OVER THE TOP

and other stories

Rebecca goes to boarding school, she’s ﬁfteen years old, she’s got her GCSEs this year and she’s bored.

But not for much longer. One simple decision is all it takes for her to embark on a series of adventures that will give her plenty to talk about at dinner parties for the rest of her life.

Here are four short stories about the exploits of Rebecca and her friends as they are confronted with saturated sisters, tottering tents and malignant minibuses, not to mention a host of other events, people and places which combine to reveal that there is a lot more to life than just sitting down and watching it on the television.

This is the ﬁrst book in the Rebecca series.

Now read on…

By the same author

Over the Top and Other Stories

(Rebecca Series book 1)

Painting the Tank and Other Stories

(Rebecca Series book 2)

Sinking the Ship and Other Stories

(Rebecca Series book 3)

Taking the Plunge and Other Stories

(Rebecca Series book 4)

8 is Three Twos—Complicated

Araminta

The Text—A short school story

OVER THE TOP

and other stories

Stone de Roufﬁgnac

Copyright © Stone de Roufﬁgnac, 2000

First published in 2000 by

Paperweight Press

Springﬁeld House, 5 Spring Hill Terrace, Whitby, North Yorkshire, YO21 1EG

This edition published in 2015 by Paperweight Press

The moral right of the author, writing under the name of Stone de Roufﬁgnac, is asserted according to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

Stone de Roufﬁgnac is a pseudonym

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Conditions of sale:

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.

This book is a work of ﬁction. Names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination or have been used ﬁctitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Table of Contents

Author’s Note

No Room at the Inn

Overnight Sensation

The Search for the Missing Pintle

Over the Top

Thank You!

About the Author

Extract of Painting the Tank

Extract of Araminta

Author’s Note

All these stories are ﬁction, and so are the characters, but each story is based on events which actually happened.

The stories are all set in the 1990s, when there were no mobile phones (you had to ﬁnd a phone box) and Year 11 was called Fifth-form.

Each story is self-contained, but they make a lot more sense if they are read in the order in which they appear in the book.

Remember this is the ﬁrst book in the series.

No Room at the Inn

October…

Becky

‘Scouts!’ I had to hold the telephone away from my ear as Dad exploded into the other end of it. ‘You, join the Scouts? What on earth do you want to join the Scouts for?’

‘Something to do…’ I replied, cautiously.

‘Surely you have enough to do as it is. Don’t forget you’ve got your GCSEs this year…’

“Don’t forget you’ve got your GCSEs this year,” I mimicked, soundlessly. As if I could forget. Last year it had been, “Don’t forget you’ve got your GCSEs next year,” and the year before that, “Don’t forget you start your GCSEs next year.” They never let up.

Dad was still talking. Perhaps I had missed something important. It didn’t seem very likely, but I thought I’d better give him a chance.

‘Sorry, I missed that last bit—it’s very noisy here…’

Beep, beep, beep…

‘Dad! Can you phone me back? Usual number…’

Beeeep.

I put the receiver back and glared at the kid at the front of the queue. For God’s sake! Fifth-formers had to have some privileges, and going straight to the front of the phone queue was one of them. As long as no sixth-formers came along, of course.

I waited impatiently. On the whole, I got on ﬁne with Dad, and Mum too, but having cosy chats on the phone to Germany wasn’t my ideal way of spending a Saturday afternoon. But I needed to know!

The phone rang. I grabbed it.

‘Dad? Is that you?’

‘Becky?’

‘Yes, it’s me. Is it all right?’

‘What?’

‘To join the Scouts!’

‘Are you sure it won’t interfere with your exams?’

‘Dad! Was there anything wrong with my report at the end of last term?’

‘No…’

‘Well then!’

‘Oh, I suppose so. But don’t you mean Guides?’

‘What?’

‘Guides. Girl Guides.’

‘Dad! This is the twentieth century, you know. Nobody joins Guides any more—not since they let girls into Scouts. Think about it!’

Why did I say that? Now he’ll get worried again.

‘And in any case, aren’t you too old?’

‘What?’

‘Too old. To be a Boy Scout. Or Girl Scout, or…’

‘Dad. Listen. It’s not “Boy Scouts” any more—not since they let girls join, and in any case, I’m not going to be a Scout. I want to join Ventures.’

‘What?’

‘Venture Scouts. You have to be ﬁfteen—and a half—to join. That’s why I’m asking now. Can I?’

‘I expect this is going to cost money, or you wouldn’t have bothered to ask me at all!’

‘Don’t be like that, Dad! Anyway, it’s OK, it can go on the bill.’

‘I suppose that makes it all right then! Do you have any idea how big this bill is going to be, young lady?’

‘Dad! You’d save a lot of money on phone calls if you just said yes.’

There was a strangled rasping noise from the other end, which I took to be Dad tearing his hair out, and then at last he capitulated.

‘But I expect you to stick with it! If this turns out to be a ﬁve-minute wonder…’

‘Relax, Dad. Once I’ve joined I can stay a member until I’m twenty! That’s another three years at school and the ﬁrst two years at uni. Oh, by the way, Nic wants to join, too.’

‘What!’

More explosions from the German end of the line. Goodness knows what the neighbours would be thinking. Still, he could hardly say yes to me and not to Nic, could he!

‘Thanks Dad! Bye!’

I slammed the phone back on its rest and rushed out of the box, into the street, and who should I see but Mr Wardle, in his car, and driving slowly to avoid a cyclist. Most of the teachers take some sort of perverse delight in accelerating past any pupils who might be looking for a lift, but I knew I could rely on Mr W. I waved, and he stopped.

‘You’re looking very pleased with yourself!’ he remarked, as I climbed in.

‘Dad’s going to let us join Ventures!’ I explained.

‘You and your sister, you mean? Very nice.’

But we didn’t have time to talk any more, because we were already pulling into the school car park. The journey takes just over a minute by car, but at least ten minutes to walk, uphill all the way. I hate that hill! Every time we go down to the village shop, or when we go to church on Sundays, we have to walk back up it, and it is steep! There’s a sign at the bottom saying 25%, and another one exhorting bus drivers to engage ﬁrst gear. I’ve walked up that hill more times than I can remember, and when I get to the top I always need a shower, unless I’m lucky enough to get a lift, like today.

‘Thanks!’ I called as I got out of the car. Then I was off to give Nic the good news.

Nicola is my bimbo sister. Mind you, she can’t be that stupid, since it always seems to be me who goes down to the village to phone Mum and Dad.

She says she has too much work to do. Right!

Actually, she probably does need to—God knows how she got into the sixth-form. Still, she did choose easy subjects. Not like me. Next year I’m going to do sciences and maths, and then I’ll read engineering at uni. I’m the brainy one in our family.

Although she’s in the year above me, Nic is barely nine months older than I am. Mum and Dad didn’t waste any time there! I’m always teasing her that as soon as she was born, they took one look and set to straight away to make an improved version! I don’t know why I bother though—she’s dead casual about it. I don’t know anyone more laid-back than my sister. It’s impossible to wind her up. Not like me. I suppose that’s my one failing! Actually, it’s hard to believe we’re sisters sometimes, since we’re so different. I think she must take after Dad, whereas I’m more like Mum. She’s taller than I am, for one thing, and slim, without being thin. We’ve both got brown hair, but hers is much longer than mine, and she’s got the eyes to match. In fact—it’s funny, I’ve never really noticed before—she’s quite attractive!

Still, since she said she had a lot of work to get on with, I knew exactly where to ﬁnd her, and there she was, in the common room, lounging in an armchair with her feet on the table, watching football on TV.

‘I knew I’d ﬁnd you working hard,’ I said, but my sarcasm was wasted on her. ‘Dad says, “Yes”.’

‘Told you! He always lets you have what you want. You’re his blue-eyed girl. Does that mean we can get enrolled this week and go on that trip next weekend?’

‘Sure does.’

‘Jolly spifﬁng, what?’ said Nic, doing her 1930s public school girl impression, looking along her nose at me, and then suddenly she leapt up and started dancing on the table, but it wasn’t because of what I’d said.

Liverpool had just scored another goal.

I left.

Up in Corner Dorm I found Jules and Liz.

‘Guess what!’ I said, as I went in.

‘No idea,’ Jules replied.

‘I thought that’s what you call a deer with no eyes,’ said Liz, without looking up from her book.

‘What?’ said Jules.

‘Shut up, Liz!’ I glared at her, but she still had her nose in the book so she didn’t notice.

‘Sor-ry!’

‘Dad says we can join Ventures! Me and Nic!’

‘No!’ This was Jules.

‘Yes!’

I suppose it’s fair to say that Jules and Liz are my two best friends, even though I’ve only known them a couple of years. That’s when I ﬁrst started at this school, you see, and to be totally honest I didn’t like it much at ﬁrst. Well, OK, I hated it! And I even ran away! But Jules and Liz have both been here since they were about nine years old, and they helped me through all that homesickness stuff, and now I don’t ever want to leave—well, not until I go to uni at any rate. Dad’s work sends him all over the world, so it makes a lot more sense for Nic and me to go to boarding school than to keep changing every few months. It can be quite good fun, actually.

‘Really!’ Liz put her book down and started to pay attention at last. ‘So, can you join straight away? Are you coming on the hike?’

‘Got it in one, kid!’ I replied.

‘Brilliant!’ Jules exclaimed. ‘That’s going to make all the difference. We didn’t fancy being the only girls. Not with Damien going.’

I swallowed. I hadn’t known this.

‘He’s not!’

‘Yep.’

‘Oh. Well in that case…’

‘Too late to back out now!’ Liz cried. ‘Come on, it’ll be fun! Don’t let Damien spoil it.’

I suppose I ought to say something about this Damien. But for now I’ll restrict my comments to saying that none of us fancied him. Further details to follow.

Jules and Liz had joined Ventures last term. Jules wasn’t old enough, but she’d been in Guides so she got special dispensation. I suppose it was partly because I didn’t want to be left out that I was so keen to join too. And, even though I really like it here now, the opportunity to get away for a bit, without too many teachers around, also appealed! I knew that since it was a school Scout group, all the leaders were teachers as well. Boring! But it was the teachers who I got on with who were Scout leaders, so it wasn’t too bad, and in any case, at Ventures we were supposed to run most things ourselves, and next weekend’s trip was to be a case in point—we were going to be completely on our own!

+ + +

Why, why, why on earth did I let myself be persuaded to take part in this, this, nightmare!

I was not in a good mood. The trip was not going well. It had started off OK, when we left the village, but that was three hours ago, it was already nearly dark, and we had at least another two hours ahead of us. On top of that, my rucksack was way heavy, and one of my trainers was more than a bit smelly as a result of treading on the same bit of ground as a recent cow.

‘Why are we doing this?’ I remarked, to nobody in particular.

‘Because it’s there?’ Liz was in one of her deep moods.

‘To have fun!’ yelled Bonehead, sounding as if he was having anything but.

‘Call this fun?’ My sister was also having second thoughts about the whole thing.

When I said we would be on our own, I meant it. There were eight of us, four girls and four boys, and we were doing a navigation exercise with an overnight stop, and with no leaders to help us. We had planned the route, and now we had to follow it, and we had to be at the rendezvous by 11.30 the following morning or we would miss lunch.

‘Are we nearly there yet?’ I said, not really expecting an answer, which was just as well because I didn’t get one.

It was Saturday evening.

It had been ﬁne when we set out. Tony took us to the starting point in the Scout minibus (of which more anon) and dropped us off outside the art gallery.

‘See you tomorrow,’ he said, just before turning the bus round. And then, his parting shot, ‘By the way, the bothy can get a bit crowded on Saturday nights.’

He was gone. We were on our own.

Tony is our Venture Scout leader. He is also, like I said before, one of the teachers, and that makes it confusing. You see, everyone calls the men teachers “Sir”. I don’t know why. It’s not as if they insist on it, or anything like that. Mr Wardle is perfectly happy being called Mr Wardle, and all the female teachers are Miss or Mrs, as the case might be. There’s Miss Finch, and Mrs Bagshott, and Madame Picard, but all the men are “Sir”. Tradition, I suppose. I’m used to it—it doesn’t bother me. But then I found that Scouts are all on ﬁrst name terms, so I was expected to call Mr Rundle “Tony”. Of course, I forgot.

‘Sir—I mean, Tony,’ I would say.

Sometimes I get it right, but other times I end up calling him “Sir Tony”, which gives everyone a good laugh. But what was that comment about the bothy?

‘Hurry up!’ Simon called back to us. ‘After all the trouble you had persuading Mrs Bagshott to let you come on this trip, I would have thought you’d make the most of it!’

‘Oh, we are,’ I said, under my breath.

I think I ought to explain about Mrs Bagshott at this point. She’s our housemistress, and a formidable lady she is too. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that everyone’s a bit scared of her—I know I am! But the trouble is, we have to get her permission before we take part in any of these activities. If she says no, we don’t go. It’s as simple as that, and even Tony can’t overrule her. That makes it important not to get on the wrong side of her, which hampers us a bit! Today there had been a bit of an altercation regarding the state of our dorm, resulting in some frantic tidying on our part, but Mrs B. eventually agreed to let us out of her sight.

‘Just remind me,’ I called to Simon. ‘Once we get to the moor top we just stay on the high ground until we reach the bothy, is that it?’

‘That’s it,’ he replied. ‘We spend the night there and then tomorrow morning we have to meet the minibus at the grid reference we agreed with Tony.’

‘No more ups and downs?’

‘Not tonight.’

The bothy is a sort of hut, run by the Mountain Bothies’ Association, where anyone can stay if they are walking across the moors. Hardly mountainous terrain, where we were going, but we knew it could get a bit bleak in winter, although it was only early October when we were there. Simon was the only one of us who had ever stayed at the bothy before, but Tony had told us about it. Just a one-roomed hut, about six metres by four. There was a bench at one end to cook on, and some, shelves would be the best description, to sleep on, and a ﬁreplace. Very spartan. And you had to take your own ﬁrewood. That was one of the reasons my rucksack was so heavy.

‘Do we really need all this much ﬁrewood,’ I asked, innocently.

‘All how much?’ replied Simon.

‘Like, eight rucksacks full of the stuff!’

‘We haven’t got as much as that. I’m not carrying any,’ he said.

‘You’re not?’

‘No.’

‘Then, who is?’ I enquired, my suspicions aroused now. ‘Apart from me, that is?’

‘Um…’

‘Er…’

‘Jules?’

‘Er, not exactly…’

‘Liz?’

‘Well, you’ve got the biggest rucksack, you see, so…’

‘Thank you very much! And you’re supposed to be my friends!’

Still, it sounded pretty exciting, and we all fancied the idea of spending the night there together, without any teachers to keep an eye on us! We even had some illicit beer, which was another reason my rucksack was so heavy. It was a relief when we got that away from Mrs Bagshott’s prying eyes, I can tell you!

Exciting plan, OK, but ﬁrst we had to ﬁnd the place, and so far we had only managed to struggle up onto the moor, having made one or two errors in map reading earlier on. And everywhere seems so much further away when you’re walking, than it does on the map, so it was a bit of a relief to come out at what seemed to be the right place, ready for what was now going to be a night hike across uncharted moorland.

I think I’ll blame my sister for this. She probably had the map upside down.

At least the next bit was relatively easy. The last climb up to the moor had been heavy going, but now we were on high, but comparatively level ground. We climbed over a stile, and there was a road! A tarred road, stretching across the moor as far as we could see.

‘Tony could have dropped us here,’ I said. ‘Then we could have saved ourselves all that walking.’

‘But,’ replied Simon, ‘that would have defeated the point of the exercise. We’re supposed to be walking.’

‘This far?’

‘It’s only ten kilometres. How are you going to manage when we do a proper hike? Anyway, we’ve done about seven. Not far now.’

I suppose I should have said before, but Simon is in upper-sixth, although he’s only ten months older than Nic, and she’s one of the youngest in lower-sixth. That’s because his birthday’s in August, so he was seventeen just before the start of the new school year. Unlike the rest of us, who didn’t join until we were old enough to be Ventures, he came up from Scouts and Cubs, so he’s used to all this hiking and stuff. A couple of years ago he walked the West Highland Way in four and a half days, and it’s over ninety miles! Anyway, he was nominally in charge of our little expedition, so we crossed the road and off we went again, along a wide and well-trodden path. Easy walking.

‘This is part of the Coast-to-Coast path,’ Simon pointed out.

‘The what?’ Nic had spoken.

‘Coast-to-Coast,’ he repeated. ‘It’s very popular in the summer months. Most people take a couple of weeks to complete it.’

‘Rather them than me!’ I think Nic was having second thoughts about this trip, too.

Whatever it was called, on this particular Saturday it was deserted, apart from the eight of us. Darkness had fallen, and as we walked a mist rolled across the moor, creeping up on us until it had us in its clutches. It was thick. And cold. And clammy.

I stopped brieﬂy to adjust one of the straps on my rucksack, and in that instant, I was alone!

‘Simon! Liz!’ Just a hint of panic in my voice.

‘Becky? Where are you?’

‘Over here.’

‘Can you see my torch?’

I could, now it was pointing straight towards me, and I stumbled gratefully towards it. I had been lost for something like ten seconds, and it frightened me. We stayed very close together from then on.

Although it was not too difﬁcult following the path, even through the mist, we knew we had serious problems ahead. The path did not go to the bothy. In fact, no path went to the bothy. It was just there, somewhere on the moor, and because of the way the ground undulated up and down, it was apparently quite hard to ﬁnd, even in broad daylight. And we had to ﬁnd it at night, in thick fog!

‘What do we have to do?’ Jules asked Simon.

‘Turn left at the fork,’ he replied, ‘and then walk for another 170 metres.’

‘I thought we had to use the compass,’ I said. ‘What was all that working out we had to do?’

‘That comes next,’ Simon agreed. ‘We have to walk on a compass bearing for ten minutes, and with any luck we’ll be at the bothy.’

‘And without any luck?’ Liz was a bit worried.

It had been easy enough to work out when we had a large scale map spread out in a well-lit classroom, but it’s a different matter when you’re actually out there. Even ﬁnding the fork was difﬁcult. We solved that one by walking in a line right across the path, but even then we must have gone about ten metres beyond it before we realized we were too spread out. The fog was getting thicker.

Now we had to measure 170 metres. We had no tape, but we had practised pacing one metre steps. We just hoped we would be accurate enough.

One metre, two metres…

We stopped. The path looked no different here from anywhere else.

Decision time.

‘Let’s have a look at the compass,’ said Simon.

‘Are you sure we ought to do this?’ asked Liz.

‘Do what?’

‘Leave the path.’

‘We won’t get to the bothy if we don’t, will we!’

‘But, suppose we don’t ﬁnd it? What will we do then?’

‘We’ll ﬁnd it.’

‘But, what if we don’t?’

‘Then we’ll have to come back.’

‘But…’ Liz’s voice was shaking as she continued, ‘What if we can’t ﬁnd our way back?’

Some of us thought she had a good point. In principle, if we couldn’t ﬁnd the bothy, all we had to do was turn round and walk on the reverse bearing until we reached the path again. In practice, based on our experience so far, we wouldn’t recognize the path if we did reach it!

‘Let’s go back,’ said Liz.

‘Where?’ said Simon.

‘Just back,’ replied Liz. She didn’t seem to be making any sense. I was worried.

Then Jules had an idea. Quite a good one too. She had the map open and had noticed that the road we’d crossed went through a village about ﬁve kilometres further along. And in the village there was a phone. We could phone school and ask to be picked up! But Nic had an objection to this.

‘OK. If we don’t leave the path, we shouldn’t have any problem ﬁnding the road, and I’m sure we won’t get lost once we’re on that, but it’s seven kilometres altogether, there are two very steep hills, and we’re all quite tired. If, on the other hand, we head for the bothy, we can be there, in the warm, in ten minutes.’

‘If we ﬁnd it,’ said Jules.

We had a discussion, but all the time we were standing around we were getting colder. In the end, Simon suggested we took a vote. I suppose, as leader, he could have just made the decision for us, but he was diplomatic and let us choose.

Five to three in favour of heading for the bothy.

We all crowded round the compass, making sure we were on the right bearing. We set off.

‘No!’ cried Simon. ‘Stop!’

Fortunately we had only gone a couple of metres, because when he explained what he had suddenly remembered I couldn’t help but shudder. We had been about to make a ghastly mistake.

Even in daylight, walking on a compass bearing isn’t easy. You are constantly having to move sideways, to avoid obstacles, so although you might be going in the right direction, you can end up way off line. The bothy was less than six metres square, and hidden by the lie of the land until we got within about thirty metres of it. Tonight, we would have to get much closer than that.

‘Becky,’ said Simon. ‘Start walking on the compass bearing.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Give me the compass.’

‘No, I’ll keep the compass. You walk, and if I see you going off course, I’ll tell you which way to move.’

And it was amazingly easy to go off course. He had to give me directions almost constantly. Eventually he told me to stop. This was when he could only just see my torch. Now, everyone else walked to where I was, except for Bonehead.

‘Why me?’

‘Shut up, Bonehead.’

When Simon reached the place where I was standing, he took a back bearing on Bonehead, and then sent me on again. Only when he was satisﬁed that me and Bonehead were at opposite ends of a straight line, with himself in the middle, did he let Bonehead move. But I could understand what he was doing.

We carried on like this, covering about ﬁfteen or twenty metres at each stage. Then, as I stood shining my torch back after what must have been the seventh or eighth stage, the fog swirled a bit and I caught sight of a dark shape over to my left.

The bothy! And even after all that work, we had almost walked right past it!

Sighs of relief all round as the others made their way to where I was standing. It was like arriving home. Now we could get inside, get the ﬁre alight, tuck into our sleeping bags, drink some beer…

What was that noise?

It seemed to be coming from the bothy itself.

Voices.

‘Oh! There’s somebody there already,’ said Liz. ‘I said we should go back.’

‘Perhaps that’s what Tony meant when he said it gets crowded,’ I said. ‘But we can stay too. Come on.’

But suddenly everybody was too shy. Whoever it was inside, they were strangers, so it was left to me and Nic to go and announce our arrival. As we got closer we realized there were quite a lot of voices.

‘Do you think we should knock?’ said Nic.

‘I don’t see why. They don’t own the place. We’ve got as much right to be here as they have. We’ll just, open the door and go in.’

I was nervous. But I steeled myself. We went into the outside lobby, I grasped the handle, turned it, and opened the door…

I knew, from what Tony had told us, that the ﬁreplace was opposite the door, but I couldn’t see it. And the reason I couldn’t see it, what I could see in the light from half a dozen candles stuck in empty wine bottles, was people. People everywhere. People on the sleeping shelves, people on the ﬂoor, people on each other, and all of them drinking. I’d never seen so many empty cans and bottles. And they were all talking. I think it was only the fact we still had the door open and the cold air was getting in that drew anybody’s attention to us. Then one bloke looked up, and his face was a picture as he saw me standing there. He got up, and staggered over. In the candlelight, I guessed he must have been about twenty. He could barely stand upright, and when he spoke his speech was so slurred I could hardly understand a word he said. And he smelt so strongly of beer I had to keep moving out of range.

‘Yeah?’

‘Hello, um, we’re looking for somewhere to sleep.’

‘Oh, thasht all right, love. You can shleep with me.’

He couldn’t even see Nic from where he was standing, so I tried to explain.

‘No. I mean, there’s not just me…’

‘Whaht? More of you? More girlsh, is it…?’

I was actually quite glad we had the lads with us. I told him about them, and the news seemed to clear his head a little.

‘Oh. Well, I shupposhe you can shleep on the ﬂoor.’

But it was obvious we couldn’t. There wasn’t an inch of ﬂoor that wasn’t two deep already. I asked him how many people there were in the bothy.

‘Fihfty.’

‘Fifty!’ I didn’t know whether to believe him or not, but even if there had been room, I certainly didn’t fancy trying to share with that lot. I mean, I know we’d brought some beer with us, and we were hoping to have a good time too, but we were going to be sensible! Well, you know. Not like that, anyway. We closed the door behind us and went to report back.

‘What are we going to do now!’ wailed Liz. ‘I’m getting cold!’

‘So am I!’

‘And me!’

‘Me too!’

It was then we realized we didn’t have a Plan B.

Anyway, standing around wasn’t going to do us any good, so we got the map out again and found there was a forestry plantation about a kilometre away.

‘There,’ said Simon. ‘That’ll give us some shelter.’

‘But where are we going to sleep?’ Liz was getting really fed up. The cold was getting to her, and that was pretty unusual. I mean, not meaning to be rude or anything—she is my best friend, after all—but she’s quite substantial, is Liz. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying she’s fat, but she’s, well… Actually, I’m not exactly a size ten, either! Liz and me are roughly the same build, and Jules, who’s a PORG—Person Of Restricted Growth—often refers to us as Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

But not tonight.

We took a compass bearing and set off. I thought at ﬁrst, we would have to go through the leapfrog routine again, but Simon explained that it didn’t matter—the plantation was a lot bigger than the bothy, so there was no way we could miss it!

But it didn’t matter for another reason. We were walking downhill now, and we hadn’t got very far when I realized I could see much further, and then I could see a long dark shape all along the horizon. The plantation! It wasn’t fog we’d been in, but low-ﬂying cloud, and now we were walking out the bottom of it.

General rejoicing, and we speeded up our pace, now we could see more-or-less where we were heading for. We were in a line, with Nic perhaps ﬁve metres ahead of me. I could see her walking along—she’s quite tall, like I said before—and she was silhouetted against the skyline. There she was, my sister Nic. There she was. There she…

Wasn’t.

