Squishy Taylor and the Mess-Makers by Ailsa Wild Read Free Book Online Page A

but I like how it feels, dangling off my head.

    The tram stops four doors down from our building, opposite a big hotel. The hotel has shiny brass luggage trolleys and an outdoor carpet and men in fancy suits who just stand there, waiting to be nice to people.
    We cross at the lights, towards the hotel, and Vee elbows me and points. A big, scraggly grey puppy is sitting next to one of the men. It’s skinny and is looking up with massive soft brown eyes. The man kicks it, not hard, but still a kick.
    ‘Hey!’ I say, because that was mean .
    The puppy scampers away, limping. It stops behind a big tree out the front of the hotel, and I run towards it. I want to pick it up and cuddle it and give it food. But something scares the puppy and it bolts across the road where I can’t follow.
    ‘Come on.’ Alice tugs my hand. I follow her towards our place, even though I don’t want to.
    ‘I’m calling the pound,’ the Fancy Man says.
    I turn around to glare at him for being so mean, but then immediately forget all about it. Because someone is getting out of a taxi and heading into the hotel.
    ‘ It’s Carmeline Clancy! ’ I say.

‘It was not Carmeline Clancy,’ Jessie says, packing up her violin music. Jessie is Vee’s twin, my other bonus sister. Even though they look matching, in lots of ways they’re opposites.
    ‘It was so , I saw her,’ I insist.
    ‘You wish you saw her,’ Jessie says in her annoying older-kid voice .
    ‘I did see her.’
    The twins are only five and a half months older than me, but Jessie does this all the time.
    ‘Can you guys give it a break?’ Alice asks. She’s kneeling on the floor and Baby is trying to kick her in the face while she wrangles his dirty nappy off him. Usually on Saturday morning, Dad looks after Baby while Alice does rock-climbing. This weekend, one of Dad’s old friends is sick so he’s gone over to make him food. That’s why Baby came to the gym.
    Baby is wrinkling his face. I calculate that he’ll start screaming in nine seconds. I start counting down: Nine, eight, seven …
    ‘Can I google where Carmeline’s staying?’ Jessie asks.
    Six, five …
    Alice says nothing.
    ‘Please, Mum?’ Jessie brings the iPad over.
    Four, three …
    ‘No.’
    ‘Please?’
    Two, one …
    ‘ Waaaaaaah! ’ Baby is super loud when he’s annoyed.
    Alice sits back on her heels. ‘I said no , Jessie. Can you just get out of my face for a minute?’
    Jessie sulks off to our room. You’d think Jessie wouldn’t care where Carmeline Clancy was staying, because she never watches the clips with us. She says they’re soooo boring. But Jessie’s into facts. And she’s into being right.
    I wonder if I really did see Carmeline Clancy getting out of that taxi.
    In our room, Vee is lying on her tummy on the top bunk, looking through the telescope.
    ‘How’s Boring Lady?’ I ask.
    Boring Lady works in the office exactly across from our window and we used to think she was boring. Then we found out she was the Chief of Special Secret Undercover Operations. Now she’s kind of our own private police officer . She knows we spy on her and she doesn’t mind. All she does in that office is type, anyway.
    ‘I’m not looking at Boring Lady,’ Vee says, with a scrunched-face voice . I realise the telescope is at a different angle than usual. Vee’s looking down at the street in front of the hotel.
    ‘Can you see her?’ I ask.
    ‘Not yet,’ Vee says. We both know we’re talking about Carmeline Clancy without saying her name. Because that’s how much we care.
    ‘You haven’t seen her because she’s not there,’ Jessie says. Jessie has started putting her things away in neat rows in her drawers.
    I do a Split-Legged-Upside Down-Hoik up to Vee’s bed and nudge her aside to look through the telescope. Usually I look through the telescope from my bunk, which is in the middle – and means you see directly across to Boring Lady’s office. From Jessie’s bunk on the bottom, the