem’s face fell. She looked at me, suddenly uncertain. “It wasn’t really you, was it?”

“Well, if it wasn’t,” I said, “it’s someone else, and then you’ll be responsible if it comes true.”

Quick as a flash, Jem said, “I’m not saying everything does! Just some things.”

In the meantime, we kept our eyes fixed firmly on Daisy Hooper. I guess I wouldn’t have minded if she’d got clonked on the head, but all that happened was she got whacked by a hockey stick. On the ankle, not the head.

Jem tried claiming that was just as good. She said you had to know how to interpret these things – they were never straightforward. Clonk on the head didn’t have to mean clonk on the actual head, it could just as easily mean clonk on the top part of something, such as for instance the top part of the foot, which was, of course, the ankle. Well, if you looked at it one way it was. The ankle was on top of the foot. In other words, it was the head of the foot. And Daisy had been clonked on it and was now all bandaged up and hobbling.

We wouldn’t normally wish ill upon someone, but Daisy Hooper is such a disagreeable person. Really loud and overbearing. And mean. She is so mean! Plus she hates us and we hate her.

Jem was eager to open up all our bits of paper and check whether clonk on the head had been matched to Daisy’s star sign or someone else’s. She said, “I know which sign she is, I asked her, she’s Libra! So please can we just look? Please, Skye? Please?”

But Skye said no. She was very firm about it. The end of term was when we were going to look. Not before.

Jem grumbled to me later that “Skye can be such a bore at times!”

I had to admit she was being a bit more bossy than usual.

“Why do we put up with it?” wondered Jem. “It was our game – we invented it. Then she comes barging in and takes over. I think we should tell her.”

“Tell her what?”

“That we’ve had enough! We want all our bits of paper back, and we’ll play the game without her.”

“Thing is…” I hesitated.

“What?”

“I wouldn’t want to upset her.”

“But she’s upsetting us!”

“Yes, but she’s been really funny just lately. Like there’s something on her mind.”

“Mm.” Jem thought about it. “She has been a bit odd.”

“It’s no use asking her, you know what she’s like.”

“Secretive.”

She is a very controlled sort of person, is Skye. Unlike me and Jem, who tend to splurge, Skye prefers to keep things to herself. She wouldn’t dream of splurging.

“What we’ve not got to do,” I said, “we’ve not got to nag, cos that’ll only make things worse.”

“Make her all ratty.”

“We’ll just have to be patient.” Mum is always urging me to be patient. She says patience is a virtue. I don’t get it, myself, I don’t think it’s natural; I mean you want something to happen, you want it to happen now. But as I said to Jem, sometimes you just have to wait.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah!” Jem waved a hand. “Wait till she gets over it.”

“Or till she feels like telling us.”

“Whatever.”

“In the meantime,” I said, “we can still go on watching, see if anyone gets clonked.”

We watched like hawks all the rest of the week, but nobody got clonked. Nothing, as far as we could see, happened to anybody, though Jem did turn up for school one morning bubbling over with excitement and obviously bursting to tell me something. She made it clear she couldn’t do it while Skye was there, cos she kept pointing at Skye behind her back and pulling faces. If Skye hadn’t peeled off at the school gates to go and talk to one of the teachers, I really think Jem would have exploded. Her face had gone bright scarlet with the effort of not saying anything.

“Guess what?” she squeaked, before Skye was even properly out of earshot. “Guess what happened?”

I said, “Tell me, tell me!”

“Huge hairy monsters!” Jem announced it in a trumpet-blast of triumph. Heads swung round to look at us.

I said, “Where?”

“In the kitchen,” whispered Jem. “All across the floor!”

Wow! Our first bit of evidence. I stared at her in awe. Skye must have stuck the huge hairy monsters horoscope to the star sign that belonged to Jem’s mum. So predictions could come true!

“I reckon most people would have screamed,” said Jem. “I didn’t! Not even when it ran across Mum’s foot.”

I said, “It?”

Her eyes slid away.

“What d’you mean it?”

