Writing Down Under

Out of Bowland - Chapter One

The Grindlewallop - Chapter Four

The hole in the ground was ordinary enough – round, small, uninteresting. But the plump, pink finger that poked through from underneath was another matter altogether. And when it formed itself into a crook and gestured for Tara to come closer, she scarpered back through the bush on fine, wiry legs, almost taking flight at the old oak tree with its thousand spindly branches, a beckoning, menacing crowd calling over her head.

When she reached the back door of the boathouse she thought the best she could hope for right now, was that her heart might one day settle back into its regular beat. At this moment however, that was a far-off possibility.

Now for a little thought. Firstly, why did I volunteer to come to the boathouse before all the others? We do this trip every year, all the cousins and me, regular as the jacaranda blooms in November. It’s a break from routine – from school; from church; from dancing classes and tennis lessons – all those things adults insist we love but which, in all honesty, we endure for their sakes, not ours. If only we had the heart to tell them – that kind of routine is for old ladies and businessmen. This fortnight at the boathouse is our officially sanctioned Lord-of-the-flies vacation from restrictions. The only stipulations of course, are that we have to be at least fourteen years old and strong swimmers…but that’s just common sense. None of us want to go when we’re little. It’d scare the tripe out of us.

Anyway, no Lord-of-the-flies stuff ever happens here in our rustic little spot on the New England Plateau. We all get along like honey-bees and end up suntanned, healthy and disgustingly content at the end of every summer. For a whole two weeks we have no fears, no worries, no thoughts for the future; just lots of sucking on globby pink marshmallows toasted over the camp oven and pelting through the water, stretching our brown, racehorse limbs with an ecstatic lack of self consciousness. It’s bliss.

I should be thinking about that pink finger sticking out of the mud…but I can’t…simple as that. I might go mad in the trying. Sometime tonight I’ll think about it properly; or preferably in the morning when the candied light slips through the bamboo slats and I can hear the curlews crashing about in the bush. I’ll know then that everything is right and good in the world; that fingers do not, absolutely do not, poke through holes in the ground, unless they’re dead and buried in a shallow grave, of course. Stiff and white and probably gnawed to the bone. And that’s hairy enough. But this one was moving – plump, pink and moving. Very much alive.

Not thinking about it! It didn’t happen. Couldn’t. It’s being here alone with only the clean sounds of the bush and the earthy smells of rotting leaves and honey-tipped acacias to stir my senses. No wonder I get to imagining; hallucinating even. Mother would say I was the right age for that kind of thing. You know – all that dwelling somewhere in the twilight zone, hovering between reality and fantasy. Sometimes, she said she thought I walked through that mystical valley where the veil between this world and the next is gossamer thin and that it’s a shame really, that we lose touch with it as we grow older, and perhaps less wise. Is it any wonder I think weird things with a mother like that?

Thank God for Hesper. Practical, realistic, down-to-earth Hesper.

A chubby, beige and cream rat stood on her back feet on the second story of a well-equipped cage, two tiny pink hands in the begging position. She never failed to get Tara’s attention that way but just in case, she had an impressive array of acrobatics and theatrics ready to try out whenever Tara entered the room. She’d already gone through half a dozen of these routines in the past four minutes and was completely baffled when she got no response from Tara. So she returned to her best begging look and waited curiously, her head on one side, for her person to notice her…and let her out of the darned cage!

‘Hesper! Come on out of there, you silly thing.’

If only rats could talk.

‘Poor baby. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ignore you. It’s just that something really odd just happened. Really bizarre…and I…oh, come on…’

And Tara flipped open the wire cage gate and waited for Hesper to scramble onto her finger, up onto her shoulder and hide in her hair, weaving the usual wily rat’s nest at the nape of her neck. She’d had to buy a curry-comb just to deal with that. But Hesper hesitated on her finger for a moment, giving it a love-nip before moving on.

Finger.

‘Hess, you know the other day when you tried to steal my chocolate? Well, I just want you to know that it’s not good for you, that’s all. That’s why I had to take it away from you. I wasn’t just being mean. I couldn’t be mean to you, Hess. You know that, don’t you?’

