“We should celebrate my birthday …” he said, still looking out of the window, “every day?”
“Every day,” said his mum.
“Every day,” said his dad.
“Every day. Actually,” said – most surprisingly – his sister.
Which made Sam think about something. He’d spotted a flaw in what they were saying.
“What about … Ruby?” he said. “Why aren’t we celebrating her birthday … every day?”
Charlie and Vicky frowned. They looked at Ruby. Ruby looked back at them. Then Vicky’s face cleared.
“Well, we will do. When she’s eleven. That’ll be when we have the same thought about her. It’ll be a family tradition, I imagine.”
“Yes! That’s right! You’re all right with that, aren’t you, Rube?” said Sam.
“Fine,” said Ruby. “It’s only four years. Which, as I’m sure you know, to a child of seven, seems only like about four hundred.”
“Er … right,” said Mum.
But then Charlie said: “Great! OK, I’m off out!”
“Where to?” said Sam.
“Never you mind …” his dad replied, with a nod and a wink at Vicky, who smiled back. Which, Sam knew, was grown-up code – really obvious grown-up code – for, “I’m going to go and buy Sam some presents.”
His dad left the room, and Sam looked back at his smiling mum and somewhat less smiling sister. Could it be real? Could the wish he made last night have come true?
“Come on, Sam,” said his mum. “It’s not going to be here forever …”
Sam frowned at her. “My birthday?”
“No! That is going to be here forever. I meant: your breakfast!”
And it did smell, it had to be said, very tempting, especially the mix of bacon and doughnut. So Sam said: “Thanks, Mum!” and scampered up the bunk-bed ladder, and tucked in.
“You what? You what? You what?” said Grandpa Sam, later that day.
“Ah, now, you see, you – stupid – ’ave started to say things over and over again,” said Grandpa Mike. “You old fool! You ’ave gone completely gaga.”
“Me, gaga? You’re the one that’s gaga! You, in fact, are Lady Gaga!” said Grandpa Sam.
“Oh. What a good joke. You should be doin’ a blinkin’ comedy act with material like that. Hang on, I’ll phone Michael McIntyre and tell him ’e may as well retire.”
“Oh, shut up,” said Grandpa Sam. “You boomdonking dipthong!”
Grandpa Sam swore a lot. But luckily it was all swearwords he made up, so it’s OK for you to hear them. Fudgeblaster, piggle-dandler, dungpie, snotbum (OK that one is getting quite close to real swearing), blobnoodler and great big fragglestooping bustyplop were all in his repertoire.
Secretly – if you ever meet the others, don’t tell them – Grandpa Sam was Sam’s favourite grandparent. It was partly because Sam was named after him, and partly because Grandpa Sam was the first person apart from his parents who saw him on the day he was born, but mainly because of the funny swearwords. Whenever he did one – like now, when saying boomdonking dipthong – he would wink at Sam (and Ruby), as if to let them know they were in on the joke.
“You shut up!” said Grandpa Mike. “I’ll do yer if you call me stuff like that! I will! I’ll do yer!”
Grandpa Mike didn’t swear as much as Grandpa Sam, but he did speak in an accent that sounded as if it came from an old British film, and he waved his fists around a lot and suggested he was going to fight people (mainly Grandpa Sam). This was because he thought of himself, even though he was seventy-seven, as hard. As a tough guy. He sometimes referred, with a dark air of mystery, to time spent in his earlier life “inside”. Which sometimes means prison, which is what Grandpa Mike wanted you to think. But what he actually meant was inside. His house. Because he didn’t much like going out.
Grandpa Sam reacted to Grandpa Mike’s aggression by whistling a happy tune. Which he always did when Grandpa Mike got cross, which only made Grandpa Mike more furious.
“Shut your whistle ’ole! I said I’ll do yer.”
“He will! That’s right! Don’t call my husband stupid names!” said Grandma Glenda to Grandpa Sam. She was married – as you may have been able to work out – to Grandpa Mike.
“Don’t you tell my husband not to tell your husband to shut up!” said Grandma Poppy, who – I don’t have to tell you this, do I? – was married to Grandpa Sam. Poppy was very thin. She ate an awful lot of sponge cake, and toffees, and biscuits with jam in the middle, and other stuff that old people like, but without ever putting on weight.
This was not true of Grandma Glenda, who ate virtually nothing – constantly counting calories, and demanding no butter on her bread, and refusing pudding unless it was the dullest puddings, rice ones with skimmed milk and NO JAM, for example – but was shaped not unlike a large balloon. Although one filled with flesh, rather than air.
“Oh yeah?” said Grandma Glenda, getting up from her chair and leaning over the table and putting her face very close to Grandma Poppy’s. “And who’s going to stop me?”
“I am!” said Vicky, coming into the living room with a teapot. “Come on, Mum, Dad, Glenda, Mike … We’re not going to be fighting today, remember, because” – and here she glanced significantly in Sam’s direction – “it’s a special day.”
All the grandparents looked at each other.
“Oh yes!” they said at once. “Happy birthday, Sam!” they chorused.
“Yes, it’s strange,” said Grandma Poppy. “We all woke up with those words in our heads, didn’t we?”
“I suppose so,” said Grandma Glenda, as if it was hard to agree with Grandma Poppy about anything. “Well, I mean, yes, we did. All of us.”
Then they folded their arms and sat back in their chairs and did their best to smile at each other.
That was when Sam really started to believe it was true. Because what his grandparents usually liked to do, when they came round, was fight. And shout and swear at each other.
The only days they didn’t do that were his birthday, and Ruby’s birthday. He knew it wasn’t Ruby’s birthday. So it must be his birthday. Again. Today.
For a second, it bothered him that his mum had referred to today as a special day. Because if it was a special day, what did that make the day before, which had been Sam’s real birthday?
But, then again, today was feeling pretty real, birthday-wise. His dad had come back from the shops with loads of new presents. Stuff left over from his birthday list that he hadn’t got the day before. A chess set, a lava lamp, two video games, three new T-shirts and a pair of headphones! Wireless, with Bluetooth, and noise reduction! Plus his mum had nipped out when his dad had got