‘Look out!’
Olive froze. The room was rather dark, making it impossible to see from where the voice had come. Gingerly, she took another step forward.
‘Ouch! Somebody kicked my butt!’
She sidestepped to the window and threw open the shutters. Light flooded into the room.
‘Aaargh!’ A fat white rat leapt into the air, then dived under a rug. His rotund bottom caught on the edge and wriggled from side to side, his back feet slipping and scratching on the bare timber floorboards.
‘My butt! My butt!’ came the rat’s muffled voice from underneath the rug. ‘It’s been kicked! Bruised! Beaten to a pulp!’
Olive stifled a giggle. She knelt down and lifted the edge of the rug. The rat pulled the rest of his ample body into hiding, then turned around to peer out at her.
‘Are you okay?’ Olive asked.
The rat examined his bottom, wriggled it, rubbed it. ‘Does this look bruised and battered to you?’ he asked anxiously, turning his sleek, fat rear towards Olive.
‘No, not at all,’ she replied, trying to appear serious and concerned. ‘It looks just fine.’
The rat sighed with relief.
‘In fact,’ said Olive, ‘it is, perhaps, the most robust-looking bottom I have ever seen.’
‘Robust?’ asked the rat. ‘What’s robust?’
Olive was about to explain when a dictionary slid out from underneath the bed, followed by a grey rat. He flipped the dictionary open, licked one of his paws and started flicking through the pages.
‘P . . . Q . . . R . . . rambunctious . . . rectum . . . regurgitation . . .’ The grey rat ran a tiny claw down the pages, mumbling the words as he searched.
Olive knelt beside the dictionary. The white rat, suddenly forgetting his troubles, poked his head out from beneath the rug.
‘Rhombus . . . rhubarb . . . ripsnorter . . . roaring forties . . . ROBUST!’ The grey rat looked to Olive, then to his white friend, making sure that both were paying attention. ‘Robust,’ he announced, clearing his throat. ‘Strong and sturdy, in remarkable health, solidly built.’
The white rat crept out from under the rug and into Olive’s lap. He looked up into her face, twitched his whiskers and smiled. ‘I have a robust butt!’ he shouted.
‘Yes,’ said Olive, for honestly, dear reader, what else could one possibly say to such a comment?
‘I feel so very, very proud,’ he cried and wiped a little tear of joy from his eye. Then, holding out his paw, he said, ‘I’m Blimp and I’m ever so pleased to meet you.’
Olive shook his paw between her forefinger and thumb. ‘Hello, Blimp. My name is Olive and I am honoured to meet you.’ She nodded to the grey rat and added, ‘And I am very pleased to meet you too, little grey rat.’
‘Wordsworth,’ said the grey rat, bowing like an old-fashioned gentleman. ‘My name is Wordsworth. And my fur is silver, not grey!’
It was definitely grey, but Olive nodded politely anyway.
At that moment, a third rat, brown and hairy, squeezed through a crack in the wall.
‘You’ll never guess what I just found!’ he cried. He held a blue button in the air and was grinning from ear to ear. ‘I was scampering down the stair–’
Suddenly, he noticed Olive. His tail went rigid with fright and, quick as a flash, he popped the button into his mouth.
‘Chester, this is Olive,’ said Wordsworth. ‘I don’t know what she is doing here, but she is dreadfully nice and I was thinking of asking her to stay for a cup of tea and some scraps.’
Chester grinned stupidly, his mouth bulging with the concealed button.
‘Actually,’ said Olive, blushing a little, ‘I’m your new roommate.’
‘Oh, supersonic!’ cried Blimp.
‘Splendid!’ declared Wordsworth.
Chester’s tail went limp. He shuffled around a little, then spat the button out into his paws. ‘You’d better have this back then,’ he said, holding up the button from Olive’s cardigan, but avoiding her eyes. His whiskers and ears drooped.
‘No, it’s okay,’ she said. ‘You keep it. I have another in my sewing kit.’
Chester’s eyes widened. They flickered back and forth between the button and Olive’s face several times, then he disappeared under the bed.
Blimp jumped off Olive’s lap and clambered up onto the bedside table. He spread his front paws wide. ‘Welcome!’ he sang. ‘Your new home.’
Olive smiled. She stood up and truly looked at her surroundings for the first time. The room was, in fact, a lopsided hexagon, wedged within the walls of the turret. There was an open fireplace made of stone and the ceiling was sloping. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that the fireplace was made of crumbling stone and that the ceiling was collapsing, but the overall effect was quite charming regardless of the impending danger. The bed was covered in a pretty pink quilt and the wallpaper, although peeling and faded, was a cheerful yellow with a pattern of green caterpillars crawling all over. A chest of drawers, bookcase and bedside table were covered in flaky white paint and nibble marks. The bookcase was filled with leather-bound volumes bearing interesting titles like Surviving Falls from Great Heights, The Mango Method of Training Monkeys and Blasted to Bits: My Life as a Human Cannonball. The square window gave a beautiful view down into the back garden. Further, beyond the back lane and the buildings of the city, one could just catch a glimpse of the seaside. Beside the window sat a tattered but comfortable-looking armchair with faded yellow and green stripes to match the wallpaper.