Tara couldn’t be mean to anything living, and possibly even dead. She even had passing moments where she wondered if the grass hunched its shoulder blades away from her as she trod on it. Someone had said once that plants cringe from people who hurt them and it worried her for weeks, putting her in danger of becoming blatantly obsessive about it. But what if it was true? How could anyone eat? She was already a vegetarian and would have been a vegan if her father would let her; but he insisted, perhaps wisely, perhaps not, that she get through her growing years before she made that kind of decision.

‘I don’t think dogs and cats can survive a bout of chocolate, Hesper. I mean…it makes them really sick – sometimes they even die – and I couldn’t stand it if anything like that happened to you.’

There. Now she felt better. She’d lost sleep last night thinking she’d hurt her little ratty’s feelings and when she bit her finger, it reminded her…

Finger. Is there no getting away from that apparition? If that’s what it is?

Martha Pudding was only a two-way radio chat away, ‘Pudding’ not really being her name of course, but it suited her right down to her black currant eyes and doughy derriere. She was a gem of a woman though and all the kids loved her; relied on her in fact, and if she hadn’t been there, ‘a five minute holler through the bush’ as she called it, none of them would have been allowed to stay at the boathouse at all. She was their safety valve and Tara felt very much like calling her up and blowing off a bit of steam right now.

‘What can I say, Hesper? Hey, Mrs Pudding, have you ever seen a finger poking out of the ground and waving about in this part of the woods? No? Well…what about a suspicious looking hole in the ground that a finger might poke out of?’

No. It’d never do. Martha Pudding would explain it away as a snake or spider hole and warn her, unnecessarily, to tread carefully, keep her eyes open and give holes in the ground a wide berth. The rules of the Aussie bush.

Still, a cozy fireside chat couldn’t do any harm, could it? Without the fire maybe, given the stifling heat.

Tara pulled a stiff-backed hardwood chair up to the side table – slab really – that the two-way rested on and blew away the dust. It hadn’t been used in a year but the old beast never let them down. It was here when the ark was built and would probably survive some futuristic alien attack, when some sucker-fingered extra-terrestrial poked it with curiosity and…

Fingers again.

Tara felt a new obsession descending on her, trickling down through the cobwebby stuff of her mind like dust-motes in the sunlight; and doing her best to distract herself, she hurriedly picked up the radio and conjured up the familiar and comforting Mrs Pudding.

‘Mrs P…I’m so glad I got hold of you.’

‘Which kid is that? Rick?’

Mortifying.

‘I’m a girl, Mrs P. It’s Tara.’

‘Ahhhh…so it is. You two always did sound like two peas in a pod.’

Not any more, thought Tara, thinking of the hilarious gruff squawk that now came out of her fifteen year old cousin’s mouth, a sound that reminded her of gagging on hot potatoes.

‘Anyway, I’m not Mrs P, either, am I?’

Testy old thing.

‘Sorry, Mrs Thackery. I meant to say Mrs T.’

‘Oh, you did not. I’m well aware all you teenagers call me Mrs Pudding and I’m also intimately acquainted with the reasons why. At least you don’t call me Mrs Buns.’ And a raucous, vibrating laugh echoed through the airwaves, spinning around inside Tara’s ear, bumping off her cochlea and making her momentarily dizzy.

Mrs Pudding was irresistibly lovable, even in her madness…and even if she sent you mad in the process.

‘Aren’t you a bit early this year?’ she pressed on, like one of those curtain-flipping old ducks with too much time on their hands and not enough to do with it. As bad as that fiendish cat of hers in fact – old Curiosity himself.

‘I am, yes. I think I might have made a mistake coming here early but my new school finished a week before the rest and I thought I’d come down and make the place a bit respectable before the others arrive. It’s always so musty-smelling and covered in muck when we get here. We spend the first three days cleaning up.’

‘That’s true. Gets a bit damp in there through the winter, doesn’t it? Sometimes downright wet. I do check it over from time to time, you know…not as much as I should. Me old bones, y’understand? But you’d swear the place had been visited sometimes – and by real mischief-makers too. Sand everywhere. Pebbles. Bits of moss. Weird really.’

