Poppy's Garden (4 page)

Izzy looked round, as though she was searching for something, and then she suddenly gasped. “Poppy, where’s your mum? She’s not here, is she? Did you just walk out of after-school club?”

“Hang on,” Izzy’s dad said, frowning. “Poppy, sweetheart. Is that right? Does anyone know you’re here on your own?”

Poppy shook her head slowly, and then gave a massive sniff and started to cry.

Izzy’s dad looked a bit panicked, as though he wasn’t sure what to do with a crying person, and he patted her shoulder awkwardly. Izzy gave her a hug, and all of a sudden Poppy decided that she couldn’t possibly have meant to be mean to her all afternoon. It wasn’t the hug of a two-faced sort of person at all. And Izzy had never been like that anyway. She was
incredibly honest. Absolutely the worst liar ever, and terrible at keeping secrets. Poppy gulped and sniffed again, suddenly feeling very tired. If only she’d got more sleep last night, all this might not have seemed so important, she realised. But it didn’t mean she could stop crying.

Izzy’s dad was leading them into the nice little coffee shop where Mum took her for hot chocolate sometimes, and once he’d got them sat down he told Izzy to order them both a drink, and pulled his mobile out of his pocket.

“Are you calling my mum?” Poppy said, although she wasn’t totally sure anyone understood her – it came out as gulps.

“I have to call your mum, Poppy,” he told her gently. “I don’t know if the school will have told her yet – they might not have realised that you’ve gone. But if they have – well, if Izzy had disappeared, I know how worried I’d be.”

“She’ll be so cross!” Poppy wailed, and Izzy hugged her again.

“Dad will tell her there’s something wrong. He won’t let her be cross with you.”

Izzy’s dad nodded grimly, as though he thought that might be difficult, and tapped at his phone,
clearly finding Poppy’s mum’s number.

Poppy could only hear his side of the phone call, but she could guess what her mum was saying. The school hadn’t called her yet, and she was worried, but not frantic.

“Yes, she’s obviously upset about something but she’s fine. Not hurt or anything, are you, Poppy?”

Poppy shook her head.

“Are you still at work? Do you want me to take her home with us? I can do tea for them both if you like?”

Izzy nodded eagerly, and Poppy felt slightly better. She had got things mixed up somehow, she must have done.

“Here, talk to your mum for a minute, Poppy. She needs to know you’re OK.”

Poppy nodded and took the phone.

“Poppy, what’s happening? I can’t believe you walked out of school like that!”

“I’m sorry,” Poppy whispered. “Stuff was going on…” She didn’t want to tell her mum that she’d thought Izzy was being mean to her. Especially now she was thinking she might have got it all wrong. And she really wanted to go back to Izzy’s house, and try and find out why they’d all been so
odd that afternoon. “Ali told me my design for the school garden was all copied and I was a cheat,” she explained. It was totally true, even if it wasn’t why she’d actually sneaked out of school.

“That girl!” her mum snarled. “Right. Well, I shall be ringing the school and telling them exactly what I think of them for letting you walk out, and asking for a meeting with Mrs Angel and Ali Morgan’s parents. And don’t you think you aren’t in trouble either, Poppy. Now, hand me back to Izzy’s dad.”

Poppy sighed and passed the phone over. Maybe Mum would calm down…

“Oh, you’ll let the school know? OK, good. Yeah, I wouldn’t want Mrs Angel thinking I’d kidnapped Poppy. I might not survive,” Izzy’s dad joked. “I’ll bring her back about six-thirty, OK?” He ended the call and sighed. “Your mum sounds like she wants to yell at somebody, Poppy. I wouldn’t want to be your school secretary right now. So…” He eyed her thoughtfully. “Exactly what was going on? What did Ali say that made you so upset? Izzy’s always telling me how brave you are, and how Ali doesn’t worry you at all. She said she wishes
she
could be that cool about it!”

“Dad…” Izzy moaned.

Poppy nodded. “It wasn’t actually Ali.”

“Who was it then?” Izzy demanded. “Was someone mean to you at lunch or something?”

Poppy stared at her tiredly, and sighed. “Yes. You.”

FOUR

Izzy stared at her, her pale-blue eyes going rounder and rounder, and red spots growing in the middle of her cheeks. “I wasn’t!” she said, shaking her head in bewilderment.

Poppy sighed. “I don’t think you meant to be. Or I don’t think so
now
, anyway. But you all went off somewhere without me at lunch, and then this afternoon you kept looking at each other and – and sort of smirking…” She glanced up miserably at Izzy.

