Winner Takes All Read Online Free PDF Page A

least.
    It was just because it was this new, weirdo game. Grand Theft Auto, or Gran Turismo, or even Sonic the bleedin’ Hedgehog, and the Doctor wouldn’t have stood a chance. But this game, with its jerky viewpoint and freaky graphics – it took time to get used to. Mickey hadn’t played it nearly enough yet. Taking another onion, Mickey sauntered back into the other room and switched the games console back on. He was going to master this thing, and then next time the Doctor turned up on his doorstep he’d challenge him to a game – just a little game, Doctor, not scared I’ll beat you, are you, Doctor? – and then he’d show the time-travelling show-off . . .
    But the console was playing up. There were all these lights flashing and it was making this high-pitched sound, and there was no picture on the screen at all.
    And then Mickey’s front door crashed open.
    For a second, when he saw Percy Porcupine standing in the doorway, Mickey had the mad idea that they knew his console had gone wrong and had sent someone round to sort it. But he knew that was stupid. That wasn’t how things worked. And the bloke – or girl, who knew which was inside the costume? – hadn’t even knocked on the door.
    And then, because he remembered the sort of things that happened when the Doctor was about, he suddenly realised that this wasn’t a bloke – or a girl – in a costume after all. So when the porcupine pointed a gun at him, he really wasn’t surprised at all.

FOUR
    R obert had always suspected that his mum wasn’t his real mum. And he knew, knew with a passionate certainty, that deep inside he was different. Special. Not like other boys.
    Then one day, the proof had come. The letter. The wonderful, glorious letter. ‘Dear Mr Watson, We beg to inform you that you are really a wizard. We will expect you at Dozbin’s Magical College at the beginning of next term.’
    And his mum had had to admit that he wasn’t really her son. His parents had been famous sorcerers, possibly the most brilliant sorcerers there had ever been, but they’d been killed by an evil wizard. It was suspected that the evil wizard had been trying to kill Robert, because he was going to be the most powerful wizard that had ever lived. So Robert had been smuggled away as a baby, and given to the most pathetic, feeble, stupid, rubbishy woman they could find, so no one would suspect.
    But now the evil wizard was threatening to take over the world, and Robert had to go to Magical College to learn spells so he could defeat him once and for all, and all the kids who had ever teased Robert would look at him in awe and the girls would love him . . .
    He had to pack his suitcase to go to Magical College.
    He was packing his suitcase to go to Magical College.
    Not to go on holiday, he didn’t want to go on holiday, ‘a holiday in the sun, Bobbles, oh, we’ll have a wonderful time,’ but it wasn’t the sun part or the holiday part that bothered him, it was the Mum part. He could be quite happy lying on a beach, sunglasses hopefully hiding the fact that he was watching the girls in their bikinis – dreaming that any minute now they’d look back at him, and it wouldn’t be with pity or disdain for the skinny kid with pale skin and spots, it’d be with understanding as they divined that his soul was the twin of theirs, and it made them want him, need him, be desperate for him . . .
    But he had his mum with him.
    His mum who called him ‘Bobbles’, even in front of his friends, even in front of girls. His mum, who’d suddenly start rubbing sun-tan lotion on his back while he was chilling on the sand, like he was six years old.
    Who read out things from her horrible women’s magazines really loudly, so everyone could hear and know that she liked really rubbish things.
    Who wore rubbish clothes and rubbish shoes and