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Hamster Face
Amy woke to light around the edge of the blinds, silence outside the campervan, except for the sound of birds, and to Matt’s eyes looking at her from the pillow at the other side of the rock-and-roll bed. She smiled, and he smiled back, as Harry wriggled, sat up in between them and said, ‘I’m hungry, Mam, when’s breakfast?’
‘I’ve only just woken up myself, and most of our food is under a collapsed tent,’ she admitted. ‘Harry, please stop wriggling. It’s tight enough for space in this bed without that, and you’ll wake Oliver.’
‘I am awake,’ Oliver’s voice came from under the big white duvet under which all four of them had spent the remainder of the night. ‘I think we’ll go back in the pop-top now. Can you put it up again, Dad?’
Matt had lowered the pop-top at the height of the storm, once the boys had clattered headlong down from the roof after that enormous flash of lightning had woken them. It had probably been for the best. If one kiss in the cottage had led to so much trouble, this could have been much worse. No, it was much better things had ended the way they did. There were so many complications, and in the cold light of day with both boys around, living in the here and now didn’t seem as straightforward as it had done in the darkness, when they were alone.
‘Okay. I wouldn’t have come down in the first place if it wasn’t for you,’ Harry pointed out. ‘I wasn’t scared of the thunderstorm.’
‘Neither was I. I wasn’t scared, not exactly. I was worried you would be scared. That lightning was very bright, and the thunder was as loud as —’
‘As loud as my dad farting!’ yelled Harry, and the two boys started making fart noises with their armpits. Normal service was resumed.
‘You’ve both been very brave,’ Matt said. ‘That was an almighty thunderstorm last night. Darcey-Mae would be very impressed with both of you!’ he joked.
‘Ha. Darcey-Mae. I don’t care about Darcey-Mae,’ Harry said.
‘Me neither. I’m not scared of her either,’ Oliver added. ‘I don’t have to be her boyfriend, do I, Amy?’ She nodded in reply, and he continued: ‘I’m never going to do what she says any more. I don’t care what she says, I’m Harry’s friend now and she can get stuffed. Like a sheep. A stuffed sheep.’
He was wriggling out from under the duvet and climbed up onto the worktop to get up to the pop-top.
‘Wait a minute, please, Oliver,’ Amy said, sitting upright in bed. She was still wearing Matt’s T-shirt over her pyjama top. ‘Did Darcey-Mae tell you not to be Harry’s friend?’
‘Yeah, loads of times. She doesn’t like Harry ‘cos he wouldn’t be her boyfriend.’
‘Darcey-Mae’s gross. I don’t want a girlfriend.’ Harry pulled a face.
‘I’m glad you’re not going to pay any attention to her any more, then,’ said Matt.
‘Yeah, and I’m not going to tell the dinner nans things any more, just cos she says.’ Oliver puffed up with bravado, while Darcey-Mae was a hundred miles away.
‘Excellent. Let’s play Goat Gunge,’ said Harry, as Oliver disappeared up into the pop-top and Harry began to follow.
‘One more thing! Olly, could you come back down here for a minute?’ Matt said. ‘What exactly do you mean, you’re not going to tell the dinner nans any more? What have you been telling them?’
Oliver’s head appeared, upside-down, from the pop-top.
‘Darcey-Mae makes Harry do something naughty, and then I have to tell the dinner nans, so we get to go first in the line for lunch and we get reward points for good behaviour. She’s got the most in the whole school, and whoever gets the most wins a prize at the end of term. It’s, like, her best game.’ He pulled his head up again, and Matt stood up so he could look into the pop-top. Amy hugged the quilt around her knees, and held Harry’s hand.
‘Olly, I need to ask you a serious question, and I want you to promise to tell me the truth. Can you do that?’ Matt asked. Amy couldn’t hear an answer from Oliver, but she presumed Oliver was nodding. ‘What kind of naughty things does Darcey-Mae make Harry do?’
There was a pause, and Amy found she was holding her breath.
‘She likes it when he loses his temper, so we sometimes call him “hamster-face” until he gets cross.’
‘Hamster face?’ Amy queried, trying to keep her own face straight.
‘’Cos he’s got chubby cheeks like a hamster!’ Oliver announced.
‘Don’t say that!’ Harry was getting cross.
‘Or we have to copy everything he says, ‘cos that annoys him too. Or we have to scream whenever he says something and run away. Or she makes him do something and then we have to tell the dinner nans when he does it.’
‘That’s not very kind, is it?’ Matt said to Oliver.
‘Not really, I guess,’ Oliver said.
