‘BUT I WANT TO GO TO THE FAIR!’
Tilly and Dad are heading down towards the castle green. I leave Eric and his dad holding hands looking at the sea, and slip up through the crazy golf to the main street.
Tilly stamps her feet on the cobbles so that the dust flies up all around her. ‘Fifty pence!’ she bellows. ‘Five pounds, more like, or I’ll tell Mum you were mean to me –’
‘Oh, Tilly, be reasonable,’ says Dad. A couple of tourists stop their evening strolls to stare.
Tilly’s enjoying the audience. ‘You’re the one who’s unreasonable.’ She pauses and slumps her shoulders, looking pathetic. ‘I mean, you’re the one who makes me work every scrap of the day cleaning the house –’ she wipes her hand across her forehead, tragically – ‘sweeping chimneys … ’ She lets out a tiny sob. ‘And I’m so sorry I couldn’t fix the roof – I’m just too small.’
‘Poor child. In this day and age,’ says a woman to her husband, casting a glare at Dad.
‘Tilly,’ I say, catching them up.
‘Shuttup, Tom!’ she hisses. ‘I’m just getting somewhere.’
‘I know a secret!’ The cockatoo, now tinged with yellow, flies overhead, going into orbit around Dad’s head. ‘I know a secret! I know a secret! I know a secret about YOU!’
‘Wretched bird,’ says Dad, flapping his arms.
‘Five pounds?’ says Tilly.
Dad makes a noise somewhere between a grunt and a squeal. It means he’s given in.
‘Excellent, so glad you see sense,’ says Tilly, dropping the hangdog look. ‘I want to go on the helter-skelter, with the princess pamper party.’ Tilly points at a monstrous pink tower, which is vying with the jaws-of-death underwater upside-down roller coaster for the most-ridiculous-thing-in-the-fairground prize.
‘Can’t you make do with a ride on the teacups?’ says Dad, looking green.
The woman and her husband look confused and wander off up the road.
‘You shouldn’t give in to her, Dad,’ I say, walking into the fairground behind them. ‘She’ll get worse.’
Dad hands Tilly two pounds and she rushes off to the Princess Pamper Helter-Skelter. ‘I don’t know how to get out of it – she’s so … she’s so … ’
‘Manipulative?’ I say.
We watch Tilly take a pink mat and settle herself at the top of the slide. She waves and sets off, sliding into the pampering zone halfway down.
‘Fail, fail, epic fail!’ yells the cockatoo from the top of the helter-skelter.
We wait, watching the slide for another view of Tilly. ‘Yes, that’s probably the right word,’ says Dad. ‘I can’t imagine where she gets it fr—’
Something loud and fast crashes in through the air – a flash of light – heading straight for the helter-skelter; heading straight for the pamper zone.
Bang!
The cockatoo takes off, squawking, and Dad runs towards the helter-skelter. I stand there gawping. I really hope what I think has happened, hasn’t happened.
‘Dad – Tom!’ yells Tilly, running out from the bottom of the tower, shedding marshmallows and cake from a huge pink bag and holding something in her hands.
‘Look what I’ve got! Look what I’ve got! My very own meteorite!’