A Duckling Called Button Read online

  Mum laughed and went to unplug her phone from its charger on the dresser. As soon as her back was turned, Manu pushed his plate of carrot sticks and cherry tomatoes across the table to Ben, who stuffed them all in his mouth at once and slid the plate back to Manu.

  “Finished,” said Manu. “Can we go and play now?”

  “Off you go, then,” said Mum. “Right, I need to make this phone call.”

  She picked up her phone and left the room.

  “Thank you, Nadia,” said Ben, through a mouthful of vegetables.

  As he stood up, Ben suddenly noticed what Jasmine and Ella held in their hands.

  “Why are you holding eggs? Is it a game?”

  Jasmine explained everything.

  “So there’s ducklings already growing in them?” said Ben. “That’s so cool! Let’s crack one open and see.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” said Jasmine. “You’d kill the duckling.”

  “I’d only break one. You’d still get three ducklings.”

  Jasmine gave him her most withering stare.

  “She’s such a spoilsport,” said Manu. “Come on, let’s go.”

  “We could sit on the eggs and hatch them out!” said Ben.

  Jasmine snorted.

  “They wouldn’t break,” he said.

  “Of course they’d break.”

  “No, they wouldn’t,” said Manu. “We did this science experiment at school. If you stand an egg with the pointed end facing up, it won’t break, even if you tread on it. So we can definitely sit on them. And then they’ll hatch out underneath us. Give me that egg, Ella.”

  “Huh?” said Ella, vaguely, glancing up from her book.

  “No!” shouted Jasmine.

  But Manu held out his hand and Ella, who had obviously been too absorbed in her book to listen to the conversation, let him take it.

  “Give that back!” yelled Jasmine. “Don’t you dare sit on it!”

  She rushed around the table, but she had an egg in each hand and, as she desperately looked around for a safe place to put them, Manu positioned his egg on the floor with the pointed end facing up and plonked himself down on top of it.

  A cracking, crunching sound came from underneath him.

  “Oops,” said Ben.

  “You idiot!” screamed Jasmine. “You stupid idiot! I hate you!”

  Still clutching her eggs, she swung out her leg and kicked her brother.

  “Get off me!” he shouted, scrambling to his feet. “It’s not my fault!”

  “You killed the duckling!” shouted Jasmine, tears of anger in her eyes at the sight of the crushed, slippery mess on the floor. “I told you not to do it. I told you.”

  “How was I to know it wouldn’t work?” protested Manu. “It worked in the experiment. There must have been something wrong with that egg. I bet it was bad.”

  Jasmine aimed another kick at him. Manu ran out of the room, down the corridor and into the hall. Jasmine chased after him.

  Tom emerged from the downstairs bathroom, looking horrified. “Stop it!” he shouted. “You’ll break the eggs!”

  “What on earth is going on?” asked Mum, appearing from the living room with her phone in her hand.

  Jasmine and Manu both shouted at once.

  “It’s him! He killed a duckling!”

  “It’s her! She kicked me! And I didn’t do anything!”

  The doorbell rang.

  “Stay right there, both of you,” said Mum. “Don’t move an inch and don’t say a word.”

  “Murderer,” muttered Jasmine to Manu.

  Mum opened the front door. On the step stood a tall woman with a border collie at her side wagging his feathery tail. The woman washolding a round plastic container the size of a cake tin, with a lead and a plug. It had a yellow base, clear sides and a black lid with buttons and a digital display.

  “Hello,” said Mum. “Can I help you?” She sounded puzzled.

  The woman smiled. “Hello. You must be Jasmine’s mum. I’m Angela. Tom’s aunty.”

  “Oh, nice to meet you. Have you come to fetch Tom? He’s just here.”

  “No, I’m not here for Tom,” said Angela. “I’ve brought round that incubator you wanted to borrow.”

  What Incubator?

  “I’m sorry?” said Mum. “What incubator?”

  She turned at the sound of Dad’s footsteps on the stairs.

  “Michael, did you ask Tom’s aunt to bring round an incubator?”