I might have known it was too good to be true. When I questioned her more closely I discovered that in fact it had only been one hairy monster and it hadn’t even been a proper monster, if it came to that, just one tiny little mouse. Jem tried arguing with me, like she always does. She is a very argumentative-type person. She said that as mice went it had been pretty huge, it seemed to her, plus everybody knew that mice didn’t come singly.

“They live in nests. With other mice.”

She said there was obviously a whole family of them hiding away somewhere, and that if you stayed and watched, you’d probably see hordes of them come out and run across the floor. I told her rather sharply that in that case she had better be prepared to sit in the kitchen all night, and maybe, if lots of mice appeared, and if they were really big mice, I might be prepared to put them on my list.

Jem immediately said, “What list?”

I said, “List I’m making of stuff that happens, ready for when Skye lets us open up and have a look.”

“So what’s happened so far?” said Jem.

I had to admit nothing, apart from Daisy Hooper getting whacked on the ankle, which I didn’t honestly think we could count. Jem said she reckoned I still ought to make a note of it.

“And Mum’s mouse. Cos these things aren’t ever straightforward.”

“Yes, but you can’t just twist them to mean anything,” I said. “They’ve got to have a bit of resemblance to what’s written down.”

Jem said, “Clonk – Daisy. Monster – Mum. That’s two of mine, and they do have some resemblance! It could be,” she said, “that I’m the one with psychic powers. Not everybody has them. How much of what you wrote has come true?”

Loftily I said, “Too early to tell. I’m waiting for proper scientific proof.”

I certainly wasn’t putting Daisy Hooper’s ankle on the list, and I wasn’t putting Jem’s mum. Jem could argue as much as she liked. An ankle is not the same as a head, and one small mouse isn’t the same as a horde of huge furry monsters. On the other hand, something very remarkable happened later that day. I got home to find that a leaflet had been pushed through the letterbox. It was there, lying face up on the mat.

TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS EXCITING OPPORTUNITY!

GET FIT, HAVE FUN!

SIGN UP NOW FOR ONE MONTH’S FREE TRIAL AT THE

GREENBANK LEISURE CENTRE.

Well. That was more like it! It was exactly what I’d written: An exciting new opportunity will arise. It should be grasped with both hands.

If I could just get someone to grasp it… I rushed into the kitchen to show Mum.

“Mum,” I cried, “look! You can have a month’s free trial at the Greenbank Leisure Centre!”

Mum said, “Oh, Frankie, I don’t have time for that. I’m far too busy.”

It’s true that Mum is quite busy, doing dressmaking and stuff for all her ladies, but I’d have thought a bit of fun and keeping fit would have brightened up her life.

“Not really,” said Mum. “I’d sooner put my feet up and have a cup of coffee.”

What can you do? I try to be helpful.

I showed the leaflet to Angel, suggesting she might like to grasp the opportunity, but she seemed to think I was insulting her.

“Why should I need it?” she shrieked. “Are you implying I’m fat?”

I said, “No, but it’s free.”

“So you do it,” said Angel.

Next I tried Tom, who just grunted, which is pretty much all he ever does.

“You mean, you don’t want to?” I said.

“Gotta be joking,” said Tom.

Dad was my last chance. I reminded him what the government had said about us all taking more exercise to stop from getting fat and flabby, but Dad laughed and said he got quite enough exercise watching sport on TV, thank you very much.

Honestly! What a family. An exciting new opportunity and not a single one of them would grasp it. Still, I put it on my list. It was the first real sign we had had. A proper sign. Not like Jem and her hairy monsters. After all, you can’t blame horoscopes if people are too stupid to follow their advice. I just wish I knew which one of the family it was!

I couldn’t make up my mind whether to tell Jem or not. I knew if I did she would only start arguing again about ankles being the same as heads and tiny little mice being huge furry monsters, but, anyway, as it happened, I didn’t get the chance. Skye was with us, as usual, as we walked into school, and we were together all the rest of the day.

Skye was in a really glumpish sort of mood. Even in maths, when Mr Hargreaves wanted to know if anyone had the answer to some weird mess he’d scrawled all over the board, she didn’t put her hand up. I could tell Mr Hargreaves was surprised, cos Skye always has the answer to everything. Me and Jem exchanged glances over her head. Something was definitely not right.

