Charlie and the Haunted Tent and Charlie and the Big Snow Read online

  www.hodderchildrens.co.uk

  Look out for all the Charlie books!

  Charlie and the Cheese and Onion Crisps

  and Charlie and the Cat Flap

  Charlie and the Rocket Boy

  and Charlie and the Great Escape

  Charlie and the Tooth Fairy and Charlie

  and the Big Birthday Bash

  Charlie and the Haunted Tent

  and Charlie and the Big Snow

  For older readers:

  Saffy’s Angel

  (Winner of the Whitbread Children’s Book Award)

  Indigo’s Star

  Permanent Rose

  Caddy Ever After

  Forever Rose

  Caddy’s World

  Binny for Short

  Contents

  Charlie and the Haunted Tent

  Charlie and the Big Snow

  Sneak Peek

  Copyright

  If you liked this, you’ll love…

  1

  What Happened in the Morning

  Charlie was seven years old and he lived with his father and mother and big brother Max.

  ‘I am the normal one in the family,’ Charlie used to say. ‘Dad is old. Mum is dopey. Max thinks he’s Superman or something! Thank goodness for me!’

  Max used to laugh when Charlie said that.

  Max was not a bit like Charlie …

  Max was tall and brainy and good at sports. He could ride a bike with no hands and do maths in his head.

  ‘That’s weird,’ said Henry, Charlie’s best friend, who could not do maths anywhere, not in a maths book or on a calculator or even on his fingers.

  Max knew which rock bands were good and which were rubbish. He could deal with spider invasions, and do somersaults on a trampoline and land the right way up.

  ‘Showing off,’ said Henry, whose trampoline it was.

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ said Charlie, ‘is how he keeps his jeans up when he jumps so high.’

  ‘They can’t be ordinary jeans,’ said Henry, ‘and his trainers can’t be ordinary trainers either.’

  It was true that Max’s trainers never flew off when he kicked a ball. And he never had to have jokes explained to him. And fizzy drinks did not come exploding out of his nose when he laughed.

  ‘I’m glad he does not live with me!’ said Henry.

  Max went to Big School, which was not a bit like the school Charlie had to go to. Big School sounded like a sort of merry heaven, with its skiddy corridors and chewing gum dappled desks and handy sweetshop right next door. Max loved it, and every morning he got up early to catch the Big School bus.

  Max was very, very aggravating early in the morning.

  He did not give Charlie one second of peace.

  One Friday he was even worse than usual.

  ‘Buzz out of the way!’ he ordered, rushing around completely dressed while Charlie was still half asleep in pyjamas and not even sure what day of the week it was.

  ‘That’s my toast! Give it back! Stand up a minute, you’re sitting on my tie! Pass the cereal! Give me the TV remote! What are you watching that for?’

  ‘It’s my favourite,’ said Charlie.

  ‘It’s for toddlers!’ said Max. ‘There’s something in your hair, I think it might be jam. Leave my schoolbag alone, you can’t borrow anything. What are you sucking? Is that from my packed lunch? When are you going to get dressed?’

  ‘When are you going to stop bossing me about?’ asked Charlie, yawning. ‘Can I have that orange juice?’

  ‘No,’ said Max, ‘I just poured it out! Hey! Where are you taking it?’

  But Charlie had gone, and so had the orange juice and the cocoa pops and the biscuit tin. He had decided it would be quieter to have breakfast in bed.

  He had just got comfy when he heard Max calling from the front doorstep.

  ‘Charlie!’ shouted Max. ‘Charlie! Throw me down my football boots! Quick, before I miss the bus!’

  ‘Growl, growl, growl,’ went Charlie.

  ‘Charlie!’ yelled Max. ‘Boots! Quick!’

  ‘Boss, boss, boss!’ muttered Charlie, taking no notice.

  Then their mother joined in from the bathroom where she had been having a shower.

  ‘Charlie!’ she called. ‘Can’t you hear Max?’