Tara shuddered.

‘I really shouldn’t have come. It seemed like such a good idea in the cold hard light of day.’

‘There’s nothing to worry about, love. Not in these parts. Lived here on me own for years now, haven’t I? Mr P’s been gone seven years now. Now there were a pudding if ever you saw one.’

‘But I remember him being so skinny! Like a long drink of water, you used to say.’

‘Yes…but what was inside his head was a bit of a cake mix, wasn’t it? Don’t you remember?’

She did…but she’d loved Mr P…or T…and she always thought the tales he told were pure make-believe, sprung from a fertile imagination he never bothered to keep in check. Not at his advanced age – why should he?

‘Mermaids indeed. He’d o’liked that, I’m sure…pretty little sylphs flittin’ about in the river. Silly old dodger.’

It was said, Tara knew, with the kind of soft-headed, life-long affection that turned insults into terms of endearment and ear-clippings into warm hugs. Old Martha had mourned for her old dodger, making them all tongue-tongued and bashful with her loud and unpredictable outbursts of tears, and though still round and merry, she had visibly shrunk since his passing. If only they knew she still cried sometimes, usually at first light when she missed him most. It was cruel to wake from a warm fuzzy dream, smiling softly and flinging her arm out across the bed, only to find it unrumpled and empty. Bereft. The young know so much and yet understand so little.

‘Always rattling on, he was. And the night before he died, he was still talking about mermaids and underworld things. Said I should go looking…when I asked him what I should be looking for, he said he wasn’t sure…couldn’t quite put his finger on it.’

Finger.

For a calm few moments Tara hadn’t thought once about the finger and now here it was again, peering up from inside her mind as surely as it had gawked up from the ground like a terrestrial periscope. A blight. A pestilence. Like lots of other pests that grew up through the ground – lantana, mother-of-millions, pokeweed.

The finger was a recalcitrant pest. Should she mention her fears to Martha Pudding? She’d probably think Tara was batty, just like her late husband, but maybe she’d offer to come round, keep her company for the night or more likely still, ask Tara to come to her own warm, fuzzy little cottage? That’d be lovely. It was only a short walk across fairly open country and all the kids could hike their way across with their eyes gummed shut – except for the possibility of snakes.

It wasn’t dark yet. In fact there was at least an hour of light left in the sultry day; long enough to do a quick tidy up, pack a small swag and impose of Mrs P for the night.

‘Would you like some company, Mrs T?’

Martha’s sister and niece had just left her in merciful and overdue peace the day before, having descended on her for a month of harassment and constant harping. ‘When are you coming back to the city to live with us, Marty? We worry about you alone out here, don’t you know?’ Well, she did know and she didn’t much care either. She dusted her hands of them brusquely after they left and looked forward to an evening in front of the radio - but she wasn’t a total ninny - she knew the sound of a scared kid when she heard it.

‘Would I ever, Tara-Diddle! I’ll help you put that boathouse to rights in the morning. Roast lamb alright for dinner?’

Tara’s stomach lurched left and right, heaved vertically a few times and settled somewhere in the middle in a calcified lump.

‘Um…sorry…I’m a vego, remember?’

‘Course! No worries. I’ve got enough potato, pumpkin and peas here to feed the proverbial…all home grown, don’t you know?’

‘Sounds great. I’ll bring chocolate! I remember how much you love it. Almost as much as me. Too-roo. See you in a few.’

‘Over and out, ya big lump.’

And Tara catapulted off the chair, determined to beat the fading light and feeling Hesper dig her claws in desperately, somewhere in the center of her cervical spine.

‘Lord, Hess. I wish I could give you a manicure. But I forgot you were there. Sorry.’

She sincerely hoped Martha Pudding liked rats. As for that sinister cat of hers – well, there are ways and means of hiding innocent creatures like Hesper and Tara knew all of them. The two simply never went anywhere without each other.

Besides, how could she leave Hess here alone when there was a great, plump finger surging up out of the ground, threatening murder and mayhem a mere half kilometer from the front door?

