Impulse buy

Robbie pricked up his ears.

Mum had come home claiming that she had been spontaneous. She had gone to the shops to buy some breakfast cereal but had come home with a new pair of shoes. She had claimed these were an impulse buy. But all worked out well as Dad thought they looked pretty. Neighbour Mr Barclay thought they looked pretty but had red cheeks when he said this. Annabelle also thought she looked pretty. Robbie didn’t think she looked pretty as she was his mum and mums were not supposed to look pretty.

Robbie decided that he wanted to make an impulse buy. He emptied all the money from his piggy bank and headed for the shops. On reaching the parade of shops, he decided to close his eyes and when he opened them, he would buy something from that shop.

Firstly he banged into a lamppost and soon after walked into a surly looking traffic warden who could only growl at Robbie. When Robbie next opened his eyes he was outside the bank and didn’t think you could buy anything there. So he tried again and this time opened his eyes outside the pet shop.

The shop assistant was very helpful and when Robbie produced his pocket money, he was told that he had enough money to buy a newt.

Robbie was delighted. What an impulse buy! He rushed home to show the family and named the newt Nelly on the way home.

On showing his new pet, Dad raised his eyebrows, Mum sighed heavily, Annabelle called Robbie “Stoopid” and Bubbles the cat was intrigued until Nellie climbed on to Bubbles back one day and refused to come down.

The house was in chaos the next few days as Nellie ran riot around the house. It was found in the bread bin, it was found inside a toilet roll, it was found in Mum’s handbag, it swam in Annabelle’s bath water and seemed to sleep in Dad’s slippers.

Robbie loved his pet until one day Nellie just disappeared and was never seen by Robbie again. Robbie was a little upset for a day but soon got over it. Every now and then though, he did wonder what had happened to Nellie. Dad thought it had probably left the house and found a pond to live in.

The truth was never known to Robbie, but this is what happened.

At school, the day after Nellie went missing, Annabelle’s school class was tasked with designing and colouring a flag for a mythical country.

Annabelle had to ask permission to go to the toilet. She had forgotten to go during break time as she was listening to a particularly cool track on her i-pod with her best friend Faye Rosewood.

When Annabelle left the classroom, Rosie Leach, the naughtiest girl in the class, unzipped Annabelle’s pencil case as she new that Annabelle had a new set of felt tip pens.

Rosie shrieked as loudly as she could as a little green animal suddenly appeared from nowhere, jumped on to Rosie’s shoulder, licked her on the cheek, jumped down on to the floor and ran out the door.

“LIZARD!!!” Yelled Rosie and burst into tears.

Newts are quite small and nobody else in the classroom saw anything.

Rosie was sent to the head teacher’s room to be told off for yelling out in class. Annabelle thought it typical that Rosie had gone into her pencil case without asking but never for one moment did she connect Rosie’s claim of seeing a lizard with a missing newt.

Robbie decided that maybe Impulse buys weren’t the best idea and decided to save his pocket money so that he could buy his favourite comic.

With thanks to Holly Blackwood for the suggested two words - Spontaneous & newt.