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The Black Sheep

Let me give you an example of my relationship with the good people of Stoneguard. I lived there for eighteen years, so there are lots of examples to choose from. But some memories are stickier than others; they fossilise in your mind and represent, or seem to represent, everything that you were thinking and feeling in that moment and in all the moments leading up to and after that one.

It was at Christmas, long before the Horrid Christmas but horrible enough in its own way, maybe even the Christmas which determined my feelings about all my Christmases to come.

Ma Gamble was the owner of the Wholefood Emporium, and a former Major in the British Army. She had no family of her own, but she marshalled the entire town as if they were her troops. Our vicar, Mr McGregor, was an ancient wizened man, who could hardly see through his spectacles, let alone through the back of his head; Ma Gamble had long assumed the role of moral protector of all of Stoneguard, and the Emporium was the hub of all information.

The year my twin sister Lee and I turned ten, Ma Gamble had turned her steely eyes on the children of the town and decided that enforced carolling, craft-making and toy patrolling were not sufficient to keep the youth of the village out of trouble. It was always a danger when school was out of session. Children, left to themselves, could do anything. Given a spare five minutes without organised activities, we were liable to terrorise infants, set thatched roofs alight or vandalise the ancient stone circle.

What we needed, apparently, was a Christmas pageant involving all the village children, whether the children wanted it or not. Ma Gamble called a meeting in the church on the first day of the Christmas holidays, and read out our names and the parts which had been assigned. She’d done all the choosing herself, of course, without the benefit of audition—what was the point of an audition when everyone had to participate, and when Ma Gamble knew every single child by sight, reputation and genealogy?

At the end of the meeting, some children (and one twin in particular) skipped happily out of the church to dream of sugarplums and stardom and holding the Saviour of Mankind in her arms.

Some of us (one other twin in particular) dragged our feet, shrouded in doom.

‘This sucks,’ I said before we were even out of the church. ‘Why do I have to be a sheep? Sheep are horrible. They smell.’

‘Stop whining, Elizabeth,’ said my mother, holding the door open for me, impatience tapping her fingers on the jamb. ‘The acoustics in the church have given me a headache.’

‘I don’t want to be a sheep. I hate sheep.’ We emerged into the churchyard. ‘Can we visit Nan and Granddad?’

‘I’ve already used up the whole of my lunch hour here,’ Mum replied. ‘Come along.’

‘It’s Saturday.’

‘And I have the Ice Cream Heaven accounts to look over, and you have your chores. Come.’ She began to walk briskly down the pavement, Lee tripping along behind her.

I cast a baleful glance back at the churchyard, at the grey obelisk just visible from the lych gate, and considered going back to my grandparents’ grave anyway. I decided it wasn’t worth it; I could come later on, when she was busy with her accounts and she wouldn’t notice me sneaking out of the house. I joined my mother and my sister.

‘I really, really hate sheep,’ I said. ‘Why do there have to be sheep anyway?’

‘It’s a stable, Elizabeth. There are shepherds.’

‘I think sheep are nice,’ said Lee. ‘They’re lovely and fluffy.’

I rolled my eyes at my sister. She could talk; she wasn’t a sheep.

‘Why couldn’t I be the angel?’ I asked. ‘The angel gets to fly.’

Nobody answered me on this one. Probably because the answer was too obvious even to say aloud. If you were going to choose an angel in Stoneguard, it was never going to be me.

‘Why can’t I be a star at least?’

‘Ma Gamble said that Candace got to be the star,’ Lee said.

‘I could be one too.’

‘There’s only one star.’

‘Who says?’

‘The Bible.’

I frowned under my heavy brown fringe. Leave it to Lee to invoke the ultimate authority. Or one of them. I appealed to the other one.

‘Do we really have to do this stupid pageant, Mummy?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Ma Gamble has organised it for the children of the village, and you are a child of the village.’ We rounded the corner; our house loomed ahead of us, tall and red with blank windows. There was a wreath on our door of spiky holly, slightly softened by a gold ribbon.

‘But you don’t even like Ma Gamble.’

‘Elizabeth, that is a singularly unsuitable thing for a child to say.’

‘But it’s true. You bare your teeth at her every time you see her.’

‘All the more reason for you to perform in this pageant.’

‘That doesn’t make any sense.’

‘Elizabeth, I am warning you.’

‘But I’m a sheep, Mummy.’

