On her way back to Year Three, Isabel did not bother to keep up with her class. She wandered slowly through the school’s front hall. She stood before the Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award trophy and studied the photograph of Lucy Lu Miller. The caption under the photo read Our Green Planet Golden Girl: Lucy Lu Miller, Reception. Lucy Lu had a huge smile on her face in the picture. She was proudly holding the golden globe, like she had won it all on her own.

 

But she hadn’t. Isabel had won it, really. There had been a little help from the rest of the school, of course, but mostly it was Isabel.

Who went round the tables after lunch and gathered up plastic for the blue bin? Who took home every single lolly stick and milk carton she could get her hands on, and made them into beautiful art? Who made sure that everyone turned the taps off when they finished washing their hands, sometimes even before they’d rinsed the soap off?

Isabel Donaldson, that’s who.

That should have been Isabel’s photo there. That real gold award was really Isabel’s. And she hadn’t even got a proper look at it yet.

Isabel glanced around the hallway. Mrs Peabody’s office door was open a crack. Isabel could hear her offering a triple-chocolate biscuit to someone inside; Mrs Peabody loved to invite girls in for a chat and some biscuits. She really was the kindest of the kind.

Next door in the school office, Mrs Biro was bent over her computer, clicking away on the keyboard. She was busy writing important letters to the Crabtree mummies and daddies.

On Isabel’s left, Lady Constance Hawthorne stared straight ahead, her stony eyes looking out towards the front door.

No one else was in the hallway. Isabel was alone. She reached out to touch the Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award trophy. Real gold felt smooth and cold. She thought she might like to hold the globe, just for a minute. It was heavier than she remembered.

Isabel was about to put the globe back down again when she noticed that her fingers, which were still sticky from the ice lolly and also covered in daisy juice, had left smudges on the real gold.

She began to rub the globe with her sleeve, to get the sticky off. But rubbing didn’t help: the sticky smudges just got covered with fuzz from her cardigan. Isabel rubbed harder. She couldn’t put the golden globe back all hairy and yucky. Should she take it to the toilets and wash it off?

Before she could do that, lots of things happened all at once.

Colonel Crunch came marching through the front door with a basket of apples. He was taking them to Mrs Crunch in the kitchen so that she could make her famous apple crumble for tomorrow’s pudding.

At the exact same time, loads of ghosts and goblins began pouring out of the assembly room right towards Isabel. The Reception girls had been practising for their Halloween play and they still had their costumes on.

Isabel froze. She closed her fingers around the sticky golden globe in the palm of her hand. She looked in fear at the spot on the pedestal where the globe was meant to be. She had to put it back before anyone saw.

But someone had already seen. Lady Lovelypaws had been watching the golden globe ever since Mrs Peabody put it on display. The cat was hoping that maybe this thing all the humans were fussing over was a mouse. Lady Lovelypaws had never actually caught a mouse before. She hadn’t even seen one up close. But if this did turn out to be a real, true-life mouse, Lady Lovelypaws was ready for it. All morning she had kept a half-closed but careful eye on the globe from the top of the stairs.

When the globe began to move (because Isabel moved it), Lady Lovelypaws was certain it was a mouse. She didn’t know that mice aren’t made of real gold and cardigan fuzz. Lady Lovelypaws took a minute to finish her morning bath and then sprang to catch it.

Which meant that suddenly, a big white fluffy thing landed right on the pedestal in front of Isabel! This hairy, squirming animal sent Lucy Lu’s photograph crashing to the floor. The frame broke into a million pieces.

“Ahhhh,” screamed Isabel in terror. Colonel Crunch dropped his basket of apples all over the floor as Lady Lovelypaws scrambled off the pedestal, knocking it over. The panicked cat jumped over Baron Biscuit’s head and disappeared into Mrs Peabody’s office to hide in her paper tray. Miss Tiny, the Reception teacher, rushed to steer her class around the rolling apples and broken glass in the hall.

Isabel couldn’t very well put the Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award golden trophy back now, could she? A colonel or a teacher or a ghost or a goblin might see her.

 

Isabel could have just dropped the award amongst the mess on the floor. No one would have noticed. In the commotion that followed the cat crash, Colonel Crunch and Mrs Peabody and Mrs Biro were all looking for the globe. They thought that Lady Lovelypaws had knocked it off the pedestal when she jumped. Isabel could have pretended to find it. She could have just handed it over.

But that’s not what she did. What Isabel DID do was to stuff the Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award trophy into her cardigan pocket. Her heart beat fast, and the butterflies did cartwheels in her stomach. The Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award was hers.

She hurried away to wash her sticky hands.