She wasn’t there! I could see Liz, next in line, but Nic had just vanished! Completely. No sign of her.

‘Hey! Stop!’

‘Becky?’

‘I’ve lost Nic!’

‘What do you mean, lost her?’

‘I mean I’ve lost her! She just disappeared!’

‘Disappeared? Nic! Nic! NIC!’

‘Hello?’

Liz, Simon and the others rushed back, and I rushed forward, and all of us nearly suffered the same fate as Nic. There was a sort of drainage ditch, although I don’t think it was artiﬁcial, well over a metre deep, and Nic was lying at the bottom of it in a pool of water. The others had been lucky to miss it—it seemed to start just at the point where we were walking—Nic must have been a little bit further to the left and had stumbled straight into it.

‘Nic! Are you all right?’

‘I think so.’

‘No bones broken?’

‘Not that I’ve noticed.’

We helped her out, and struggled on the remaining hundred metres to the plantation.

It had a fence round it.

It was Bonehead who found a way in. There was another ditch, not as deep as Nic’s, and the fence went straight over, so with a bit of crawling we were inside, sheltered by the trees. I felt warmer already.

‘Where are we going to sleep?’ complained Liz.

It was only then that I noticed my sister was shivering, and I mean, shivering.

‘Nic? Are you cold?’

‘’Bit.’

But she was frozen! And then I realized what the problem was, and I learnt something else about what not to do. She was wearing jeans. Denim jeans. Never, ever wear jeans for hiking, especially not if you’re likely to get wet. Although she had managed to keep her top half out of the water, Nic’s jeans were absolutely saturated, with water that wasn’t much above freezing. And denim doesn’t dry. It was just draining the warmth from her body.

‘Nic! For God’s sake! Get those wet jeans off!’

She looked around. At the lads. But I told her.

‘Nic. You either get your jeans off or you die of hypothermia. Choose!’

She took her jeans off, and I hung them over a branch. The lads were very good, actually. They didn’t stare at her. Well, not too much. Simon even produced a towel she could wrap herself up in.

‘We need to light a ﬁre,’ he said.

We were a bit worried about lighting a ﬁre in a plantation. We thought we wouldn’t be too popular if we started a forest ﬁre, and it wouldn’t exactly be good publicity for Scouts, either. We reckoned the ground was too damp for it to spread, however, and we could keep an eye on it, and anyway, it was an emergency—we had to get my sister warm.

Lighting it was easy. None of your rubbing two sticks together for us! This time, we really were prepared, because we’d been planning to have a ﬁre in the bothy, so we had a rucksack full of dry wood, and matches, and a box of ﬁrelighters! We also had potatoes.

We all knew we would feel better if we got some hot food inside us, but potatoes are notoriously slow to cook, so we’d cheated! We managed to get them into the oven before we left school, each one wrapped in foil. Now all we needed to do was warm them up. Ten minutes.

Things were looking better already. Nic was getting warmer, and the sight of the potatoes heating in the ﬁre was boosting everyone’s spirits.

‘What else have we got to eat?’ said Jules.

(Perhaps this is the time for me to mention that Jules is always hungry. Bit ironic that, considering how small she is. She eats much more than I do, but never gets any bigger. That’s why we call her a PORG, you see. It’s not fair! If only I could eat that much without getting any fatter. I wish!)

‘What else have we got to eat?’ said Jules.

‘Baked beans.’

‘Pass us the tin opener.’

Silence. How could we be so stupid!

‘I thought you had it!’

‘Well, I thought you had it.’

You know the sort of thing.

Simon had one of those do-anything penknives. The sort that even have a gadget for taking stones out of horses hooves.

It didn’t have a gadget for opening tins.

‘Can’t we just use the blade,’ I asked him.

‘No way! You’ll ruin it. Do you know how much that knife cost?’

Have you ever tried opening tins of baked beans with two stones? You put the tin on one stone and hit it with the other one. Well, it does work, but packing a tin opener would have been so much easier.

But we had a good meal. During the holidays, when we’re at home with Mum and Dad, we sometimes go out to some pretty decent restaurants, but their gourmet menus were nothing compared to our potatoes and baked beans, with chocolate biscuits for dessert. We even had coffee. And nobody fancied the beer.

But then Liz brought us back to reality.

‘Where are we going to sleep?’

I was really glad we had Simon with us. Like I said before, he’s been doing all this outdoor pursuits stuff since he was a kid.

‘We’ll have to build a bivvy.’

‘A what?’

‘Bivvy. Bivouac. Come on, help me to ﬁnd some branches and sticks. And some leaves, too.’

It was brilliant! Following Simon’s instructions we stuck three branches in the ground in a sort of tripod arrangement, then attached loads of sticks, and ﬁnally covered the whole lot in leaves. It was just like a tent, but made of things we found lying around. The only problem was we had no groundsheet, but we looked around and found some sheets of corrugated iron. I’ve no idea what they were doing in the wood, but they came in very useful. We put our sleeping bags on top of them, all of us huddled in together, and settled down for the night. It wasn’t the most comfortable bed I’d ever slept in, but it was a lot better than being on the damp ground.

+ + +

I don’t know what woke me up, or what time it was, but it was certainly still dark. I could hear the sound of the others, all breathing gently, and I went to look at my watch. But I was still half asleep, and when, at the third attempt, I found the right button to put the light on, I discovered my previous two attempts had reset the time and set the alarm, so I was none the wiser.

But then I heard it.

The noise. A sort of rustling, but not rustling. A swishing, thumping sound. In the trees, and yet not in the trees. It stopped.

But I could still hear the thumping.

It took me a moment to realize it was my heartbeat. There was nothing there. It was just my imagination…

There was the swishing again, and a thud, like someone falling over a log, ﬂat on their face. But no voices. Silence.

But there really was something there. Something or someone, creeping about in the trees, slowly and silently creeping up on us!

I reached for my torch. I went to point it outside the bivvy, to see what was coming, but then I thought better of it. Perhaps whatever it was didn’t know we were there. Better not draw attention to ourselves. I kept perfectly still, and listened.

Thump, thump. Thump, thump.

I wished my heart would beat more quietly! I strained my ears, and listened…

Swishing. Rustling. Swishing. Rustling. Thud!

I thought of waking the others. I tried, actually, to shake Liz, but she was fast asleep and wouldn’t stir.

Swishing. Rustling.

Then I decided to do a Very Brave Thing!

Quiet as a mouse, I slithered out of my sleeping bag and slipped my trainers on. It was cold. The ﬁre had gone out. Slowly, carefully, I stood up. I was taller than our bivvy shelter—I could see over the top of it. I could see…

Darkness.

I had my torch, but I didn’t dare switch it on. I took a step, and another, and another.

Now I was alongside the bivvy. I turned, and started to work my way behind it. One step. Two…

Crack!

My heart stopped. I froze. I’d stepped on a twig. Whatever was out there must have heard it. I’d given myself away! My heart was beating again. Thump, thump. Thump, thump.

I stood stock still for ages. Nothing. Not a sound apart from the beating of my heart. Thump, thump. Thump, thump.

I told myself there was nothing there. That I was imagining it all. I listened.

Thump, thump. Thump, thump.

I grasped my torch with both hands, aimed it straight ahead of me, plucked up my courage, and switched it on! And, in the sudden glare of blinding light I saw…

Trees.

Slowly, I swept the beam around in a complete circle. In every direction there were trees. Nothing but trees. It had all been due to an overactive imagination. I gave a sigh of relief and went back to the bivvy. Off came my trainers, and I eased myself back into the comforting warmth of my sleeping bag. It enveloped me, caressed me, reassured me. I was drifting, dozing, on the very brink of sleep once again…

Swishing. Rustling. Swishing. Rustling.

But this time I just ignored it.

+ + +

In the morning we had breakfast before we got up. Chocolate biscuits and cheese. It’s not bad, actually! I decided not to mention anything to the others about the strange noises I’d heard in the night, but I did start to worry about the time.

‘What time is it, Jules?’

‘Hold on… Nine o’clock.’

‘Nine o’clock! That only gives us two and a half hours to reach the pick-up point! Where’s the map?’

I found it, stuffed into my rucksack, and my worst fears were conﬁrmed.

‘It’s nearly four kilometres from here!’

‘Don’t panic,’ said Simon, who was looking over my shoulder. ‘See this track? It’s heading our way.’

He was right. The direction we needed to head in was parallel to the edge of the plantation, but there was a forestry track we could use, which would be a lot easier than ﬁghting our way across the moor.

‘OK,’ said Simon once again. ‘We have to take this bivvy down and leave the site exactly as we found it.’

‘Why?’ said Bonehead.

‘It’s called concern for the environment,’ Simon replied. ‘Don’t make any permanent changes.’

‘Take nothing but photographs, leave nothing but footprints,’ I murmured. I’d read that somewhere.

We struck camp, and headed further into the wood, towards the track, and as we came out from amongst the trees I realized what it was that had disturbed me.

‘Look at that!’

‘My God!’ said Liz.

‘No wonder it was cold!’ added Jules.

‘That,’ whispered Nic, ‘is just beautiful!’

It just hadn’t occurred to me, or to any of the others, that it could happen so early, before winter really set in, but it had! There had been a snowfall, and quite a substantial one, judging by the track, which was a wide ribbon of pristine white, stretching away through the trees. The noises I’d heard were the branches moving under the weight of the snow, and the thuds were due to snow falling off down to the ground.

‘It seems a shame to walk on this,’ said Nic.

‘Mmmm.’

But we set off, and made good time on the gravel road, scrunching beneath our feet but hidden by the snow. Greg, Damien and Bonehead were in front, then me, Jules and Liz, and ﬁnally Nic and Simon, who was leading from the back. Both Greg and Damien are in lower-sixth, like my sister. Greg is a very quiet, shy sort of lad. Not bad-looking though, although he doesn’t have a girlfriend. I suppose that’s because he doesn’t know how to talk to girls. Perhaps Liz and me should give him a few lessons! I think I mentioned Damien before, brieﬂy. Not that he’s worth mentioning. He’s the complete opposite of Greg, and I’m surprised Greg can put up with Damien like he does, but perhaps it helps his self-conﬁdence to have a friend who is everything he’s not. Damien is loud, self-centred, and brash; always showing off. Not my type at all!

It wasn’t long before we reached the edge of the plantation. Now the moor opened up ahead of us, and it was absolutely beautiful, heather covered in a white mantle; a brilliant blue sky at the horizon.

‘Look!’ cried Nic. ‘There’s the bothy!’

‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘Funny how it’s visible from this direction.’

‘It’s because of the way the land slopes,’ Simon explained. ‘And the fact we’re below it, so you can see it against the sky.’

We kept the bothy on our right as we hurried across the moor, keeping a sharp lookout for ditches! Our progress was slower now—much slower than it had been on the road.

‘My feet are cold!’ I said. I could hardly feel them.

‘So are mine,’ agreed Liz.

‘It serves you right for wearing trainers,’ said Simon, yomping along in his hiking boots. ‘What are you wearing inside them, by the way?’

‘Socks,’ I said.

‘How many pairs?’

‘One. Oh! I should wear two, right?’

‘Right,’ he replied. ‘And I suggest you get some proper boots if you want to do this sort of thing seriously.’

‘Boots. Right. Expensive?’

‘Not cheap,’ he agreed.

‘Are you listening to this?’ I said to Nic.

‘Mmmm. Big bill. Dad’s not going to be very pleased.’

‘Well, he did say we could join! And it’s for our safety, so he can’t really complain.’

‘How long do boots last?’ Nic asked Simon.

‘Oh, years and years.’

‘There you are,’ I said. ‘An investment.’

‘If you look after them,’ he ﬁnished.

I tried to put my feet on autopilot, and we plodded on. Ten o’clock came and went; it was hard work, uphill work. One of those annoying convex hillsides where you keep thinking you can see the top, and then when you get there you ﬁnd it goes up still further. And further.

But even the highest hills have to have a summit, and as eleven o’clock arrived, so we arrived at the top, and looking down we could see a road. The road. The road along which Tony would drive in the minibus, to pick us up.

There was actually a junction, and we knew this was the rendezvous point. No need of the compass any more, and we swooped towards it gleefully. For some reason I was last, and as the ﬁrst person reached the road, from my vantage point I saw a tiny speck in the distance. And then I realized it was a moving speck, and it was heading our way. Tony! With the minibus!

You don’t need a degree in psychology to recognize the look on his face when he arrived. He’d been worried about us, no doubt about that. I don’t know whether he was more relieved to see us or we to see him, but I know we were all very happy as we piled in. Of course, we thought once we got into the bus our troubles would be over. Little did we know!

‘Oh!’ said Liz. ‘The road’s covered in snow, too!’

‘Very astute of you, Elizabeth,’ Tony remarked.

‘Don’t call me that! You know I hate that name!’

‘Why don’t you use your other one then?’

‘No!’

‘Don’t you like being called…’

‘Don’t you dare tell them! How come you know my middle name, anyway?’

‘I know everything,’ replied Tony.

‘What’s your middle name, Elizabeth?’ taunted Damien.

‘Don’t call me that! Tony! Don’t you dare tell him!’

‘It’s a very thin road,’ I said, quickly. ‘What will we do if we meet someone coming the other way?’

‘Not much chance of that,’ replied Tony. ‘It’s only idiots like us who are out here in this weather!’

‘Are you saying we’re all idiots?’ said Liz.

‘Well I’m not,’ Damien butted in. ‘Don’t know about Elizabeth, though!’

‘It’s a very minor road,’ Tony explained, before Liz and Damien started a ﬁght, ‘which links two villages, one on each side of the moor. But most people go in the opposite direction, towards their nearest town, when they want to go anywhere, so this road hasn’t been improved much.’

‘How do we get to school from here?’ I asked.

‘Down into the valley, up the other side, and along the main road.’

He made it sound easy, and the downhill part was, since the road was straight, and with a fairly gentle gradient. It was covered in snow though, and I wondered how he had managed to drive up it.

‘You see those big containers of water? I’ve put them over the back wheels, to give us some extra traction, although now I’ve got you lot in the back they’re probably redundant!’

‘Are you saying we’re fat?’

‘Not at all,’ he said, in his best deadpan voice.

We reached the bottom without incident, and found ourselves in the next village up the valley from the one we had started from. We drove over the river, and under the railway, and then it was time to climb back out of the valley.

Admittedly this road was wider, since it was used a lot more, but it was also much steeper and it had a couple of really sharp bends. We had hoped the extra trafﬁc would have cleared the snow away, but on a winter Sunday there wasn’t all that much trafﬁc, and all it had done was compact the snow into a hard layer. Being on the valley side it didn’t even get any sun, so what we had ahead of us now was a steep hill covered in a sheet of ice!

We took a run at the ﬁrst bit, and we thought we might make it, but as soon as we hit the ﬁrst bend we slithered to a stop, wheels spinning, and Tony just managed to run the back wheels onto the verge before we started to slip back the way we had come!

‘Everybody out,’ called Tony.

Of course, we had to push, but we couldn’t even get a grip for our feet, and most of us ended up ﬂat on our faces in the snow before we realized we were getting nowhere.

But snow isn’t unusual in this part of the world, and every ﬁfty metres or so there was a pile of gravel at the side of the road. Tony had come prepared with a shovel, so we put some in front of the driving wheels and started pushing again, and suddenly the tyres bit into the gravel and the bus moved forwards and I got blasted with a mixture of gravel and ice! But at least the bus was on its way again.

‘Tony!’ called Liz, as the bus disappeared up the hill. ‘He’s going without us!’ she exclaimed.

‘He can’t risk stopping on the hill,’ said Simon reasonably. ‘He might never get going again. Come on, we’ll meet him at the top.’

‘How far is it?’ wailed Jules.

It was half a mile!

We made it though. It was really difﬁcult, walking uphill on ice, but at least we didn’t have to carry anything. But when we at last reached the minibus we collapsed into it, very out of breath, and Tony drove on. And, now we were safely at the top, he admitted he had had a couple of scary moments on the way down, earlier on.

This part of the road was almost level, and we had no more problems, and it only took a few minutes to reach the main road.

‘It hasn’t snowed here!’ said Bonehead.

‘No, of course not!’ I jeered. ‘We have very intelligent clouds that can snow on the ﬁelds and not the road! Haven’t you ever heard of snow ploughs?’

‘Er…’ said Bonehead.

And so we had an uneventful trip back to school, until we got to the point where we had to leave the main road once again. Here the snow was much more obvious, and the trafﬁc fairly light. One side of the road was completely impassable, while the other had two sets of tracks where everyone had been driving in other people’s wheel ruts. Cautiously, Tony eased the bus along. It didn’t seem necessary to actually steer it, since the snow was piled so high on either side of the tracks it was almost like being on a railway line, but he just drove very slowly and carefully and it didn’t take too long before we reached the top of the hill that led down to school.

And that’s where he wimped out.

‘Tony! We’re going to be late for lunch!’ This was Jules, of course. Actually, I was pretty hungry too, but I thought it best not to mention it.

‘You really want me to drive down there?’

‘Well, I’m not walking.’

‘Stay here then. This is as far as the bus goes!’

I don’t blame him, actually. Like I said before, that hill is really steep. It goes from the moor top right the way down to the sea, and the school is about halfway. I have to admit, I didn’t fancy the idea of driving down in those conditions—not after our experience coming up out of the valley.

At the top of the hill is a viewpoint. In summer, loads of tourists like to stop there, but it would be dangerous to park on the road so the council have built a little car park, and Tony steered the bus into that. At least, he tried to, but the snow was piled so deep it didn’t want to go, and we had to get the shovel out again to clear the way. Still, we got the bus off the road eventually, and then we had to heave our rucksacks onto our shoulders again, and stagger down the slippery slope for another half mile, until eventually we arrived back at school.

We were late for lunch.

‘Tony! I told you this would happen!’ cried Jules, who had decided not to stay up at the viewpoint on her own.

‘What’s the problem?’ he replied.

‘There won’t be anything left, of course!’

The basic system for lunch is that you get so much food per table, and you share it out between you. If anyone is missing, everyone else eats their share, and the people on our table were a load of gannets, so we knew Jules was right.

‘I’m starving!’ she went on.

‘So am I!’

‘Come with me,’ said Tony, mysteriously.

He led us to the dining room, but when we arrived our worst fears were conﬁrmed. All the tables had been cleared, and there were only two kids left, sweeping the ﬂoor.

‘Tony!’

‘Go round the corner,’ he said.

Suspiciously, we went round into the alcove, and there was another table, set for eight! And Mrs Thompson was in the kitchen.

‘Are you ready?’ she said.

Ready! Normally I’m not too keen on school lunch, but today I just didn’t care! We devoured the lot, and then she gave us some fruit and biscuits to take away!

We thanked her profusely, and then we spent the afternoon collapsed in armchairs, recovering. It had been a hard introduction to hiking and camping, but I had to admit I’d enjoyed it. If there were any more trips coming up, you could count me in!

Overnight Sensation

January…

Zak

‘Hey! Steady on!’ cried Karen as she cannoned into the back of my seat.

‘Sorry,’ mumbled Dave, changing down a couple of gears and easing his foot off the brake.

‘I should think so too! It’s all right for you—we haven’t got any seat belts in the back, you know.’

‘Remind me to get a new car,’ he retorted.

‘Be about time. What did you slow down for, anyway?’

‘Steep hill going down. That means we’re nearly there.’

‘If you knew there was a steep hill, you shouldn’t have been going so fast in the ﬁrst place! I said you should have let me drive.’

‘But,’ said Dave, in his Mr Reasonable voice, ‘you haven’t actually, you know, passed your test yet, have you?’

‘But at least I’m up to date. You started driving so long ago they probably didn’t even have a test.’

I hate it when Karen gets like this. Ever since she started driving lessons, you can’t take her anywhere without getting a running commentary. She was seventeen just before Christmas—that’s only about a month ago—but already she knows it all. I thought it might be prudent to intervene.

‘We have to turn off soon,’ I said. ‘Put your lights up so we can see.’

‘I can’t,’ Dave replied. ‘There’s someone coming.’

‘Hah!’ exclaimed Karen from the back. ‘That shows how much you know about driving, Zak.’

That’s me, by the way. Zak. Short for Zachariah. At least you can shorten Zachariah, which is some relief. Sometimes I think I could kill my parents! And my twin sister is Abby, short for Abigail. I think they must have used an A to Z of names with most of the pages missing when they chose ours. Abby was in the car too, squashed in the back between Karen and Serbian Sam. We all called him Sam because no one could pronounce his real name. And no prizes for guessing where he was from.

‘I can’t be expected to know about driving,’ I argued. ‘I’m not old enough.’

That was true. Abby and me had another six months to go before we turned seventeen, and Sam was only just sixteen. He was in ﬁfth form at our school, out in the back of beyond over the far side of the Vale of York, while the rest of us were in lower-sixth. All except for Dave, of course. Dave is our Venture Scout Leader, and the reason he’d been lumbered with driving us about seventy miles on a chilly January night was because we were going to take part in some sort of adventure game, together with teams from all over North Yorkshire. Exactly what the game involved, we had no idea…

‘There’s a signpost!’

‘Got it!’ cried Dave, and Karen slammed into the back of my seat again.

‘Mirror, signal, manoeuvre,’ she muttered. Then, ‘Why have you stopped in the middle of the road?’

‘Have you seen that signpost?’ he said.

We all looked. There was a tiny lane leading off to the right, and stuck on a post was a single arrow with the legend THIS WAY above it. Unfortunately, there was another arrow pointing down the main road. This one said THAT WAY.

‘Now what do we do?’ I said.

‘Turn right, obviously,’ Karen replied.

‘Obviously?’

‘Well, of course! We want to go This Way, don’t we? Nobody would be stupid enough to go That Way. I bet you get points knocked off if you do.’

Sometimes I think that girl’s too intelligent for her own good.

‘Your choice,’ said Dave. ‘I’m just the driver.’

‘Are you sure about this?’ I said to Karen. ‘This is a really thin road. We won’t be able to turn round if it’s wrong.’

‘Trust me.’

We trickled along, and suddenly there was a gate.

‘No,’ I said. ‘This has to be wrong. You don’t get gates across a public road.’

‘But it’s open,’ Karen replied. ‘Trust me.’

‘Trust her, Big Brother,’ added Abby.

She calls me that to try to wind me up, just because I was born ﬁrst. It doesn’t work, though. And in any case, she’s Karen’s best friend, so she has to agree with her.

‘Well, we must be somewhere,’ said Dave. ‘There are lights ahead.’

He was right. We could see the glow as we drove down an avenue of trees, but the road was curved so we couldn’t tell exactly where we were until it was too late to turn back.

‘Stop!’

He stopped. Karen and my seat met once more.

‘Dave!’

We stared out the front. The road widened into a large parking area, brightly lit by powerful street lights, and directly ahead of us, blocking the way, were two soldiers!

‘Karen! I told you! Now we’ve ended up in a secret army base, or something. It’s probably to do with the Early Warning Station. We are in serious trouble!’

‘Trust me.’ She was doing a very good job of keeping her cool, but I could detect a trace of uncertainty in her voice. Even Abby was having doubts.

The soldiers split up, one round each side of the car. Dave wound down his window, and the soldier on my side made it clear I should do likewise.

‘What’s he want to talk to me for?’

‘Because I’m just the driver,’ said Dave, with a smirk on his face. Did he know something?

I wound the window down, and this beefy bloke leaned in.

‘Passports!’

‘Passports?’

‘You heard what I said, sunshine.’

‘But, we haven’t got any…’

‘No passports?’ He called over to the guy on the other side, ‘Inform HQ about this, corporal.’

‘Right away, Sarge!’ and he mumbled something into a radio.

‘But,’ I stuttered, ‘surely we don’t need passports? We’re still in England, aren’t we?’

‘Hah! That’s what they all say! And I suppose you think you’re still in Yorkshire, too.’

‘Um…’

‘You have now entered the Ostensible Oligarchy of Od, and entered it illegally, I might point out.’

‘Od?’ I looked blank.

‘Who’s this old geezer, then?’ he went on, as if he’d only just noticed Dave.

‘Er, I’m just the driver,’ said Dave, sans smirk and ignoring the insult. Perhaps he didn’t know something, after all.

‘He’s our Leader,’ said Karen, dropping him in it.

‘A Leader, eh? A Leader who isn’t prepared to admit it! Right! Park over there!’

Dave complied, and we all had to get out.

‘Corporal!’

‘Sarge?’

‘Take this man and lock him up with the rest of the so-called “Leaders”.’

‘Right away, Sarge!’

Dave was led away, and we were on our own, with this sadistic sergeant.

‘You got us into this!’ I whispered to Karen.

‘Silence!’

‘What’s going to happen to Dave?’ cried Abby, in a shaky voice.

‘We have some Menial Tasks for him to carry out. You four, follow me!’

We were taken across the parking area and down a couple of steep steps into a long, low building. The steps were worn, and Abby stumbled.

‘Mind the step!’ shouted our tormentor.

In we went. The room was apparently an ofﬁce. Harsh ﬂuorescent lighting, a ﬁling cabinet, desks and chairs ﬁlling most of the space; calendars and charts on the wall, and there was paper everywhere.

‘The immigration ofﬁcer will be here in a moment,’ said the sergeant, taking off his helmet.

And then I realized.

Behind the façade; the camouﬂage jacket, the squaddie boots (I’m not talking DMs here) and the helmet with a tree growing out of it, our frightening fusilier was a girl!