  Dad looked bemused. “Did I what?”

  “No, it was Tom who phoned,” said Angela. “He said you had some duck eggs that needed incubating.”

  Tom sidled closer to Jasmine.

  Before her parents had a chance to speak, Jasmine said, “Please let us hatch them. We’ll learn all about it. You know I can look after hens, and I’ve looked after Truffle, haven’t I?”

  “You’ve done a great job with Truffle,” said Dad. “Nobody could have looked after her better.”

  Jasmine turned to her mother. “Please, Mum? It will be so lovely to have ducklings. And it will be great experience for when we have our rescue centre.”

  Jasmine and Tom were determined to run an animal rescue centre when they grew up. They were already planning the details.

  Mum turned to Angela. “I’m so sorry about all this. Please come in.”

  “Oh, I won’t, thank you. Not with Jake.”

  Mum opened the door wider. “What a lovely dog. Bring him in, too.”

  “Sit, Jake,” said Angela, as she walked into the hall. Jake sat immediately, swishing his tail across the carpet, looking adoringly at his owner.

  “As you might have gathered,” Mum said, “this has come as a bit of a surprise. I was just about to take the eggs to a rescue centre. And judging by Jasmine’s behaviour since she brought them home, I’m really not sure she’s mature enough to look after them. Honestly, Jasmine. Racing around screaming with the eggs in your hands, for goodness’ sake.”

  “It wasn’t Jasmine’s fault,” said Ella.

  Everyone turned to look at her. She stood in the doorway, her book in her hand. “Manu took one of the eggs I was holding and sat on it.”

  “I was trying to hatch it out,” said Manu. “They’re not supposed to break.”

  Dad looked at Manu as though he had just landed from another planet.

  “Are you completely mad?”

  Mum’s phone beeped. She read the message and frowned. “Sorry, Angela. I’m on call this weekend. I’m going to have to go. And I’m afraid I really don’t know what to do about this egg business. We’re busy enough without hatching ducklings.”

  “But we’ll do it all,” said Jasmine. “You won’t have to do anything.”

  “Angela will help us set up the incubator,” said Tom. He turned to his aunt. “Won’t you?”

  “And Tom knows loads already,” said Jasmine. “He’s helped Angela before.”

  “I’m happy to help,” Angela said to Mum.

  Mum gave a helpless sort of shrug. “Michael?”

  Dad looked thoughtful. “It would be a good thing for Jasmine to learn. And there’s not much to beat seeing a duckling hatch from an egg.”

  Mum sighed and picked up her car keys. “Fine. But you need to do the work, Jasmine. I really haven’t got the time.”

  Behind Mum’s back, Tom and Jasmine exchanged delighted grins. They were going to have their very own ducklings!

  “The first thing to do,” said Angela, once Mum had left, “is to plug this in and get it up to the right temperature. Which room are you planning to keep it in?”

  “My bedroom,” said Jasmine. “Then I can look after the eggs and watch the ducklings hatch.”

  “That should be fine,” said Angela, “as long as you make sure you keep the room at roughly the same temperature the whole time.”

  Jasmine took everything off the low table by her bed to make room for the incubator. Her cats, Toffee and Marmite, were curled up asleep on her duvet, their paws i
ntertwined. They opened their eyes lazily as Jasmine murmured to them and stroked their silky fur.

  “The temperature’s on the display there,” said Angela, when Jasmine had switched the incubator on. “Once it gets to 37.5 degrees, you can put the eggs in. And while we’re waiting, you can wash them. I’ll get the solution from the car.”

  “Why do we need to wash them?” Jasmine asked.

  “Germs can pass through the shell,” said Tom. “So you wash them with this special eggcleaning solution.”

  Jasmine looked at her grubby hands, alarmed. “But we’ve been holding them all this time. What if germs have already got in?”

  “I’m sure they’ll be fine,” said Angela. “Just remember to wash your hands before handling them from now on.”

  Once they had washed the eggs, Tom suggested candling them while they waited for the incubator to get to the right temperature.

