Zodiac Girls: Brat Princess Read online

  “You heard me.”

  I looked at the mounds of presents. “All of them? You expect me to wrap all of them?”

  “All of them. Leos can be very creative if they want to be, fabulously flamboyant in fact. It’s time you got back in touch with the more giving side of your nature. And have a think over things while you’re at it. I’m going to leave you now. There’s some juice in a carton behind the door and a buzzer to the right of it. You can press it when you’ve finished.” He gave me a totally false smile, then left the room and shut the door behind him.

  I got up and tried the door. Locked. I glanced around the room. There was definitely no escape.

  I sat on the floor and stared at the pile of presents for a few minutes. I could break them, I thought. Rip the dolls’ heads off, pull their arms off and wrap them around the teddy bear’s neck. I could empty all the bath gel over the walls. Stomp on the toy trains and cars until they were nothing but splinters. Break everything! That would show old Cronie Baby what he could do with his precious lessons. I considered the plan for a few moments. The old me would have started in an instant and created havoc, but I found myself hesitating. There was no point. I knew my captors well enough by now to know that if I didn’t co-operate, they’d only find some other miserable task for me to do. And it was pointless having a tantrum as they’d take no notice or leave me in here for even longer.

  I took a deep breath and picked up the first present. I may as well get started, I thought. Just do the job and get it over with. Sooner done, the sooner I get out of here.

  I began wrapping, using the most basic paper and continued doing each present as fast as I could with no fancy trimmings. As I worked, my mind drifted back to Christmases gone by when Poppy had been alive and she and I would sit together and wrap up all the pressies. She delighted in every aspect of Christmas – making handmade cards with glitter and stars, decorating the tree with baked gingerbread, leaving out a beer and mince pie for Santa, apples for his reindeer, then opening her presents on the morning of December 25th. Her enthusiasm had been infectious and I’d loved the season and all that went with it – the carol services, the shopping, the yummy scrummy dinner with family and friends.

  As I continued wrapping, I remembered how I loved to buy presents for everyone, then wrap them in my own special way. Mummy said I had a gift for wrapping, an artist’s touch. My presents always looked the best and hardly cost anything. It didn’t take much. I liked to use what I could from the garden. In December, there was always holly and ivy to pick. I used to weave the green leaves and red berries with bits of twigs that I’d spray gold then put it all together with green ribbon. I was such a different person back then. I’d even write my own plays about princes and princesses and fairies in far-off lands. Poppy used to watch me perform them with her enormous brown eyes and I’d feel like I was making magic in front of her.

  And now I’m here in a cupboard on my own on Christmas Eve and everybody hates me. And I am so-ooooo saaaaaaddddddd. Probably the loneliest person in the whole world. A tidal wave of self-pity flooded through me. Tears came to my eyes. Poor, poor me. All by myself. I looked around at the gifts waiting to be wrapped. And poor them. Those people in hospital. Among strangers. These gifts are to make them feel better – how could I have thought about ruining them, even for a second?! That would have been so mean of me when they were having a tough time anyway, away from home and family and friends… like me. I looked at the untouched ribbon and tinsels and bows on the table. I will wrap these presents. And not only will I wrap them, but I’ll wrap them really, really beautifully as well, so that the faces of the sick people will light up when they see them. That will show Old Croniebum. He won’t be expecting that! Hah! He thinks he knows me, but he doesn’t. Nobody does. I used to be caring once. I used to have friends! Yes. I ca-aaaa-aan b…be (sob, sob) n…ni-iiiice. N…NOBODY (sob, sob) u…understands m… m… meeeeeeeeee.

  After a good cry, I set about my task with renewed enthusiasm and found that my old talent for making gifts look special soon came back. To get myself even more in the mood, I sang Christmas carols at the top of my voice. Minutes went by as I tied and glued and cut and pasted. Hours. I lost track of time as I beavered on and the pile of unwrapped presents decreased.

  When I’d finished wrapping all the gifts, I didn’t press the buzzer to let Dr Cronus know. Instead I set about perfecting the finishing touches. Then tweaking and adding bits and pieces until every gift looked totally unique, a work of art with paper flowers and leaves and bows and twirls of coloured ribbon and tape. The posh present wrapper in the swankiest store in Paris couldn’t have done a better job.

