Wished E-Book

Lissa Evans

• Herausgeber: David Fickling Books
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 226

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Ed and his sister Roo are faced with the most boring half-term holiday in history: five days spent in the company of their elderly neighbour Miss Filey, and her ancient, smelly cat. But when they find a box of birthday candles in a cupboard in Miss Filey's house, their world is changed completely. These are no ordinary candles, every single one of them comes with a wish.There's only one problem: some of those wishes actually belong to someone else . . .

Leseprobe

For Isotta

CONTENTS

TITLE PAGEDEDICATIONTHEN 55 YEARS AGO NOW CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3 CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER 6 CHAPTER 7 CHAPTER 8 CHAPTER 9 CHAPTER 10 CHAPTER 11 CHAPTER 12 CHAPTER 13 CHAPTER 14 CHAPTER 15 CHAPTER 16 CHAPTER 17 CHAPTER 18 CHAPTER 19 CHAPTER 20 CHAPTER 21 CHAPTER 22 CHAPTER 23 CHAPTER 24 CHAPTER 25 CHAPTER 26 CHAPTER 27 CHAPTER 28 CHAPTER 29 CHAPTER 30 CHAPTER 31 CHAPTER 32 CHAPTER 33 CHAPTER 34 CHAPTER 35 CHAPTER 36 CHAPTER 37  ALSO AVAILABLE BY LISSA EVANSALSO BY LISSA EVANS COPYRIGHT

THEN

55 YEARS AGO

That year there was no party, and no cake, because no one felt like celebrating, but Rosanna still lined up her cards on the mantelpiece, so that it felt a bit like a birthday. There was one from her grandmother, with a picture of a girl stroking a kitten, and one from her aunt and uncle, with a picture of a girl stroking a puppy, and one from her other aunt and uncle with a picture of a girl not stroking anything, but just standing in a flowery meadow, smiling and holding a daisy chain.

Though the cards were very nice, Rosanna would secretly have preferred a picture of a girl steering a red-sailed boat across a tropical sea towards a mystery island, like the illustration on the front of the adventure storybook she’d been given as her best present.

Her favourite card was the one from her mum and dad, and she put it in the middle of the mantelpiece. On the front, the words:

were illustrated as if they were bursting fireworks, lighting up a dark sky dusted with stars. Inside was a verse:

Ten candles on your birthday cake

Each one’s a wish for you to make –

Adventures all, they wait for you

To come and make those dreams come true.

But there’d be no wishes this year. She put the birthday candles in a little box and placed them in a drawer.

Maybe next year, she thought.

After all, she had plans; lots of plans.

NOW

CHAPTER 1

‘Miss Filey’s house?’ repeated Ed, outraged. ‘We have to spend every day this week at Miss Filey’s house? Are you totally serious?’

‘Sorry, but it can’t be helped,’ said his dad, avoiding Ed’s gaze and sidling out of the door.

‘IT CAN’T BE HELPED,’ echoed Ed’s mother loudly, from the other room, where she was packing DVDs into a box. ‘IT’S NO GOOD MOANING, ED.’

‘I’m not moaning, I’ve hardly said anything – but can’t we discuss it? Don’t I have a say?’

‘NOT IN THIS CASE,’ called his mother. ‘SORRY. YOU’LL JUST HAVE TO GRIN AND BEAR IT. THERE IS LITERALLY NO ALTERNATIVE, AND IF MISS FILEY HADN’T MADE THE SUGGESTION, I DON’T KNOW WHAT WE’D HAVE DONE.’

‘But I’d rather spend next week in the shed. I’d rather spend it in the middle of a car park. In the rain. I bet she doesn’t even have WiFi.’

‘Who are you talking about?’ asked his nine-year-old sister, Roo. She had an irritating habit of quietly entering rooms and then speaking before you even realized she was standing next to you.

Ed swivelled to face her. ‘Sit down, Roo, I’ve got bad news.’

Her pointed face seemed to sharpen. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

‘Yes, fine,’ he said dismissively. ‘It’s not that sort of bad news. It’s about the half-term holiday club. It’s been cancelled.’

‘Why?’

‘The toilet at the hall overflowed and the building’s been declared a biohazard and they’re having to get specialist cleaners in. And so—’

‘Why did it overflow?’

