Right, that did it!

“You beast, you animal in trousers!”

Cain, er, I mean Jo, yelled practically nose to nose with me. “If you don’t like the animals, don’t come into the woods and get hailstones on your nose!!”

I grabbed her round the head. And I was shouting at her. “I’m not a shrew, I’m a human being!!!”

I literally went a bit mad. Even Jo looked frightened. Thankfully Monty rang a bell for time-out. Sidone and Monty were very excited by our performances. Sidone said, “Truly, truly wonderful, girls. The Bard would’ve been proud of you. Now then, after all that fighting let’s all make friends as lovers do.”

Jo and I were very red. Jo said, “Erm, I don’t really know where that came from, Lullah. I think I’ve got cabin fever. I’m sorry.”

I said, “Well, I’m sorry for, you know, squashing your head and everything.” And we shook hands.

Sidone said, “Right, my girls, I want you to come up with a four-minute piece to be performed in next Friday’s lunchtime performance slot. These pieces will make up a third of your marks for the term. Choose different partners. Dig deep, darlings, and come to the banquet with the fruits of your psyches!”

Fruits of our psyches?

As we walked out to lunch, Vaisey came up to me and said shyly, “Lullah, you know this performance assessment piece . . . well, would you do it with me? I’d really like us to do something together, you know, because, well, the clown thing was good, wasn’t it?”

Oh, this was nice, people wanting to work with me.

Vaisey said, “Let’s go for a little walk on our own and talk about everything.”

We got togged up and went out. Jo had gone off to the potting shed and Flossie was in the music studio, so it was just us.

Vaisey said, “Jo has made a shrine to Phil in the potting shed. She eats her biscuits in there and looks up at the boy-shaped hole in the roof.”

I said, “Does she offer him a biscuit?”

Vaisey said, “No, but she sometimes tells him about her day.”

As we got into the woods, Vaisey burst out, “Tallulah, something happened that was so, so nice. Well, after supps last night, I went out to get fir cones for my Taming of the Shrew collage and guess what, Jack was in the woods!!!”

She was beside herself with excitement.

“He said he came . . . in the hope that he might see me!! He jogged over to the woods and jogged about for ages and he said he felt my presence. . . . And there I was!!”

Ahhhh.

“What happened?”

Vaisey blushed. “Well, he told me about some new tunes he’s been practicing and then he told me that The Jones are coming to our music studio on Monday to rehearse for their gig.”

I said, “Oh.”

Vaisey carried on. “Only nobody must know because of, you know, the trouble there’s been. Jack’s got special permission from Hoppy to be there. It’s a big secret. So we’re sworn to secrecy, aren’t we? Flossie and Jo have already promised.”