Pizza Cake Page 12
As Harriet crosses the lawn, she notices that a trench has recently been dug and filled in again. A trench from the street to the neighbours’ house.
A cable’s probably been laid, she thinks. A high-security burglar alarm cable that has to go under the ground.
Wait a minute.
When a deep high-security trench is dug, perhaps it can sometimes damage other things under the ground. Like water pipes.
Harriet hurries out to the street, to where the trench meets the footpath. She peers at the ground. And sees exactly what she was hoping to see.
A big patch of damp mud.
She’s so thirsty now she’s tempted just to fill her mouth with mud and see if she can suck any water out of it.
But she doesn’t. She hurries to the shed, finds Dad’s pickaxe, comes back and digs down into the mud.
Yes.
There it is.
Just as she’d suspected.
She’s uncovered the place where the water pipe to her house joins the main pipe for the street. In the house pipe, near the join, is a crack with water trickling out of it.
Harriet drops to her knees and laps at the water. It’s muddy and gritty, but she doesn’t care.
All she cares about is there’s not enough of it.
The tantalising taste of water is driving her crazy with thirst.
She grabs the pickaxe and swings it gently and makes the crack in the pipe just a little bit bigger. Mud and plastic putty ooze out of the crack.
Look at that, thinks Harriet. When they dug the trench, they not only cracked our pipe, they tried to hide what they’d done with plastic putty.
She swings the pickaxe again and makes the crack a little bit bigger again.
Well, quite a bit bigger actually, but Harriet doesn’t care because now the water is bubbling out in a glorious fountain and she plunges her face into it and drinks and drinks and drinks.
And drinks.
Ahhhh, that’s better.
Problem solved.
Suddenly Harriet is dizzy with tiredness. She has just enough strength to block the hole in the pipe with the putty and her socks, put the pickaxe back in the shed, and drag herself up to bed.
She flops down and closes her eyes, and as the warm tide of sleep carries her away, she has one last thought.
That’s nice, she murmurs to herself. My story has a happy ending.
So deep is Harriet’s sleep she doesn’t hear the faint pop of a plug of putty and sock being expelled from a hole in a water pipe, and the soft gush of water fountaining high into the night sky and then cascading down a driveway and under the neighbours’ front door.
Hours later she’s still slumbering so soundly that even the harsh sound of a State Emergency Service diesel pump starting up on the other side of the fence doesn’t wake her. Nor does the even harsher sound of the neighbours wailing about possible rust damage to their medals.
Somebody the noise does wake, though, in the next street, is Ms Lovett.
Hmmm, thinks Ms Lovett, stretching sleepily under the covers with the contentment of a person who loves her job. I think I’ll talk to the class some more about stories today. Introduce them to irony. Perhaps use the example of a character solving a problem and causing another problem that’s the exact opposite.
She pauses, reflecting.
Are they ready for irony, this lot?
She stretches again, smiling.
Yes, I think so.
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This collection first published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2011
Text copyright © Creative Input Pty Ltd, 2011
Illustrations copyright © Andrew Weldon, 2011
Slightly different versions of ‘Secret Diary of a Dad’, ‘Draclia’, ‘Tickled Onions’ and ‘Big Mistake’ were first published in the Get Reading! collection Tickled Onions.
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Illustrations by Andrew Weldon
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ISBN: 978-1-74253-420-6