The Girls from See Saw Lane by Sandy Taylor Read Free Book Online

it was rumoured that the judge might have been the Baxter baby’s father, on account of the fact that his ears stuck out as well and he used to give Mrs Baxter marrows off his allotment.’
    Still no response. Then Dad came upstairs.
    â€˜What’s going on?’ he asked. Mum told him and he shouted through the keyhole that modelling was a daft job, and why couldn’t she do something useful, like nursing? That certainly got a response from Rita, and she started throwing things around the room. I decided to keep well out of it.
    Dad said he was going out to his shed and he went downstairs, mumbling about hysterical women.
    It had gone all quiet inside the bedroom, so Mum laid flat on the floor and peered under the door. ‘I can’t see her,’ she said to me. ‘Do you think she’s all right?’
    â€˜She sounded all right just now,’ I said.
    All the noise had woken Clark up and he came out of his bedroom, stepped over Mum, and went downstairs.
    â€˜Clark, go and tell your Aunty Brenda to come over,’ said Mum. ‘She’ll know what to do. Dottie, you stay here and listen.’
    There was nothing to listen to, so I went into Clark’s room. His Dennis the Menace clock said it was 9.15. Mary was going to kill me if I was late.  
    Mum came back upstairs: ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Your Aunty Brenda will be here soon.’
    â€˜I hope so,’ I said. ‘Mary will be round soon, and I need to get dressed.’
    â€˜Where are you going?’ said Mum.
    â€˜Saturday morning pictures.’
    â€˜That’s nice.’ 
    Clark returned all red-faced and out of breath and suggested we kicked the door down. Actually, I thought that was a pretty good idea, but Mum said if Clark went anywhere near the door, he wouldn’t be able to sit down for a month.
    Just then Aunty Brenda came running up the stairs.
    â€˜Thank goodness you’re here, Brenda!’ said Mum. ‘Perhaps you can talk some sense into her.’
    â€˜I’ll do my best,’ said Aunty Brenda, and she put her ear to the door.
    â€˜Dottie, get your Aunty Brenda a cup of tea.’
    I went downstairs, put the kettle on and sat down at the kitchen table. Clark was shovelling cornflakes into his mouth as if he hadn’t eaten for a year.
    I made the tea and went back upstairs. Aunty Brenda was halfway through the tale of the Baxter baby’s sticky-out ears and the judge’s marrows when Rita started screaming that her career was in ruins and why couldn’t Mum have married someone taller. Mum said that Dad was taller when she’d married him, but he’d shrunk.
    Rita said she was going to stay in there forever, and fade away, and that we’d all be sorry. Well, I reckoned I was the only one that would be sorry, because dead bodies smell after a bit, and I had to sleep in there.
    Mum and Aunty Brenda were just about to resort to kicking down the door themselves when Dad set fire to the garden shed.
    At the start of every New Year, my dad gives up smoking. At that point, he was two days into his hundredth attempt, and he’d gone down the shed for what my mum calls ‘a sneaky one’, but he’d fallen asleep, and the cigarette had dropped onto a pile of newspapers that I’d been saving in the hope that one day Mum would let me have a hamster like Mary’s.
    Anyway, Dad came rushing into the house screaming ‘Maureen! Call the fire brigade! The shed’s on fire!’
    Aunty Brenda started screaming ‘Women and children first’, which was most of us, and Clark started turning his bedroom upside down looking for his camera. He takes action pictures whenever he can.
    Mum ran next door to phone for the fire brigade, as next door was the only house in the street that had a phone, and Aunty Brenda shouted to Rita that the shed was on fire. Rita said: ‘Nice try.’