The London Pride by Charlie Fletcher Page B

hopeless. But the nasty look was the last straw. It was unbearable. She felt anger spike through her fear, like a sudden explosion of heat needling behind the bridge of her nose. She knew this was her eyes getting red, and though the rain would likely hide any tears of frustration from the dragon, she was determined not to betray herself in front of it.
    ‘COME ON!’ she yelled, and stamped her leading foot closer. ‘COME ON! WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!’
    Dragons probably don’t snigger, but the noise this one made definitely oozed quite a lot of smirk. As if to emphasise its power and to show it was in no particular hurry to barbecue her, it looked casually behind itself, and as her eyes were inexorably drawn after it, she saw precisely and terribly what it HAD been waiting for.
    Another dragon, its silver-painted twin, rose from below the lip of the building with the same ominous whomping wing-thud and, in a movement that matched the first one so exactly that you might have thought their motions were rehearsed, it bounded forwards and landed next door to it on the raised skylight, with a similarly percussive crack.
    The only difference between them was the shield it carried. It wasn’t metal. It was plywood. And instead of a proud red cross it shouted ‘GOLF SALE LAST CHANCE!!!’ at her, in foot-high neon lettering. She didn’t have the time to begin to wonder what that was about.
    Both dragons looked very pleased with each other indeed. For about half a second. Then they turned to look at her instead.
    One dragon was quite bad enough. Escaping one dragon was the wildest of wild long shots. But two dragons?
    ‘Last chance?’ she muttered to herself, looking at the plywood shield. ‘More like Game Over.’
    She needed a miracle.
    Perhaps if she could make them both attack at once she could dive between them and they might get tangled up as they tried to turn and chase her. Or maybe she should just get this thing started so it could all be over sooner.
    Her mouth was too dry to say anything brave or clever, so she hefted the stick and stamped forwards another six inches.
    The dragons looked at her. Then looked at each other. And then they definitely, DEFINITELY sniggered. Both of them.
    Then they turned and looked at her and did something even worse.
    The first dragon imitated her. It shuffled round so it was side-on, like she was, then it raised its stubby arms as if holding an imaginary sword, and then stamped its foot. Just like she’d done. The other one sniggered, wobbled its eyebrows and did exactly the same, adding a really demeaning wiggle of its bottom as it did so.
    The other dragon emitted a gleeful and wheezy ‘ sheesh sheesh sheesh ’ noise as it giggled at its friend’s antics, and stamped its foot again.
    Toughened glass can take a lot of punishment.
    But it isn’t indestructible.
    One minute there were two dragons mocking and mimicking her. Then there was a loud splintering noise.
    One of the dragons went ‘Ulp … ?’
    The other went ‘… Ook?’
    And then the glass beneath their feet splintered and gave way, and gravity took over as they dropped straight down the light well beneath them, plunging out of sight as abruptly as if a mysterious hand had just erased them from the planet.
    One hit its chin on the lip of the skylight with a surprised grunt of pain as it plummeted away, snapping its snout towards the sky and leaving a surprised puff of smoke hanging in the air, as a kind of exclamation mark.
    Jo and Will’s dad was a great believer in mulligans. Mulligans are do-overs. Playing table tennis, if you messed up your first serve, you were allowed one mulligan, which meant you started again. It was a family rule. And as a soldier he had expanded this rule to life in all its unpredictability, a large and unpleasant portion of which he had seen, and tried very hard not to bring home. All he did bring home was the positive lessons this hard side of his work had taught him. ‘Work