Izzy's River (5 page)

They were just happily criticising one of the girls’ hairstyles when Poppy frowned, then turned to Izzy with her finger to her lips. “Listen!” she whispered, turning the sound on the TV down a little.

“What is it?” Izzy whispered back, a little anxiously.

“Alex! On the phone, ssshhh!” Poppy tiptoed closer to the garden door.

Alex was sitting outside on a bench – he obviously didn’t realise that the door was open, and the girls could hear him.

Izzy felt a bit guilty eavesdropping, but Poppy clearly didn’t. Perhaps it was a brother/sister thing that you just didn’t understand if you were an only one? Poppy’s eyes were glittering with gleeful excitement.

“He is! He’s talking to a girl!” she hissed to Izzy. “And I’m practically certain it’s not Lucy. She lives up the road, he’s been seeing her on-again off-again for ages.”

Alex was talking very quietly so the girls found themselves leaning dangerously round the door to hear. But he was so intent on his conversation that he didn’t notice them at all.

“OK. Yeah. Tomorrow night, then. Bye, Maddy.”

He finished the call and jumped up so quickly that he caught Poppy by surprise, and she fell backwards into the doorway giggling, and half squashing Izzy.

“Oi! Poppy, were you listening?” Alex stopped staring happily down at his phone, and advanced on Poppy looking menacing.

“Of course I was!” Poppy kept laughing. “Who’s
Maddy
, Alex?”

“No one!” he snapped.

“OK, I’ll just ask Jake.”

“Don’t you dare!”

“Hang on. Maddy…” Poppy stared at him, her eyes widening. “It’s not that girl from your canoe club that he’s fancied for ages?”

Alex went red. “He never even spoke to her,” he muttered. “I gave him loads of time. We just got talking…”

“He’ll kill you!” Poppy stood up, folding her arms, and shook her head sadly. “You are
dead
.”

“She doesn’t belong to him,” Alex muttered, but he looked guilty. “Don’t tell him, Poppy.”

“Why not? He’s going to find out anyway.”

“Yeah, well, I want him to find out gradually. If I get together with Maddy, I’ll tell him then, OK?”

“You really owe me, if I don’t tell him,” Poppy pointed out.

“I helped you bath the dog!”

“This is worth way more than bathing the dog!” Poppy squeaked. “And I’m holding you to it. Just wait.”

Alex stomped out of the living room, muttering, and Poppy hugged Izzy.

“Oh, that was so funny. Now we just have to wait till we need a big, big favour…”

FOUR

“Izzy! Your dad’s here!”

Izzy and Poppy were upstairs in Poppy’s room, listening to some music after they’d had dinner, and plotting ways to call in the favour Alex owed them.

Izzy picked up her damp, muddy school dress and cardigan, and shook them out – she’d been trying not to think about them, and she’d almost forgotten.

“Is your dad going to be annoyed?” Poppy asked apologetically. “I’ll tell him it was my fault. And Billy’s.”

“I shouldn’t think he’ll mind that much,” Izzy said hopefully. But it was quite a new dress, and she’d torn it on the sharp mudguard of the bike. Dad wouldn’t shout at her or anything, but he would sigh, in that tired sort of way.

They galloped down the stairs, and found Izzy’s dad making a fuss over Billy. He was scratching the
big dog behind the ears, and Billy was leaning against his legs with a blissed-out look on his face.

“Wow, he likes you!” Poppy said in surprise. Billy looked so relaxed he was about to fall over.

“My dad used to have one of these – Grandad Pete, Izzy. His was called Patch, he looked like a pirate. That was when I was your age, though.” Her dad hugged her. “Oh, you got changed!” he said, sounding surprised.

“We got a bit wet –”

“Billy was chasing –”

“The girls had an accident –”

Izzy, Poppy and her mum all tried to explain at once.

“An accident? Are you OK?” Izzy’s dad looked worriedly down at Billy, as though he thought the Bull Terrier might have hurt Izzy.

“We’re fine, Dad. But Billy chased a rat into the river, down by the park, and then he got stuck in an old bike that someone had thrown in! We had to rescue him, and I tore my school dress. A little bit.” Izzy held it up apologetically.

Her dad frowned at the tear. “I reckon I can probably mend that. You didn’t get hurt? And Billy didn’t?”

