Cherry Blossom Dreams Read Online Free PDF

or something. I keep telling her that Monty is too small to swallow a child but she won’t listen. Plus she’s worried about my sister’s new kitten …’
    Before I could speak, Sean said, ‘So I told him we could keep Monty here. It’ll be cool, Sasha. Mum’s way too scared of snakes to ever let me have one at home. I reckon this’ll be the next best thing.’
    ‘Are you crazy ? What if Mum has to show someone round?’
    ‘We’ll hide him.’
    ‘Where?’ I demanded. Zack was already placing the snake back inside its container on top of a towel with something rubbery poking out from under it. ‘Is that a hot-water bottle?’
    ‘That’s right,’ Zack replied. ‘Snakes like to be kept warm. But the hot-water bottle’s just to keep him comfy while we transport him. When we get him upstairs I’m going to plug in his heat mat. There is somewhere to plug it into, right?’
    ‘Don’t worry,’ Sean said. ‘This cupboard I told you about has a plug socket just outside. We can plug it into that and run the cable under the door. Come on. Let’s take him upstairs.’
    ‘It shouldn’t take me too long to find him a permanent home,’ Zack said. ‘You never know. I might be able to talk my mum round.’
    ‘Listen, I really don’t think this is a good idea,’ I exclaimed as I followed them up the staircase.
    I knew where we were going. There was a huge walk-in cupboard in the main front bedroom on the first floor and one rainy day, when Sean and I had been exploring the house, we’d discovered three old dresses and a stack of old board games inside. There had been a few bits and pieces like that left behind in various places around the house and I was guessing they were things that the old lady’s son hadn’t wanted but hadn’t quite had the heart to get rid of either.
    ‘It’ll be OK, Sasha. Stop worrying so much,’ Sean said impatiently as he opened the cupboard for Zack.
    Zack obviously spotted the board games straight away because he read out, ‘Tiddlywinks … Ludo … Beetle … Snakes and Ladders …’ He added with a laugh, ‘Well, Monty, I reckon that’s the one to go for if you get bored.’
    I waited while they lifted up the snake and took out the hot-water bottle and towel, leaving only a thin layer of newspaper on the bottom of the container for Monty to lie on. Then Zack produced a small heat mat out of his bag and plugged it in.
    ‘Isn’t that dangerous?’ I queried. ‘I mean, what if it starts a fire or something?’
    ‘That’s why there’s the thermostat with it,’ Zack said as he plugged that in too and showed us how it worked. ‘Now it can’t overheat … the heat mat goes under the box, like this,’ he added as he showed us how to position the mat with the container half on and half off it.
    ‘Don’t worry, Monty, you’re going to be fine with Uncle Sean and Auntie Sasha,’ Sean joked as he went to fill up a big bowl of water to put in the container.
    ‘Watch out for those dresses – they’re really old and delicate,’ I warned Zack as he disappeared inside the cupboard, carrying Monty’s bulky box.
    I was pretty sure the dresses we had discovered along with the games dated back to the 1950s. I’d looked them up and in the 1950s all the women had beautifully styled hair and wore masses of lipstick, and even when they were really young they looked so glamorous, like film stars, and they all had ever so tiny waists. The old lady must have been very small and slight when she had worn the dresses, because they actually fitted me – though on me the skirts were more ankle length than calf length. One dress was made of emerald green satin with a stiff bodice and a softly pleated, three-layered swishy skirt trimmed with green ribbon. Another had a fitted black velvet bodice and a fuchsia-pink silk skirt, covered with a fine layer of black netting that was studded with tiny black gems. But my favourite of the three was a halter neck red taffeta dress, which had a