Later that day, Jessica sat on her bed. She was copying bits from Astrophysics Made Simple into a large, red notebook. But she did not know what it was. Somehow she could not concentrate.
‘I hope you’re pleased with yourself!’
Jessica looked up to see Midge, glaring at her from the doorway.
‘I don’t know what you’re on about.’
‘Oh yes you do. Thanks to you, Dad’s walked out. What if he never comes back? We’ll be a Single Parent Family.’
Jessica swallowed. ‘There’s nothing wrong with single-parent families,’ she said. ‘Lots of kids at school have them.’
‘Well, but other kids’ single parents aren’t Mum. Imagine, there’ll be nothing to eat except nettle soup ever again!’ (Jessica turned pale. It was a truly terrible thought.) ‘Anyway,’ added Midge passionately, ‘I want Dad back.’
‘Perhaps we should learn to cook,’ said Jessica. But she knew it was not the answer. She was missing Mr Haggerthwaite too. When she remembered that he wasn’t there, she felt all funny inside. And he had only been gone for two hours.
The truth was, she relied on him. Of course, Mrs Haggerthwaite could be good fun. Even Jessica had to admit that. Sometimes she even made eating nettle soup seem like fun. And even the time she had celebrated the Rites of Spring by dancing about the roof wearing nothing but pink knickers had been quite funny - afterwards. And then she could be horribly rude to people she didn’t like - which was funny when it was somebody Jessica didn’t like either, and less funny when it was somebody she did. And then there was the time she had put a curse on Mr Boswell, three doors down, because Midge had kicked his new football over the fence and Mr Boswell wouldn’t give it back. Yes, she was loyal too, Jessica had to admit that. In fact, she had several good qualities.
But she was not very good at seeing other people’s point of view. Today, for example, she had not understood why everybody hated her new idea. Just like she never understood why Jessica minded when she filled the fridge with pond slime, or when she borrowed Jessica’s test tubes to help with her spells and broke them, or when she went to the School Concert in a purple cape with magic runes all over it and all the kids stared.
Mr Haggerthwaite, on the other hand, was very good at understanding people’s feelings. He even managed to understand how Mrs Haggerthwaite felt most of the time, which was fairly amazing. Certainly he understood how Jessica felt. It was he, for example, that made sure that she had a sensible jacket to wear to school, one without magic runes. It was he that decided to take over most of the cooking, when Jessica was only five, and she hurled her nettle soup to the floor, breaking the bowl into a hundred pieces. It was he that took Jessica to the Natural History Museum in the holidays, or watched the science programmes on TV with her, without making rude remarks or saying ‘Science - Fiddlesticks!’ every two minutes.
And only last month he had made sure that Jessica’s birthday present had been just what she had always wanted.
‘I know what Jessica wants,’ she had overheard him saying to her mum. ‘Just you leave it to me.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ Mrs Haggerthwaite had replied. ‘It’s so dull! It’s so boring! I’m sure my idea is better.’
‘Not for Jessica,’ said Mr Haggerthwaite. ‘Just trust me.’
They had continued like this for some time, with Jessica desperately trying to work out what they were discussing. And then they had caught her listening and both been cross with her, and she had never worked it out. But for her birthday there had been exactly what she had always dreamed of - but never thought she could possibly own. Her own microscope. It was sitting on her desk now, just as new and shiny and wonderful as when she had first unwrapped it. Even looking at it made Jessica feel warm inside. ‘We can always take it back you know,’ Mrs Haggerthwaite had said hopefully. It turned out Mrs Haggerthwaite had wanted to give her a crystal ball.
Maybe I don’t just rely on him, thought Jessica. Maybe I love him. After all, she thought defiantly, he is my dad.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said aloud to Midge. ‘They’ll make it up. They always do.’
‘Huh! I’m not so sure. You may not have noticed, but Mum is the most stubborn person ever. And Dad’s really mad this time too.’ Midge was looking worried. ‘Maybe he won’t come back for ages. Maybe he won’t come back ever!’
‘Of course he will! Don’t worry about it,’ said Jessica authoritatively. ‘I’ll sort it out.’
If possible, Midge looked even more alarmed. ‘How are you going to do that?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jessica admitted. ‘But I’m sure the first thing is to stop this professional witch nonsense. Once Mum sees sense, Dad’s sure to come home.’
‘She won’t give up easily, that’s certain,’ said Midge gloomily. ‘She’s stubborn. They both are. Neither of them wants to back down.’ Midge had a nasty feeling that Jessica was rushing in again. ‘I think Mum is absolutely determined to be a professional witch.’
‘Yes, but I am absolutely determined that she won’t.’
Midge looked at Jessica, whose lips had set in a firm, stubborn line. At that moment she looked horribly like Mrs Haggerthwaite. Her black hair was shorter and wavier, and her nose was smaller than Mrs Haggerthwaite’s beak, but her green eyes had the same determined glitter.
But before he could say anything, they heard Mrs Haggerthwaite calling them to come and eat. At exactly the same moment the exact same smell hit both their noses. They looked at each other in horror.
‘Nettle soup!’
* * *
As soon as she could after tea, Jessica escaped upstairs. She flung herself onto her bed and opened up the red notebook. Then she ripped out all the notes she had made from Astrophysics Made Simple, and wrote PLAN OF ACTION in red capitals on the first page.
She would soon sort things out, she thought hopefully, chewing on her pen. Midge, after all, was far too young to understand these things. Of course it was only natural (thought Jessica kindly) that he should be alarmed. And in some ways she did not blame him: with parents as pig-headed as theirs, there was no telling the mess they might get into. But she, Jessica, knew how to cope with their parents’ tantrums. She would make sure that this stupid squabble was soon forgotten. Then everything would be back to normal in no time.
The first thing was to stop her mum.
Somehow thinking of an actual plan was more difficult than she had expected. She chewed her pen for a while. Then she closed her notebook. She wrote on the cover Master Plan of Jessica - and then she hesitated. Jessica the Witch Hunter, she thought, but that didn’t sound quite right. Jessica the Witch Terminator? It sounded formidable, but perhaps a bit too fierce. She wasn’t about to stick her mother on a bonfire, after all. Then it came to her. She wrote it down on the cover of her notebook.
Now she really had to think of a plan. She scowled. Her eyes fell on her microscope, sitting on her desk. They passed over her posters of the Solar System and the one showing a skeleton of Tyrannosaurus Rex. They passed over her Junior Science Encyclopaedia and the interesting fossil that she had found last summer on the beach and thought might be a prehistoric fish. (Midge thought it looked more like a prehistoric tadpole.)
And then it came to her. Of course. Science! Science was the enemy of witchcraft, if anything was. No scientist believed in magic.
Jessica wrote Plan A - Science. She added a few more notes. Then she snapped the notebook shut.
Just before she went to bed, she fetched out a large sheet of paper from her school science folder. Then she wrote, in huge, red capitals, the same thing she had written on the cover of her notebook. She got up and stuck the paper to the outside of her bedroom door.
JESSICA HAGGERTHWAITE
WITCH DISPATCHER
That will show her, she thought. Then she grinned. There was no doubt about it. She was going to enjoy being a witch dispatcher.