Poppy shook her head. “He was lucky, though. He sort of caught his paw in the bike wheel, but we managed to pull it out without hurting him.”

“There’s so much junk in the water down there,” Izzy explained. “Three shopping trolleys, Dad! And there was a TV.”

“And a fridge on the bank,” Poppy added.

“Is that the bit of the river that runs through Illroy Park?” Izzy’s dad asked. “With a footpath along it?”

“Yes, but the footpath’s where loads of the rubbish is,” Poppy explained.

“I’ve told Poppy she’s going to have to stop taking Billy down there,” her mum said apologetically. “I’m really sorry – I shouldn’t have let the girls go.”

“No, don’t worry about that, you couldn’t have known Billy would go diving in.”

Poppy’s mum sighed. “You don’t know Billy. I should have guessed!”

Izzy’s dad grinned, and scratched Billy’s ears again. Billy groaned happily, and slumped further to the floor.

“It’s a real pity that it’s in such a mess, though. I haven’t been there for years, but it used to be a great place for walks – your grandad and I used to take Patch down there, actually, Izzy. It’s such a shame.
Anyway, we’d better get going. What do you say to Poppy’s mum, Izzy?”

Izzy rolled her eyes. She wasn’t six. “Thanks for having me,” she said. “And see you on Monday, Poppy.”

“So, did you have a good time?” Izzy’s dad asked her as they were driving home. He was looking at her worriedly, she could tell.

“Watch the road, Dad!”

“Sorry, sorry. I was thinking about you – while I had my tea all on my own.”

“Oh, Dad!” Izzy gazed at him guiltily.

“I don’t mean it! I just wanted to know that you were all right. You were, weren’t you?”

“I had a fab time,” Izzy promised him. “I’m really sorry about the dress, though. It was one of the newish ones, too.”

“Well, like I said, I think I can mend it. Or if I can’t, I’m sure your gran could.”

“Was the river really a nice place to go, before?”

Her dad nodded. “Beautiful. Still a bit wild, but that was good. I saw a kingfisher down there once. And there were some rare plants, I’m sure. I’m really surprised it’s been left to get into such a state.” He glanced down at Izzy. “How about we go down there
on our bikes tomorrow? Ride through the park and along the river?”

“You don’t have to work tomorrow?” Izzy asked delightedly.

“Nope, got my invoices done while you were at Poppy’s tonight. I fancy a bike ride. And maybe a picnic.”

“Whoa.” Izzy’s dad stopped in the middle of the pathway, and stared around. “I didn’t realise it would be this bad.”

Izzy braked, and slid up beside him. “I know, it’s a mess, isn’t it?”

“It looks like a junk yard.” Her dad sighed, staring around at the rubbish scattered all over the path, and in the water. “It used to be so beautiful here, Iz. It’s probably hard to believe, but it really did…” He got off his bike, and leaned it up against one of the benches, and went wandering through the mess, kicking at things here and there. “Who dumps a whole load of old newspapers by the side of a river? Why not just put them in the recycling? I don’t understand some people.” He stopped, looking down at an old piece of wood. “I thought so. Look at this, Iz.” He swept the grass away from the board with one hand,
and Izzy came to see over his shoulder.

“Illroy Riverside Nature Reserve,” she read out. “Please keep dogs on the lead.” She laughed sadly. “We did, but it didn’t help much. That’s really sad. What can have happened to let it get like this?”

“I should think people just forgot about it, and it was too expensive to keep it properly looked after.” Her dad shook his head.

“Could your Rescue group help sort it out, Dad?” Izzy asked suddenly.

Her dad looked round with a sigh. “I’d really like to suggest it to them, but we’re a bit short of money right now. Buying all those trees for that little green patch behind the old people’s home cost us a lot. We’d need to do some fundraising first to get this all sorted, and we’ve already promised to do some clean-up over in the woods close to your school too.”

Izzy nodded. Her dad had been asked to join a local environmental group a few months before. It was organised by somebody he’d done some garden landscaping for. They planted trees and bulbs around the area, and every so often organised a big Rescue Weekend, where they hired a skip and cleared up litter and junk. This neglected bit of river sounded just right for them.

“I’ll definitely mention it at our next meeting, though,” her dad agreed. “It’s just the sort of thing we’d want to do. Actually, I’m surprised no one’s mentioned it already. I suppose it’s a bit out of the way.”

