"Oh… God. Here we go." Hannah crossed her arms. "I suppose YOU'RE the one who took all our stuff and hid it down here."
"Erm… no…" Lee said, looking confused. "You just dropped it down here."
Hannah went pink.
"So… what is there to do around here?" Jess asked. "What's the nightlife like… pubs, bars, etc…?"
"Erm… no… this is down the back of a SOFA."
"So?"
"Well… a bar wouldn't realistically fit down the back of a sofa, now, would it?"
Jess was flabbergasted. "Oh, so we can fall down the back of a sofa and find a random comedian down there, but there can't be any bars down here?!"
"Of course not," said Lee. "That'd just be stupid."
"Fine. I'll just keep my mouth shut, then."
"Oh dear," said Hannah.
"What?" Lee asked.
Hannah shrugged.
"So why did you say 'oh dear'?"
Hannah shrugged again.
"What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?"
Hannah shrugged.
Lee turned to Jess who was sporadically knitting.
"I'll leave you guys to it, then."
Lee started to walk off before Jess asked, "So are you going to get us out of here, then?"
"Oh, well, it's actually a long ritual of enduring life-risking, danger-inducing challenges, each more fiendishly difficult than the last—"
"Oh, shut up and show us the door."

There was indeed a door imbedded in the wall of the pink sofa material, which Lee opened for them.
"Voila."
Jess and Hannah peered outside.
"It's a field."
"Are you sure this is right?"
Lee sighed.
"Do you see any other doors around here?"
Hannah poked her head out. "I never realised there was a field down the back of my sofa."
Jess frowned and carried on knitting.
Hannah took a step outside. "Ooh… there are cows!" she said. "And they're PINK!"
"Oh my God," said Jess. "This is sad… very sad. Can't we go home?"
"Correction - my home."
"Ooh, get you," Jess said sarcastically. "Didn't know you had to be so picky."
"SORRY," said Hannah, stomping off to pinch the cows – they looked rather fake.
Jess continued to knit – so far she had two legs, one torso, one head, two ears and three arms.
"Oh, B*LL*CKS!" Jess screamed, un-knitting the third arm she had been knitting for the past fifteen minutes.
"They're real!" Hannah called over from the cows. The one nearest to her snorted and she legged it behind the nearest tree to hide.
"Look, I don't mean to be a party pooper here, but can't we just get back to Hannah's house?" Jess said.
Lee nodded and said, "OK, where did you come from?"
"Hannah's sofa. At Hannah's house," Jess said, simply.
Hannah came over from behind the tree, intrigued.
"Right, come over to this cow." Lee led them to a nearby cow. "Put your right hand on one of its spots and I'll chant a little rhyme to send you back."
"What the hell is this? The Wizard of Oz?" Jess asked in exasperation.
"Do you want to go home or not?"
Jess frowned and placed a hand on one of the cow's spots.
"Right." Lee cleared his throat. "Powers of chickens, all come to me, send us back to our settee!" A wind began to blow across the field.
"Chickens?!" Jess asked, scornfully.
"Hey, I just SAY the rhymes, I don't make them up!" Lee shouted at her over the sound of the wind.
Hannah could feel herself being pulled upwards… then everything went dark and squidgy…

Hannah and Jess came head first out of a blue sofa and stopped halfway.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"
They heard a child scream and Hannah turned to see a little girl of no more than seven years, who had been sitting reading, now jumping up in horror.
"Oh, God, Jess, this isn't my house… unless we've suddenly got a blue sofa and another child!" Hannah exclaimed.
"Let's go back," Jess said, grabbing hold of a clump of Hannah's hair and wriggling back to where they had come from.

They landed on a cow which mooed loudly, then its legs gave way and they squashed it.
"Oops," commented Hannah.
"That was not Hannah's sofa at Hannah's house!" Jess cried at a sheepish looking Lee in the middle of the cows.
"Sorry," he commented. "These cows can be tricky. It may have been the wrong one."
"You mean each cow leads to a different sofa?" asked Jess, excitedly.
"Erm… yes."
"What about armchairs?" asked Hannah.
"Pigs," Lee replied.
"Deckchairs?" Jess suggested.
"Oh, don't be so STUPID."
Jess scowled and looked away. She spotted a particularly large, cuddly looking cow and ran towards it. "Let's try this one." She grabbed Hannah by the hand and pressed the other hand against the cow's flank. "GO!" she shouted.
Once again a hurricane appeared to come from nowhere and the two girls felt themselves going up…

<< back to Book 3.1

� Jess and Hannah 2002