Lizard's Leap: Chapter Thirty Three: Strange Magic.

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, nothing was stirring—except Debbie Taylor.

Debbie Taylor was moving all over the house and grumbling to anybody who would listen. It was Christmas Eve and her baby was due.

‘Why couldn’t it have been born a week early? What kind of Christmas is this going to be? Just think, if baby doesn’t come tonight, I might have to be up and off right in the middle of cooking the Christmas dinner and then where will we be? Half-cooked turkey and food poisoning all round, I shouldn’t wonder. I can’t even have a glass of wine with my Christmas lunch. I hope the baby waits until next week and then at least we can get Christmas over with, and hopefully I’ll be back home in time for the New Year.’

As it happened, baby did wait. It waited all through Christmas and Boxing Day. And then it continued to wait. In fact, it waited right through the next week, too. Soon it was New Year’s Eve 1999. By this time, everybody was sick of waiting for their new baby. Emma and Kerry had bags packed and stacked in the hall next to Debbie’s suitcase so they could be deposited at Granddad’s house at a minute’s notice. Every morning they got up saying to each other, ‘Today must be the day.’

They were very excited for another reason, too - a major company had offered a million pounds to the first British baby born in the new millennium. The whole family, were hoping that it would be their baby. All day, Debbie and her husband, Steve, were begging the baby not to come. Steve kept talking to Debbie’s stomach, ‘One second after midnight, little one. That’ll do nicely.’

And then, as the evening arrived they were praying that it would come. ‘Come on, Fred, come on.’ Steve thought it was funny calling the bump Fred and it had stuck.

They were allowed to stay up late that night to see the birth of the new century. It was very exciting, but something had to be done. At ten o’clock, while the family party was in full swing at Granddad’s house, Vicki called an emergency meeting. ‘Bedroom in five minutes,’ she whispered to the other three.

‘It’s ten o’clock and Auntie Debbie doesn’t look as though she’s going to have the baby in the next two hours,’ she said once they were all together. ‘What are we going to do?’

Without saying a word, all four of them turned their eyes to the magic frame.

‘We couldn’t,’ Emma gasped. ‘It’s so wrong. We’d lose a berry for sure.’

‘Yes, but we’d still have twenty-one left. Wouldn’t it be worth losing one measly berry to have a new baby in the family and the million pounds?’

They pondered the problem.

Kerry was the first to pipe up. ‘Sylvia would be furious,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ Emma agreed. ‘But, what could she do about it? Once it’s born she couldn’t unborn the baby, could she? And just think, we’d have that little baby to cuddle and I’m sure my mum and dad would share some of the money with us. Imagine what we could do with it all.’

It was tempting, really, really tempting.
‘What if,’ Vicki said thoughtfully. ‘What if, because we interfered, something happened to the baby?’

They didn’t like this thought at all and lapsed into a deep silence, each battling with their own morals and consciences.

‘I vote we don’t do it,’ Kerry said at last. ‘My new brother or sister is too precious to take chances with. All in favour…?

Instantly, there were three very firm and resolute ‘Ayes. Even Mark, who was always the naughty one, agreed that they couldn’t take the risk. They went back to join the party, relieved that they were going to let nature do what nature does best.

At the children’s insistence - and against their parents’ wishes - Sylvia had reluctantly been invited to join the New Year’s Celebrations. They’d had explained to their folks that Sylvia was just a lonely old lady that they’d got to know her quite well since the "misunderstanding" about the frame.

Their parents decided that Sylvia should be invited so that they could get the measure of her. If need be the children would be forbidden from having anything more to do with her. Karen was still annoyed that it may well have been a misunderstanding, but Vicki had still come away from it with cuts and bruises.

Sylvia came suitably dressed for the occasion, in what they called, old granny-type, clothes. The girls had dressed her for the party and had done the best they could with what she had in her wardrobe. She wore a decorative scarf that hid her alarming hair and she was sweetness itself. The children were delighted. If Sylvia became an accepted part of the family, they would be free to visit her at Brampton Hall. Everything was going well, and Nana was very interested in Sylvia’s recipe for banana bread.

When the children tried to slink back into the party, Sylvia was waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Well thought through, kids. I’m proud of you, though I wouldn’t have let you do it, you know.’

‘How did you know?’ Kerry asked, shamefaced.

‘Well, now, that’s one of the oldest secrets of all. How did I know, indeed!’ She looked left and right over her shoulder to see that nobody was listening. They huddled in close, thrilled to be on the point of discovering a new and exciting magic secret.

‘Well now, this is what I did. When you suspect four lively and headstrong children of being up to something, and you want to know what it is…’ she paused.

‘Yes,’ they said, impatiently.

‘Well, you follow them up to their room and listen at the door!’

‘Oh, Sylvia, you are so funny,’ Emma threw her arms round Sylvia’s waist and hugged her hard. ‘We love you.’

The clock struck twelve. Auld Lang Syne was sung with gusto and happiness flew round the room, touching each and every one of the people present…

*

New Year’s Day came and went, as did the next day and the one after that. This was getting beyond a joke. They were seriously beginning to doubt if the baby was ever going to arrive. But the whole family were in for a huge surprise, something that they had never imagined.

Very late at night on the 4th of January 2000, two sleepy little girls were dropped off at their Granddad’s house and tucked straight into their beds. Very shortly after, little Amy Taylor was born looking surprised at her big new world and sporting a shock of jet black hair. Steve and Debbie breathed a huge sigh of relief as they gazed down on their new daughter.

A few minutes later another black haired baby came into the world with her face screwed up and eyes tight shut. Twins! Imagine that. Little Eve was given to Steve to hold. Debbie was told that she had to stay in hospital with Amy and Eve for a few days to give them all a rest; coming into the world had been an ordeal for the new babies. Twins usually come early, but not these two, Steve and Deb knew they were going to be trouble and looked at their new daughters proudly.

They were dying to go and see the babies. They hopped and jumped, begged and pleaded, but they were told they’d just have to wait for a few days to meet Amy and Eve. Steve gave Emma and Kerry a photograph of their new sisters. They were two beautiful babies with pickled onion faces and mushy-pea noses, well, that was Mark’s opinion.

The next night, they were staying at their grandparents’ house because it was the weekend. Sometime very late that night the plan was hatched.

‘What harm would it do?’ Vicki reasoned.

‘Everyone will be asleep. We’ll just leap in, have a quick look and then leap out again. Nobody will ever know.’ She was far too impatient to wait any longer to introduce herself to her new cousins.

Vicki was renowned for her lack of patience. She said that at this rate the twins would be all grown up by the time she got to see them.

‘It doesn’t sound as though it would be wrong, but I don’t think the frame will like it. I’m not sure,’ Kerry said. But she wouldn’t take much persuading because she too was dying to see her little sisters.

They threw backwards and forward the pros and cons and there didn’t seem to be many cons. They weren’t changing history; they weren’t gaining anything financial from it. It didn’t seem to be breaking any rules even if it did feel a bit wicked.

They decided to do it.

Kerry still wasn’t sure that it was morally right. Mark was moaning that if they lost a berry not to blame him. But, really, they were all excited at the thought of seeing the new babies for the first time and Emma and Kerry were arguing about which baby belonged to which of them.

Vicki felt put out because she was only a cousin and not a sister like the others, she was going to make sure that she got her look in, too. Older cousins were very important beings.

They put the photograph of Amy and Eve in the frame and leaped into the maternity ward at 1:05 a.m.