They had Maths first on Tuesday mornings.  Cassie Gorman searched through the box to find an exercise card she hadn’t done yet.  She was hoping for an “Addition and Subtraction” card, but everyone else must have got to them first.  All that was left was “Division” and “Volume and Capacity.”  She flicked through them a second time, just in case there was a better card stuck to the back of one of the others, but didn’t find anything.

Well, anything was better than division.  She picked out one of the “Volume and Capacity” cards.  Cassie hadn’t known what those words meant at first, but now she knew the cards well enough to expect a bunch of questions where you had to estimate and weigh stuff.  (“Estimate” was another new word- Mrs Colley had taught them it a couple of weeks ago.  She’d said it didn’t mean the same thing as “guess,” but she hadn’t got round to telling them what the difference was.)  That was usually ok.  Most of the time, you had to put multilink pieces on the scales on the corner table and then write down what it said, and that meant that you got to walk around the classroom a bit instead of having to stay in your seat. 

Last year, when Cassie had been in Year One, their classroom had been a dim, cluttered kind of place where it was hard to find anything you needed.  This one, though, was all light green with big windows, and everything looked like it was where it was on purpose.  There were tables in the middle, where you sat, and tables going along the walls, where there were things you could use and displays that had to do with the class’s projects.  One of those- the one Cassie went past to get back to her table- had a plate with a slice of bread on it.  Mrs Colley had put it there on Monday- they were supposed to watch what happened to it as the days went by and it went stale and mouldy.  It wasn’t mouldy yet, though, which was why Cassie, without even really thinking about it, tore off a bit and put it in her mouth.  She was still rolling it about on her tongue when she sat down and opened her maths book.

*

Patrick’s actual last name was Skelton, but some of his friends had started calling him “Patrick Skeleton” at the start of Year One, and then everyone had joined in.  Jodie Mackenzie, who sat opposite him, said that that would come in handy when he was famous and on TV.  “You could wear a skeleton costume and do a skeleton dance every week,” she told him, “On my show.”

Jodie’s show was going to be called “The Nutter Club,” and she and the other presenters would dress up in peanut costumes and perform song and dance routines.  She’d had the idea when one of the other boys in their class had called her a “nutter” at break, so it made sense that she was making the “Patrick Skeleton” thing a part of it. 

“How about,” suggested Patrick, “we do a bit where we all go down a great big waterslide and land in a pool full of elephants?”

“Why elephants?” asked Jodie.

“Trained ones, like they have in circuses.  They can swim- I’ve seen them do it on TV.  They wouldn’t be scared of being in a pool.”

Jodie thought about this.  She had round glasses that made her eyes look enormous, and sometimes Patrick thought that, if she could make two spiky bits out of the sides of her hair, she’d look exactly like an owl.  “Would that be at the end of a song?  Or would we carry on singing as we went down the slide?”

“I think we’d carry on singing.  As long as we didn’t go underwater.”

There was a scream from the other side of the classroom.  Patrick and Jodie looked over and saw Lucy Osbourne, holding her hand back as if she’d burnt it.

Mrs Colley was there on the double.  “What’s wrong, Lucy?”

“Matt told me to close my eyes, and then he put my hand on that!”  Lucy pointed down at the folded thing on the table.  Patrick was pretty sure it was the magazine Matt Hughes had been bringing in all week, the one about bugs.  Some of the pictures in it weren’t things Patrick would have wanted to touch, either, even if they were just on paper.

“Is that it?” asked Mrs Colley, “What a ridiculous fuss!  It’s just a picture!  It’s not going to hurt you!”  She snatched up the magazine, gave Lucy and Matt poisonous looks, and went back to her desk.

Jodie stayed quiet for a moment or two, then said, “How about we do a bit with some talking dormice?  Broadcast from their home in the big tree?”  She looked over at one of the nature photos on the wall, and added, “We could have songthrushes as the cameramen.  They’d be able to fit.”

“And then, what, the dormice would be able to tell us about their lives, and that?”

“Yeah.  And show us the secret tunnels they have, all through the tree.”  She fetched something out of her pocket.  “And they could have this on their dining room table.”