  ‘Charlie, MOVE IT!’ bellowed Max from the street.

  ‘If I come in there and find you’ve gone back to bed …’ called Charlie’s mother from the bathroom.

  ‘It’s not fair!’ complained Charlie. ‘I was ASLEEP!’

  All the same he rolled out of bed.

  ‘HURRY!’ ordered Max from the street.

  Charlie stamped across to Max’s boots, dragged open the window, and flung them as hard as he could, one, two, at Max’s annoying, bossy head.

  ‘NO!’ roared Max.

  But it was too late. There was a pop like a huge balloon bursting.

  A crash.

  And then the sound of tinkling glass.

  ‘Crikey,’ said Max.

  The man-round-the-corner had a lovely yellow sports car. He parked it on Max and Charlie’s street because he thought it was safer there than on the main road.

  The lovely yellow sports car now had two football boots somewhere inside it and a huge terrible hole in the windscreen.

  Charlie had a sudden longing to be in a very safe place.

  Max seemed to go silent with shock.

  Charlie’s mother was not silent. She came out of the bathroom just in time to hear the second boot. She went wild. She marched into the bedroom and dragged Charlie out of from under the bed and into the street to see exactly what he had done.

  ‘Open your eyes!’ she commanded, in a terrible voice when he refused to look.

  Charlie unscrunched his eyes for a second, looked, and quickly glanced away.

  ‘And what is the-man-round-the-corner going say about that?’

  ‘I dunno,’ said Charlie, picking up two little bits of glass and fitting them neatly together like a jigsaw puzzle. ‘I s’pose he won’t be pleased. But it’s his fault really. Leaving it there where anything might land on it.’

  ‘What?’ asked Charlie’s mother, as if she could not believe her ears.

  ‘But he probably won’t think that.’

  ‘So what do you suggest?’ asked Charlie’s mother, not very calmly.

  ‘I s’pose you’ll have to say sorry and explain you didn’t mean it to happen.’

  ‘I’ll have to say sorry?’

  ‘Or could you just pretend you hadn’t noticed?’ asked Charlie hopefully.

  ‘No, Charlie,’ said Charlie’s (now mad with rage) mother. ‘I could not pretend I had not noticed. And I will not have to say sorry either. YOU threw the boots through his windscreen! So YOU will have to say sorry.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Charlie’s mother and she pointed dramatically up the street.

  ‘NOW!’

  ‘But,’ said Charlie, now very frightened, ‘the-man-round the-corner is AWFUL about his car.’

  ‘I know,’ said Charlie’s mother. ‘Off you go.’

  ‘I think I’ve forgotten where he lives!’

  ‘Charlie!’ said Charlie’s mother in a scary quiet voice. ‘I may lose my temper.’

  So Charlie, in his pyjamas, set off to tell the man-round-the-corner what had happened to his car. He didn’t want to, but he had to, because his mum had gone bonkers.

  But he did not have to go on his own. Almost as soon as he set off he heard footsteps behind him.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ said Max.

 
; Max did not just come with him. When the front door of the house round the corner opened and the man with the yellow car stood staring on the doorstep and Charlie became completely speechless, Max did the talking.

  ‘I’m very, very sorry,’ said Max. ‘But I’m afraid there’s been a dreadful accident with your car.’

  ‘An accident?’

  ‘Its windscreen is broken.’

  ‘Broken?’

  ‘Yes, and there’s glass all inside. I’m terribly sorry. And please would you mind coming round and unlocking it because I’m afraid my football boots are inside and I need them at school today.’

  ‘Are you trying to tell me,’ demanded the man-round-the-corner, ‘that YOUR football boots BROKE my windscreen?’

  Max nodded, and looked at Charlie who was staring at them both with round horrified eyes and only just managing not to cry.

  ‘It was an accident, wasn’t it Charlie?’ said Max.