Izzy went darkly red all over. “Oh. Yes. I suppose we did. But we weren’t trying to be mean at all.”

“So what were you doing?” her dad demanded curiously.

Izzy frowned and looked down at her school bag. “Promise you won’t be cross?” she asked Poppy.

“It’s a bit late for that, Iz!” her dad muttered. “Just tell us.”

Izzy reached into her bag and pulled out a crumpled, sticky-looking piece of paper.

“Oh! You got it out of the bin!” Poppy took it, rather sadly. She was wondering now if she ought to have stood up for herself better. Maybe she shouldn’t have let Ali convince her that she was a cheat. But there was no way she could enter this now. It had Ribena all over it, she reckoned, and perhaps a bit of chocolate?

“Is that your competition entry, Poppy?” Izzy’s dad asked, peering at it interestedly. “It looks very good.” He squinted at it sideways. “What’s under that splodge there?”

“Scented plants. It was meant to be about all the different senses.” Poppy heaved a huge sigh, and nearly caused a tidal wave over the edge of her hot chocolate mug. “I wish I hadn’t thrown it away now. I mean, I did borrow ideas, but that isn’t really the same as copying, is it?”

“Of course not!” Izzy’s dad chuckled. “All designers have to refer back to other famous gardens, Poppy. It’s what you do with the ideas that counts. So is this what you were doing at lunch, Iz? It can’t have taken you that long to get it out of the bin though.”

Izzy shook her head and pulled out another piece
of paper. She slid it across the table to Poppy, looking apologetic. “We thought you were wrong to throw it away, so I got it out of the bin and we were going to just enter it for you. But by then it was all mucked up. So we tried to redo it. It took ages. And it still isn’t as good as yours was.”

“You did me another copy?” Poppy murmured, looking down at it.

“Well, we tried, but none of us can draw like you, Poppy. It’s useless. And we couldn’t remember what was in some of the smudgy bits. We were thinking we might have to get together tomorrow again and sort it out.” She looked sideways at Poppy. “Are you cross? We just wanted to help.”

“I’m not cross. Emily wrote this, didn’t she?” Poppy asked, looking at one of the little descriptions. “She’s got the worst spelling ever.” She shook her head, grinning. The drawings weren’t nearly as good as hers, like Izzy said, but they’d obviously tried so hard to make it look like her design. It was the nicest thing they could possibly have done. “So this was why you were looking all weird. I thought you hated me because I was a cheat, like Ali said!”

Izzy stared at her disgustedly. “You thought we’d believe that – that slug! Instead of you? Who do
you think we are?”

Poppy shrugged apologetically. “I did stay up a bit late finishing my design,” she admitted. “I was so tired… I suppose I was a bit silly – you know. A bit teary. I feel a lot better now though,” she added, taking a big gulp of chocolate.

“Good.” Izzy’s dad was still studying the original design. “Finish up that hot chocolate, you two.”

Izzy looked at him in surprise. “Why? We’ve only just got it.”

“Because we need to go home and get Poppy some more paper. We’re not wasting this,” her dad said firmly. “Brilliant ideas.
Very original
, and I’ll tell Ali and her little rat gang that. We’re going home so you can do another copy. I’ll help. But only from a distance. I won’t put a finger near it, so no one can say we were cheating.”

“I’m just not sure it’s exciting enough…” Poppy murmured thoughtfully. She and Izzy had eaten a super-fast tea of toasted sandwiches before clearing the table and covering it in paper and coloured pencils, and Izzy’s dad’s huge collection of garden design books. He had flicked through these, carefully pointing out to Poppy where various gardens were
described as “inspired by” something.

“Which is just a nice way of saying copied from. Well, no. Not exactly copied. You borrow a bit from their idea and twist it round and make it your own. Which is just what you did, Poppy, I promise.”

He even had the same Cam Morris book as Poppy’s mum and he snorted disgustedly when Poppy showed it to him, looking at him worriedly to see if he thought she’d “borrowed” too much.

“It’s nothing like yours!” he told her indignantly. “Do you know, I’m worried that Ali’s going to end up running the country one day. She seems to be able to twist all of you round her little finger.”

“You know you wanted it to be more exciting?” Izzy said thoughtfully, leaning over Poppy’s shoulder.

Poppy looked up at her hopefully.

“In that video, Cam Morris talked about everybody being able to help in the garden, and get involved, and do stuff. I mean, there’s lots to look at, and smell, and touch, and it’s beautiful, but do you think it would help if there were things we could
do
?”