     The quadrangle was velvet black, lit only here and there by austere yellow lamps that stood nearly as tall as the buildings. In the northwest corner lay the School of Arts. KJ could just make out the scandalous sculptures that graced the foyer, their limbs sticking out in all sorts of crazy juxtapositions. No wonder Laura laughed at them and called them artwitsy, with emphasis on the ‘twit’. She had no time for those types she said, her own mind bent on things scientific, though it must be said, the more spectacular the science, the better.

     KJ smiled as she remembered her mother stomping up and down, beating out the small fires Laura liked to leave in the wake of her experiments. ‘You’re a  pyromaniac!’,  her mother piped in a high-pitched voice, looking as though she was about to burst into flames herself; certain Laura was going to reduce the house and its occupants to ashes. KJ’s mind lit on these tidbits from the not-so-distant past as she inched her way along the cold concrete paths that skirted the university’s lonely courtyard. In the daytime these hallowed halls of learning filled her with a sense of awe, and the great, grassy expanse at their centre was constantly filled with the busy criss-crossing of harried students. But at night, it was different, sinister even, and KJ hoped, with the smallest of shudders, that she was heading in the right direction.

     She went through the instructions in her mind. Past the dissection lab on the left and ... ugh, an pungent smell bit into her nostrils – formaldehyde. Hurrying along with one hand clapped across her mouth and nose, and tripping over the tail end of an abandoned shark carcass - blast, this was a bad idea! – she rounded one more corner and looked up. This must be it.

     Laura had given KJ instructions on how to reach her in the unlikely event that her sister happened to be in the city without her mother or father.  ‘Just in case you want to sneak in and get your belly button pierced or something and mum doesn’t want you to – which she won’t’. She said you couldn’t miss the main Chemistry Lab; it was on the top floor of the highest building. From where KJ stood, this looked like the one. Now, how to get in? And anyway, was Laura even there? She said she worked late most nights of the week but tonight, as luck would have it, everything was exceedingly dark and quiet.

     Schmack! The black rectangle that was the lab window lit up like a supernova! In that split second of light, a thin, ethereal-looking figure was seen darting backwards and forwards across the room, its hands flung wildly in the air as if searching for something. A moment later the light was doused and the window hurled open to let out a thick trail of pink-tinged smoke.

     Yep, that was Laura alright. Long, straggly strands of straight blond hair streamed out over the windowsill accompanied by a cacophony of choking noises. KJ gave her sister a moment to recover before stepping back a few paces from the edge of the building and waving her arms in a wide arc to attract her attention. No point in yelling - she’d never be heard six floors up.

     ‘Everything alright, Miss?’

     KJ nearly passed out with fright as two burly security guards appeared at her elbows, their eyes meeting above her head, trying to figure out what such a young girl was doing here.

     ‘What’s a bit of a kid doing out here on her own?’ queried one.

     ‘I’m waiting for my sister. She’s up there.’ And KJ looked skyward to where Laura hung loosely from the open sixth-floor window.

     ‘Oh, Miss Laura. Oh, well, yes. That’s why we came over here. See what the bang was all about.’

     ‘Yeah, again,’ interjected the other guard. ‘That sister o’ yours has always got us on the hop investigating strange noises in the night. She’s a right one for creating a scene.’

     KJ giggled. She could just imagine.

     ‘Hey! Dan! Dave! It’s okay! I’m alright! Just used a bit too much...’ And Laura’s voice trailed off as she rattled out a long chemical formula. KJ was amazed at how far her sister’s voice carried - for someone so petite she had great voice projection! Mum thought she sounded like a fishwife, whatever that was.

     ‘Hey!’ Down came the voice again. ‘Who’s that with you, anyway?’

     ‘She says she’s your sister. She’s waiting for you,’ offered the first guard.

     ‘Who?’

     ‘Your sister!’ he fairly screamed. But it was no good.

     ‘Whoa?’

     Simultaneously, the guards directed their torches at KJ’s round, pale face.

