Tiger Moth (21 page)

For the first time my mum actually looked like a grown-up.

‘Well?’ she said, looking more nervous than me.

‘You look really nice,’ I said.

The next thing that happened was a mixture of massively scary and kind of OK. When I got to school, I felt so sick that I really thought I was going to throw up. I had to go to
the Headmaster’s office and meet the person who was going to be my ‘mentor’.

‘At Somerset Vale,’ he said, peering over his desk at me, ‘we always assign a new pupil to an older pupil so one of the Year Eleven boys will be your mentor.’

I had to wait at the reception for what felt like forever. I watched all the other new pupils shuffle into school and that’s when I saw that everyone looked like me. Everyone looked
scared. I watched a boy who was going to be in my year as he was introduced to a scary-looking mentor, but as soon as the Head turned away the mentor kind of shoved the boy in the back and my heart
sank. I think I was just staring at my shoes when I heard a really deep voice say my name.

I guess I expected to see a big man or something, but it was a boy.

‘Come on then,’ he said.

I slowly stood up and followed him down the corridor. I waited for the punch or the kick or something, and then he stopped by a drinks fountain and turned to look at me.

‘Did you really swim round the headland to Culver then?’ he said. I stared back at him and tried to think what the right answer would be. I opened my mouth to speak, but the words
didn’t come and he laughed. ‘I’d be well scared, I reckon. I wouldn’t have the guts to do that.’ And when he saw my confused-looking face he put his arm round my
shoulder and said, ‘My nan knows everything, mate. She’s Pippa, from the post office? I swear she’s got some kind of special hearing and she has eyes in the back of her
head.’

I didn’t get punched. I didn’t get kicked and nothing bad happened at all, although my mum waved at me once and I had to ignore her.

It made me think of what George had said to me. ‘Nothing is ever as bad as it seems.’ And he was right.

Today is September 7th and it is my dad’s birthday. Yesterday it rained all day so he went fishing with Zack. They packed the car up with all sorts of fishing rods and a
picnic that Mum had made, and I waved them off on the driveway.

‘Bring a salmon home for supper!’ Mum shouted and we went inside to make him his birthday cake while Becky Boo slept in a little basket on the kitchen table. And later that day, as I
was feeding my sister, my mum took a telephone call that went on for ages. I heard her say, ‘Oh yes, Jane, what a great idea and why don’t they all stay here?’ I asked her about
it at bedtime, but she just smiled and said, ‘Something fun. You’ll enjoy it.’

After Dad opened his presents, he went outside to the terrace. ‘I’ve got something I need to do,’ he said, taking a toolbox with him, and shortly after that I heard voices
outside that I didn’t recognise. I raced across the hallway to the spiral staircase and peered out of the little window on to the driveway. There was Zack, his mum, a taller woman, two girls
and a dog. It had to be Otter!

The girl with the red hair was the loudest and she was marching up to the front door as though she lived here. And, as though she could sense me looking down, she looked up at the window and
waved. I’d never seen anyone with an eyepatch before and I ran back down the stairs to the front door. Standing there with presents in their arms was a woman with curly red hair, a
shy-looking girl with short brown hair and the loud one.

‘I’m Lexi,’ she said loudly. ‘Happy birthday!’

The other girl sort of sighed and rolled her eyes. ‘Er, Lexi, it’s her dad’s birthday, remember.’ They both kind of laughed and I did too.

‘Oh yes, sorry, Mum said. I forgot.’ She twirled a strand of curly hair round her finger and laughed nervously. ‘I’m always forgetting things.’

Just then the gorgeous brown dog reappeared with Zack and his mum.

‘He needed a wee. Alice, this is Otter.’ Zack pulled the lead tighter and immediately Otter sat down at his feet. ‘Lexi’s been teaching him new stuff. Watch.’ He
unhooked the lead, pointed to the ground and I watched as Otter rolled over on to his back.

Jane laughed. ‘Looks like Otter has been at dog-training school, Lexi.’

Then the other girl spoke for the first time. ‘Well, it took us about eight goes to get him to do that and he chewed right through my schoolbag afterwards.’ Zack laughed and the four
of us raced through the garden to the tree house where we stayed until it was time for lunch.

