I had a fight with Ruthy who stormed away with Caleb in tow, after I called him a flat-nosed rude. It was a Wilson rule that we weren’t allowed to swear, so we had made up our own cussing, and flat-nosed rude was right up there with the best of the real obscenities. Caleb deserved it. I had finished all my lollies and asked him nicely for one of his. When he refused, I asked him again in my very friendly voice and also reminded him that in the Bible there was a story that said if someone asked you for a shirt, you should give him your coat, or something like that, and so he was lucky he only had to give me one set of lolly teeth and not the whole bag. He said he was pretty sure that wasn’t a rule. He twisted the top of his white paper bag tight, as though that was the end of the matter, and put his sweets in the waistband of his shorts. So I pinched him. He told me I would be in ‘tremenjous’ trouble with Mum. I started laughing and called out to the other children that Caleb couldn’t say tremendous. Ruthy said that just because I was too lazy to learn new words didn’t mean Caleb couldn’t, and she put her arms around his shoulders and led him away

Those who saw a chance to be closer friends with Ruthy, which seemed to be everyone’s goal, followed her and Caleb to a clearing amongst the trees on the other side of the block. Only Teddy Edwards stayed with me.

Teddy Edwards was just a straight-up strange boy. He asked me to marry him most Saturdays. I explained to him over and over that I would never get married unless it was to a Knight of the Round Table, and there weren’t that many of them in Australia as far as I could tell. Teddy persisted. I didn’t understand why he kept choosing me, because I wasn’t particularly nice to him, although I did make up roles for him in my plays, whereas the others often left him out of games and activities because he was a bit weird and quite smelly.

After a while of huffy silent treatment from me, even Teddy gave up and joined the other kids. I hung around in the tree for a bit longer, pretending I didn’t care that everyone always liked Ruthy better, and talking loudly to a person I made up so the others would think I had a new friend, but eventually I dropped to the ground, softened by old olives and leaf litter, and decided to visit Mrs Johnson and Sixpence.

I wanted a dog more than anything in the world. And not a dog I had to share with Ruthy and Caleb, but a dog that loved me alone and belonged to me and slept on my bed and walked with me to school and then waited for me to come home. I would call her Raspberry, because that was a good name for a dog, whereas Fido and Rusty and Max had no imagination to them. But we were not allowed to have any pets. Mum said it was because of Caleb’s asthma, but I think it was because she didn’t like any kind of dirt, and if you have dogs, well, you have dirt too.