Seriously! She had camouﬂage paint on her face, and her hair had been hidden under the helmet, but now, indoors, I could tell it was a girl. No doubt about it. I’m good at these things. And she wasn’t bad looking, either.

‘Hi!’ she said, in a completely different voice and holding out her hand. ‘I’m Becky. Welcome to Od!’

We all shook hands and introduced ourselves, breathing a collective sigh of relief. Becky wrote our team name down in a book. She caught my eye.

‘You had us worried for a bit!’ I said. ‘I thought we must be in some secret base, or something.’

‘Had you all fooled, did we?’ she grinned.

‘Didn’t fool me,’ said Karen.

‘Oh! An Unbeliever!’

‘So, Dave’s all right?’ This was Abby.

‘Yeah. Like I said, we have Menial Tasks for leaders.’

‘What sort of tasks?’

‘You know. Making tea, drinking tea, that sort of stuff. Oh, and helping with one of the Events.’

‘Events?’

‘You’ll see. I’ll have to leave you now. Guard Duty. There are three teams still to arrive.’

‘So, what do we do now?’ Karen wanted to know.

‘Wait here. You’re to see the immigration ofﬁcer.’

‘But, that was a joke. Wasn’t it?’

‘Wait here.’

And before we could say another word, she had put her helmet back on and was gone.

‘Now what do we do?’ I said.

‘What she said, I suppose,’ replied my sister.

We didn’t have long to wait. There was another door to the ofﬁce, from an inner room, and it couldn’t have been more than a minute before it creaked open and a huge round ﬁgure in a red cloak with a long white beard joined us.

‘Ho, Ho, Ho!’

We all burst out laughing.

‘So, who are you?’ It had to be Karen who said it.

‘You may call me Saint Nicholas,’ intoned the apparition.

‘Saint Nicholas?’ said Abby. ‘But I thought you were called…’

‘Never mind what you thought,’ said Saint Nicholas. ‘It’s all above board. I’m a proper saint. Got me own day, and everything. Patron saint of pawnbrokers, me.’

‘Pawnbrokers?’

‘That’s right. Sailors, pawnbrokers and thieves, so if you fall into any of those categories, Saint Nic is at your service.’

‘But,’ said Abby, ‘I thought you were, you know, the sleigh, and the chimneys… You know!’

‘Oh. Kid’s stuff. Is that what you mean?’

‘Yes, of course!’

‘Yeah, well. I have to do the kids, but it’s not exactly regular work, is it? More, seasonal—know what I mean? And it’s a lot of rushing around.’

‘What do you mean?’ Karen demanded.

‘Think about it,’ Saint Nicholas replied. ‘I’ve got 31 hours—allowing for different time zones—to get to 92 million homes. I don’t even get an hour off for lunch. Any idea what it’s like, working at that rate?’

‘What rate?’

‘Only 800 visits per second! That’s what rate. And what do I get out of it?’

‘What do you get out of it?’

‘A few mouldy mince pies and a glass of port, which I don’t have time to drink! I’m thinking of chucking it in, if you really want to know.’

‘You mean, stop delivering all those presents?’

‘What else do you think I mean! Anyway, I may have to—can’t get the reindeer nowadays.’

‘What? Why not?’

‘Well, ever since they built that new road through Lapland, you get all these Swedes in their big Volvos decimating them. And themselves.’

‘What?’

‘Trafﬁc accidents. I put the reindeer out to pasture ready for next season; they wander across the road to get the tastier morsels and Wham! Big dent in the Volvo and bits of reindeer splattered everywhere.’

‘That’s horrible!’ exclaimed Abby, who doesn’t approve of cruel sports.

‘And,’ Saint Nic went on, ‘taking into account it’s only a small percentage of reindeer that can ﬂy…’

‘How small?’ Karen was in pedantic mode.

‘What? Oh. Well, zero actually.’

‘I think you’re trying to wind us up,’ said Karen. ‘Just like that girl. Becky.’

‘That’s enough of that, young woman!’ replied Saint Nicholas. ‘I’m the one who’s supposed to be doing the interrogation, not you, so listen up! Is it your birthday?’

‘What? No.’

‘Ho, Ho, Ho!’ chuckled Saint Nicholas. ‘That is a coincidence!’

‘What do you mean, a coincidence?’

‘It’s not mine, either. Ho, Ho, Ho!’

‘That’s just stupid,’ said Karen.

‘You started it.’

‘What?’

‘Saying it wasn’t your birthday. I was just telling the truth. Right. Next question. Got any money?’

‘Not much,’ I said, reaching into my pocket for a couple of 50p pieces and some coppers. ‘I didn’t think we needed to bring any.’

‘Not that kind of money!’ Saint Nic exclaimed. ‘I mean proper money.’

‘Proper money?’

‘Od money. You won’t get far without it.’

‘But, what do we need money for?’ Abby asked. ‘I thought we were going to have to solve puzzles, and stuff like that.’

‘And what’s the quickest way to solve a puzzle?’

‘Er…’

‘Ask someone who knows the answer, of course!’

‘But, isn’t that cheating?’ My sister can be infuriatingly honest at times.

‘It’s called tactics, my dear young lady. But your informants will require a little pecuniary advantage, if you understand me?’

‘That’s bribery!’ exclaimed Karen.

‘That’s life,’ said Saint Nicholas.

‘But we don’t have any Od money,’ I said. ‘Does that mean we might as well go home now?’

‘I will give you an introduction to our bank,’ replied Saint Nic. ‘They will ﬁx you up with a loan, and I’m sure you will ﬁnd our interest rates very, um, competitive.’

‘We can’t have a loan,’ said Karen. ‘None of us are eighteen.’

‘This,’ replied Saint Nic, ‘is Od.’

‘So?’

‘In Od,’ he went on, ‘anything can happen!’

+ + +

‘Do you think it’s a sort of test?’ enquired Sam, speaking for the ﬁrst time as we climbed the steps.

‘A what?’

‘I was wondering whether we’ve already been graded on the way we responded in there.’

Sam’s like that. He doesn’t say much, but when he does speak, it’s deep. He’s predicted to get straight ‘A’s in GCSE. And in ten subjects, too. Of course, Karen did get straight ‘A’s—the difference being, she doesn’t let you forget it! Still, she’s not as bad as she was back in fourth-form—she was a conceited bitch in those days. Now she’s just Absolutely Perfect.

‘Did you notice anything about that Saint Nic?’ he asked.

‘Not especially.’

‘He was a girl, too.’

‘Really?’

‘Probably the same girl,’ said Karen. ‘I expect there’s a back door she could have got in.’

‘No, it wasn’t Becky,’ Sam replied. ‘I could see her through the window.’

That’s told you! I thought.

‘Where are we going?’ said Abby.

‘To the bank,’ I replied. ‘Saint Nic said we were to go through this arch, and then we couldn’t miss it.’

‘And why are we carrying these things?’

‘No idea.’

Saint Nicholas had given each of us a large scroll before we left the ofﬁce. Goodness knows what they were for. We went through the arch.

‘There it is!’ exclaimed Karen, smarting from Sam’s comment and determined not to be outdone again. ‘See, there’s a sign.’

There was indeed. We were in a courtyard, and on the left-hand side a door was propped open by a wooden board, on which was written, “OdBank”. We trooped inside and up a ﬂight of steep stairs into an attic room. It was stacked full of chairs and desks.

‘This looks like a classroom,’ I said.

‘Oh! Aren’t we being observant!’ said Karen, in her Absolutely Perfect voice. ‘Didn’t you read the leaﬂet they sent us?’

‘Sorry?’

‘This is a school, Zak. You know, like the place you go to?’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t go to a place like this.’

‘It’s a boarding school. OK?’

‘Sorry?’

She gave up. I had read the leaﬂet, actually. After all, it had been sent to me, since I’m the secretary, but Karen had obviously forgotten, and I just love winding her up.

There was a screen at the far end of the room, and behind it a desk with a bored-looking guy in a mega-unfashionable white suit. A sign on the desk informed us he was Mr Cobley.

‘Uncle Tom, more like!’ whispered Karen.

‘Shhhh!’

‘Good evening,’ said Mr Cobley.

‘Good evening,’ Karen replied, before the rest of us had a chance. ‘We want to open an account.’

‘Would that be an account each, or a joint account?’ asked Mr Cobley.

‘A joint account,’ replied Sam, getting in before Karen could open her mouth again.

‘One account for all four of you?’

‘Can we have an account like that?’ said Abby, in surprise.

‘Of course. This is Od.’

‘Then that’s what we want.’ Karen hardly gave him time to ﬁnish speaking.

‘Very good. Do you have any identiﬁcation?’

‘Er, I’ve got my driving licence,’ Karen replied, fumbling in her pocket.

‘No, no, no! That won’t do here! This is Od.’

‘I think he means these,’ said Sam, picking up his scroll and handing it over.

‘Correct, young man. And don’t forget, it’s a serious offence if you can’t produce your ID when requested.’

‘You mean, we have to carry these huge things around all night?’ wailed my pathetic sister.

‘Unless you want to risk being arrested. Sign here.’ He thrust a form at us.

We all signed, and Mr Cobley got out a pair of tweezers and a small plastic jar.

‘The standard allowance is 23 Thousands per team,’ he said, counting out brightly coloured sugar strands like the ones you put on cakes.

‘Don’t eat them!’ he went on. ‘They’re worth a lot more than the material they’re made from.’

‘Just like English money,’ I said.

‘I’m not so sure about that,’ said Sam.

‘Remember this is a loan,’ said Mr Cobley. ‘If you can’t pay it back, with interest, tomorrow morning, the shortfall is deducted from your score.’

‘What happens if we make a proﬁt?’ asked Sam.

‘Bonus points.’

‘What’s the rate of interest?’ said Karen.

‘You’ll ﬁnd that out in the morning.’

‘Now what do we do?’ This was Karen again.

‘All the teams are meeting in the Café del A,’ Mr Cobley informed us. ‘Down the stairs, across the courtyard, and you can’t miss it.’

We met another team on their way up the stairs as we left.

‘Where are you from?’ we asked.

‘Pateley Bridge. How about you?’

We told them, and wished them good luck, and then we set off for the Café del A.

+ + +

‘Do you need any help?’

‘Sorry?’

I must have been thinking about something else for the moment, but then the speaker came into focus and I realized it was another girl. Not as good-looking as Becky, though. Quite plain in fact, and dressed in jeans and trainers, with a thick jacket to keep out the cold. I actually thought she must be in one of the other teams.

‘What team are you with?’ I asked.

‘I’m not. I’m from here. And I can help you if you want,’ she continued, in what she obviously thought was a seductive voice. It wasn’t, though.

‘We’re all right, thank you,’ said Karen.

That was when I saw Sam slip the envelope containing our money into an inside pocket. He caught my gaze, and grinned.

‘But,’ said Abby, ‘don’t we want to know where this café place is?’

‘Shhhh!’ I hissed.

‘I’m sure we’ll manage,’ Sam declared. ‘But thank you so much for your kind offer.’

I thought he was overdoing it, but the girl didn’t seem to notice.

‘Oh well. Please yourselves. I’ll be around later, if you need me. Just ask for Luce.’

‘What’s the matter?’ said Abby, as soon as she was out of sight. ‘She was only trying to be friendly.’

‘Pecuniary advantage?’ I replied. ‘Remember what Saint Nic said!’

‘Oh! You mean, she expected money in return for helping us?’

‘A seductive siren. I think that’s how you’d describe her,’ agreed Sam. It’s hard to believe he spoke no English at all, three years ago.

‘Siren; yes. Seductive; no,’ declared Karen. ‘She looked like the back end of a bus. Oh! Sorry, Zak. Were you getting interested?’

‘Shut up, Karen!’

It wasn’t actually difﬁcult to ﬁnd the café—we could hear the music as soon as we left the bank, and there was a steady ﬂow of people going in and out of the only door, allowing streams of coloured light to spill out into the courtyard.

‘Don’t they call them hufﬂers?’ said Abby, as we went in.

‘What?’

‘People who expect money in return for “help”.’

‘I don’t know. Do they?’

But we couldn’t discuss it any more, because as soon as we were inside we were accosted by yet another girl, and I had to wonder if there were actually any boys at this school. But at least this one looked the part. No attempt at disguise here. She wasn’t especially tall, but she looked as if she was, with her waist-length, ﬂowing, mid-brown hair, and long ﬂowing dress to match—in style, at any rate. It was a rich ruby red, and it had a slit up one side.

‘Hello,’ she purred, in a voice that sounded like honey. ‘I’m Adèle. Come and sit here.’

It turned out, as she explained once she’d got us all sat down at one of the tables, that Adèle was to be our hostess for the night, being in charge of the Café del A.

‘So if you get cold, wandering about outside, just pop back in here for some soup, or toast, or coffee.’

‘Do we pay in Od money, or English money,’ Sam enquired.

‘No, it’s free.’

‘Free?’

‘Well, it comes out of your entry fee. Don’t worry about it.’

I remembered then. About the entry fee. Ten quid per team. I’d thought it was a bit steep at the time, but now I could see they wouldn’t be making much out of it. It was a cold night, and I could imagine most teams would be popping in more than once.

‘Hi, ’Dèl! Got some coffee? It’s freezing out there!’

We looked up to see who had just come in. It was the two soldiers, obviously off duty now. The sergeant—Becky—had her helmet off and she recognized us immediately.

‘Hi! How’s it going?’ she said, coming over to our table. She really was quite nice-looking.

‘Fine!’ I replied. Karen didn’t say anything.

‘Meet Liz,’ Becky went on, introducing the other soldier. Yet another girl! This was getting ridiculous.

‘Hi!’ said Liz.

‘Hi!’

‘Me ’n’ Liz are best mates,’ continued Becky.

‘Supposed to be,’ corrected Liz. ‘How do you explain your being a sergeant, and me just a corporal, huh?’

‘It’s just my charisma, dearie,’ Becky replied.

‘Here’s your coffee!’ Adèle was back with a tray. She’d brought some for us, too.

‘Ho, Ho, Ho!’

Not too hard to guess the identity of the next arrival, but we all looked round anyway.

‘Let me introduce you,’ said Becky. ‘Meet Nic.’

‘Saint Nic, don’t you mean?’ Abby likes to get these things clear.

‘No, just Nic,’ replied Saint Nic, taking off her hood and beard. ‘I’m Becky’s sister.’

‘Oh. Right.’

Then they went off to talk to some of the other teams, but I caught sight of Becky stealing a glance at me. Anyway, we were just getting back into our conversation with Adèle when there was another yell from the doorway.

‘Yoo Hoo! Hi! It’s me! Luce! Mind if I join you?’

‘Luce! Go away!’ Adèle shouted at her, and I thought they were going to start a ﬁght, but then suddenly they both screamed and ducked down behind the table! Abby screamed too. She was facing the doorway. Then there was a tremendous commotion, with people rushing about and hiding behind things. I just had time to see a tall ﬁgure, dressed entirely in black, feet shrouded in mist, when the lights went out! More screams, followed by silence. Cold air wafted in through the open door.

And then the ﬁgure spoke. A deep, masculine voice, but completely without warmth. Involuntarily, I shivered. Out of the black came the words.

‘Citizens of Od! And visitors. Know who I am!’

A small scream from Luce, under the table.

‘Behold! The Wicked Warlock Widdershins!’

A louder scream from Luce.

‘Now hear this. Hear this and tremble.’

I could feel the table trembling. Probably that was due to Luce, too. I just hoped my coffee didn’t spill.

‘I, the Warlock Widdershins, have abducted your Princess and hidden her away where you will never ﬁnd her. For her safe return, I demand a price.’

‘Price?’ I think it was Karen who said it.

‘The price for the release of the Princess is…

…One Woodenpiece.’

Massed screams from the audience, and then the lights came back on. The door was closed. Of the Wicked Warlock there was no sign. Adèle and Luce crawled back out from under the table, and Luce scurried off.

‘What on earth was all that about?’ I cried.

‘Don’t be thick, Zak!’ Karen retorted.

‘What?’

‘It’s what we’re here for,’ replied Sam. ‘It’s a challenge. Presumably all the visiting teams have to try to rescue this Princess, and whoever gets her ﬁrst, wins.’

‘Just a minute,’ Abby interrupted. ‘You don’t have a Princess in an oligarchy. I bet it’s a trap.’

‘A trap?’

‘It’s only an ostensible oligarchy,’ said Karen, ‘so they might have a Princess.’

‘Will someone explain what on earth you’re all talking about!’ My head was spinning with all these long words.

‘All right, Zak. Aunty Karen will explain it all to you in words of one syllable.’

‘Go on then.’

‘Ostensible means pretending, so if they’re only pretending to be an oligarchy, of course they could have a Princess!’

‘You used words with more than one syllable!’

I ducked as I said it, which was just as well, since she took a swipe at me with her bag. I thought it best not to ask her to explain what an oligarchy was.

‘But how do we even begin?’ Abby put into words what must have been uppermost in everyone’s mind. ‘Aren’t we supposed to have clues?’

‘If it’s clues you’re after,’ cooed Adèle, ‘perhaps we can come to a little business arrangement?’

I groaned.

‘Not you too,’ remarked Karen.

‘How much?’ asked Sam.

‘Sam!’ This was Abby.

‘It’s all right. I see how it works. They’ve got some people trying to take money off you for things you don’t need, like that girl, Luce. And then there are other things you have to pay for or you can’t actually get anywhere.’

‘Smart guy, your mate!’ Adèle winked at me. And then, to Sam, ‘What’re you doing tomorrow?’

‘How much?’ said Sam. ‘For the clue,’ he added, quickly.

‘Forty-two and a half Primos.’

‘What?’ I was totally confused, but Sam had already cottoned on. Like I said, that guy is quick. Even Karen was still trying to work it out.

‘You have change?’ he asked her.

‘Sure.’

‘OK,’ and he got out our little envelope.

‘Put it on my tongue,’ commanded the hostess.

Sam took one of the sugar strands and placed it carefully on his little ﬁnger. Then he put it in Adèle’s mouth. I watched, horriﬁed, as she swallowed it!

‘You haven’t eaten it! That was a whole Thousand!’

‘Calm down,’ she replied. ‘You’ll get your change. And your clue.’

And then she took out a huge wad of banknotes, or perhaps a wad of huge banknotes would be a better description. Each one was about A4 size, and completely blank except that in each corner was the legend, “One Quarter Primo”. She peeled them off.

‘Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three. Here.’ She handed them over.

‘What about the half?’ Karen had caught up.

‘God! You are observant!’ And then she took another note and calmly tore it in half. She gave one of the pieces to Sam.

‘How much did you say it was?’ I was still trying to sort it out.

‘Forty-two and a half.’

‘And the change is…’

‘It’s easy,’ Adèle explained. ‘We have four Secondos to the Primo, sixty-six Primos to the Thousand, and…’

‘Go on.’ Karen sounded ominous.

‘That’s it.’

‘What about the Woodenpiece?’

‘Oh!’

‘How many Thousands in a Woodenpiece?’

‘Um, I’m not sure…’

‘You’re not sure! You expect us to believe that?’

‘All right. A lot.’

‘A lot!’ Sam was back online now. ‘How many?’

‘I don’t know!’

‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’

‘I don’t know! A lot!’

‘Are you trying to tell us,’ Sam continued, ‘you don’t actually know your own currency! Why not?’

‘Well,’ whispered Adèle, ‘it’s like this…’

‘We’re listening.’

‘It’s just that a Woodenpiece is so valuable nobody’s ever had enough money to own one.’

‘Then how,’ I said, thinking it was about time I made a contribution, ‘are we supposed to stand any chance of rescuing the Princess?’

‘Beginner’s luck?’

+ + +

I don’t know who thought up this game—Becky and her friends, I suppose—but it’s most ingenious. It’s a sort of adventure trading game, with traps for the unwary. A bit like some computer games, only with real people, and real objects. And it didn’t take long to work out how we could start earning money.

The school where they held this thing is on a very steep site. Not surprising when you consider that hill we had to come down. The clue we got from Adèle sent us to the very bottom, where we found that water was available at only one Secundo per litre.

‘It’s worth a lot more up in Top Woods,’ informed the water seller.

‘How much?’ Karen wasn’t satisﬁed with vague statements. She wanted to know.

‘Twenty-two Primos.’

‘How much!’

‘Twenty-two…’

‘Per litre?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Right, guys,’ said Karen. ‘This is what we do…’

But she didn’t need to elaborate. We all knew a nine thousand percent proﬁt when we saw one. There was only one slight problem…

‘What are we going to carry it in?’ It was Abby who actually put it into words.

Smart guy, the water seller. It set us back a whole Thousand to rent a twenty-ﬁve litre container, but we knew we’d recoup that on our ﬁrst trip. But then there was another slight problem…

Have you ever carried that much water, all the way up a steep hill? We did it though, and after our second trip we decided to rent another container so we could go at twice the rate.

And it was while we were on our way back from that trip that we saw the sign.

‘Rent-a-Slave,’ said Karen. ‘Now there’s an idea!’

We followed the directions, and soon found ourselves in a room that looked very much like the bank, talking to a guy who looked very much like Mr Cobley, only now he was wearing a mega-unfashionable green suit.

‘How can I help you?’ he enquired, steepling his ﬁngers.

‘We want a slave,’ replied Karen, getting straight to the point.

We struck a deal. One Thousand per half-hour. Then we had to go outside again, and were taken to another room to choose.

‘Dave!’ cried Abby.

‘Hello, you lot!’ he replied. ‘Am I glad to see you!’

He wasn’t, though. Not after he found out what he had to do. All the other leaders were slaves too, and of course, each team chose their own Leader. As a way of getting their own back, I suppose.

Anyway, Dave managed one trip, pufﬁng and panting, and then we had to call it off.

‘We can’t get him to do all this work!’ exclaimed Abby. ‘He’s too old. He might have a heart attack!’

I tried to whisper to her that he could hear what she was saying, but she didn’t take any notice.

It wasn’t long after that when we discovered that the Vampire of the Wooden Hut had a seemingly limitless supply of gold for sale at a very good price.

‘Do you think it’s real?’ I managed to get out, as I struggled with my fourth bar of the stuff.

‘Zak! Where are they going to get real gold from? Use your head!’

‘Have you felt the weight of it, Karen?’ I replied.

‘No need. That’s what the men are for.’

Good job it was so heavy, or I might have thrown it at her, but then Abby spotted something.

‘Look. See here, where the paint’s chipped off?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Sam. ‘It’s lead, underneath.’

‘I know that!’ she retorted, sounding more like Karen than Karen does. ‘That’s not what I meant!’

‘What did you mean?’ I thought it must be my turn again.

‘That last bar had the paint chipped off in exactly the same place.’

‘You mean…’

‘As fast as we get them there, someone else is whipping them back. They’ve only got the two sets, and they’re just going round and round.’

‘But why?’ I was really confused by now.

‘It’s all part of the game,’ said Karen, as if that explained everything.

One thing I didn’t explain was where we were taking the stuff. Not up hill, at least. We’d found out from the Mystery Man of the Mountain—the one who was paying loads of money a litre for water—that one of the assistants in the Café del A had a nice little sideline in bullion, provided we could get it in while Adèle wasn’t watching. We did our best, and then, after our tenth bar of the stuff, we decided to stop for a bit of toast.

‘Mmmm. Not bad!’ Sam’s a great enthusiast for toast. I thought it was good, too.

‘Excuse me. Mind if I join you?’

The newcomer turned out to be a short guy with zits. Even in the dim lighting I could tell he was up to no good, but he just sat there, drinking coffee, and sizing us up. He looked like a weasel.

Five minutes, and he seemed to make up his mind. Lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, he signalled to us to gather round.

‘Like a mint?’

We looked. He kept it well out of the public gaze, hidden down in the folds of the tablecloth, but it looked just like an ordinary packet of peppermints to me. Karen went to take one.

‘No, no, no!’ and he snatched the packet away.

‘What?’

‘You want, you buy.’

‘Buy? A peppermint?’ Karen was outraged.

‘How much?’ said Sam.

‘Five Thousands.’

‘Five…’

‘You got any idea how much these are worth, on the open market?’

‘How much?’

‘Ask the vampire!’

‘The vampire?’ I queried.

‘Go on! Then I’ll give you one more chance.’

He was gone.

‘What was all that about?’ asked Abby, looking all innocent.

‘I think maybe peppermints aren’t allowed here,’ Sam replied.

‘So?’

‘So there’s a good proﬁt to be made, if you’re prepared to take the risk.’

‘What risk?’ This was Karen.

‘Dealing in illegal substances,’ Sam explained patiently, ‘carries a risk of severe penalties…’

‘It’s just a game!’ she interrupted. ‘Come on! Let’s go and ﬁnd that vampire.’

This was the same vampire we’d bought the gold from, of course. I expect they only had the one costume. I even recognized who was inside it—Becky’s sister, the one who played Saint Nicholas.

‘Other parts were played by members of the cast,’ I murmured.

‘What?’ said Karen.

‘Nothing.’

She gave us the information we’d come for. After we’d given her a little pecuniary advantage.

‘Eighty Thousands!’ Karen was screaming at us. ‘Eighty Thousands! That’s a hundred and ﬁfty Thousands proﬁt if we buy two at ﬁve Thousands each. This has got to be the way to make money.’

‘All right, Karen. We can all count. But I still don’t think we should do it.’ Sam sounded seriously worried—I could sense it.

‘Why on earth not?’

‘Because it’s illegal!’

‘You don’t know that. Nobody’s actually told us not to do it. Anyway, it’s only a game.’

