Free Viva Alice! by Judi Curtin

‘Oh, sorry, Mum, Gavin’s asleep. He went for an extra-long run this afternoon, and he was wrecked after it, so he went to bed as soon as he’d eaten. He said to say goodnight to you. Yeah, we’ll all be fine, don’t worry about us. Yes, I’ll lock all the doors and I’ll put out all the lights when we’re going to bed. We’ll see you tomorrow, OK? Yes, love you too. Kiss Dad goodnight for me. Bye.’
    When she hung up, Alice hugged her. ‘Well done,’ she said. ‘That was perfect.’
    ‘I feel bad though,’ said Grace. ‘I don’t like telling lies – especially to my family.’
    ‘Don’t feel bad,’ said Alice. ‘Remember, we’re doing a good thing here. Your mum is getting to stay with your dad while he’s not well, and Gavin is making sure that Robyn doesn’t get a hard time from her mean cousins. And we three will be fine here.’
    ‘I guess you’re right,’ said Grace.
    ‘Of course I’m right,’ said Alice. ‘It’s all good. We’re three responsible kids and everything’s going to be fine.’
    * * *
    The three of us helped to tidy up after the dinner and then we threw ourselves on the couches in the living room and ate ice-cream and chatted and laughed. I felt all grown-up, like someone from a movie or a cool TV show.
    ‘I’ve got a great idea,’ said Alice after a while. ‘Let’s play the secrets game.’
    I hate that game. (There’s a reason they’re called secrets.) I didn’t say this though. Once Alice has made up her mind about something, it’s pretty impossible to make her change it.
    ‘You start then, Alice,’ I said. ‘You tell the first secret.’
    I was trying to buy time so I could think of a secret I didn’t mind sharing.
    ‘OK,’ said Alice. ‘Let me think … Oh, I know,I have a great one. Years and years ago, I used to love playing with Mum’s make-up. One day I sneaked into her bedroom to play with her new lipstick. She’d only got it the day before, and I knew it was really, really expensive. I’d just wound it up as far as it would go when I heard her coming up the stairs.’
    ‘What did you do?’ I asked. I felt scared even thinking about it. Veronica totally hates when anyone messes with her stuff.
    ‘I didn’t have time to think,’ said Alice. ‘I put the lid back on really quickly, but I hadn’t wound the lipstick down, and it got all squished up and wrecked.’
    ‘OMG,’ I said.
    ‘What happened?’ asked Grace. ‘Did your mum go crazy?’
    ‘I haven’t told you the worst part yet,’ said Alice. ‘I’ve never told anyone this before. I shoved the squished-up lipstick into my pocket, and later I put it under Jamie’s bed. When Mum found it the next day, she blamed him.’
    ‘That’s awful,’ I said. ‘But didn’t Jamie tell her that it was nothing to do with him?’
    Alice shook her head. ‘He was so small he couldn’t talk properly. He could only say words like duck, and teddy and stuff, so he wasn’t able to explain that he’d never touched the broken lipstick.’
    ‘The poor kid,’ said Grace. ‘How could you do that to him?’
    ‘Actually, it wasn’t as bad as it sounds,’ said Alice. ‘Jamie was so small and cute, Mum didn’t really get cross with him, even though she’d have
killed
me. Anyway, I survived, and that’s the end of my secret. What’s yours, Grace?’
    Grace thought for a long time. ‘I don’t know,’ she said in the end. ‘I can’t think of anything. I’ve told you two all my secrets already.’
    ‘But you’ve got to think of something,’ said Alice. ‘That’s the game.’
    ‘OK’ said Grace in the end. ‘Since you insist – but you might be sorry, Alice, because my secret is to do with you.’
    ‘What is it?’ asked Alice leaning forward and looking excited. ‘Will I be happy when I hear it?’
    ‘Er … I don’t think so,’ said Grace. ‘My secret is that, at lunchtime, when you went inside to get the ketchup, I didn’t eat any of the sandwiches you put on my