‘No idea.’ It was another of Roo’s irritating habits to interrupt good stories with unimportant questions. ‘So anyway, the club’s not on, and for some reason we can’t stay in the house when Mum and Dad are at work.’

‘YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHY YOU CAN’T,’ called their mother, who had bat-like hearing. ‘THE WHOLE BACK OF OUR HOUSE IS BEING TORN OFF FOR THE NEW EXTENSION, SO THERE’LL BE WORKMEN EVERYWHERE AND CABLES, AND THEY DON’T NEED CHILDREN WANDERING AROUND.’

‘I don’t wander.’

‘AND ANYWAY YOU’RE BOTH TOO YOUNG TO STAY ON YOUR OWN, DON’T ARGUE, ED, OR I SHALL GO MAD.’

‘So, what are we going to do?’ asked Roo. ‘Can we go to our cousins?’ she added hopefully.

‘THEY’RE AWAY,’ called their mum.

‘This is where the bad news comes in,’ said Ed. ‘Dad has done something completely random. He bumped into Miss Filey at the recycling bins this morning and she suggested that we go to her house during the day. For an entire week.’

‘DON’T EXAGGERATE,’ called Mum. ‘YOU DON’T HAVE TO GO AT THE WEEKEND, SO IT’S LITERALLY FIVE DAYS.’

‘Miss Filey?’ asked Roo.

‘Yes. Unbelievable, isn’t it?’

‘I’ve never been inside her house,’ said Roo.

‘Nor me. Why would anyone want to?’

‘Well … it might be interesting.’ Roo said the last few words quietly; she never enjoyed contradicting Ed, who was a year and a half older than her, because Ed enjoyed arguing and was good at it, and she didn’t, and wasn’t. But Miss Filey’s house, at the bottom of the road, was intriguing. All the other houses were small and quite new, but hers was large and quite old; a broad, brick bungalow in a wide, square garden filled with flowering bushes and surrounded by trees. The front door was set in a deep porch, and above it was a window shaped like a fan. Reflections danced across it when you walked past.

‘But even if it’s interesting, it’ll still contain Miss Filey,’ said Ed. He leaned forward from the waist and opened his mouth wide, pitching his voice to an enthusiastic shriek. ‘Super weather, isn’t it?’

‘ARE YOU DOING AN IMPRESSION OF MISS FILEY?’ called Mum.

‘Yes, but it’s not unkind, just accurate. Have a simply smashing day!’ he added.

And it was true, thought Roo – that was exactly how Miss Filey talked: like somebody out of a black-and-white film. And she never stopped to have a conversation, but just trilled a comment as she hurried by, as if she was calling from a passing ship.

‘SHE’S ALWAYS VERY KIND,’ shouted their mum. ‘REMEMBER SHE CAME TO THE FUNDRAISER AND BOUGHT EVERYTHING ON THE PLANT STALL AND ALL THE SMASHED BISCUITS IN THAT TIN THAT GOT DROPPED.’

‘But what will we do there?’ asked Ed, who didn’t like talking about the fundraiser. ‘I mean, seriously, Mum – what will we do at Miss Filey’s house? Talk about the weather for five days? Eat broken biscuits?’

He waited for an answer, but there was no response from the next room.

‘It might be OK,’ said Roo.

‘It won’t. It’ll be mind-numbingly boring.’

But Ed was wrong, because what happened at Miss Filey’s house wasn’t boring.

What happened at Miss Filey’s house was beyond imagination.

CHAPTER 2

The front door opened the second that Roo put her finger on the bell, and she stepped back in shock and banged her heel on the footplate of Ed’s wheelchair.

‘Crikey, you’re punctual!’ said Miss Filey, who must have been waiting directly behind the door. ‘Come on in.’

‘Hi,’ said Roo, standing on one leg and rubbing the other. ‘Thank you for having us. We’ve brought packed lunches because there’s loads of stuff Ed won’t eat.’

‘Allergies,’ said Ed, who didn’t have any allergies but who was incredibly picky. ‘I don’t need help,’ he added quickly, as Miss Filey reached out for the wheelchair handles. ‘I can do it myself.’ There was only a shallow step, and he rolled across the doormat and onto the patterned wooden floor of the large, square hall. His first impression was that it was full of people, and then he realized that he was looking at a wide gilt-edged mirror that filled half of the opposite wall. His own face was only visible from the chin upwards, with the top half of Roo in a red sweatshirt just beside him, her straight dark hair swinging as she looked around the hall, and then, towering over both of them, their hostess.

