Boy Underwater. Adam Baron

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      Lance once asked me a question. We were in the hall doing PE, something I’d been looking forward to all week, but which turned out to be terrible. We were starting Year 3 then with Mr Ashe, who I happen to know is a boss footballer. He coaches the Year 6 team and we sometimes interrupt our Year 4 Saturday-morning training to watch their matches. Before every game he does kick-ups and catches the ball on the back of his neck while the Year 6 kids all groan. So I thought PE would be a chance to improve and perhaps even overtake Danny Jones. But it wasn’t. That term, Mr Ashe explained, as we lined up near the wall bars, we would not be doing football. Or rugby. Not even netball, which would at least have involved a ball. Instead we were going to be doing gymnastics, and if you don’t think that’s terrible it means you are probably a girl (though if you’re not, BIG SORRY AND RESPECT). The girls all squealed with delight, and soon I could see why.

      Now I have to admit something. I like girls as much as the next boy, and maybe a little bit more, but I’d always thought that when it came to sport girls just weren’t quite as good. That day I found out that I was wrong. Hardly had the words left Mr Ashe’s lips than I was staring in mouth-wide amazement as girl after girl did the most incredible things. Laura Pinter did a cartwheel that was just like a real wheel going round, especially when she kept going and did three in a row. Rachel Jones then did another one but sort of twisted round halfway in the air so that she ended up on two feet, facing the way she’d come, her arms pointing up to the ceiling.

      Wow! It looked so easy but when I tried I just got tangled up. The other boys were the same, looking like rejects from a toy factory, the ones that didn’t work right. The girls were smug too, standing up straighter than they normally did and raising their chins as they walked back to start again. In contrast, our own rubbish-ness was sort of humiliating, though there was one moment I did enjoy. Vi Delap did this thing that I simply COULD NOT believe. She stood straight and bent over backwards, reaching up and behind her. In less than a second she’d put her hands on the floor into a bridge, and then flicked her feet over so that she was standing up again. Billy Lee saw her and tried himself. The very loud echo, when his head connected with the wooden floor, is still one of my Top Five Sounds Of All Time.

      ‘Cymbeline,’ Lance said, sitting down beside me and rubbing his elbow. And his knee. And then his bum. He looked miserable, though I didn’t think it came from the gymnastics. ‘Where did you get your name from?’

      ‘My name?’

      ‘Yeah. I mean, I always thought it was normal because it’s what you’re called, isn’t it?’

      ‘So why don’t you think it’s normal now?’

      ‘Well, my dad –’

      ‘Wait, Lance. Is this your dad-dad you mean, or your new-dad?’

      ‘My new-dad. I told him you were my best friend and he thought you were a girl. When I told him you weren’t, he laughed a bit and told me he’d never heard that name before and it must be because I went to ‘that kind of school’. He didn’t tell me what ‘that kind of school’ was because my mum came in. So where did you get it from?’

      ‘I could ask you the same thing.’

      ‘I suppose,’ Lance said. ‘Though my name’s not as weird as yours. I’ve never met another Cymbeline but there’s another Lance in this school. And another kid called Lance in me and my dad’s cycling club.’

      ‘Your dad-dad?’

      ‘My dad-dad.’

      ‘But still, if you ask me, I can ask you. Why are you called Lance?’

      ‘I’m not allowed to tell you.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘It’s my dad,’ Lance explained.

      ‘Your dad-dad?’

      ‘Yeah, my dad-dad. He says I shouldn’t say. Or, if I do say, I have to say that it’s СКАЧАТЬ