T hey’re catching up with me.
I’m trying to run faster but my heart is banging so hard it hurts, and I can’t get my breath. And now Lucy’s shouting at me to stop or else. She always makes her voice go deeper when she wants to really scare me.
Got to run faster!
The back of my leg stings where one of Lucy’s stones just hit me. I can hear her laughing with her big friend, Sophie, that she’s going to trip me up and send me flying, then they’re going to pull my hair and pinch my arms until I beg them to stop.
Joanna should have been at the school gates. She’s my cousin and she’s twelve and goes to big school, and sometimes Mum asks her to bring me home. But I waited and Joanna didn’t come so I started walking home myself. Mum will be cross if I tell her Joanna wasn’t there, so I’m not going to tell her. I don’t want Joanna to get into trouble.
Nearly home now!
If Mum’s at the kitchen window, peeling the potatoes for dinner or doing the dishes, Lucy and Sophie will slow down and act like they haven’t even noticed me. I’ll tell Mum that Joanna left me at the end of our street because she’s going to her friend Amy’s house for tea. Then Mum won’t be cross with her.
But Mum’s not at the window today and I feel sick. What if she’s got the hoover on and doesn’t hear me ringing the doorbell?
If I dodge round the corner and take the short cut to the back of my house, I might get there before they catch me. They’d never dare come after me into the garden. I’ll be safe there. I can see my treehouse now, sitting high above the fence. A few more steps and I’ll be through the garden gate and safe.
But the back gate always sticks. Please let it open for me today.
I close my eyes and push myself against it.
Yes!
I run in and slam the gate shut behind me.
Made it!
The ladder up to my treehouse is a little bit wobbly and scary sometimes but Dad says it’s perfectly safe. He knows because he made the treehouse for me himself and he’s really clever at stuff like that. He does woodwork when he has time off from selling things to farm people in our shop at the bottom of the garden.
I’m so hot. As I climb up into the sky, the whole treehouse seems to sway, the bright green summer leaves sort of shivering as I move.
I’m crouched down on the wooden floorboards now, hidden among the branches, breathing in the lovely cool leafy smells coming in through the slightly open window. I can tell it’s been raining because the woody scent seems much sharper and tickles my nose. Dad built the treehouse for me when I was just six. That’s a whole year ago now. I’ll stay here for a bit so my face isn’t red and sweaty when Mum sees me – otherwise she might guess that something bad has happened.
Slowly, I stand up and peep through the big square window, getting ready to duck down if Lucy and Sophie are there. But they’re not.
They must have gone!
My eyes are suddenly wet with tears. Lucy Slater is in my class at school and she hates me. She told everyone I smelled like a dustbin and all her friends laughed, so now they call me Stinker Wilson instead of Twilight Wilson, which is my real name.
I feel better now, although my heart is still beating fast and my legs feel funny, like they probably won’t work properly if I try to climb back down the ladder. I’ll just stay here a bit longer to make sure they’ve really gone. I could put the kettle on and have a pretend tea party for my dolls. Mum always says a cuppa makes things better.
If Lucy Slater knew I had my dolls up here, she’d think it was really funny and she’d tell everyone in my class. Like the time she told one of her fibs and said I’d had a wee in my pants in the middle of the shopping centre. It wasn’t true, but it made my face really hot when everyone pointed at me and laughed.
I know I’m too old, really, to play with dolls. But I like them. They make me remember the time when I didn’t have to go to school and see Lucy Slater. I could just play in my treehouse instead. I don’t know why Lucy hates me. I gave her sweets once, but she just made a face and said they looked horrible. Then she threw them over the school wall and ran off with Sophie.
I love my dolls because they never laugh at me or say they’re going to get me on the way home from school. We just sit here quietly and I pour tea into their cups (it’s just water, really) and I tell them what I’ve been doing at school that day. I don’t tell them about the nasty things because that would make them very sad.
Today, I tell them Mum wants me to make the cake for Dad’s birthday on Sunday. She’s going to let me mix the icing and decorate it and everything!
I’m so lucky to have my treehouse. I think maybe the reason Lucy Slater is angry with me is because her dad didn’t make her a treehouse like mine …
I’m about to spread snowy white icing onto the perfect fairy cake, before adorning it with a sugary, melt-in-the-mouth pink rose, when a rail official walks into the carriage.
‘All tickets, please.’
Pulled from my daydream, I sit up and start scrabbling through my belongings, panicking that I might have lost my ticket. If only I could be more practical and less prone to disappearing into my imagination.
As an only child, I tended to escape into a comforting fantasy world in times of stress, and now – at thirty-two – I’m still a bit of a dreamer, although the days of being bullied at school are thankfully long behind me.
Something