We went into the house. It was hardly any warmer than outside. My theory was that our mother spent so much time making and marketing ice cream that she never noticed that her living quarters were always freezing. Lee thought it was because the central heating was old and didn’t work properly. My mother and my sister took off their boots and coats, while I stood in the hallway, fully-dressed and dissatisfied.

‘I’m not doing it,’ I announced. ‘I’m not doing the stupid pageant. I hate it.’

‘Liza,’ cried Lee in dismay. My mother rounded on me, her face carved into furious stone.

‘I have said you will do the pageant, Elizabeth, and you will.’

‘But why?’

‘Because this family’s business is set in Stoneguard, and it depends on Stoneguard, and you are the representative of this family. Therefore you will do as you are expected.’

‘Lee can represent the family. She’s Mary, anyway. She wants to do it and I don’t.’

‘I don’t mind, really,’ said Lee.

‘You will both be in the Stoneguard Christmas pageant and that is final. I have a reputation to maintain.’ She put her scarf on the coat rack with a decisive jerk of her wrist, and walked away from us. We heard her office door slam shut.

*

‘You are going to do it, right?’ Lee asked me later, in our bedroom. We had made a tent out of our sheets and collected all our dozens of teddy bears underneath it with us. Lee sat perched in her flannel pyjamas on a pillow, her knees up near her ears and her hair pulled back into a plait just like mine.

‘There’s no point talking about it.’ I hugged Baba Bear to me.

‘Maybe Ma Gamble will let you be a second star if you ask really nicely.’

‘I don’t care. I don’t want to be a star either.’

Lee walked her bear, Bobo, across the pillow and back. ‘Did you—you didn’t want to be Mary, did you?’

I laughed out through my nose, without smiling or opening my mouth. It was something I’d seen my mother do. ‘I don’t want to be anything.’

‘Because—because if you really, really wanted to be Mary, you could be. I would let you. I could be the sheep and nobody would know the difference.’

I looked at my sister. She was holding Bobo tight and biting her lip.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I really don’t want to be Mary. You can keep it. It’s better for you anyway, you’re like the princess of the town or whatever.’

‘Oh.’ She breathed a sigh of relief, and then tried to cover it up with a little sigh of sympathy. ‘A sheep isn’t really that bad. I’ll help you make your costume.’

‘Maybe I can stand close to Candace in her star costume and people will think I’m a cloud.’

‘Maybe.’ She contemplated her bear for a minute, and then smiled. ‘I think Will Naughton will make a good Joseph, don’t you?’

‘No.’ I twisted Baba’s ear.

‘Don’t you think he’s really cute?’

‘No.’

‘I almost fainted when I heard he was going to be Joseph.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he’s—well he’s going to be my husband!’

‘You want to snog him, don’t you?’

‘No.’

‘You do.’

‘No!’ Lee said again, but she giggled. She did want to snog him.

‘He’s good looking,’ I said, ‘but thinks he’s better than everyone just because he’s rich and goes to boarding school and lives in that big house.’

‘We live in a big house.’

‘Our house could fit inside Naughton Hall.’

‘I didn’t mean that. I meant do you think people might say that about us?’

‘No! We don’t—we’re not—’ My ten-year-old brain tried unsuccessfully to articulate the difference between old money and new. ‘He’s like all big and important and stuck-up. He doesn’t even talk to anybody.’

‘I don’t think he’s stuck-up. I think he’s lovely.’

‘And he uses wax to make his hair all messy. Ick.’

‘I like it.’ Her cheeks went pink. ‘Imagine if I really did get married to him. It would be like a fairy tale.’

‘Eww.’ I plucked at Baba’s fur. ‘Maybe I could dye my sheep costume green and be a bush. I’d rather be a bush than a sheep.’

‘Maybe Candace will get sick and you’ll be allowed to be the star.’

‘Don’t worry,’ I told her. ‘I’ll think of something.’

*

But the day of the pageant arrived and I was still a sheep. It was December the twenty-third. In the afternoon, Ice Cream Heaven had its Christmas party and our mother bundled us into scratchy velvet dresses and walked us down cold country lanes to the ice cream factory. The inside of the office block was decorated with tinsel and fairy lights twinkling around the desks and windows, and it was filled with warm tall grown-ups, their tedious chatter, and the smell of cigarettes and perfume. Lee and I were the only children; it was really an employee party, during office hours. We had our costumes in plastic bags so we could go straight to the school hall after.

Lee and I were given a paper cup of lemonade each and put to work in the small kitchen scooping ice cream into tiny plastic wine glasses. It was Mulled Wine Magic, this year’s Christmas limited edition flavour. My hands got sticky right away; I wiped them on my dress and sniffed the ice cream.

