“My mum picked me up after school and we went to the new ice-cream parlour in town with my little brother,” I said. As soon as the words left my lips, I regretted it. What was I doing?!

“Oh, how lovely!” said Ellie. “I’ve heard it’s really nice there. What flavour ice cream did you have?” She sounded so interested, I had to carry on.

“I had a chocolate sundae,” I said. “With an extra flake and toffee sauce.” I had never been to the ice-cream parlour before, but as I spoke I could almost picture us there, sitting in one of the booths with the bright red padded seats.

“Henry had a strawberry sundae and it was so tall he had to kneel on his seat to eat it!” I said. I imagined me and Henry laughing and sharing a scoop of each other’s ice creams.

“That sounds like a lot of fun,” said Ellie. “Did you do anything else?”

I should have stopped right there, but it was too tempting to keep going. I was enjoying saying that I’d actually done something for once, even if it wasn’t true.

“After the ice creams, we met up with my dad and we all went ten-pin bowling,” I said. “Henry is only two, so he just watched and had a go at pushing the ball down the ramp now and then.”

This part of my story was true, but it had happened about ten months ago. Mum had won a family ticket to go bowling in a raffle in the office where she worked. I didn’t think there was any harm in adding the story in now.

“Great!” said Ellie. “I love ten-pin bowling.”

I grinned. “Me too!” I said. “And after that we went to the American diner and got hamburgers.”

Ellie was quiet for a moment.

“Wow, that’s a lot of things,” she said. “Was it someone’s birthday?”

I bit my bottom lip. She was right. It was a lot of things to do on a regular Monday afternoon. I’d definitely overdone it.

“No,” I said. “Dad got a pay rise at work and … um … he thought he’d treat us. We don’t normally have that much fun!” I did a little laugh.

“Well, it sounds like a wonderful evening,” said Ellie. The head of the robot turned and faced the front.

I swallowed. I felt awful for lying, but I also wanted Ellie to like me. My life was not interesting. If I didn’t make something up, then what would we have to talk about? Surely there wasn’t any harm in that?

Chapter 7

Chapter Seven