Karen can actually be very persuasive. Perhaps it’s all those grade ‘A’s. Anyway, somehow she talked us into it, even though it was against all our better judgements, and we went back to the café and invested some of our hard-earned proﬁts in two of these mints.

‘Now what?’

‘Back to the vampire, of course,’ replied the incorrigible Karen. ‘A few trips like this and we’ll be able to afford a Woodenpiece for sure.’

Well, we got there. We sat. We produced the goods, and Nic the Vampire produced a lot of sugar strands. Karen slid the mints across the table—Nic slid the money in the opposite direction…

‘Stop! Hold it right there!’

Suddenly the room was full of blinding light and at least a dozen police ofﬁcers, customs ofﬁcials and soldiers. Becky and Liz, I presumed. And Nic the Vampire turned out to be another customs ofﬁcer in disguise. We’d been set up! Even the weasel who’d sold us the stuff was a police informer!

The mints were conﬁscated, of course. Ten Thousands of our precious money gone, in a fraction of the time it had taken us to earn them. And we were sent to prison! For half an hour! When the whole game only lasts for nine hours in total. We needed that half-hour. But instead, we had to do Menial Tasks in the prison where the leaders were kept. What did we have to do? Make the tea! That’s the last time I try to trade in illegal substances!

+ + +

‘I said you should have listened to us!’ I said.

‘Shut up!’ replied Karen.

‘We did try to tell you,’ added Sam.

‘Shut up!’

‘And now look what’s happened,’ I continued.

‘Shut up, shut up, shut up!’

‘Never mind all that,’ said Abby. ‘We need to get on and earn some more money.’

‘Huh!’ I replied. ‘What chance do you think we’ve got now? We must be way behind all the other teams.’

‘Don’t be so defeatist,’ replied my sister. ‘Come on!’

‘Where are we going?’

‘To the vampire! We can still trade in gold. That’s perfectly legal.’

We trundled off. We were all feeling pretty dejected. After all, we’d lost ten Thousands and half an hour, and we were going to have to work really hard to catch up again. And Karen was in a sulk. Still, perhaps Abby was right, and we did still have a chance. Time would tell.

We found Nic the Vampire in her Wooden Hut.

‘Oh, it’s you lot,’ she said. She didn’t seem especially pleased to see us.

‘Hi!’ I said, trying to sound cheerful. ‘Can we buy two bars of gold, please?’

‘Sorry.’

‘What?’

‘I can’t sell you any gold.’

‘What! Why not?’

‘I’m not allowed to sell gold to people with a criminal record. I’d lose my licence.’

‘But,’ I said, starting to panic, ‘we’ve paid for our mistake. We’ve just spent half an hour in prison, making cups of tea!’

‘Sorry.’

So that was that. Back we went.

‘Karen!’ I said.

‘What? Oh! I’ve had enough of this!’ she replied. ‘I’m going home!’

‘Karen!’

‘Leave her alone!’ shouted Abby. ‘It isn’t all her fault, you know.’

‘Yes it…’

‘Shut up! Just because Karen suggested it, doesn’t mean we aren’t to blame as well. We all took part. And if we want to get anywhere at all, we have to work as a team. Can’t you see they’re trying to split us up?’

I subsided. A bit. I suppose she had a point.

‘But how are we going to get money if we can’t trade in gold?’ I asked her. ‘No way am I going to carry any more water up that hill!’

‘There isn’t enough proﬁt in it anyway,’ said Sam. ‘Not compared to the gold.’

‘Then what can we do?’

‘I know!’ Abby exclaimed. ‘Let’s go back to the café and buy another clue! Coming, Ka?’

‘I suppose.’

There were quite a few people in the café when we arrived. Some were clearly other teams, while others were our hosts, having a break from their duties. We looked around for Adèle.

‘There!’ said Sam, and we headed across.

‘What do you want?’ she said, as soon as she saw us. ‘Quick! Over here, away from the door!’

She made us sit in the darkest corner, where nobody would be likely to spot us.

‘I don’t want you coming in here! If anyone sees you I’ll lose my licence. What do you want?’

‘Please, Adèle,’ Abby whimpered. ‘Can we have another clue?’

‘You’ve got a nerve!’

‘Please…’

‘All right! Two Thousands.’

‘Two Thousands!’ I said. ‘But, that’s…’

‘Take it or leave it.’

Well, we didn’t really have a choice. If we didn’t take it we would have had to give up there and then, but we were starting to get a bit short of cash. Sam got the envelope out.

‘Just give it to me!’ Adèle was really agitated. ‘I don’t want it on my tongue—it’s tainted!’

‘You make us sound like…’

‘Here’s your clue. Now get out!’

We got out. She wouldn’t even let us stop for some soup or toast, so we had to wander round in the cold trying to decipher the clue.

‘She’s a good actor,’ said Sam.

‘What?’

‘Well, actually they all are,’ he went on.

‘What are you going on about?’ This was Karen.

‘Well, she isn’t really in a bad mood with us—it’s all part of the game—but she sounds really ﬁerce.’

‘That’s all very well,’ said Karen, ‘but I don’t see that she’s got any right to chuck us out of the café. We’ve paid for refreshments, out of our entry fee.’

‘It’s probably only temporary,’ I said. ‘They’re always trying to wind us up, just like Abby said. If we stay calm and start to earn legal money again, I expect we’ll be able to go back in there.’

‘I hope so,’ said Abby. ‘Let’s have a look at this clue.’

Inside the envelope was a sheet of paper. At the top was a single word: PRIZES.

Underneath was a map. We followed it, and soon found ourselves in a room that looked very much like the bank, talking to a guy who looked very much like Mr Cobley, only now he was wearing a mega-unfashionable brown suit.

‘Yes?’

‘Um, can you explain about the prizes?’ Abby asked him, nervously.

‘Easy. You give me some money, I give you a test of your ingenuity. If you pass the test, you win some money.’

‘This is more like I thought it would be,’ said Abby. ‘What sort of test?’

‘Sorry,’ said the Mr Cobley lookalike. ‘Cash ﬁrst.’

‘How much?’ said Sam.

‘One Thousand.’

‘And how much do we win?’ asked Karen.

‘Sorry. You have to win it ﬁrst.’

Again, we had no choice. We coughed up another Thousand—very little left now—and received a piece of paper in exchange. It looked like sheet music.

‘What do we have to do?’ I asked.

‘Play it!’

‘What on?’

‘There’s a piano in the prison.’

‘In the prison! No way. We’re not going there!’ I could just imagine us being arrested all over again.

‘It’s perfectly safe. And you don’t have a choice.’

It felt really weird, going to prison voluntarily, but nothing alarming happened to us. Dave was there, with his feet up in front of a log ﬁre, being served tea and biscuits by the team from Pateley Bridge.

‘See!’ whispered Abby. ‘It’s not just us!’

‘Hi!’ I said. ‘What are you in for?’

‘It’s like this,’ replied the guy I spoke to. ‘There’s this girl, see. She kept coming up to us asking if we needed help, and eventually we said we did, at which point she demanded money…’

‘You didn’t give her any?’ I interrupted.

‘Yes, and no sooner had it changed hands than we were surrounded by police and brought here!’

‘So, that’s illegal too,’ I said, quietly to Sam. ‘It looks like you were right.’

‘What was this girl’s name?’ I asked.

‘Luce.’

‘That ﬁgures.’

Dave wasn’t the only Leader in the prison. I think they were all there, and they didn’t look in the least unhappy. I suppose it helps, being waited on hand and foot. They had the TV on, too.

‘What is this place, really?’ I asked.

‘It’s the school staffroom,’ replied one of the leaders.

‘Really!’ said Abby. ‘I’ve never been in one of those before. It isn’t allowed at our school.’

‘This one’s more like a corridor,’ said our informant. ‘Have you come to play the piano?’

‘Yes.’

‘All of you?’

‘No, just me,’ she replied. I don’t think I mentioned it before, but Abby’s Grade eight.

‘OK, down you go. It’s in the cellar.’

‘Can we go too?’ I asked. ‘To listen?’

We had to go down this ﬂight of really steep, narrow steps, into a room we could only just stand up in. One of the leaders came too. He was the judge. Abby put the manuscript paper on the piano, sat down, and played it straight off. Perfect.

‘Well Done!’ She got a round of applause, too.

Back up the stairs we went, to collect our prize. Twenty Thousands! And a refund of the Thousand we had to pay to take part.

‘Hey!’ cried Abby, excited now. ‘This is easy! Can we do some more like this?’

‘Go back to where you got that from, get another one,’ we were told.

We bumped into Liz and Becky as we left. I’m not sure why, but I got the impression it wasn’t an accident. Something to do with the way they were looking at us. Especially Becky.

Our next test—which cost us two Thousands, by the way—took us to a room which turned out to be the sixth-form common room.

‘This is nice,’ Abby remarked, as we went in.

I saw her point. Armchairs, carpet, TV and video, little kitchen to make coffee and toast—it was much more luxurious than we were used to. But then again, I suppose they use it a lot more than we do. There was a little girl inside. Well, not really a little girl, but she wasn’t very big, if you see what I mean.

‘Hi!’ she said. ‘I’m Jules. Have you come to do the Pigsaw Juzzle?’

‘The what?’

‘Pigsaw Juzzle. It’s a Spoonerism,’ she added, as if that explained everything.

‘Oh, I see!’ Karen was down on the ﬂoor examining a load of wooden shapes. ‘She means it’s a jigsaw puzzle, with a picture of a pig.’

‘Clever bitch,’ muttered Jules, under her breath. Had someone told her about Karen?

‘This is easy!’ Karen went on. ‘There’s only a few pieces.’

But it wasn’t.

‘This isn’t fair!’ Karen had just noticed the pieces had a picture on both sides.

‘And it’s the same picture!’ she went on.

‘Er, not quite,’ said Jules.

It was subtle, actually. Jules told us she had made the Pigsaw Juzzle herself, and that the pictures were almost, but not exactly, the same. That made it very difﬁcult to work out where to put each piece. Still, I suppose I have to give Karen her due, because she managed it in the end, and we won our prize. Forty Thousands. And our money back.

‘How much do you bet the next one will cost us three Thousands?’ she said.

‘Four,’ said Sam.

‘Why four?’

‘It doubles each time,’ he replied.

‘You reckon?’

‘That will be four Thousands, please,’ said the Mr Cobley lookalike.

+ + +

‘Good Evening, Ladies and Gentlemen.’

The speaker was quite a tall guy, very smartly dressed with a waistcoat and bow tie. He looked like one of those people you get in casinos.

‘What’s the game?’ I asked him.

‘Darts, sir.’ He handed me three.

‘There are four of us,’ Karen butted in.

‘Regrettably, madam, there are only three darts per team, and they must all be thrown by the same individual.’

‘Then it’s going to be me!’ exclaimed Karen.

‘Hold on!’ I said. ‘I’m good at darts.’

‘Are you saying I’m not!’

‘Please!’ said Sam. ‘Don’t let’s argue about it. I’ve seen Zak in action. He’s good.’

‘So is Karen!’ Abby was standing up for her friend.

We decided to toss a coin. English money. I won.

‘What are the rules?’ I asked the guy, who turned out to be called Greg.

‘They are very simple, sir. For each point you score, you receive one Thousand.’

‘That’s it?’

‘That’s it, indeed, sir.’

‘OK,’ said Karen. ‘Are you listening, Zak? Go for the bull. Do you hear?’

‘What,’ I said, ‘are you talking about, Karen?’

‘The bull! In the middle! It’s worth ﬁfty points!’

‘So?’

‘If you score a bull each time, that’s a hundred and ﬁfty Thousands! That’s as much as we would have got from selling those stupid peppermints!’

‘Karen,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘What’s three times twenty?’

‘What? Sixty. Why?’

‘So, if I put three darts in the treble twenty, that will make a hundred and eighty Thousands. Yes?’

Karen looked confused.

‘Is that right?’ she said.

‘Just throw the darts, Zak,’ said Sam.

I took off my coat. They had everything properly laid out. The board was set at the right height, there was the line on the ﬂoor beyond which I couldn’t step, everything felt right. I took the ﬁrst dart, calmed my breathing, took aim…

‘Sixty!’ called Greg, sounding suitably excited.

Next dart. Ready, aim…

‘One hundred and twenty!’

Last dart. Steady. Don’t panic. Keep calm. Aim…

‘Are you sure?’ said Karen.

‘One hundred and twenty-one!’ Greg sang out.

‘Karen!’

‘What?’

‘You just lost us… Oh! Never mind!’

+ + +

We played one more game. It was a bit like Scrabble and was run by a guy called Rick. Seems I was wrong about there being no boys in this school. It cost us eight Thousands to enter, but we made a good proﬁt with all the triple word scores and so on, and we reckoned we deserved a break.

‘Do you think we’ll be allowed back in the café?’ I said to the others.

‘Won’t know until we try,’ said Abby. ‘Come on!’

‘I think I see why they use these sugar strands for money,’ said Sam, as we walked along.

‘Why?’

‘Well, our 23 Thousands to start off with was a bit pathetic. Look how many we’ve got now! If they used anything bigger we’d have trouble carrying them.’

‘Especially since we still have to carry these IDs around,’ Abby agreed. ‘They’re not exactly light!’

‘Er, guys,’ said Karen, in a slightly alarmed voice. ‘I don’t want to worry you but, we’re being followed!’

‘Followed!’ We all looked round, but we couldn’t see anyone.

‘They ducked into a doorway! You shouldn’t have talked about how much money we’ve got. I expect the place is crawling with thieves!’

She had a good point, we thought. We were a prime target, and if we had our money stolen we would be right back where we started. Fortunately, we were only a step away from the Café del A.

‘Hi!’ It was Adèle. ‘How was Coventry?’

‘What?’

‘I think she means,’ explained Abby, who’s quite quick about this sort of thing, ‘how did we like being sent to Coventry. Like, nobody talking to us, and stuff like that.’

‘Oh!’ I replied. ‘Not much!’

‘Sorry,’ said Adèle, ‘but rules are rules. But that’s all over now. Fancy some coffee?’

‘Please!’

She went off to organize it, and we came to an agreement about our money. We split it twelve ways, and each of us carried three little packages, concealed in various parts of our clothing.

‘Where are you going to hide yours, Karen?’ I enquired.

She looked at me in that way that girls do.

‘Somewhere you won’t be able to ﬁnd it, Zak!’ she replied, with a smug look on her face.

‘Oh, one of those places,’ I groaned.

Adèle returned with the coffee. She put an envelope on the table.

‘Have a clue,’ she said.

‘A clue! How much?’ asked Abby.

‘No, it’s free. On the house,’ she replied.

‘Free?’

‘Once you get to a certain point in the game, we don’t charge for clues any more.’

‘Are you saying,’ I suggested tentatively, ‘that we’re in the lead?’

‘That,’ she said, ‘would be telling! But you’re not doing too badly!’

She left us, and we ripped open the envelope.

‘What does it say?’ cried Abby.

Karen read it out loud.

‘Get your Woodenpiece from the bank.’

‘Get our Woodenpiece! That must mean we’ve got enough money!’ I said, excitedly.

‘Yes,’ Sam agreed, ‘it does look that way. I suggest we ﬁnish our coffee and get over to the bank before anyone else reaches the same stage.’

Typically, Adèle had produced some really hot coffee this time, but we managed to swallow it and set off once again.

‘I’ll catch you up!’ cried Karen, bending down to tie her shoelace. ‘Get to the bank before any of the other teams beats us to it!’

We got, and we were halfway up the stairs before we heard the scream.

‘That’s Karen!’ exclaimed Abby.

We rushed back, just in time to see Karen hopping up and down, furiously shaking her ﬁsts at two ﬁgures who were making a quick exit round the corner. One of them looked suspiciously like the zit-faced weasel who’d set us up with the peppermints.

‘Bastards!’ cried Karen. She can be quite unladylike when she’s angry.

‘Karen! Are you all right?’ Abby was already trying to calm her down.

‘I’m OK. Just shocked really. They sprang out from that doorway and one of them grabbed me from behind while the other one went through all my pockets.’

‘The money! They must have been after the money,’ I cried.

‘Yeah,’ she replied. ‘Looks like they got it, too.’

‘All of it?’

She felt under her coat. And went a bit pink.

‘All of it. Bastards!’

+ + +

We huddled together on the stairs outside the bank and counted out the money we had left.

‘270 Thousands,’ said Sam.

‘Where were the police, when I needed them?’ said Karen, still furious.

‘Do you think it will be enough?’ asked Abby.

‘They get here quick enough when we do something wrong,’ Karen butted in.

‘Only one way to ﬁnd out!’ I cried.

We knew it was Mr Cobley again because he was back in the white suit. Apart from that he might have been the Slave-master or the Purveyor of Initiative Tests. We got straight to the point.

‘How much is a Woodenpiece?’ asked Sam.

‘How much have you got?’ replied Mr Cobley.

‘Two hundred and sev…’ I started, but Sam dug me in the ribs.

‘Two hundred and forty Thousands,’ he said.

Mr Cobley made a pretence of consulting some ﬁnancial tables.

‘Why did you say that?’ I whispered to Sam.

‘We still have to pay back the loan,’ he replied.

‘The price of a Woodenpiece,’ intoned Mr Cobley, ‘is two hundred and forty Thousands.’

‘There you are!’ said Sam, under his breath.

‘Huh! We could probably have got it for 200,’ said Karen. She was still smarting from her ordeal.

Mr Cobley asked us to wait while he went next door to the vault.

‘Can’t leave things like that lying around!’ he told us. ‘Far too valuable.’

We waited, and shortly afterwards he returned, rolling a large disc along the ground.

‘I can see why it’s called a Woodenpiece!’ Abby laughed, as she saw it.

‘I see what you mean!’

It was a coin. Made of wood. But perhaps there had been a slight error of scale, because the thing was at least a metre in diameter!

‘Is this it?’ It was Karen who asked.

‘Of course.’

‘And are we going to have to roll it along the ground, like that?’

‘Ah. Well, not exactly,’ replied Mr Cobley.

‘Not exactly?’

‘It’s made of wood, you see,’ he went on.

‘So?’ said Karen.

‘If you roll it, out of doors, you’ll damage the edge. And then it won’t be legal tender any more.’

‘What!’

‘So I’m afraid you’re going to have to carry it.’

Sam and I tried to lift it between us. We managed, but it was obvious we couldn’t get very far like that. The girls would have to help, too. I don’t know what sort of wood it was made of, but it was a lot heavier than the gold bars we’d struggled with earlier.

‘And you were saying,’ I said to Sam, ‘they used sugar strands because they’re light!’

‘But, where do we take it?’ cried Abby.

‘I would have thought that was obvious,’ Mr Cobley replied.

‘To the Wicked Warlock, I suppose,’ Sam concluded.

‘How do we get there?’ I asked.

‘I doubt you’ll have any problems on that score,’ came Mr Cobley’s reply.

‘Oh?’

‘No problems at all. But once you get there, you will have to summon the Warlock.’

‘Summon the Warlock?’

‘But of course! You don’t expect him to be waiting there on the off-chance someone will turn up with a Woodenpiece, do you?’

‘All right,’ said Abby. ‘How do we summon him?’

‘It’s really quite simple,’ Mr Cobley explained. ‘All you do is form a circle, holding the Woodenpiece between you at about waist height.’

‘Waist height?’ we echoed, puzzled.

‘That’s it. And then you must rotate. Anticlockwise, of course,’ he went on.

‘Of course.’ We thought we’d better humour him.

‘And while rotating, you must say the magic incantation.’

‘The what?’

‘Wicked Warlock Widdershins Woodenpiece.’

‘Sorry?’

‘But you must say it quickly. Over and over. Until the Warlock arrives.’

‘Wicked Warlock Widdershins Woodenpiece.’

‘With your eyes shut,’ he ﬁnished.

Becky was waiting for us outside. This time she grinned at me. Or maybe she smiled at me—it was difﬁcult to tell in the half-dark, but she did give us a clue about where to ﬁnd the Warlock.

‘That way!’ and she pointed.

We had to go past the café. Adèle popped out.

‘That way!’

‘I don’t get it!’ I said. ‘How come they’re telling us, all of a sudden?’

‘I suppose it’s because we’re carrying this huge lump of wood about with us,’ replied Karen.

‘Yes,’ Abby agreed. ‘There wouldn’t have been much point before, but now we must be close to ﬁnishing.’

It was hard work, getting to the Warlock’s abode. Some of the route was quite narrow, including a ﬂight of steep stone steps, and there was no room for all four of us to carry the thing, so me and Sam had to manage between us.

‘Hurry up!’ called Karen.

‘Karen!’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

We got there. It looked rather like some stables for horses. No sign of any horses, however, and no sign of the Warlock either, or of anyone else for that matter. Still, that was what we’d been led to expect. Even so, we felt pretty stupid as we formed a circle and started to chant.

‘Wicked Warlock Widdershins Woodenpiece.’

We were rotating now. It was hard with my eyes shut. I guess it would have been hard anyway, with the weight we had to carry, but the fact I couldn’t see my feet just made it worse. And worse.

‘Wicked Warlock Widdershins Woodenpiece.’

My feet stepped sideways. One step, two steps.

‘Wicked Warlock Widdershins Woodenpiece.’

Faster we stepped, faster we chanted.

‘Wicked Warlock Widdershins Woodenpiece.’

Now my feet were getting mixed up. I couldn’t remember which one was which.

‘Wicked Warlock Widdershins Woodenpiece.’

And then someone else’s feet—Karen’s, I think—got mixed up with mine and suddenly we were all ﬂailing about on the ground with the Woodenpiece on top of us. I opened my eyes.

There was a loud bang, a ﬂash, and a cloud of smoke. The Warlock was with us.

‘Neat trick!’ said Sam, appreciatively.

‘Did you like it?’ said the Warlock.

Then we noticed he was not alone. At least six ﬁgures were enjoying the sight of us piled in a heap. I recognized Jules, Adèle, Liz and Becky, and there were some others I couldn’t be sure about. I struggled to my feet. So did Karen, Sam and Abby.

‘I hope you were not discommoded,’ said the Warlock.

‘What did he say?’ I asked Abby.

‘He hopes we’re all right,’ she translated.

‘Oh.’

I noticed the audience were laughing at our plight. Except for Becky.

‘I’ll just take this,’ said the Warlock, wheeling the Woodenpiece away.

‘Careful!’ screamed Karen. ‘You’ll damage the edge!’

‘That is now my problem,’ replied the Warlock.

‘You mean,’ I said, ‘that we’ve won?’ Things were looking up.

‘I will take you to the chamber where I placed the Princess,’ said the Warlock, by way of an answer.

He led us to one of the stables. He unbolted the door and swung it open.

‘Behold!’ he said.

All four of us crowded into the doorway. We looked inside. It was empty!

‘You were second,’ informed the Warlock.

‘Second!’

‘I’m afraid so. Another team arrived about half an hour ago and took the Princess away with them.’

‘No!’

‘Yes.’

None of us could think of anything to say. All that trouble, just to come second. So close.

‘Who won?’ Abby managed to get out.

‘You’ll ﬁnd out at the presentation.’

‘Presentation?’

‘At breakfast—in half an hour. None of the other teams are anywhere near. You actually did very well. Come on, I want to get out of this ridiculous costume!’

And he set off, back to the main part of the school, taking his cloak off as he did so. Abby and the others followed. I noticed the audience had gone too. Except for Becky.

‘Yerrrk!’ she said.

‘What?’

‘I can’t stand that boy. He’s a prat.’

‘What? Who?’

‘Damien. The Warlock,’ she went on, by way of explanation. ‘Thinks he’s so clever—God’s gift. Let’s wait until he’s gone.’

I looked at her. She looked at me. We were alone. Suddenly, I felt a sort of tingly feeling come over me. Like I said earlier, she was quite attractive, and it had just struck me exactly how attractive she was.

I don’t have a lot of practical experience with girls. On the other hand, having a twin sister can be quite useful. In terms of picking things up. Even if she doesn’t expect you to. And Becky was just stood there. She didn’t make any attempt to leave.

The trouble was, I wasn’t sure. Well, I’m not a mind-reader! And it did occur to me it might be another wind-up. Perhaps her mates were hiding round the corner, waiting for me to make a fool of myself. But what did I have to lose!

I reckoned the worst that could happen was that I’d get a slap round the face. After which I could go home. I wouldn’t have to put up with her laughing at me every day, like I would if we went to the same school. I decided to go for it.

‘It’s quite cold here,’ I said, moving a bit closer.

‘Mmmm.’ She didn’t seem to want to go indoors.

Here goes! I thought, and sort of put my arms round her, just a little bit.

She remained where she was. Not moving. I held her a little tighter.

I could feel my heartbeat picking up as I felt her body against mine, and then it started to race faster as her hands moved behind my back and she held me even closer. I was sure now. Well, fairly sure.

She was shorter than me. Girls often are. So I had to look down to see her face. She was looking up. Our eyes met. She had a nice smile.

Don’t chicken out now! I told myself, or she’ll think you’re a wimp!

Even so, I was sure she would be able to feel my heart pounding away, as I lifted her slightly and leant forward. Our lips touched.

+ + +

Some time later, we had to stop for breath.

‘I thought you might be too shy!’ she said.

‘I am!’ I replied.

‘Good job we had plenty of time then! Come on, time for breakfast.’

We reached the dining room hand-in-hand, and I didn’t care who noticed us. Not that Karen, Abby and Sam did notice—not just then—because all the tables had been arranged in long rows and the teams were all mixed up with the hosts so everyone could get to know each other a bit. Dave and the other leaders were there too.