     ‘Well, good Lord!’ Laura shrieked and seconds later the bottom-floor lift groaned open to expel a slightly blackened, pretty girl with eyes as dark as anthracite. Yes, she was certainly made for fire, this one.

     ‘Miss Laura, you’re gonna kill yourself one day.’

     ‘No, I won’t Dave. I know what I’m doing.’

     ‘Yeah, looks like it.’

     ‘Well, we’ll be off then, young ladies. Make sure you stay safe now. And you’d better clean up that mess, Miss Laura. If the professor gets wind of it and asks us what we know, we’re going to have to tell him, okay?’

     ‘Of course, Dave. I won’t leave any evidence, don’t worry.’ By this time Laura was hugging her sister tight, a new habit she’d developed that still slightly embarrassed KJ, given they’d spent the first decade of their lives fighting like sisters should. And this new stage of sisterhood, the best friend stage, was still slightly uncomfortable. Not that she didn’t love Laura, it’s just that she hadn’t quite learned to stop expecting a punch to come out of the blue…just for fun.

     But no punch was forthcoming as they headed back into the elevator and pressed the button for the sixth floor.

     As soon as the heavy metal doors closed, Laura spun her sister around to face her, asking in a panicked voice, ‘What’s up? Have you run away from home? How in the name of heaven did you get here?’

     ‘On the bus. And I haven’t exactly run away from home…not really…although it is possible Mum and Dad might interpret it that way.’

     ‘But why, KJ? You and the oldies always got along. Not like me. I’m the one who’s supposed to be in trouble around here.’

     ‘I’m not in trouble. Yet. But I will be when they find out I didn’t come home from Biddy’s place, which, when I think about it, would have been about four hours ago.’

     ‘Okay, kiddo. Do you want to start at the beginning? Or somewhere close to it? I’ll have to start cleaning up here but you can tell me all about it while I work.’

     The steel doors whined open, releasing them into a wide corridor that smelled of sulphur, bromide, ancient textbooks and old sneakers. Old sneakers? Stuart must be here somewhere.

     Laura’s boyfriend stuck his scruffy head out from behind the third door on the right, the room from which KJ had seen sparks issuing moments before.

     ‘KJ! Little sis. How are you doing? And what are you doing here?’

     ‘She’s going to tell us the whole story while we clean up, Stuart,’ Laura interjected with a reproachful look that warned him she was well aware he was about to skip out on clean-up duty. It earned for her a goofy look from him; a look that always annoyed KJ but seemed to make her silly sister’s heart skip beats.

     And so KJ started to tell her story somewhere near the beginning. She told them of the Grindlewallop, of the koalas crying in the gum trees, of the poison lillypillies, the toxic waterways, the starving wildlife and lastly of the disappearance of her best bud, Biddy.

     She stopped at this point and looked up to see her listeners gaping at her, motionless but for the rise and fall of their chests. A wave of heat migrated from her chest to her face as she realized she must sound like she’d completely lost her mind.

     ‘KJ?’ ventured Stuart at last, ‘What are you on? I want some.’

     ‘Shut up, Stuart,’ spat Laura. ‘KJ’s as straight as there is. She’s not on anything. There’s got to be something more to this.’

     The two of them moved closer to KJ and Laura tentatively reached out to touch her sister’s ski-jump nose, a gesture from childhood. She bent a little at the knees, bringing their eyes into alignment,noticing she didn’t have to bend so far these days.

     ‘Have you been sick, sis?’ she asked, her lustrous eyes growing even larger with concern.

     ‘No Laura. I’m as healthy as ever. I know it sounds crazy…but honestly, this really happened. You know me…I don’t make things up. Why would I? I just want to find Biddy. Everyone thinks she’s dead. They found her strawberry hat in the mud at the edge of the lake.  And I found out about it right after I spoke to the Grindlewallop.’

     She was aware she was running off at the mouth and definitely not making much sense but KJ was scared, very scared. Scared for her friend, scared for the Australian bush and frankly, scared at what her role in all this might be.

     ‘Synchronicity.’ One word and it came from Laura.

     No one answered. They had no idea what she was talking about.

