Lazy Daisy
by Lynne Roberts
Copyright 2014 Lynne Roberts
ISBN 978-1-927241-10-3
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 1.
I said afterwards that the very worst part was when Aunt Daisy came to stay. Eddie said that of course it wasn’t. He said that there were much worse bits than Aunt Daisy, and that it was typical of a girl to focus on one thing. I resent that. Not being a girl, of course, but being thought typical. So then Eddie said,
‘Why don’t you write it all down, Poppy. Then you’ll see that Aunt Daisy wasn’t the worst part.’
‘Why don’t you write it down, if you’re so keen?’
Eddie didn’t say anything but he gave me that hurt puppy dog look he’s so good at and, naturally, I gave in. So here goes.
My name is Poppy Amelia Arlington and I am twelve. Eddie is my little brother and he had not long turned nine when the trouble started. Eddie is fairly small and skinny with heaps of freckles and bright red hair. He gets the hair from my grandfather although Pop’s hair was mostly white by the time he died a couple of years ago. I am fortunate enough to take after Mum with unremarkable brown hair. I guess the red hair makes Eddie stand out, which is why the bigger boys tended to pick on him. Most red-haired people are supposed to have really bad tempers to match but Eddie is quite a gentle sort of kid for a boy. He’s crazy about anything to do with cars and he is a whiz at Maths. Dad is a sports fanatic and I think he would have preferred a son who was good at sports. I mean, you can’t run up and down a sideline cheering on someone for calculating sums or working out Maths problems. Dad tries to make Eddie go and play sports and Eddie goes along happily. He’s really not too bad, either. That makes it worse, as when Dad thinks his son is going to be the star of the match, Eddie sees something really interesting like a car driving past on the road. This is inevitably the moment he could have caught the ball or hit the ball and covered himself in glory. Dad gets exasperated and yells at him, but Eddie doesn’t seem to care very much though, and grins back.
But Eddie had gone all quiet, even for him when the trouble began. He’d been bullied at school in a minor way for ages, mainly because he was so small, and stood out with his red hair. He shrugged it off and whoever was doing the bullying got sick of it and stopped. Then a few weeks ago it was Friday the thirteenth and his bad luck started with a vengeance. A new kid, Tyler, arrived at the school and went into Eddie’s class and things went really bad very quickly. Tyler was big and chunky and not very bright, but he was cunning and always managed to slither away if there was a risk of being caught or punished. So he got in a fair few thumps on Eddie and managed to grab his bag and drop it in puddles on wet days and other stupid mindless things like that. Eddie got quieter and quieter at home and at school. I told him what to do.
‘You should hit Tyler as hard as you can then he’ll leave you alone.’
Eddie looked appalled. ‘That wouldn’t work,’ he muttered. ‘He’d just laugh and hit me harder.’
I thought about it and had to admit he was probably right. And with Eddie’s luck, he’d be the one spotted fighting by the teachers, and then he’d really be in trouble.
So Eddie was drooping around being small and miserable and I was storming around being angry on his behalf, which is why neither of us took much notice of Mum. Maybe that’s what caused the trouble. I’ll never know.
Our parents are fairly normal, at least we think so. Dad works in an office doing something complicated that involves lots of work on a computer and heaps of phone calls to other people in offices all over the world. Mum writes books. Not the reading kind, although you do have to read them. She writes recipe books. Before she married Dad, Mum used to be a cook in a restaurant and she came up with amazing recipes for meals. The restaurant became famous and was not happy when she left and started having children. They wanted her to go back but Mum said she couldn’t face it after all the work looking after us. That makes me cross. I don’t think Eddie and I are much work at all. She made it sound like we were a couple of badly trained chimpanzees.
But anyway, Mum decided she would work from home instead and write recipe books. First she had to try out all the recipes on us. That could be great, especially if it was a dessert, but it could get tedious as well. There was one chocolate pie thing that she made every day for three weeks, trying to get the ingredients exactly right. Only Eddie lasted the whole time. Dad and I gave up after ten days and ate an apple for dessert instead.
Some of the spicy casserole things Mum made occasionally were awful, even though Dad usually liked them. We always regarded anything new with great suspicion and Mum encouraged us to comment on whether we liked the food or not.
‘It’s really good feedback,’ she’d say. ‘After all, children go to the restaurant as well so I have to know what they will eat.’
‘Stick to hamburgers and chips then,’ Dad advised, but Mum looked shocked and started going on about nutrition and balanced meals.
She served up what looked to be a fairly ordinary stew one night, only it smelled a bit strange.
‘What’s that stuff?’ Eddie asked, wrinkling his nose.
‘I haven’t actually named it yet. But do try a little bit, children,’ Mum said encouragingly. ‘If you truly don’t like it I will let you have a cheese sandwich instead. I think it could be a little on the hot side.’
