A few minutes later, there was a knock on Sam’s door.
“Go away!” said Sam, from inside.
There was a short pause.
“Unless you’ve got some presents.”
“No!” said Ruby.
“Oh, it’s you,” said Sam. “What do you want?”
“Can I come in, please?”
“No!”
“Why not?”
There was a longer pause from inside. The truth was that Sam didn’t really know why he’d shut himself in his room. It was some sort of reaction to the telescope breaking, but he didn’t know exactly what it was. But before he could think of an answer to Ruby’s question he heard her say:
“Aren’t you … lonely? In there all by yourself?”
“No!” he said back with some emphasis, it suddenly coming to him what to say. “I’m not. Because I’ve got all my presents and toys to play with!”
He settled back smugly on his inflatable chair (a present from the sixth of October last year), put his feet up on a train-set box (present from the third of November) and drank some leftover lemonade from his cup with S on it (present from the fourth of May).
That’s told her, he thought.
Then he had an idea. He’d get the voice-changer from his Samuelus9 birthday and use it to make his voice really deep and then roar through the door.
That’ll scare her off, he thought.
Only he couldn’t find the voice-changer anywhere. He scrabbled around in his presents. I’m sure it was here somewhere, he thought. But no, nowhere to be seen.
OK, he thought, I’ve got a really high-powered torch somewhere. Super-bright 8,000 lumens (present from the second of March)! I’ll find that instead, open the door quickly and shine that in her face! That’ll scare her off, he thought.
Only he couldn’t find that, either. What’s going on? he wondered. But it was very messy in there.
“Right,” he heard Ruby say. “Well … that – having all your presents and toys to play with by yourself – still sounds a bit … lonely to me. Actually.”
Sam looked over at his door, with its poster of the solar system on it, a present from the twenty-ninth of September – I must remember to take that down, he thought in passing, to make the point about how I don’t really like space any more.
“Listen …” he said, coming over and speaking right into the door. “You’re just jealous. Because it’s not your birthday every day!”
“Yes, I am,” said Ruby simply. Which took the wind out of Sam’s sails, as he was expecting her to deny it. “Very jealous. But not just jealous. I’ve got some vegetables for Spock. Or do you want him to starve?”
Sam glanced over. He could see Spock looking up at him through the visor of the knight’s helmet, with quite a strong sense of, “Who am I? Sir Guinea Pig and the Green Knight?”
Reluctantly, he turned the key in the lock and opened the door.
“Happy birthday,” said Ruby, not very enthusiastically, when she came in.
Sam nodded and turned away. As he began to shut his door, he heard the front door slam.
“Who’s that going out?” he said. “Is it one of my school friends who came for the rock-star party? Did one of them stay?”
Sam sounded, even though he didn’t really want to, hopeful.
Ruby shook her head. She was bending down and clearing off the knight costume from Spock’s cage. Spock looked up at her with quite a strong sense of, “About time …”
“No,” she said. “They all left. They couldn’t wait for you any longer. They’ve gone to play football.”
“Oh …” said Sam. He went over to his window and looked out. He could see Charlie getting into the family car.
“Where’s Dad going? Out to get me some more presents?”
“No,” said Ruby plainly. “He’s going to look for Grandpa Sam.”
Sam looked round at her sharply. “What do you mean, look for Grandpa Sam? Going to Abbey Court?”
“No,” said Ruby. “You see … Grandpa Sam’s not there.”