Free Amelia by Siobhan Parkinson Page A

effort. She had her arms over her head, trying to pin the edge of a paper chain to the cornice.
    ‘I’ll see if I can find something to do in the kitchen,’ said Amelia, and she clattered off in that direction.
    Cook, who was, as all cooks should be, a large, puddingy sort of person, whose full, soft cheeks shook when she spoke, like a half-cooked cake mixture that’s still wobblyunder the skewer, and who was normally, as all large, puddingy persons are, an oasis of calm and a rock of sense, was pink and flustered in the cheeks and concerned across the eyebrows. She raised one of her concerned eyebrows at Amelia as she entered the kitchen and said, ‘I hope you haven’t come looking for a snack, because I haven’t time to get you one.’ And with that, Cook ran, or at least she lurched quickly, which is the nearest that large, puddingy persons come to running, into the pantry and emerged shortly with a platter of iced buns with shiny little glacé cherries on top, for all the world like tiny casseroles with wee bright lid-knobs.
    ‘Oh no, Cook, I’ve come to see if I can help.’
    Cook looked mollified. She shoved the plate of iced cakes at Amelia and said, ‘Well, you can take these to the dining room, but they’re for after the savouries, so make sure they go on the sideboard, not the main table. You can put them next to the jellies and the trifles.’
    In her delight with the orangery and the light filling the normally rather dusky dining room, Amelia hadn’t even noticed the food. Now, clearing a place on the sideboard with her elbow to put the large plate of iced cakes down, she took in the splendid array of food for the first time. There were jellies, as Cook had mentioned, in three colours – green, purple and red – all beautifully turned out of their complicated moulds and glowing like translucent eastern buildings with turrets and minarets, and there were trifles in cut-glass bowls, thick with custard and studded with fruit, there were little bon-bon dishes of liquorice all-sorts, all bright and spanking, and there was, right in the centre of the desserts, a birthday cake such as Amelia had never seen before, with perfectly smooth white icing and little pink sugar roses around each of the thirteen candles. In addition, there was a spread of savouries on the large oval dining table – olives and pickled onions, tiny sausages, anchovy toast,miniature egg-and-bacon tarts, and dainty little triangular sandwiches with the crusts cut off, with little bouquets of parsley dotted here and there among them. It was just as well Grandmama had taken Papa’s advice and absented herself to Bray for the day, for she would never have stood for sandwiches with the crusts cut off.
    For the next while Amelia joined in the household dither, making little journeys up from the kitchen to the dining room, sometimes meeting Mary Ann on the way, stopping occasionally to hold the step-ladder for Mama when she was at a particularly awkward bit, and even carrying extra coal to the drawing room, where any mamas who came would be entertained.
    There was so much to be done, and such an air of determined excitement about it all, and Amelia was bustling so hard with the rest of them that she almost forgot to go and get ready. Mama called to her at last: ‘Amelia, do you realise what time it is? They’ll be here in half-an-hour. What’s the point in having a watch if you don’t use it to keep an eye on the time?’
    A cold shiver ran over Amelia’s skin, as if someone had suddenly opened a door from a warm room to a very cold outdoors and let in a wintry blast of air. She hadn’t given the watch a thought for a good half-hour at least. Oh bother Mama! Why did she have to spoil everything?
    ‘Very well, Mama,’ said Amelia in a subdued voice. ‘I’ll go and change.’
    But when she arrived in her bedroom and saw the beautiful emerald silk dress glowing on the quilt where Mama must have laid it while she was at school,