Amber’s Secret. Ann Pilling

Sally said silently to herself, don’t let Mrs Spinks go next door.

      She really thought she was going to have to tell a lie. Perhaps she would tell Mrs Spinks that she’d dropped Mum’s front door key down a drain. But then she had a brainwave.

      She said, ‘Mrs Spinks, I’m very sorry but my mouse has escaped from his cage. He’ll be in our house somewhere but I really don’t know where.’ Then she added, ‘He likes running up people’s legs.’

      This time it was Mrs Spinks who turned pale and she gave a little scream. ‘Oh my goodness gracious. If I ever—’ Then she turned her old-lady lips into the thin line. ‘Sally Bell,’ she said severely, ‘until that mouse is back in its cage you must be a very grown-up girl. When you go to put his food out you must water your mother’s plants for me. You must bring the letters over here and you must make sure there have been no—’

      ‘Burglars. I know, Mrs Spinks,’ Sally said in her most grown-up voice. ‘And I’ll look under all the beds.’ Then she added, ‘I might find my mouse.’

      ‘Ugh,’ said Mrs Spinks, fanning herself with the morning paper. ‘I’m sorry, Sally, but if your mouse ran up my leg I think I should have a heart attack. When my Billie was a little boy we got him goldfish. There’s never any trouble with goldfish.’

      So at least Sally had arranged things so that Mrs Spinks wouldn’t go next door, and without telling a lie. But that didn’t solve the problem of Grandfather. When people died you had to have funerals, she thought. So perhaps she could get a very big box, tip all the broken pieces in, and leave it out for the dustbin men.

      But that didn’t feel right. Grandfather Clock was like a person and you wouldn’t leave a dead person out for the rubbish men. Also, there must be somebody in the world who could stick him together again. It now occurred to Sally that being able to get stuck together with glue was one way in which things were luckier than people.

      It was because she was going to try with all her might to get Grandfather beautifully mended and ticking again, that she had needed Amber’s special phone number, the one that got you through to God. Nobody else would do.

      Sally woke up very early the day after Amber had given her the number, yawned, rubbed her eyes and got out of bed. It was the first day of the holidays and the sun was shining. No more school. Normally, she would have felt happy and light. Normally, she would feel like singing and skipping about. But today she felt as if there was a big stone on her chest, a stone that was crushing her. She felt all heavy. It was because of Grandfather.

      She must go home straight away and phone that number. She wouldn’t have a wash till she’d done it, she would just put her blue dress on and slip out. With any luck, Mrs Spinks might not be up yet. She had a little lie-in on Saturdays, had a cup of tea in bed, and did the crossword puzzle.

      But when Sally started to put her clothes on she found that her blue dress had turned into a red check one. Mrs Spinks had a craze about doing the washing. She must have decided it was dirty.

      Sally crept out on to the landing and listened hard. Mrs Spinks’s bedroom door was open and her bed was already made. She pulled on the red dress and went downstairs. But Mrs Spinks wasn’t in her kitchen, she was in her wash house, a little brick hut across the back yard which you had to cross to reach the garden. Mum had a wash house, too.

      The kitchen door was open. Sally crossed the yard and peeped round the corner of the wash house door. It felt all soapy and steamy and Mrs Spinks was turning the handle of a wooden mangle that squeezed water out of the clothes before they were hung on the line to dry. She was very red in the face. Mum had a mangle, too, but it was electric and went on its own.

      Mrs Spinks liked turning the mangle herself. ‘The old ways are the best,’ she had told Sally.

      ‘Hello, Sally Bell,’ she said. ‘You’re up early.’

      ‘So are you,’ answered Sally. This must have sounded a bit rude because Mrs Spinks gave her a funny look. But all Sally could think of was her blue dress. What had happened to it?

      ‘Did you take my blue dress to wash, Mrs Spinks?’ she said.

      ‘I certainly did. It’s soaking in that sink. I noticed you’d got all mud on it. Been down those allotments again, have you? Been sitting by that dirty old stream? My Jack used to come home filthy from those allotments. “Everything into the wash house, Jack”. That’s what I’d say to him.’

      Sally said, ‘I don’t suppose you emptied the pockets, Mrs Spinks?’

      Mrs Spinks blinked. ‘No, I can’t say I did.’ Then she seemed to panic. ‘You didn’t leave anything like a pen in them, did you, because pens run something shocking and I don’t want my washing all blue.’

      ‘No, it wasn’t a pen. It was. . . Oh, it doesn’t matter. It wasn’t important.’ Sally didn’t dare try and fish her dress out of the old brown sink. It would look too suspicious.

      But it was quite easy to please Mrs Spinks. She beamed. ‘That’s all right then. Now, what about a bit of breakfast? Eggs on toast all right?’

      Sally ate her soggy toast in misery. She liked scrambled eggs, but not when Mrs Spinks scrambled them because Mrs Spinks still used powdered eggs that you had to mix with water, the kind people had in the war, when you couldn’t get fresh ones. It hadn’t been the war for ages but Mrs Spinks said she’d got used to the taste.

      It was watery eggs on soggy toast every Saturday morning. Lunch would be a plate of very sloppy stew with boiled potatoes, and tomorrow’s lunch would be slices of dried-up chicken, and on Monday it would be fish cakes and mashed-up carrots. Pudding was always stewed fruit. The endless, pale-coloured meals stretched on and on.

      Sally ate her breakfast very quickly, so that she could escape.

4

      She would have to find Amber and get the telephone number again, unless, by trying really hard, she could actually remember it for herself. Appleford – it was definitely Appleford – 661, that was it! But then she wasn’t sure. Could it have been Appleford 116? Sally thought and thought. She was certain it was one or the other. Then she had an idea. She could try both numbers; she could go home and use their own phone.

      Mrs Spinks had a long thin garden with vegetables right at the end, and she’d gone out to see how everything was growing. Sally left a note on the kitchen table.

      Gone to feed my mouse and do plants.

      Might go and see my friend Amber.

      Back soon.

      Love from Sally

      Because she thought Mrs Spinks might be cross with her, for going off without permission, she added a few kisses, although Mrs Spinks was not really that sort of person.

      ‘Appleford 661, Appleford 116, Appleford 661.’ Sally kept repeating the numbers as she let herself into their house. She went quickly through the hall where Grandfather lay in pieces (she did not look at him) and along the corridor into the kitchen where the phone was. The plants were droopy and the kitchen had a stale, unused smell, but Sally went straight to the phone, before she forgot the numbers.

      She picked up the telephone and a lady said, ‘Number, please?’

      ‘Appleford 116,’ replied Sally.

      ‘Hold the line, I will try it for you,’ the lady said next and there were some clicking noises. But then she said, ‘Madam, is it a company you are calling?’

      Sally hesitated. ‘Er, no, it’s not a company. It’s. . . I’ve been told I can talk to