Free The Cast-Off Kids by Trisha Merry Page B

the knots in the wood and started poking them out to look through. So it was all a lot of fuss and expense for nothing.
    One morning, we decided to tidy up the orchard and have a bonfire but next door had their washing on the line, so I went round to see her.
    ‘I’ve just come to let you know that we’re going to light a bonfire shortly, so you might want to take your washing in.’
    ‘It’s immaterial to us,’ she said in her snootiest voice, ‘
what
you do in your garden.’
    ‘Well, we could have lit it, but I thought it was only fair to come and let you know, so that your nice clean washing doesn’t get covered in sooty smuts.’
    She gave me a look. Then, without saying another word, she shut the door in my face. I couldn’t believe it. As I walked back . . . I knew it was petty, but I thought
sod you
, and I
blew a raspberry in the direction of her house. That made me feel better!
    I went back to our garden and, as I struck the match, I caught sight of her closing an upstairs window and staring daggers at me. I lit the kindling and watched it go, sending black smoke up
from a couple of tattered tyres in the middle. I was glad that she rushed out and took her washing in, before the smuts blew over that way.
    But what I didn’t realise was that, while I’d popped next door, Paul had picked up a plastic ride-on tractor and somehow thrown it up onto the top of the bonfire heap. I didn’t
notice it until he shouted, pointing at it, with the flames curling up between its wheels.
    ‘Tractor’s gone! My tractor’s gone!’
    ‘Too late to rescue it now,’ I told him. ‘Why did you throw it up there?’
    ‘King of the Castle!’ he shouted out.
    Isn’t it funny how children’s minds work – doing things on impulse with a real purpose in their minds, but without any idea that there might be consequences.
    It wasn’t so funny how Gilroy’s mind worked, except on this one occasion. I just caught sight of him doing a moony to the lady next door as she stared out of her window at us. She
raised her hands in horror, then immediately drew the curtains across from both sides. Gilroy grinned from ear to ear . . . and, turning away from him to hide it, so did I.
    As if the kids weren’t rowdy enough, we had all sorts of animals too when we were at Sonnington. We had dog kennels and rabbit hutches spaced out between the trees. The
dogs occasionally barked during the day, especially when the children were playing with them, and once or twice I heard the cats wail in the night. But I suppose the kids made the most
commotion.
    Our relationship with our neighbours was on a downward slope and they found fault with everything. The funniest complaint was the day she came round and Mike answered the door. I’m glad it
was him and not me.
    ‘Hello,’ he greeted her cheerily. ‘What can I do for—’
    ‘This noise is going too far,’ she interrupted him. ‘Could you please stop your children screaming in the orchard?’
    ‘Well, I’ll try. But they’re just happy kids, using up their energy and having fun.’
    ‘That’s not fun,’ she said. ‘They’re doing it on purpose to annoy us.’
    ‘Oh, I don’t think so . . .’
    ‘Well, I am asking you to stop them,’ she insisted. ‘We’ve got a pair of doves that are trying to mate, and your children are disturbing them.’
    ‘Well’ replied Mike. ‘I find that surprising. It’s never bothered us!’
    Ronnie, Chrissy and Sheena were old-timers at school, and AJ had settled in well.
    ‘It’s much better than my old school,’ he announced one day. ‘We can have breaktime snacks at this school.’ AJ hadn’t forgotten what hunger felt like, so food
was always the most important thing for him. We still had the occasional problem of petty thefts in school, and I was always being called in to help sort it out, with all my brood in tow.
    It happened at home too, but usually only minor things that we managed to restore to their owners quite easily.