21

Turkish Delish!

As soon as we got home The Brothers buzzed round the Turkish Delight like bees round a honey pot.

‘It’s not set!’ I cried, shoving them away. I put it on the side in the kitchen. ‘We can have it tomorrow!’

Then I told them about how Nadima’s family had had their own sweet shop.

‘Their own sweet shop! Now that’s the kind of parents I want!’ said Gus.

‘Yeah,’ agreed Dan. ‘How come we get a crummy estate agent for a parent, and they get their own sweet shop?’ he teased.

‘Bad luck!’ Mum grinned.

‘Yeah, well, they haven’t got it any more,’ I said quietly.

Mum sighed. ‘I can’t even begin to imagine how hard it must be to leave your home and everyone you love,’ she said. ‘And head off to a strange land where you’re not at all sure of your welcome – I’m ashamed of how few refugees we’ve taken in.’

‘I reckon everyone should have the right to live wherever they want to,’ I said.

‘It’s not that simple,’ said Matt. ‘There are millions of refugees.’

‘We can’t take all of them,’ said Dan.

‘No one country could take all of them,’ added Matt.

‘But they don’t all want to come to the UK, do they?’ I argued.

‘A lot of them do,’ said Mum. ‘And to be fair, we don’t have enough housing for all of them.’

‘Then we should build some more,’ I said.

‘But it takes ages to build houses. Where would they live in the meantime?’ asked Dan.

‘Tents!’ replied Gus.

‘What about when it snows?!’ I cried. ‘They’d freeze to death.’

‘OK, so would you give up your bedroom for a refugee to live in?’ Dan asked me.

‘No, I’d give up yours!’ I told him.

He thwacked me with a cushion.

The next morning was Saturday so I’d gone down early to grab the computer, as usual. While it was loading, I checked if the Turkish Delight had set. It had – so I cut it into chunks with a sharp knife and turned it out onto a plate. Obviously I had to try a bit. And OMG it was amazing. I don’t know how I resisted scoffing the lot. Actually I do. It was knowing what The Brothers would do to me if I did.

Not surprisingly, we polished off all the Turkish Delight before breakfast. And then World War Three nearly broke out over the last piece, so Mum made us bid for it. Matt won with a 50p bid. Mum put the money in the treats pot in the kitchen cupboard.

And I had a brilliant new business idea.

Fifty pence for ONE piece of Turkish Delight? Seriously?! What if we got Nadima’s mum to make tons of it and we sold it at school?

We’d make a fortune!

Entrepreneurial or what!?

I wondered if Nadima would be up for it. But then I thought that actually it would be great – because she’d sort of be getting a part of her old life back. And it’d give her a chance to show everyone what her family had done, back in Syria.

I was itching to tell Nadima my fabulous plan. I thought about texting her, but I realised it would be almost as difficult for me to write the text as it would be for her to read it. By which I mean impossible. It would have to wait until I could explain everything at school next week.