The Bad Sheep by Julie Cohen Read Free Book Online Page A

Candace got to be the star,’ Lee
said.
    ‘I could be one too.’
    ‘There’s only one star.’
    ‘Who says?’
    ‘The Bible.’
    I frowned under my heavy brown fringe. Leave it to Lee to
invoke the ultimate authority. Or one of them. I appealed to the
other one.
    ‘Do we really have to do this stupid pageant, Mummy?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because Ma Gamble has organised it for the children of the
village, and you are a child of the village.’ We rounded the
corner; our house loomed ahead of us, tall and red with blank
windows. There was a wreath on our door of spiky holly, slightly
softened by a gold ribbon.
    ‘But you don’t even like Ma Gamble.’
    ‘Elizabeth, that is a singularly unsuitable thing for a
child to say.’
    ‘But it’s true. You bare your teeth at her every time you
see her.’
    ‘All the more reason for you to perform in this
pageant.’
    ‘That doesn’t make any sense.’
    ‘Elizabeth, I am warning you.’
    ‘But I’m a sheep , Mummy.’
    We went into the house. It was hardly any warmer than
outside. My theory was that our mother spent so much time making
and marketing ice cream that she never noticed that her living
quarters were always freezing. Lee thought it was because the
central heating was old and didn’t work properly. My mother and my
sister took off their boots and coats, while I stood in the
hallway, fully-dressed and dissatisfied.
    ‘I’m not doing it,’ I announced. ‘I’m not doing the stupid
pageant. I hate it.’
    ‘Liza,’ cried Lee in dismay. My mother rounded on me, her
face carved into furious stone.
    ‘I have said you will do the pageant, Elizabeth, and you
will.’
    ‘But why?’
    ‘Because this family’s business is set in Stoneguard, and
it depends on Stoneguard, and you are the representative of this
family. Therefore you will do as you are expected.’
    ‘Lee can represent the family. She’s Mary, anyway. She
wants to do it and I don’t.’
    ‘I don’t mind, really,’ said Lee.
    ‘You will both be in the Stoneguard Christmas pageant and
that is final. I have a reputation to maintain.’ She put her scarf
on the coat rack with a decisive jerk of her wrist, and walked away
from us. We heard her office door slam shut.
    *
    ‘You are going to do it, right?’ Lee asked me later, in our
bedroom. We had made a tent out of our sheets and collected all our
dozens of teddy bears underneath it with us. Lee sat perched in her
flannel pyjamas on a pillow, her knees up near her ears and her
hair pulled back into a plait just like mine.
    ‘There’s no point talking about it.’ I hugged Baba Bear to
me.
    ‘Maybe Ma Gamble will let you be a second star if you ask
really nicely.’
    ‘I don’t care. I don’t want to be a star either.’
    Lee walked her bear, Bobo, across the pillow and back. ‘Did
you—you didn’t want to be Mary, did you?’
    I laughed out through my nose, without smiling or opening
my mouth. It was something I’d seen my mother do. ‘I don’t want to
be anything.’
    ‘Because—because if you really, really wanted to be Mary,
you could be. I would let you. I could be the sheep and nobody
would know the difference.’
    I looked at my sister. She was holding Bobo tight and
biting her lip.
    ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I really don’t want to be Mary. You
can keep it. It’s better for you anyway, you’re like the princess
of the town or whatever.’
    ‘Oh.’ She breathed a sigh of relief, and then tried to
cover it up with a little sigh of sympathy. ‘A sheep isn’t really
that bad. I’ll help you make your costume.’
    ‘Maybe I can stand close to Candace in her star costume and
people will think I’m a cloud.’
    ‘Maybe.’ She contemplated her bear for a minute, and then
smiled. ‘I think Will Naughton will make a good Joseph, don’t
you?’
    ‘No.’ I twisted Baba’s ear.
    ‘Don’t you think he’s really cute?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘I almost fainted when I heard he was going to