3

A Lady in Pink

‘You can’t stay up there all day. You’ll have to come down sometime.’

I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for the red-faced man from the municipality. He had unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt and, by this time, his handkerchief was full of sweaty stains. It looked as if he was wishing he was lying by a pool with an ice-cold drink in his hand rather than having to talk to two children sitting in a tree.

I didn’t know how long we’d been sitting up there but it felt like at least an hour or two.

‘He’s right,’ I whispered to Leila. ‘We’ll have to get down sooner or later.’

Leila smiled at me. The tree was throwing dappled green shadows on her face. ‘You’re braver than I thought,’ she said.

I didn’t feel brave at all. I was thirsty and my bum was hurting from sitting on the hard branch. On top of that, I was sure I would need to go to the loo pretty soon. And I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that we were in trouble.

In the meantime, two more municipal pickups had arrived. On the back of one of the pickups were men with chainsaws and other equipment. They were sitting around, bored and waiting for us to get down from the tree.

‘I still say we should just get them down from there,’ growled Rat-face.

‘We can’t use violence,’ said Red-face. ‘They’re two kids. Can you imagine what the press would say?’

Leila and I grinned at each other. Didn’t they realize that we could hear every word?

Like Leila, I lightly kicked the air with my bare feet. I had taken off my sneakers and put them in a fork in the branches. I was hoping Leila couldn’t smell my socks. At least it was nice and cool up in the tree. It smelt like the small shed on my grandfather’s farm, where he kept the firewood for winter. Somewhere above us a bird was chirping among the branches.

I smiled when I suddenly thought of something my dad sometimes said. When he was feeling down in the dumps or when things went wrong, he would say, ‘Yep, today’s a good day for climbing trees.’ Lately my dad was down in the dumps quite often.

Suddenly the calm was shattered by some ear-splitting yapping.

‘Trixi, Georgie, pipe down, my darlings,’ said a voice somewhere below us. A voice that sounded vaguely familiar. ‘What’s going on here?’

My stomach flip-flopped and I pushed some leaves out of the way to see who the voice belonged to.

‘It’s Mrs Merriman,’ I whispered to Leila in alarm. ‘She lives in the same street as us. If she sees me, she’s going to call my mum and dad.’

My mum said Mrs Merriman was eccentric. I thought that was just a nice word for ‘freaking weird’. She always wore pink clothes and even her grey hair had a touch of pink in it. She came to this park every day to walk her two poodles, George and Trixibelle. At least once a month she rang our doorbell to collect money for the SPCA, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. My mum always told us to ignore her but my dad always opened the door and patiently listened to her descriptions of the dire needs of the poor animals.

I heard Red-face explain about the tree that had to be felled to make place for the pipeline.

‘What a pity,’ said Mrs Merriman. ‘Such a beautiful tree.’

‘It’s going to be even more of a pity if people don’t have water to drink,’ Red-face replied gruffly. ‘Nor doggies like these. Can’t do our job. Two kids sitting up there in the tree. Refuse to get down.’

‘Strange,’ said Mrs Merriman. She shaded her eyes with one hand and peered up.

I quickly let go of the leaves so that she couldn’t see my face.

The rustling of the leaves made George and Trixibelle growl suspiciously.

I was starting to get worried. If Mrs Merriman thought this was strange, it wasn’t a good sign. After all, she had pink hair.

A mobile phone rang.

‘Hello?’ answered Red-face.

Leila and I looked at each other.

‘His ringtone is Justin Bieber?’ Leila stifled her laughter with her hand.

I shrugged. Maybe Red-face had a teenage daughter at home. Donovan once uploaded a heavy-metal ringtone for my mum. I wish I could’ve seen the look on the faces of her stiff-lipped colleagues when they heard her phone ring for the first time.

‘The office,’ said Red-face to Rat-face after ending the call. ‘We have to go back.’

Surprised, Leila and I watched the men get into the pickups.

‘Don’t think you’ve won!’ Red-face shouted through his open window as he drove off. ‘We’ll be back!’

When they were gone, Leila and I gave each other a high five. Her hand was soft and cool against mine. She was grinning from ear to ear.

‘So, what now?’ I asked, stretching out my arm that was getting stiff by then. ‘Shall we get down?’

‘You heard what that man said,’ said Leila. ‘They’ll be back.’

I said nothing. I’d guessed she was going to say that.

We jumped with fright when a voice suddenly spoke right below us. I grabbed hold of the branch to stop myself from falling off.

For a moment I’d forgotten all about Mrs Merriman.

‘Could I perhaps bring you two darlings some cold drinks?’ she called. ‘You must be thirsty by now.’