Clementine Rose and the Pet Day Disaster 2 (4 page)

‘No, but he did it,’ Clementine asserted.

‘There is no proof, Clementine, so you’ll just have to make the best of it and paste that one into your book the way I showed you. It’s a pity that your first piece of work is rather messy but I suppose that’s a good lesson to learn about doing your best.’

Clementine felt hot and prickly again.

‘When are we going to learn to read?’ Clementine asked.

‘You’ve been learning that all morning,’ Mrs Bottomley smiled.

‘Oh.’ Clementine frowned and took her sheet back to her desk. She sat down and opened her workbook and pasted the paper into the front. It looked awful.

Angus leaned over and whispered, ‘Guess what? I did it.’

Clementine was shocked. ‘Mrs Bottomley, Angus just told me that he scribbled on my page,’ she called out.

‘Did not,’ Angus sneered at her.

‘Clementine, you really must stop all these false accusations at once,’ Mrs Bottomley huffed. ‘You don’t want to get a reputation for telling tales on your very first day, do you?’

Clementine finished pasting her page into the book and snapped it shut. She looked at the clock and hoped that it would soon be time for morning tea.

Morning tea time came and went in a blink. Clementine sat with Sophie and Poppy out on the veranda and by the time the girls had eaten their snacks and visited the toilet there was no time left to play.

Clementine had decided that visiting the toilet was very important. Just before the morning tea bell, a girl called Erica had an accident in the classroom. Although Mrs Bottomley didn’t fuss, Erica cried and everyone felt sorry for her. That is, except for some of the boys, including Angus, who called her a piddle-pants. Mrs Bottomley told the class that it could happen to anyone.

Clementine didn’t like to think it could happen to her. She’d had enough attention from her teacher for one day. She had already decided that she’d try her best to do as she was told and then hopefully Mrs Bottomley wouldn’t accuse her of telling lies any more.

After morning tea, Mrs Bottomley made the children copy some numbers from the board and then match them with coloured blocks. Clementine wondered when she would learn how to tell the time.

She avoided talking to Angus and tried not to look at him either. But that didn’t stop him being naughty.

Clementine just happened to glance up from her work when she saw that Angus was drilling his finger up his nose. She watched as he removed a large glob of yellow snot. He held it in the air and examined it closely.

Angus noticed her watching him and pulled a face. ‘What are you looking at?’

‘Nothing,’ said Clementine, and went back to her work. That’s when Angus did something unforgivable. He wiped his finger on her shoulder.

She let out a squeal. ‘Ahh!’

‘Clementine Rose Appleby, whatever is the matter now?’ Mrs Bottomley demanded.

‘Angus just put snot on my uniform.’ Clementine’s lip began to tremble. Her beautiful clean new uniform now had a disgusting booger on it.

‘Come here,’ said Mrs Bottomley, rolling her eyes.

Clementine stood up. Angus giggled. The boy behind him called Joshua laughed too.

But this time the girls in the class seemed equally offended and nine pairs of eyes bored into Angus’s back.

Mrs Bottomley examined the offending yellow glob. With one swift move she pulled a tissue from the supersized box on her desk and removed it without so much as leaving a mark.

‘All gone, Clementine, nothing to worry about,’ she tutted. ‘Angus Archibald, you will see me at lunchtime. I think our playground could do with some beautification, which you will be in charge of. That behaviour is completely unacceptable.’ The teacher walked over to the lad, who crossed his arms and huffed loudly.

‘But,’ he whined, ‘it was an accident.’

Mrs Bottomley’s eyebrows furrowed together like a pair of angry brown caterpillars. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘But, Nan . . .’ Angus pouted.

The whole class gasped.

‘What did you just call me?’ Ethel Bottomley’s eyes grew round and she stood over him like a giant brown toadstool.

Clementine looked at Angus Archibald and then at Mrs Bottomley. They had the same hair; that was why she had thought Mrs Bottomley reminded her of someone. It was the woman who had been standing out the front with Angus. She must be Mrs Bottomley’s daughter.

Angus looked at the forbidding woman in front of him.

‘Outside. NOW!’ she roared.

The lad scurried out the door and onto the veranda like a naughty dog. The kindergarten class had never been left on their own before. No one quite knew what to do.

Sophie and Poppy left their seats and raced up the front to talk to Clementine.

‘He’s in big trouble now,’ Sophie said.

‘But if Mrs Bottomley’s really his granny, she can’t be all that mad with him. Grandparents have to be nice to their grandchildren,’ said Poppy. ‘It’s in the rules.’

‘Are you joking? My grandmamma is fierce and French and half the time I can’t understand a word she says. She scares me to bits,’ Sophie said.

It was hard to tell what was going on out on the veranda, except when Mrs Bottomley roared like a hungry lion.