  As I was twirling a length of silver ribbon into a double bow, the door opened and Dr Cronus put his head around. He looked at the pile of gifts stacked neatly to the left of the room. “Wow!” he said.

  “Good, aren’t they?” I said with a smile.

  He walked in and examined a couple of the boxes on top. “No. Not good. They’re blooming astonishing.” He turned and looked at me. “Look what you’re capable of. Just look! What happened, Leonora? What happened to make you so angry with the world?” He was looking at me with such kindness in his eyes that for a moment, I forgot he was one of my captors. I felt a fresh wave of sadness rushing up to the surface.

  “You can tell me, Leonora,” the doctor urged. “Let it out…”

  “I… I… Poppy died. Our house over here was sold soon after,” I said. “Too many memories, Mum and Dad said. We moved to the Caribbean but nothing was the same again. Life for me lost its colour. And so did Christmas.” I sighed and I was almost in tears again but then I remembered that Cronus wasn’t my friend and I had made a vow not to ever let any of them see me cry. I shook the sad feelings away and made myself put my inner wall back up. “But that was then and this is now.”

  “You had a happy home,” said the doctor. “A happy life. And now I am going to let you in on a great secret, one of life’s greatest lessons and if you can learn it, your time on this earth will be marvellous. It needn’t be over just because life dealt you some difficult cards. Life is what you make it. Just like making a movie. In fact, you write, you direct and you act in your own movie. The movie of your life. Never forget that. You still have a say in it all. Okay, one of the characters has gone. Your sister, Poppy. But you’re still here. But what part are you playing now? Do you like the character you have written for yourself? This Brat Princess that the others call you? Do you like your script? The dialogue that you have given to yourself? If you were watching yourself now on a screen, would you be proud of your part?”

  “Oh god, not more psychobabble,” I groaned. “Pul-leese.”

  Dr Cronus let out one of his sighs. “I repeat. You are the writer, the director and the actor in your own play,” he said. “It is always up to you what you make of it, just as it is up to you what you make of your month as Zodiac Girl. And now you can go and join the others. I think they may be having a carol session as, don’t forget, it’s Christmas.”

  I got up and left the room. Okay. I thought. I write my own character? So? Yeah. I’m Leonora Hedley-Dent. Rich girl. Pretty great part if you ask me. I have a life that people envy when I’m not stuck in this awful place. I do… don’t I? But seeing the footage of Poppy then remembering my Christmases gone by had made me think. I felt strange, like some of the anger had gone out of me and had been replaced by an overwhelming sense of sadness. I didn’t know which was worse. Anger or sadness. When I was angry at least I could blame everyone else. But this new feeling. This emptiness. I didn’t know what to do with it. Who to direct it at.

  Christmas, I said to myself. Hah blooming bumbag!

  Chapter Twelve

  Christmas present

  “We don’t want her with us,” said Jake as I came out of the front door to find the others from the lodge hunched around a camp fire with Mr O, Miss Lunie Petunie and Mario. Although I didn’t show it, I was pleased to see that Mr O was still arou
nd. He seemed back to his sunny self and was busy toasting marshmallows. The others were each wearing a pair of reindeer’s antlers, an anorak and a gloomy expression. If I hadn’t felt so miserable, I might have laughed.

  “And I don’t want to be here,” I said, “but Cronie Baby says that there might be a Christmas breakfast for you lot if I co-operate. So what’s going on out here?”

  “As a special treat, hah, pardon me while I laugh,” droned Marilyn, “Mario made us build this fire so that we could sit around and sing Christmas carols.”

  Selene got up and handed me a pair of felt antlers. I was about to object, then remembered that I had to co-operate or no posh nosh tomorrow. I took them, put them on and sat at the edge of the circle. My Prat of the Year look is now complete, I thought. Curly hair, brown eyes, navy trackies and now antlers. And to think that, only a few weeks ago, I was Queen of Style.

  I looked around the camp fire. Marilyn, Lynn, Jake and Mark’s faces were pink from the glow of the fire. Each of them looked far away, probably lost in their memories of Christmases gone by as well. The atmosphere felt sad. Even Mark’s usual scowl had been replaced by a look of regret.

