Step by Wicked Step Read online

  ‘You’ve met her now, though.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Ralph. ‘I’ve met her now.’

  The strange look drifted back across his face.

  ‘Well?’ Pixie demanded.

  With an effort, he dragged his attention back to them.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘Meeting Flora,’ prompted Claudia.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Ralph. ‘I met her the next day. Mum was sticking to Janet’s schedule. “It’s like Annabel’s lunchbox trick,” she said. “Too good to give up just because she’s gone.” So I went over to Dad’s as usual, and Flora opened the door. “Hello,” I said. “Here I am.” And she looked me up and down and said, “That’s very nice, but who are you?”’

  He grinned. ‘It wasn’t easy to explain. I started by telling her, “I’m Ralph.” But since she still looked blank, I thought I ought to add a bit, and the best I could come up with was, “I think I might be one of your new sort of stepsons.” She didn’t look frightfully pleased, I must say. In fact, she stormed off to the living room, to phone my dad. I heard her through the door, sounding ratty. “What do you mean, you can’t get away from work?” I don’t know what he said, but it can’t have worked any better on Flora than Janet, because the next thing I heard was Flora slamming down the phone. Then she came back.

  ‘ “Your dad’s got a cheek,” she said. “I’m not a nanny!”

  ‘ “And I’m not a baby,” I snapped. (Well, I was hurt.) And then, to prove it, I went in the kitchen. “I’m getting myself a cheese sandwich,” I told her. But somehow a little bit of Janet must have stuck, because I couldn’t help adding politely: “May I make you one too?” She stared for a moment, then snatched up her bag. “Don’t bother making us sandwiches,” she said, as if we were already some sort of team. “We’ll eat out.”

  ‘ “But what about Dad?” I asked, and she gave me a bit of a cool look.

  ‘ “What about him?’ ”

  Ralph grinned. ‘And I could see her point. If he couldn’t even get home in time to introduce us on the day we met, why should we worry about him? So off we went. We had the best time ever. First we had Chinese food. Then she took me to a film about Killer Tomatoes. And then, while we were arguing about aliens on the way home, we bumped into some of her friends and went off to a coffee bar, where I took the chance to sneak away and ring Dad.

  ‘ “Where are you?” he squawked at me down the phone.

  ‘ “We’re at the Purple Onion,” I told him. “We’re just having a nightcap with a couple of friends, and then we’re on our way home.”

  ‘So, naturally, he went spare.

  ‘ “Do you know what the time is?” But I pretended that my money had run out. “Back soon,” I said. But we weren’t, because Flora took her time over her coffee. It was eleven-thirty when we got home. Dad was climbing the walls. “How could you do that?” he said to Flora. “It’s getting on for midnight. On a school night!” But Flora only pulled out the pins in her hair and tossed her head, and told him cheerfully: “Oh, well. Another time, maybe, you’ll think twice before leaving him in my care without checking about my plans.” She shook her hair into the most amazing fan around her face, and winked at me from behind, so he couldn’t see.’

  Again, the vague, bewitched look spread over his face, and he fell silent, staring into space.

  ‘You’re totally soft on Flora, aren’t you?’ Robbo said.

  Ralph made no effort to deny it. He just sighed.

  ‘I think she’s wonderful,’ he admitted. ‘She’s done all sorts of terrible things to me. She poured a bowl of spaghetti over my head when I was rude to her. She picks me up from school hours late. I practically finish my homework sitting in the gutter. She gets me in trouble, sneaking me into films I’m not old enough to see, and places I shouldn’t go. If I complain, she only says, “Don’t moan at me. I’m not your mother!” She’s completely disorganized. She bought me the most amazing stone frog in the January sales, and then forgot my birthday. And now she’s pregnant, she’s impossible. Yesterday, she sent me miles to buy a bottle of mint sauce for her sandwiches.’

  ‘Mint sauce? For a sandwich?’

  ‘That’s all she eats now,’ Ralph told them mournfully. ‘Mint sauce sandwiches. I worry about this baby. She’ll never look after it properly. All the responsibility will fall on me. Mum says if Flora craves mint sauce, it’s because her body needs it, and I should stop fussing round her like an old hen. But in all the baby books –’

  ‘You’re never reading baby books!’

