The Adventures of Emma and Scruffy

By Emma Williams

Why cant I have a dog? Emma says for the twentieth time. Her father explains that dogs arent allowed where they live. Then, one wonderful day, Emma finds Scruffy a hungry shaggy, little dog that belongs to nobody she is determined to keep Scruffy and somehow shes going to do it!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Mar 10, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450039093

Emma Williams

Emma Williams studied history at Oxford and medicine at London University. She has worked as a doctor in Britain, Pakistan, Afghanistan, New York, South Africa and Jerusalem. She wrote for several newspapers and magazines about Palestinian-Israeli affairs and was a correspondent for the Spectator from 2000-2003.

Book preview

Contents

1. She Goes to the Children’s Film with Her Imaginary Dog

2. She Goes to Find the Dog

3. She Goes Knocking on Doors to Find the Dog and Makes Friends with a Stranger

4. She Finds the Dog

5. She Takes the Dog to Mrs. Walters’s House

6. She Tells Her Friend Sam about Finding Scruffy

7. She Keeps Scruffy in an Old Car

8. She Plays with Scruffy All Day

9. Scruffy Is Ill

10. She Goes to the Vet to Ask for Some Pills, But She Can’t Get Any for Him

11. The Rescue

Chapter 1

She Goes to the Children’s Film

with Her Imaginary Dog

Come on, boy, said Emma to her dog. Emma’s friend Sam paused while Emma waited for her dog to sniff around a lamp. This was very nice of Sam because Emma’s dog was imaginary. Emma is ten years old, and for as long as she could remember, she had longed for a dog. But she’d never been able to have a real dog, only an imaginary one. Good dog, said Emma.

The girls walked on, puffing out steam into the freezing air. Emma’s sister, Kelly, and Sam’s sister, Tracey, who are younger than they, skipped ahead. It was a Saturday morning in February. They were going to the children’s film show in the center of the town. They were in the middle of the housing estate where they all lived; they walked toward the bus stop. It was an incredibly clean housing estate. The roads were smooth and the pavements spotless. Velvet green grass stretched in front of the houses. Every twenty meters, a neat little tree sprouted out of the curb. In the pale winter light, the houses looked like toy houses, each with its brightly painted front door; there wasn’t a cardboard box or a can or a bit of litter to be seen. The wives cleaning their windows wore aprons; the husbands washing their spotless cars wore homemade pullovers.

On the corner, Emma stopped to let her imaginary dog cock his leg. She looked at Sam, very neat in her blue coat and her shiny shoes. She looked at Kelly and Tracey, in their colored frocks and pom-pom hats. She looked at the bus queue, all in their go-to-town clothes. She looked down at herself, at her dusty shoes, her crumpled jeans, her duffle coat ripped in the seams.

I don’t know how you get so messy, her mother kept telling her. Why can’t you stay neat like Kelly? I wash and mend your clothes, and they’re torn again in two minutes, and comb your hair, it looks like a haystack.

Emma said nothing; she hated the housing estate because it was so clean and because all the people were so proper, but most of all she hated it because nobody on the estate were allowed to keep a dog. It was a rule: no dogs on housing estates, the only dog Emma was allowed to have was an imaginary dog.

The bus is coming, said Sam. Emma jerked her dog’s head, and they all ran across the road. There was a young woman with two little children in dazzling white socks, their mother in a fake fur coat, and a black-coated, black-hatted man carrying a rolled-up umbrella.

The bus swung around the corner; at this moment, a little dog ran in front of the bus. The bus screeched to a stop; the dog disappeared under the bus then shot out from behind the wheels. He came running toward the bus queue.

Here, boy, called Emma, snapping her fingers; the little dog bounded straight toward her. Here, boy.

Out into the road rushed the man with the umbrella; he raised his umbrella and whacked the dog on the back. The dog squealed and ran away up the road.

Anger boiled up inside Emma; she