  How has it come to this? I asked myself. I never in a million thousand trillion billion years thought that, at the age of fourteen, I’d be apart from Mummy and Daddy on Christmas Eve of all nights. I rubbed Poppy’s locket between my finger and thumb again, needing to know that it was there. It had been hers. She had been wearing it on the day she died. The nurses gave it to us in a transparent plastic bag along with her Little Mermaid watch, her blue bead bracelet and her inhaler. I’d put the locket on and hadn’t taken it off since that day. Not once. Not even in the bath. At the thought of that little bag of her belongings, I felt tears spill out of my eyes and down my cheeks. I quickly brushed them away before anyone saw. If only, I thought. If only I’d behaved differently that day. If only. If only. If only I could turn back time and make it right I would because her death was all my fault. I am such a bad person. And I will never forgive myself, ever.

  I glanced around again. One more week to go. And deck the halls with Christmas holly, tra la la la la, la la la laaaaaah.

  As we sat staring into the embers of the fire and chewing on the marshmallows that Mr O handed round, there was the familiar roar of Hermie’s bike and indeed, a few moments later, he appeared and skidded to a halt in front of the fire. Even he had made an effort for Christmas and his usual garb of black leather was adorned with garlands of tinsels. He reached into the box on the back of his bike and pulled out five packages. “I bring greetings from the outside world,” he said as he chucked them over to us. “Jake, Marilyn, Lynn, Mark and… yep, one for you, Leonora.”

  Everyone was silent as they ripped off the paper.

  Mark’s parcel contained a video phone. Jake got a card and a Terry’s Chocolate Orange which he immediately opened and passed round. It tasted like heaven. Lynn got a pink woolly scarf, which she wrapped round her neck. And Marilyn got a card with a photo and a bunch of music CDs.

  “What have you got?” asked Lynn.

  I looked down at the box on my knee. It was a portable DVD player. And a DVD.

  Hermie pointed at a switch. “That’s the on button,” he said.

  “I know,” I said.

  “What is it?” asked Jake. “A Christmas movie to pass the time? Can we all watch?”

  “It’s a message from your mum and dad,” Hermie said.

  I sat and looked at the DVD player. It felt like it was a bomb waiting to go off. What if the DVD was a movie with Poppy in it and the others asked me about her? I wondered. What would I say? I was about to put it in my pocket when Mr O shook his head.

  “I think we should all share what we’ve received tonight,” he said. “In the spirit of Christmas, I’d like to hear what you’ve got and what it means to you.”

  There was a collective groan. “Nooooooooo.”

  Mr O clapped his hands. “Okay, then let’s play a game first. Role reversal.”

  There was another collective groan. “Noooooooo.”

  Mr O took no notice of any of us. “Okay. Who shall we have go first?”

  “Leonora,” said Marilyn. “It’s only fair seeing as she messed supper up for us.”

  I knew I had to co-operate. If I didn’t there would be no breakfast. Plus, I was starting to tire of being so objectionable all the time. I’d show them. I could play nice. “Okay. Who do you want me to be?”

  Mr O beamed and gave me the thumbs up. “You can play your mother,” he said. “And… Marilyn, you can be Leonora.”

  Marilyn leapt up. “Love to.” She immediately put a really sour expression on her face.

  “I don’t do that,” I said.

  “You soooo do,” chorused Lynn, Jake and Mark.

  Marilyn started flouncing about like a total drama queen. “I am so superior. I don’t know whaaaat I am doing here with these losers. Oh loser,” she turned to Selene, “get me a toastie would you? And make it snappy.” Then she turned to Mark. “And slave boy, get me a goose-down duvet would you. I am sooooo cold. Brrr. Never mind the others? Who cares about them? Oh me me me me me me me. Oh my hair! It’s gone curly. Oh. I think I might die. And that shampoo? It’s like sooooooo last century.”

  The others cracked up laughing. Not me, though. I felt outraged.

  “Go on, Leonora,” urged Mr O. “Be your mum. You can do it.”

