How the Trouble Started Read Online Free Page A

favourite of all the songs we used to sing in school assembly. When Mrs Eccles started playing the opening notes on the piano it always had the same effect on me, a lump would appear in my throat and I would stand with my shoulders back, my chin out and my feet together, just like you were supposed to, ready to sing as well as I could. My eyes hunted out the source of the sound and rested on the back of Gillygate Primary School, about thirty yards away, over scrubby grass, behind a patch of trees. I wandered closer to see if I could get a clearer listen and settled down in the grass, resting against a tree trunk. I must have caught the end of their practice though, because there was only one more chorus to come, and then the piano struck its last high ringing notes and there was only silence and no more singing seeping out into the world for free. My legs weren’t for moving me on so I stayed where I was looking onto an empty playground and the school building. The school was red-bricked and old-fashioned-looking – ‘Boys’ was inscribed in stone in a fussy font over one red door and ‘Girls’ above another. The schoolyard was sketched out with a caterpillar, numbers running up its wiggly body, a hopscotch grid, and a couple of other designs that were so faded I couldn’t tell what they were without getting closer.
    After a couple of minutes the ‘Boys’ red door slowly opened and boys and girls bumbled out into the playground. It was the proper small ones first – ones that looked so tiny and useless you couldn’t believe that they’d been let out of the sight of their mums and dads, even for a second. A minute later a lady teacher in a long green skirt pushed through the door and the little ones ran up to her and wrapped their arms around a leg, or grabbed hold of an arm, and she walked around the playground like a slow-moving maypole with kids orbiting her, bumping off one another like dozy bees. Bigger children started pouring out through the other door but they were less interested in the teacher and were off doing the things they normally did at break in a separate part of the yard.
    It was obvious within a minute or two of watching which kids were in and which kids were out. I’d clocked two outs within seconds. They were playing together in the corner by a tree. One of the lads had big red hair that grew like a helmet and desperately needed a cut. He had the widest eyes I’d ever seen, like he was permanently startled, like it was always the second after someone had shouted ‘BOO!’ in his face. The other boy looked like he’d just been released from a prisoner-of-war camp – head shaved and so skinny you feared he would be chilly out, even on a summer’s morning. There was nobody else near – just them and a tree in the corner. God knows what they were up to over there, but they appeared oblivious to all the playing going on around them as groups of kids yelled and had fun and shot about one way then the other. These two were huddled together chat, chat, chatting and it was good, I thought, that they had each other at least. At one point a ball bounced over to them, a stray shot from a game going on over the other side of the yard. The lad with the red hair took a wild swing in an attempt to kick it back to the lads who were calling for it, but the ball ended up behind him, to the laughter of the football boys. It took the two of them a further couple of attempts before they managed to send the ball in the intended direction.
    I let my eyes move over to the middle, where the girls congregated and the princesses ruled. Not yet eleven years old and you could already spot them, the two of them, pretty little things, one blonde, one brunette, pristine uniforms and shiny shoes, ponytails bobbing along after them, as were the plainer girls, eager to keep up, to be in on the chat. I could have sat there all day and watched the mucking about and daft games, but a whistle blew and the long process of them