Easy Peasy Read Online Free PDF Page B

behind, speaking to Hazel not Bridget, but Bridget would turn, eyes narrowed, gum snapping between her teeth. ‘But honey,’ she’d say, ‘those fifteen months count .’
    I didn’t care anyway, I didn’t want to walk with them. Bridget was allowed to wear shoes that were almost high-heeled and made her wiggle when she walked so that I wanted to kick her up the bum. She and Hazel would link arms and walk in step and, just before they reached the school gates, Bridget would spit her gum into someone’s hedge.
    My best friend, Elaine, lived in the other direction. Hardly any other children lived our way. Most families with children lived on the new estate the other side of the village. Our house was big and dark. Mummy hated it. She longed for a bright new house. ‘Where we can inscribe our own personalities on the pristine walls,’ she said, ‘instead of battling against the dust of ages. A sort of architectural tabula rasa,’ she added, and Daddy flapped his paper and belched in the way he did when most irritated.
    Nobody lived our way, on the gloomy outskirts, separated from the village by a couple of flat, windy fields, nobody except old people. One of the houses was actually an old people’s home and some were divided up into flats. Nobody I knew lived our way – until Puddle-duck arrived.
    He used to appear at the end of the path that led up the side of our house to his, just as Hazel and I came out of our door every morning. I think he must have been bobbing down behind the fence, waiting, for whether we were late or early he would always step out smiling at me in a way that made my heart clench. A pleading smile. Just because I’d fetched him an Aertex shirt to cover up his dog’s belly, he liked me. Hazel would ignore him, sweeping past as if he was nothing, her straight blonde hair swinging below her ears. I would smile back sometimes, but hurry past, leaving him behind.
    When we met Bridget at the other side of the fields, I was supposed to drop back, but if I dropped back too much, Puddle-duck caught up with me. I couldn’t stand it. ‘Oh, it’s lover boy,’ Bridget would shout. ‘Going steady, Grizzle?’ My face would go tight and hot. At least Puddle-duck was deaf, that was a blessing. It was difficult walking far enough behind them and far enough in front of Puddle-duck. But I couldn’t walk with him. When he said hello he sounded like a seal. If he was behind me I couldn’t see him so my hardness couldn’t be chipped away by the sad sight of him. Only sometimes he was close enough for me to hear the slap, slap, slap of his big feet in their plimsolls – he always wore the sort of plimsolls with stretchy elastic fronts – and sometimes I could hear him breathing too, he breathed so loudly because he couldn’t hear I suppose, incorporating little squeaks and grunts.
    Then, one morning over breakfast, Hazel mentioned Puddle-duck.
    â€˜Who?’ Mummy asked.
    â€˜The boy who lives in one of the flats at the back,’ Hazel said.
    Mummy picked Huwie’s spoon up from the floor and sat down, intrigued. ‘The little fellow who stares out of the window?’ Huwie, sitting in his high-chair, threw his spoon back on to the floor and jammed a Marmite soldier into his mouth with a pudgy fist. I remember that, because suddenly I became aware that Puddle-duck had been a baby once, not as sweet and fat as Huw I’m sure, but still … a baby boy. I felt a sort of surge of compassion for him. What if everyone hated Huw when he was older like everyone hated Puddle-duck? Compassion I tried to swallow with my mouthful of egg.
    â€˜I’ve often wondered about him. Have you noticed him, Ralph?’
    â€˜Eh?’ Daddy emerged from his Daily Telegraph and took a bite of toast. It was smothered in marmalade that he made himself, the bits of peel as thick as caterpillars. I wouldn’t eat