The Rainbows and the Secrets - Christine Cox (the snowy day read aloud TXT) 📗

an adult.”
“She’s my sister,” said Jamie quickly. “And my Dad’s– er - just gone outside for a minute.”
“You don’t look anything like each other.” The nurse looked suspicious. “Anyway," she continued, “you’d better make sure you both behave.” She turned to Ellie. “Do you know what he did this morning? He disappeared out of his bed and I couldn’t find him anywhere. He still hasn’t told me where he went.”
“I was in the jungle,” said Jamie, “stopping a monkey battle.”
“He didn’t do it on his own!” protested Ellie. “I was there too. I got captured in the battle, but I escaped by saving a raft full of coconuts from a raging torrent. And I saved a monkey leader from drowning.”
“Raging torrent ! The water was only up to your knees!”
“Was not! It was up to here!!” Ellie pointed to her neck.
“Well, at least you quarrel like brother and sister," said the nurse, reassured. “Just don’t go off to the jungle again, understand?” she told Jamie. ”I’ll get into trouble if you don’t stay in your bed.”
“I’ll stay if we can have some toast,” wheedled Jamie. “I’m really hungry and my sister hardly had any lunch.”
“I couldn’t possibly make toast,” said the nurse, “I’m off to the desert, to take part in a camel race. Wish me luck!” and she was gone.
“My Mum and your Dad are going to have a baby,” announced Ellie.
“Are they?” said Jamie, amazed.
Ellie nodded. “Mum’s pregnant.”
“Did she tell you?”
“No, but this morning she said to me: ‘How am I going to cope with the new baby if you aren’t good?’ Which wasn’t fair, because I am good all the time usually,” Ellie finished angrily.
“Wicked!” exclaimed her stepbrother. “Babies are cool! My baby cousin’s really cute. He smiles at me and grips my finger with his little tiny hand.”
“Yeah right!” scoffed Ellie. “Your cousin doesn’t live with us, does he? Where’s the baby going to sleep, derr-err-err?”
“In Dad and Vee’s room.”
“Like they’ve got any space!”
Ellie forestalled the next suggestion. “It can’t go in my room,” she said quickly. “You know my friend Holly-“
“The one who’s always having sleepovers?”
“She doesn’t have sleepovers any more, does she ? Why not? Because her baby sister’s sharing her room, that’s why! And it cries in the night and she can’t sleep! And they never go anywhere any more because her Mum says she can’t take the baby. And her Mum’s really tired and cross all the time and tells her off for every little thing. And she has to do millions of jobs like washing up and hoovering. And her room’s all full of baby stuff and poohy nappies and things because her Mum never tidies it up.”
Jamie knew the last thing would be the worst for Ellie. She wouldn’t be able to bear anything that upset her perfectly neat room, and Vee wasn’t a tidy person. And it was likely that the baby would sleep in Ellie’s room, because it was the only place they could fit a cot. Now that Ellie was being friendly to him, he felt a little sorry for her.
“Our parents never have time to do anything with us now,” continued Ellie. “I missed the swimming gala because you’re in hospital-I know that’s not your fault,” she added hastily, not wanting to upset Jamie. “They’re always busy. They never listen to what we want. They don’t even care about us. When the baby comes, I bet they won’t care at all.” Ellie looked as if she was going to cry.
This was a shock for Jamie. He had always thought Ellie was quite happy. Now he realised she felt just as bad as he usually did. "We'll have to stick together, "he said.
Ellie looked a little happier.
“We’ll stick together and make them do something,” Jamie went on. “Like move to a bigger place and – and – I don’t know, but we’ll make them do something. Agreed?”
“Agreed” said Ellie, and smiled as they exchanged high fives.
The nurse arrived with a large plateful of toast.
“I won the camel race in double quick time,” she explained, “so I came back and made you this, to celebrate.”
As they ate the toast, they discussed what to do about the Rainbows and Secrets. “We’ll go back to the jungle together,” said Jamie, “and....
“...and call a meeting for both sets of monkeys to discuss the food situation.” chimed in Ellie. “It’ll have to be in a specially drawn place, where they can’t start a fight – oh but we can’t!” She remembered the trouble she was already in for drawing on the wall and told Jamie all about it.

Meanwhile, at home, Vee woke up and found a note from Ian explaining that he’d collected Ellie and taken her to the hospital. Then she remembered her daughter’s shocking behaviour of that morning. She went to look at the wall again, to check that it wasn’t all a dream. She phoned Ian on his mobile. He needed to know about this. Perhaps he could buy some paint while he was out and repaint the whole room. It was silly wallpaper anyway.
Ian was in the supermarket when he answered his mobile. The call from his wife didn’t make any sense to him at all. Vee told him that Ellie had painted all over Jamie’s bedroom and tried to blame it on Jamie. Yet now, without seeing each other in between times, Ellie and Jamie seemed to be the best of friends. He couldn’t understand it at all; but Vee wanted paint, so he bought some.
When he arrived back at Jamie’s bedside, he was even more confused. The two children were talking excitedly together, their mouths full of toast.
“Dad,” said Jamie, “you know I’m coming home tomorrow? Well, I’d really like it if me and Ellie could paint my bedroom wall - I mean with pictures and things and jungle scenes. I don’t care about the small bed and I won’t mind sleeping in there for ever if we could do that.”