“I should think people only come here when they want to dump rubbish,” Izzy agreed sadly. “I don’t think I want to eat the picnic here, Dad.”

“No, definitely not. We’ll go further on, round to the main bit of the river – it’s a lot nicer to look at there.”

They got back on their bikes and, ten minutes later, they were sitting on the grass, watching two swans gliding along with their beaks in the air, looking extremely grand.

“I bet they wouldn’t go down that bit of river,” Izzy said, between bites of ham sandwich.

“Certainly not. Not nearly clean enough for those posh swans.”

Izzy chewed thoughtfully as she watched the swans disappearing round the curve of the water. If it was only money that was stopping Dad’s Rescue group cleaning up the river, maybe there was something she and Poppy and Emily and Maya could do to help? Could they raise some money somehow? Mr Finlay
had said they needed a new project. It would be nice to do something that was really close to home, too.

She bit into an apple, smiling to herself. A new project. Something they could really help with. It sounded excellent!

On Monday she hurried to find Poppy in the playground, and smiled to herself at the difference from Friday morning.

Emily and Maya were already there, as the school bus had been on time for once, and they waved to her.

“Was your dad really OK about your dress?” Poppy asked anxiously. “I told Emily and Maya what happened,” she added.

“That dog!” Emily shook her head. “He’s a menace.”

“He’s a very nice menace,” Izzy said, smiling.

“He’s still sulking about us giving him a bath,” Poppy sighed. “He’s hardly talking to me.”

Emily snickered, and Poppy elbowed her. “You know what I mean.”

“My dad didn’t mind that much, and we went to see my gran yesterday, she’s going to mend it for me. I showed my dad the river too – we went for a bike
ride down there on Saturday. He was really upset at how messy it was.”

“It is pretty bad,” Poppy agreed.

“He says it used to be beautiful, and we found a board that said it was a nature reserve.”

Poppy looked disbelieving. “Really? I’ve never seen rare birds flying in and out of the old fridge, Izzy.”

“Well, I shouldn’t think it’s much use as one now – not with all that rubbish messing up the water and everything. But it used to be. And I bet it could be again, if it was cleaned up.” She looked at the others hopefully. “Dad belongs to a clean-up group, they take on projects just like that. But they’ve spent all their money on trees.”

“Are you thinking we could help? Like Mr Finlay said?” Maya asked excitedly.

“It would be a really cool project,” Izzy said. She was so glad Maya liked the idea – she was the one who’d first thought of the fashion show, and Izzy couldn’t help feeling that she had to approve this before it could happen. It was Maya who’d started them off working as a team.

But Emily was scowling. “It doesn’t sound cool at all! Picking up litter on a messy river bank? It sounds dead boring.”

“I know it’s not as exciting as organising a fashion show––” Izzy started to say, but Emily interrupted.

“Of course it isn’t!” Emily stared at her disgustedly.

Izzy sighed, and tried to tell herself it was just the way Emily was. Stroppy. Izzy had a feeling it was to do with having two very annoying, very loud younger brothers (and a baby sister who, although she didn’t get on Emily’s nerves as much, meant that Emily’s mum was always busy).

Emily had a habit of making snap decisions and then sticking to them like glue, even when really she knew she was wrong. Izzy liked her most of the time, but sometimes she could be a real pain. Izzy sighed, and tried not to get upset. “I’m not saying we ought to go and clean up the river – though I’d like to join in, I think it
would
be cool, actually. If you listen, I think we ought to help raise some money, so my dad’s Rescue group can do the tidying up.”

“What do they need the money for?” Maya asked. “Isn’t it just picking up some rubbish?”

“They’d have to hire a skip – and maybe some other equipment. You haven’t seen it, Maya, it isn’t just litter. There was half an old boat, and the bike that Billy got stuck in.”

“And the mattress in the water, that would be really
hard to get out,” Poppy agreed. “They might need one of those little diggers, with a grab on. Something like that. I bet they cost a lot to hire.”

“Exactly.” Izzy sighed. “Maybe we couldn’t…”

“I bet we could!” Maya was looking interested. “I’m not sure how, yet… Who does that bit of river belong to?”

Izzy shook her head. “I don’t know. The sign said it was a nature reserve. The council? My dad could find out, or someone else from the Rescue group.”