Chapter Six
“I’m coming with you to your football match,” she told Liam the next day.
He immediately looked suspicious. “What for?”
“What do you think? I’m going to make sure you hand that trophy straight over to me as soon as you’ve shown it to your friends. Here, I’ll carry your boots.”
Casually Abby picked up the boot bag, pretending it was light. She hefted her school rucksack onto her back.
“What do you need your rucksack for?” demanded Liam.
“To bring the trophy home in, dummy. I’m not risking getting mugged.” In fact, it held Liam’s real, unplastered boots. It had occurred to Abby that to expect him to play a football match with concrete boots would be unsporting. It was also likely to bring the wrath of Mum down on her.
Just to see his face when he pulled the two left boots out of his bag would be enough. She could barely stop herself from laughing.
Liam was still suspicious. “You’re not going to hang around, are you?”
“No chance.”
He stowed the trophy carefully in his kit bag. “Well, all right. Come on, then.”
On the way to the sports centre she chattered about school to put Liam at his ease. He was as twitchy as a cat in a kennel.
“Hallo Tom hallo Jack hallo Kamal!” she said airily to his friends when they arrived.
“What’s she doing here?” demanded another boy whom she did not know.
“I’m the bodyguard,” said Abby. “I mean the trophy guard.”
“She’s your weird kid sister, isn’t she?” said the boy. He laughed. There was something familiar about that laugh.
“Shut it, Bradley,” said Liam. He bent over his kit bag.
“Let’s see this amazing wonderful trophy then,” said Bradley, and Abby identified him. Maya had a brother called Bradley. This boy had Maya’s laugh.
She heard the laugh again when Liam took the trophy out and held it up. And she heard the other boys join in.
“That’s it, is it? That tin-pot thing?” Bradley grabbed the trophy off Liam. He tossed it in the air and caught it.
“Careful!” cried Abby.
Bradley looked at her as if she was made out of mud. Then he inspected the trophy, and laughed again.
“You played ping-pong doubles? And your partner was your weird kid sister?”
“Table tennis,” said Liam. He looked very tense.
“And I am not–” Abby paused. “I’m proud to be weird,” she said.
Bradley tossed the trophy back carelessly. Liam only just caught it.
“I’ve got sixteen football trophies back home,” Bradley said. “What a pity I haven’t got a ping pong junior doubles trophy with my little sister.” He said it in a stupid voice. He was taking the mickey.
And with a cold shock, as if a giant freezing wave had swamped her as she lay sunbathing, Abby was hit by a number of discoveries at once.
She realised that Bradley always took the mickey; that he was tormenting her brother; that Bradley’s sixteen trophies were why Liam had been so anxious to bring this one along; and that Liam was in trouble.
She glanced at the other boys. She had thought that they were Liam’s friends. But now they were smiling along with Bradley, if a touch uncertainly. Bradley was the boss. He was the top dog, and they weren’t about to interfere.
Abby knew all about top dogs. She could have told Liam he was wasting his time trying to impress Bradley. Nothing would ever impress a boy like Bradley. He had a built-in sneer, just like his sister.
“Ping pong,” Bradley said derisively with that sneer. “I thought it was a game for little kids. Weird little kids.”
The wave kept washing over Abby. Standing quite still, she let herself fill up with it: a huge, cold surge. She could feel the chilly tide rising higher and higher inside her. Her desire to show up Liam had been washed away entirely, and replaced by an icy resolution to show up his tormenter.
“So you can’t play ping-pong, then?” she said.
“What? Of course I can. I just wouldn’t bother.”
“I challenge you,” she said. “I challenge you to a game of ping-pong.”
“What?”
“I challenge you to a game of ping-pong!” Abby yelled. “Here. In the sports centre. Now.”
“What?”
“Is that all you can say? What? Do you take up my challenge?”
“You might as well,” put in Tom. “The other team’s not here yet. We’ve got some time to kill.”
Abby felt such immense gratitude that she dared not look at Tom. Now Bradley could not refuse without seeming to back down.
She swiftly picked up the boot bag and began to march towards the sports hall. She turned round and glared at Bradley. “Well, come on!”
And it was Tom who moved first, so that the others followed. They had to. Abby decided that when she was older she might marry Tom.
It was Tom who hired the bats and booked the table. She knew this table: it was a nice flat one, not gouged or cracked like the one in the garage.
Tom gave the bats to Abby. She offered them to Bradley.
“We can knock up for a bit if you like,” she said, because that was the correct thing to do.
“No.” Instead, Bradley served a few balls across the table. He was looking more confident now. And he had played before: that was obvious.
“But he hasn’t played me,” said Abby to herself.
“You can serve first,” she told him. “That gives you an advantage.”
He smiled at her. “You think I need an advantage?” It was not a nice smile.
“Go easy on her,” said Tom. “She’s only a kid.”
Abby decided that she might not marry Tom after all. She was not only a kid. She was not only anything. She was a crouching, fiendish tiger full of concentrated fury who was ready to wallop Bradley right through the back wall of the sports hall, smash, smash, smash.
And from the glower on his face, he felt exactly the same way.