  “It’s really cool,” he said. “You shine a torch through the shell and you can see if there’s a duckling growing inside.”

  Jasmine fetched Mum’s torch from its hook by the back door. “Will this work?”

  Angela switched it on. “Perfect. Close the curtains, Jasmine. The darker it is, the better we’ll see. And could you fetch me a pencil? With a soft lead, if possible.”

  “Why do we need a pencil?” asked Jasmine, inspecting the random assortment in the jam jar on her window sill, trying to find one with an unbroken lead.

  “To number the eggs,” said Tom, “so we can tell them apart.”

  “And you’ll have to turn them by hand several times a day,” said Angela, “because duck eggs are too big for the automatic turning tray to work. So if there’s a number on one side of the egg, you’ll be able to see that you’ve turned them all. Turning them is really important. It means the ducklings can move around in the egg white and don’t get stuck to one side of the shell.”

  Jasmine picked up an egg and carefully wrote a number one on it. Then she handed it to Angela, who held it up and shone the torch beam through the back of the shell. The egg glowed golden-red.

  “Wow,” said Jasmine. “It looks like Mars. Only egg-shaped.”

  “See that dark red spot, with the spidery veins coming from it?” said Angela. “That’s your tiny duckling. All of its organs and limbs have already started to form.”

  “Just in that blob?”

  “Yes. Its heart is already beating. Isn’t that amazing?”

  “Those poor eggs that were destroyed,” said Jasmine.

  When Angela candled the last egg, she frowned. “I’m afraid this one doesn’t look good. There’s none of that spidery veining, see. Just a dark blob. I think we’d better discard it.”

  “Kill it?” cried Jasmine. “No! Can’t we give it another chance? Just wait a few days and see?”

  “It’s up to you, of course. They’re your eggs. But I’d advise you not to risk it. If it starts to go bad, it could transmit bacteria to the other eggs.”

  Jasmine looked at Tom.

  “We can’t risk losing them all,” he said.

  Jasmine held out her hand for the egg. “I’ll bury it beside its mother. Poor little duckling.”

  “It’s sad,” said Angela, “but it’s very common. Not all eggs hatch. That’s probably why birds incubate so many at once, to allow for some not working. You’ve got two healthy developing embryos, at least.”

  “When do you think they’ll hatch?” asked Tom.

  “Mallard eggs take about twenty-seven days, and I would guess these are about a week in. If you look at a candling chart, you’ll be able to predict it more accurately.”

  “So we should have ducklings in three weeks’ time!” said Jasmine.

  “If you’re lucky,” said Angela. “But there are no guarantees, I’m afraid. You’ll just have to wait and see.”

  I Can’t Wait to See You

  When Jasmine woke up on the last day of term, she had a funny fluttery feeling in her stomach. It was the same feeling she always had on Christmas morning. For a moment, she wasn’t sure why. And then she remembered. The ducklings were due to hatch today!

  She jumped out of bed and crouched down by the incubator. Her heart missed a beat. At the wide end of Egg One were several little cracks.

  It had pipped! The first duckling was breaking out of its shell!

  “Hello, little duckling,” whispered Jasmine. “Are you all right in there? I can’t wait to see you.”

  She scrutinized the other egg, but it was still intact. Not the tiniest little crack. She hoped it was all right.

  She ran down to the kitchen, where Mum was stirring a pan of porridge on the Aga.

  “Mum, Egg One has pipped!”

  Mum turned and smiled at her. “Oh, that’s great news. Well done, Jasmine.”

  “So I need the day off school. Will you phone the office?”

  Mum laughed. “You can’t have the day off school because you might have eggs hatching.”

  Jasmine stared at her mother, aghast.

  “Of course I need the day off school. It’s the most important day of my life. I bet you had the day off work when your babies were born.”

  “That’s a little bit different.”

  “I don’t see how.”