George was the last to arrive and I watched Mum, Dad and Jane hug him tightly and, after we’d eaten, him and Dad sat on my uncle’s special bench and chatted until it was getting
dark. It was only then that I saw what my dad had needed his toolbox for; it was only when I went back outside to get my jumper that I saw what he had done. Carved into the back of the wooden bench
were two names:
Thomas Edward Richardson
and
Kirran Moore
.

We had to go up to the attic to find the really big tent because the one that Lexi and Eddie had brought had a massive hole in it. Dad, George and Zack put it up and in the end George said there
was enough room for a football team to camp out in, let alone four children and a dog. The four of us watched the sky nervously. It had to be a clear sky if we were going to do it. We peered out
from our tent and I could feel Zack grinning as the biggest moon lit up the garden so brightly it was as though someone had switched the lights on.

‘Are you ready then?’ Dad said.

‘It’s going to be chilly,’ Jane said nervously, but I thought the air felt as warm as on a summer’s day.

Mum said later that she could hear the sound of us all giggling from the house and I think she really must have because Lexi is probably one of the funniest people I have ever met. We used our
torches on the footpath, and when Eddie said she couldn’t see properly Lexi laughed and said, ‘Yeah, try doing it wearing an eyepatch.’

When we got to the little ledge, I saw that it wasn’t a little ledge any more. The gap that we used to jump across had been fixed. Instead of a gaping hole there was a wooden step and when
I shone my torch down I saw the words that had been carved into it:
One, two, three, jump!
Even the really tricky bits had been made easier and when I looked up at Dad he smiled.

‘Well, if we’re going to be coming down here all the time, I thought I’d best make it as safe as possible,’ he said.

Have you ever swum in the moonlight? Have you ever dived under blackened sea and seen the moon shine down through the silvery waters? It feels like you’re swimming through another world.
We were careful not to go too far, and my dad was with us the whole time, watching, but we had so much fun splashing around in the sea. We dived again and again under the water, until we were all
getting cold, and then the four of us ran back to the shore and wrapped ourselves up in the warmest, softest towels. But before I left the beach I found a stick and drew upon the sand:

It was properly autumn when we drove up the hill to George’s house, but it wasn’t really cold at all, even though it was late October. As we arrived at the big glass
house, I could see Zack was already there with his mum. Otter too. Zack got him back a little while ago because his mum spoke to Pippa who said she’d come and see him during the day. So Lexi
and Hannah, who were looking after him, brought Otter back which made Zack really happy.

‘I went out in that one last week,’ Zack told me, pointing to a little silver sports car. ‘And me and George had to change the tyre on the way back, look,’ he said,
holding out a bruised hand where he’d hit his thumb with a spanner.

He showed me the car that he’d slept in and the motorbike and sidecar, but my eyes kept going back to the plane.

‘Are you ready?’ I asked.

‘Ready as I’ll ever be,’ he said, looking excited. ‘Black Mountains.’ He pointed out of the open door and towards the sea. ‘That’s where we’re
headed.’

I watched him race out of the building to George and I went over to Mum, Dad and Rebecca. I looked down into her pram and pulled one of the faces I know will make her laugh and she did.

‘Have you wished him luck?’ my mum asked and I ran over to the plane.

‘Zack! Zack!’ I shouted as he climbed the steps into the tiny cockpit. ‘Good luck, Zack!’ I shouted as George fastened his seat belt. ‘You’re the
bravest,’ I called as the engines roared into life, and Zack grinned back at me and shouted something, but I couldn’t hear him.

As the little plane started to move, he pointed at his chest and shouted down again.

‘Me tiger! You moth!’

The night we had our moonlight swim was amazing. I didn’t tell Alice, but when we first got down to the beach I was a bit scared of swimming in the blackish-looking
water. Even though the sky was lit up with the biggest moon I have ever seen, I was a bit nervous of swimming in water that was so dark. But when I watched Alice tear off her dressing gown and race
for the water I knew it would be all right and afterwards Mum told me that Dad would have been terrified of swimming in the dark too.

When Mum said that Hannah, Lexi and her friend Eddie were coming to visit, I groaned, remembering how annoying they were last time. But when they arrived and brought Otter I hugged him
tightly.

