stomped into the room.

‘Get up,’ she said, not very nicely.

‘What?’ the small boy looked up at her with bleary eyes.

‘Get up, I said, or…’ she looked around his room quickly. ‘I will whack you with a tennis racquet.’

‘You will not!’ He shot out of the bed like he’d done something in it.

‘Yes, I will. Where are your brothers?’

‘They’re not here,’ he cried, scrambling for the bin, where he’d hidden her papers. ‘Damnit!’

‘Yes they are. I can hear them.’ She stomped her foot imperiously.

Giggling came from behind the curtains. Perhaps, if the boys had been older, it would have been masculine giggling. As it was, they were still very young and didn’t know how to hide properly. Two sets of feet, in very unattractive shoes, poked out from beneath the hideously orange hanging cloth.

The little girl didn’t say anything to warn them. She picked up the racquet the boy had hidden under the bed and advanced towards the window.

‘Run away!’ the boy called from the bin he had accidentally-on-purpose fallen into. ‘How the hell did this get so big,’ he muttered to himself.

The two brothers peeked out. ‘Oh no,’ cried the one with the blue eyes. ‘She’s gonna get me by Jumminy. I must run slowly in a wriggling line of not very far so I can’t be caught.’ He began to tiptoe, very unquietly, and very vaguely, and hideously slowly in the general direction of something that was not her.

‘Arrrrrgh,’ cried the one with the green eyes. ‘I am friendly, I am friendly!’ He deposited himself on the floor and began to giggle uncontrollably.

‘You are NOT HELPING MOIIIIII,’ said the first boy. His eyes were very large and brown, and rather pretty in their own stupid way. ‘Not fair,’ he muttered. ‘I was trying to be cute.’

‘It does not suit you AT ALL,’ cried the little girl and swung the racquet at him as hard as she could. It hit him on his rather horribly shaped backside, for we must remember he was currently upside down in a bin.

‘You better watch out,’ cried the little girl. ‘For when I grow up, I am gonna get my future husband to come along and clean you up like something or other that I can’t think of right now.’

‘Well then! Well then!,’ the little boy cried from under the sheets of paper he’d finally found. ‘When I get a wife that… when I get a wife, and I WILL, I’ll set her onto you and you’ll be SORRY.’

‘Not gonna happen,’ said the little girl furiously. ‘And I’ll tell ya why. It’s because me and your future wife, whoever she may be, are gonna be best mates, and that’s that. So THERE.’

Someone’s mother dashed into the room as quickly as she was able, with her bad back and gimpy leg, and one eye missing. ‘What the hell is going on,’ she cried.

Her husband walked in slowly after her and surveyed the room. He began to grin.

‘What are you laughing at,’ cried the little boy with the big brown eyes as he backed out of the fallen over bin.

‘I see now,’ said the father. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said to his wife, who was trying to grab one of the screeching boys.

‘Don’t worry about it? Look at them!’

‘They’re fine. The only problem I can see here,’ and the father grinned quite widely. ‘Is the fact there aren’t enough girls in this room. But, that’s okay. They’re playing together quite nicely, don’t you think?’

‘They are?’ The mother looked again. The screeching and whacking and begging for mercy all seemed quite… civilised, if the playing of children could seem that way, especially if it were three boys and only one girl.

‘Yep, it’s fine,’ said the father. ‘They’re all friendly, you see. Kids these days just don’t know how to do it right, that’s all.’

‘What year is it here then?’ the mother asked.

‘Most likely the seventies, or something. Maybe the eighties. Doesn’t really matter,’ said the father. ‘They’ll be alright. See, she’s making him feel better now.’

They looked at the little girl, who was currently trying to drag one of the little boys out of the bedroom door by his ankles.

‘See?’ said the dad. ‘They’re friends.’

The End.