In the mind of Sally Jones walked Muddlespot, Messenger of Hell.
He was not a happy little Muddlespot.
He had said he was going to lie down. But he couldn’t lie down. He was all jangly. He was depressed.
He knew he should never tire. He should never give up. He should keep coming back, disguised as this, veiled as that, suggesting, whispering, steering, ready for those moments when Sally was weak and using every one.
It was just that she never was.
The pathways of her thoughts spread in all directions. They ran under high, arched ceilings, up flights of broad steps and through many-sided chambers that opened onto more corridors down which the perspectives dwindled towards infinity. The walls were made of crystal that pulsed with gentle colours. Muddlespot could see through them. He could even see through floors, to other chambers and corridors far above his head, or many, many levels below his feet. It was dizzying. Looking down through a hundred and fifty different layers of assorted Facts made his stomach tingle.
There were slogans and mottos and signs up on the walls. Some were about the way Sally wanted things done in her mind. They said things like PLEASE WALK ON THE LEFT or HURRY UP, YOU’RE NEEDED.
Others said things like ASK NOT WHAT MISS SMITH CAN DO FOR YOU BUT WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR MISS SMITH. (Miss Smith was the new Art teacher at Darlington High. Muddlespot had tried telling Sally that she was hopeless. Sally said yes, she knew. That was the point.)
In Sally’s mind there were war rooms with charts and maps upon the tables, where steely-eyed, square-shouldered thoughts gathered to take reports, write letters to important people and plan appeals for Operation Save The World. The thoughts wore green uniforms with rank badges in the shape of oak leaves. They moved purposefully and spoke in short, clipped voices like crack troops who knew that, whatever the odds, they were going to win.
In the corridor below Muddlespot’s feet, Sally’s French thoughts were knocking off their shift and returning to their rooms. There were smiles among them and a sense of a job well done. They wished each other cheerful goodbyes and disappeared through doors marked Nouns, Subjunctives, Irregular Verbs etc. The German and Spanish thoughts and the Japanese club thoughts lived in other corridors around the mind. They were all kept separate from each other. No mingling was allowed. No way was Sally going to go looking for a word like saucisson and find a Würst popping up instead. That sort of thing didn’t happen to her.
There was a list on the wall. It was headed ‘One Thousand Things To Do With My Life.’ There were exactly a thousand things on the list. Some of them even had ✓s against them. ‘Save the World’ didn’t have a ✓ yet but the way things were going it might not be much longer.
She had everything sorted out and in its place. She had Dates, Must-do’s and Should-do’s. She had libraries of Things I Know. She had fountains of Generosity, gardens of Patience and an entire lighting system of Hope with bulbs that never blew. Her mind was built upon space, purpose and clarity. And the greatest of these was clarity.
‘Boo,’ said Muddlespot sulkily.
He shuffled past another war room. This one was working on Operation End World Poverty. The guys in there looked as though they were winning too. If Muddlespot had had something to kick he would have kicked it.
He skirted the Reading Corridors carefully. The normal rules of Sally’s mind (space, purpose etc) did not seem to apply so much to the Reading Corridors, which were dark and narrow and the nearest thing her brain had to a rough end of town. They tended to turn sharp corners so you couldn’t see what was waiting round them. Doors and little windows opened on these passages, and from behind them came strange sounds, music maybe, and the noise of hidden feasting, or perhaps screams and cries of battle. Some very queer things lived down there, and sometimes came out. Whenever you found something unexpected in Sally’s mind, the chances were that it had wandered out of the Reading Corridors. It was an unsettling place. Muddlespot could never quite escape the feeling that he himself might somehow have come from there, even though he knew with every part of his scientific and rational being that he had been created when someone had hit someone else with a brass hammer in the City of Pandemonium far below, and that he had flown in here on a batskin airplane with squadrons of enraged doves on his tail. Sally had been reading Paradise Lost at the time.
He came to the Rules.
They were written into a wall of transparent crystal. When you moved around and looked at them from the other side, you could still read them because the lettering wasn’t backwards. And every thought in Sally’s mind knew what they said.
The First Rule was this:
Be nise to evryone and they wil be hapy.
It had been written very early in Sally’s life when her mind had been quite a different place, much smaller and with bright colours and slides and ball parks and things. The words and they wil be had been changed several times over the years, first by adding usuly and then by more elaborate forms such as they will be more likely to be and it will help them to be and more than they otherwise would be and so on, in the light of experience. Muddlespot had even tried writing in it will not make them any more . . . But the words Be nise to evryone . . . hapy were still there underneath it all, carved deep in a childish hand. They always would be, to the end of Sally’s life.
The Second Rule had been written in about Year 4. It read:
Do your best at everything because you can.
There had been no amendments. Experience hadn’t even tried to argue with that one.
The Third Rule had been added after a rocky couple of months with relationships in Year Eight. It said:
Keep ruls 1 & 2 but dont rub friends faces in it & dont wory 2 much cos they wil probly b OK with u again soon.
