Anne Fine - On Planet Fruitcake

‘Right,’ Miss Dove said encouragingly next morning. ‘Ready to use your brains? Are all the tiny wheels inside your heads well-oiled and spinning nicely?’

Everyone nodded. It was cloudier today, and nowhere near so hot and stuffy. Everyone, even Astrid, felt ready to think.

‘Good.’ Miss Dove beamed. ‘Then we’ll begin the minute we get back from Assembly.’

But Philip started sooner than that. Because in Assembly Mrs Carter gave a little talk. ‘Anyone can knock someone over in the playground by accident,’ she said. ‘But they should never try to put the blame on someone else. It’s never, ever right to tell a lie.’

All the way back to the classroom, Philip was thinking. He knew that, if he lived on Planet Fruitcake, he would have something to say to the whole class. He’d put his hand up, just like all the others did.

Why not? Why couldn’t he pretend he lived there. No one would know.

Before he could even think about it for one more minute, Philip had raised his hand.

Miss Dove stared.

So did everyone else.

Miss Dove said kindly, ‘I see your hand’s up, Philip. Have you left something in the hall you need to go back and fetch?’

‘No,’ Philip said. ‘I wanted to tell you that what Mrs Carter just said to us – that it’s never, ever right to tell a lie – well, that’s plain wrong .’

Everyone stared even harder. Then Miss Dove asked him gently, ‘What makes you say that, Philip?’

He wasn’t going to admit he only said it because he was pretending that he was on Planet Fruitcake. So he said, ‘Because that’s what I think .’ And then, because they were still gazing at him in astonishment, he told them what he had been thinking all the way back from Assembly.

‘Suppose you looked out of your window and saw a man waving an axe dripping with blood, and terrified people scuttling away up an alley. If he called up to ask you if you could see anyone trying to hide from him, it would be right to say you couldn’t.’

‘That’s true!’ Arif agreed. ‘You’d say one tiny thing that wasn’t true, but you’d save people’s lives.’

They all chimed in. ‘Yes. That’s much more important.’

‘What could be wrong with that?’

They sat and watched as Miss Dove had a quick think about it. In the end she said, ‘Well, that’s a special example.’

‘Still,’ Astrid said. ‘It proves that Mrs Carter’s wrong.’

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