There's a Hamster in my Pocket Read Online Free PDF Page A

glanced over at Nani, who was looking daggers at me.
    â€œMight make the room look a bit small, though,” I added.
    Mum drained the last of her tea and walked over to the sink. Her shoulders, I noticed, were right down.
    â€œIt’ll have to do,” she said. “I don’t have time to change it.”
    Then she took the carrier bag and headed upstairs. “I’ve only got the morning,” she shouted back at us. “We’re going to have another health and safety inspection, so the shop’s got to be thoroughly cleaned.”
    Suddenly, I remembered Killer Queen. “No!” I shouted, jumping out of my chair. “Wait!” And I thundered up the stairs behind Mum, three at a time.
    When I caught up with her, she had one hand on the bedroom door handle.
    â€œIt’s OK, Mum,” I said, pulling at the carrier bag. “You can go to the shop right now. Kylie and me’ll do it.”
    Mum looked doubtful.
    â€œKylie’s a dab hand at painting,” I assured her. “We’ll have the walls done by the time you and Dad get home – honest!”
    I took out my mobile and texted Kylie,
Wanna hlp mk N’s rm look lk a road axidnt
?
    Within thirty seconds Kylie rang me back to say she was “well up for it”. She also said she’d managed to get me a small portion of yesterday’s tinned salmon for Killer Queen.
    â€œOff you go,” I told Mum. “It’ll be fine. . .”
    And, with a look of relief, and a dire warning not, on any account, to give Bilal a paintbrush, she hurried off.
    ***
    Painting the walls – even Fiesta Red – was extremely soothing. Nani was downstairs entertaining Bilal, and so we’d put Killer Queen next door to sleep off her salmon-and-milk breakfast. For a while, we worked away in companionable silence.
    Underneath the calm, though, everything was churning up inside me, and the more Nani’s walls turned the colour of blood, the more they reminded me of the pin man, and Sniper’s mallet, and my awful nightmare.
    I could feel the tears at the back of my eyes, and every now and then they seemed to find their way down my nose, which made me sniff. Of course, it was only a matter of time before Kylie noticed.
    â€œYou OK, Yosser?” she asked.
    I wanted more than anything to tell her why I was so upset, but I felt I shouldn’t. The big birthday party was tomorrow night, after all. Her nerves must be stretched to breaking-point. So I said I was fine, and that I was only sniffing because of the paint.
    â€œHave you noticed what a good view of your house you get from the window?” I said.
    We stopped painting and went over to the window. Just then, Kylie’s front door opened and her mum came out. She had on a backpack.
    â€œShe’s off to the shops to buy in stuff for tomorrow,” Kylie said. “There’s a little ‘do’ in the house before the actual surprise party. She says I can sleep over with you,”she added. “If that’s OK?”

    I nodded. “We can sleep in here in sleeping bags,” I said. “With our backs to the Feature Wall. . .”
    We watched Kylie’s mum walk down the path. At the gate she paused, bent to examine a rose bush, then shook her head gravely.
    â€œGreenfly,” Kylie explained. “They’re everywhere. Yesterday they decimated her early-flowering chrysanthemums.”
    â€œCan’t she get greenfly spray?” I said. “That’s what Nani uses on her pot plants. Mind you, you’ve got to stay well out of range when she’s at it. . .”
    Kylie shook her head. “Mum’s strictly organic,” she said. “No sprays, no slug pellets. She relies totally on ladybirds and frogs.”
    She sighed. “Nothing’s going right for her at the moment. Nothing.”
    Sadly, we watched Kylie’s mum disappear round the corner. Her back view reminded me of
my
mum’s