‘Do you think it’s alcoholic?’ I asked. It certainly smelled it.

‘Mum said not to have any, so it must be.’

Lee’s scoops were perfect spheres; mine were shapeless blobs. I held my nose and tipped one of them into my mouth, swallowing it as quickly as I could. Then I tipped in another. The ice cream headache grabbed the front of my brain immediately; I ate two more scoops straight from the container, shuddering.

‘Do I look drunk?’ I asked, squinting against the pain and rubbing my eyebrows.

‘A little,’ said Lee.

‘Maybe I should try to nick a tin of beer.’ I washed my mouth out with lemonade and spat into the sink. ‘Ugh.’

‘Why?’

‘Because if I’m drunk and tripping all over things, Mum will send me to my room and I won’t have to do the pageant.’

Lee crumpled her forehead and bit her lip, as she always did when she was worried about me, but she didn’t have time to say anything because our mother appeared in the doorway in her green Christmas suit. ‘Everyone is waiting, girls.’

We loaded the cups on trays and circulated amongst the grown-up employees, delivering to them the fruits of their labour. Lee took longer at this than I did, because she stopped to chat with each adult as she went, offering them pretty replies to their questions about school and the pageant and what she wanted for Christmas. I was too busy thinking about sheep, and trying to feel whether I was drunk or not, to do anything but shrug, even though I felt the force of my mother’s frown all the way across the room. We were meant to represent the business by being cheerful and cute and identical, just as we were in the photos for the adverts.

I went over to Doris Pinchbeck, a wiry lady who’d worked as my mother’s Production Manager since before I was born. Doris was about as fond of idle chit-chat as I was; she was standing to the side of a group of Production ladies wearing tinsel bows pinned to their coveralls. She took a cup of the ice cream I offered, and which she’d probably made personally herself, and nodded at me. ‘Merry Christmas, eh,’ she said.

I nodded back at her.

‘Where are my favourite girls?’ boomed a voice, and I turned to see Jonny Whitehair, my mother’s Sales Manager. He was a big man with big hair, glossy and dark and combed back from his forehead in a semi-Elvis pompadour. He reached out for me and Lee, put a big hand on each of our shoulders and dropped a big kiss on the top of each of our heads, the same as he did every time he saw us. He smelled of hair tonic, beer and cigarettes. ‘Hazel sent something over for you.’ Jonny took his hands off our shoulders and rummaged in the pockets of his suit jacket. He wore a white shirt, a tie with poinsettias on it and he had a gold tooth that winked when he smiled.

‘Here you are.’ He gave us each an identical packet of red tissue paper tied with shiny red ribbon. I could tell from the feel that they were his wife’s Christmas biscuits.

‘Thank you, Mr Whitehair,’ Lee said. I nodded and slipped my packet into the pocket of my dress.

‘Ah, well, you enjoy them. Now is this Mulled Wine Magic? Don’t mind if I do.’ He took a cup from each of us, and sat on his desk to eat them, in between sips of his beer glass and conversation with Mr Sales, our mother’s accountant.

Lee went off to replenish her tray, but I lingered. Our presents hadn’t been the only thing in Jonny Whitehair’s jacket pockets; as he sat on his desk his pocket gaped open, and I could see the top of a gold packet of Benson and Hedges, and a red plastic lighter.

The room was crowded, and I was shorter than everyone except for my sister. The adults talked about incomprehensible and boring things and laughed too loudly. I put my tray down on the corner of Jonny Whitehair’s desk and looked around quickly to make sure nobody was watching me. Then I reached forward and lifted the fags and lighter from his pocket and stuck them into mine along with the biscuits. I picked up my tray and retreated to the kitchen.

The party didn’t last long; though my mother pulled out all her social stops for these important business events, she was the boss and everyone else was eager to get to the pub where they could properly relax. Before it ended, Lee slipped off to change into her Mary costume and appeared to admiring oohs and ahs. She did look beautiful; the blue dress and scarf over her head and all the attention made her rosy-cheeked and bright-eyed. I stood by the door, my plastic bag in my hand, my stolen fags in my pocket, planning. Then it was over and I watched Jonny Whitehair borrowing a Marlboro Light from Glenys Munt, saying, ‘I don’t know where they’ve got to, I must have left them in the car. No worries, I’ll buy some more at the pub.’

