Esmerelda Smudge and the Magic Pepper Pot Read online



  Esmerelda Smudge

  and the Magic Pepper pot

  MANDY MARTIN

  Nine-year-old Esmerelda isn't happy. Cursed with a stupid girly name that no one can pronounce, never mind spell, she seems destined to be a disappointment. Mum wants a perfect princess for a daughter, complete with balletic grace and frilly dresses. Her teachers wish she'd pay attention in class and learn to spell, and her dance teacher wishes Esmerelda would point her toes and perform impeccable pirouettes, but would settle for her remembering her ballet shoes once in a while.

  No one seems to care much about Esmerelda's wishes. Until she finds a magic pepper pot in Great Aunt Maud's attic. Every time she sneezes and makes a wish, the wish comes true. But when the wishes go a bit wonky, Esmerelda has to wonder if wishing for things only spells disaster.

  COPYRIGHT

  Copyright © Mandy Martin 2015

  Mandy Martin asserts the moral right to be

  identified as the author of this work

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Also by Mandy Martin

  Seren Kitty

  Seren Kitty and the Tricky Wizard

  Seren Kitty and the Dog Nappers

  Seren Kitty in Italy

  Moon Pony

  Will on the Water

  Alfie Stanton: Half Baked Hero

  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  All rights reserved.

  CONTENTS

  Great Aunt Maud

  Surprise in the Attic

  Wishful Thinking

  Potty Pirouettes

  Spelling Shock

  Nat’s Niggles

  Cricket Chaos

  Pink Disaster

  Dancing Dad

  Sneaky Sneeze

  Spelling Dilemma

  Challenging Championships

  Catastrophe

  Filming Fun

  Persian Prize

  Auction Fever

  Brilliant Borneo

  Russia Calling

  Great Aunt Maud

  “Esmerelda!”

  Esme stuck her fingers in her ears and pretended Mum was calling someone else. Esmerelda was such a stupid name – she refused to answer to it.

  “Esmerelda! We have to go. Oh, for goodness sake, Esme! Come down, now.”

  Esme smiled. She didn’t like the short version much either, but at least it wasn’t so awfully girly. Jumping off the bed, Esme pulled on her favourite blue t-shirt and green shorts, cartwheeled along the hallway, and galloped down the stairs.

  “Are you wearing that?” Mum said with a sigh. “Oh, Esme, can’t you at least try to make an effort? Great Aunt Maud is very old-fashioned. She would love to see you in a dress for a change. What about the pink one I bought you last week?”

  Pink. Eugh! It wasn’t just pink either. It had frills and flowers, and sparkly gems glued all over it. The lace underskirt scratched and tangled her legs when she tried to do handstands.

  “I thought we were clearing out the attic?” Esme asked innocently. “I don’t want to get it dirty.”

  Mum gave her a suspicious look. Esme smiled and tilted her head, shaking her black pigtails in what she hoped was an adorable way.

  At last Mum smiled back. “You, my girl, are impossible. But I can’t argue with you: it is likely to be messy. Why Aunt Maud wants to clear her attic now all of a sudden I have no idea.”

  “She wants to go on Dosh in the Loft – she told me. Said her attic was full of treasures and heirlooms.”

  “Dust and mice more like,” Mum said as she unhooked the car keys. “I doubt anyone’s been up there in a decade. Uncle Harold used to keep his train set up there, but I think Cousin Dave took that for his boys.”

  It was all boys in Esme’s family, apart from her, Mum, and Great Aunt Maud. It wasn’t fair, Esme thought, as they climbed in Mum’s little red car. Why couldn’t she have been a boy? You’d have thought Mum would be a bit less obsessed with frills, after being brought up with her four noisy, boisterous cousins. But, no: all that time surrounded by mud and football boots and fishing rods seemed to have left her desperate to possess a perfect little princess for a daughter.

  It took an hour to drive to Great Aunt Maud’s. Mum tested Esme on her spellings while they drove, but after ten minutes they were both so frustrated she turned the radio on instead.

