A few minutes later I was keeping watch by the living room door. James was standing in front of the telly which was quietly showing a cooking programme. He was clutching the wrapped cake and was gently prodding the top with his finger. Suddenly the door opened and James spun round, almost dropping the cake.
‘Relax,’ I told him. ‘It’s only Tilly.’
‘What’s James doing?’ asked Tilly.
‘He’s trying to see if he can change the telly channel using the cake,’ I said.
‘That’s a bit boring,’ said Tilly. ‘Why doesn’t he use the remote?’
‘Don’t tell her I lost it!’ James snapped bossily. He kept prodding the cake, trying to push as hard as he dared without messing up the fancy patterns. He was just about to give up when the telly suddenly boomed out:
‘. . . AND THE PUDDING IS CALLED CHOCOLATE SURPRISE BECAUSE . . .’
‘Argh!’ cried James, stabbing at the cake even harder. ‘I must have hit the volume button. Shhh! Please shhh . . . !’
‘. . . WHEN YOU DIG YOUR SPOON IN, YOU FIND . . . TWO PAIRS OF TROUSERS AND AN OLD WELLINGTON BOOT AND . . . NOTTINGHAM RAILWAY STATION.’
‘Now it’s changing channels,’ said James. ‘The chocolate flower is BBC2 and the green star is Channel 5. The remote is definitely in here!’
‘What did James say?’ shouted Tilly, trying to make herself heard over the telly. Before she got an answer, we heard Mum shouting from the top of the stairs.
‘Why is that telly on so loud?’
‘James, she’s coming!’ I warned him. ‘Try pressing the red Smartie.’ So James pressed the red Smartie and to his relief the telly got quieter.* (*You’ll find out how I knew the telly would get quieter later on. It’s a bit of excitement I’m saving up for you. And anyway it’s unfair if I tell you now when I didn’t tell Ivy.)
By the time Mum came into the room, the cake was back on the kitchen table and we were all sitting watching an old man with a big nose talking about train timetables.
‘What programme’s this?’ asked Mum suspiciously.
‘It’s something James wanted to watch,’ I told her. ‘Isn’t it James?’
‘It’s a bit boring,’ said Tilly.
Mum knew something was going on, but as the house didn’t seem to be falling down, she hadn’t the energy to care.
‘Tilly, you get a quick drink and then up to bed,’ she said. ‘And you two, keep that telly quiet.’
A few minutes later James was in the kitchen having a panic. Tilly had gone upstairs to do her teeth, and we could hear Mum walking around the main bedroom telling Dad off for getting chocolate on the carpet.
‘Maybe we could make a list of what sweets to press on the cake to change the telly,’ said James. ‘Then Dad could use it and stop worrying about the remote. We’ll just say the cake is magic or something.’
‘So you’re expecting dad to sit there every night with that cake on his knee, poking it with his finger?’ I asked. James nodded. Honestly, he’s such a loser! ‘Forget it. We have to take that cake to the school fete tomorrow.’
‘But I have to get the remote out,’ said James. ‘And if I cut the cake up Dad will kill me.’
‘He couldn’t kill you if it was yours,’ I said. James looked puzzled so I had to explain it a bit more. ‘Suppose you actually won the cake tomorrow and brought it home, you could do what you liked with it.’
‘Oh very funny,’ said James. ‘How am I supposed to guess the weight?’
Well DURRR! There’s only a set of weighing scales in the kitchen cupboard isn’t there? He could have put the cake on them . . . but as James didn’t think of that, I suggested something really stupid instead.
‘All you need to do is get the cake recipe and then add up all the different bits,’ I said.
I was only joking, but before I knew it, James had pulled the tatty old cookbook off the shelf and found the right page. Ha ha!
‘170 grams of flour, 170 grams of butter, 170 grams of sugar, three eggs . . .’ he read.
‘Dad used six eggs,’ I told him. ‘So he must have used more than it says of everything.’
‘So instead of three eggs it was six, so how much flour would that be . . .’ James got out a pencil and paper. ‘And how much does an egg weigh anyway?’
‘Don’t forget the icing,’ I said helpfully. ‘And the toppings.’
And then James did something that made me a bit jealous. He made a really loud sad little sighing noise and he didn’t sound like a hippopotamus one bit. So it IS possible after all!
I left him in the kitchen scribbling away like mad. To be honest I was wondering if I was being too mean to him, but then again, my head still hurt where it got bashed by the remote, and thanks to him I still didn’t know who’d won Sing, Wiggle and Shine. So no, Agatha, you were not being too mean. The boy James had asked for trouble, and he was getting it. Good.