‘What do you think?’ asked Wordsworth.
‘Delightful!’ Olive declared.
‘Marvellous!’ cried Wordsworth.
‘Equatorial rainforest!’ cheered Blimp.
Wordsworth rolled his eyes. ‘I’ve tried to educate him,’ he sighed. ‘Truly I have. But there is only so much one can do with a rat who dedicates 367 per cent of his brain capacity to locating food and the other thirteen per cent to finding the perfect spot for a snooze.’ He shook his head in despair.
Olive giggled. She heaved her suitcase onto the bed and flipped the lid open. Blimp was there in a flash.
‘Wow!’ he yelled, hanging over the edge. ‘You must be rich!’ He dived in, burrowed down beneath the folds of a red cardigan and reappeared beside a biscuit tin. ‘What’s this?’ he gasped. ‘What is it?’
Olive opened the lid and offered Blimp one of Granny’s home-made choc-chip biscuits.
‘Oh, thank you! Thank you! Thank you!’ he cried.
Blimp crawled into the tin. He held up one biscuit after the other, until certain that he had found the largest, dragged it out onto the bed and began to eat. He nibbled his way around the edge in a clockwise direction so that the biscuit became smaller and smaller while always keeping its circular shape. Within thirty seconds, all that remained was a single choc-chip, which he sniffed, licked, then popped into his mouth, where it melted away into sweet nothingness. Leaning back against the suitcase lid, Blimp licked his lips and patted his bulging belly.
Olive passed a choc-chip bickie to Wordsworth, sat one aside for Chester and tucked two beneath the pillow at the top of the bed. ‘In case I get hungry in the night,’ she explained.
Blimp nodded, impressed.
Olive sealed the biscuit tin and placed it in the bottom drawer of the bedside table. Next, she arranged her clothes, underwear and handkerchiefs in alphabetical order in the chest of drawers.
‘Beautiful!’ sighed Wordsworth. ‘And practical. Just like words in a dictionary!’
Olive popped three fresh, new notebooks on the bookcase, beside Dental Care for Elephants. She sat her jam tin full of pencils and crayons on the windowsill. Then she wound up her silver alarm clock and displayed it on the bedside table next to an eight-year-old photo of Granny, Pop and tiny Olive.
‘There!’ she cried. ‘All done.’
Chester’s hairy brown head peeked out from beneath the bed. He beckoned with his paw.
Olive lay down on the floor, lifted the edge of the quilt and gasped.
Discarded envelopes, dirty socks, greasy fish-and-chip wrappers with several chips still clinging, lolly bags, snail shells, sawdust, holey singlets, pie crusts, cake crumbs, damp tea towels and a number of unidentifiable fuzzy clumps were crammed together in a display of filth that made Olive’s eyes water and stomach lurch.
‘It’s astonishing!’ she declared, trying not to breathe through her nose.
Chester stood on an empty jube box, his face etched with pride. ‘It’s magnificent, isn’t it?’
Olive stared. ‘Are they . . .?’ She hesitated for a moment. ‘Are they mushrooms growing out of that pair of underpants?’
Chester nodded excitedly. ‘That’s nothing. Look at this.’ He burrowed into a pile of newspaper and emerged moments later carrying a little tower of flat, round objects. ‘My button collection,’ he whispered with so much awe in his voice, he might just as well have been declaring, ‘My magic chicken!’ or, ‘My purple diamonds from Jupiter!’
‘They’re beautiful,’ Olive said kindly.
A loud gong sounded.
‘Dinner time!’ cried Blimp, jumping to attention. He leapt down from the bed, bounced on his bottom, sprang to his feet and scampered through the hole in the wall.
Wordsworth cried, ‘Tofu sausages!’ and chased after Blimp.
Chester dropped his buttons on the floor, kicked them under a pile of potato peelings and followed his friends.
Olive was suddenly alone. She stood up and looked around once more at her new room. ‘Home sweet home,’ she sighed.
Granny’s and Pop’s faces smiled out at her from the photo frame. She shuffled her feet and felt an unexpected lump form in her throat.
Olive shoved her hands into her skirt pockets and pricked her finger on something sharp. ‘Pop’s medal!’ she cried. She pulled it out and stared at the shiny brass star hanging from a blue and red ribbon.
Pinning the ribbon to her shirt collar, she squared her shoulders and echoed Pop’s words. ‘I am brave and clever and precious.’
She swallowed hard, repeated the word ‘brave’ two or three more times and marched out the door, ready to face her first dinner time at Groves.