Jodie held her hand under the table, so that no-one but Patrick could see it.  Something round and reddish-brown, hidden under her fingers.

“It’s a magic conker,” she explained, “I found it at the weekend, near where my grandma lives.”

“How do you know it’s magic?” asked Patrick.

“It was in this clearing in the woods.  It was right in the middle, on its own.  There weren’t any other conkers around it, so we don’t know how it got there.”

Patrick grinned.  “Maybe the dormice put it there just so you would find it.”

Jodie laughed, and put the conker back in her pocket.

*

They were on the carpet, in the little room with all the bookcases in it.  At least, Jodie thought of it as a different room, but there was a gap in the wall instead of a door, so maybe that meant it didn’t count.  Anyway, Mrs Colley had sat them in a circle and handed them all a bit of string and a needle with a sharp bit they had to be careful of.  “Later this week,” she told them, “we’re going to do something special.  You’re all going to sew a special picture to take home to your mums and dads.”

Jodie looked at the sharp bit of the needle (the bit she wasn’t going to touch), and wondered how she was going to use it to make a picture.  Just little threads across a piece of paper, like pencil strokes but in 3D?

“But before you can do that, you need to be able to thread the needle.”  Mrs Colley held the needle up to her eye, and, with her other hand, moved the string towards it.  Jodie didn’t even see what she did, exactly.  It was as if she’d put the string right through it, as if it was a hologram needle.

“You need to put it through the eye,” explained Mrs Colley.  Her own eyes were bright and brown, just behind where she was holding the needle, and it upset Jodie to think of anyone putting string in them.  It turned out that she meant the little hole at the top of the needle, but why would you call it that?  You weren’t supposed to put things in your eyes.  You weren’t supposed to put things in any eyes.

But Jodie tried.  She held the string in one hand and the needle in the other (careful to avoid the sharp bit), and tried to put it through.  She tried over and over again, butting the end of the string against the eye-hole, but it just didn’t work.  At the last second, the string would split in half or flop away from the needle.  It just wouldn’t go.

Chloe Browning (who’d done hers ages ago) looked over at Jodie and turned up her nose.  “Ummm.  You’re doing it wrong.”

“Well, how do you do it right, then?” asked Jodie, because if Chloe was going to be annoying then she could at least be helpful as well.  And maybe she would have been, but Mrs Colley heard them talking and made a sort of growling sound.

Jodie was never sure whether or not to be nervous around Mrs Colley.  She was one of the younger teachers in the school, and most of the time, she was happy and smiley and sweet.  But sometimes, she’d make that growling sound, and you knew things were going to be different.  “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Jodie, I explained it four or five times.  You have to hold the needle still, and then the thread will go straight through.  It’s not that hard!”

Jodie looked down at her needle, and tried again.  Mrs Colley said that a lot of things were not that hard.  Like putting on swimming hats when they went to the pool on Thursdays.  No matter how many times Jodie tried to get it over her hair, it just got caught halfway through.  Every week, the teachers told her to try doing it on her own, and every week, they had to come in and help her at the last minute.  They got really grumpy about it.

Patrick Skeleton tapped her shoulder.  “If you lick the end of the thread, it sticks together better,” he whispered.

Jodie tried.  She didn’t want to put too much of the string in her mouth (she didn’t know where it had been), but she managed to get the end damp and sticking together in a clump.  But it still wouldn’t go through the eye-hole.  It was like it was the wrong shape.

Mrs Colley clapped twice to get everyone’s attention.  “Right- if you’ve managed to thread your needle, bring it to me and I’ll give you one of these worksheets to take back to your table.”  She waved a bunch of papers in the air.  “If you haven’t, stay on the carpet for now.”

Almost everyone got up to get a worksheet.  After a couple of minutes, the only people left on the carpet were Jodie and three other people.  And they’d all get it right really soon, she could tell.  You just had to look at them.

One by one, they all got up and gave their needles to Mrs Colley.  Only Jodie had to stay.  They’d all made it look really easy, like there was an obvious trick she was missing.

