The Fishwhacker Swindle?

Once upon a time there was a little girl called Patsy. She lived in a neighbourhood just like yours or mine. Patsy was a very bossy little girl and nobody liked her. She wanted people to like her, even more than she wanted them to be scared of her.

Patsy’s daddy gave her a job one day. She was to be in charge of mending all the broken dolls in the neighbourhood. Patsy wasn’t a very hard-working little girl and had no talents, so Daddy gave her lots and lots of money to pay other children with doll-mending skills to do the work.

The children in the neighbourhood all brought their dolls to be mended. One day some of the doll-menders came to Patsy. ‘There are more and more broken dolls in the neighbourhood, and we’re becoming better and better at mending them,’ they said. ‘We need more money because it’s becoming more expensive to do it properly.’

Patsy didn’t like the doll-menders. She was very jealous of them. So she said, ‘I think you just want the money to buy sweets for yourselves. I’m going to start checking up on you.’

She asked her daddy for more money. Daddy was very busy fighting all the other parents in the neighbourhood and beyond, and he said crossly, ‘This is all you’re getting,’ and threw some money at her. Patsy took the money and found some bullies and paid them to spy on the doll-menders. The bullies complained that they had nowhere to rest between spying, so Patsy told them to kick the doll-menders out of the Wendy houses where they were mending dolls and to sit in them themselves. She also gave them lots of paper to make planes with to keep them busy. The bullies loved making paper planes so much that they decided to make the doll-menders make lots of paper planes as well. The doll-menders complained that all this paper plane-making wasn’t leaving them much time to mend dolls. The bullies laughed at them and threatened to hit them.

One day the children in the neighbourhood came to see Patsy. They were crying and carrying bits of their broken dolls. ‘The doll-menders can’t mend our dolls any more,’ they said. ‘They’re either too busy or they’ve died of stress or killed themselves.’

‘Liars!’ shrieked Patsy, stamping her foot. ‘This has been the best week ever for doll-mending!’ She ran inside crying and told her daddy. Daddy made sure that a writer for a friendly newspaper wrote an article about how ungrateful the children in the neighbourhood were.

Soon the doll-menders were all dead, in mental homes or abroad. The streets were full of the broken arms and legs and heads of dolls. Daddy sighed. Even he had to admit that his darling little girl had made a right balls-up of things. He called Patsy, who was sulking in her room (which was decorated very prettily with all the lovely things Daddy’s money had bought her).

‘I don’t think doll-mending is for you,’ he said. ‘I’m giving you another job instead.’

And so, the next day, Patsy stood outside her house and looked proudly at the collection of little boys and girls in shiny police uniforms who were already hiding cameras about the street.

‘This time I’ll get it right!’ she vowed.


(Etc., etc.)