There were only a few seats left, and me and Becky had to sit together, so it was all right.

Breakfast was pretty substantial. What with all the snacks during the night I think we got good value for our entry fee, and I wasn’t especially bothered we hadn’t won. Not now. Half an hour ago, perhaps, but not now. I had something to take my mind off it!

‘We will now have the presentation!’ A voice I didn’t recognize, and two people went and stood at the front.

‘Bianca and Simon,’ Becky told me. ‘Bianca is our chairperson, and Simon’s the secretary. They’re in upper-sixth.’

‘Oh. Right.’

Bianca seemed to be there purely for moral support, but Simon said a few words about how he hoped everyone had enjoyed it, and that it was planned to have another event next year, but that it would be hosted by this year’s winners.

‘Hey!’ I said. ‘Perhaps it’s just as well we didn’t win. This looks as if it takes a lot of work to get everything ready.’

‘It did,’ Becky agreed.

Then Simon announced the winners. I can’t for the life of me remember who it was. A team from Filey, perhaps. Or Bridlington. Somewhere south. A representative of the winning team came up and shook hands with both Simon and Bianca, then she collected a rather nice shield and went back to her seat. That was it. All over.

‘I suppose you have to go home now,’ said Becky, sounding suitably miserable.

‘Yeah. Dave’s going to take us.’

‘He won’t go without you, will he?’

‘No, of course not!’

‘Then he’ll have to ﬁnd you ﬁrst! Come on!’

‘Where are we going?’ I cried, as she dragged me away.

‘To ﬁnd some paper.’

‘What on earth for?’

‘To exchange phone numbers, of course!’

Considering that the place was a school, it took a very long time to ﬁnd a piece of paper!

The Search for the Missing Pintle

March…

Becky

One of the things we do in Ventures is voluntary work. Helping out with projects that are nothing to do with Scouts. Well, I’d found this little magazine in a secondhand bookshop during the holidays, and it gave me an idea.

It was called “Navvies”, this magazine. It’s published by some people who call themselves the “Waterway Recovery Group”, and you can tell what sort of people they are when I tell you there was an advert in this magazine, for T-shirts with, “I’m a Dirty Weekender!” blazoned all over the front. Obviously designed to catch people’s attention. It certainly caught mine! But the thing is, it’s meant to be taken literally. Their idea of a dirty weekend is to be up to their knees in mud, actually shovelling the stuff out of derelict canals!

I can’t say the idea appealed to me immediately, but the more I thought about it, the more it grew on me. Out of doors, fresh air, miles away from school, and one of the best things about going out like that was that we would get a packed lunch. For some reason best known to herself, Mrs Thompson the school cook always made much better packed lunches than the stuff the kids who stayed at school had to eat.

Inside this magazine there was a sort of calendar thing, that listed all the restoration projects and what was happening when. I hadn’t realized there were so many of them, but unfortunately everything was about a year out of date. Still, undaunted, I decided to give it a try anyway.

There are no canals in our part of the country, but I found there was, or had been, a project going on about ﬁfty miles away, so I got on the phone to the contact number given in the magazine. This is not something I ﬁnd easy, but I took a deep breath and did it, and a man’s voice answered.

‘3165 Hello?’

‘Hello?’ Suddenly, I found I didn’t know what to say. The magazine was a year old, perhaps it wasn’t the right number any more, maybe someone else had moved in…

‘Hello? This is Stanton 3165. Can I help you?’

I found my voice. Just.

‘Oh, hello. Um, excuse me, my name’s Rebecca. Er, you don’t know me, but I’m phoning about the canal. Um, have I got the right number?’

‘The canal? Do you mean the restoration project?’

Relief. He knew what I was talking about. He seemed quite a nice man, and it turned out he was the organizer for the canal society’s weekend working parties. He also, at ﬁrst, seemed quite keen for the offer of some assistance. Until I mentioned we were Scouts, that is.

‘Scouts? Oh…’ I could imagine him frowning at the other end of the phone. ‘Look, I’ve got nothing against Scouts, you understand—my son’s a Scout too—it’s just that, well, it’s quite demanding, this work. Physically demanding and, it’s got to be done properly, if you see what I mean. It’s not really suitable for kids. Sorry if I seem to be a bit…’

‘I’m sixteen,’ I interrupted, ‘and some of us are seventeen. We’re Venture Scouts, and we’re not afraid of hard work.’

It wasn’t strictly true, actually, the bit about me being sixteen, but since my birthday was but a few weeks away I thought I’d get away with it. Anyway, I could hear the relief in his voice, even over the phone. He didn’t want to be saddled with a load of young kids, but the offer of ten strong guys ’n’ gals for a dirty weekend or two was too good to refuse!

‘We’ve got a working party this weekend. Could you come on Sunday morning, about ten o’clock?’

Well, it was a bit short notice, but I thought I could arrange it. Sunday! That meant we had a legitimate excuse to miss church! Yes, I was sure I could ﬁnd a few volunteers! I asked him where we should meet, and he gave me a grid reference, so I suppose I must have inspired conﬁdence. I put the phone down and looked at the clock.

Quarter past six. Go and get on with my prep for a couple of hours, and then, since it was Wednesday, I could put the idea to the rest of the unit at our weekly meeting at 8.15.

Unfortunately, even the thought of missing church wasn’t enough to convince some of the crew. OK, so they wouldn’t have to listen to Reverend Scarﬁeld’s Wonderfully Bracing Sermon, but they would also miss out on lazing about in front of the telly after lunch. Still, I managed to con Liz and Jules into going, but that still only made three, and all of us were girls. But then Damien decided to go. Well! I began to wish I’d never mentioned it! I think I told you my opinion of Damien, and the thought of any sort of weekend in his company did not appeal one little bit! Still, it was too late to do anything about it, but to make matters worse Damien didn’t want to be the only lad so he press-ganged Eric into going, and at the last minute Bonehead joined in. He didn’t tell me why, but I found out. I have my methods! It was because he fancied Liz, and since she’d had a blazing row with the guy who was now her ex-boyfriend, he thought he might be in with a chance. I didn’t have the heart to tell him. Well, Liz is my friend, so I knew she wouldn’t touch him with a barge pole (Hey, that was quite good—canal restoration, barge pole!) but he wasn’t going to ﬁnd that out until after he’d shifted his cubic metre of mud, or whatever!

Anyway, that made six of us, and I sweet-talked Tony into driving, so we were all set. We were going to have to use the minibus, and it gets a bit expensive when it’s not full but, what the hell! It’s only ﬁfty miles.

But then I had an idea!

Except I wasn’t sure I could go through with it. I’d had to psych myself up before I could bring myself to phone the guy in Stanton, and now I was going to have to do it all over again. Psych myself up, I mean.

I hate phoning people I don’t know, and I even ﬁnd it difﬁcult phoning people I do know, and if there’s a good chance they won’t answer the phone themselves, that just makes it worse.

But I did want to see Zak again!

But, would he want to see me?

I thought about it. He’d seemed keen enough last time, but there must be a whole lot of girls near where he lives—would he still be interested in a remote romance? I thought it might be safest if I spoke to Abby in the ﬁrst place.

No queue for the phone, thank goodness. If there had been I think I would have chickened out, but I didn’t have that excuse, so I punched in the number and waited for it to connect. I’d memorized it too, which must mean something, and I was just thinking how wonderful it was that we’d now got a payphone at school so I didn’t have to go traipsing down to the village, when a female voice answered. It sounded too old to be Abby, so I assumed it must be her mum.

‘Hello,’ I said, in my Speaking To Parents voice. ‘Um, can I speak to Abigail, please?’

‘Hello, Becky,’ said the voice. ‘Wouldn’t you rather speak to Zak? I’ll just get him. Hold on.’

I held on. To a chair. In fact, I sat down. This wasn’t what I’d expected at all! Zak came on.

‘Hi, Becky!’ he said.

‘Hi,’ I said. ‘It’s me,’ I added, unnecessarily.

‘Really?’

‘Mmmm.’

‘So, what’s new?’

Eventually I got my tongue sorted out and managed to explain about the working party. Would they be interested in joining us? And staying at school for the weekend?

‘Where would we sleep?’ said Abby. Then, ‘I’m on the extension. You did ask for me!’

‘Oh, don’t worry about that!’ I said. ‘I’ll sort something out.’

So that was it. Fixed up. They were both keen to come along, and it would mean I wouldn’t have to put up with Damien, Eric and Bonehead to quite the same extent. As soon as they saw Zak, they’d get the hint. And I get on well with Abby, too.

The only problem was, I hadn’t been totally honest when I told them I could sort out some accommodation. I suppose I’d had some vague idea that Abby could sleep in our dorm, and Zak could kip on the ﬂoor in one of the boys’ dorms. Or the common room. Or something. But now that I was committed, I realized it wasn’t going to work. I knew Jules and Liz and co. wouldn’t mind if Abby spent a couple of nights with us, but Mrs Bagshott was another thing entirely! If she found out, we’d never hear the last of it, and I knew it wouldn’t just be me who got into trouble—it would be the whole dorm. And Abby probably wouldn’t be allowed back.

There would be less chance of getting caught if Abby slept in Nic’s dorm, but I wasn’t sure I could persuade my sister to cooperate. Zak would be easier to hide, but even so, if he were found out we would have some serious explaining to do. I felt a shiver down my spine as I realized I was going to have to do this thing properly.

There’s a guest room at school, for just this sort of thing. It’s got twin beds and its own bathroom. Better facilities than our dorm! The trouble is, it has to be booked through Mrs Bagshott, and she has a habit of asking a lot of awkward questions. She would also probably expect me to pay for it! It would go on the bill, of course. I just hoped Mum and Dad didn’t examine it too closely! I took a few deep breaths, and went off in search of Mrs B.

She wasn’t in her ﬂat, but I found her in her classroom, doing some marking. She didn’t seem at all pleased to see me. Even less so when I explained what I wanted. Still, she did send me to get her book, so she could make sure nobody else was using the room, and then she wrote my name down in it, next to the date.

‘And what’s the name of the girl who’s staying?’

‘Abigail,’ I said.

‘And it’s just her?’ Mrs Bagshott continued. ‘Nobody else?’

My heart skipped a beat. I told you she asked awkward questions. I had hoped to be economical with the truth, but there’s no way I could actually lie to Mrs B. It isn’t physically possible. So I admitted there would be two visitors.

‘And what’s the name of the other girl?’

‘Er, Zak,’ I mumbled.

‘Zak? Funny name for a girl.’

It was hot in the classroom. At least, I felt it was hot. I had to wipe my face with my sleeve. And I knew I’d turned bright pink.

‘Well, actually,’ I stuttered, ‘he’s not a girl.’

‘Rebecca! I’m surprised at you! What do you take me for? You know perfectly well I won’t allow such a thing. What on earth do you think you’re up to?’

I felt my legs turn to jelly, but I knew I had to come up with something.

‘Please, Mrs Bagshott! It’s OK. They’re related.’

‘Related? Surely you’re not trying to tell me they’re married!’

‘No. No, of course not. But they’re brother and sister. Twins.’

‘I see. But I still don’t think it’s possible.’

‘But Mrs Bagshott!’ I pleaded. ‘They don’t mind. They’ve shared a room before.’

‘I don’t know…’

‘Please, Mrs Bagshott!’

‘Well, I shall have to phone their parents. What’s the number?’

And then I did tell a lie. Only a little one. I told Mrs B. I would have to go and look it up, and while I was away I quickly phoned them myself to warn them.

Zak’s mum answered again, and then she nearly put the phone down on me because I was breathing so heavily with running she thought it was an obscene phone call, but I got through eventually.

‘It will be OK, won’t it?’ I said, anxiously.

‘Sure,’ said Zak. ‘No problem. We don’t mind, and I’ll let Mum know to expect a call.’

I forced myself to walk back to the classroom. I gave Mrs B. the number, and she promised to phone as soon as she had ﬁnished her marking. And at ten o’clock, when she came to check we were all in the dorm, she told me everything was ﬁxed up.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

‘Tell you what,’ said Liz. ‘Once Mrs B. has checked we’re all here, why don’t you sneak out and swop places with Abby? We won’t say anything.’

‘What! You mean, me spend the night with Zak? No. I’m a good girl!’

It was an interesting idea, though!

+ + +

Friday night found me down at the road junction, waiting for the bus. Not an easy journey for them, but there was nobody who could give them a lift, so they didn’t have a choice. And we knew it would be impossible for them to get back that way on the Sunday night, but Tony was prepared to make a diversion and drop them off in York, which meant they would probably be home before we were!

Half past eight, and we could hear the noise of something large, laboriously climbing up the hill from the village.

‘Do you think this is it?’ I said to Nic.

‘Wait and see,’ she replied.

I’d brought Nic with me because she’s in sixth-form. So are Zak and Abby, so as Nic’s guests they would be invited into the sixth-form common room. And since they were my guests really, that meant I could go in there too, which was good because it isn’t usually allowed. Having said that, you ﬁnd one or two ﬁfth-form girls there most nights—the ones who have sixth-form boyfriends.

‘Suppose they’re not on the bus,’ I said, starting to panic. ‘They might have missed the connection.’

‘Stop worrying, Becky! If they’ve had a problem they would have phoned to let us know.’

‘If they could ﬁnd a phone.’

Headlights swept round the bend, closely followed by the bus. We’d been blinded by the lights, so we couldn’t see if they were on board, but the bus stopped, which seemed like a good sign. After all, it only stopped if someone wanted to get on or off, since the driver didn’t really like having to get going again, halfway up the hill.

‘Thanks!’

Two ﬁgures emerged. The bus drove on.

‘Zak!’

‘Hi Becky! Hello Nic.’

‘Hi Abby! Had a good trip?’

Big hugs all round, and we set off along the footpath that was the short cut to school.

We got them into the common room, made them coffee, found some biscuits, and then I set off in search of Mrs B.

I found her in the staffroom—my ﬁrst guess—and she was in a much better mood than she had been when I ﬁrst arranged this.

‘Mrs Bagshott…’

‘Yes Becky? What is it, dear?’

‘Zak and Abby have arrived, Mrs Bagshott.’

‘Oh yes! Your two friends. I expect you’d like the key, then?’

‘Yes please, Mrs Bagshott.’

And she gave it to me! I’d expected her to come along herself, to check up on these two strangers, but for once it looked as if she trusted me so I took the key and shot straight back to where Zak and Abby were chatting freely to Nic and the rest of the sixth-form. I’d forgotten they knew most of them, as well as me.

‘I’ve got the key!’ I said. ‘Come along—let me show you to your room.’

They dragged themselves away, and I took them to the guest room. It’s in a quiet part of the school, near to the inﬁrmary. Nobody really goes there.

‘This is nice,’ said Abby, as I opened the door.

‘Do you think you’ll be comfortable?’ I asked.

‘Oh yes.’

‘Here’s the bathroom. All yours. We don’t have such luxury in our dorm. Do you want to unpack now, or later?’

‘Later, I think,’ Abby replied. ‘I wouldn’t mind going back to the common room for a bit. But Becky, why don’t you help Zak, and come over later…’

She went. Zak and I were alone!

I was a good girl. The thing is, Zak and me hadn’t known each other all that long, and I’d only seen him a few times since we ﬁrst met. I thought it might be an idea if I found out a bit more about him before we did anything like Liz had suggested, although I don’t think Abby would have minded swopping places with me. We were quite late back to the common room, though!

Saturday was great! Abby was great! She spent the day with Nic and the rest of the sixth-form, leaving Zak and me all by ourselves. We pottered about a bit during the morning, saw the others brieﬂy at lunch time, went for a long walk in the afternoon and spent the evening in the common room, watching a video. And I found out a lot about Zak. He didn’t have a girlfriend back home. He liked being with me. Things were looking up!

+ + +

‘Come on, Becky! Wake up!’

Jules and Liz were making a bit too much noise for seven o’clock on a Sunday morning. At least, they were until Adèle threw a pillow at them.

‘Can’t you two shut up! Do you know what time it is? I’m trying to sleep.’

‘Sorry!’

‘Becky!’ said Liz in a deafening whisper. ‘Early breakfast. Come on!’

I struggled my eyes open, rolled out of bed, and lurched into the bathroom for a wash. No chance of a shower—the noise would have woken the whole house up—so I managed as best I could and the three of us went downstairs to fetch Zak and Abby before reporting to the dining room. Damien and the other two lads were already there.

‘Good morning,’ said Mrs Thompson. She didn’t look very happy about having to do early breakfast, so after we’d ﬁnished we all made sure we thanked her before clearing everything away, collecting our packed lunches and heading off for the minibus.

Tony was there, washing the windows.

‘I hope you appreciate this,’ were his ﬁrst words. ‘I should still be asleep if it wasn’t for you! Sunday is my day off.’

‘But it’s a lovely time of day!’ Liz reminded him. ‘Blue sky, birds singing—you don’t want to waste it, lying in bed!’

‘And there won’t be any trafﬁc on the roads,’ added Jules. ‘You’ll be able to enjoy the journey just as much as we will.’

I didn’t enjoy it at all, actually. Because I didn’t know anything about it. As soon as we set off, I fell asleep again! Well, it was horribly early. But this time I was snuggled into Zak’s chest, so I suppose I did enjoy it really. In a way.

‘Come on, Becky! Wake up!’

‘Time for breakfast,’ added Jules.

I struggled my eyes open, and was about to roll out of bed when I realized where I was.

‘Don’t be daft! We’ve had breakfast. Where are we?’

‘Nearly there. And since you’re the one who’s bright idea this is, it’s your job to go and talk to the people to ﬁnd out what they want us to do.’

I could see the sense in this. But I was scared. It’s one thing talking to strange men on the telephone, but quite another face to face. Especially when, as I realized as soon as I got out of the bus and started walking up to the work site, there were so many of them. And all of them much older than me. They were clearing out a lock chamber, four of them up to their knees in mud at the bottom, ﬁlling up a huge bucket on a crane which was being operated by two other guys at the top.

‘Er, Excuse me,’ I called out, over the fence.

‘Don’t you come near the edge, love,’ one of the men replied. ‘It isn’t safe. The footpath’s closed at the moment. Sorry.’

‘I don’t want the footpath,’ I explained. ‘I’ve come to help.’

‘Help?’ They had a quick conference. ‘No, we don’t need no help, love. You go back home now, there’s a good girl.’

I wasn’t scared now. I was angry. They were treating me like a little kid. Even so, I managed to keep my voice calm as I replied.

‘But we can’t go home! There are eight of us, and we’ve come ﬁfty miles. We were asked to.’

‘Oh? Who by?’

Then I realized I’d forgotten the guy’s name!

Fortunately, they began to consider the possibility I might be genuine, and suggested a couple of names.

‘Was it Bill, love?’

I wished he’d stop calling me love.

‘No, I don’t think so…’

‘Or Jack, maybe?’

‘Yes!’ I replied, clutching at straws. ‘I spoke to him on the phone!’

‘Well, he didn’t say owt to us, love, but he’ll be here in a bit. Just you wait over there while he comes, OK?’

Well, it seemed the best course of action, under the circumstances, so I got the rest of the crew out of the bus and we settled down to wait. Tony came too, with the camcorder.

It was quite interesting, actually. There was no water in the bottom of the lock, but the canal at the top was full, and they had a ﬂat boat to tip the mud into. But they couldn’t get the boat right up to where the crane was, so there was a little railway line with a single truck, and they tipped the mud into that and then the two guys on the crane trundled it along to the boat and poured it in.

‘Do you suppose that’s what we’ll be doing?’

‘I’ve no idea, Abby,’ I replied.

‘It looks like hard work,’ said Liz.

‘Which one of you is Rebecca?’

We all looked round. The newcomer was a man about Tony’s age, dressed in a tatty pullover, jeans and wellingtons. I stood up.

‘Hello there. I’m Jack. We spoke on the phone.’ He held out a muddy hand, and we shook. After I’d introduced everyone else, he told us we’d all have to get back in the bus again.

‘Just turn right along the lane,’ he said to Tony, ‘and turn in at that ﬁrst ﬁeld gate. Then follow the track around by the farm and right again until you get back to the canal. I’ll walk along the towpath and meet you there.’

‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

‘You’ll see. I’ve got a special job for you lot. Keep meaning to start it, but there always seem to be other things that need doing ﬁrst. This can be your very own project.’

We followed his directions—not difﬁcult—and within a few minutes we were parked by the canal looking at the remains of what had once been a bridge. Jack arrived.

‘What happened to the bridge?’ I asked him.

‘That’s the interesting bit,’ he replied. ‘Until quite recently there used to be a proper bridge just here, but we’ve knocked it down and put in that temporary footbridge you can see.’

‘Why?’ I could see the footbridge clearly enough, lashed together out of old scaffold poles and a few wooden planks. It didn’t look at all safe, and I said as much to Jack.

‘Oh, it’s safe enough, as long as you don’t have more than about three people on it at once.’

‘But why,’ I continued, only partially reassured, ‘did you take the proper bridge down in the ﬁrst place?’

‘Well,’ he replied, getting into his stride, ‘it wasn’t really a proper bridge, strictly speaking.’

‘Oh?’

‘No. It was built when the canal closed, and it only gave about a foot of headroom. Not much use if we’re trying to reopen the canal for boats, you see.’

I did see. Not many boats would be able to get under a bridge like that. Toy boats, perhaps. But he still hadn’t really answered my question.

‘But, what was here before? Or didn’t they have a bridge when the canal was open?’

‘Oh yes! They had a bridge all right. But it was a swing bridge.’

‘A swing bridge?’ This was a new one to me.

‘That’s right. Look, over on yon side. Do you see that quarter-circle of stone blocks?’

I looked. They were quite easy to see, sticking up slightly above the ground on either side of them, curving away from the canal in an arc. But what they were for I had no idea.

‘You’ve got to use your imagination now, Rebecca.’

I tried. I think the others were doing the same.

‘Imagine all the ground on this side of the wall being taken away…’

I imagined it. ‘But that would leave a big hole as far as this wall that goes along the edge of the canal, just over there.’

I pointed to another line of stone blocks which ran right alongside the water, as far as the bridge.

‘Now imagine that wall isn’t there, either.’

This was a lot of imagining. I wished he could just draw me a picture. But I thought I could see it.

‘Oh! In that case, the ground level would be only just above the waterline, until you reach the curved wall.’

‘Well done!’

That was when I realized what our Special Project was going to be!

‘You mean, the original bridge used to ﬁt into that space, but the wall along the edge was built to hold back all the soil that was dumped to hold up the low-level bridge?’

‘You’re very good at this, Rebecca.’

‘And you want us to dig it all out again?’

‘Very good indeed, Rebecca.’

‘And take down that stone wall?’

‘Excellent.’

‘But leave the curved one?’

‘You certainly are an intelligent young lady! I don’t think there’s any more explaining to do, do you?’

‘Only one thing. How will we know when we’ve gone down far enough?’

‘Ah! Good point. Well, in theory, there should be a large stone block down at the original ground level, to support the pintle.’

‘Pintle?’

‘It’s a sort of pivot, for the bridge to swing on. Of course, it’ll be all corroded by now, but if you can ﬁnd it, then we’ll know where to put the new one.’

‘So, you want us to dig down until we ﬁnd this pintle thing, is that it?’

‘That’s right. Quite a challenge, eh? Do you think you can do it?’

‘Sure,’ I said, sounding more conﬁdent than I felt. ‘And then I suppose you’re going to ﬁt a new swing bridge—is that the idea?’

‘Exactly. And we need this job done ﬁrst, so if you can do it, we’ll be very grateful.’

‘What about tools?’

‘If a few of you come with me, I’ll ﬁnd you everything you need.’

Abby and Zak, me and Bonehead followed him along the towpath to the lock, where we collected an assortment of spades and shovels, pickaxes and crowbars, then he wished us luck and left us to it.

+ + +

We tried. We really did. I tried; Jules and Liz tried; Zak and Abby tried. Even Damien and Bonehead tried. Eric didn’t try. But then, nobody really expected him to, so it didn’t matter.

Bonehead tried so hard he got a chisel stuck in the gap between two stone blocks.

‘Help!’ he cried. ‘I can’t get it out!’

‘Can’t get it out, eh!’ called Liz, stood at the top of the wall, and then when she saw what his problem was she laughed so much she fell off the wall and grazed her ﬁnger.

‘Look!’ she cried, rushing up to Tony, who had the camcorder running. ‘I’ve cut my ﬁnger!’

‘So you have,’ replied Tony, getting over the shock of seeing a larger than life version in the viewﬁnder as she thrust her ﬁnger close up to the lens. ‘Why don’t you go back to the bus and put a plaster on it?’

‘I can’t do it on my own, can I!’ she retorted. ‘Come and help.’

So Tony had to go and practise his ﬁrst aid on Liz’s ﬁnger. I’m sure she only does these things to get attention. As soon as she was back she made him take a shot of the plaster. Then she looked back at the wall, to where Bonehead was still struggling with the chisel.

‘Oh look!’ she shouted, drawing everyone’s attention to his plight. ‘Bonehead still can’t get it out!’

I felt sorry for Bonehead, then. After all, he’d only come on this trip because he thought he might stand a chance with Liz, and here she was ridiculing him in front of everyone. I thought perhaps I should try to redress the balance.

‘Hey, Liz!’ I called. ‘Why don’t you get a pickaxe and try to lever that block out of the way? You and Bonehead could shift it between you.’