Mrs Colley looked up from the worksheets, saw that Jodie was still there, and made that growling sound again.  She stood up, throwing the worksheets aside, and stormed over to her.  “Look,” she said, kneeling down beside Jodie.  She snatched the needle and the string from her hands, threaded it, and then pulled it out again.  “Now, you do it.”

Jodie did her best to remember everything Mrs Colley had done.  She’d have to copy it exactly if she was going to…

“No, not like that!”  Mrs Colley snatched the needle and string back.  “Look!”  She threaded it again.  It looked like exactly the same movement as before.  Exactly the same movement Jodie had been trying to do.

Jodie took the needle and string back, a grey, hopeless feeling coming over her.  She was pretty sure Mrs Colley thought she was getting it wrong on purpose.  In the hope that it would help, she lifted the string up to her mouth to wet it again.

“What are you doing?” snapped Mrs Colley.

Jodie stopped trying to wet it.  When she tried to put the string through the eye-hole, it just bumped against it, same as before.

Mrs Colley reached over and grabbed her wrists.  She pulled them to one side and then to the other, trying to get them into the right position to thread the needle.  It didn’t work.  No matter how Mrs Colley pulled her hands, the string just kept bumping into the eye-hole without going through.

Finally, she let go.  Mrs Colley stood up, stamped over to the front table, and waved one of the worksheets in Jodie’s direction.  “Just go to your table, Jodie.  I don’t have time for this.”

*

Cassie and Alicia had both read the Secret Seven and Famous Five books.  Obviously, both those names were already taken, but they could think of others.  “We could be the Terrific Two,” Cassie explained, “And then, when we get more members, we could be the Thrilling Three, or the Fabulous Four.”

“And then the Smashing Six,” said Alicia.

“The Excellent Eight.”

“The… Neverending Nine?”

Cassie waved this aside.  They could worry about that when they actually got nine members.  “The next thing we need,” said Cassie, “is a secret password.  It has to be something that no-one else could guess.”  The books had also said something about a secret sign, but Cassie wasn’t sure what one of those was.

“Oh!” said Alicia, “How about ‘the ‘Nomenal Nine’?  Like, short for ‘phenomenal’?”

Cassie frowned.  “What, as a password?”

“No, a name for the club.  If we got nine members.” 

“Oh.  Well, maybe.”  In the books, they were always bringing really great snacks to the meetings, like warm blackberry juice.  Cassie had never had any warm blackberry juice, but suddenly all she could think of was getting hold of some.  “But the password has to be something that only we know.  If someone else found out, they could get into our meetings and find out all our secrets.”  She thought about this for a moment.  “It’s really important that we keep all our secrets.  If anyone ever gave them away, we’d have to have a trial.”

“Like if they gave away the password?”

“Yeah.  Even if it was their best friend they told.  They’d get a trial, and if they were found guilty they could be hung upside-down from the top of the tree, just next to the treehouse.”

“The treehouse?”

“Yeah.  That’s our headquarters.”

Alicia looked as if she was about to ask something (maybe whether Cassie already had a treehouse, or at least had a tree in mind where they could build it), but then she saw something and went quiet.  One of the other girls- Jodie Mackenzie, the one with the big glasses- walked past them, going sideways through the narrow bit between their table and the next.

As soon as she was gone, Alicia whispered, “Look at her glasses case.”

Cassie took a look.  “What, the pink thing over her shoulder?”

“Yeah.  You know Suzie Winstead, from Mrs Kingsley’s class?”  Alicia leaned towards Cassie.  “She had one just like it, but she lost it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.  I bet Jodie stole it.”

“Hm.”  Cassie looked over at Jodie again.  “Maybe that could be our first…”

Just then, there was a loud cry of, “Matthew Hughes!”  Cassie and Alicia turned round and saw Mrs Colley, standing over the bread display, holding Matt’s wrist in her hand and glaring at him as if she was trying to laser him to death.  “That bread is not for eating!”

Cassie squirmed a bit.  She tried to look elsewhere.

“It’s stale!  That’s the whole point of the experiment!”  Mrs Colley let go of Matt’s wrist just so she could wave her hands around in exasperation.  “You wouldn’t just have ruined it for everyone else- you’d have made yourself sick as well!”

