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

one’s going to hit you in this house.”
    â€œMummy took my dolly,” I whispered.
    â€œI know, princess,” said Graham. “But you have to do what Mummy tells you. What did she want you to do?”
    â€œHave a time out.”
    â€œCome on, then,” said Dopey Graham. He led me downstairs and sat me on the sofa. “Seven minutes,” he said, and he kissed me on the top of my head.
    I sat perfectly still with my toes pointed downwards and my hands neatly folded in my lap. I pulled my skirt out so the ballerina ruffles flowed down around me. I looked like a little girl ornament from Grumpy Annabel’s dressing-table.
    â€œWell done, princess!” said Dopey Graham, after six and a half minutes exactly. “Now come and say sorry to Mummy.”
    Grumpy Annabel was sitting in the kitchen with tearmarks on her face and a big glass of wine. I did that , I thought.
    â€œWhat do you say?” said Dopey Graham.
    â€œSorry, Mummy,” I whispered.
    â€œGood girl,” said Dopey Graham. He reached under the table and brought out my dolly. “There you go! No one’s ever going to take her away again. I promise.”
    I wrapped my arms around the doll and buried my face in her hair. She smelled of old tea bags and rotten vegetables. She smelled of the rubbish bin.
    â€œThank you, Daddy,” I said, and I shot Grumpy Annabel a triumphant look. Who’s the boss now?

ZOMBIE KILLING SPREES
    I liked Harriet. It took me a while to realize why I liked her so much. I think it was because she reminded me of living with my sister Hayley. Harriet was eight, which was nearly as old as Hayley. Hayley was nine. That was the only thing similar about them, though. Hayley had yellow hair and blue eyes, and she didn’t like it when I didn’t do what I was told, which was always. She liked Polly Pocket and she had a pink T-shirt and jeans with a heart on the pocket. Actually, I didn’t know very much about Hayley. I’d only seen her twice since she was five. When she was five, I was her favourite person in the world, but she probably liked her mum and dad better now.
    Harriet liked me, though. Harriet was great. She was little and dark-haired, and she was way easy to wind up, because she took everything dead seriously. Her best thing was pretending and dress-up. She had a whole box of dress-up toys, and as soon as she came home from school she would run and put on some fairy wings, or a crown, or a pirate costume. She never cared how stupid she looked.
    After pretending, Harriet liked drawing best. She looked all little and sweet, but she wasn’t. She liked really gruesome stories about ghosts and flesh-eating insects and zombies. The more blood, the better. Her pictures were the same. She’d draw puppies and kittens and bunnies with eyeballs falling out and blood dripping down their cheeks.
    â€œWell, I suppose it’s creative,” said Jim, when Harriet presented him with one of her pictures. “But don’t show it to Social Services, will you?”
    I think Jim was a bit worried when I came about whether I’d beat Harriet up, but I never did. I liked Harriet. I liked playing little-kid games. I liked playing with the dolls’ house, pulling all the furniture out and arranging it exactly right in all the rooms. Harriet’s dolls’ house was big and square. Her dad had made it for her. Sometimes I liked to put everything in perfectly, and sometimes I liked to turn it all upside down, chuck the parents’ bed out into the garden, fill their room with all the kids’ toys and put the mum in the toilet.
    I played with Harriet quite a lot. She always let me be boss. It was like having a small, wriggly slave in fairy wings. I played with Daniel too, but if Daniel disagreed with me he wouldn’t shut up about it, and he never did what he was told like Harriet did.
    Being bigger than Harriet meant it was my job to look after her.