Miss Filey was slender and quite tall, but she stooped slightly as if she felt awkward about her height. Her grey shoulder-length hair was pulled back on one side with a tortoiseshell clip, and she was wearing, as always, a knitted jumper and a plain knee-length skirt, so that she looked a bit like an elderly schoolgirl.

‘I’m really jolly pleased you could come,’ she announced.

‘Thanks,’ said Roo, still looking around. Everything looked old. Not ‘old’ as in ‘your antique table is worth THREE THOUSAND POUNDS’, but ‘old’ as in a TV series about men who smoked pipes and listened to the radio while their wives mended socks. There was an uncomfortable-looking chair beneath the mirror, with a little table beside it, for the telephone. There was a framed painting of a wonky cottage with roses climbing up the wall. In one corner, there was a tall wicker basket containing an umbrella, and in the other, a revolting stuffed tabby cat, its fur in matted clumps.

‘That’s Attlee,’ said Miss Filey.

The stuffed cat opened its eyes, and Roo screamed rather loudly. ‘Sorry,’ she said.

‘He’s quite harmless,’ said Miss Filey, ‘and my father always said he was very intelligent and could understand every word we say.’

Attlee flicked them a slitted look and then yawned; the terrible stench of cat food and rotten teeth drifted across the hall. Ed covered his nose.

‘He’s frightfully old – nearly twenty-two!’ said Miss Filey.

‘Oh,’ said Roo, trying to sound impressed.

There was a pause. Instead of telling them what to do, in the traditional way of grown-ups, Miss Filey remained standing in the centre of the hall, her hands clasped.

‘Can we look around?’ asked Roo, after a minute had passed.

‘Gosh, what a terrific idea!’ said Miss Filey. She sounded rather relieved; Roo had the feeling that if the suggestion hadn’t been made, they’d have spent the entire day standing in the hall.

Despite having no upstairs to it, Miss Filey’s house felt at least twice the size of Ed and Roo’s; all the rooms were large and square and light, and were linked by a broad corridor; despite this, Roo found something dispiriting about it. It was all very clean and tidy, but despite being full of furniture and ornaments, it somehow felt empty.

‘So, this was my bedroom when I was a child,’ said Miss Filey, opening yet another door. ‘And now it’s my little library.’ This room was quite different to all the others: the only furniture was a chair and a desk with a globe on it. Floor-to-ceiling shelves on three walls held rows of large books and yellow-spined magazines, while on the fourth wall, next to the window, was a vast map of the world. Miss Filey paused to look at it. ‘I try to learn the name of a new place every week,’ she said, running a finger down the coast of Finland and then dabbing at a tiny island. ‘This week it’s Kirjalansaari, which is really jolly hard to say.’

‘Could I ask you something?’ said Ed. ‘Do you have WiFi?’

Miss Filey looked thoughtful. ‘Why. Fy.’ she repeated, rather carefully, as if the words were in another language. ‘Now, is that a special sort of biscuit?’

Ed had been opening his backpack to get out his tablet, but he closed it again. ‘Never mind,’ he said.

‘Do you have a TV?’ asked Roo.

‘Yes – it’s in the living room, come and see.’

The television was about the size of a washing machine and looked as if it was made of wood. Miss Filey pressed a button. For a while nothing happened, and then the surprisingly small screen turned from dark grey to light grey and there was a faint whining noise. ‘I can’t remember the last time I turned it on – my father used to enjoy watching history programmes,’ she said. ‘While it’s warming up, would you like to have a look at the garden?’

It wasn’t until they had followed the flagstoned path as far as the back wall that Roo risked a look at Ed. His expression made her snort with laughter.

‘Glad you think it’s funny,’ he said. ‘That tele vision should have police tape around it. I’m surprised it didn’t explode when she switched it on.’

‘She’s quite nice though, isn’t she?’ said Roo. ‘In a weird sort of way.’

They both looked back towards the house, as if Miss Filey might be listening, but there was nothing to see except the open French windows, and beyond them the faint glow of the television still warming up.

Somewhere, in another garden, a dog was woofing.

‘Hi,’ said a voice, behind them.

CHAPTER 3

An extremely short kid of about Ed’s age was looking at them over the low garden wall. He had a huge gap between his teeth and was cross-eyed.

