Free Little Darlings by Jacqueline Wilson Page B

love whirling around and leaping about, and so long as I can’t see myself I can pretend I’m in a sticky-out white dress with pink ballet shoes on my feet. I do a figure-of-eight around the pool, a wafting float through the long grass, and then start a serious wood-nymph ballet in and out of the trees. I’m getting seriously out of breath now, so I slow down and sweep a deep curtsy to my imaginary audience while they clap and cheer and throw flowers at me.
    I can hear clapping!
Real
clapping, muted butunmistakable. I look up and there’s a face at the top of the wall, elbows, two clapping hands. I feel myself blushing all over. I must look such a
fool
. Who is it? A girl, not very old, only about my age. A thin dark girl with her hair pulled back in a ponytail.
    Do I know her? She looks sort of familiar. She’s not one of the girls at school, she’s not any of the girls who used to come round to play, she’s . . . She’s the girl from last night at the premiere, the girl who said I was lucky!
    What is she doing
here
? And how did she get up the wall? It’s a good six feet high. I stand dithering, still brick-red, not knowing what to do. Maybe I should run right back into the house. Perhaps I should find John – he’s meant to be our security guy. I should tell him there’s a girl climbing the wall.
    â€˜Hello,’ she says tentatively.
    â€˜Hello,’ I say, as if it’s the most normal thing in the world for us to meet like this.
    â€˜I liked your dancing,’ she says.
    My heart thumps but she doesn’t seem to be teasing me.
    â€˜I must have looked a right idiot,’ I mumble.
    I realize I
still
look incredibly stupid in my pink teddy-bear pyjamas and John’s old fleece. Shelooks so effortlessly cool in her black T-shirt. She’s still got her little black mittens on. Her mum was dressed identically.
    â€˜Where’s your mum?’ I ask.
    â€˜Oh, she’s here, but she’s asleep just now.’
    â€˜What do you mean, here?’
    She nods to her side of the wall. ‘Here!’
    â€˜What, your mum’s sleeping on the
pavement
?’
    â€˜Yep.’
    â€˜Is she all right?’
    â€˜I think so.’ She peers down and nearly slips. ‘Whoops! Hang on a minute.’ She pulls hard, wriggles a lot, and then somehow gets one foot up on the wall too.
    â€˜Oh, careful, you’ll fall!’
    â€˜No, no, wait a minute.’ She levers her foot further across, wriggles a bit more, gets her leg right up – and then suddenly there she is, sitting triumphantly side-saddle on top of the wall.
    â€˜How did you
do
that? How did you get right
up
it?’
    â€˜I’m good at climbing. And there’s the creeper-thingy so I hung onto that. I could jump right down into your garden, if that’s OK with you?’
    â€˜Well. . .’
    â€˜I’d come through the gate, but it’s all locked up and it’s one of them ones with a security code, isn’t it?’
    â€˜Yes, I think so.’
    â€˜So how do your friends nip round to see if you want to play out?’
    â€˜They don’t. I suppose their mum and my mum might fix it up first, on the phone,’ I say uncomfortably, not wanting to let on that I don’t
have
any friends just at the moment.
    â€˜Well,
I’ve
come round on the off-chance, haven’t I? Can I come in?’
    I know I shouldn’t let her. Mum would go bananas. She’s always going on to Dad that we should have more security. She tried to get the wall built even higher, with jagged glass at the top, but the other Robin Hill residents objected, saying it wouldn’t be in keeping with the rest of the estate. Mum was furious, saying they were all a load of nosy interfering snobs, and they simply didn’t understand our security problems because they just had boring old managing directors for their husbands, not world-famous rock stars.