Bill's New Frock Read online

  Then, cheerfully, she picked herself up and, limping heavily on the wrong foot, returned to the others waiting around the line.

  ‘Bad luck!’

  ‘Never mind, Astrid!’

  Up at the front of the race, Kirsty and Talilah seemed to be battling it out for first place. Now Kirsty had the edge, now Talilah. Then Kirsty was in front again. But just as she might have pulled ahead of Talilah, the two girls’ bodies seemed to become entangled: ankles wrapped round ankles, legs wrapped round legs.

  Together they fell, rolling over and over on the grass, giggling loudly.

  As Bill ran up, they managed somehow to roll in his way and bring him to a standstill. Twice he tried to get round them, but they rolled the way he was going. Paul was catching up behind, so finally Bill just jumped over their wildly flailing arms and legs. As he did so, he saw Kirsty wink.

  Of course! He’d almost forgotten! Let Paul win!

  And now there were only himself and Paul left in the race. So he would have to fall back and let him pull ahead very soon. The winning line was not all that far away. He was already halfway round the circuit.

  Right, then.

  Bill tried to slow his pace. He couldn’t do it. It was remarkable, but though he could pound along like a well-oiled machine, and leap over tufts of rough grass without thinking, and even do a fancy sideways hop when he saw something glinting like broken glass beneath his foot, he couldn’t slow down. He just couldn’t do it.

  He couldn’t let Paul win.

  And it wasn’t as if who won the race was important. He knew that. A race might start with those who walked to school running against those who came on a bus or by car, but by the time someone had won, no one could even remember what the race was about.

  So it wasn’t important.

  But still he couldn’t slow up and let Paul win. It would look quite ridiculous, he thought. Everyone would guess, and Paul would be really embarrassed.

  And then he remembered that he wasn’t supposed to slow down. The girls had sat in their huddle and worked all this out before the race began. They’d known he wouldn’t be able to slow down. They’d thought it all out – weren’t girls amazing?

  He was supposed to pretend to have a stitch.

  Right, then.

  But he couldn’t do that either! And time was running out so fast. He’d almost completed the circuit. There was the finishing line, looming up only a few metres ahead. And there was the whole class, watching.

  And he could not stop and double over, grimacing and clutching his stomach as though in the grip of a fierce spasm of pain, pretending he had a stitch.

  It wasn’t that he couldn’t act. It wasn’t that he would feel embarrassed about it. It was simply that he could not bring himself to do it. There was the finishing line, and here was he, and there was Paul, a really long way behind him now. He wanted to reach the line first, that was all. He didn’t want to let Paul win.

  He wanted to win himself.

  Ten metres to go. Now or never. The girls would kill him if he let them down.

  Five metres. Now or never. Surely even the girls, if they had come this far, would find it difficult to stop and lose.

  Three metres. Now or never.

  One metre. Now.

  There! Over the line!

  (Never.)

  A smile of triumph spread across his face. He’d won. He’d won!

  He shut his eyes, the better to appreciate the sound of hands clapping, and the cheers.

  Then, opening them, he met a cold and hostile glare from Astrid. And one from Kirsty. And one from Talilah.

  There was everybody else, cheering and applauding madly. And there were three pairs of witch eyes, glowering at him balefully.

  He’d let them down horribly. It was almost as if he’d cheated to win the race. And since all three had dropped out one after another, expecting that he would as well, he had in a way won it unfairly. If everyone had run properly, Kirsty would almost certainly have won.

  The victorious smile on Bill’s face faded. He felt small and selfish and ungenerous. He felt ashamed.

  But while Bill was standing, picking miserably at the embroidered roses on his pink frock, feeling quite rotten and wishing that everybody would stop cheering, Paul was still bravely pressing round the last bit of the circuit in his funny loping way. And he looked happy enough. He had a huge smile on his face. In fact, he looked positively radiant.

  He threw himself across the finishing line, and lay like a tortoise on its back, beaming up at the sky.

  ‘Second!’ he yelled in triumph. ‘I came second! Second!’

  Everyone was cheering and clapping for Paul now.

  Bill joined in, louder than anybody else.

  ‘Hurray for Paul!’ he yelled. ‘Second!’

  And he reached down to help Paul up.

  Paul was a bit unsteady on his feet after the run. Whether it was excitement or exhaustion, Bill didn’t know. But Mrs Collins took one brief look at Paul’s thin, trembling legs, and said:

  ‘That’s it! That was the very last race! Well done, everybody!’

  Happily they all trooped back towards the classroom. Astrid and Talilah came up on either side of Paul just in time to hear him confessing excitedly:

  ‘I’ve never come second in a race before. Never!’

  Kirsty came up behind Bill, and drew him quietly to one side.

  ‘You just weren’t listening, were you?’ she scolded. ‘Lying there on your back staring at clouds, away with the fairies. You were supposed to pretend to get a stitch!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Bill.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Kirsty said. ‘In fact it was probably all for the best. If he’d come first, Paul might have guessed.’

