Bill's New Frock Read Free

didn’t stray farfrom the railings. No wonder they didn’t ask to play.

    ‘Give the ball back.’ Rohan was really glowering now.
    ‘Yes,’ Martin agreed. ‘Why can’t you stay in your own bit of the playground?’
    Mystified, Bill asked Martin, ‘What bit?’
    ‘The girls’ bit, of course.’
    Bill looked around. Girls were still perched along the nursery wall. Girls werestill huddled in the porch. Girls still stood in tight little groups in each corner. No girl was more than a few feet into the playground itself. Even the pair who had been trying to mark out the hopscotch game had given up and gone away.
    ‘Where’s that, then?’ asked Bill. ‘Where’s the girls’ bit? Where
are
the girls supposed to play?’
    ‘
I
don’t know,’ Martin answered irritably. ‘
Anywhere
. Just somewhere we’re not already playing football.’
    ‘But you’re playing football all over
every single bit
of the playground!’
    Martin glanced up at the clock on the church tower next door to the school. There were only two minutes left before the bell rang, and his team was down by one tiny goal.
    He spread his hands in desperation.
    ‘
Please
give the ball back,’ he pleaded.‘What’s it worth?’
    For the life of him Bill Simpson couldn’t understand why, if Martin wanted the ball back so badly, he couldn’t just step forward and try to prise it away from his chest. Then he realised that Martin simply didn’t dare. The two of them might end up in a bit of a shoving match, and then a real fight – and
no one
fights someone in a pretty pink frock with fiddly shell buttons.
    So he said cunningly:
    ‘I’ll tell you what it’s worth. It’s worth your very last wumpy choo!’
    To his astonishment, Martin looked delighted.
    ‘Done!’ he said at once, and began digging deep in his trouser pocket.
    He handed a tiny, wrappered rectangle over to Bill.
    ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘Here it is.Now give me the football and get off the pitch!’
    Bill Simpson looked down.
    ‘What’s this?’ he asked.
    ‘It’s what you wanted,’ Martin said. ‘My very last 1p chew.’
    In silence, Bill Simpson handed over the football. Where he’d been clutching it tightly against his chest, there was now an enormous brown smudge.
    In silence, Bill Simpson turned and walked away. If all the girls had not been standing around the edges of the playground watching him, he would have cried.

3
Pink, pink, nothing but pink

    After break, it was art. Everyone helped to unfold the large plastic sheets and lay them over the table tops, and spread old newspapers over them. Then Mrs Collins sent Leila into the dark cupboard at the back of the classroom to see what was left in the art supplies box.
    ‘Are there any coloured chalks left?’
    ‘No, they’re all gone.’
    ‘Pastels, then.’
    ‘They’re still too damp to use after the roof leak.’
    ‘What about clay?’
    ‘It’s all dried up.’
    ‘There must be crayons.
Every
class has crayons.’
    ‘The infants came and borrowed ours last week, and haven’t brought them back yet.’
    ‘Right, then. It will just have to be paint, as usual.’
    So Leila dragged the heavy cardboard box full of paint tubs out of the cupboard, and everyone crowded round to choose their colours.
    ‘Here’s a pink.’
    ‘What’s that one?’
    ‘Pink.’
    ‘More pink.’
    ‘Pink.’
    ‘I’ve found some blue – no, I haven’t.It’s empty.’
    ‘I thought I’d found some green, but it’s dried up.’
    ‘There’s no white. There’s never any white. We haven’t had white for years and years.’
    ‘There’s some pink here.’
    ‘And this one’s pink.’
    ‘Pink, pink, nothing but pink!’
    Everyone stood up, disappointed. Kirsty voiced everyone’s disgust.
    ‘What can you do with pink?’ she demanded. ‘You can’t paint pink dogs or pink space vehicles or pink trees or pink battlefields, can you? If you can only find one colour, it’s difficult enough. But if you’ve only got