  Robbo was aghast.

  Ralph stared.

  ‘Of course I am. This baby is my sister.’ Noticing Colin’s eye on him, he corrected himself with an effort. ‘All right, then. Half-sister. Or half-brother, maybe. But either way Flora’s not going to be much use. She’s only ever looked after a goldfish in her whole life. And that was found floating belly-upwards in its bowl.’

  He squared his shoulders.

  ‘No, I’m afraid it’s up to me. But Mum has promised I can spend a bit more time round there, just till I get them better organized.’

  Pixie asked curiously:

  ‘Doesn’t your mother mind you being –’ She hesitated, trawling for a more delicate way of putting it, and then gave up and copied Robbo’s phrase. ‘Being totally soft on your stepmother?’

  Ralph blushed.

  ‘She teases me about it a little. Everyone does. Yesterday, when I was sorting out the baby clothes that Mum is lending me, George even pointed out that I am actually nearer in age to Flora than Dad is, so if she’s going to marry anyone, maybe it should be me.’

  A huge grin crossed his face.

  ‘But Howard said I should just thank my lucky stars that Stepmother Number Three turned out a winner.’

  ‘Do you think she’ll stay?’

  Ralph held up crossed fingers.

  ‘She’s settling down,’ he said judiciously. ‘No doubt about it. George and Edward keep warning me not to bank on it. It might just be the baby. It might not last. But when I was helping her sort out some old toys and rattles and stuff, she picked up a fairy-tale book she’s had since she was four, and started to read. “Once upon a time there was a beautiful stepmother who lived with her three wicked stepchildren, deep in the woods…”’

  He grinned again.

  ‘I checked it later, and she’d changed it round. But I think, if she can make a joke like that, she must be settling down.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Claudia. ‘And, after all, third time lucky.’

  ‘That’s what I think,’ Ralph told them. ‘At least, that’s what I hope.’

  The soft look came back again, just like before.

  ‘Third time lucky,’ he said, and held up his fingers which were crossed again.

  *

  Pixie threw herself backwards on the bed, tucked her arms under her head, and told the ceiling gloomily:

  ‘If it’s third time lucky, I’ve a long way to go.’

  Everyone shifted round to face her.

  ‘Go on, then,’ said Robbo. ‘Tell us.’

  Pixie sat up again.

  ‘Why? Am I next?’

  ‘I thought we were going round in a circle,’ said Claudia. ‘It should be Robbo now.’

  ‘I don’t mind Pixie going first if she’s ready.’

  ‘Ready?’ teased Ralph. ‘She’s probably even worked out a title.’

  ‘Yes,’ Pixie told him. ‘I do have a title. I’m calling my story “The Pains in my Life”.’

  Ralph settled back.

  ‘All right, then. But no fancy frills. We want the truth, and nothing but the truth, or it won’t count.’

  ‘What makes you think –?’

  But since she could already hear them sniggering, she thought it safer to begin.

  PIXIE’S STORY:

  The Pains in my Life

  Really, of course, their name is P-a-y-n-e, but, like me, you’d call them ‘The Pains’ if you met them. They’re awful
, Sophie and Hetty Payne. They drive me up the wall. I almost don’t want to bother seeing my father any more, now it means that I have to spend weekends at their house. Lucy their mother’s not so bad. I can ignore her. She makes a fuss of me when I arrive, and asks the usual questions about school. But, after that, she tends to lose track of me. I used to disappear upstairs, and only come down at mealtimes, or when someone called me. And maybe we would have kept on that way for ever, except that Sophie and Hetty had a terrible quarrel a few months ago, a real stand-up fight, and Lucy and Dad decided the sensible thing was to move Hetty out of her sister’s bedroom into mine.

  Mine!

  It was agreed when Dad and Lucy bought the house that I’d have a bedroom to myself. I remember that. Mum remembers it. And even Dad admits that was the deal. No sharing bedrooms with my stepsisters. But then there was this fight. We’d all seen it coming. Sophie and Hetty had been niggling at one another for months.

  ‘Hetty’s using my calculator, and she won’t give it back to me.’

