Chapter One

Do you remember the card game Top Trumps? I was brilliant at Top Trumps. King of the whole school. I was almost as good at Top Trumps as I was at marbles, and no one could touch me for marbles, not even the boys.

I must have played close to a thousand games while I was in junior school, but my all-time greatest victory was against Gary Martin Washbrook in the winter of 1979. Gary was spectacularly unsavoury character. He had boss eyes and bad breath and a pet rat called Hooligan that lived in the lining of his Pac-a-Mac. His favourite trick was creeping up behind you in the playground, waving Hooligan's lumpy belly in front of your face, and demanding that you hand over all your pocket money and sandwiches. It was the same story when it came to winning at marbles. With a modicum of skill, a hefty dose of intimidation and the help of one scabrous, flea-infected rodent, Gary Washbrook had earned himself the second-largest marble collection in the school.

It was my life's ambition to win it from him.

The day it happened had begun much like any other. I'd spent the morning constructing a wonky snowflake out of tinsel and wire coat hangers and planned to spend a most satisfactory lunch hour counting my marbles, eating my fish-finger sandwiches and rereading my Children's Encyclopaedia of Truly Amazing Facts. I was very keen on amazing facts when I was a kid. I wasn't too hot on the Partridge Family or the middle names of the Bay City Rollers, but if ever you needed to know the speed of something, or the height of something, or the length of time it would take an earthworm to crawl across the Mojave Desert (sixteen years, two months and twenty-seven days, in case you were wondering) I was definitely the person to ask.

It was a bitterly cold afternoon. The lunch bell had just rung and I was about to make a start on chapter eleven -- 'Weird Things You'd Never Expect to Happen in a Million Years' -- when I noticed Gary Washbrook heading towards me with his pet rat peeping out of his jumper.

At first I thought he was planning to hit me in the head and steal my sandwiches, but it turned out he had something altogether different in mind. He glanced down at my packed lunch, announced that he didn't much care for fish fingers and shoved Hooligan's whiskery face back into his sleeve. Content that he had my full attention, he reached into the nether regions of his sports bag, heaved out his entire marble collection and dumped it at my feet with a deeply satisfying clatter. I couldn't take my eyes off it. If I concentrate I can still see it now: a red felt bag, brimming with clusters of multi-coloured globes that spun the winter sunlight like they were diamonds.

'Oi, Four-eyes,' he said, loosening the string at the top of his bag so I could see farther inside. 'I've decided to break me no girls rule. One day only. All or nothing. You up for it, or are you chicken?'

This was very odd indeed. I'd been trying to engineer a game with Gary for months now, but he'd always claimed I wasn't worth playing on account of my gingerness and my chronic asthma. I knew right away that someone had dared him. I knew right away there was every chance that he'd cheat. I didn't hesitate. Not for a second.

After lengthy debate -- and a brief reappearance from Hooligan -- we agreed this match should settle the score once and for all. We'd play on the drain behind the dinner-hut wall for the next hour, and whoever was ahead at the final lunch bell would be the undisputed champion. This was big news. There was a small crowd gathering as we knelt down to pitch our opening shots, and by the time we reached the climax of our game there must have been close to thirty people watching us play. Skinny girls that smelt of Charlie and wee, shivering in their fingerless gloves; boys that smelt of linseed oil and mud, tightening their parka hoods against the wind; and me and Gary Washbrook, crouched at the edge of a rusty iron storm drain with our legs turning purple from the cold.

There were 147 marbles on the drain by then. Green ones, blue ones, twisters and Frenchies, and a gold-flecked Chinese oriental that I was absolutely desperate not to lose. I didn't let it show, though. Not for a moment. I'd already missed a couple of shots on purpose to gain his confidence, and with five minutes left before the final bell I offered him the chance to go all-in. One last shot, I said. If I made the hit I took every marble on the drain and everything that was left in his red felt bag. If I messed it up he walked away with a collection it had taken me close to three and a half years to build.

He couldn't resist it. Greed took hold of him like a fever, and he pushed his remaining marbles towards the drain without a second thought. He didn't even bother fetching Hooligan out of his pocket in an attempt to put me off. He never thought I'd make it: not in a million years.

Even by my standards, I played the shot beautifully. I lifted the final marble out of my lunch box, paused for a moment to build up the tension in the crowd, and rolled it slowly between my index finger and thumb. This was my secret weapon. The sheep's eye. A chunk of glass so pitted and hard and misshapen it was impossible to imagine that it had once been as smooth and as spherical as a pea.

The crowd fell silent ...

Excerpted from The Perfect Play © Copyright 2012 by Louise Wener. Reprinted with permission by Harper Paperbacks. All rights reserved.