     ‘You know, she continued. Synchronicity – nothing in the universe is a coincidence. It’s all part of a bigger plan. It wasn’t just lucky timing that you happened to run into a weird creature with a weird story…and then got home to find out something weird has happened to Bid. Get it?’

     They didn’t. A vestige of understanding was lapping at the shores of KJ’s consciousness but Stuart’s slate remained resolutely blank.

     ‘KJ…you were given this information for a reason. Probably because you’re still so young and it’s easy for you to access these states of consciousness.’

     ‘You’ve gone all esoteric on us, Laura.’ Esoteric was a word KJ didn’t expect to find in Stuart’s vocabulary. Her sister must have taught him a few things, a few questionable things perhaps but at least he’d been listening. He rose a point or two in her estimation.

     ‘But it wasn’t a state of consciousness, Laura. It was real. The Grindlewallop had fair dinkum flesh and blood, fur, eyes, hands, a voice. He even ate a vegemite sandwich.’

     ‘Well, I know it must seem that way, darling.’ (Oh Lord, she was getting all big-sisterly on her.)

     ‘What difference does it make?’ blurted Stuart. ‘I mean if the information is real and useful, the information is real and useful. Period.’

     He had a point. That was one good thing about boys, and God knew there had to be something good about boys, KJ mused, but the thing was they did haven’t a talent for cutting to the chase.

     Laura wiped the last of the soot off the laboratory benches, closed the sliding window and ushered them through the door into the corridor, leaving behind only the faintest aftertaste of chemicals and bringing with them the unavoidable smell of old sneakers.

     The student dorms were a short walk back across the quadrangle, through the arch that led between the Faculty of Literature and the Faculty of Environmental Sciences and past the amphitheatre. If they hadn’t had Stuart with them they’d have called the security bus. Nasty things happen on university campuses late at night. Checking out Stuart’s spider-monkey legs (that boy should never wear shorts she noted), she wondered what possible good he might be in a confrontation. She wasn’t at all convinced by Laura’s adoring descriptions of his prowess at ju jitsu and tai kwon do but held fast to the hope there was safety in numbers.

     Laura’s room was at the back of the building and Stuart’s in another building altogether. The sexes were only allowed to fraternize between the hours of 9.00am and 10.00pm and it was now past eleven so Stuart reluctantly took his leave, too aware of KJ to give Laura more than an affectionate peck on the cheek. Just as well, KJ thought. That was probably as much as she could handle.

     Inside with Laura, they began to formulate a plan based on all the information the Grindlewallop had given her. It wasn’t long before they decided quickly and unanimously on the first step.

     ‘You’ll have to speak with the Faerie Queen first. She’ll be able to help you from there.’

     ‘I know,’ said KJ. ‘But I don’t know where to find her. The Grindlewallop said he’d take me to her when I got back from seeing you but he scampered after a fluorescent green hare before I could make proper arrangements.’

     Laura shot her sister a wary look but decided to say nothing. After everything she’d heard so far, a fluorescent green hare wasn’t that implausible.

     ‘Well, we know he hangs out at the river, right? And he absolutely loves vegemite sandwiches, you said?’

     ‘Yes. He’s crazy about them. Are you saying we could sort of lure him out again?’

     ‘You got it. You might have to be a bit patient but then, you were always very patient, KJ.’

     Wow! Laura noticed? She actually picked up on her patience and determination? KJ figured she’d always been too busy and distracted to notice what her little sister was up to. She was always on the move; in perpetual motion as Dad said. A wave of affection washed over KJ and she almost hugged her sister – almost – but Laura, already on a new train of thought, stood up quickly and was climbing on top of a chair.

     ‘You’ll need pillows and sheets and blankets if you’re going to stay the night – and you are going to stay the night,’ she tossed over her shoulder at KJ. ‘I have plenty of spares here somewhere.’ And she reached into a long, high cupboard above the bed and started hurtling the bed linen onto the floor.

     ‘There’s a trundle under my bed.’