‘Hello,’ said Roo, trying to sound both friendly and sympathetic. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Elastico,’ said the boy.

‘Sorry?’

‘Elastico.’

‘It can’t be.’

‘Yes, it can, because that is my superpower.’ And as the boy spoke he suddenly grew taller, but slightly jerkily so it was obvious that he’d actually been on his knees behind the wall. He also uncrossed his eyes and took a small square of dark paper off his front teeth, revealing himself to be completely ordinary-looking.

‘Hi, I’m Willard,’ he said, grinning. ‘Did I fool you?’

‘Slightly,’ said Ed, unwillingly impressed by the amount of effort that had gone into the introduction. ‘Do you always do that when you meet new people?’

‘I’ve got a range of things,’ said Willard. ‘Eyepatch, fake sick, spider crawling up my face, that sort of thing.’

‘Why?’ asked Roo.

‘Just, you know …’ Willard shrugged ‘For a laugh. I’m class clown. What’s your names?’

‘I’m Ed and this is my sister, Roo.’

‘It’s “Lucy”, really,’ said Roo.

‘How do you get “Roo” from “Lucy”?’

‘I couldn’t say her name properly when I was little,’ said Ed, ‘and it just stuck.’

‘Though I do quite like being called “Lucy”,’ said Roo.

‘Is that thing electric?’ asked Willard, nodding at the wheelchair.

‘No.’

‘Why are you in it?’

‘Hurt my leg,’ said Ed, briefly and untruthfully.

‘We’ve just moved here,’ said Willard. ‘The day before yesterday. From Wales.’

‘You don’t sound Welsh,’ said Ed.

‘I’m not. Before that we were in Northampton. We’re always moving, because my mother owns a circus.’

‘Really?’ asked Roo, astonished.

‘No, just kidding, she’s a vicar.’

‘Oh.’

‘What does your mum do?’ asked Willard.

‘She’s a driving instructor. So’s our dad.’

‘And which school are you at?’

‘Meadows Primary,’ said Ed.

‘That’s where I’ll be going too, after the holiday. Are you in Year Five?’

Ed nodded.

‘Me too,’ said Willard. ‘I’m class clown,’ he said again, as if it were an official title.

Ed felt a stir of irritation. Making people laugh was his own speciality, though he tended to do it with sarcasm rather than fake sick.

‘Who’s that?’ asked Willard, looking past them. ‘What’s she holding?’

Ed and Roo turned to see Miss Filey coming through the French windows with a small gong in her hand. ‘The television is ON,’ she announced, hitting the gong with a drumstick.

‘She’s called Miss Filey,’ said Roo. ‘We’re spending the day with her.’

‘Can I too?’ asked Willard, already slinging a leg over the wall.

‘Umm …’ said Roo, just as Willard lifted up the other leg and fell heavily into a shrub. He lay on the ground beneath it, eyes shut, mouth open, one hand twitching slightly.

‘We ought to ask her first,’ said Ed. ‘And shouldn’t you check with someone at home?’

Willard opened his eyes. ‘How did you know I wasn’t badly injured?’

‘Lucky guess.’

Willard stood up. ‘I’ll just come in for five minutes. Hello, Miss Filey,’ he said, walking straight past her. ‘I’m a friend of Ed and Roo’s. Holy cow!!’ he exclaimed, staggering back at the sight of the TV.’

‘It’s old,’ said Roo, stating the obvious.

‘It’s black and white,’ said Willard, gazing mesmerized at the screen, where two men in suits were standing in a studio. The top half of the picture was stationary while the bottom half kept jerking around, as if the presenters were doing a Charleston.

‘There’s lemonade and biscuits,’ said Miss Filey, placing a tray on a spindly-looking table with a scratched top. ‘I’ll try and buy a packet of Why Fy for tomorrow. Do make yourself at home, everyone.’

‘Thanks very much,’ said Roo. She watched Ed fiddling with the control buttons, which stuck out of the set like biro tops, and then she realized that Miss Filey was lingering next to the door, her smile slightly fixed, as if waiting for something. ‘Thanks very much,’ she said again, and Miss Filey ducked her head in an awkward nod, and left the room.