“Cassie was eating it earlier!” protested Matt, pointing at her.

Cassie froze.  She could feel the weird heat starting to spread through her, the kind you always got when something bad was about to happen.  It was as if Mrs Colley’s laser eyes were already upon her, burning holes into her skin.

But Mrs Colley didn’t even look in her direction.  “Well, I didn’t see Cassie eating it- I saw you!  Now go and sit back at your table!”

And that was it.  Mrs Colley didn’t turn around so she could tell Cassie off as well.  She didn’t drag both of them outside to tell them why what they did was so wrong.  It was over.  Cassie wasn’t going to get into trouble at all.

She should probably have felt a lot more relieved than she did.

*

Jodie had spent the whole assembly so far looking at the patterns in the ceiling, because the hall was set up so that, if you were sat too far back, that was all you could see.  The teachers speaking at the front were just little blurs that occasionally appeared between the heads of the people in front, but Jodie had probably memorised every little curl and carving of the rafters above their heads.

She might not have had as much time to stare at it if she’d been able to look at the words of the song they were singing, but when the teachers had given the songbooks out, the person on Jodie’s left had thought he was supposed to share with the person on his left, and the person on her right had thought she was supposed to be sharing with the person on her right.  At first, Jodie had just been mouthing along when they sang, but then the teachers had got them to sing it four or five times so they got the harmonies right, so she definitely knew the words by now.  It was about saving the whales.  At the start of the assembly, one of the teachers had said there were only about two thousand of them left.

Every so often, Jodie’s hand went to her skirt pocket to check that the magic conker was still there.  If she went too long without checking it, she worried that it had already fallen out, and she wouldn’t know about it until they’d moved somewhere else and it was too late to go back and find it.  Maybe the magic conker could do the whales some good.  Maybe it could send them luck from far away.

The music finished, and for a moment, so-one said anything.  There was a kind of mumbling from the front, but from where Jodie was sitting, “the front” was most of the hall, so she had no way to work out whether it was coming from the teachers or some of the kids.  Then Mrs Sutherland, the headteacher, cleared her throat.  “That was better.”  She paused, then added, “We’re going to go over it one more time…”

A grumbling groan came up from the kids.  Even seconds later, Jodie wasn’t sure whether or not she’d joined in.  If a groan was everywhere else in the room, surrounding you on all sides, then it made sense to assume that it had been in your mouth as well.

Mrs Sutherland broke off without finishing her sentence.  She turned to the teachers behind her.  There was more mumbling, and this time it definitely came from them.  After a while, she turned back and said, “I’m sorry?  Are there children in here who are bored?”

There was silence.  No-one was going to fall for that.

“Would you rather be back in the classroom?”

Still no answer.

“Well, if you’d rather be back in the classroom, then your teachers can take you back!  Stand up, go on!”

At first, Jodie stayed still, in case this was another trick.  But then she saw most of the kids on either side of her stand up, so she decided it would be OK for her to do it, too.

Mrs Sutherland looked at them, and shook her head.  “Oh dear, Mrs Colley.  Look at all these children who don’t care about saving the whales.”

“Mm,” said Mrs Colley, looking at all of them as if she expected them to start saying sorry and sitting back down.  No-one did.  If they were already standing up, then everyone else was standing up with them, but if they sat down, everybody would be staring at them and just them.  Mrs Colley waited for a moment or two, then, tutting, began to lead them out of the hall.

The corridor they went into was warm and smelled of the food cooking in the school kitchens nearby.  Jodie’s hand went back to her pocket and found the conker, where it was supposed to be.  Then somebody behind her grabbed her wrist and wrenched it back. 

Jodie stumbled a few steps backwards, and the conker came bouncing out of her pocket.  The person behind her- it was Alicia Brewster, she could see her now- let go of her arm, picked up the conker on its second bounce, and ran ahead, getting out of the line and disappearing down the corridor.  Jodie ran after her.  She could hear Mrs Colley shouting something behind her, but she wasn’t paying enough attention to hear what it was.  All she could think about was the conker.