I wish I hadn’t spoken! Liz grabbed a pickaxe and gave one almighty heave from above, and before Bonehead had time to realize what was happening he had this massive stone block descending straight for his toe! Mind you, he got out of the way pretty smartish. I’ve never seen anyone move that quickly before. Just as well, really—that block was about a foot square by two the other way, and if it had hit him I suspect the ﬁrst aid kit might have been a triﬂe inadequate!

There were no more serious incidents, fortunately, but progress was painfully slow. I’d joked about Bonehead having to shift a cubic metre of mud before he found out he had no chance with Liz, but what I didn’t realize at the time was just how big a cubic metre is. More than a shovelful. A lot more than a shovelful. And we had a lot of cubic metres to shift. It wasn’t working. We stopped for lunch.

‘Hello there! How’s it going?’

‘OK.’ But of course, it wasn’t. I could sense the disappointment in Jack’s voice, even though he said nice things about how well we were getting on. We cut our lunch break short and went back to work.

And Eric thought he would join in.

What a prat! First thing he does is to hit a chisel a glancing blow with a hammer, the chisel shakes itself loose and leaps out in a graceful curve, straight into the canal!

‘Idiot!’ We all ganged up on him. I even thought of pushing him in after it, but the water looked a bit cold. And muddy. No chance of seeing where it was, at any rate. I knew I would have to go and tell Jack what we’d done.

‘But you’re coming with me!’ I yelled at Eric.

‘Got a problem?’ said Jack, as he saw us trundling up the towpath. I think he’d been expecting something like this.

‘Go on!’ I nudged Eric in the ribs.

‘Er, well. It’s like this…’

‘Dropped something in the water, did you?’ I suppose he must have heard it all before.

‘Yeah. A chisel.’

‘Is it very expensive?’ I asked, fearful we might have to pay for it.

‘Not too bad. But try to ﬁnd it with this, ﬁrst.’

‘What is it?’ It was heavy, with a length of string attached to it.

‘A magnet.’

‘Oh! That’s a good idea!’

‘We have a lot of those, round here,’ said Jack.

‘Magnets?’ I replied. ‘Or good ideas?’

‘Just go and ﬁnd that chisel!’

We tried. I think I said that. I tried. This time, even Eric tried. But we didn’t ﬁnd it. I think the bottom of the canal was too muddy and it had just sunk straight down. We probably had no chance of recovering it, magnet or not. I went to report back.

‘Sorry,’ I said.

‘Don’t worry, girl. These things happen. How’s the digging going?’

‘Not very well,’ I admitted.

‘What’s the problem?’

‘There’s so much of it! And only eight of us.’

‘I know! It always seems easy, until you actually try it. Want to give up?’

‘No!’ Looking back, I fell into that one. If he’d told me we had to get it ﬁnished I would have felt like packing it in, but his implying we couldn’t manage it just made me more determined than ever. And he knew it!

‘No,’ I continued. ‘We may have to leave soon, because we’ve got a long way to go, but we’ll be back! When’s your next working party?’

‘Two weeks time. Can you make it?’

‘We’ll be here! And we’ll get that pit dug out, don’t you worry!’

I went back to tell the others we were going home. They were all pretty tired by then, so they didn’t mind calling it a day, especially since the light was starting to fade. We gathered up all the other tools and took them back to the lock.

‘Have a safe journey,’ Jack called out as we set off back to the minibus. ‘See you in two weeks.’

‘Two weeks?’ queried Liz. I’d forgotten to tell her.

‘Sorry,’ I replied. ‘I’ve said we’ll come back and get this job ﬁnished. You don’t mind, do you?’

‘No,’ she said, kicking a stone away from the water—before she started doing this she would have kicked it in—‘I want to see it through, too. Job satisfaction, I suppose.’

‘Yeah.’

The journey back was pretty uneventful. It took longer, of course, going via York, but we got Zak and Abby off safely, and I managed a quick kiss, out of sight of the others. From Zak, I mean. Tony had arranged for us to have a late dinner, and we even had time for a hot shower ﬁrst. That made a difference to my aching joints! I felt really creaky, coming back in the bus.

I was a bit worried about meeting Mrs Thompson again. I thought she would be in a really bad mood, having had to be on duty for early breakfast and then stay late as well, but it turned out she’d gone home and left our meal in charge of Mrs Bagshott. We had a table set specially, and Mrs B. came and sat with us. Well! We could hardly tell her to go away, but in fact she listened while we told her all about what it was like. She even sympathized with Liz about her cut ﬁnger! Suspicious!

+ + +

‘Tony! Can we show that video, during the unit meeting?’

‘What video?’

‘The one you took while we were digging at the canal,’ I replied. What did he think I meant?

‘But it’s only about ten minutes. Hardly worth it.’

‘Yes it is! Liz cut her ﬁnger!’

‘You just want to drum up some more support for next time, don’t you!’

‘Yeah.’

‘Don’t you think the sight of it will put them off?’

‘No. Teenagers like ﬁlms with lots of blood in them—you should know that!’

‘Oh, go on then. But you’ll have to arrange to get the TV shifted.’

‘Fine.’

‘And don’t drop it!’

‘As if!’

And it worked. As soon as they saw what we’d been doing, everyone wanted to go. Well, not Simon and Bianca, because they had their A levels coming up and felt they couldn’t justify the time, but we didn’t have room in the bus for everyone else so we made sure that the people who went ﬁrst time got ﬁrst choice. And somehow we contrived to make sure Luce got left behind! I wonder why!

‘Are Zak and Abby coming?’ asked Liz. ‘Because if so, we’ve got a problem.’

‘Oh?’

‘We’ve ﬁlled up all the seats in the bus.’

‘Don’t worry,’ I replied. ‘I sorted it out with Zak over the phone. They’re getting Dave to drive them, and they’re dragging Sam and Karen along, too!’

‘Neat trick! How many will that be, altogether?’

‘Fifteen, and we might even persuade Dave and Tony to pick up a shovel, too!’ I told her.

‘In that case,’ she ﬁnished, ‘we’ll get the job done, no problem.’

+ + +

‘Hi, Abby! Hi Ka!’

Our group had arrived ﬁrst, and had been stood around in the cold, waiting, but they weren’t really late, and I was so pleased to see Zak again that I didn’t bother to mention it. Jack was up by the lock, sorting out tools, so we went to see him. All of us.

‘You do intend to get this ﬁnished!’ he exclaimed, when he saw how big a crowd I’d brought.

‘I told you! We can’t wait to get started.’

‘Um, there may be a bit of a problem with that…’

‘What? Why?’ We’d just come ﬁfty miles. Zak and co. had driven nearer seventy. Surely he wasn’t going to tell us we weren’t needed after all!

‘We don’t have that many shovels.’

‘Oh, is that all!’ I laughed. ‘Don’t worry, we’ve come prepared, this time. We brought our own.’

We had, too. Just so long as we got them back before the gardeners turned up on Monday morning!

‘Right! OK then,’ he said, and we all marched off along the towpath while Tony drove round the ﬁeld path with the bus.

+ + +

‘Pass us that axe.’

‘No way!’ replied Bonehead.

‘Pass us the axe!’ repeated Adèle.

‘I don’t trust you!’ he replied.

Tony intervened.

‘What do you want the axe for?’

‘To split this tree root. It’s in the way.’

Adèle was doing quite a good job, actually. She’d already scraped away a lot of the soil from behind the stone wall, with a bit of help from Jules. We’d come to the conclusion that taking the stones out one at a time wasn’t working too well—not after last time when Bonehead got the chisel stuck—so we were using a more scientiﬁc approach.

‘Let her have the axe,’ said Tony. ‘And why don’t you get a saw and help her for a bit?’

That made sense. Bonehead hadn’t really been a lot of use, up till then. He’d realized, once we were back at school, that Liz wasn’t interested in him, so he wasn’t so keen to turn up. But we made him!

‘Why don’t you take Luce? She wants to go!’ That’s what he’d said, but we made sure he went so we didn’t have to take her. We’re not stupid!

Having so many people meant we could have different gangs working in separate places. Adèle and Jules, and now Bonehead, were working on the stone wall; Me, Liz, Abby, Zak and Sam were clearing down from the curved wall; Greg, Rick, Damien and Eric, believe it or not, were digging straight down where Jack said the pintle was; while Nic and Karen were clearing the space where the bridge was supposed to go when it was open. Cobley had been helping them, but now he’d managed to swop places with Tony and was working the camcorder. Dave was making tea!

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned Cobley before. He’s still in fourth-form, although he’s one of the oldest. His birthday’s in September, and he was only just old enough to be in Ventures when we did this trip in early March. We expected him to be grateful that we let him take part in Overnight Sensation when he was a couple of months too young, but no, he has such a high opinion of himself he just takes it for granted. He’s a bit like Karen in that respect, and I have to admit he is fairly bright. At least he’s not as loud as Damien!

‘As you can see,’ said Cobley, speaking into the camera, ‘everyone is working hard. Here’s a close-up of Becky digging in with her shovel…’

I was facing away from him at the time, bent over, but I could hear his voice and it didn’t take much imagination to work out which bit of me he was ﬁlming. I whirled round.

‘Cobley! Go away! Go and ﬁlm someone else.’

‘And now we see Becky behaving like a spoiled brat…’

‘Cobley!’

‘Hello, Becky! Smile for the camera!’

I stuck my tongue out at him, and he went away to get a few shots of Adèle, who was too busy to notice. Then Dave came across the rickety bridge with a tray full of mugs of tea, and we took a ten minute break.

I was quite impressed, when I stood back and looked at the whole thing. I volunteered to take the tray back, and from the other side of the canal I could see how much we had achieved already. It just shows what can be done if you have enough people. Jack came along for a chat.

‘Hello, Becky,’ he said. I’d soon got him out of the habit of calling me “Rebecca”.

‘Hi! See how much we’ve done!’

‘Very impressive! Now do you think you’ll get it ﬁnished?’

‘Sure!’ I was much more conﬁdent now, than I had been two weeks ago. The ground level was far lower than it had been at the start of today’s shift, and we’d built a big mound of soil over to one side.

‘What are you going to do with that?’ I asked.

‘Don’t worry, we’re always needing soil. If nothing else it can be used to repair the towpath.’

At that moment, Tony came across with the camcorder.

‘Are you ready?’ he said, shouting across to the rest of the gang.

‘Ready!’ Adèle called back.

‘OK. Camera’s rolling.’

And then I noticed Adèle and her team had cleared everything away from behind the stone wall. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, but Adèle, whilst not being as small as Jules, isn’t exactly built like a sumo wrestler. She’s only average height, and you wouldn’t think she’d have the muscles to do what she did next, so I was just totally gobsmacked to see her get behind the wall, wedge her feet into the ground, and push. And see the wall fall clean over! Jack was very impressed. Especially when all the individual stone blocks came apart without any need for hammering and chiselling.

‘Well done, Adèle!’ I called, across the water.

‘Does she do weight training or something? I’ve never seen a girl do anything like that before!’

‘Told you!’ I said. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere!’

I was so excited at watching something really useful happening that I didn’t pay much attention to the fact that Cobley, Jules and Liz were having a fairly serious conference together. Looking back, I should have been suspicious right from the start, because neither of them is any more fond of Cobley than I am, but it didn’t ring any bells with me, and I still didn’t register that something was up when Liz and Cobley came across the bridge to get the camera back from Tony.

‘See you later!’ called Jack, and Tony went with him to have a look at what was going on at the lock.

‘I’m going to ﬁlm the work from this side,’ said Cobley. ‘Are you going back over, Becky?’

‘Yes!’ I replied. ‘It’s better than staying here with you. And no more close-ups of my… No more close-ups of me, OK!’

‘Would I!’ he teased. Still I didn’t click.

I set off. Liz must have been behind me, although I didn’t notice. I suppose I’d got about halfway when Jules started crossing from the other side.

‘Careful!’ I said. ‘Remember what Jack said about not having too many people on the bridge at the same time.’

Still it hadn’t dawned on me.

And then there was an almighty splash and I was up to my armpits in freezing, muddy water!

‘Happy birthday, Becky!’ Jules and Liz cried out, from the bridge.

‘Get me out!’ I screamed. ‘It’s freezing!’

‘How deep is it?’ Liz called back.

‘This deep!’ I was stood on the bottom, so there wasn’t much chance of drowning, but I had a feeling I was going to lose my trainers in the mud.

‘Is it cold?’ This was Jules.

‘You’re not my friends any more,’ I shouted back at them. ‘And you’re buying me a new pair of trainers! Get me out!’

‘All right. But if we were at school it would have been the horse trough, so it’s no different really.’

‘Get me out!’

‘Make sure you get this, Cobley!’ Liz called out.

‘Is he ﬁlming this!’ I was furious.

Jules and Liz each reached out a hand, and I held on. And then I had a wonderfully wicked thought!

‘Help! It’s freezing!’ spluttered Liz.

‘Serves you right!’ I grinned.

‘We ought to get them out now.’ I recognized my sister’s voice, and then Abby, Karen, Nic and Adèle were reaching down for us. The lads wanted to help, but spoilsport Nic said no. I was glad, actually.

I was ﬁrst up, and as I ﬂopped on to the bridge in beached whale mode, I felt my waterlogged leggings staying behind and just managed to grab them before Cobley shot embarrassing video clip number ﬁfty-seven. I was wet. Jules and Liz were wet.

‘Have they got anything to change into?’ Tony had just returned from his trip to the lock.

Fortunately, I’d brought a spare T-shirt, and I’d been wearing jeans over my leggings but had taken them off while I was working, so they were still OK. But I didn’t have any dry socks or underwear.

‘Worth it though,’ said Jules.

‘What?’

‘Come and get warmed up,’ she said.

Tony was in the minibus.

‘So, Becky,’ he began, ‘I’m not sure you deserve this, but since I’ve taken the trouble to bring it, you might as well have it.’

‘What do you mean?’ I replied, starting to get annoyed. ‘It wasn’t my idea to get wet!’

And then he rummaged around inside a bag and produced a large, round, plastic box.

‘Careful!’ I said. ‘You’ve got it upside down!’

I notice these things.

‘I know that,’ he replied. ‘Watch.’

And then he took the box off the lid, if you see what I mean, and handed it to me. The lid, that is. At ﬁrst, I couldn’t speak, but then I found my voice.

‘Tony! Oh my God!’

It was a cake. Sixteen candles. I’d been so keen to get this job done that until Jules and Liz chucked me in I’d forgotten all about it!

And then everybody started singing, and I started to go bright red, and Cobley was ﬁlming again.

‘It was Nic who reminded me,’ said Tony.

‘Nic!’ I gave her a big hug.

‘What about me?’ said Zak.

So I gave him a hug too, and then I gave Tony a hug, and everybody else, and I was just so happy!

‘Aren’t you going to cut it?’ said Jules, hungrily.

‘Here’s a knife,’ added Liz.

So there we all were, munching birthday cake.

‘You won’t ever forget this birthday!’ exclaimed Liz, grinning. ‘Sweet sixteen!’

‘Well, sixteen, at any rate.’ Jules looked at me.

‘Legal,’ added Liz, looking at Zak.

I blushed.

‘We don’t!’ I exclaimed, suddenly feeling hot.

‘Sure,’ said Liz.

‘Of course not,’ agreed Jules, as they left.

‘Liz! Jules!’

I looked at Zak. I didn’t know what to say.

‘Better get the job ﬁnished,’ he said.

‘Come on!’ I cried. ‘Back to work, everyone. And,’ I added, ‘since it’s my birthday, I’ll work the camera and we’ll see how much digging you can do, Cobley!’

+ + +

Liz had found a frog. In fact, it wouldn’t be too much of an exaggeration to say she’d rescued it, because it had hopped out straight in front of her shovel, as if intent on ending it all.

‘Keep still, can’t you!’ She was trying to hold it in front of the camera so I could get a good view. But it was shy, and kept leaping out of her hands.

‘What should I do with it?’

‘Put in in the water!’ called Adèle.

‘Or in the long grass,’ Jules suggested.

‘Give it here,’ said Cobley, but she went to give it to Eric instead.

And do you know what that boy did? He ran away!

I am not joking; he legged it across to the other side of the canal. Honestly! We all knew he was a wimp, but this was just the limit. After all, he never really had any chance with the girls, but he’d just thrown away any slight hope that might be left.

‘Scared of a little frog are you, Eric!’ I taunted.

‘Shut up!’

‘Frightened it’s going to bite you!’

‘Leave me alone!’

We were so busy teasing the poor lad that we didn’t notice what actually happened to the frog. I guess it made its escape while it had the chance.

It was great fun working the camera. I’d never really tried it before, so I went around all the gang, taking close-ups of them in action.

‘Here’s Liz,’ I said, in my commentator’s voice. ‘She swings a pretty mean shovel. And there’s Adèle, Miss Muscle herself, carting stones about. Here’s a rear view of Greg, just what you always wanted to see…’ I was panning round now, trying to get a bit of everything. The bridge came into view.

‘There’s the bridge. The one my so-called friends pushed me in from. That water was freezing! But I got them back!’

I swung further round.

‘Here’s my ugly sister. Say, “Hi!”’

‘Hi!’ said Nic.

‘Say, “Bye!”’

‘Bye!’ said Nic.

‘And here’s Tony, actually doing some work at last. This is the ﬁrst time he’s picked up a shovel all day!’

‘Come off it, Becky!’ he retorted. ‘I’ve dug most of this out by myself.’

‘He’s lying,’ I whispered. ‘Ow! He’s throwing things at me!’ A large shovelful of soil had just hit me, right below the knees.

I decided to do a long shot of the countryside before anybody else copied him, and then suddenly—I don’t know if it was the cold or just the thought of having been in the water—but I needed the loo!

‘Er, where are the toilets?’ I sang out.

‘All around you, Becky!’ Adèle replied.

More embarrassment, as I skulked off to ﬁnd a bush, to a chorus of, ‘We know where you’re going!’ but I made sure I kept hold of the camera. You just can’t trust people nowadays.

When I got back I found everyone in a state of excitement. The four teams had been gradually working towards each other, and now they were all congregated in the middle. Damien dug his spade straight down, and there was the unmistakable sound as it hit something solid.

‘Nearly there, guys!’ he shouted, as if he was in command or something. ‘Keep digging!’

I got the camera running again.

‘And here we are,’ I said, ‘at last on the track of the legendary pintle…’

‘You sound just like Cobley,’ said Liz.

‘Please don’t say that,’ I replied.

The soil was ﬂying now, and more and more spades and shovels were striking solid stone. Greg and Nic began to scrape all the way along the edge to ﬁnd the limits of the hidden block.

It was huge! Easily two metres square. God knows how they got it there in the ﬁrst place.

‘How much do you think it weighs?’ I asked Tony.

‘A lot.’

Now Greg and Nic were scraping along the block. Their shovels stopped. Something was there, sticking up, now hidden only by a thin covering of soil.

‘Pass us that brush.’ Adèle was taking charge.

With all the skill of an archaeologist, she swept away the ﬁnal grains.

‘There it is, lads!’

And all the boys were down on their knees, as if it was some Pagan idol they were worshipping. They stood up again, and Cobley started to speak.

‘After weeks of unremitting effort, our intrepid team have at last uncovered the secret of the long-lost pintle…’

‘Is that you talking, Becky?’ asked Liz.

‘Get a close-up of it!’ shouted Cobley.

‘It would be easier,’ I retorted, ‘if Eric wasn’t standing in the way. I can’t see a thing!’

Cobley dragged Eric to one side, and there it was, revealed in all its glory. A little iron rod, about ten centimetres long by two or three across, sticking up out of the centre of the stone block.

‘Is that it?’ I said. ‘All this work for that?’

And then Eric, like the complete prat that he is, bent down and started to stroke it in a suggestive fashion! I turned the camera off and looked at Liz.

‘Why don’t you give Bonehead a chance?’ I said. ‘He’s got to be better than that!’

‘I see your point,’ she replied.

+ + +

I left them sweeping up and went to ﬁnd Jack. He was over the moon when he saw what we’d achieved.

‘Well done! My word, that is good!’

‘You didn’t think we could do it, did you!’ I was shy when I ﬁrst spoke to him, but now I had a lot more conﬁdence.

‘I wasn’t sure, I’ll admit that. I thought you would either give up and not come back, or you’d keep slogging on until it was done, but I never expected to have it ﬁnished so soon. That is just excellent! Do you want another job?’

‘I was waiting for that! Possibly, but most of us have exams soon, so it won’t be before September. OK?’

‘I’ll just have to leave the difﬁcult jobs until then!’

So that was it. All over. I sneaked off with Zak for a couple of minutes, and then we went our separate ways. Shower, supper, bed. Sense of achievement.

It’s a good feeling.

Over the Top

June…

Becky

‘Becky! Wake up!’

‘Whaaa…’

‘It’s no use.’ I could just make out Liz’s voice. ‘We’ll have to go or we’ll be late too.’

‘I suppose so.’ This was Jules. ‘But with friends like us, who needs enemies!’

I was late. I’d overslept. Again. OK, so it was my own fault. We had to turn the light out at half past ten—in our dorm, I mean—and Mrs Bagshott always checked to make sure we did. The thing is, after she’d gone I switched on my little desk lamp and sat up reading until after one o’clock. Well, I like reading. And Jules and Liz and the others didn’t mind, because the light didn’t disturb them. And they really did try to wake me up, but it didn’t work. I knew that if I was late for breakfast one more time this week, Mrs Bagshott would go spare. In fact, I’d probably be gated at the weekend, which would mean I’d miss the hike.

When we’d done the ﬁrst bit of the Dales Way, from Ilkley to Grassington, the eight people involved must have talked about it, because as soon as we advertised Part Two, from Grassington to Sedburgh, everybody in the whole unit wanted to go, including Adèle, who hates walking! And since there was no way Adèle was going hiking and not me, I leapt down the stairs, two at a time, shot through the front door and charged straight into the postman! He was late, too.

‘Whaaa…’ he cried, as I pinned him against his van; the contents of his sack all over the ground.

‘Sorry!’ I said. Well, there wasn’t very much else I could say.

He bent down to pick up the letters, and I felt obliged to help. Our faces met.

‘Oh! It’s you, Becky,’ he said. He knows me.

I admitted it.

‘What happened? Did you oversleep again?’

I admitted that, too. Was I getting a reputation for this, I wondered.

‘Here,’ he said, giving me a bundle of letters. ‘Tell Mrs Bagshott I held you up.’

I like the postman! Especially when he gives me an excuse like that, or if he’s bringing me a present from home! No sign of anything like that today, but I took the bundle of letters he gave me and legged it for the dining room. We always get the same postman, unless he’s on leave, or off sick. The school’s out in the middle of nowhere, so he comes round every morning in his van, with a huge sack, and he collects anything we want to send at the same time. He usually arrives before breakfast, and I was very glad he was late this time.

‘Thanks!’ I called back, as I ran.

When I got to the dining room Mrs Bagshott looked at her watch as she saw me come through the door, and she had just opened her mouth to say something when I produced the letters. When I told her I’d been helping the postman there wasn’t much she could do, so I joined Jules, Liz and the rest of the gang at our table. Mrs B. usually potters about distributing the post while we’re eating, but she looked as though she’d hoped to get away with it this morning. If the postman’s late she sometimes uses it as an excuse, not telling us whether he’s been or not until after she’s checked our dorms are tidy! Today, everyone had seen me bring the letters in, so she didn’t have that choice!

‘Pass us the marmalade,’ said Jules, taking four slices of bread and helping herself to another bowl of cereal at the same time.

‘Jules!’ Liz was holding out the marmalade jar but looking resolutely in the opposite direction. ‘Have some consideration for others.’

‘What?’ replied Jules, looking confused.

‘It’s bad enough watching you stuff yourself,’ I told her, ‘without having to listen to you as well.’

I ought to explain that me and Liz had a pact. An eating pact, or perhaps a not-eating pact would be a better description. We had decided to diet! All we allowed ourselves was one slice of toast at breakfast, salad for lunch… the usual stuff. It was hard work, and it didn’t help having to watch Jules ravenously wolﬁng down the calories like there was no tomorrow. I had a quick cup of tea and then got up to go. So did Liz.

‘Where do you think you’re off to?’ called Adèle.

‘Back to the dorm. We’ve ﬁnished.’

‘It’s your turn to clear the table.’

‘But, we haven’t eaten anything!’

‘So what? It’s still your turn.’

I was going to argue, but breakfast really isn’t my best time—certainly not today—and Mrs Bagshott had started to head in our direction, sensing something was up. She was probably looking for an excuse to tell me off, so we sat back down again. And then Adèle, who was obviously in a bitchy mood about something, had some more toast and two more cups of tea. Even Jules had ﬁnished before then. By the time we had cleared away everyone else had gone and we were nearly late for school too.

‘Wouldn’t it be easier if we just skipped breakfast?’ I said, as we left.

‘Sure,’ replied Liz. ‘But you know what Mrs B’s like. We’d never be allowed.’

‘I don’t get it. What difference does it make to her how much we eat?’

‘No idea, but she doesn’t seem to mind if we just eat less, so let’s not antagonize her,’ she said.

Well, it made sense, I supposed. We just had time to get our books ready and then we went to school. One of the best things about boarding school is that you don’t have far to go. No time wasted on boring bus journeys or long walks through cold, dark streets. The downside is you don’t get to go out very much—certainly not during the week—which was one of the reasons why a lot of us joined Ventures in the ﬁrst place, and why I was so keen to go on the forthcoming hike. I guess it must be like living on an island—you have to make your own amusements.