  As soon as they pulled up outside Great Aunt Maud’s house Esme released her seatbelt and opened the car door.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Mum said severely.

  Esme already had one foot on the grass verge. “If we’re going to be stuck indoors all day, I need to get some fresh air and exercise first,” she said glibly. “You don’t want me growing up fat and unhealthy do you?”

  Before Mum could splutter out an answer, Esme had raced through the gate and round to the back garden.

  Great Aunt Maud lived in an old school house. It was spooky in the winter, when the bare trees scraped their branches along the windows, and the turrets and chimneys cast weird shadows on the ground. But in the spring the trees came alive with buds and fresh green leaves and the air filled with bird song.

  Esme clambered up her favourite horse chestnut tree. It spread over half the garden, providing conker ammunition in the autumn and leafy shade in the summer holidays. Now, in the spring, the flowers made her sneeze as their giant pink ice-cream-cone blooms bobbed in the wind. But Esme didn’t mind.

  Hiding deep in the branches, Esme peered out over the rambling brambles at the bottom of Maud’s garden and pretended she was deep in the rainforests of Borneo. She wasn’t Esmerelda, nine-year-old school misfit, she was Sir David Attenborough, deep in Indonesia, meeting orangutans and telling people in a deep gravelly voice how to protect them.

  Esme reached up and grasped a branch. Then, hanging by one arm, she reached out for another. Swinging from branch to branch she made it round to where the trunk of a wizened apple tree came close enough to leap to. She was just about to jump when she heard Mum shout.

  “Esmerelda Smudge! Get down right now. For the fifty-seventh time you are not an orangutan!”

  Esme flinched, missed her hand hold, and tumbled from the tree. She landed in a heap in the compost pile, scraping her arm on a nail as she fell.

  “Oh, Esme,” Mum said, hurrying over. “You’re bleeding all over your clothes. And you’ve got potato peel in your hair. Urgh you smell of rotten grass.” Mum continued to complain as she led Esme into the kitchen to patch her up.

  “Good morning, Esmerelda,” Great Aunt Maud said as they entered the freezing cold kitchen. “I see you’ve already had an adventure!” Maud bustled over and tutted at the wound. “Have you been climbing trees or fighting monsters? I don’t remember my boys getting injured like you do!”

  Probably because they didn’t do anything remotely risky, Esme thought privately. She’d met her second cousins and they were the least likely jungle explorers she’d ever known. In their boring black suits and stuffy ties they all looked like bank managers.

  By the time Esme’s arm was covered in sticky plasters, and Mum had finished her lecture on ‘lady-like behaviour’, Esme was regretting not finding a reason to get out of the attic rummage.

  “Give the poor lass a break, Alice,” Great Aunt Maud said eventually. “She can’t help being a tomboy. You were one too.”

  “I was not!” Mum said. “I wore boys’ clothes because that’s all you had when you were lumbered with me.” Mum’
s parents had died when she was little, and she’d been raised by Great Aunt Maud, along with Maud’s four boys. You’d think that would make Mum appreciate the need to climb trees. Unfortunately not.

  Esme saw the tears in Mum’s eyes and knew it was time to change the subject. “All right, Auntie Maud, what are we looking for in your loft?”

  Maud’s eyes lit up and she hustled Esme and Mum out the door towards the stairs. “Anything that will make me lots of dosh!” she said.

  “Why do you need money?” Mum asked, dabbing at her eyes with a hanky. “I thought this house was bought and paid for?”

  “It is,” Maud agreed, “and Uncle Harold’s pension pays the bills.” She sighed as she always did when she remembered her husband. “But even old biddies like me want an extra special treat now and again.”

  “You’re sixty-one!” Mum exclaimed. “You are not old!” Esme thought Mum was old at thirty: Sixty-one sounded ancient.

  “Well, anyway,” Maud said with a twinkle in her eye. “Never you mind what I want the money for. Besides, I’m rather looking forward to that charming man Brad James coming here for the filming.”

  “Oh, Maud!” Mum said in a long-suffering voice. “You’re incorrigible.”

  Surprise in the Attic

  The