Free My Sister Jodie by Jacqueline Wilson Page B

we’ll all eat in the dining room.’
    â€˜With the other children?’ I said.
    â€˜Yep, though there’s only a handful still here. Imagine keeping your kids at school all through the holidays!’ Dad tutted and shook his head. ‘Make your mum and me a cuppa too, sweetheart.’
    Dad went off to take Mum her tea in bed. I carefully carried our two cups back to our bedroom.Jodie had gone back to sleep, curled up in a little ball under the duvet.
    â€˜Jodie? Jodie!’
    She played dead, eyes closed, utterly still, even when I tickled her. I
knew
she was playing but I panicked all the same, shaking her frantically.
    â€˜Jodie!’
    â€˜Yeah?’ she said, opening her eyes and grinning.
    â€˜Don’t
do
that!’
    â€˜Sorry, sorry, just kidding.’ She sat up and drank her tea and ate her toast. She ate mine too because I was too het up to be hungry. I’d see Harley at breakfast, the strange badger boy. We had our special secret.
    â€˜Jodie, can I wear your red shoes today?’ I asked.
    â€˜No, I’m wearing them.’
    â€˜Just at breakfast, for a treat.’
    â€˜They’re way too big for you.’
    â€˜I could stuff the toes with tissues.
Please.
’
    â€˜OK, OK, so long as you’ll be my willing slave for the rest of the day.’
    â€˜I’m always your willing slave,’ I said, thrusting my bare feet into Jodie’s shoes and tottering around in my nightie.
    â€˜You look like Minnie Mouse,’ said Jodie. ‘You’re not meant to stick your bum out like that. Sort of
swish
your way along, like this.’ She jumped out of bed and demonstrated a model’s walk, though she had to zigzag nimbly around all the cardboard boxes.
    â€˜Should we start getting everything unpacked and sorted?’ I said.
    â€˜No! Not
yet
. Come on, let’s get dressed.’
    â€˜Can I borrow one of your skirts too?’
    She peered at me. ‘What
is
this, Pearl?’
    â€˜I’m just sick of looking babyish.’
    But I looked even
more
of a baby in Jodie’s clothes, like a little girl dressing up. I gave her back her red shoes, sighing, and got dressed in my own skirt and top and sandals.
    Dad was wearing a bright checked shirt and denim jeans so stiff and new he could barely bend his legs. He had his workman’s belt buckled round his waist, its leather pouches filled with wrenches and hammers and screwdrivers. He had his new working boots on too, very big and purposeful.
    â€˜Oh, Dad, you look like Bob the Builder!’ said Jodie, laughing at him. Then she saw his face and realized she’d hurt his feelings. ‘Only teasing! You look way cool, ever so hunky. Watch out for that Miss French. She’ll be nudging up to you and pinching your bum.’
    â€˜You stop your nonsense, saucebox,’ said Dad. He gave her a kiss and blew me one too. Then he sniffed the air. ‘Can you smell bacon? Come on then, girls, let’s go and eat.’
    We went down the corridor and turned the corner. There was a big panel of bells set into the wall with copperplate handwriting underneath:
Drawing Room; Sitting Room; Master Bedroom
; room after room after room.
    â€˜There’s nowhere near a hundred rooms though,’ I said.
    â€˜What
are
all the bells?’ said Jodie.
    â€˜It’s the servants’ bells. They ring in the rooms and it rings here.’
    â€˜Still?’
said Jodie. ‘So will they ring for Mum and Dad?’
    â€˜Who knows?’ said Dad. ‘Still, it’s not like Mr Wilberforce treats me like a servant. I don’t have to bow and scrape to him.’
    â€˜Oh let’s, it’ll be fun,’ said Jodie, bowing extravagantly.
    She pushed open the door. We stepped into a vast kitchen with a stone-flagged floor and a big wooden table and a huge dresser with shiny pans hanging off hooks, just like the picture of a Victorian kitchen in my history book.
    Mum was