11

A different Story?

On Sunday morning, before he fetched Jamie from hospital, Ian took the captain’s bed apart and put it in his van.
“It is too dangerous,” Vee had said. “He will fall out again, because the bed is too small for him.” She said this before she left for the nursing home: she worked there all day on Sundays. The doctor had told them they must be especially careful that Jamie didn’t do anything that could cause him to bang his head again for the next two weeks.
Ellie cleared out one of her cupboards and helped Ian to transfer Jamie’s things from the shelves and cupboard of the captain’s bed into it. When Jamie came home, there was nothing in his room but a black futon rolled out on the floor.
“I’m sorry Jamie,” said Dad, “but this is only temporary, while we sort something out.”
“No problem!” cried Jamie, delighted. “We can roll the futon up while we paint!”
While they ate lunch, he and Ellie chattered about paint. They wanted Ian’s coloured pots from under the sink. ‘Why not, if it keeps them happy?’ thought Ian to himself. The room would probably have to become a store room now anyway: he’d never be able to fit a proper full-sized bed in it.
“Will you want any help?” he asked them.
“No thanks Dad” said Jamie. “You can watch the football. We’ll be fine.” With a bit of luck Dad would fall asleep in front of the TV.
And so by the middle of the afternoon, Jamie and Ellie were able to go back to the jungle. They had converted the bridge into a meeting place. On either side, they had cleared away some of Ellie’s barbed wire and spikes, so both sets of monkeys could get onto the bridge from their sides of the river. But they had also made a break in the middle of the bridge, too wide for monkeys to leap across without risking falling in the water. This was designed to keep the two sides apart and stop them fighting. They had added two pillars each side, to support the two broken ends of the bridge, and each pillar had steps on it, leading down to the water. If Ellie or Jamie wanted to cross from one side of the bridge to the other, they could climb down the steps on one side, swim across the gap and climb up the steps on the other side. No monkey, of course, would dream of doing that.
They easily got the Rainbows to join them on the bridge: Snapper and Tufts and most of the fifteen monkeys who had previously crossed on the raft were there, plus quite a few more, all chattering and fidgeting impatiently.
Then Ellie went on her own to look for the Secrets, because seeing Jamie might have annoyed them. They were very hard to spot and she had almost given up hope of finding them. But they, of course, unseen, were watching her. When they reported back to their leader, Softpad sent for her and listened to what she had to say, because she had saved his life.
Just as Snapper was saying: “Waste of time! Waste of time!” and was about to round up his Rainbows and leave, Softpad and his companions arrived and lined up opposite, looking expectantly at Jamie from the other side of the break in the bridge. Several green parrots that had come with them perched along the parapets to either side of the monkeys.

“They’ve brought their parrots!” cried Snapper immediately. “Not fair! Send for ours!” and Jamie had to stop and wait till the multi-coloured parrots had taken up their perches around the Rainbows.
Meanwhile Ellie wanted to be near Jamie. She had been careful to put a swimsuit on under her clothes this time, so she stripped them off, went carefully down the rather rickety steps, swam across the gulf and climbed up onto the Rainbows’ side of the bridge.
“Now," announced Jamie, loudly enough for the Secrets to hear him too, “you had a terrible fight yesterday. Some of you were hurt, and Softpad nearly died. They nodded solemnly. They remembered that. “We need to make sure it won’t happen again,” Jamie went on. “That’s why we’ve called this meeting.”
“It won’t happen again,” said Softpad, “if you get rid of this bridge you’ve made.”
“It wouldn’t have happened at all if you hadn’t brought those Rainbows over to steal our coconuts,” complained Shadow, growling.
“Quite right, Shadow, it wouldn’t,” said Softpad. “But now, just take the bridge away, and everything will be OK again,” he told Jamie.
“It won’t be OK,” began Jamie, but Ellie nudged him and whispered: “Apologise!”
"I have,” whispered Jamie.
“Not properly.”
“Look,” said Jamie to the Secrets, “I’m very sorry I brought the Rainbows over to –errm –take- your coconuts, but they’re very hungry and-“
“Not their coconuts, not theirs!” interrupted Snapper.
“Don’t interrupt!” ordered Jamie. “Of course the coconuts belong to the Secrets. They’re on their side of the river.”
Snapper shook his head. Then Tufts joined in. “Rainbows own the whole Jungle. Our Story says so. The parrots will tell you that.” She looked up at a large multicoloured parrot with a hooked, authoritative beak. Jamie was sure it was the same male parrot that had told him the Rainbows’ Story before: Augustine. It started to squawk, but the Secrets shouted over it: “Don’t listen to their parrots, listen to ours!”
Jamie shushed them. “We’ll hear the Rainbows’ parrot first, then we’ll hear yours,” he promised.
Augustine told the Story just as Jamie had heard it before. When he