  I felt like my legs had turned to concrete, but I forced myself to move. You can do this, I told myself. If there’s one thing I can do better than anything, that’s act. My life since Poppy died has all been an act. “Now then sweetheart…” I began as I got up.

  Marilyn turned and gave me a scathing look. “I’m not your sweetheart. I’m nobody’s sweetheart, and I’ll be suing your sorry butt as soon as I get out of here.”

  Jake fell on the floor laughing.

  “But it’s for your own good, dear,” I said in Mummy’s gentle voice and even if I say it myself, I had it down rather well. Drama was my best subject at school, even before accounting. I glanced over at Mr O and he gave me an encouraging wink.

  Marilyn folded her arms and pinched her mouth in. “You’re not my mother. I disown you. I hate you.”

  It was so weird because when she said that she hated me, it hurt. “No darling, please don’t…”

  “Oh don’t simper, Mummy. You’re like… so… annoying. Like pardon you for squeaking,” snapped Marilyn as she stepped forward and gave me a good shove, so forceful that I fell back into a bush. That hurt too, and as I lay there, I realised that pushing someone into a bush was exactly what I had done to Daddy on the day I left to board the plane just three weeks previously.

  “Okay, well done girls,” said Selene. “Yes. Er. Enough now. Come on, Leonora. Up you come.” She got up and came over to where I lay and offered her hand.

  “Just give me a mo,” I said. “Please.” I lay in the bush and closed my eyes. A hundred tantrums I’d had in the past year flashed through my mind. The hurtful words I had said to Mummy and Daddy. The moods. The slammed doors. Phone calls cut short. I opened my eyes to see Marilyn still flouncing around being Brat Princess à la Leonora Hedley-Dent and I thought about what old Cronus had just said about life being like a movie. Well, if that was true, I might have the lead role in my personal film but my character stank. She needs a major rewrite, I thought as I pulled a twig out of my hair then continued looking up at the black sky. I have been the daughter from hell. No wonder Mummy and Daddy sent me here.

  A few moments later, I scrambled out of the bush and Mr O patted the ground beside him to indicate that I should go and sit by him.

  “Okay?” he asked as I took my place.

  I nodded, but I felt peculiar – as if I was waking from a long, stressful dream.

  We played out some more scenarios. Lynn got to be Dr Cronus, which she did very well – grumping and scowling her way around the camp fire and threatening us all with extra lessons. Mark got to
be Selene, and he played her as a madwoman who lived her life by the phases of the Moon and who liked to do strange dances to “get her feelings out.” Mark was turning out to be good fun since he’d started talking, and Selene took his impersonation like a great sport and laughed along with the rest of us.

  When the role-playing had finished, Selene asked to see what we had all got in our packages.

  “You go first, Jake,” he said.

  Jake held up sticky fingers. “Chocolate. It’s my favourite. Mum always gets it for me at Christmas.” He showed us the card that accompanied the chocolate. Inside it was a photo of a boy who looked like a younger version of Jake. He had a sweet face and was in a hospital bed. His parents were on either side and the boy was holding up a teddy bear with a Christmas hat on. It made me think of all the times that my family had accompanied Poppy to the hospital when she couldn’t breathe and that last fateful time when she didn’t come home with us. I glanced at Jake’s earnest face and hoped that he never had to go through the same.

  “What’s the matter with your brother?” I asked.

  Jake shrugged. “Some kind of autoimmune disease I think it’s called.”

  “Can they help him?”

  Jake shook his head. “Not here they can’t. They could if we sent him to America. There’s a man there who could help him but we can’t afford it.”

  “Is that why you stole cars?” asked Selene.

  Jake nodded. “Yeah. Partly. I was trying to raise the money. But… I enjoyed it too. It was a laugh. Some’at to do to take my mind off things.”

  Mario got up and stood threateningly over Jake. “But you won’t be doing that kind of thing any more will you?”

  Jake coughed. “Er, no. Course not, sir.”

  “Good,” said Mario. “Because, if you do, you’ll be back here before you can say BMW. Your choice. So who’s next? Mark?”

  Mark showed us his video phone. His family had recorded a message for him and he showed us a busy family scene, with dogs, cats, babies, grandparents, parents, siblings. All the adults were singing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”. They looked like fun.