  She turned to face Bill.

  ‘It’s just –’ Now, tipping her head to one side, she looked him very closely in the eye. ‘It’s just –’

  ‘What?’

  Kirsty shook her head, sighing.

  ‘It’s just that somehow you seem different today. I can’t think what it is about you that’s odd. But you’re not you.’

  She turned to go.

  Bill reached out to try to stop her.

  ‘But who am I?’ he asked her desperately. ‘Who am I?’

  But Kirsty, the fastest runner in the class, had sped away.

  7

  Happy ending

  Maybe the day had been more tiring than he realised. Maybe the school work was harder than usual. Bill wasn’t sure. All he knew was, he’d had enough. He wanted to go home. It had been the most horrible of days, and he’d be glad to have it over.

  The clock hands seemed to crawl. Each time he looked up, they had scarcely moved. The afternoon seemed endless – endless.

  And then, at last, the bell rang. And after the usual shouting and clattering and tidying of chairs, everyone made for the door.

  As Bill went past her, Mrs Collins stretched out a hand to hold him back for just a moment.

  ‘You’re still not looking quite right to me,’ she said. ‘I can’t work out what it is. But let’s hope that you’re your old self tomorrow!’

  ‘Yes,’ Bill agreed with her fervently. ‘Let’s hope!’

  He had his doubts, though. And it was a dispirited Bill Simpson who trailed down the school drive, dragging his feet. At the gates, Paul was jumping up and down beside his baby sister’s pushchair, excitedly telling his mother about the race. They smiled and waved, but Bill pretended not to see.

  He was, it has to be admitted, in the worst mood. He felt angry and bitter and resentful. And he was so sick of the silly pink frock that he would have liked the ground to open up and swallow him.

  But no such luck. In fact, worse was to come, it seemed. For there at the corner, nesting on one of the dustbins, was Mean Malcolm, waiting for his gang.

  Mean Malcolm saw him coming, and whistled.

  Bill looked a sight. He knew it. The frock was a rumpled mess, with grubby fingerprints all
round the hem, a huge, brown football-shaped smudge on the front, paint smears down the folds, rips in each side where he had hunted in vain for pockets, a great criss-cross footprint where Rohan kicked him, and grass stains down the back – the sort of grass stains that never come out.

  The frock was a disaster.

  And that is probably why, when Mean Malcolm whistled at Bill Simpson again, he took it so very badly.

  He stopped and glowered at Mean Malcolm.

  ‘Whistling at me?’

  Mean Malcolm looked astonished to find this pink apparition glaring at him with such menace. He shifted uneasily on the lid of his dustbin.

  ‘Because,’ continued Bill savagely, ‘I am not a dog! I am –’

  He hesitated a moment, not knowing quite how to finish, then yelled triumphantly:

  ‘I am a person!’

  And charging at Mean Malcolm with all the pent-up fury of the most horrible and frustrating day in his life, he flung him backwards off the dustbin lid, into a pile of spilled rubbish.

  ‘There!’ he yelled. ‘That will teach you! Whistle at dogs in future – not at people!’

  And he strode off towards home, a little more cheerful, leaving Mean Malcolm desperately trying to brush the carrot peelings and tea leaves off his purple studded jacket before his gang came round the corner and saw him.

  When Bill Simpson walked in the front door of his house, his mother was just coming in through the back door.

  They met in the hall.

  Mrs Simpson stopped in her tracks. She stared at Bill in absolute horror.

  ‘Look at you!’ she declared. ‘Look at you! What a mess! Fingerprints! Smudges! Paint smears! Rips! Footprints! Turn around!’

  Obediently, Bill spun round. He heard his mother gasp.

  ‘Grass stains!’ she shrieked. ‘The kind that never come out!’

  Bill shrugged. It wasn’t his fault, after all. He never asked to wear the silly frock.

  Bill’s mother sighed.

  ‘You’d better take it off at once,’ she said, unzipping the back and starting to undo the fiddly shell buttons. ‘This is the last time I ever send you to school in a frock!’

  She peeled the offending dress up over his head and gave him a little push towards the stairs.

  Bill needed no prompting. He ran up to his bedroom and pulled on a pair of jeans and a shirt.

  Then he took the tiniest sideways peep in his mirror.

  And then another slightly longer peep.

  And then a good long stare.

  He was a boy! Some people might have said that he could have done with a bit of a haircut . . . But he was definitely a boy.

  Never in his whole life had Bill felt such relief.

  Bella the cat came up and rubbed her soft furry body around his ankles in the usual way. She didn’t seem to notice any difference.

  Bill picked her up and buried his face in her fur.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he whispered to her delightedly. It’s over. It’s over. It doesn’t matter if it was a dream, or not. Whatever it was, it’s all over.’

  She purred contentedly in his arms. He held her tight.

  ‘And Mum says,’ he repeated firmly to himself and Bella, ‘that is the last time I ever go to school in a frock!’

  And it was.

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