+ + +

We had a student teacher at school that term—Mr Forres, but we all called him Duncan—and he liked hiking and was keen to help out. Not only that, but he had his own car, so with Tony driving the minibus it was possible to take ﬁfteen of us.

We had planned a two-day hike, setting off from school on the Saturday morning to drive to Grassington. Then we would be on our own as far as Kettlewell, while Duncan and Tony shufﬂed the vehicles around, and then they were going to join us for the next bit, as far as the campsite. Then they planned to drive back to Kettlewell to retrieve the minibus. And we had a similar idea for the Sunday.

We were quite well equipped. I suppose we were lucky really, but we had two four-man tents and a nice lightweight two-man hike tent which I planned to share with Jules and Liz, since it was only for one night. Some of the lads had their own tents too, so we couldn’t see any problems with accommodation.

Food was a bit more difﬁcult. Not that Liz and me were planning on giving up on our diet or anything, but with people like Jules around you have to be well-organized in the catering department. Part of the deal you get at boarding schools is that meals are included, but normally you’re expected to be there if you want to eat them. What I mean is, if you go out for the weekend, perhaps if your parents come and visit, they can’t expect to get a refund for the meals you didn’t have. But we thought this was different. We reckoned that since we were a school Scout group, it ought to count as a school trip, and therefore school should provide the food. Mrs Thompson, the cook, wasn’t so sure. She hadn’t objected when it was just a few of us wanting the occasional packed lunch, but now it was starting to involve a lot of us, and on a much more regular basis. She was not a happy lady.

Still, we sorted it. Tony—that’s our Venture Scout Leader—went to see her, and I went too. After all, I’d managed to talk Dad into letting me and Nic join Ventures in the ﬁrst place, so I thought perhaps I could charm Mrs Thompson as well.

‘Right, Rebecca. This is what you have to do.’

‘Mrs Thompson?’ Pay attention, Rebecca, I thought.

‘At least a week before any trip, I want you to come and see me.’

‘Yes, Mrs Thompson,’ I said. I’m very polite, you see.

‘And I will give you three copies of a form, which I’m going to ask the school secretary to draw up.’

‘Yes, Mrs Thompson.’ Still polite, please note.

‘And you must ﬁll in exactly what you want me to provide.’

‘Yes, Mrs Thompson.’ Starting to yawn a bit.

‘On each copy.’

‘Yes, Mrs Thompson.’ Still listening. Honest!

‘And then hand them back to me.’

‘Yes, Mrs Thompson.’ How much more?

‘I will check them. And if I ﬁnd any mistakes…’

‘Yes, Mrs Thompson?’ There’s a condition?

‘You’ll have to start all over again.’

‘Yes, Mrs Thompson.’ My God! She means it, too!

Well, I suppose we got what we wanted, after a fashion. We used our Wednesday meeting just before the hike weekend to do an equipment check, then we spent Friday evening loading the bus with the camping gear, and straight after breakfast on Saturday we went to see Mrs T. and collected two huge cardboard boxes of food, which she made us sign for(!) and we were off.

Except that we weren’t. The minibus had a puncture.

I suppose I can’t really blame the bus for that. After all, a puncture can happen to anyone, but it sort of sums up the state of our transport. It’s always breaking down! In the Olden Days—I’m talking about before I was born—when the minibus was young, it had been a proper bus, earning its living with a local bus company. Now it’s past its sell-by date it’s been relegated, and I’m not surprised, because things keep dropping off! Tony maintains that nothing really serious ever goes wrong with it, and I admit he always ﬁxes it, and it must pass its test each year or we couldn’t keep using it, but…

Being seen in it really lowers your street cred!

Half an hour later, spare wheel ﬁtted, we set off again. Now it was Tony’s turn to be worried.

‘We really ought to get that tyre repaired before we go very far. Suppose we get another puncture.’

‘But we’re late as it is! Do you want us to be walking in the dark?’ I argued.

‘Well, no. But if we don’t ﬁx the tyre you might not be walking at all.’

‘Let’s worry about that if it happens!’

‘I suppose you’re right. Let’s go!’

‘About time!’

I mentioned that the hill which comes up from the village doesn’t stop when it gets to school. It goes at least as far up again, and the minibus, now containing twelve people and a great load of equipment, did not make very good progress. We were only about halfway to the top when some of the lads started a chorus of ‘Are we nearly there yet?’ but I persuaded them to stop. I didn’t want Tony to get in a bad mood when we still had a long way to go.

It’s quite hard to put Tony in a bad mood, actually. He’s been at the school for a long time, so he must enjoy it, and I suppose he must even enjoy taking us lot out and about, or he wouldn’t do it. That’s quite brave of him—if I were in his place I think I’d rather spend my weekends watching paint dry than have anything to do with people like us! When he isn’t being a Venture Scout Leader he’s busy teaching us physics, only he calls it Nature Study. He also tells us never to believe a word he tells us. Does that mean we should believe him? Or we shouldn’t believe him? Or what? I think he’s just winding us up! But I always do well in physics.

Our journey that morning took us across the moors and onto the Hambleton hills, then sinking dramatically into the Vale of York at Sutton Bank.

‘What’s that?’ cried Liz, pointing into the sky.

‘Hang glider,’ said Tony. ‘Do you fancy doing that?’

‘Yeah! Can we?’

‘Maybe. There are some people in the county who might help you. Why not give them a ring?’

I made a mental note to do just that. We travelled across the ﬂat plain, through Thirsk to Ripon. Now we were climbing again, but in a different landscape, since this was the limestone of the Yorkshire Dales. Up and down we went, through Pateley Bridge, and eventually into the valley of the Wharfe, the river whose water is used to make beer(!) in Tadcaster. The last two miles we were following the river, but high up, until at last we dropped into Grassington itself. We had clocked eighty-ﬁve miles in the bus, and ahead of us were something like thirty miles on foot.

‘You go that way,’ said Tony, pointing.

‘We know that!’ replied Jules, scathingly.

‘Just testing! See you at Kettlewell.’

‘Hurry up, everyone!’ called Simon. ‘We’re late.’

‘Whose fault’s that?’ queried Adèle.

‘Tony’s,’ I replied, once I’d made sure he was out of earshot. ‘But don’t worry, we won’t have any more problems.’

We didn’t expect any problems because some of us at least had done quite a lot of hiking by that time, so we were used to it. After all, we had walked the ﬁrst part of the Dales Way—Ilkley to Grassington—and we had also coped successfully with the night hike across the moors—that was the time when we didn’t stay in the bothy!—so we thought a daytime hike along a river valley would be easy.

That’s what we thought.

What we hadn’t counted on was the fact that the ﬁrst stage—Grassington to Kettlewell—didn’t keep to the valley bottom but involved quite a bit of climbing. Nice view, but hard work for people like Adèle who hadn’t done much hiking before, so she was tired almost as soon as we started. At least she wasn’t in a bad mood like she had been that morning at breakfast. PMT, most likely. At any rate, that’s my excuse when I don’t feel like doing something!

It also didn’t help when Eric and Damien found a couple of dead branches and decided to practise their sword ﬁghting skills while we were actually walking along. Honestly! And Damien’s in the year above me, too. Lads are so immature! Not that I was surprised. I think I’ve already told you my opinion of Damien. If I say he’s a loud-mouthed show-off I won’t be doing him justice. Still, he is a rugby player, so that says it all really, don’t you think! He looks like a rugby player too. And he’s single, of course. What self-respecting girl would go out with someone like that!

And as for Eric, well! He most deﬁnitely is not a rugby player. More of a beanstalk. Pity Damien isn’t called Jack. Eric’s got about as much charisma as a fresh cow pat. And that’s being unkind to the cow pat. And he’s got zits. He is also, I’m sorry to say, in my year, so I even have to put up with him during lessons.

Fortunately, they soon tired of their games, and we made better progress until we reached our ﬁrst stop.

‘Hold on, everyone!’ Simon was enjoying this. Still, I suppose now his exams are over he hasn’t got anything else to do.

‘What’s the matter now?’ asked Adèle, sounding as if she was about to revert to a state of bitchiness.

‘Time for our oranges,’ replied Simon.

‘Oranges!’ Cobley exclaimed. ‘Is that all?’

What we normally do, us old hands at this hiking business, is to walk for ﬁfty-ﬁve minutes in every hour, and have a ﬁve minute break for something to eat and drink. Then we set off again.

‘Time to go!’ called Simon.

‘On your bike!’ replied Damien and Eric together.

‘For goodness sake!’ I shouted at them, getting to my feet. ‘Surely you can see that it’s better than walking for hours and then having a long stop for a big lunch.’

‘No,’ said Eric. ‘Why’s that then?’

‘Because, if you eat a lot in one go you need to digest it a bit before you start walking again, and by the time you’re ready to go you ﬁnd your muscles have seized up and it really isn’t fun any more.’

‘It isn’t fun anyway,’ Eric retorted.

‘Then why did you bother to come!’ I would have kicked him to his feet, but Nic and Bianca calmed me down. I doubt whether he appreciated it. It was a whole quarter of an hour before we got them moving.

Our next problem was that Cobley had been entrusted by Tony with the camcorder, and he wanted to keep stopping so he could interview Bonehead while making stupid comments.

‘Cobley!’

‘What?’

‘Bring the camera over here.’

‘Why?’

‘I want to tell you a story.’

‘Does it feature a big bad wolf?’ said Cobley, zooming in for a close-up.

‘No.’

‘A madman with a chain saw?’

‘No.’

‘Axe murderer?’

‘It’s about that cow over there,’ said Bonehead.

‘A cow! Sorry. Haven’t got enough tape for that.’

‘You see that cow…’ Bonehead went on.

‘Battery’s low.’

‘That cow!’ said Bonehead, grabbing hold of Cobley and swinging him round until he was pointing in roughly the right direction.

‘I can see the sky,’ Cobley replied, eye to the viewﬁnder.

It took Simon, Rick, me and Nic all ganging up on him before he stopped, but by then we’d lost another half-hour so we were ninety minutes behind time.

And when we got to Kettlewell we found we had another problem.

No minibus.

Remember I said Tony and Duncan were going to drive to the campsite and then join us for the next stage of the walk? We were sure they would be waiting there when we arrived, especially when we were so late, so we were just a bit surprised when they weren’t.

That’s not true, actually. We just assumed the bus had broken down again.

‘What do we do now?’ said Liz.

‘Wait,’ replied Simon. ‘They may have got held up somewhere, or perhaps there’s a problem with the campsite.’

‘You mean, “Perhaps there’s a problem with the bus”,’ I said. ‘It’ll be just our luck if they can’t ﬁx it. What will we do then?’

‘Well,’ said Simon, ‘we can’t walk any further than this or they will have no idea where we are.’

So we waited. The path crosses the main road just here, and there’s a bridge across the river, and a little car park with a caravan which sells ice cream. That made it hard to wait, since I was being good about my diet, but some of the others found it no hardship at all! But I was getting more and more worried about the time. So was Simon.

‘They ought to be here by now,’ he said, after another half-hour had gone by.

‘I bet they really have broken down,’ I replied.

‘I hope not!’

‘Which way will they come?’ I said.

Simon pointed across the bridge, back the way we had come, so we all strained our eyes to see if they were in sight. Not that it did much good, since there was a bend in the road only about a hundred metres away, but it did mean we were taken completely by surprise when Tony arrived, with the minibus, from completely the opposite direction.

‘How long have you been here?’ were his ﬁrst words as he climbed out.

‘About half an hour.’

‘Is that all! How fast have you been walking? Do you know how far we have to go from here!’

Well, we did, of course, but just try explaining it to Adèle, or Luce, or Cobley. But we didn’t want to blame them and get Tony upset, so we just said the route was harder than it looked on the map, and left it at that. But anyway, we were ready to go half an hour ago, so it was Tony who was holding us up, not the other way around. Tony and Duncan. Where was Duncan, anyway?

It turned out Duncan and Tony had taken longer to move the tents than expected, so they were sure we would be waiting for them when they got back. When they found we weren’t they decided we must have had a serious problem, so they had driven back to Grassington to see if we had turned back. Duncan had then volunteered to walk to Kettlewell while Tony came back in the bus.

‘It’s a pity we didn’t have a third person,’ said Tony. ‘Then we could have left someone here to tell you what was happening.’

‘It’s a pity Duncan didn’t walk back along the path from here,’ I retorted. ‘He would have found us at some point. That way you wouldn’t have missed us while you were driving.’

‘But, suppose you had turned back. I would have been stuck here with no way of knowing.’

‘Well, OK. I suppose you could have driven to Grassington while Duncan walked.’

‘But then, if you hadn’t turned back, I would have been stuck in Grassington with no way of knowing.’

It was then we decided that two-way radios might not be a bad idea!

‘Anyway,’ said Tony. ‘You’d best be setting off. I’ll wait here for Duncan and we’ll catch you up.’

‘Are you sure? We might walk a lot faster now!’

‘Don’t worry about us. Get moving!’

We got moving, although it was still a struggle prising some of the crew away from the ice cream van. We managed it though. We were now walking right next to the river, the path was almost level, and everyone seemed to have got more into the swing of it. My prediction actually came true because Duncan and Tony did catch us up, but it wasn’t until we had stopped for our next ﬁve minute break.

‘How much further?’ cried Luce, collapsing in a heap on the ground.

‘We’re about halfway,’ Liz told her.

‘Is that all! I can’t go on any more!’

‘Stay here then,’ I said. ‘Here’s your rations. The ﬁve minutes are nearly up.’

‘But I’ve only just got here!’

‘You should walk faster then,’ Jules pointed out. ‘I’m no taller than you are, Luce, but I was here ﬁrst.’

‘Come on!’ I said, and Luce struggled to her feet.

‘Have we got to go up there?’ she cried, as she realized what was ahead.

Luce is another of those fourth-formers who are only just old enough to be in Ventures. She was ﬁfteen in November, and the only reason we let her help with Overnight Sensation was because it didn’t involve going outside school. That girl is such an embarrassment.

She was right though. The climb out of the valley is really steep, although you get a bit of a respite as the path joins a farm track which winds its way gradually up onto the fell. Even so, the ﬁrst part had sorted the ﬁt from the unﬁt—I’m talking about physically ﬁt here, of course—and the ﬁfteen of us were now spread along something like half a kilometre with the ﬁt people like me at the front, as you would expect, and Adèle and Luce at the back. Still, at least everyone was in sight of everyone else, and Duncan and Tony stationed themselves near the front and back respectively and we plodded on.

I don’t actually know why Adèle joined Ventures. She’s in ﬁfth-form, same as me and Liz and Jules, although she was sixteen right at the start, back in October. Unlike us, she’s not really that interested in outdoor pursuits—or very much else, come to that. I suppose she tries reasonably hard at her school work, but out of class she’s only really interested in one thing. Adèle changes boyfriends about as often as most people change their knickers, and it gets a bit boring after a while. For us, I mean.

‘What time will it get dark?’ Liz asked.

‘About ten o’clock,’ Simon replied.

‘Are we going to make it, do you think?’

‘I doubt it. I hope you packed your torch!’

‘Oh my God!’ she began. Then, ‘Only joking!’

We reached the end of the track and were faced with another steep, but short, climb along the side of a plantation and onto the spur that was, thankfully, the highest point of today’s journey. When I say “we”, I mean the people in front: me, Jules, Liz, Rick, Simon and, curiously, Damien, who seemed to have calmed down and was now taking the whole thing much more seriously. I have to say, I found this new behaviour rather suspicious! Still, I couldn’t very well say anything, so I just took no notice. Duncan was a little way behind us with Bianca, and then there was another little group consisting of Cobley, Bonehead and Eric—they’re all at about the same intellectual level—and then Nic was walking with Samantha, who is actually a Ranger Guide from the village who had joined us for this trip because she enjoys hiking. A bit further back still were Greg and Luce—they made a very strange pair—and ﬁnally Adèle slowly bringing up the rear. Tony was near the back too, trying to encourage the tail-enders to keep moving. No rest for the wicked!

We were halfway up the steep bit, all breathing heavily, when our progress was suddenly arrested by a scream from below. Jules nearly fell over backwards with shock but recovered herself, and when we turned to look we could just make out the shape of someone lying on the ground a couple of hundred metres back down the farm track, with someone else kneeling beside them. We couldn’t tell who it was, and we were about to go back when we saw Tony, who hadn’t been far behind, arrive at the scene.

‘Tony!’ shouted Simon. ‘What happened?’

‘What?’ came the reply.

‘What’s going on?’

But we couldn’t understand what he was shouting to us, so it was pretty clear he couldn’t tell what we were saying either.

‘I think we’d better go down and see what the problem is,’ I said.

‘I agree,’ replied Simon. ‘Come on!’

‘Do we all have to go?’ wailed Jules. ‘I’ve only just managed to struggle up here, and now I have to go back and then do it all over again!’

But all the lads—including Damien would you believe—were already on their way down, and since she didn’t want to be called a wimp as well as a porg she had no choice but to follow on. Then I noticed Tony was waving furiously to us.

‘Hold on a minute!’ I called, to the lads.

‘All… right… you… go… on…’ I could just make out the words as they wafted up the fell.

‘Simon! Come back! He wants us to carry on.’

Jules was relieved—well, we all were really—and we resumed our steady slog up the hill. It wasn’t until much later, when we all reached the campsite, that we found out what had actually happened.

When I had heard the words, “all right”, I had naturally assumed there was nothing to worry about, but what Tony had meant was that he could manage without any help. In fact, there was something wrong, and it was fairly serious.

It was Sam who’d been on the ground. She had taken a bad step and twisted her ankle. Not that Tony was sure of that at ﬁrst. For all he knew, she might have broken it.

‘Let’s have a look.’

‘It’s nothing,’ said Sam. ‘Just a sprain. Ow!’

‘I’m going to take your boot off,’ said Tony, ‘and have a proper look. OK?’

‘OK. Careful! Ow! That hurts!’

Quite painful, and although he couldn’t ﬁnd any broken bones she probably shouldn’t have walked on it, but that meant Tony had a difﬁcult decision to make.

‘Do you want us to fetch Duncan’s car? I don’t suppose the farmer will mind if we drive along his track, and then you won’t need to walk any further.’

‘How long will it take?’ she asked, gritting her teeth.

‘Well, Duncan will have to go on ahead to the campsite—that’s where the car is—and then to get here by road, well, it is a bit of a long way round…’

‘How long?’

‘That’s because there isn’t a road across the fell, you see. Not this far south. He’ll have to go up to Hawes and then come back.’

‘How long?’ asked Sam again, trying hard not to shout. Tony can ramble on a bit, at times.

‘Let’s see,’ Sam could almost hear the gears grinding as he did the arithmetic in his head. ‘About two hours, I should say.’

‘Two hours!’

‘About that, yes. Perhaps a little longer.’

‘Forget it! I’m walking!’

‘I’m not sure I would really advise that,’ said Tony, engaging Granny Mode. ‘Once you get past the end of the track the car can’t get to you, so if it gets worse…’

‘I’m walking! Come on, help me up.’

I suppose he didn’t really have a lot of choice, but Tony agreed and decided to walk with her. Adèle moved up to be with Greg and Luce; Nic walked with Duncan and Bianca and away they went once again. When Tony told us all this, he also said he made up the bit about it taking two hours to get the car, just so they wouldn’t have to do it. He thought she was making a lot of fuss over nothing! I don’t know whether to believe him or not.

When we got to the top we came to a T-junction, and turned left onto a much wider track. I thought this was odd, and asked Simon about it.

‘It looks as if a lot more people walk along here, than come up that path we’ve just been on.’

‘That’s right, they do.’

‘But where do they all come from? I thought most people would be following the same route as us.’

‘Well actually,’ Simon pointed out, ‘for the next few kilometres we share the path with the Pennine Way.’

‘The Pennine Way! That’s really tough, isn’t it?’

‘Very, and it’s really long too. Let’s leave it for another time!’

It was starting to get dark by now, and there weren’t any other people out walking that night. In fact, we had got so far ahead of the rest of our party that we seemed to be completely alone. This was a bit worrying because we knew we were going to have to turn off the track at some point and strike off downhill to the place where we were going to camp, but navigational aids seemed few and far between.

‘Any idea where we are?’ said Jules, to nobody in particular.

‘Somewhere in England,’ replied Damien. Coming from anyone else I would have thought it rather a facile comment, but from him it was quite good.

‘No,’ said Simon, somewhat more to the point.

‘How far do you think we’ve walked?’ I said.

‘About twenty kilometres,’ replied Liz, sounding as if she meant it.

‘I mean from the T-junction!’

‘Oh! About twenty minutes.’

‘We’ve come twenty minutes from the T-junction,’ I snapped back, sarcastically. ‘What kind of a measurement do you call that?’

‘Quite a useful one,’ Simon interjected. ‘Look, we know what time we started this morning, and if we deduct our stops we can work out how long it’s taken us to get to where we are now.’

‘But we don’t know where we are now. That’s the whole point!’

‘Well, to the T-junction then.’

‘So?’ This was Jules.

‘We can use the map to ﬁnd out how far it is from the start to the T-junction,’ Simon continued. ‘Then we can work out our average speed.’

‘Distance over time,’ I murmured. ‘But so what?’

‘If we know our average speed, and we know it’s taken us twenty minutes from the T-junction, we can work out how far away from it we are!’

Of course! Physics in action. I knew it would come in useful some day! I made up my mind to tell Tony about it when we got to the campsite, but I forgot.

We guessed we might be walking a bit slower than our average now, since we were getting tired, but it gave us an idea of where we were. We realized it was about time we started to look out for the new path, but it wasn’t easy in the half-light.

‘What’s that?’

But it was just a gap between some bushes.

‘Over there!’

A rock.

‘I bet we’ve missed it!’

‘Liz! Don’t be so pessimistic!’

We were walking much more slowly now, and constantly looking out for a path, but when we arrived at the junction it was quite obvious because there was a signpost!

‘Look at that!’ I exclaimed. ‘We didn’t need to waste all that time searching—we could have been at the campsite by now!’

‘Calm down, Becky,’ said Damien, speaking to me directly for the ﬁrst time ever. ‘At least we know it isn’t much further to go.’

I was so taken aback at being spoken to by He Who Is Brash And Boring that I couldn’t think of a suitably rude retort. Anyway, Simon and Rick were already on their way down, so I just followed on.

I think Rick must be the quietest boy I’ve ever met. Even more so than Greg, and that’s saying something, so it’s hard to get to know him. Like Greg, he’s in the same year as Nic and Damien. Unlike Damien, he’s not a rugby player, but that’s not to say he doesn’t keep himself ﬁt. All through our hike he’d been carrying the heaviest rucksack and keeping to the front. One of the sports we can do at our school is riding, but almost all the riders are girls. Except for Rick. He does caving and orienteering too, and he played me at squash once. I thought I was pretty good, but he beat me, no problem.

I thought I’d better get a move on if I didn’t want Simon and Rick to leave me behind, so down I went. It was another steep track, although it looked very much as if vehicles used it sometimes, judging by the wheel ruts and the mud. We knew from the map that we were heading towards a stream, and there was a bridge, clearly marked, so we could cross.

Slowly, we worked our way down the bank. It wasn’t too easy, and we couldn’t see very far ahead, even with the light from our torches to help, but after some time we saw the glint of water ahead of us and we knew we were nearly there.

There was only one problem. We couldn’t ﬁnd the bridge.

Actually, that’s not strictly true. We found the bridge piers, in exactly the place the map indicated. It was just that there was no deck. Either the bridge had been dismantled or it had got washed away in a ﬂood, but it certainly wasn’t there any more, and we had to ﬁnd some other way of getting across.

Fortunately there was a ford so it was possible to wade, but the water was actually quite deep and it looked as though we would have to get our feet wet. Rick made a sensible suggestion at this point—it was the ﬁrst time I’d heard him speak all day. He told us to take our boots and socks off ﬁrst. That way, even though our feet would get wet we would be able to put dry boots on again later.

The water was freezing! Despite it being June. But we made it, and there, only a few metres away was Duncan’s car, containing all the tents and all the food. Great! The diet could wait until I was back at school! I was looking forward to zipping myself into my sleeping bag and warming my feet up. I knew we had some chocolate in one of the boxes, too.

‘Who’s got the key?’ I called out, in the general direction of Simon and Rick.

‘Er, Duncan, I suppose,’ replied Simon.

‘Duncan! But he’s miles behind. Why didn’t he give it to one of you?’

‘Probably because I didn’t ask him.’

‘Idiot!’

OK, so Simon is quite a bit older than I am, but I felt justiﬁed. Perhaps he left his brain behind, along with the key. But I think I was feeling too self-righteous, because his next remark caught me completely off guard.

‘Why didn’t you ask him?’

‘What? Oh! Er, because…’

‘Because you’re the oldest, Simon,’ Damien ﬁnished for me, ‘so naturally Duncan would give it to you.’

My God! I thought. Support from Damien, of all people. What on earth’s got into him?

I was trying to puzzle it out all the time we were waiting. Once Duncan arrived we set to and pitched all the tents, and got some food ready so the stragglers would be able to have something to eat as soon as they caught up. Weren’t we good!

Our original plan, of course, was that Duncan and Tony would leave us to do the tents while they went back to Kettlewell in the car to collect the minibus. Now we couldn’t do that—not straight away—because Tony was at the very back, encouraging Sam to keep going, and she was making such slow progress that it was at least an hour and a half after we arrived that they ﬁnally made it to camp. Of course, they were desperately hungry by that time, so we all thought it made more sense if they had a meal before setting off back. It was after midnight before Duncan and Tony eventually departed.

