Maybe the right thing to do was to hug them back and then they would let me go.

But that made it worse.

Dibdobs started hugging more tightly and I think she might have been crying.

I got away at last by saying, “Bye then!!!”

I was only going three feet across the green. What if we went on a school trip?

The sign (a pig in dark glasses with a white stick) was creaking in the cold wind.

I remembered last sitting here.

On the wall next to the pub.

With Alex.

Dreamy Alex.

He’d looked at me and smiled his smile. It was the best moment of my life so far. We were so close. I wanted to say so much. I wanted my eyes to speak the words I couldn’t say. (Which actually might have been a bit of a surprise to both of us if they had done.)

So I had said to him, “My knees are too far up.”

Why?

Why would you say that?

And then he had wanted to look at my knees to see how far up they were, and the whole thing had gone wrong, leaving him thinking I was just a stupid little kid. With out-of-control legs.

Well, I will not be saying that sort of thing to him again.

In fact I’m going to make a “normal” list in my performance-art notebook.

Topics that a normal person would talk about.

Topics that are not knee-based.

Like theater.

Yes, yes, I will tell him about the plays I have seen.

Well, actually I haven’t seen any plays.

Books, then. Yes, books.

I could say, “That Dickens writes a lot, doesn’t he?”

Ruby came bursting out of the pub door.

“I saw you through the winder. Ullo ullo. It’s me!!! And Matilda!!!”

Matilda was barking and throwing herself at me, jumping up. Well, sort of. She was just thudding against my calves to be fair. Her bulldoggy face looks like she is doing a turned-down squashy smile all the time. Maybe she is.

Ruby was laughing and her pigtails were jiggling about like ears underneath her hat.

She was still yelling, “Ullo ullo!!!”

It was so nice to see her little freckly face and gappy teeth.

She was skipping around me and shouting, “She’s back, she’s back!!! Matilda, show Loobylullah how tha can die for England!”

Matilda stopped leaping and lay on her back with her stumpy bow legs in the air.

Ruby said, “Do your Irish dancing over her. She likes that. Go on. I’ll do the singing. ‘Hiddly diddly diddly. Hiddly diddly diddly.’”

As she was bobbing around she said, “You should see the owlets! Shall we go for a wander now? You’ll not believe it. They’ve got right fat. Come on, come on.”

As she went skipping off, I said, “Should you tell your dad where you’re going? Or … or … Alex?”

She shouted back, “He’s not in. He’s forming a heavy metal band in Ormskirk.”

What?