‘It doesn’t sound like he’s getting any special treatment,’ said Clementine. Her eyes were the size of dinner plates.

‘Don’t you ever call me Nan in class again, young man, or I will have you out of here before you have time to learn to count to one hundred,’ Mrs Bottomley bellowed.

The door opened and everyone scurried back to their seats, like ants before a storm.

‘Yes, well,’ the teacher said, looking around at the class, ‘we might as well be honest about this. Angus is my grandson. But rest assured, while I love him very much, he will call me Mrs Bottomley just the same as everyone else does.’ She glared at the lad, whose face was red and eyes were puffy. He sniffled as he skulked back to his desk.

Clementine thought that was a bit beside the point. Who cared if he called her Nan? She was more worried about him getting away with bad behaviour, which up until now he’d proven to be very good at. Angus slumped down in his chair. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hands.

Clementine felt a little bit sorry for him. She decided to see if he would talk to her. Maybe then he wouldn’t be so upset.

‘Are we really having a pet day?’ Clementine asked.

Angus shrugged.

Clementine tried again to be friendly. ‘That would be fun, don’t you think?’

‘Maybe,’ Angus said with a sniffle.

Clementine noticed that he was in need of a tissue. She walked over to Mrs Bottomley’s supersized box, pulled a couple out and handed them to the boy. He took the tissues from her and blew his nose like a trumpet, then thrust them back at her covered in gooey slime.

‘You just don’t get it, do you?’ Clementine sighed, and then dropped the grotty tissues in the bin. She asked Mrs Bottomley if she could go to the toilet and wash her hands. Angus hadn’t even said thank you.

Clementine’s tummy grumbled and she was very glad when Mrs Bottomley announced that it was time for lunch. The teacher had the children stand in two straight lines and marched them across the quadrangle. Clementine was quite sure now that Mrs Bottomley had a thing about lines.

Because the kindergarten children took longer to eat their lunch, they arrived at the dining room a quarter of an hour before the other classes. That way they had a better chance of finishing their meal and still having time for a run around in the playground before the afternoon lessons.

‘Lunch today is Mrs Winky’s special sausages with yummy mashed potato and vegetables,’ Mrs Bottomley told the group.

Clementine thought that sounded quite good – she loved her mother’s sausages and mashed potato. The children lined up once again and the plates of food were handed over to them.

‘It smells nice,’ Poppy said as she walked over to a table and sat down.

‘No, no, no, Poppy, you must sit where I tell you to,’ Mrs Bottomley barked. ‘Over there with Clementine and Angus and Joshua. I think it’s far better to have the girls and boys mixed together at lunchtime.’

Clementine couldn’t believe that she had to sit with Angus again.

She put her plate down on the table and realised that she needed to go to the toilet. She didn’t want to leave it until later, just in case she had an accident too.

She whispered to Poppy.

‘I need to go too,’ Poppy replied.

The girls approached Mrs Bottomley and asked if they could go. The old woman huffed and asked why they hadn’t gone at morning tea time.

‘But we did,’ Clementine protested.

Mrs Bottomley muttered something that sounded like ‘weak bladders’ and then said, ‘I’m not too keen to mop up after anyone else today, so yes, off you go.’

The girls returned just minutes later. Angus and Joshua were sitting at the table grinning at one another like a pair of Cheshire cats.

‘What are you smiling at?’ Clementine asked as she sat down.

‘Nothing.’ Angus shook his head.

‘Yeah, nothing at all,’ Joshua added, which only made Clementine more suspicious.

Clementine pushed her fork into the mashed potato and put it in her mouth.

Poppy did the same.

At exactly the same moment both girls spat their mouthfuls of food all over their plates.

‘Yuck!’ Clementine couldn’t get it out quickly enough. ‘That’s disgusting!’

Poppy was gagging.

Mrs Bottomley was patrolling the tables and saw their carry-on. ‘Girls, whatever’s the matter this time?’

‘There’s something wrong with it,’ said Clementine. She pointed at the potato. ‘It tastes awful.’

‘I’ll be the judge of that.’ Mrs Bottomley whisked the fork out of Angus’s hand and dug it into his mashed potato. She shovelled a generous portion of the creamy white vegetable into her mouth.

‘Mmm, delicious,’ she said. She looked at Clementine and Poppy. ‘There’s nothing wrong with this at all.’

‘I’m sure there’s nothing wrong with
Angus’s
food because he wouldn’t do anything to his own lunch,’ Clementine snapped.

‘Are you accusing Angus of tampering with your food?’ Mrs Bottomley stared at her. Even her eyebrows looked sharp.

‘He must have put something in it when Poppy and me went to the toilet,’ said Clementine. She could feel the hot sting of tears prickling her eyes for the second time that day. She also noticed some sprinklings of what looked like salt all over the floor.