We all went to bed.

+ + +

I think it must have been about three o’clock in the morning when I was rudely awakened by the noise of the minibus arriving. I don’t know why it had taken them so long, although apparently the journey by road is a lot farther than the path, but I know I wasn’t very pleased they were making so much noise about it.

Then Cobley and Bonehead came and stuck their heads in our tent and tried to tell us what was going on. But we didn’t want to know. Not from them.

‘For God’s sake, Cobley!’ I screamed. ‘This is our tent. Get out!’

‘I hope you’re not videoing us,’ added Jules.

Liz was awake too, and in a dangerous mood.

‘Cobley, if you’ve got that camera on I’m going to stuff it down your throat!’

‘Christ!’ replied Cobley. ‘Give us a chance. Do you want to know what all the noise is about, or not?’

‘No! Go away!’

‘But…’

‘Go,’ I repeated, ‘away!’

‘Duncan and Tony have got the minibus bogged down in the mud.’

‘What do you expect us to do about it,’ retorted Jules. ‘Go and laugh at them?’

‘Help push? Please?’

Cobley is in the year below me, so I should have withered him with a glance, but although he’s six months younger than I am, it was difﬁcult with him shining a torch in my face.

‘Pretty please?’

I think if I had been properly awake I would have refused, but as it was I fumbled my way out of my sleeping bag, threw a jacket over my shoulders and somehow managed to get my feet into my boots, and then I was behind the bus and pushing for all I was worth. It wasn’t until the bus surged forward sending showers of mud everywhere that I realized I’d forgotten to put any trousers on—I’d been sleeping in a T-shirt and underwear, like you do when camping—and now my bare legs were absolutely covered in wet, slimy mud. And Cobley and co. could see my knickers! Why does this always happen to me!

But then my ugly sister had a bright idea, and all the rest of my so-called friends thought it was great, so I was dragged off to the ford, shivering, to wash the mud off in freezing water! I was not amused.

I went back to bed, much disgruntled, and the next thing I knew it was about seven o’clock and bucketing down with rain.

I went back to sleep.

By about nine o’clock the weather seemed to have improved a bit and I could hear the sound of people cheering. This intrigued me, so I extricated myself and went to see what all the excitement was about. And it was worth seeing! Simon and Damien had been among those watching me wash my legs in the ford last night, and being two big strong lads they weren’t going to be outdone by a lass, so they were down at the ford almost completely stripped off and even dipping their hair in the water! I have to say, this was a New View of Damien. I thought he looked quite macho, if you get my drift!

Of course, Cobley was there with the camcorder, getting it all on tape for posterity, and as soon as Simon and Damey had gone to get dressed he turned his attention to Bonehead’s pet brick.

I’m serious! Bonehead had this brick—and I’m talking house brick here—which he’d brought all the way from school and put on the ground outside his tent all night.

‘Interview!’ said Cobley, going for a close up of the brick before pointing the camera at Bonehead.

‘Oh! Right!’ replied Bonehead, off his guard for a moment, but then he settled down into his TV presenter impersonation.

‘As you can see,’ he intoned, in his best accent, ‘it’s very strong, and handsome. It has been guarding this tent all night long.’

Can you believe it! Perhaps that’s why everyone calls him Bonehead.

I don’t think I mentioned it before, but Bonehead’s in our year, and he thinks he’s the class clown. He can be quite amusing sometimes, but it’s best not to encourage him because he gets conceited. He’s quite short, for a boy—not much taller than Jules—and not exactly good-looking. Not in the least good-looking, actually. Thin and pimply. But I would rather have Bonehead than Eric any day!

By now it was time to get Duncan up. He was sleeping in his car, doing a very good impression of someone who intends to stay in bed all day. Once we got a couple of us at each corner, and started to bounce it up and down on the springs, he realized he had to get up if he didn’t want to be seasick. But then he pretended to have hurt his ankle! Honestly! There was nothing wrong with it last night. Wimp! Still, it meant Sam didn’t need to walk on her (genuine) sprained ankle, because he could take her to Sedburgh by car. She would have preferred to walk, of course.

We didn’t need to get Tony up. He knew what we were like, so he made sure he was up before any of us, but Eric was determined to be last.

‘Good morning, Eric,’ called Jules, cheerfully.

Silence.

‘Time to get up!’ added Liz.

No reply.

‘Rise and shine!’ I screamed, right next to where we assumed his head would be.

Still nothing, so we unzipped the tent ﬂap and Cobley brought the camera over for an interior shot.

‘Sleeping like a baby!’ he said, at which point Eric’s hand appeared from within and made a rude gesture. I was shocked. (Not really!) And I thought those two were friends!

But he still refused to get out of his tent no matter what we threatened him with, so in the end we just collapsed the tent around him. It didn’t make any difference though. Only when we started to roll the canvas up with him inside it did he condescend to emerge, and then he had to go hungry for the ﬁrst hour because we cleared breakfast away ﬁrst.

This was where Tony and Duncan were supposed to leave us while they shufﬂed the vehicles around, but since Duncan was now going to be in his car all day Tony decided to leave the minibus and walk all the way with us. I think he was making a statement about his opinion of Duncan’s “twisted ankle”, too!

It wasn’t long after we started that Bonehead and Eric really excelled themselves. Bonehead and Dickhead more like. They climbed this hill—at the start of the days’ walk—and lay down on the wet grass. They didn’t need to go up it at all.

‘What are they doing?’ I said to Liz.

‘Go on, then!’ called Adèle, who’d worked it out.

Then they rolled, over and over. Down they came.

‘Keep rolling!’ Adèle was getting all excited.

And they did. All the way down to the bottom! They were absolutely saturated, and now they had to stay in their wet clothes for the rest of the day! It just goes to show. Of course, Cobley got it all on video.

Our campsite was quite close to the Ribblehead Viaduct, which is quite famous, and we followed the railway for a bit until we passed Dent station. Good job they didn’t have a trades’ descriptions act in those days, because it must be about ﬁve miles from the village! At least it was downhill all the way.

‘It’s this way,’ said Liz, as we reached a stile. ‘At least, I think it is.’

‘Let’s have a look,’ I said. Liz was only reading the map because she had her geography exam coming up. Normally she leaves that sort of thing to me, or Jules, or one of the lads. But she was right. The path keeps to the riverbank as it approaches Dent, and avoids the village itself. We climbed over.

‘Not that way!’ shouted Tony, from some distance behind us.

‘It’s the right way,’ I called back, waving the map.

‘No! Follow the road!’

‘The map says it’s this way,’ I shouted, and off we went along the path.

‘No!’ And then I looked back and saw the most amazing thing. Tony was running!

‘Look at this!’ I called, and Liz came back to see.

‘I hope Cobley’s got the video on!’ she said.

‘I never thought I’d hear you say that!’

‘I don’t mind, as long as he’s not videoing me! I want a copy of this.’

‘Why?’ I said. ‘Who are you going to show it to?’

But I never found out, because at that moment Tony reached us, panting and breathless.

‘Along the road,’ he said, as soon as he could speak.

‘But the map says…’

‘Don’t you want to see the village?’

‘Don’t know. Should we?’

‘It’s nice,’ he replied. ‘And there’s something I want to show you.’

He was right. The village is nice. The main street is still paved with cobblestones instead of being tarred. There are some attractive old-fashioned shops and a photographers with some interesting pictures—taken by the owner—of some of the caves in the area.

‘Look at these,’ said Tony.

We looked. Like Rick, Tony is a keen caver, and the area around Dent is one of the most famous caving regions in the whole world.

‘Do you fancy going caving?’ he asked.

‘Us?’

‘Yes.’

‘When?’

‘Well not today, obviously, but I’m sure we could arrange it for another time. If you want to go.’

I was in two minds about it. I could see it might be exciting, but wouldn’t it be cold? And wet?

‘Maybe,’ I said.

‘I’ll start making the arrangements,’ he replied.

I could see an ice cream shop just up the road, and the weather was much better. Even so, I felt guilty about the diet as I spoke.

‘Who wants an ice cream?’

‘Are you buying?’ replied Liz.

That was careless of me. Still, too late to change my mind, so I went into the shop with Jules and Liz.

‘What do you want then?’ I said, feeling in my pocket for my purse.

‘Hold on,’ said Jules. She’d just seen Tony come in, and she sidled over to him.

‘Dad,’ she said. ‘Can I have an ice cream?’

Tony looked a bit startled, but before he could say anything she carried on.

‘Please, Dad. Let me have an ice cream.’

At this point the shopkeeper must have thought he stood a chance of making a sale, because he came across and joined in.

‘Go on sir! Buy your daughter an ice cream.’

‘But, she’s…’ stammered Tony.

‘Dad…’

What could he do! He ﬁshed in his pocket for some money, and Jules got her ice cream. Neat trick, or what? I thought I’d done pretty well to con Dad into letting me join Ventures in the ﬁrst place, but Jules had just left me standing at the starting post! I looked at Liz, and she looked at me.

‘Dad,’ I said.

‘Dad,’ said Liz.

‘Now look,’ said Tony, starting to go a bit pink, but Liz slipped her arm through his and I did the same on the other side, and we steered him over to the freezer.

‘One of those,’ I said, pointing.

‘Can I have a green one?’ said Liz.

I don’t know who was the more gullible, Tony for giving in so easily or the shopkeeper for believing he really could have three daughters all the same age. OK, I suppose he might have thought Liz was my twin, but Jules doesn’t look anything like us! Still, it was fun, but Adèle had come in and heard what was going on, so when she tried it too Tony must have thought enough was enough.

‘No!’

And he stormed out of the shop.

I noticed the shopkeeper was now looking at us in a funny way. Perhaps the penny had dropped.

‘She’s the milkman’s,’ I said, smiling sweetly, and then I grabbed Adèle by the hand and lugged her into the street.

We caught up with Tony right at the far end of the village.

‘Sorry,’ I said.

He didn’t reply.

‘We can give you the money back,’ added Liz. ‘It was only a joke.’

Still nothing but stony-faced silence.

‘And you should have seen the shopkeeper’s face!’ Jules exclaimed. ‘I think you’re a very nice dad.’

And then she gave him a big hug! I thought that was pushing her luck a bit too far, but instead of exploding, he suddenly burst out laughing!

‘Well done!’ he cried. ‘All of you. That was the best bit of acting I’ve seen in a long time!’

Much to our surprise he was actually quite pleased with us, and he didn’t even want the money back, so all three of us were one ice cream ahead of the game. Adèle decided to sulk, because she didn’t get one.

‘I’ll try the same trick on Duncan,’ she said.

Right! Fat chance! I mean, Tony really is old enough to be my father, so it was a natural enough mistake for the shopkeeper to make, but Duncan’s only twenty-three, and ’Dèl’s sixteen. Not too obvious!

All the others had reached us by now, and the riverside path joined up with the road, brieﬂy, before striking across ﬁelds again. There was still quite a way to go before we reached Sedburgh, but we were congratulating ourselves over the joke we’d played on Tony, and we didn’t feel tired at all. But then a funny thing happened. I had started off in front, with Liz, Jules, Rick, Simon and Damien, but gradually—I don’t know quite how it came about—a gap sort of opened up so that the other four stayed in the lead and I was walking along with Damien by myself!

And the next group were quite a bit behind!

I have to admit, I didn’t spend a lot of time looking back, but I couldn’t help noticing that Luce and Greg were with Cobley and Bonehead, Nic and Bianca were walking with Tony (boring!) and ’Dèl was with Eric. Eric! I could hardly believe my eyes. Surely, not even Adèle could fancy Eric! Unless she was impressed by the rolling. Not that I was thinking much about it. I had other things on my mind!

I don’t remember a lot about the rest of the walk. I know we followed the river for quite a long way, until eventually we came to a bridge, and there we joined the road for the ﬁnal kilometre, to get into Sedburgh itself. First, however, Eric took it upon himself to teach ’Dèl how to skim stones across the river, and she let him! I’m getting worried about that girl!

When we got to Sedburgh we had to cross a road. It wasn’t very busy, but for Damien it was the perfect excuse to hold my hand so he could help me across. And once we were across, of course he didn’t let go! And actually—I didn’t know quite what was happening to me—I didn’t want him to! I hadn’t felt like this, ever before. Not even when Zak kissed me, although that was nice. In fact, not even when he kissed me for the ﬁrst time, that night we did Overnight Sensation. My heart was pounding, and not just from the exercise!

Duncan was waiting for us when we reached the town, and I knew he had to drive Tony back to the campsite for the minibus. I had been banking on this, because Simon had told us about his uncle who runs a pub in Sedburgh, and how we would be able to wait there for an hour. And I needed a drink!

I had to think about this. All this time I’d been thinking bitchy thoughts about Damien, and now, suddenly, I felt like…

How did I feel? Was I in love? Is this what it felt like? I really had never, ever, felt like this with Zak.

And that was another thing.

How was I going to break it to Zak? He’d been faithful to me, for nearly six months now, despite having plenty of opportunities with other girls. Could I really be that cruel?

I needed a drink!

We all piled in, and I headed straight for the bar. I wasn’t expecting any problem, because if Nic and me go out by ourselves we can easily pass for eighteen, and normally I have no trouble getting served in pubs. I had reckoned that with both Tony and Duncan out of the way it would be the same today. Unfortunately, Simon’s uncle knew how old we were!

‘Simon!’ I hissed. ‘Did you tell him?’

‘Use your head, Becky! He knows how old I am, so you’ve got no chance!’

We had to survive on lemonade!

C’est la vie!

Thank You!

Thank you for downloading and reading this book. If you enjoyed it, perhaps you would consider writing a review. Reviews help other people ﬁnd the books they want to read.

The next book in the series is Painting the Tank and Other Stories. Keep turning the pages for a sneak preview…

About the Author

Stone de Roufﬁgnac is a pseudonym.

The real Stone de Roufﬁgnac taught physics for more than thirty years, variously in a coeducational boarding school, an international school, and two girls’ day schools.

Now retired, Stone de Roufﬁgnac writes Young Adult ﬁction for fun, while the real Stone de Roufﬁgnac writes educational magazine articles for a small amount of proﬁt.

To ﬁnd out more visit his author proﬁle on Goodreads.

Extract of Painting the Tank

A Tight Spot

February…

‘Where have all these boulders come from?’ I asked.

They were in the way, and we had to keep going round some, and over others, which made it hard work.

‘They’ve fallen down from the roof,’ Rick replied.

‘Not recently, I hope!’

‘Fairly recently.’

‘What!’

‘Well, within the last thousand years, at a guess.’

‘Rick!’ I exclaimed. ‘Are you trying to scare me?’

‘You’re the one with the grade “A” in geography,’ he replied. ‘You know it isn’t that long, geologically speaking.’

‘Yes, OK. But you made it sound as if they might have fallen down yesterday! We are safe, aren’t we?’

‘People used to die in caves,’ said Nic.

‘Nic!’

‘This part is pretty stable,’ Rick agreed, ‘but it can be a bit risky in active stream passages, especially ones that ﬂood to the roof.’

‘It doesn’t! Does it?’

‘Not here. Don’t panic, Becky! Not much water comes this way, these days.’

That was a relief. I don’t mind getting a bit grubby, but I didn’t fancy the idea of drowning. It just didn’t appeal to me!

‘So we stay dry?’ I suggested.

‘Not exactly,’ he said.

‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

‘If you want to have a look at this end of the through trip,’ he explained, ‘we’ll have to go down to the streamway. Which is certainly not the place to be if it’s raining, or if there’s been snow and then the sun comes out.’

‘But how will we know if it starts raining?’ asked Cobley. ‘We can’t see what the weather’s like outside!’

‘And you claim you’re not a moron!’ Nic rounded on him. ‘Don’t worry. Good old Nic—that’s the one with common sense—watched the weather forecast!’

‘Essential viewing if you’re going caving,’ agreed Rick.

‘Don’t trust weather forecasts,’ said Cobley.

‘Cobley!’

‘What?’

‘Don’t start that!’

‘But…’

‘Shut up!’

He subsided, and Rick explained that there was another wet bit, before we got to the streamway.

‘How wet?’ I asked.

‘Quite wet.’

We scrambled along. Most of the time the passage was walking height, with only a few places where we had to bend down a bit, but no serious crawling. I was starting to enjoy myself. We came to a T-junction. Rick stopped and waited for me to catch up.

‘What’s the matter?’ I said. ‘Don’t you know the way?’

‘I’m just making sure everyone is still here. I know which way to go, but nobody else does.’

‘Yes I do!’ called Nic, who was within earshot by now. ‘I read it in the guidebook, remember? To the right is just a dead end, but if we go left we should get to Terminal Chamber.’

‘Terminal Chamber?’ queried Cobley. ‘I thought you said this cave went right through to the one Tony’s gone to. How come this is a terminus, then?’

‘I think,’ said Rick, ‘that when it was ﬁrst explored this was as far as they could get, but since then they’ve found a way through.’

‘That makes sense,’ Nic agreed, ‘because the bit after that is called Blasted Crawl, which sounds as if they used explosives to make it big enough.’

‘Explosives!’ I cried. ‘But you said the roof might collapse, just with water ﬂowing through. It must be dangerous to use explosives underground, surely?’

‘It probably helps if you know what you’re doing,’ Rick replied.

Extract of Araminta

The skin is turning white. Is that what’s supposed to happen? I thought… No, wait—I get it. It’s the pressure, forcing the blood away from the blade. But… Perhaps I’m not pressing hard enough—yes, that’s more like it. It hurts a lot more, and they’re right—it’s starting to make sense. If I focus on this pain, I don’t have to think so much about that pain…

But I thought you were supposed to get, like, high on this. Sort of. Not like doing drugs, but isn’t there supposed to be something… Endorphins? Oh! Got it. No wonder the stupid sharpener snapped my pencil lead—the blade’s too blunt. Perhaps if I drag it across my skin, instead of just pressing down…

+ + +

Nowadays, I’ve got the hang of it. And I’ve been doing it rather a lot, these last few months. It’s sort of calming—comforting, even. That probably sounds weird, but when you’re subjected to all the external stresses I am—things completely beyond my control—you soon realize how much it helps. It’s one of the few things I can decide about for myself. Something I can do in secret, privately, without the whole world giving its opinion and telling me what…

‘Araminta! Dinner!’

Oh my god! That went far too deep. And it’s bleeding a lot. She’ll kill me if I get it on the carpet. What if I need stitches? Why on earth didn’t I keep an eye on the time? Dinner is always at seven—to the second, usually. I could set my watch by it. I’m starting to not feel well…

Grabbing a tissue with my other hand I try to stem the ﬂow as I stumble towards the bathroom. There’s a ﬁrst aid kit in there, although getting it out of the cupboard is a bit of a challenge…

‘Araminta!’

‘Just washing my hands,’ I reply, scrabbling around to try and ﬁnd something suitable. No butterﬂy stitches or anything useful like that, but I ﬁnd a gauze pad and some tape. If I do it up tightly enough it might work.

‘Araminta! Dinner is on the table and we are waiting.’

‘Just coming, Mother.’

I rush back to my room. I can’t go downstairs like this. No way can I let them see it—I need to cover it up. But what with? I need something with long sleeves and if I wear my school shirt I’ll be sent straight back up to change.

‘Araminta!’ It’s my father this time. I grab a cardigan and head for the stairs. A cardigan will be acceptable, surely?

‘You’re ﬁve minutes late,’ I’m told, before I’ve even sat down.

‘Sorry.’

‘Well?’

I don’t answer. There’s no point. Anything I say will be taken down and used in evidence against me. But I know they’ll keep on and on anyway. My father has that look.

‘Explain yourself,’ he says.

Oh well. Here goes…

‘I’m sorry. I got distracted. I was trying to do my homework.’

‘Don’t lie.’ It’s my mother’s standard response to pretty much anything I say. OK, this time it really was a lie, but I could hardly tell her what I was actually doing. But even if I don’t lie, she still thinks I do. I just bow my head and hope they’ll leave it. Fat chance.

Mother is about to open her mouth to give me the third degree when my father interrupts.

‘What’s that stain on your sleeve? It looks like blood.’

And it is, of course. I couldn’t have done the dressing up tightly enough. But before I have a chance to respond or even do anything Mother has demanded I remove it immediately and show her. Then she rips the dressing off. It’s stuck, where the blood has started to clot, but she’s so rough it tears open again and blood drips onto the tablecloth.

‘You stupid child!’ Then she steps back, not quite comprehending what she’s seeing. But it doesn’t take long for her to recognize the older scabs—more than a dozen of them—for what they are. My secret’s out.

‘How long?’ she demands. ‘How long have you been doing this, Araminta?’

I can’t speak. The shock of being found out is just too much. Even when Father joins in and demands an explanation I just stand there, quaking.

‘Leave this to me,’ Mother tells him, grabbing my other arm and dragging me upstairs. Then she proceeds to turn my room upside down, looking for anything I might use to cut myself. I try to tell her I only have a pencil sharpener blade but, of course, she doesn’t believe me. I just stand in the doorway, trying to hold the torn skin together.

Eventually, she satisﬁes herself I don’t have any more sharps hidden away. My room is now a tip. She brings me the ﬁrst aid kit and tells me to sort myself out.

‘Hand over your phone.’ She wants my tablet, too. I try to tell her I have homework but she just ignores me.

‘I’m taking you to the doctor tomorrow,’ she continues. ‘I’m not having any daughter of mine start this sort of behaviour. Stay here. You’re grounded. Your father will bring you something later, after we’ve ﬁnished our dinner.’

She slams out of the room, and I collapse onto the ﬂoor. At least now I can have some peace.

Gingerly, I examine the cut. It isn’t as bad as I originally thought, and a fresh bandage should deal with it. Anyway, I read somewhere you have to lose at least half a litre of blood before any medical people will get worried so I’m not going to bleed to death.

I start to pick things up and put them back where they were before that woman came in here. I know I have well over an hour before they ﬁnish dinner and for once I’m out of it. Every single night we have dinner at seven—right in the middle of my evening. I wish I could make my own decisions about how to organize my time, instead of wasting an hour and a half of my life every single day, sitting down to a formal dinner with my parents.

I wouldn’t mind so much if we could have an intelligent conversation during the meal but that never happens. I’m expected to be seen and not heard, while Mother and Father sit there drinking wine and telling each other what a stressful day they’ve had. I don’t drink wine. They won’t permit it, and I would be wasting my time asking.

Anyway, tonight I’m grounded. It’s a joke—I’m pretty much grounded permanently in any case. I feel like a prisoner, and I haven’t done anything wrong. Apart from school, I’m only really allowed out for dance class, and that’s only because it was Mother’s idea in the ﬁrst place. I must have been about eight, I suppose, and Mother had got it into her head that I could be a professional dancer when I grew up. Honestly! I think she must be living in cloud cuckoo land. You have to be totally dedicated—and talented—to stand any chance of dancing as a career, and I’m neither.

But Mother insisted I kept going to the classes and after a couple of years I found I was actually enjoying it. It was good exercise, and it got me out of the house. I’m ﬁne with dance as a hobby, but a career? No. Just no. What I want to do is biomedical physics, and when I went to the sixth-form options evening I chose the subjects I’ll need for uni—maths, physics and biology.

Of course, my parents weren’t happy. Mother wanted me to choose subjects more “appropriate”. She seemed to think she had the right to tell me what A level subjects to take, without even considering it should be my own decision. Fortunately, Mr Le Page, my biology teacher, stepped in and somehow convinced Father I’d made the right choice.

And to appease Mother I opted for AS Dance as well. Just for fun, but she actually thinks she’s got her own way.

Mother. I’ve called her “Mother” for as long as I can remember. No other word seems appropriate. I suppose, when I was very small, she might have been “Mummy”, but I’m not convinced. I’ve certainly never called her “Mum”. She just isn’t.

My bestie, Thabi, she has a mum. A proper mum, who does mum things, like giving Thabi a hug when she’s feeling down. Actually, she gives me a hug too. I sometimes think of her as my second mum. She’s the one I go to if I have any problems—things I would never dream of asking Mother, who probably wouldn’t know the answer anyway. She and Thabi are two of the few people who know about the self-harm—at least, they were until tonight. Unlike Mother, they don’t judge me. They do think I need help to stop, and I actually agree with them. What they don’t do is try to push me into seeking help. They understand it has to be my own decision.

Actually, I spend quite a lot of time at Thabi’s. It’s only these last couple of months, since I turned sixteen, that I’ve been trusted with a key so I can get in the house when my parents aren’t there. But me and Thabi have been friends since Year 8, she lives just a few houses down the street, and she’s the only friend I’ve ever been allowed to bring home. Mother grudgingly considered her “suitable” and I’ve been going to Thabi’s after school as a regular thing for ages now.

To be honest, I’m surprised Mother does accept Thabi, considering the fact she’s mixed race. I think it’s because her dad has some sort of diplomatic job. Not an actual ambassador or anything, but he worked at the Irish embassy in Lesotho before it closed down, and that’s where he met Palesa—Thabi’s mum.

Anyway, it seems to have worked out well genetically—Thabi is the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met. I think most of the boys at school have a crush on her, but she and Travis have been together for the best part of a year now, and it’s looking serious. Thabi has a younger sister, too. Saoirse’s fourteen, and she’s not short of admirers either.

I could do with Thabi right now. Not that there would be any point in asking if she can come round tonight, and with Mother having taken my phone I can’t even text her. But perhaps I could message her—Mother didn’t take my laptop…

She’s turned the WiFi off. I give up!