Tammy knew about lots of things. For instance, she knew how to make a rainbow out of hot water and a pack of Skittles. She also knew how to make noodles because she’d seen a video about it on YouTube. That was what got us into trouble in the first place – the noodles.

It was a Sunday. Mum was working the weekend shift, the babysitter was sleeping, and Tammy was hungry.

‘She’s not meant to be sleeping, you know,’ Tammy said. ‘Especially not when we’re hungry and haven’t had dinner. What’s Mum paying her for, anyway?’

I nodded even though I wasn’t hungry. ‘Should we wake her up?’

‘No.’ Tammy looked annoyed, but then she smirked. ‘Actually, this is a good chance for me to try that noodle recipe I told you about. Mum had some noodles in the cupboard if I remember correctly.’

The kitchen still smelled like the fish fingers we’d had for lunch. Tammy dragged one of the dining chairs towards the marble counter. Usually, she would clamber onto it and get herself up there without the chair, but she’d need the chair to reach the hob anyway. She took out the box of noodles and told me to grab a saucepan from the cupboard at the bottom, which I did.

‘It’s faster if you boil the water in the kettle first,’ she said.

She tip-toed over the counter to the sink, where she filled the kettle with water, returned it to its base and switched it on. She then climbed down and pushed the chair closer to the hob. I told her all that scraping would wake the babysitter, but she just told me to shush, which she often did because I don’t know as much as her.

Tammy placed the saucepan on the hob and turned a bunch of knobs, then asked me to bring the kettle over. She was pouring the boiling water into the saucepan when the babysitter walked in. When she spotted Tammy, standing over the hob, the kettle tipped over in mid-air with a steady stream of steamy water pouring out of it, I thought her eyes were going to pop out of their sockets.

‘What are you doing?!’ She screeched and ran in Tammy’s direction, almost slipping in the process. I thought Tammy panicked when she dropped the empty kettle and it landed on the hob, barely missing the saucepan, but later on she told me she knew what she was doing. The babysitter, whose name was Hana, lifted Tammy off the chair and put her down beside me, then turned all the knobs off.

She spun around to face us, her cheeks a blotchy red. ‘What in the world were you thinking?! You could’ve seriously hurt yourselves!’

Tammy smoothed the creases on her flowery, orange dress down, lifted her chin and said, ‘Well, you shouldn’t have been sleeping while we were hungry. We were forced to make our own food.’

‘I slept by accident,’ Hana said. ‘You should’ve woken me up if you wanted food, or found some biscuits or raided the fridge like a normal child!’

That was what made Tammy the angriest, the “normal child” bit. She said Hana was a “boosive”, a word which is apparently used to describe a mean and unkind person. She’d heard that in a TikTok video once.

I can’t lie, I felt a bit bad for Hana. Tammy was giving her a hard time the whole afternoon. I told Tammy that I had suggested we wake Hana up and if we had, we could’ve avoided all the trouble, but Tammy said, ‘Shush, darling. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Anyway, when Mum came home, Hana told her what happened and Mum was furious. She came into our room and we were in bed, but only pretending to be asleep while Tammy whispered her “strategy” to me. The strategy was for both of us to say we hated Hana, she didn’t treat us well and she slept when we were hungry. I felt bad because only one of those things was true, and Hana had really only slept when Tammy was hungry, not both of us. But Tammy said she’d heard people on TikTok say that blood was thicker than water, which meant that you should always be loyal to your family, and if you aren’t, you would be cursed and your blood would become too thick and gloopy to run through your body.

Unfortunately, Mum didn’t believe us because she said she kept cameras near the TV in the living room and in our room. She said she saw that Hana was treating us very well and that the only thing that was true was that she slept, which she’d already admitted and apologized for.

‘It wasn’t even dinner time when she slept, it was 3 o’clock, which means you two have been lying to me,’ Mum said.

‘We haven’t! And did she tell you she called us abnormal? Don’t you have a camera in the kitchen? She said that! She’s a boosive!’ Tammy yelled.

Mum pursed her lips. ‘It’s abusive, not “a boosive”. Boosive is not a word. And no, I don’t have a camera in the kitchen, but you already lied to me about everything while Hana told the truth, so I don’t believe you. That’s the problem with you Tammy – you want to be a grown up so bad, don’t you? Then let me teach you a lesson about this grown up thing called dealing with the consequences, that means the results, of your actions. Because you lied to me, there will be no screens, at ALL, for a month, and apart from school, no going out, not even to the garden.’

Tammy cried, but Mum said her decision was final, and that if we decided to lie again or break the rules of the punishment, she would double it.

That night, I thought I heard Tammy crying under her unicorn duvet for a long time, which I thought must be because of the “no screens” part of the punishment, which meant she couldn’t sneakily watch videos on YouTube or TikTok. But in the morning she told me she wasn’t crying, she was coming up with a revenge strategy.

‘Hana is going to wish she never crossed us,’ she said.

The strategy was for us to write an ad selling Mum’s car and, once it was sold, to say we heard Hana talk about stealing it. We would then use the money to bribe the kids on our street to say they saw Hana drive off with the car to confirm what we said.

Tammy said I should write the ad because I was good at writing and my handwriting was prettier. I thought the strategy was mean and what if Hana went to jail for something she didn’t do? But Tammy told me to shush and reminded me that blood is thicker than water.

So, I sat down to write the ad on a pale yellow piece of cardstock paper. The idea was to make it “short and snappy” like a grown up would, Tammy had said, and she showed me an example of an ad selling a used bicycle in a newspaper.

I frowned and chewed on the end of my pencil. After some time, I wrote, “White car, great condition. Two booster seats included. £1000.”

I handed Tammy the paper.

‘Really?’ Tammy scoffed and rolled her eyes. ‘It’s not just a white car, it’s a Honda Civic. In marketing, you’ve got to be precise, you know. And a thousand pounds?! Have you lost your mind?’

So we dropped it down to £100, which Tammy thought was more reasonable. We also added our address and instructions to take the car and leave the money in an envelope under our red garden bucket. Tammy also figured since Mum didn’t have a camera in the kitchen, she could climb out of the kitchen window while I pretended to be hurt and the new babysitter (Hana had quit) was taking care of me.

The strategy went well. Tammy managed to sneak out and stick the ad to the wall on the side of Tony’s Shop, the shop at the end of our street, and the new babysitter never noticed. We were so giddy that night, Tammy because she was excited, but I was secretly really nervous. There were lots of ads on that wall on the side of Tony’s Shop, but what if Mum spotted ours? She would recognize my handwriting, I thought, she was always so proud of it.

The next day was a Saturday and Mum was home. Around one in the afternoon, the doorbell rang and Tammy panicked when she remembered the car keys weren’t in the car.

‘That must be a potential buyer wondering where the keys are!’ she said.

We darted out of our room and found Mum standing at the front door with Mr Tony, the shop owner.

‘Hello, Mrs Hassan. I found this on the wall outside my shop,’ he passed the piece of cardstock paper to Mum. ‘I figured it probably wasn’t you who wrote it.’ His eyes fell on us and I bit my lip and looked at the floor.

Mum scanned the paper and sighed. ‘It wasn’t. Thank you very much for bringing this to my attention.’

Mr Tony left and Mum closed the door. She turned around slowly, clutching the paper in her hand as she glared at us. Her nostrils flared the way they do when she’s really, really angry – or livid, as Tammy would say.

‘It was Serene’s idea! Look, it’s her handwriting!’ Tammy cried.

My jaw fell open. ‘No, it was not! And blood is thicker than water! Your blood is going to become too thick and gloopy to run through your body!’