Trevor liked playing in his garden. There was a long green patch of grass, which had bushes on each side, where he had two little buckets ten feet apart from each other that acted as his goal. He would put his red teddy bear in the goal, in the middle, and then when everything was ready. He would take eleven long paces back and put the football on the ground before running at the ball and shooting at the goal. He always scored. Mostly because his teddy bear didn’t move from the middle of the goal. But that didn’t bother Trevor. It wasn’t about the scoring of goals for him he just loved being able to play in his garden. If anything Trevor felt the happiest when he was playing in the garden.
There was also a swing that was hung from an oak tree at the other end of the garden and though his sister Millie liked to sit on the swing and read her books. Trevor preferred to stand on the swing to see how high he could swing. His mother didn’t like him standing on the swing so he only did it when she wasn’t in the garden or when she was showing Millie the differences between daffodils and roses. Something Trevor remembered his mother doing with him when he was Millie’s age. Daffodils were yellow and roses were either white or red. That’s what Trevor remembered.
When it was raining Trevor would pull a chair up to the kitchen window and look out into the garden hoping the rain would stop. There was times when he would look out the window for hours while Millie, with a book in her hand, read another story. Trevor wasn’t into reading. He found it boring preferring instead when it was raining to line his action men against the kitchen window with their guns aimed towards the rain. It was his way of telling the rain to go away.
Millie on the other hand would just say ‘rain rain go away and come back another day.’ Which it never did. Trevor felt, when he threatened the rain with his army of action men, the rain usually listened and stopped. Trevor didn’t believe in coincidences. It didn’t dawn on him that the rain may actually stop without him lining up his action men. Even when the rain stopped Trevor’s mother still made him wear a little yellow rain coat and orange wellington boots because it was still wet.
Trevor didn’t like this as he felt it restricted his movement too much. He would slip off the swing when he was standing on it and he couldn’t run at the football when he was talking penalties because the wellington’s made it too awkward to run and strike the ball. However he was still able to take Millie’s books from her and hide them in the garden. Something he liked doing when he tired of taking penalties and swinging on the swing.
It wasn’t that he didn’t like Millie. It was just he liked playing more than he liked looking at Millie sitting on the swing. It was his swing and not hers and why shouldn’t he be allowed hide Millie’s books? Though Millie didn’t know it Trevor always hide the books in the same place. In his father’s shed behind the deckchairs.
No matter how many times Millie looked she never found the books and would eventually give up. Going into the house to get another book before a guilty Trevor would hand her back her book when he realised what he had done wasn’t nice. Though he didn’t like sharing the garden or swing with Millie he still loved her. Even if books, love, yellow raincoats and orange wellington boots were for sissies.