Lee practised walking in a Virgin Mary-like glide all the way from the factory to the school, where the pageant was taking place. I dawdled. ‘Why can’t you be more like your sister, Elizabeth?’ my mother snapped.

I kicked a pebble.

The Victorian school hall was a-bustle with children and parents. Ma Gamble, wearing some sort of hand-woven red sack over woollen tights, took charge of us as soon as we appeared. ‘Lee, you look lovely. Go to the stage, Muriel Johnson’s parents are waiting for you to practise holding the baby. Liza, you need to get into your costume right away. You can do it in the toilets. Hurry up!’

I dragged my feet to the girls’ toilets. The window there was far too small to squeeze through, and the school entrance was guarded by Ma Gamble and assorted other adults. There was no escape from sheepdom. I locked myself into a cubicle and put on my costume. This consisted of black tights and a black jumper, onto which I had haphazardly glued cotton wool. The jumper was just long enough to cover my bum. Carefully, I put Jonny Whitehair’s cigarettes and lighter into the waistband of my tights along with the tube of crimson lipstick I’d nicked from my mother’s room. I stuffed everything else back into the carrier bag, and emerged.

Mouse Morrison was leaning over a sink on her tiptoes, applying a black eyeliner pencil to her snub nose. On her chubby legs she also wore black tights, and she had a black jumper covered with cotton wool, though hers was more carefully stuck on than mine. She looked like a round cotton ball. I wasn’t as fat as she was, but I looked nearly as stupid. Maybe even more, because Mouse wouldn’t have her identical double standing in blue robes looking beautiful and proud.

My face burned with humiliation. Mouse caught my eye in the mirror and quickly looked away. ‘Hi,’ she mumbled in her quiet mouse voice.

I had no desire to fraternise with a fellow sheep. Without a word I pulled my hair back into a tight ponytail and left the toilets.

Ma Gamble must have seen the desire to bolt in my eyes because she was outside the door waiting for me, and guided me with a firm hand on my arm down the corridor and through the doors at the back of the hall. This was the backstage area, full to the brim of children in costume jostling each other. Through a black curtain, I could glimpse the stage. Though the teenagers of Stoneguard had managed to escape Pageant Hell, they’d been co-opted to build the set. The stable and manger were made out of scrap wood, painted a variety of shades of brown. Some bales of hay had been piled around it, so Mary and Joseph would have someplace to sit while everyone came to pay their respects. Dust and chaff floated in the air.

‘The sheep are standing over there, near the curtain,’ Ma Gamble said to me, pointing to a few little kids in cotton wool who were standing picking their noses. I took one step in that direction, which appeased her enough for her to turn her attention elsewhere.

I threaded through the children until I found my sister. She was standing near the curtain, carefully holding little Muriel Johnson, who was standing in for the baby Jesus. Muriel sucked on her dummy with such fierceness that I suspected she’d burst into wails the minute someone tried to remove it for historical accuracy. I tried to imagine anybody ever entrusting me with a three-month-old baby, and failed.

‘Isn’t she gorgeous?’ Lee whispered to me.

‘She looks like a prune that’s been soaked in water.’

‘Your costume looks good.’

‘No it doesn’t.’

‘You’re not going to do anything horrible, are you?’ Her eyes met mine, pleading. ‘It really won’t be that bad. It could be fun.’
‘Here’s your husband,’ I said, as the crowd parted like the sea for Moses and Will Naughton strode in, clad in brown robes the same colour as his hair. Lee’s face immediately flushed and her eyes got even starrier.

He was two years older than us, nearly a teenager, and much taller; in fact he was taller than all of the other children, no doubt because of his superior genes. He hadn’t done that messy thing with his hair today, and it flopped around his face so he looked just like the public schoolboy that he was. He carried sandals and had a pair of sunglasses perched on top of his head.

I snorted. During rehearsals, he’d appeared late, with headphones on, and hardly talked to anyone. That didn’t stop my sister from gazing at him as if he were her own personal Prince Charming. ‘Hi,’ he said to Lee, and sat down to take off his expensive trainers.

‘Hello, Will,’ Lee breathed.

‘Places, everyone!’ boomed Ma Gamble. There was a Mexican wave of movement as the children all tried to organise themselves. ‘Over there, over there,’ said Ma Gamble, wading through the chaos, waving her hands at the costumed youth of Stoneguard. ‘Joseph and Mary, in the front. Lee, right up there where no one will jostle the baby. Candace, come over here so I can adjust your harness. Wise men, to the left. Sheep and shepherds, to the right.’