‘Surprise!’ Mum said and I kissed her cheek. What was even more surprising is that Otter has learnt a few new tricks from Eddie and Lexi, but he still chews stuff. I wasn’t
sure I really wanted to camp out with a bunch of girls, but I think I’m realising that girls can be pretty cool too. And Eddie has this really weird memory which I think is the coolest thing
ever. She can remember everything she reads. Not just a little bit,
everything
.

After the swim, we stayed up really late and I laughed so much that my stomach kind of hurt, and in the end David had to come outside and tell us to be quiet. I don’t know which one of the
girls was snoring, but it sounded a bit like a baby pig and I was having the best dream ever when a noise woke me up. It sounded like crunching or chomping and my heart almost stopped when a large
black shadow passed by the tent. At first I didn’t move, hoping that the thing had been a dream, but the chomping noise started again and this time it woke Alice up. Just as she opened her
eyes, the big black shadow moved past the other side of the tent.

‘Oh my God, Alice,’ I whispered, ‘what the hell is that?’

But Alice smiled. ‘Shh,’ she said, holding a finger to her lips and climbing carefully over Lexi’s feet to the end of the tent. ‘Don’t be scared.’

I felt my heartbeat get faster and faster as Alice slowly unzipped the tent.

‘Be very still and as quiet as quiet can be,’ she whispered into my ear. We inched closer to the gap and saw the moonlit garden as bright as before, but nothing out of the ordinary.
Then we heard it again.
Chomp, chomp, chomp
. I looked back at Alice with worried eyes, but she edged closer to the gap, tugged on my T-shirt and pointed. I leaned closer and turned my head
so that I was half in and half out of the tent. My eyes scanned the wall, the roses, and then it came into view.

‘Wow!’ I gasped. ‘Wow.’

Outside there was a baby deer! I watched the young stag lean into a rose bush and bite off one of the flowers.

‘They love roses,’ Alice whispered.

We watched it for ages, eating rose after rose, until it was as though it felt us watching and it slowly turned to face us. It tilted its head to one side and the moonlight lit up its antlers so
that I could see they had a sort of fur that kind of sparked in the light on them. I looked back at Alice and smiled, and the stag walked right past us, so close I could almost reach out and touch
its fur.

‘It’s called velvet,’ she said.

It made a little snuffling noise as it went past us and I watched in amazement as it leapt silently over the wall and disappeared.

The day George and I went up in his little plane it felt completely different, but it was like Dad was with me the whole time. The rain started in October and it didn’t
really stop. The snow came in December and the roads were so icy that even Otter sort of skidded across the little stone bridge. When Mum and I are out all day, Pippa comes over to stroke his ears
and give him some food. He’s already chewed my new guitar, but I don’t mind.

I know that I’ve only been at the new school for a little bit, but it’s kind of good and, even though I’ve made loads of new friends, I still can’t wait for the next
holiday. I especially can’t wait for it to be summer. I can’t wait for us all to be together again. I can’t wait to go back to Culver Manor and the secret beach that lies beyond
the garden door.

I was ten years old when I flew across the Irish Sea for the first time. I was twelve years old when I flew across the English Channel, landing safely and in time for dinner. I
was thirteen years old when I was flown in a bigger plane across the Atlantic and the landing that time was pretty hairy, but I loved it anyway. I love each take-off. I love the feeling as I fly
above the ocean. Each trip makes me feel closer to somewhere new and unexplored. It always feels like I’m the first person to see the shore, as though it’s me that has discovered a new
land for the very first time. Each time I plan a new trip, it’s the beginning of an adventure. Each time I leave, it’s exciting. It’s both exciting and completely terrifying, but
I love it.

I’m fifteen years old today and if I make it down safely I’ll be the youngest person to have ever circumnavigated the globe twice all by myself. If I make it before six pm, I may
even break the record. I’ve had a lot of luck on this flight. The weather has been just perfect. On the cockpit there’s a good-luck charm that’s made of tiny pink and white
shells. ‘
Keep them close
,’ she’d said to me and I had kept them close for three months straight. They’ve never left my sight.