Shrinking Ralph Perfect by Chris D'Lacey Page A

up. He hated being picked on, and he hated it even more when people made fun of any part of his name. The first day he’d met young Kyle Howard Salter, the bully had said, ‘Your name’s Perfect ? Well get you, snooty.’ And that was bad enough. But when Kyle had then found out that ‘Rafe’ (pronounced to rhyme with ‘waif’) was a trendy contraction of ‘Ralph’, he’d teased and jeered and never stopped saying it. Ralph could have happily put a fist in Kyle’s mouth. But where would that have got him? In hospital, not Miniville.
    ‘Mum,’ he shouted.
    Penny hurried over. ‘Are you OK? Are you OK?’ She kissed his head, loudly.
    ‘Pathetic,’ Kyle muttered, and walked away laughing.
    Ralph stood up, candy shell breaking underfoot. As it happened, he did feel dreadfully hungry and was about to ask his mum if there was anything to eat when he saw, in one corner, what he thought at first was a stack of small gas cylinders. They were multicoloured and ranging in size from torpedo-shaped to large roundfootballs. It was only when Kyle took a stick to one and cracked off a lump and started to eat it that Ralph twigged what the objects really were: not cylinders, but sugar beads – from Mum’s loaned tub of hundreds and thousands.
    Food for the fishes. It made him want to yak.
    ‘Everyone,’ said Tom, calling for attention. ‘This is Ralph, Penny’s son. They came from next door.’
    Ralph shuddered and suddenly felt weak behind his knees. He didn’t like the tense that Tom had used: came from next door. Were they destined to stay here in Miniville for ever?
    People muttered their ‘hellos’ or offered their sympathies. Most were workmen of one kind or another. As well as Tom, Neville and Wally – plumber, carpenter, electrician – there was a stocky Irish roofer called Spud O’Hare; a green-wellied gardener called Mrs Spink, who for some reason stood twice as tall and twice as skinny as the rest of the captives; and a well-spoken architect named Rodney Coiffure. And beside the fire, looking as if she’d cried all of Cinderella’s tears, was a ragged, grim-faced Jemima Culvery, the only girl in the Salter gang. She scowled at Ralph, then returned her stare to the crackling fire, as if she’d like to be the next log on it.
    Tom gave Ralph a drink of water in a can. ‘No mugs,’he explained. ‘We have to make do with what we can find and what Jack chooses to send our way. It’s a pretty miserable existence, I’m afraid.’ He crouched in front of Penny, who was holding Ralph’s hand. ‘We’ve got lighting and some running water; Jack miniaturised in a generator and pump, but they’re for the house use, not for us. In the room next door there’s an old, cracked sink I plumbed into the system. You can wash in it but I wouldn’t advise drinking from the taps; Jack made me fur them up with algae.’
    Ralph grimaced and pulled his mouth back from his can. ‘Why is everything so disgusting?’
    ‘I’ll explain in a minute,’ Tom replied. ‘The water you’re drinking is clean, we think. There’s a barrel over there in the corner by the door. Two tins per day, no more. That’s the rule. Fresh water is precious here.’
    ‘How do you get it?’ asked Penny.
    ‘You’ll see,’ Kyle sniffed.
    Tom ignored him and said, ‘There are no showers or baths. It’s a standing agreement that we don’t swap complaints about body odour. We all accept we stink like polecats.’
    Penny blushed and looked away.
    ‘There’s a toilet facility on the ground floor. It flushes – just – if you pull the chain hard. The wastegoes into a septic tank that Neville and I dug in the shallow strip of earth around the outside of the house. It’s makeshift and not at all pleasant. We keep it clean so the flies don’t come.’
    ‘Flies?’ Ralph took a gulp of air.
    ‘Big furry buzzy things,’ Kyle said (buzzing). ‘Any good with a spear, Rafe ?’ He pointed to a cluster of sharpened stakes, stacked beside