  ‘DON’T TRY AND TELL ME YOUR LITTLE BROTHER HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT!’ now yelled the man-round-the-corner. ‘Because I can see perfectly well the poor little lad’s still in his pyjamas! Now get off home! And tell your parents I’ll be round as soon as I’ve spoken to my insurers. And you can just manage without your blessed football boots today and I hope you’re ashamed of yourself!’

  And then he turned back inside and slammed the door.

  All this time Charlie had not been able to speak a word. He had not even been able to move.

  ‘Come on Charlie,’ said Max, and put an arm round his shoulder and led him away.

  Charlie came, still speechless. He stayed that way until they were safely home. And then he found his voice at last and said, ‘Max.’

  ‘What?’ asked Max.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Max. ‘It was nothing.’

  2

  What Happened in the Afternoon

  Max and Charlie were so late for school that day they had to be driven there by their (only very slightly calmer) mother. Max was the first to be dropped off. Max rushed into school as if he was missing something wonderful but when it came to Charlie’s turn he did not hurry. He walked very slowly, as if in a daze. His head was full of Max, and the way Max had gone with him and explained so politely, and put up with being yelled at, and never once said a single thing to suggest that the football boots had been thrown through the car window by himself, Charlie, in a moment of early morning grumpiness.

  Charlie longed to do something wonderful for Max, to pay him back.

  ‘Write him a sorry poem,’ suggested Henry. Henry often wrote sorry poems himself when he was in trouble. His mother had quite a collection. In fact, only that morning he had given her a new one that began:

  … Sorry I broke the handle off the loo and actually ended with a rhyme …

  ‘I’m really good at them,’ he continued, ‘I’ve done loads. I’ll start you off if you like. Begin:

  … Sorry I let the man-round-the-corner think you broke his car windscreen … and go on with whatever you can think of for an excuse.’

  Charlie sighed.

  ‘All you have to do is find a word that rhymes with windscreen! Easy peasy!’

  ‘It’s not enough,’ said Charlie. No poem, he was quite sure, not even one that happened to contain a rhyme for windscreen, would be enough to show Max how grateful he was. What was needed, he thought, was something much more heroic.

  Something superheroish.

  Such as a rescue from under the noses of roaring tigers.

  Or the watery deck of a sinking ship.

  Or the crumbling brink of a mile high cliff.

  Or quicksand (which was an easy place to rescue someone from, because you just swam towards them over the surface with a rope in your teeth).

  Or an attack by swamp-living boa constrictors (you unwind them by the tail, Charlie told himself, it cannot be difficult, unless there is more than one).

  And if there was more than one, thought Charlie, the simple thing would be to tie their tails together. Then they would constrict each other and while they are doing it, I would grab Max and drag him out of the swamp … it wouldn’t be a problem …

  Nor would aliens, if aliens tried to abduct him. I would simply invade their spaceship and baffle them with stuff they had never seen before. Like Suzy the cat, and my Bart Simpson torch, and my Tamagotchi. And while they were trying to work out what they were I would spot the escape hatch and untie Max’s legs. And then we would run (I’d let him go first) past the Controllers and right through the spaceship and down the escape hatch … and Max would be saved …

  By me.

  And afterwards, dreamed Charlie, when everything was over and the aliens were gone (caught by the police and put in the zoo. I’d help with that too.) then, afterwards, Max would say, ‘Charlie,’ and I’d say, ‘What?’ and he’d say, Max would say, ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Oh,’ I’d say (calmer than anyone, James Bond or anyone), ‘It was nothing.’

  Every single one of the daydreams that Charlie dreamed that day ended this way. They cheered him up tremendously; he felt almost as if he really had done those things. The next time Max was in trouble, he decided, he would be there at once, rushing to the rescue like the most heroic of heroes.

  He could hardly wait.

  Charlie bounced home feeling good. He felt even better when he saw that the yellow sports car had disappeared from outside his house. Only the tiniest sparkle of broken glass showed it had ever been there.