  ‘Sophie keeps switching channels while I’m watching.’

  ‘Hetty wore my blue woolly while I was out yesterday, and now there’s a hole in it.’

  ‘Sophie’s sitting on the stairs, and she won’t let me past her.’

  You’d think that they were three, the way they went on. And you’d think they’d be used to it. (Everybody else was.) But, no. All of a sudden there was this giant bust-up – fists flying, hair pulled out in chunks, and all Sophie’s little glass animals smashed to bits.

  So I end up with Hetty. In my room. One Friday I show up and lock myself away in peace and quiet as usual. And on the next visit I can hardly get in the room for Hetty’s bed and Hetty’s desk and Hetty’s chest of drawers.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  Dad looked at Lucy. Lucy looked at Dad. Then Lucy said:

  ‘We didn’t think you’d mind. It’s not as if you’re here that much. Only a few days a month. And Sophie says she won’t share with Hetty any longer.’

  What could I do? What could I say? I could have tried to argue. I could have said that I’d been promised a room of my own. Everyone had said I wouldn’t have to share. But it wouldn’t have sounded very nice of me. It would have sounded rather petty and mean (unless I added a bit about not being all that keen on coming anyway, and I couldn’t really do that with Dad standing there, could I?).

  And Lucy was right. A few days a month isn’t much. It wouldn’t really have mattered, except that even a day feels like a year if you can’t stand the person two feet away from you.

  And I can’t stand Hetty Payne. I just can’t stand her. I’m not too keen on Sophie, to be fair. But Hetty drives me mad. I hate the way she cocks her head on one side and fiddles with her hair. I hate the way she sniffs without noticing whenever she’s reading. I even hate the way she rolls the cat over the carpet like a sausage. But most of all I hated the way she teased me about my name.

  ‘Lunch-time, Priscilla!’ she’d yodel up the stairs.

  And though I wouldn’t answer till someone else came along and called up ‘Pixie!’, it still made me want to creep out of my room and drop a heavy pot plant on her head.

  And she’d been put in with me. I was supposed to get along with her from Friday after school to Sunday night, on two weekends a month.

  ‘This isn’t fair,’ I grumbled to my dad. ‘She’s Sophie’s sister, not mine. Let Sophie put up with her. Or let her use my room while I’m not there, and move back with Sophie when I come. That would be fine with me.’

  ‘Lucy thinks Hetty might find that unsettling,’ said my dad. ‘She thinks it’s easier this way.’

  Lucy thinks… Lucy thinks… But he was my dad before he was Lucy’s husband. I’m only here for two weekends a month. Do you think it would kill him to try and stick up for me once in a while, instead of crawling round his new family as if everything about them mattered more?

  But none of them ever seemed to think about me. Nobody even asked. When all of us went on holiday for the first time, Sophie and I had a fight. We were supposed to be one brand-new, big, happy family, and Sophie took the top bunk-bed without even asking me, or tossing a coin. I pulled her stuff off and threw mine up, and she hurled it down again. Then we were thumping each other, and lashing out, and snatching at one another’s hair. The tears were streaming down our cheeks, but we never made a noise, not a single peep, in case Dad and Lucy came in from the next room and saw what a terrible mistake they’d made, and how much they were fooling themselves, and how stupid they were to think we would ever feel anything about one another except: ‘Get out of my life, please. Just go away!’

  And I didn’t feel any different about Hetty. In fact, I felt worse. Hetty is nearer my age, but we couldn’t be more different. You only have to pin back your ears for half an hour to get your head stuffed to bursting with Hetty’s gift for maths, and Hetty’s natural good manners, and Hetty’s way with animals (if you can call rolling a cat across the floor ‘having a way with animals’).

  Hetty is everyone’s darling. Except mine. When she holds up her homework with its neatly written ‘Excellent!’ at the bottom, I want to snatch it from her and rip it up. When she reaches for her helping of pudding and starts with her creepy ‘Oh, delicious, Mum!’, I want to push her face in it. And when she leans over to point to all the little mistakes in my maths, I want to stab her finger with my pen.