There were people in the way, and that slowed Alicia down, but not by much.  Jodie saw her slip between them, a skinny figure that could fit through the smallest crack if she wanted, and burst through the doors and out into the playground.  Jodie followed in her footsteps, trying to catch up, trying to think of something she could say to persuade Alicia to give the conker back.  Something she could offer her.  Some way she could trick her.  What did they do in stories?

Before Jodie could think of anything, it was too late.  Alicia got to the fence at the end of the playground, drew back her arm, and threw the conker over.  It was gone.

Jodie must have screamed, because Alicia turned around and smiled.  “Serves you right!” she declared.  And maybe that was true.  Maybe it did serve Jodie right.  She couldn’t think why, but Alicia sounded so sure about it that there must have been something, right?

There were quick footsteps behind her, and Jodie felt Mrs Colley grab her arm.  But all she could think about was the conker, lost in the junk and the undergrowth on the other side of the fence.  A conker with enough power to grant your every wish, and Jodie had had it in her hand for less than a day.  She hadn’t looked after it properly, and now it was gone.  Her fault.  Served her right.

*

The first five minutes back in class were spent watching Alicia and Jodie get screamed at for running away.  It was as if Mrs Colley had forgotten that the rest of the class was even there, she was so absorbed in shaking them by the shoulders and telling them (words aimed like darts, each consonant a crisp little click) that they were a complete disgrace.  Such a ridiculous fuss!  A conker.  You think a conker is worth making the whole class suffer.  In the end, Alicia and Jodie were told that they weren’t going to be allowed out for lunch, and both were sent to a separate table where their backs were to the rest of the class.  Mrs Colley told everyone to look through their trays and finish off any work left over from yesterday in silence.  They did.  No-one wanted to make her mad again.

Cassie had nearly finished her worksheet on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  It was supposed to be a family tree.  Mrs Colley had shown them how to do it, with Charlie at the bottom and Mr and Mrs Bucket branching out from him and all the grandparents branching out from them.  Cassie had been a bit annoyed that there were more boys in the book than girls, so she’d sneakily turned her picture of Charlie into a girl by giving him little, barely-noticeable pigtails, because “Charlie” was one of those names that could be a boy or a girl, right?  And that made things a bit fairer.

As she finished the picture, Cassie found herself looking at Jodie’s back.  She couldn’t see whether or not her face was still red with tears like it had been before.  Cassie didn’t know why she kept thinking about it, but one time last year there had been a boy picking on her at lunch, calling her names and shoving her over for no reason.  And when she tried to tell the teacher on duty, she couldn’t, because she didn’t know his name.  She’d asked him what it was, and he’d just yelled, “Crisp Packet!”  It should have been funny, but it wasn’t.  It had been like a dream, where nothing made any sense and the rules kept changing just to catch you out.

She looked out of the window into the cloakroom.  Mrs Colley had made Jodie hang up her glasses case on her peg before they’d gone to assembly.  You aren’t going to need to take your glasses off in the hall, are you? she’d said, They’ll just stay on your face.

Cassie put up her hand.

“Yes?” said Mrs Colley, with a suggestion of, This had better be good.

“Can I go to the toilet?”

Mrs Colley groaned.  “Can you wait twenty minutes?  It’s nearly lunchtime.”

Cassie shook her head.  She didn’t know why Mrs Colley even asked that.  If you needed the toilet enough to put up your hand, then you definitely couldn’t wait twenty minutes.

“Fine.  Off you go.”

So Cassie walked through the cloakroom to the toilets.  She sat in the little dark cubicle, thinking.  She went to the sink and washed her hands, looking up at the big scuffed mirror, still thinking.

She got back to the cloakroom, and, once she’d checked that Mrs Colley hadn’t seen her yet, she ducked down next to Jodie’s peg, pushed aside her coat, and opened up that little pink glasses case.

It was on the underside of the lid.  A paper label with ‘Jodie Mackenzie’ printed on it in neat little letters.

*

Year Two had first lunch and they were first back out onto the playground, and Patrick Skeleton didn’t know what to do.  He wanted to go and find Jodie, who was always good at thinking up games, but them he remembered that Jodie had been kept in.  She was still in the classroom, at the table that meant her back was to the rest of the class, and Patrick probably wouldn’t even see her face for the rest of the day.

