One Saturday morning, Abby's Mum came upstairs to see Abby in her bedroom. There was a big mess on the floor and Abby sat in the middle of it all reading a book.
"What a mess," Mum said. "You need to have a clear up in here. Because things get broken or lost when they're all willy-nilly like this. Come on, have a tidy up now."
"But I'm very busy," Abby argued, "and it's boring doing it on my own. Can't you help me?"
"No I can't, I'm busy too. But I'll give you extra pocket money if you do a good job."
When Mum came back later all the toys and clothes and books had disappeared.
"I'm impressed," said Mum. "But I'll inspect it properly later."
"It was easy," said Abby. "Can I have my extra pocket money I now?"
"All right. Get it out of my change purse. It's in the kitchen tidy drawer."
In the kitchen, Abby went over to the dresser and pulled open the tidy drawer. She hunted for the purse.
"It must be somewhere at the bottom," Mum said. "Let's have a I proper look."
She pulled the drawer out and carried it over to the table. Abby looked inside. There were lots of boring things like staplers and string, but there were lots of interesting things as well.
"What's this?" Abby asked, holding up a plastic bottle full of red liquid.
"Fake blood, from a Halloween party years ago. Your Dad and I took I you to that, dressed up as a baby vampire. You were really scary."
Abby carried on looking through the drawer. She found some I vampire teeth, white face paint, plastic witch nails and hair gel. Mum pulled out a glittery hair band. It had springs with wobbly balls on the top that flashed disco colours! Abby found some sparkly hair elastics to match the hair band. She made her Mum put lots of little bunches all over her head so she looked really silly.
"I remember this," Abby said as she pulled out a plastic bag. "This is from my pirate party." Inside there was a black, false moustache and some big gold earrings.
"Come here," Mum said and smeared white face paint all over Abby's face. She dribbled the fake blood so it looked as if it was coming out of Abby's eyes and mouth. She put gel all over Abby's hair and made it stand up into weird, pointy shapes. Abby put in the vampire teeth and slipped on the witch fingers. She made scary noises at Wow-Wow, the cat.
He ignored her and carried on washing himself on the seat next to her.
Abby came to sit on her Mum's knee.
"It's fun doing this together," she said.
"Maybe. But we still haven't found the change purse."
"Well, you know things will get lost, or broken, when they're all willy-nilly."
"You cheeky monkey!" Mum laughed. "But what shall I do with it all?"
"I know, it's easy," Abby said and began to remove everything off the table into her arms. She put it all back in the kitchen drawer.
Mum looked at her suspiciously.
"Let's go and inspect your bedroom, shall we?"
Abby followed her upstairs and into her bedroom. Wow-Wow was sitting in front of her fish tank looking hungrily at the goldfish. He dashed under the bed when he saw Mum and Abby. Mum kneeled down and lifted the bed cover to get him out. Underneath were heaps of Abby's toys, books, tapes, clothes and shoes, empty plastic cups, wrappers and a half-eaten sandwich on a plate.
"Abby! What's all this?"
"It's my tidy drawer," Abby said. She wrapped her arms around her Mum and gave her a kiss. "Let's sort this one out together now.'