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I don’t think so
now
, anyway. But you all went off somewhere without me at lunch, and then this afternoon you kept looking at each other and – and sort of smirking…” She glanced up miserably at Izzy.
    Izzy went darkly red all over. “Oh. Yes. I suppose we did. But we weren’t trying to be mean at all.”
    “So what were you doing?” her dad demanded curiously.
    Izzy frowned and looked down at her school bag. “Promise you won’t be cross?” she asked Poppy.
    “It’s a bit late for that, Iz!” her dad muttered. “Just tell us.”
    Izzy reached into her bag and pulled out a crumpled, sticky-looking piece of paper.
    “Oh! You got it out of the bin!” Poppy took it, rather sadly. She was wondering now if she ought to have stood up for herself better. Maybe she shouldn’t have let Ali convince her that she was a cheat. But there was no way she could enter this now. It had Ribena all over it, she reckoned, and perhaps a bit of chocolate?
    “Is that your competition entry, Poppy?” Izzy’s dad asked, peering at it interestedly. “It looks very good.” He squinted at it sideways. “What’s under that splodge there?”
    “Scented plants. It was meant to be about all the different senses.” Poppy heaved a huge sigh, and nearly caused a tidal wave over the edge of her hot chocolate mug. “I wish I hadn’t thrown it away now. I mean, I did borrow ideas, but that isn’t really the same as copying, is it?”
    “Of course not!” Izzy’s dad chuckled. “All designers have to refer back to other famous gardens, Poppy. It’s what you do with the ideas that counts. So is this what you were doing at lunch, Iz? It can’t have taken you that long to get it out of the bin though.”
    Izzy shook her head and pulled out another pieceof paper. She slid it across the table to Poppy, looking apologetic. “We thought you were wrong to throw it away, so I got it out of the bin and we were going to just enter it for you. But by then it was all mucked up. So we tried to redo it. It took ages. And it still isn’t as good as yours was.”
    “You did me another copy?” Poppy murmured, looking down at it.
    “Well, we tried, but none of us can draw like you, Poppy. It’s useless. And we couldn’t remember what was in some of the smudgy bits. We were thinking we might have to get together tomorrow again and sort it out.” She looked sideways at Poppy. “Are you cross? We just wanted to help.”
    “I’m not cross. Emily wrote this, didn’t she?” Poppy asked, looking at one of the little descriptions. “She’s got the worst spelling ever.” She shook her head, grinning. The drawings weren’t nearly as good as hers, like Izzy said, but they’d obviously tried so hard to make it look like her design. It was the nicest thing they could possibly have done. “So this was why you were looking all weird. I thought you hated me because I was a cheat, like Ali said!”
    Izzy stared at her disgustedly. “You thought we’d believe that – that slug! Instead of you? Who doyou think we are?”
    Poppy shrugged apologetically. “I did stay up a bit late finishing my design,” she admitted. “I was so tired… I suppose I was a bit silly – you know. A bit teary. I feel a lot better now though,” she added, taking a big gulp of chocolate.
    “Good.” Izzy’s dad was still studying the original design. “Finish up that hot chocolate, you two.”
    Izzy looked at him in surprise. “Why? We’ve only just got it.”
    “Because we need to go home and get Poppy some more paper. We’re not wasting this,” her dad said firmly. “Brilliant ideas.
Very original
, and I’ll tell Ali and her little rat gang that. We’re going home so you can do another copy. I’ll help. But only from a distance. I won’t put a finger near it, so no one can say we were cheating.”

    “I’m just not sure it’s exciting enough…” Poppy murmured thoughtfully. She and Izzy had eaten a super-fast tea of toasted sandwiches before