There were two groups of people (boys versus girls, it looked like) marching towards each other and chanting, “Are you ready for a fight?  We are the champions!”  There were some boys playing football, but Patrick could only see one goal, which didn’t seem fair on the side that didn’t have one.  There were some girls spinning around the big poles that held the shelter up and woofing at each other.  Patrick wandered on, to a big patch of the playground that didn’t have anyone on it.  It was by the side fence, near where the orange buildings of the school and the creche next door touched walls.  And there, among the big trees on the other side of the fence, was where he saw it.

There was a little movement in the undergrowth at the bottom of the fence.  The leaves moved a bit, then parted like stage curtains, and Patrick Skeleton saw the dormouse.  It was bigger than he’d imagined, but its pointy, furry, whiskery face was perfect.

Patrick dropped to his hands and knees to get a better look, but the dormouse turned around and it was gone.  Disappeared back behind the leaf curtains.  If he just had one of those litter-pickers he’d seen in the shops, the ones with the plastic sharks on the end, then he’d have been able to reach in and pull the dormouse back to him.  Then he and Jodie could train it to be part of the Nutter Club.  Patrick already had hamsters at home- it could live with them in their cage.  It would probably be happy to make new friends.

Patrick stood up and looked at the tree, the one closest to the fence, the one the dormouse had appeared and disappeared under.  One of its branches was low enough to stroke the top of the fence.  Low enough to grab, if you hopped onto one of the branches nearby.  And then you could climb over the fence and find the dormouse for yourself.

It didn’t work.  Patrick was barely halfway up the fence when there was a terrible cracking, crumbling sound and the branch dropped him right back onto the bench, falling right behind him onto the ground.  It still had a big chunk of tree attached to it.

Over in the distance, people were starting to turn and look.  Patrick got to his feet and ran away as quickly as he could.

*

Mrs Sutherland had come into the class just to glare at them.  For a long time, she and Mrs Colley just stood at the front of the class, looking at them, as if they couldn’t find the words.

“Somebody was climbing the tree by the fence,” explained Mrs Sutherland, “What a stupid, dangerous thing to do.”

Patrick Skeleton, who’d spent nearly all of lunch hiding behind one of the fire ramps, waited for her to point at him and say they knew he did it.

“And do you know what happened?  They pulled a whole branch off.  That tree is dead.  They could have been dead, too.”

Patrick Skeleton hunched over in his chair.

Mrs Colley stepped forward.  “We know it was somebody from Year Two, because you were the only ones out on the playground at the time.  I am ashamed to think that someone in my year did such a thing.”

Patrick was confused.  He’d been expecting them to say that they knew it was somebody from Year Two because it was Patrick Skeleton and he’s sitting right there.

“This person knows who they are,” said Mrs Colley… which probably meant that no-one else did.  None of the people who’d turned around when they heard the branch snap had been close enough to recognise him.  Or at least they hadn’t said anything about it yet.

“This person knows who they are.  They know they’ve made the whole of their class and the whole of their year look bad in front of the whole school.  We need them to do the right thing and own up to what they’ve done.”

All the sounds in the room- the children breathing, the floor creaking, the radiators humming- were suddenly too loud.  It was like it was all a chorus foretelling Patrick’s doom.

“If they don’t own up, then the whole of Year Two will have to stay in at break and lunch for the rest of the week.  No playing outside.  Imagine that, all your friends missing out on playtime because of something you did.”

Patrick didn’t like that idea at all.  But he still didn’t put up his hand and tell Mrs Colley it was him.  It was as if his arms had been glued to his sides.

From behind him, he heard Alicia Brewster whisper, “Bet it was Jodie.”

The sounds were too loud and the smells were too strong.  Patrick Skeleton felt like he was about to faint.

*

“Bet it was Jodie.”

Cassie had no idea why Alicia had said that.  Other than Alicia herself, Jodie was the only one in the whole class who was definitely innocent.  Even though she’d been in trouble earlier.  Because she’d been in trouble earlier.  She had an alibi, and Alicia knew it.  They’d been in the classroom all of lunch.

