when you’ve been on a sleepover. You can’t just chuck him around like he’s a bit of rubbish. He’s seventeen years old, Alex – you need to look after him.’
‘News flash, Izzy. It’s a stupid stuffed teddy bear.’ Alex has made her voice sound really low and dull, like she thinks I’m incredibly stupid. I don’t like how she’s making me feel – as if I’m too young to be interesting.
I grab a tissue off her dresser and wipe my mouth, really hard. When most of the lipstick is on the tissue, I drop it into the bin and walk across the room, avoiding the piles of clothes that are lying randomly across the floor. I pick up Mr Cuddles and hold him close to me for a moment. I know that he’s just a toy, but Alex has always had him and sometimes the old stuff is the most important. I carefully pick my way across the stack of magazines that are between me and the bed and hand Mr Cuddles back to her.
Alex takes him from me and looks at him closely. She strokes his fur and sniffs his head and then passes him back to me.
‘You can have him, if he means that much to you.’
I don’t know what to say. The thing is, I’ve wanted Mr Cuddles ever since I can remember. I’ve got my own cuddly toys, of course, but none of them seems special. Not like him anyway. He was a ‘welcome to the world’ present to Alex from Grandpa. Mum was really young when she had Alex, and Grandpa was majorly upset with her until the day Alex was born when (as Mum tells us every year on Alex’s birthday) he took one look at his first ever grandchild and fell totally in love with her. He dashed straight from the hospital into town, spent ages choosing a teddy bear that had the nicest face (only the best would do for his granddaughter) and put it in Alex’s cot when he went back later to visit. So Mr Cuddles has slept in the same bed as Alex every night since she was born.
By the time I came along, babies weren’t such a surprise to our family. I guess the novelty had worn off a little bit. I’ve got loads of things to cuddle: a rabbit, a hippo, a strange-looking kangaroo glove
puppet with a baby in its pouch and quite a few teddy bears. Mum kept a sweet wooden rattle that I was given when I was a baby and a family of plastic ducks that you can pull along on a string. They used to quack, but not any more. I reckon it’s just another one of the perks of being the oldest child: people make a bit more of a fuss if you’re the first.
This is why I don’t know what to do right now. I’ve longed to have Mr Cuddles snuggled up to me in my bed at night – but not like this. Alex is being cross and confusing and I don’t think she really means it.
‘You can’t give him to me. He’s yours. It’d make Grandpa sad if you didn’t have him any more.’ Alex rolls her eyes at me, but sits up, cross-legged, on her bed. ‘And I think you’d be sad without him too.’ I say this last bit really quietly, just in case it makes her yell at me again.
Alex reaches out her hand and strokes Mr Cuddles again. Then she looks up at me and smiles, and she looks like my normal, lovely big sister again.
‘OK, I guess he can stay.’ She takes Mr Cuddles from me and stares him hard in the eye (he’s only got one eye left after years of being scrunched
and snuggled and slept on by Alex). ‘You’ve been given a stay of execution, Mr Cuddles. Izzy has argued your case. Now what do you say to her?’
‘Thank you, Izzy,’ growls Mr Cuddles/Alex.
‘You’re welcome,’ I tell him, grinning at Alex, and then navigating across her floor to the door, taking great care not to trample on the piles of school books that are strewn everywhere. I think that I could have a great career ahead of me as a minesweeper, all the practice I get avoiding stepping on Alex’s stuff.
Once I’m safely out of her war zone of a room and across the landing, I open my own bedroom door and step inside. My room could not be more different to Alex’s. Everything has a