The crowd pushed me away from Lee, but before I let it take me, I slipped behind Will and plucked his sunglasses from his head. I put them under my jumper and twisted through the other kids, losing bits of wool in the process. The air was a potent mixture of glue, sweat and excitement. The shepherds, Stone and Rock Hamlin, stood holding crooks near the shadowy stage curtain. Their long hair was hanging down around their faces and they actually did sort of look like shepherds, probably because their parents were those hippies on Rainbow Farm and as far as I knew they spent much of their lives communing with livestock. Mouse had joined the little kids; she was about twice as wide as anyone else. I went straight to the front and peered through the curtain at the audience. The lights were still on, and adults were picking through the rows of folding chairs. They were talking more loudly than the children, which made me think many of them had already sampled a bit of Christmas cheer from the tables in the back of the room. I spotted our mother, standing poker-straight and shaking hands. Representing the business.

A sudden hush fell in the audience and I craned my neck to see what was happening. Two figures came through the open double doors, a tall man and a slight woman with her arm through his.

‘Lord and Lady Naughton,’ someone said, ostensibly in greeting but more in the manner of an announcement, and the hush grew, in proper respect for the aristocracy amongst us. Lord Naughton ducked his head, Lady Naughton smiled, and they were accosted by Ma Gamble. How she managed to get out there so quickly, I had no idea; the woman had supernatural powers when it came to organisation.

Though they lived just outside the village in their enormous ancestral home, the Naughtons rarely mixed with the commoners. It was typical that Ma Gamble would rush to take responsibility for their appearing here tonight. I watched as she led them to two seats specially reserved in the front row, on the far end from my mother. Lord and Lady Naughton didn’t say anything to any of the other people in the audience; they just smiled and sat down in their seats. They didn’t glance in my mother’s direction, though she did look at them. I wondered if she wanted Lee to marry Will, too. Probably. She’d love to be related to posh people. The Ice Cream Queen’s daughter and the local Lord’s son; how perfect.

‘I think we’re supposed to lead you sheep on?’ Stone said to me in his gentle voice.

‘I’ll follow you,’ I said. I stopped watching the adults and gazed around the school hall. I’d had a vague idea of grabbing one of the gym ropes and making my entrance by swinging across the stage, Tarzan-style. But they’d been secured high up on the wall, and I couldn’t get to them without climbing over the audience.

I’d have to do the best I could with what I had.

‘Are you scared?’ one of the little kids asked Mouse. I didn’t hear her reply, because Ma Gamble had come back stage and whispered in a sort of shout, ‘Places everyone, curtain in thirty seconds!’

Across from me I could see Candace in her star costume, shimmering and looking nervously around her. I wouldn’t have been nervous. I stood up straight and stared at her, showing her how I would have acted in her place, and she spotted me and averted her eyes.

Everything went very quiet, and from the front of the stage I heard Ma Gamble’s voice. ‘Welcome, everyone. All of our children have worked very hard to produce this show for you, and I hope you’ll agree that we’re all very proud of their efforts. So without further ado, I’d like to introduce what I hope will become another one of our beloved Christmas traditions here in the village: the First Annual Stoneguard Children’s Christmas Pageant.’

‘Agh,’ I choked. This was going to happen every year if I didn’t do something about it.

Applause from the adults. Above the resumed fidgets and whispers of the backstage children, I heard the shuffle of feet as the choir went onstage and sang ‘It Came Upon A Midnight Clear’. Thank God I hadn’t been put in the choir; the only worse thing than being a sheep was standing up there on stage in a nightgown for the whole show, singing.

While Charlie Munt read the bit from the Bible about there being no places at the inn, I peeped round the curtain again and watched my sister and Will Naughton slowly make their way across the stage. Lee cradled baby Muriel in her arms; the dummy was gone, somehow, and the baby was fast asleep. Lee looked serene and radiantly happy, like someone who’d just given birth to the baby Jesus. Will was watching them both with assumed adoration on his face.

Silently on my tights-clad feet, I went round to the back of the sheep while the choir sang some more. I didn’t want to watch Candace get to soar up on high in her harness. One of the little kids, or maybe Mouse, had farted and I wrinkled my nose.