Again there were no amendments. Although a little while afterwards the hand of Experience had added a 
and a ✓.
‘What,’ groaned Muddlespot, ‘am I supposed to do with this?’
He had tried and tried. He had spent hours whispering to Sally things like ‘Did you see the way she looked at you?’ and ‘Why are they excluding you?’ and ‘They’re only being friendly because they want you to help them with their homework’ etc. It had made no difference at all. Sally liked and was liked by too many people. If things ever went bad with someone she would go off and be with others for a bit. And (see Rule 1) look for a way to make up. Because everybody did like Sally. Even Muddlespot liked her – a bit. As much as his professional duties allowed.
Which made it all very difficult.
‘But I’m here all the same,’ he snarled, leering at his reflection in a crystal pillar. ‘Me, Muddlespot. Prince of Evil!’
His reflection leered back at him. The surface of the column was curved. It exaggerated his waist while doing nothing for his height. As he was basically round anyway the effect was not flattering.
He found a flat bit of wall between two powerful-looking statues. Here he studied his reflection again, frowning fiercely and drawing himself up to his full shape (that of a pear on short stilts). ‘I was sent for a purpose,’ he intoned. ‘Hand-picked.’
The statues looked down upon him. The list from which he had been picked had numbered precisely one. The Authority whose hand had done the picking had gone strangely quiet since the Incident of the Cat, the Muffin and the Wonky Oven. As far as Low Command were concerned, Sally was now in the box marked ‘Off Limits’ and Muddlespot in the one marked ‘On His Own’.
‘I wouldn’t be here if she didn’t want me!’ he cried.
‘Want me, want me,’ whispered the corridors. But what does she want me for? The whispers ran away, fading down the aisles and chambers.
Then, just at the moment when they should have died altogether, there was an echo, or a shuffle of movement, round a corner where he could not see.
‘Who’s there?’ said Muddlespot, wondering if he had really heard it.
Silence.
Frowning, Muddlespot went to investigate.
What he didn’t want to find was that Low Command had changed their minds about that ‘On His Own’ label and had sent someone up to replace him. If so, there was going to have to be a quick bit of murder behind the statues, because he was not going back downstairs for a career interview. Career interviews with Low Command tended to be painful and when they were over the only career options left would be as (a) somebody’s wall ornament, or (b) their mittens. The sort of people Muddlespot worked for did not like failure.
He tensed. He leaped to the corner of the passage, claws bared. The passage was empty.
‘Hello?’
In the darkness at the far end, something scuttled.
Warily Muddlespot stole forward. He entered a small octagonal chamber. The light here was tinted just faintly maroon. The chamber too was empty. He listened. He heard nothing.
Or maybe – maybe – the whisper of bare feet, receding quickly down a distant corridor, and a soft explosion of sound that disappeared with it.
It might have been a snigger.
The air had a huge stillness, as if the whole of Sally’s being was holding her breath. (Which it very well might be.)
There was something in the room: something small, lying in the middle of the floor like a sweet packet that someone had dropped.
Litter, in the mind of Sally Jones? The rules on litter were very strict.
It was a folded bit of card. Muddlespot bent to pick it up.
As he did so, the floor shook.
‘It’s not FAIR!’ Billie screamed.
‘Yes it is,’ said Sally. They were face to face in the kitchen at home. Sally’s feet were planted, her arms were folded. She wasn’t backing down. Not even when Billie thrust her face, red as a ripe tomato, within centimetres of Sally’s own.
‘Sweetheart,’ Mum pleaded from the sidelines, ‘you don’t have to invite anyone you don’t want to . . .’
‘She already has,’ said Sally. ‘How’s Holly going to feel now if you tell her you don’t want her after all?’
‘But she makes me sick! I just look at her and I feel sick! All the time I’m sitting at the table with her in school, I’m trying not to throw up! And I’ve got to have her because Sally’s invited Kaz!
‘Kaz is coming,’ said Sally. ‘I can’t uninvite her.’
‘No,’ said Mum. ‘Of course Kathy is coming. Billie – why don’t you just talk to Holly and clear up whatever the matter is? Last week you were best friends . . .’
‘NO!’ shrilled Billie. ‘We weren’t ever! And the trouble with Holly is HOLLY!’
‘Oh,’ said Mum.
‘All right. Tell Holly you don’t want her and invite someone else,’ said Sally.
‘There is no one else!’
‘What about Josh? He’s nice.’
‘That does it!’ fumed the Inner Sally, who wasn’t feeling nearly as calm as the Outer Sally was managing to look. ‘I’m going to kill her!’
‘No you aren’t,’ said Windleberry, who was being exactly as calm as the Outer Sally, and even had his arms folded and feet planted in the same way.
‘Then I hope she kills herself! Why doesn’t she?’
‘You don’t mean that.’
‘Don’t I? We’d all be happier – and so would she!’
