The care of tadpoles

Christopher is my enemy today and his tadpoles are dying. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said, poking the tadpoles in the jam jar with a stick. ‘I think I’ll be a spy when I grow up’.

‘You said you were going to be an astronaut,’ I reminded him.

‘That was last week. I will be a spy. Hide round corners and shoot bad people. Be responsible. Honour my country. Could be bloody.’

I kicked him on the shin. ‘Copycat. In any case your tadpoles will die if you don’t feed them.’

‘They live on water, stupid. In any case girls can’t be spies. You’ll have babies and wash and scrub and cook all day long.

‘Oh yes they can. Who says I have to have babies?’

Christopher stuck out his bottom lip. ‘Do you really want to be a spy, then?’ He fished out a dead tadpole with his fingers and flicked it at me.

‘I hate you. I shall be an artist or a pilot and grow flowers and make perfume. In any case, tadpoles eat bacon. Shall we go and ask Mum for some?’

‘Cissy,’ he said.

‘Murderer,’ I replied.

*

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