We discussed it in whispers in the cloakroom at break. Should we ask what the problem was, or should we just go on pretending not to have noticed? We still hadn’t reached any decision when Skye came out of a cubicle and wanted to know what we were gossiping about.

“Not gossiping,” said Jem.

“So why are you being all furtive?”

I couldn’t think of any answer to that. Jem, her brain whizzing into overdrive, said, “Oh! You know,” and waved a hand rather vaguely about the empty cloakroom, but Skye didn’t pursue the matter. She obviously wasn’t that interested.

Last class of the day was drama with Miss Hamilton. Me and Jem adore drama! Whenever we’re told to choose partners, we always choose each other. Never Skye! Not if we can avoid it. Drama is one of the few classes Skye is useless at. She can’t act to save her life. It’s because she can’t show her feelings. Me and Jem like nothing better. We are full of feelings! Sometimes, Miss Hamilton says, we overflow. Skye says we swamp. But I think we are just naturally expressive.

Today, Miss Hamilton said, we were going to do improvisation, making up our own short scenes with a partner. Hooray! I love improvisation. Seems to me it’s far more fun making up your own words than having to stick to other people’s.

“So,” said Miss Hamilton, “find yourselves a partner.” Me and Jem immediately bagged each other. We didn’t even think of Skye. “I want one of you to be unhappy, and the other one has to find out why, and try to comfort her. OK?”

Jem begged me to let her be the unhappy one.

“Please, Frankie, please!”

I didn’t mind. I’m good at comforting. I’m a people person!

We waited impatiently for our turn. I hate having to sit and watch while everyone else gets up and does things. Specially when they’re not very good at it. Some of them were OK, like Brittany Fern, crying cos her pet goldfish had died. I think that losing your goldfish would be quite upsetting. I know you can’t take a goldfish to bed with you or cuddle it, like I can Rags, but I daresay they have their own little fishy ways that you get fond of.

Daisy Hooper was pathetic, as usual. She’s another one that can’t act; she just thinks she can. She lumped herself into the middle of the floor and started bellowing about how she’d been promised a trip to Disneyland and then at the last minute it had been cancelled, sob sob, boo hoo. Like anyone cared. Hardly in the same class, I would have thought, as losing your goldfish.

Skye did her scene with a girl called Lucy Westwood that hardly ever speaks above a whisper. It was a bit embarrassing, really, what with Skye all wooden and saying how she’d failed this really important exam – oh, disaster! – and Lucy whispering how sorry she was. Well, I think that was what she was whispering; it was hard to tell.

Me and Jem were left till last. Top of the bill! Stars are always on last. Not meaning to boast, but I do think we are more talented than most people in our class. What I couldn’t quite understand, as we took the stage – well, the centre of the room, actually – was why a series of tiny little squeaks were coming from Jem, like she’d got the giggles and was fighting to suppress them. This was serious stuff! Jem was supposed to be unhappy and I was going to comfort her. What was there to giggle at?

I was soon to discover. Miss Hamilton said, “All right, you two, off you go!” I felt that she was expecting something really special from me and Jem. I’d already put my face into sympathetic mode, letting my mouth droop and my eyes go all big and swimmy. It’s something I’ve practised in the mirror. I’ve practised lots of faces in the mirror. Evil ones, soppy ones, scaredy ones. All kinds! You never know when they might come in useful, like if you’re going to have a career as an actor. Not that I am, probably, but I like to think that I could. If I wanted.

I turned to Jem, who was still making little squeaks, and said, “Oh dear, Jem, you are not looking very happy! Is something the matter?” Instantly, Jem stopped squeaking and burst into loud, heart-rending sobs. Real sobs. I don’t know how she does that! It’s a gift that she has.

I was immediately sympathetic. “What’s wrong?” I said. “Tell me what’s wrong!”

“It’s my great-great-grandmother!” sobbed Jem.

Pardon me? Her great-great-grandmother? Great-great-grandmother?

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