     KJ reached under and pulled it out, along with a couple of chocolate wrappers and a dusty teddy bear. Laura ate more chocolate than anybody she knew; in fact, Laura ate more of everything than anybody she knew. It was a marvel. Look at her with her legs fit to snap, her non-existent hips and surfboard belly. Where KJ was all softness and curves, Laura was all lean lines and neat edges. The proverbial chalk and cheese, and both, her mother always said, astoundingly beautiful.

     Of course, KJ thought her mother was delusional at best, barking mad at worst and though she thought her sister was stunning, she maintained that she herself was the original Plain Jane. You only had to look at the fashion magazines to see that. You didn’t see any models her size, after all and you didn’t even see many brunettes, did you? So, she decided at the tender age of eleven, that her fate was sealed as one of the people in the world who would have to make it on wit and personality. At least she felt safe on that score.

     After Laura had sneaked into the dormitory kitchen to bring back ‘a little something for a bedtime snack’ (which turned out to be three slices of cheese pizza each and half a tub of toffee ice-cream), KJ’s eyes were beginning to slide down her face and ooze onto the pillow. A quick brushing and flossing and she surrendered herself to the depths of the doonah and slept soundly.

     For a few minutes Laura watched her sleep and then turned to the bedside table, picked up a silver pen and notebook and began to write a letter…Dear Mum and Dad…

.............................................

     When KJ woke the next morning she looked about in panic, for a moment not recognizing where she was. Then she was in for two more surprises. Firstly, Laura, who’d always considered it a sacrilege to rise before nine o’clock, when breakfast in the dining hall well and truly over, was already up and dressed. Secondly, the same sister was dressed in army green cargo pants – in fact, they might have been exactly that; army issue military pants on the girl who normally swanned about in long, floaty dresses, even in the laboratory where they had the nasty habit of catching on the Bunsen burner.

     It seemed she’d entered some kind of alternative universe; what with the Grindlewallop and his strange tales and now this.

     Laura beamed at her, ready as ever for adventure and, as she called it, affirmative action! (Always with the exclamation mark.) Beside her was an empty rucksack, which KJ was about to find out, needed filling with supplies.

     An hour and a half later, after a hasty shower and cold toast, fruit, nuts and cereal nicked from the kitchen, KJ pulled on the only spare pair of jeans she’d brought with her and exited the dorm, Laura leading the way with a look of jaunty satisfaction about her. She was a born leader.

     Inside the army surplus store, a dusty den where everything was green, beige or brown, the girls set about making their purchases.

     ‘Pocket knife.’

     ‘Check.’

     ‘Can opener.’

     ‘Check.’ At least KJ thought it was a can opener – she’d need a crash course on how to use it and screwed up her nose at Laura.

     ‘Stuart’ll know how. He’s done a survival course and all that,’ and both of them burst out laughing at the thought of the pale boy with thin, spidery legs learning how to survive anywhere outside his mum’s kitchen. Sometimes the pair of them could be very silly and they’d missed the old times when they trundled about together talking ‘absolute rubbish’, as their mother called it.

     ‘Sleeping bag.’

     ‘Check. I settled on the green one…or maybe I should go for the green one…or that one over there…you know, the green one.’ And they were off again, giggling, much to the irritation of the lone shop keeper. And he was big and hairy so they swallowed their laughter and tried to be serious again.

     ‘Water bottle. Canvas. Standard army issue,’ Laura barked… oh, it was no good… the shop keeper would just have to cope. And KJ held her belly and looked like she might explode. Neither was quite certain why it was so hilarious. Perhaps it was just nerves but they doubted it.

     ‘Three pairs of army trousers. Hey! Only ten bucks. That’s not bad. Make it four pairs, one in my size.’

     ‘Okay, three pudding sized and one to fit a pretzel.’

     ‘KJ. That’s not funny. You’re not a pudding. You’re absolutely beautiful. You’ll be knocking the boys back with a stick before you know it.’

     At least that sounded reasonable. Boys! Puke. A stick could definitely come in handy there.

     ‘Okay. You’d better get some thick socks. At least six pairs since you won’t be able to wash that often and you know what your feet are like.’

     She did…and threw seven pairs in her size (freaking huge everyone said) onto the counter.