I took the lipstick from my waistband. I’d nicked it without a real sense of purpose, just because it was there, sitting on my mother’s vanity. I’d thought about writing ‘BAA’ in big bloody letters on my forehead before I swung across the stage on a rope. But the cigarettes and the sunglasses gave me another idea. I applied the lipstick carefully to my mouth, as I’d seen my mother do. It tasted waxy as I mashed my lips together to spread it out. Then I put on Will’s sunglasses, and the dark backstage went pitch black. All I could see were the children clustered near the curtain, where the stage lights leaked through.

‘And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.’ Charlie Munt lisped on ‘shepherds’. That was our cue. I flipped open the box of B&Hs, took out a fag and put it carefully between my red lips. The sheep flocked forward, towards the stage, and I followed last. As he reached the curtain, I saw shepherd Rock Hamlin glance behind him. He must have spotted me because his eyes went wide. Then he nodded, slightly, and I saw him say something before he turned away and went on stage. It looked like it was ‘Cool.’

Yes. That was it. I was a cool sheep. I paused on the edge of the stage, to use Jonny Whitehair’s lighter to light the fag. I drew in, slightly, as I’d seen adults do, but I was careful to hold the smoke in my mouth so I wouldn’t cough. The last thing I needed to do was to blow my entrance by looking like a novice.

Then I sauntered onto the stage, red-lipped, wearing shades, smoking a cigarette. A sheep the likes of which Stoneguard had never seen before.
In front of me, the assembled grown-ups of Stoneguard were silhouettes. I heard a gasp. It made me smile. I walked forward, my spine straight, wiggling my hips in the way I’d seen sexy women do on television. I sucked on the cigarette and puffed out the smoke. I wished, briefly, that I knew how to blow smoke rings.

‘Liza Haven!’ screeched Ma Gamble from the wings. ‘You get off that stage right now!’

One by one, the other children realised something was wrong and their heads swivelled to look at me. I smiled at them, and then smiled at the audience. A big, cheesy grin.

An ‘I-won’ grin.

I couldn’t see my mother’s face, especially while I was wearing the sunglasses, but I knew where she was sitting. Leisurely, I tapped the ash off the end of my cigarette, and walked to the front of the stage. Past the hippy shepherds and the other sheep and the Holy Family. I struck a pose, hand on hip, lips pursed around my fag. I blew out a long stream of smoke, directly at my mother.

‘Baa,’ I said.

It wasn’t quiet any more. The audience was talking, moving; I heard someone, somewhere near the back, stifle a laugh. I heard Ma Gamble still screeching; she was getting closer to me, but I knew she would have to push past the choir and the Wise Men to get to me. I had no desire to get caught, so I waved to the audience, dropped my fag, and bolted for the wings.

I’d nearly got there when I heard the scream.

It wasn’t an outraged scream, and it wasn’t Ma Gamble, either; it was high-pitched, from a child, and it was quickly joined by more screams. I whirled around. At first I couldn’t see anything but smoke, all around the heads of the sheep, and I thought, wow, did all of that come out of my mouth?

But then I saw the flames. Some of the loose hay on the floor had caught, and the corner of one of the bales, too.

My cigarette. The sheep were backing away; a little kid pushed against Stone and he stumbled. Lee clutched baby Muriel to her chest and retreated behind the manger; her exit path was blocked by the choir and the Wise Men and now, by Ma Gamble too, who was striding forward shouting, ‘Fire! Fire! Someone grab the extinguisher! Children, leave the stage in an orderly fashion!’

I pushed the sunglasses up onto my forehead. Should I run? Should I stay and try to put out the fire? I took a step towards it, and then one away, and then I looked out into the audience. Some parents were storming the stage, some were running for the exits, some were standing yelling directions to their offspring. Doris Pinchbeck had a red fire extinguisher in her hand and she was climbing the steps up to the stage.
The only person in her seat was my mother. She sat, her lips thin with fury, her hands fisted in her lap, staring at me. The black sheep who’d ruined her reputation in the village.

I’d be punished for this, for certain. I’d probably be grounded for the rest of my natural life, and forget about pocket money. I’d get all the dirty jobs at home and at the factory.

I smiled at my mother, tasting her lipstick on my mouth. I didn’t care about the punishment. It was worth almost anything not to be a sheep.

If you liked this story, and would like to know more about what happened to Liza and Lee when they were grown up, please check out Getting Away With It.

Download Getting Away With It for Kindle
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Buy Getting Away With It in paperback

If you’re interested in geeky things like this, “The Bad Sheep” was originally in the book just before the chapter entitled “Return to Stoneguard”, on page 99 of the paperback edition. The incidents in this story are referred to in the chapters “Prince Charming” and “Going Round in Circles”.

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