They stood side by side, looking out through the great windows which were the Outer Sally’s eyes, and which were largely filled with the sight of Billie’s red face.
‘You’re just so selfish!’ came Billie’s voice from outside. ‘Selfish-selfish-selfish!’
‘I’m selfish?’ screamed the Inner Sally. ‘Looked in a mirror lately, have you?’
‘I’m not going to uninvite people I’ve invited,’ said the Outer Sally, without raising her voice. ‘If you don’t want Holly to come, then invite Lauren or someone like that.’
‘Well done,’ said Windleberry.
‘When I need your advice . . .’ growled the Inner Sally.
‘. . . But Lauren won’t come if Freda isn’t there!’
‘Then invite both of them, sweetheart,’ said Mum. ‘Sally won’t mind, will you?’
‘Not a bit,’ said the Outer Sally.
‘Can I say “Well Done” again?’ said Windleberry.
‘She’s got one more than me, now,’ said Sally. ‘I knew she would.’
‘You don’t mind about that. You said so yourself.’
‘I mind that she’s got it by shouting and screaming.’
‘Greg’s not doing the barbecue, is he?’ Billie said dangerously.
‘He’d like to,’ said Mum.
‘Seconds out, round two,’ said Sally. ‘She’ll get at Mum about Greg now. She knows they’re going through a bad patch.’
‘. . . Well, I can’t do it, sweetheart! I’m not going to have the time. It’ll give him something to do . . .’ Mum continued.
‘But he’s so embarrassing! He tries to be cool. And his hairy paunch!’
‘Darling – he’ll wear a nice plain T-shirt, I promise . . .’
‘He should wear a nice plain sign round his neck that says I Am Embarrassing.’
‘Actually I agree with her there,’ said Sally.
. . . He mustn’t talk to anybody. He mustn’t even look at them . . .’
‘He’s just trying to be friendly . . .’
‘Friendly? He makes me sick! I just don’t understand why you . . .’
‘Time to step in,’ said the Inner Sally.
‘So,’ came her own voice from outside. ‘Does this mean you’re uninviting Holly and inviting Freda and Lauren instead?’
Through the windows onto the world they saw Billie’s face swing round upon them like the gun turret of a tank.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m going to invite Cassie and Viola.’
‘What?’ cried the Inner Sally.
And the Outer Sally said, ‘You’re crazy.’
‘I’ll invite who I want to,’ said Billie, reddening again. ‘You have.’
‘But Cassie and Viola. Won’t. Come.’
‘It’ll just look like we’re trying to get in with their group,’ groaned the Inner Sally. ‘And that’ll never happen, unless we invite the twenty coolest sixth-form boys in the county too. Which would be nice, but they wouldn’t come either.’
‘YES THEY WILL!!!!’
‘Social suicide,’ said the Outer Sally.
‘Sally . . .’ said Mum. But it was too late.
‘You always think I’m wrong! You’re always being snide and mean! And you’re always talking me down at school . . .’
‘Why should I? You do it every time you open your mouth.’
‘Sally!’ said Mum.
‘Sally!’ said Windleberry.
‘What’s going on?’ said Muddlespot.
He was peeping round the archway into the chamber where the two of them stood. He had wisely swapped his red pillbox hat for a workman’s helmet, in case the roof fell or something came flying in through one of the windows. A mind in the middle of a family row is a hard hat area.
‘Just another day in the Jones house,’ said the Inner Sally bitterly. ‘Where’ve you been? I’ve really needed you.’
‘No, you really haven’t,’ said Windleberry.
‘Tidying up, I think,’ said Muddlespot innocently. ‘Did anybody drop this?’
Windleberry looked at it.
It was a small, folded piece of card. Inside the fold, crudely-drawn and coloured, was the shape of a pink heart.
Something inside Windleberry went very quiet and cold.
‘That?’ he said carefully. ‘No, I didn’t drop that.’
‘What is it, then?’
Angels are not allowed to lie.
‘It is a heart, crudely drawn and coloured in pink,’ Windleberry said.
The voices of the row outside seemed suddenly far away. The taste of old, bad memories flooded into his mouth. He turned away and drew something from the breast pocket of his dinner jacket.
‘. . . I’m calling Viola now. And after that I’m calling Cassie!’
‘Kamikaze,’ sighed the Inner Sally.
‘And you can’t stop me!’
‘And what’s that?’ said Muddlespot.
‘This? – Oh . . .’ said Windleberry, putting it back again. ‘Something I happened to have with me. Standard issue.’
It had been a small but powerful hand torch. And for a second, as the twins stood face-to-face in the kitchen, something had flickered in Sally’s eye. It had been a signal – for anyone who knew how to read it.
‘Really?’ said Muddlespot, interested.
‘Have you got her number?’ said Billie.
Tight-lipped, Sally gave her the number.
‘That looked like a signal,’ said Muddlespot.
‘Did it?’ said Windleberry. He shut his mouth firmly.
But when he checked his hands, they were shaking.