  ‘It is being fixed,’ said his mother, ‘and we are paying the Excess and do not ask what that means because I am no mood to explain the details of car insurance to a seven-year-old. But please understand that all hope of a bouncy castle birthday party is now completely over.’

  She was in a flap, Charlie saw. A packing flap. She was charging round the house flinging things into bags.

  ‘That’s yours,’ she said. ‘No, don’t take anything out! That’s Max’s … That’s mine … Those are for Gran …’

  ‘But what’s happening?’ asked Charlie (who for one wild moment had thought they were having to move out because of the rage of the man-round-the-corner).

  ‘Gran,’ said his mum. ‘She’s had a fall and I must go over for a night or two. Your father is working all weekend and I can’t take you with me … Next door are feeding Suzy …’ (that was the cat) ‘… Henry’s mum’s having you …’

  ‘Oh, brilliant …’ began Charlie, and paused. Henry’s house was very close indeed to the house belonging to the man-round-the corner.

  ‘And Max,’ said Charlie’s mother, ‘is going to Aunt Emma.’ Charlie lost his breath and nearly fell over.

  Aunt Emma was not a real aunt. She much older than a real aunt. She was Gran’s older sister. Also she was Max’s godmother. She was quite nice … but … she lived in a haunted house.

  Once, when Max was seven years old, he had been sent to stay there.

  ‘Never, ever, ever again am I going to Aunt Emma’s,’ said Max when he got back. ‘Not in a million years. Not for a million pounds.’

  Ever since then, when ghost stories were being told, Max had remembered his visit to Aunt Emma’s house. It had become a sort of family legend to the boys, even though their parents always said, ‘Utter rubbish!’

  ‘YOU CAN’T,’ said Charlie, remembering all this. ‘YOU CAN’T SEND MAX TO AUNT EMMA!’

  ‘I can’t not send Max to Aunt Emma,’ said Charlie’s mother. ‘She invited him when she rang up about Gran.’

  ‘Where is he now?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘I’m here!’ said Max, appearing suddenly behind them. ‘And it’s NOT fair. Why can’t I go to Henry’s with Charlie? Or next door with Suzy? Why didn’t you tell me sooner? I could have arranged a sleepover with someone from school. Why can’t I stay here, anyway?’

  ‘All on your own?’ asked his mother. ‘Of course you can’t!’

  ‘It would be a million times better than being at Aunt Emma’s all on my own
,’ said Max.

  Then, just for a second, he looked hopefully at Charlie.

  Charlie did not see the look because at that moment a car drove past the window and without even knowing quite how it happened he found himself flat on the floor behind the sofa.

  ‘Wrong car,’ said Max. ‘Completely different. Not even yellow.’

  ‘I just fell over,’ said Charlie, crawling out backwards.

  ‘’Course you did.’ Max gave the bag his mother had packed for him a big, unhappy kick.

  ‘I suddenly slipped. And then I thought I’d look behind the sofa while I was down there.’

  Max shrugged.

  ‘I wasn’t scared.’

  ‘Did I say you were?’

  ‘If you knew …’ began Charlie, and then paused.

  ‘If I knew what?’

  All the things I would have rescued you from today, thought Charlie. If you’d needed me to. Lions! Drowning! Aliens! Crumbling cliff edges! Snake infested swamps … (they were the easiest) …

  Once more the delicious dreamy feeling of braveness crept over Charlie, warming him like sunshine.

  I’ve been getting him out of trouble all day! he thought, looking proudly at Max.

  Max gave his bag one last kick and slumped miserably down on the sofa.

  ‘Aunt Emma’s!’ he complained.

  Then Charlie the dream hero became Charlie the real hero.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said.

  3

  What Happened in the Evening

  When Henry heard the news he was furious.

  ‘But you were coming here!’ he wailed. ‘And I’d just got Mum to say we could camp in the garden instead of sleeping in the house.