This is a story version of an earlier-published non-fiction piece.

Unless Tim could hide as a tree trunk he wanted no part in school plays or musicals. He hated being stared at, never having the confidence of the louder, brasher, more popular kids. He lacked the self-belief to shout and stomp about or play it for laughs. Forced to be part of the Nativity he’d been a shepherd, his head bowed beneath a stripy, winceyette bedsheet at the periphery of the stables where it was gloomiest and the straw was piled highest, trying not to knock over the cotton wool sheep with his crook. He’d be found in the third or fourth row during carol services, mouthing the words like a footballer who’d forgotten the national anthem. Tim was a hanger-on, a fetcher and carrier, happy to assemble cardboard chairs or cribs or paint rainbows and skyscrapers as the backgrounds to his drama teacher’s dreams. There would be a day when Tim could hide no more.

Tim was sticking green crepe paper ‘leaves’ to a coat hanger tree when he got a whiff of Mrs Moody’s perfume. A pungent scent of Boots perfume counter and the clop of her shiny heels always preceded her. ‘Things are going to be a little different this year,’ she said. ‘Put down your spatula.’ Tim tried to protest, but she said: ‘No, this is your chance to show what you can do. I think you’ll surprise people.’ When he got home his guts churned so badly he couldn’t eat his tea.

And so he was destined to be the Wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. He had grunts to practise but at least there would be plenty of fur and whiskers and face paint to hide behind. Knowing he couldn’t get out of it and that Mum and Dad were desperate to see him do anything on stage where it was possible to identify their child he spent hours practising his lines, endlessly repeating ‘all the better for seeing you’ in his Nan’s half-moon specs in front of her dressing table mirror.

            ‘I knew you’d get the bug,’ Mum said, although acting in Tim’s family only went as far as expressing delight when opening socks on Christmas morning. The smile was wiped off Mum’s face the following morning when she was told wolves had to be grey. According to Mrs Moody – assuming the role of artistic director – Tim’s black school uniform with some sort of mask wouldn’t cut it. He’d be needing fangs too and scary claws.

Mum dug through their nature books in the loft and granddad’s battered old copies of National Geographic, desperate to find a black wolf to prove her point. ‘We’ll have to make do,’ she said when Tim pointed out cartoon wolf-type creatures who chased chickens or handled sticks of dynamite were usually grey or brown. She suggested wearing something of granddad’s.

‘Wolves don’t wear cardigans with a pipe and betting slips in the pockets.’ Dad said. Tim went on and on at her, desperate that the class wouldn’t make fun of him. There was meant to be a full-dress rehearsal, but as time was tight, it got cancelled. The afternoon of the day before the big performance Mum relented and went to the market, grumbling that it was ‘just like’ Tim to get the most difficult part.

‘Daft is what it is. It’s not as if you’ll get to do much more than growl.’ Mum went to a haberdasher’s stall in the market. Tim liked the hundreds of buttons on display at the stall, each kept like precious stones in tall, clear plastic tubes. There were turquoise and gold and ruby and sparkly buttons and ones the size of cookies or shaped like coffee beans. Mum got grey wool and some thread, but she said they ought to try the sports stall to see if they had anything a wolf might wear. Tim hated the going to the sports stall in the market as nothing was branded and they sold things like Jesus sandals bound together with elastic bands and headbands and T-shirts with things like ‘I’m Sporty’ printed on them. No one wore that stuff. Mum said she didn’t have money for brands and told him to go and sit in the car if he wasn’t going to be helpful. She held a few tops against him before he could trudge off – hideous cast-off bottle greens and burgundy colours of the town’s Catholic school. ‘A wolf isn’t going to wear-’

‘You’re driving me up the wall. Do you know that?’ Mum’s cheek twitched. He left her rummaging about in the bargains box while he went and sat in the passport photo booth, spinning the chair around and around so he could pretend he was really tiny or super tall until he had to jump off it when he got dizzy. Mum found him tangled in the orange curtains and shook her head. ‘I couldn’t get anything.’

‘I can’t do it.’

‘If you let me finish…I bumped into your Auntie Bren and she’s got something for you that sounds ideal.’

‘Let’s see it then.’ Tim had stacks of aunties. All his mum’s mates were called auntie, so he had aunties who were dinner ladies, aunties who worked at the chippy and aunties who sold poppies in the Market Square. Auntie Bren wore her hair up with knitting needles poking out of the bun. She worked at the chemist near school whispering in a voice you could hear three streets away at creams people had been prescribed.

‘She didn’t have it with her. She’ll drop it off tomorrow.’

His toes bit into his inner soles. ‘But the play’s tomorrow.’

‘It’ll be there. She won’t let us down.’

At the start of rehearsals there was no sign of Tim’s rescue sweater. He bit his thumbnail till it was jagged and sore, all through the morning. The performance was due to start at two in the afternoon. He couldn’t eat his sandwiches even though they were his favourite cheese and pickle and broken-up salt and vinegar crisps. He poked his head through the curtain. He couldn’t see Mum, but parents were filing into the assembly and taking their seats as Miss Cockcroft played ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’ on the piano.

Tim jolted at a tap on his shoulder. Mrs Moody handed him a brown paper parcel. ‘This was dropped off just this minute. You’d better hurry getting changed,’ she said. He tugged on his trousers and the grey sweater from the parcel, Mrs Moody holding the mask up to his face as soon as the rescue sweater had been pulled over his head. He snapped the elastic bands over his ears that held the mask in place. Tim liked the mask which he’d helped to make in Art class. It had sharp, jaggy teeth and yellowy, bloodshot eyes with a thick mane of fur at the neck and pricked and pointy ears. Tim had pinched some pipe cleaners from Granddad for whiskers. His red, flappy tongue was a spare inner sole for Dad’s golf shoes.

He waited for his cue, tucked behind the dusty, black curtains, heart pounding. He hated it, all of it, but knew he’d have to go through with it or they’d never forgive him. Mrs Moody gave him the thumbs-up and he stomped onto stage, roaring and growling. He gave such a roar you’d have heard it from one side of the Rockies to the other.

And it went silent. Tim paused, squinting through the slits in his painted wolf’s eyes. Had he forgotten a line? Missed a roar? Had he come on too soon? His heart thumped in his throat.

Then he saw a man in the front row was chuckling, rocking back and forth in his chair. Others began to laugh and a kid in the front row with a pudgy face and gap in his teeth pointed at Tim. It took Tim a few seconds to realise they were pointing and chuckling at him. Laughing at him, rather than his performance. He tugged at the mask, so he could try to see what they were pointing at. Perhaps one of his pipe-cleaner whiskers or button nose had fallen from his mask? No. The kid was pointing at his jumper. Tim looked down at it and was the last person in that assembly hall to see the joke. On the front of his pale grey sweater the word ‘JOGGING’ was picked out in huge shiny electric blue capitals.

‘The wolf’s into keep fit,’ someone sniggered.

Shame can crush a child. That day Tim was lost to the world of acting forever.