  Mum sighed. “Jasmine, you’re not actually giving birth to these ducklings. And the hatching process can take a long time, you know that, and it needs to happen without interference. And even after they’ve hatched, they have to stay in the incubator for twenty-four hours to dry out and to fluff up their down. So you really don’t need the day off school.”

  “But I have to be there. If I’m not the first moving thing they see, how will they recognise me as their mother? If you or Dad see them before me, they’ll imprint on you instead, and that would be so unfair.”

  “Believe me, Jasmine,” said Mum, “the last thing I need is a pair of ducklings following me around. Dad and I won’t even go into the room. We’ll just peep in every now and then. We’ll make sure you’re the first moving thing your ducklings see. I promise.”

  School seemed to go on forever that day. Jasmine was fizzing with excitement so much that she couldn’t stop squirming on her seat.

  “Do you need the toilet?” asked Bella Bradley, pausing in the act of brushing her long blonde hair for the trillionth time. “Why don’t you just go?”

  Jasmine ignored her. She hadn’t spoken to Bella since the duck incident. If she had to share a table with the girl she loathed more than anyone else in the world, the only way to make it bearable was to pretend that Bella didn’t exist.

  “Bella Bradley,” said Mr Hampton, “if I see that hairbrush one more time today, I will be confiscating it.”

  By half-past two, Jasmine was bubbling with anticipation and impatience so much that she actually fell off her chair. Mr Hampton didn’t see her sprawled between the tables and accidentally stepped on her hand before she could get to her feet.

  “What the—” he exclaimed, looking down with startled eyes. “Jasmine! What on earth are you doing?”

  “Freak,” whispered Bella, as Jasmine scrambled back on to her seat, rubbing her squished hand.

  Jasmine ignored her.

  She knew the police had been round to Bella’s house after her dog had killed the duck. The policewoman had phoned Dad and told him.

  “They gave her a stern warning,” Dad said, “to keep her dog on a lead in any field containing livestock in future.”

  “Is that all? A warning? She should be put in prison.”

  “They can’t prove she intentionally let her dog kill the duck,” Dad had said, “so there’s nothing more they can do. I think she was pretty shocked, though, to have the police turn up on her doorstep. And they warned her that if I’d seen the dog, I’d have been within my rights to shoot it on the spot. So I don’t think she’ll be letting it run free again.”

  “That’s not good enough, though,” said Jasmine. “These ducklings will be orphans because of her, and she’s just
got away without any punishment at all. It’s not fair.”

  Dad had sighed. “Sometimes, Jas, life isn’t fair.”

  That was certainly true, Jasmine thought now. There were twenty-nine other people in her class. In a fair world, she would not have been forced to spend six hours a day sitting next to Bella Bradley.

  Ten minutes before the end of school, Mr Hampton asked the class to empty their desk drawers for the holidays. Bella opened her drawer and placed on the table seven pots of lip gloss, three pocket mirrors and four hairbrushes. “What are you going to do for your project?” she asked Jasmine.

  Jasmine shrugged.

  Mr Hampton had set them a holiday project. They had to make something from things they had found in the world around them, write an account of how they made it, and bring it in to show the class on the first day of term.

  “I’m going to make my own beauty products,” said Bella. “With natural ingredients. It’s going to be amazing. I’ll sell the recipes to a massive beauty company, and I’ll be a millionaire.”

  Jasmine ignored her. She emptied out the contents of her drawer, which consisted of an assortment of sweet wrappers, a copy of her favourite magazine, Practical Pigs, and several balls of screwed-up paper torn from exercise books, which were the notes that she and Tom smuggled to each other during lessons.

  “Don’t put any of your stuff on my side,” said Bella, pushing a scrap of paper away and indicating an invisible line down the middle of the table. “Can’t you see I’m trying to keep it tidy?”

  Jasmine swept all her things into her bag. Then she turned her chair upside down on the table and stood behind it, trying to catch the teacher’s eye so he would let her out.

  Tom was also standing behind his chair. She caught his eye and grinned. All the annoyances of school melted away. She was about to have two beautiful ducklings of her very own.

  I Hope They’re All Right