Poppy nodded, frowning. “It would. What, though? I can’t think of anything…”

“What about a weather station?” Izzy asked hopefully. She was really into science, and loved
experiments. She had the biggest chemistry set Poppy had ever seen. “We could even build the instruments ourselves – I know a website. There’s a cool wind vane you can make out of old DVDs…”

“None of my DVDs count as old,” her dad said quickly. “And actually, I’ve got another idea. I know you’ve got herbs in the garden for the Taste section, Poppy, but what about vegetables too? And fruit! You’ve got a lovely south-facing wall here, look. You could even have a peach tree growing up there!”

“Do you think school would use the vegetables in our school lunches?” Poppy asked, her eyes widening hopefully.

Izzy frowned. “We’d have to have ever such a lot for that. But if we grew salad, I bet that would be useful.”

“It’s worth trying anyway,” her dad mused. “Growing your own’s a really interesting idea. Lots of schools are putting in gardens now. Since Jamie Oliver made all those TV programmes about how bad school meals were, schools are trying really hard with their lunches. Some nice fresh salad would be great. And I’m sure they could use your herbs too, Poppy. And you could try to grow everything organically.”

Poppy nodded slowly. “I was thinking about that. It sounds good, not having any chemicals, but what if bugs just eat everything we plant? Mum tried to grow broad beans last year, and in the end she just pulled them up. They had these disgusting little black flies all over them. All over! They were covered.”

Izzy’s dad sighed. “Tell me about it. It’s so difficult. I’ve started suggesting to people that they put ponds in their gardens if they want to grow fruit and veg and not spray them with anything.”

Poppy wrinkled her nose and Izzy stared at her dad. “What good does a pond do?” she demanded.

Poppy smiled down at her garden design. She was glad Izzy didn’t know either. She hadn’t felt like asking in case it made her sound stupid.

“Frogs.” Izzy’s dad folded his arms and grinned at them. “Think about it.”

“Oh!” Poppy looked up. “They eat the flies? Really? Does it make a difference?”

“Well, it helps a bit. It’s still a problem though. You have to be really watchful and sneaky. Planting marigolds round your tomatoes, that sort of thing. Pests don’t like marigolds. Or basil! You can plant basil next to your tomatoes to keep flies off, and then you’ve got tomato and basil soup.” He beamed at
them, obviously thinking he was being very funny.

Izzy rolled her eyes at him, but Poppy chewed her pencil thoughtfully and frowned down at her design. “It’s an awful lot to remember. I don’t think we have to work out the exact plants we want to use now though. It’s more like the shape of the garden. We could put vegetables here…” she murmured, pointing at the Taste section. “Peach tree up against this wall… Maybe even a little greenhouse in the corner here!” she added hopefully. “And the weather station bits wouldn’t need a whole lot of space, would they?” she asked Izzy.

“Oh, no. You could put that wind vane on a pole anywhere,” Izzy agreed. “And a rain gauge wouldn’t take much space either. You could explain that you’re having them so that people in the school can take measurements every day. And they’d help with growing food – we’d know how much rain there’d been, and so whether we needed to water the plants.”

“Yes, but wouldn’t we just know if it had been raining?” Poppy asked, and Izzy’s dad snorted with laughter.

“She’s got a point, Iz.”

“It isn’t the same as being scientific about it,” Izzy said firmly.

“I can’t look…” Poppy muttered, staring down at the table. “Are loads of people giving their designs in?”

“Nope.” Izzy shook her head. “Hardly any. I’ve got mine, and there’s Nick, and Lara; we knew about them already. And Ali, of course. Looks like Lucy and Elspeth didn’t dare do their own. Molly, Tilda – oh, and Jake. I wouldn’t have thought he’d enter. But that’s all. So, eight from our class. Maybe fifty or sixty from the whole school?”

Poppy blinked. Izzy was unfairly quick at working things like that out.

Emily leaned over. “No, all of Year Three had to enter – Mrs Taggart made them. Toby was throwing a wobbly about it. But you needn’t worry, Poppy. Toby’s design was a line of toilets, with flowers in.”

That made Poppy look up. “Why?”

“Oh, there’s a house round the corner from us in the village with a toilet full of flowers. James and Toby think it’s the funniest thing ever, so he thought school would like a loo garden too. Honestly, Poppy, yours deserves to win.”

Poppy smiled at her. “If it does, Izzy and her dad have won too. They gave me loads of ideas.”

“Don’t start stressing about whether you copied it again!” Izzy told her sternly. “We’ll all scream.”

“I promise,” Poppy said meekly. “And if Ali says anything I’ll just pretend I can’t hear her.”