accident too.
So Mr. Gilligan, our geography teacher, left me, Uma, and the rest of our set on the corner of Scalegate Drive at 10:30 AM and told us to see him back in Room 43 by 12 PM with a flow chart of the mid-morning traffic. I thought everyone was going to just skive off, but it turned out everyone else in the group just followed the instructions except for me and Uma, who were rounded up outside Woolworths at 2 PM in Ilford Mall by those truancy control weirdos from the town council.
God — they are SO crafty. They change the people who work there all the time so you never get to know their faces.
Saying that, we’d probably have missed them if Uma hadn’t gone right up — like a proper fool — and hassled the truancy bloke to go in Thresher’s and buy her ten Marlboro Lights. The bloke just laughed in her face then flashed his badge and said, “Bad luck, you’re going back to school NOW.” Then another woman who looked like an owl appeared and ordered us to get in the back of her Volvo, which smelled of egg sandwiches, and they drove us back to Mayflower Academy, playing some music on the CD player by a band called The Proclaimers which sounded like two Scottish men straining on the toilet. BRILLIANT.
Mr. Bamblebury turned up at 2:30 PM . Me and Uma both trudged into his office. He said, “Nice holiday in the Dominican, Uma?” and Uma just grunted and rolled her eyes at him. Then Mr. Bamblebury said, “So can either of you explain what you were doing wandering about Ilford Shopping Mall when you were supposed to be doing a traffic survey?” So I thought for a bit and this is what came out.
“Well, Mr. Bamblebury, what it was,” I said, “we were actually just on our way BACK through the mall to school when the truancy bods got us. ’Cos we’d been returning a lost cat to a woman.”
“A cat?” said Mr. Bamblebury.
“Yeah, a cat,” I said. “We knew it was lost when we saw it sniffing some trash bins on Scalegate Drive so we checked its collar and it lived in one of those streets behind the mall. Didn’t it, Uma?”
“Yeah, a cat,” said Uma, doing that scary stare at Mr. B that she does when she’s in trouble, like she doesn’t care.
“An orange one with white paws and a silver collar,” I said. “And a bell.”
“A bell,” said Mr. Bamblebury.
“Yeah, a bell,” I said, wishing I could shut up. “And a little barrel on the collar with a rolled-up message inside from the owner which said:
Hello, this cat belongs to a little old lady in a house behind Ilford Shopping Mall and this cat is my only friend in the world now that my husband Arthur has passed on and my eyesight is not what it ought to be. So if you find this cat please bring him home to me and I will make you a cup of tea and give you a bit of my homemade shortbread
. . . Then under that she’d written her address.”
“Really? All that on one little scrap of paper?” said Mr. Bamblebury. “She must have had very small handwriting for an old lady with poor eyesight.”
“I thought that myself, Mr. Bamblebury,” I said. “Didn’t I say that, Uma?”
“Yeah, she said that,” said Uma.
There was a long silence.
“Good shortbread, was it?” said Mr. Bamblebury.
“It was a bit soggy,” I said.
Mr. Bamblebury looked at us both, then he drummed his fingers on his notepad for a bit. For a second I thought he believed me about the cat, even though Uma was totally smirking now so it obviously wasn’t true.
Then Mr. Bamblebury said, “Are you two girls ABSOLUTELY DETERMINED to leave this school without a single GCSE between you?”
Uma just sighed. I shook my head.
“Because unless you buck your ideas up you most certainly will. Then you’ll be hanging around that mall all day long FOREVER.”
After he said “forever” he left a really long pause.
He made “forever” sound well scary, like it was a prison sentence. Uma just shrugged, then I did too, ’cos I didn’t want Uma to think I was
So Mr. Gilligan, our geography teacher, left me, Uma, and the rest of our set on the corner of Scalegate Drive at 10:30 AM and told us to see him back in Room 43 by 12 PM with a flow chart of the mid-morning traffic. I thought everyone was going to just skive off, but it turned out everyone else in the group just followed the instructions except for me and Uma, who were rounded up outside Woolworths at 2 PM in Ilford Mall by those truancy control weirdos from the town council.
God — they are SO crafty. They change the people who work there all the time so you never get to know their faces.
Saying that, we’d probably have missed them if Uma hadn’t gone right up — like a proper fool — and hassled the truancy bloke to go in Thresher’s and buy her ten Marlboro Lights. The bloke just laughed in her face then flashed his badge and said, “Bad luck, you’re going back to school NOW.” Then another woman who looked like an owl appeared and ordered us to get in the back of her Volvo, which smelled of egg sandwiches, and they drove us back to Mayflower Academy, playing some music on the CD player by a band called The Proclaimers which sounded like two Scottish men straining on the toilet. BRILLIANT.
Mr. Bamblebury turned up at 2:30 PM . Me and Uma both trudged into his office. He said, “Nice holiday in the Dominican, Uma?” and Uma just grunted and rolled her eyes at him. Then Mr. Bamblebury said, “So can either of you explain what you were doing wandering about Ilford Shopping Mall when you were supposed to be doing a traffic survey?” So I thought for a bit and this is what came out.
“Well, Mr. Bamblebury, what it was,” I said, “we were actually just on our way BACK through the mall to school when the truancy bods got us. ’Cos we’d been returning a lost cat to a woman.”
“A cat?” said Mr. Bamblebury.
“Yeah, a cat,” I said. “We knew it was lost when we saw it sniffing some trash bins on Scalegate Drive so we checked its collar and it lived in one of those streets behind the mall. Didn’t it, Uma?”
“Yeah, a cat,” said Uma, doing that scary stare at Mr. B that she does when she’s in trouble, like she doesn’t care.
“An orange one with white paws and a silver collar,” I said. “And a bell.”
“A bell,” said Mr. Bamblebury.
“Yeah, a bell,” I said, wishing I could shut up. “And a little barrel on the collar with a rolled-up message inside from the owner which said:
Hello, this cat belongs to a little old lady in a house behind Ilford Shopping Mall and this cat is my only friend in the world now that my husband Arthur has passed on and my eyesight is not what it ought to be. So if you find this cat please bring him home to me and I will make you a cup of tea and give you a bit of my homemade shortbread
. . . Then under that she’d written her address.”
“Really? All that on one little scrap of paper?” said Mr. Bamblebury. “She must have had very small handwriting for an old lady with poor eyesight.”
“I thought that myself, Mr. Bamblebury,” I said. “Didn’t I say that, Uma?”
“Yeah, she said that,” said Uma.
There was a long silence.
“Good shortbread, was it?” said Mr. Bamblebury.
“It was a bit soggy,” I said.
Mr. Bamblebury looked at us both, then he drummed his fingers on his notepad for a bit. For a second I thought he believed me about the cat, even though Uma was totally smirking now so it obviously wasn’t true.
Then Mr. Bamblebury said, “Are you two girls ABSOLUTELY DETERMINED to leave this school without a single GCSE between you?”
Uma just sighed. I shook my head.
“Because unless you buck your ideas up you most certainly will. Then you’ll be hanging around that mall all day long FOREVER.”
After he said “forever” he left a really long pause.
He made “forever” sound well scary, like it was a prison sentence. Uma just shrugged, then I did too, ’cos I didn’t want Uma to think I was
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