There's a Hamster in my Pocket

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Beset with Worries

Sniper

The box from Samarkand

Unimaginable Horrors

Nightmare

Better out than in

Germane

Discovered

Secrets

Birthday Surprises

Auntie Shabnam

Franzeska G. Ewart

I must be a Born Worrier.

Don't get me wrong – I can go for ages without a care in the world, but there are times when I'm simply
beset
with worries. And last summer was one of those times.

‘Beset with worries', by the way, is an expression I got from my best friend Kylie Teasdale. Kylie's dead set on being a writer when she grows up, and she has this little notebook where she writes down good words and phrases.

She let me look at it once, and I found ‘beset with worries' on the ‘B' page, underneath ‘bravado' and ‘bucolic'.

There were three worries besetting me last summer. The first one, which had a Worry Factor of 10, was the family business, Farooq's Fruits.

The second one, with a Worry Factor of 8.5, was Auntie Shabnam from Lahore.

The third one, which only had a Worry Factor of 4, making it more of an Annoyance than a Worry, was Kylie's Russian Dwarf hamsters.

Of all the Worries, Farooq's Fruits was far and away the worst. It was the Mother Of All Worries.

It began one night, when I tiptoed downstairs for a glass of water and heard Mum and Dad talking in the living room. Something about their voices made me stop and listen.

They were talking about the shop, and they were using words like ‘recession' and ‘falling profit margins'. Dad kept sighing, and Mum kept saying she was sure it would be all right, in a voice that clearly meant she wasn't.

By this time my ear was almost bonded to the living room door, so when Dad gave his biggest sigh yet and said, “And then there's the business of the health and safety inspection . . .” I heard every word, clear as a bell.

I didn't entirely understand what ‘recession' and ‘falling profit margins' were, but I knew they were
not
good news, and I understood perfectly how serious a failed health and safety inspection was. The next day, though, when I asked Mum and Dad if anything was wrong, they just smiled and said of
course
not.

They couldn't fool me, though. Not for a minute. And when I asked Kylie what ‘recession' meant, and she told me it was ‘a period of general economic decline', I felt absolutely sick.

So that was the First Worry, and it was, as I discovered at breakfast the next morning, the direct cause of the Second Worry.

“Auntie Shabnam is coming to stay for a while,” Dad announced. “All the way from Lahore. Exciting, isn't it?”

We were all sitting round the table. Nani was eating soggy Weetabix and Bilal, who had just cut his second tooth, was gnawing the handle of his mug.

The news completely floored us. For a while, no one spoke.

“Auntie Shabnam has agreed to help boost the business,” Dad went on. “Give us advice, and so forth.”

“Very sharp, my sister is,” Mum put in. “Brimful of business acumen.”

I turned to ask Nani what ‘business acumen' was, but she was glaring down into her spoonful of mushy cereal as though it contained all the sins of the world. I decided I could wait.

Dad cleared his throat and looked directly at me.

“Your mum and I have decided, Yosser,” he said, “that Auntie Shabnam would be most comfortable in Nani's room. We're going to convert it into an executive office for her.”

A sound like a small, wet, explosion came from Nani's direction. Dad ignored it.

“So Nani will move in with you,” he went on.

I swear I heard my stomach go
splat!
as it hit the kitchen floor.

“It's only for a short while,” Dad added, apologetically.

“And it'll give us a chance to give Nani's room a nice, fresh lick of paint,” Mum said, very brightly. “And declutter it.”

At the word ‘declutter', Nani's nostrils flared. She glowered over at Dad, then at Mum, then finally at me.

I glowered back. I was beyond words.

Mum didn't seem to notice all the bad vibes coming from Nani and me, though. She went on talking about decluttering, and painting and wallpapering, as if it was some kind of treat.

And all the while, I was picturing my little room with Nani's bed in it, and Nani's hundreds of bottles of cough linctus and nerve tonic and indigestion medicine, and her thousands of tubs of foot powder and face powder and tooth powder, and her corn plasters.

I pictured my neat shelves covered with her stuffed birds and bats and lizards, and my walls hung with her butterfly and moth collection, and every last bit of my carpet littered with her big vests, and I badly wanted to cry.

“As Shahid says, it's only for a couple of months,” Mum told Nani. “Then you can move back. And think of all the extra space you'll have when we clear out a few things. . .”

Nani's nostrils flared wider than ever. She banged the table with her fist, sending Bilal an eyeful of wet Weetabix. He began to howl.

“Not one thing will you clear out,” Nani hissed through clenched teeth. “Not one single, solitary thing, as I live and breathe.” Then she rammed her spoon hard into her mouth, and didn't say another word till bedtime.

So that was Worries one and two. And, in the
light of
them
, Worry Number three hardly seems worth mentioning.

Worry Number three concerned Kylie.

Now, I don't think I'm a jealous person. I try not to be, anyway. But that summer I was really jealous of Kylie. And the reason was Kylie's pets.

Kylie's
menagerie
.

I would have loved a pet. I'd pleaded for a dog, but Mum and Dad said that was out of the question because Nani couldn't take it for walks during the day while the rest of us were out.

I'd begged for a cat, but they said Nani was allergic – though how anyone who's lived all their life surrounded by stuffed leopards and lynxes could possibly be allergic to a mere
cat
is beyond me.

Eventually I'd had to settle for a goldfish.

It was a really nice goldfish, with big black eyes and a frilly tail, and I kept it in a bowl on the shelf above my bed and called it Smartypants.

I liked watching Smartypants, and feeding him and so on, but what I really wanted was something I could cuddle.