Eddie and I looked at each other dubiously but I thought I’d give it a go. I took the smallest possible spoonful and popped it into my mouth. I immediately wished I hadn’t. ‘Ugh!’ I gagged, and hastily gulped a glass of water, trying to cool the fire in my mouth.
‘I’m not even going to try it,’ Eddie said obstinately, as Mum offered him the spoon. ‘Look at what it’s done to Poppy.’
I sat there red faced and wheezing, gasping for breath, with streaming eyes and a burning mouth. Dad passed me the bread with a sympathetic smile and Mum scribbled a note to herself and muttered something about ‘reducing the cayenne pepper.’
Like I said, Dad ate most of the stuff that Mum cooked without complaint but we all balked at the salads.
‘Do you think I’m a rabbit?’ he demanded one night after Mum dished up the sixth meal of carrot salad in a row.
‘It’s very good for you,’ Mum said soothingly. ‘I think I almost have it right this time. This is the vegan version. Please taste a bit and tell me what you think.’
Dad grudgingly took a mouthful and even more grudgingly admitted that it was okay. I could see he actually really liked it but wasn’t going to give Mum the satisfaction of telling her.
‘That’s great,’ sighed Mum. ‘I’ll type it up tomorrow. Does anyone want to name it for me?’
That was another good thing about Mum. She used to ask us to help her name her recipes and sometimes we came up with some really good ones. There was a yummy creamy dessert that she called Poppy’s Delight, because I loved it so much and Eddie had called one of the spicy casseroles Comet Surprise. The names Dad suggested were gross but really funny and Mum would never use them in her recipe books
but they made us laugh. Some of them became our private family names like Sliced Socks for eggplant savoury and Chinese Toenail Clippings for fried rice with bean sprouts.
Other kids used to love coming to our place to play because Mum always tried out new biscuit or cake recipes on them. We didn’t mind having a Mum like that too much, although lunches were a bit of a trial. We never knew what to expect when we opened our lunchboxes at school. My friend Becky used to watch me open mine every day and it nearly drove me mad.
‘Look, it’s only lunch. It’s not that big a deal. Wouldn’t you rather sit somewhere else?’
‘But I love watching you open your lunchbox. You make such funny faces and it’s so exciting seeing what your mother gives you. My lunch is so boring. It’s always egg and tomato sandwiches.’
‘So why don’t you ask your mother to make different ones,’ I asked.
‘But I like egg and tomato sandwiches,’ Becky explained. ‘Besides, if I complained about them, she’d make me get my own lunch.’
I sighed and opened the lid, wondering what I was going to find. Mum used to send me off with pots of food and a spoon every day. When I came home in the afternoon she wanted to know what I had thought of each one. She could generally tell by what had been eaten – a pot that was licked almost clean was a good sign. But after the first term at school when I realised that other people didn’t bring test pots of food for lunch, I always insisted that mum made me sandwiches. Of course that way she piled on exotic combinations of stuff or leftover meals, so I was still doing the tasting, but at least my friends couldn’t tell what peculiar stuff I was eating. Mum usually did the decent thing and put in extra for our friends, particularly of any baking she had done, so we were fairly popular at lunchtimes.
One day Becky was disappointed to see I had the same boring old sandwiches as hers, until I took a bite and yelped.
What is it?’ Becky asked eagerly.
I swallowed and gasped. ‘It tastes like strawberries mixed with egg. It’s terrible.’
Fortunately the lemon muffins were okay and the chocolate chip biscuits almost made up for it. And the apple. You can’t muck up an apple.
The day things began to go wrong I was in the bedroom, trying to find my boots. The weather was getting colder and I knew I had chucked them in the back of the wardrobe last winter, but I couldn’t find them anywhere. Isabella Wallford had turned up at school the day before showing off her new boots and all the girls had oohed and aahed over them. All except Becky and me. We decided that Isabella definitely needed taking down a peg and so we were going to wear our own boots to school. Then, we could casually say, ‘these old things? I’ve had them for ages,’ when anyone remarked on them. To be perfectly honest, my boots only looked good because I had hardly worn them. I had nagged Mum into buying them for me last winter but they were not very comfortable. I mean, they looked really good but they pinched my toes. However Becky and I agreed it was worth a few pinched toes to put Isabella Wallford in her place.
Eddie was mooching around kicking his soccer ball over and over at the fence and pretending it was Tyler’s head. Mum was in the herb garden, at least, I supposed she was there. If she’s not in the kitchen trying out recipes, then she’s usually in her garden planting or picking plants and stuff. She is a firm believer in fresh ingredients and grows all her own herbs. I had finally found one of my boots and was trying to pull it out from under a pile of books when Eddie burst into my bedroom.
‘Mum’s gone,’ he gasped.