The television turned out only to have two channels, and both were covered in fizzy white dots, and the boys soon lost interest. For no particular reason, Willard put four biscuits in his mouth at the same time, started to choke and then accidentally kicked over his lemonade while coughing. Ed threw a cushion onto the mess, and Roo looked for something to wipe it up with. There was a cabinet on one side of the room, and she searched through the drawers; there were beautiful tablecloths, as perfect as if they’d just been woven, and embroidered mats, fancy forks, a cake slice with a china handle and a small tin box with a hinged lid, containing a bundle of little silver-and-white candles. In the bottom drawer, she found a packet of paper napkins and she opened it and soaked up as much of the lemonade as possible.

‘Where’s Willard gone?’ she asked, suddenly realizing that he wasn’t in the room.

Ed shrugged. ‘He just ran off, back into the garden – maybe he’s embarrassed about knocking the drink over. I tell you something, I’m really not looking forward to being in the same class as him.’ There’d be no room for his own witty comments with Willard making armpit fart noises every three minutes.

‘I’m back!’ said Willard, slightly out of breath, bursting in through the French windows with a plate in one hand. On it was three-quarters of an iced cake, decorated with fizzy fish. ‘It was my birthday yesterday – Mum said we could finish this off.’

‘You haven’t eaten much of it,’ said Ed.

‘Well, it was only me and Mum – I don’t know anyone here yet, do I?’

‘Oh …’ Ed felt a tweak of pity; a birthday with no friends sounded pretty miserable. ‘OK, yes, I’d love a slice.’

‘There’s some birthday candles in the drawer,’ said Roo, going back to the cabinet. ‘We could just use one, couldn’t we? It would make it more special. And here’s some matches,’ she said, rummaging round and finding a box.

Willard put the cake on the spindly-legged table, and Roo stuck one of the white-and-silver candles in the icing.

She was just about to light it when Willard puffed his cheeks, as if about to vomit. ‘Something stinks in here,’ he said.

Ed glanced round. ‘It’s the cat.’ Attlee had stalked into the room, the fishy smell surrounding him like an invisible force field.

Roo struck the match. ‘I like cats, but I do wish Miss Filey had a dog,’ she said, lighting the candle, ‘because I really love—’

There was a crash, and Attlee shot across the room like a thrown fish sandwich, his tail a plume of terror. He ran straight up the wall and clung to a framed embroidery of a vase of flowers, hissing over his shoulder at an enormous dog that had charged in through the open French windows from the garden. It was covered in tight brown curls and its mouth was open in a wide and toothy grin. Ed spun away; the dog’s mouth was far too near his own face for comfort.

‘It’s a dog!’ shouted Willard unnecessarily.

Attlee was making a terrible sing-song yowling, and the dog was up on its hind legs, pawing at the wall just beneath him. Roo grabbed its collar and pulled, and the dog gave a joyful sort of bound in her direction so that she stumbled back, knocking against the cake table. She let go of the collar and managed to grab the plate, but the cake itself was already mid-air. It hit the wall and disintegrated in a blizzard of crumbs. A fizzy fish pinged off the television screen.

Breathless, Roo turned round. The dog had gone.

‘Golly Moses, what on earth is happening?’ called Miss Filey, hurrying into the room.

‘A neighbour’s dog,’ said Ed, cautiously spinning back round. ‘We heard it woofing earlier. It’s gone out again now. It was huge – it must have jumped the garden wall.’

‘Sorry,’ said Roo. ‘About all the mess. It’s Willard’s cake – we’ll clear it up.’

‘Oh, it’s only crumbs. I’ll go and fetch the dustpan and brush,’ said Miss Filey, struggling to detach Attlee’s claws from the embroidered picture. ‘I’ll obviously have to be more careful about closing the doors. Are you all right?’ she asked Willard, who was still standing on the sofa.

He nodded rather stiffly, but his eyes were as round as buttons, and when Miss Filey had taken the cat out of the room, he flapped his mouth a couple of times before he could speak. ‘Did you see that?’ he asked.

‘Couldn’t exactly miss it, could we?’ said Ed.

‘I don’t mean the dog appearing. I mean it … disappearing. It was there and then it wasn’t there.’

‘It must have gone out through the French windows.’

‘No!’ said Willard, ‘I was looking straight at it, and it was—’ He snapped a finger. ‘Gone. Into thin air. Like magic.’

‘Sure,’ said Ed, rolling his eyes at his sister.

But Roo said nothing at all.