Cassie could have pointed that out to Alicia, but she didn’t.  She was still thinking about what she’d seen earlier.

Matt Hughes, sitting right in front of them, did say something.  He turned to Alicia and said, not even bothering to whisper, “Bet it was Cassie.”

Mrs Colley’s head swivelled round.  “Matthew, pipe down.”

Matt didn’t pipe down.  “She stole the bread from the table earlier, and she let me get in trouble for it!  So how do we know she wouldn’t kill a tree and let someone else get in trouble for that?”

Cassie had almost forgotten about eating the bread this morning, about how strange she’d felt when Matt had blamed her and she hadn’t got into trouble.  How she should have felt relieved but didn’t.  They’d both stolen the bread.  Either both of them should have got into trouble, or neither of them.  Not just the one that Mrs Colley had caught.  And then there was Jodie, who hadn’t stolen the glasses case even though Alicia was sure she had.  She was sure Jodie had killed the tree, too, even though she knew Jodie had been inside with her all lunch.  Even though she’d seen her with her own eyes.  She’d blamed her anyway.

Everyone was getting blamed for the wrong thing today.  Mrs Colley didn’t even care.  She’d keep the whole class in for something one person did, and it wouldn’t bother her at all.

Cassie didn’t care who’d really pulled down the branch.  Not one bit.  She just wanted this to be over.

“He’s right,” she said, pointing at Matt, “It was me.”

And in the moment before Mrs Colley started yelling, Cassie saw Alicia’s mouth actually hang open in shock.

*

Jodie didn’t find out what had really happened until nearly hometime.  As they were getting their coats from the cloakroom, Patrick Skeleton nudged her in the arm and whispered, “I was the one who did it.  I was trying to climb the tree.”

By then, Cassie Gorman had been gone all afternoon.  Gone off to Mrs Sutherland’s office.  Phoning her parents.  Mrs Colley very, very disappointed in her.  Jodie hadn’t been able to listen for long.  It was upsetting, even when you weren’t the one in trouble. 

“Then why did Cassie say it was her when it wasn’t?” she whispered back.

“I don’t know.”

Jodie thought about it.  “Do you think she wished it was her?”

“But I didn’t even get to climb the actual tree.  And why would she wish she was the one getting into trouble?”

“I don’t know.  But some people really like it when everyone’s paying attention to them, even if it’s for a bad reason.”  Jodie had never understood why that was.  She hated people seeing her do something stupid.

They finished zipping up their coats, and went back into the classroom.  “I thought I saw a dormouse,” said Patrick, “That’s why I did it.”

“What, on the other side of the fence?”

“Yeah.  I thought maybe I could climb over and catch it.  But it probably wasn’t one anyway.”

Jodie had never seen any dormice on the other side of the fence, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any.  So she didn’t know whether Patrick was right or not.  “Maybe she knew it was you, and she didn’t want you to get into trouble?  Maybe because she knew you didn’t mean to hurt the tree?”

“But she didn’t mean to hurt the tree either, and now she’s in trouble.”  They were back at their table now.  Everyone was.  In a minute, Mrs Colley would lead then out into the playground to wait for their parents.  (Cassie still wasn’t back.  Maybe she’d been sent home early.  Maybe she’d been sent home forever.)  When they got into the playground, Jodie was going to check the side fence next to the tree with the broken branch.  If there was a dormouse- and there might have been- then maybe it had been round to the undergrowth on the other side, where the conker had landed.  Maybe it had brought it back, and Jodie would find it waiting there, close enough to the fence for her to reach in and take it.  Or maybe he had taken it back home, to his family, and Jodie would just have to be happy with that.  Maybe that was where the conker was supposed to be in the first place.

“If we see her tomorrow, we’ll ask her,” she told Patrick.  Even if Cassie wasn’t in school, she’d be around here somewhere.  Maybe locked up somewhere bad, and Jodie and Patrick would have to rescue her.  They could do it, if they teamed up.  Patrick Skeleton and the Nutter Club, an unstoppable force.  No-one could possibly stand in their way.

The End