Read Online Close Your Pretty Eyes by Sally Nicholls - Free Book Online

there, I didn’t eat anything Grumpy Annabel cooked, but after they’d gone to bed I ate six packets of crisps, a whole packet of chocolate biscuits, five mini pork pies, three leftover sausages and most of a jar of chocolate spread. Then I went upstairs and was sick in Grumpy Annabel’s knicker drawer. She went bright pink when she found out, so I started to cry and said my tummy hurt.
    â€œPoor baby! Of course it does!” said Dopey Graham.
    â€œI want to go home!” I said.
    â€œOf course you do,” said Dopey Graham. He lifted me on to his knee. I took the chance to be sick again on his pyjamas.
    After that, Grumpy Annabel said I couldn’t just take food any time I wanted.
    â€œBut you promised!” I wailed. “You promised, and now you’ve lied to me just like everybody else!”
    â€œOh, baby,” said Dopey Graham. He gave me a hug, and I put my arms around his neck and squeezed him so tight he nearly choked. “Of course you can go into the kitchen. We just don’t want you to make yourself poorly again.”
    â€œBut—” said Grumpy Annabel. I could tell she hadn’t forgotten her sicky knickers. “We can’t just let her eat whatever she wants!”
    â€œShe won’t,” said Dopey Graham. “Will you, baby?”
    I hiccuped, and glanced at Grumpy Annabel triumphantly.
    â€œNo, Daddy,” I said.
    But I did.
    Grumpy Annabel stopped buying sweets, in the hope that that would stop me. It didn’t. The day she stopped getting sweets, I ate twelve jam sandwiches, and none of the roast chicken she’d spent all morning cooking.
    Grumpy Annabel and Dopey Graham had a huge fight about it.
    â€œThis is pathological ,” Annabel said. “She’s doing it to get at me.”
    â€œOh, love,” said Graham. “She’s only little! You’re making her sound like a criminal mastermind. What sort of child makes herself ill just to get at her parents?”
    â€œThis one does,” said Grumpy Annabel. “You don’t know her like I do. She’s all sweetness and light around you. She hates me.”
    â€œShe doesn’t hate you,” said Dopey Graham. There was a pause, while I guessed he must be snuggling her. They were like big teddy bears – they snuggled all the time. “I know it’s hard,” he said. “I know you’re tired. But she’ll get over this, when she realizes she’s not going to starve.”
    â€œI wonder if Lynne might have been right. . .” said Annabel.
    â€œLynne also said we have to let her see she can trust us,” said Graham. “I don’t want to break a promise to a child. Especially not this one.”
    But even Dopey Graham realized he had to do something. Their solution was Olivia’s Special Food Box. Annabel would fill it with Healthy Food like muesli bars and bread sticks, and if I was hungry, I was supposed to eat something from there.
    â€œAnd if I eat your food. . .?” I said.
    â€œThen you have to have a time out,” said Grumpy Annabel.
    Time outs were how you got punished in the Dopey house. If you were bad, you had to sit on the sofa for seven minutes and not talk. It was a stupid idea though, because Annabel could never make me do it.
    The first afternoon I wasn’t supposed to steal from the kitchen, I took one of Grumpy Annabel’s chocolate muffins from the fridge. I picked a muffin, because she’d bought three of them, so it was really obvious when one of them was gone. I left the wrapper out on the table just to make sure.
    I was upstairs drawing pictures on Annabel’s bedroom wall when she found out. I could hear her feet going into the kitchen. Then there was this long pause. I could hear her being frightened, which made me giggle. I loved that Grumpy Annabel was about five times as old as me, and I made her frightened.
    She came upstairs, saw me drawing on her