  So how to get rid of her, out of my room? First, I tried a haunting. As soon as the light was out on Friday night, I stretched out my arm as far as it would go, and started a scratching, scrabbling noise between the two beds.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That noise.’

  ‘Wasn’t it you?’

  There was a worried silence. Then she said:

  ‘No, it wasn’t me.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ I said cheerfully. ‘Maybe we’re haunted.’ And left it at that until the next morning when she went off for her shower. As soon as she was out of the room, I flung the window wide open. Luckily, Hetty never hurries in the bathroom. So by the time I heard her coming back and tugged the window closed, the room was icy cold.

  ‘What’s going on in here?’ she said. ‘It’s freezing.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Strange thing,’ I said. ‘One minute it was fine. Then, just a moment ago – whoosh! It was like the Arctic’

  Clutching her towel round her, she went to the radiator.

  ‘Funny. The heating’s still on.’

  ‘Very odd,’ I agreed. ‘I thought this sort of thing only happens when there are ghosts about.’

  She looked up.

  ‘You don’t think –?’

  ‘Here?’ I laughed. ‘There’s no reason to think that horrible, horrible murder happened here.’

  ‘What horrible, horrible murder?’

  I stared at her.

  ‘Didn’t you know? I thought that everyone knew about Poor Henrietta Forbes. How her husband accidentally locked her in a wardrobe, set fire to it by mistake, and then, without thinking, put the flames out with an axe.’

  Hetty sat down on her bed.

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘Her ghost was seen up and down the street for years. But then a priest came, and she was laid to rest. The story I heard was that the spirit of Henrietta Forbes would only walk again when someone with the same name lays their bed, uninvited, in her place.’

  I finished up cheerfully:

  ‘So you’re all right, then.’

  ‘No, I’m not!’ Hetty snapped.

  I spun round, pretending I’d just realized.

  ‘Hetty! Of course! It’s short for Henrietta!’

  But maybe I’m not as good an actress as I thought, because she suddenly cottoned on, and grinned at me as if I were the cleverest person in the universe, just for thinking up some silly ghost tale. I realized there was no point in carrying on with the haunting. So next day I tried something different to drive he
r out. Bothering her back. I waited until she was deep in her homework. Then I picked up my maths book, littered with all the usual ‘Try again, Pixie’s and ‘Please see rue’s, and brought it over to her desk.

  ‘Can you explain things?’

  Can Hetty Payne explain things? Can camels spit? My stepsister can explain things till hell freezes over. I stood there, bored out of my mind, while she went through each problem, and why you have to tackle it the way you do, and where it’s easy to go wrong. I got so bored I even started listening (and some of it must have accidentally stuck, because a week later, for the first time in my life, I found a neat little ‘Well done!’ on my maths test).

  But it was still pointless. Hetty didn’t even seem to notice me wasting hours of her time, let alone mind. After, without even moaning, she missed a couple of her favourite telly shows to write her essay, and then got up early next morning to finish her own maths.

  And that’s when I tried the next tack to get her out of my room. The semi-silent treatment.

  ‘Are you coming swimming this afternoon?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Don’t you know?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Well, can’t you decide?’

  ‘When I’m ready.’

  I kept it up all morning. I wasn’t exactly ‘not speaking’. And I wasn’t quite sulking. But I certainly didn’t make things easy. I hoped she’d suddenly get so fed up with me that she’d decide even her sister was better company, and sweep her clothes off the end of my wardrobe rail, and storm back to Sophie. I could imagine them discussing me behind my back.

  ‘Mean! Hateful!’

  ‘Selfish! Horrible!’

  And I was almost right. She left the room. But not to go back to Sophie and crab about me behind my back. Oh, no. Hetty the Pain went straight to her mother, and told her what was going on.

  And Lucy showed up in my doorway. She was as mild and friendly as usual; but just from the way she was ready to break off whatever it was she’d been doing to talk to me, I knew she was taking this seriously. It mattered to her.

  And suddenly I realized that it was serious to me as well. It mattered even more. I’d gone for months just drifting through my weekends in their house as if they were some sort of half-time in a football match, and real life started again when I went home on Sunday night. I was sick of hiding my feelings. I was sick of holding my tongue. And, most of all, I was sick of pretending.