CHAPTER 4

At home, there was dust everywhere, and sheets of dingy plastic taped across the place where the living-room wall had been.

‘Well,’ said Dad, trying to sound cheerful as he hoovered flakes of plaster off the carpet, ‘the builders have made a start. Won’t be too long now – just a month or two.’

It was going to be a ground-floor bedroom and bathroom for Ed. Currently he either had to go upstairs on his bum, or his dad had to carry him up, and once there, he couldn’t use his wheelchair because the doorways were too narrow, which meant that he had to wobble around holding onto things, in a way that made him feel like a toddler. So he was looking forward to getting the new extension; the only trouble was that the whole of the small town they lived in seemed to be looking forward to it as well.

‘I’m really sorry,’ his mum had said. ‘We just can’t afford it without a bit of help.’ So there had been local cake sales and sponsored hopping races and a talent show and a pie-throwing contest and now people he didn’t even know said, ‘Ed, my man!’ in the street and gave him a high five or called out ‘I bought six rock buns at the fundraiser – hope my contribution helped!’ from the other side of the road, and Ed had to smile at them all.

‘HOW WAS MISS FILEY?’ shouted Mum from the kitchen.

‘OK,’ he said.

There was a pause.

‘A LITTLE MORE DETAIL WOULD BE NICE,’ called Mum.

‘We met a boy called Willard who thinks he’s funny. We found a cupboard full of jigsaws and started one with a lot of sky. We ate some slightly stale cake. I mean, the whole thing was exactly like going to Disneyland. Do we have to go back tomorrow?’

‘YES, BUT MAYBE WE CAN MAKE SOME OTHER ARRANGEMENT FOR THE END OF THE WEEK. LUCY’S VERY QUIET.’

‘Hello, Mum,’ called Roo. ‘Yes, it was fine. Miss Filey’s nice.’ She spoke absently, her thoughts still circling the incident of the dog. She kept thinking of the moment that she’d grabbed it by the collar.

‘WHAT’S HER HOUSE LIKE?’

‘Old,’ said Ed. ‘But not necessarily in a good way.’

‘It’s big,’ said Roo. ‘Really big for one person.’

Mum appeared in the kitchen door, a potato masher in her hand. ‘Miss Filey’s father only died a few months ago – he was in his late nineties, I think, and he needed a lot of looking after. I’m not sure if she has any other family.’

‘Nor me. Are we having sausage and mash?’ asked Ed.

‘Fish cakes.’ Their mum went back into the kitchen.

‘Ed,’ said Roo. ‘I have to tell you something.’ She jerked her head towards the hall.

Ed followed her. ‘What is it?’ he asked, keeping his voice low.

‘You know the dog?’

‘Willard’s Disappearing Dog, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘What about it?’

‘There was a little tag on its collar. I saw it when I grabbed him.’

‘OK. And?’

She took a deep breath. ‘It said “49 Alum Road” on it. That’s Miss Filey’s address, isn’t it? But Miss Filey doesn’t have a dog.’

Ed waited.

‘The thing is, when I lit the candle,’ continued Roo, ‘I said, “I do wish Miss Filey had a dog”.’

Ed raised an eyebrow. ‘So, what you’re saying is that you made a wish and it came true?’

‘Yes. And then when the candle went out, the wish ended, and the dog vanished.’

‘We’ve only got Willard’s word for that. We had our backs to it.’

‘Well, OK, but … what if it really did disappear? What’s the explanation?’

Ed folded his arms in a teacherish way. ‘Let’s look at this logically. As far as I can see, there are two possibilities. One is that you made a wish and it magically came true. And the other is that you slightly misread the print on a dog’s collar and it didn’t say forty-nine, it said another number, and the dog actually belonged to a neighbour and it jumped the garden wall. Which of those two possibilities is the most likely?’ Ed saw his sister’s shoulders droop with disappointment. ‘You can always light another candle tomorrow,’ he said, trying to cheer her up. ‘Check out your theory.’

‘But what would I wish for?’

Ed shrugged. ‘How about something that definitely couldn’t turn up in a normal living room?’

‘An elephant? No, too big. A … a sloth? No, it might wee everywhere. A … a …’

‘Sloths only urinate when it’s raining,’ said Ed, who knew nearly everything. ‘Why don’t you sleep on it,’ he added. ‘And at least Willard won’t be there tomorrow.’