The Friends Forever Collection. Jean Ure

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      “I am so easily distracted! I have a mind like a flea.”

      I was a bit puzzled by this as I had once read how Harriet Chance liked to sit at her kitchen table and write her first draft by hand, surrounded by her four cats. Surely cats would distract her? The lady who lives downstairs from us has a cat called Biddy, and when she comes to visit us, Biddy I mean, she always spreads herself out across my homework, if I’m doing homework, and starts grooming herself or purring. I find that very distracting!

      I told this to Harriet. “Sometimes,” I said, “she even tries to chew the paper!”

      “Oh, I couldn’t be doing with that,” said Harriet. “I couldn’t write with cats around! And I couldn’t write on paper … far too slow!”

      Falteringly, I said, “I read this interview where you said how you always did your first draft by hand … you said you couldn’t write straight on to a computer.”

      “Did I?” She laughed. “Well, I’ve been dragged kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century! One has to move with the times.”

      “I still write by hand,” I said.

      “That’s only ’cos you don’t have a computer,” said Annie.

      “They are one of the blessings of modern technology,” said Harriet. “Imagine! If I didn’t have a computer, we would never have met. Now, then! How about some tea? Annie, clear a space on the table while I go and get it.”

      I needed to go to the loo – I always do after a car journey. Harriet told me the bathroom was “directly ahead, up the stairs … but be warned, it’s a bit primitive!”

      It was such a funny little place, the bathroom. Like a little cell. All it had was a washbasin and a toilet, with a cracked bit of mirror on the wall. Both the washbasin and the toilet were very old-fashioned. The washbasin was propped up on a sort of iron stand, and the toilet had a broken seat and a long chain with a handle that you had to pull when you’d finished, except that it didn’t seem to work, which was rather embarrassing. Red-faced, I told Harriet about it, and she said, “Oh, dear! Never mind. At least it’s better than having to go outside … imagine that on a dark night!”

      “You could write a book about someone living in a place like this,” said Annie. “You could call it Spooky Cottage.”

      I cringed, but Harriet said, “Do you know, that’s a really good idea? I might well do that! And then I could dedicate it to you both. To Annie and Megan, who came to tea. Speaking of which—” she whisked away a cloth which was covering the table. “How about that?”

      I gasped. I couldn’t believe it! It was like a fairy tale … all my favourite food was there! A bowl full of tiny weeny Easter eggs – another bowl full of Cadbury’s Creme ones – a big bowl of crisps – a plate of ham sandwiches and a baby birthday cake, with twelve candles crowded on the top.

      “This was our secret,” gloated Annie. “I told Harriet all the stuff you loved to eat!”

      “I hope we got it right,” said Harriet.

      “We did!” said Annie. “She adores all this stuff!”

      I’m afraid it is true. It is exactly the sort of food that I would like to have on a desert island. The sort of food that Mum only lets me eat in what Gran would have called “dribs and drabs”. Certainly not all in one go!

      “Fortunately,” said Harriet, “I bought enough to feed an army, so get stuck in, the pair of you.”

      Annie and I sat munching side by side on the saggy sofa. Harriet sat at the table. I was quite surprised to see that she was eating ham sandwiches as I had once read that she was a vegetarian; but I thought perhaps she was only doing it to be polite, what with me being a guest, and so I didn’t say anything. It would have seemed ungracious.

      After we’d eaten as much as we could, and I’d blown out the candles on the cake and made a birthday wish – even though it wasn’t yet properly my birthday – I settled down with my reporter’s notebook to interview Harriet. Annie kept nagging to know what I’d wished for, but Harriet told her that birthday wishes had to be secret, “Otherwise they won’t come true.”

      Annie said, “Will you tell me if it does come true?”

      I said, “Yes, but it won’t be for ages yet!” Not unless you could have books published and get famous while you were still at school … Was that possible? I opened my notepad and wrote it down, as a question to ask Harriet. I had a long list of questions! I had carefully worked them all out in advance. I had decided there wasn’t any point asking her things I already had the answers to, so I’d tried to think of questions she maybe hadn’t been asked before. This was my list: