Read Online The Chocolate Dog by Holly Webb - Free Book Online Page B

horrified.
    Amy stretched out a hand to the yellowish mess on the floor, and realized there wasn’t a lot she could do about it with just fingers. And Choc was doing his hoover impression now, licking it up gleefully. He liked her cake, anyway…
    Amy looked up at Kate guiltily. “I was trying – Lara still wanted a mermaid cake. She went back under the table, and I didn’t think she’d come out. I was worried that if Mum came back, and we’d had to cancel the party because Lara was under the table, she’d be really upset.” She gave Kate a pleading look. “Sorry about the floor…”
    â€œLook at my hair!” Lara crawled out and stood up in front of Kate, her face scarlet. “Egg in it!”
    â€œSome people put egg on their hair on purpose, to make it shiny.” Kate sighed. “All right. If you want a mermaid, you can have a mermaid. It’s your birthday, after all. And Amy’s right, I don’t want to tell your mum you wouldn’t come to your own party. Come on.” She grabbed Lara’s hand.
    â€œWhere are we going?” Amy asked, following them into the hall.
    â€œWe’re putting a bandana on Lara, and then we’re going to the corner shop.”
    Â 
    â€œWhat are we going to do with the ones that aren’t green?” Lara asked hopefully, running ever-so-casual fingers through the mixing bowl. It was full of pink and red and purple and orange sweets, and it looked like a treasure chest.
    Kate frowned at the cake. “You can eat them,” she told Lara. She wasn’t really paying attention, as she was trying to work out how to turn one square, slightly lumpy sponge cake (Amy’s creation) and one green caterpillar cake into a mermaid. She’d drawn out a plan on a piece of paper, but Amy wasn’t sure how they were going to get from paper to cake.
    Lara half-closed her eyes and stared at the bowl of sweets, as though she didn’t know where to start. “Really all of them?” she whispered, just too quietly for Kate to hear. If Kate didn’t say no, that was almost as good as if she’d said yes…
    The other mixing bowl was full of all the green and yellow fruit pastilles that they’d picked out once they’d put the cake in the oven and scrubbed the egg out of Lara’s hair. They’d bought eighteen tubes of fruit pastilles (all the newsagent’s had) and a large bag of green jelly turtles, which Amy was working her way through with the scissors from her pencil case. Once she’d chopped the little flippers off, they looked just like mermaid scales. And the flippery bits tasted even better than whole turtles, she’d discovered. She was doing two for her, one for Choc. He’d been sulking, because they didn’t take him to the corner shop.
    Kate reckoned that if they were clever, they could cut the caterpillar cake into a tail shape and cover it with the green sweets, and it would be just like a mermaid. They’d also bought some strawberry bootlaces. Kate said that real mermaids all had red hair. It was a fact.
    Amy had nearly spilled her bagful of turtles all over the shop floor when Kate said it. A sudden picture flashed in front of her eyes – the fronds of dark-red seaweedy hair waving around the pale mermaid face in the rock pool. She’d almost forgotten, with everything else that was going on.
    Amy wondered for a moment when Kate had seen a mermaid. Then Lara nodded seriously and picked up two packets of bootlaces without even trying to argue that mermaids were blonde, and Kate’s face was so relieved, Amy saw she hadn’t really meant it.
    â€œAll right,” Kate muttered, picking up a kitchen knife and starting to cut into the sponge. “This actually looks like a nice cake, Amy, especially for a first attempt. Your mum’s got lots of food colouring in the cupboard, and a gold board to put the cake on, and even some pinkish