The Listmaker Read Online Free Page A

disappearing under weed clumps and didn’t keep in straight lines, but rambled about between shrubs and through overgrown archways that looked more like railway tunnels. There didn’t even appear to be any proper flowerbeds, either. Plants just sprouted up out of the long grass, each one competing with the next, like sports teams. Only in this case the teams had all surged out of control and seemed to be bashing each other up. Two climbing roses along the side fence, one yellow and the other pink, had gone even further and reached the stage of strangling each other. I stopped to look at the roses, trying to work out if they were both on our property, or if the yellow one actually belonged to the house next-door. You would have thought that the people who’d originally planted them could have got together and chosen colours that didn’t clash quite so much.
    A big white cockatoo suddenly came flapping over the fence at me. I jumped, then blushed and pretended I’d only leaped aside to dodge rose thorns. It wasn’t a cockatoo at all, just that beamy, bouncy girl I’d seen earlier. She was handing me scones wrapped up in a white tea-towel.
    â€˜Hi, I’m Corrie Ryder,’ she trumpeted in the loudest, fastest voice I’d ever heard. ‘Your next-door neighbour – well, I guess that’s obvious, isn’t it, otherwise I wouldn’t be up on this fence! Mum says to yell out if there’s anything you guys need. She would have brought these scones over herself, only Dad told her not to be a pest on the very first day you moved in. Rubbish collection’s early Wednesday morning, mail gets delivered about ten, and if you like grapefruit, just help yourself off our tree. It sticks over your fence, anyway. Oh, and if you want to get rid of all those blackberries down the back of your place, I’ll just bring Meg over some time. She
loves
guzzling them up. I’m twelve, by the way. How old are you?’
    â€˜The same,’ I said guardedly. Having someone the same age as me next-door would almost certainly set Aunty Nat hinting that we should be friends. She was forever trying to push me into making friends with local kids, so I’d have someone to clack around with on weekends and holidays. (I think Aunty Nat meant ‘hack’ but she’d got the expression wrong.) Well, she needn’t think this boomy-voiced Corrie Ryder was the answer to her prayers! I couldn’t see us having anything at all in common. Corrie looked as though dust mites wouldn’t bother her one bit. Even trying to make temporary friends with her seemed to be a wasted effort, because I wouldn’t be here long enough. It might save time to make the situation clear right from the start …
    â€˜My name’s Sarah Radcliffe,’ I began. ‘I saw you this afternoon carrying a couch thing along the street. It was while I was helping my aunts shift in, but I don’t really live with –’
    â€˜Isn’t it ace, that swing-couch? Some people round in the lane were chucking it out. Dad’s already busted one of the chains swinging too hard, but he’s going out to get another length. We’re picking up our Christmas tree, too, at the same time … There he is now – gotta go, see ya!’ Corrie babbled as a car horn tooted from around the front of their house.
    She vanished down her side of the fence without giving me the chance to say anything at all. I was left staring up at the empty place where she’d been, thinking what patchy manners Parchment Hills people seemed to have. It wasn’t polite to dart off like that in the middle of a conversation. It was even ruder to announce that you’d bring someone called Meg over to help herself to other people’s blackberries without even waiting for an invitation! Perhaps, though, the Ryders didn’t know any better. When he’d seen on the map how far Parchment Hills was from the