The Exiles

any longer. I didn’t invite you here so that you might spend the whole summer breathing your quarrelsome little breaths down my neck.’ And she forced them to put on coats, fitted them out with umbrellas, and pushed them out for a walk. They slopped sulkily down to the post office and bought stamps and sweets.
    ‘Ice cream here,’ said the shopman proudly. ‘Told you we’d be getting it in!’ He wrung his hands and grinned weakly at them and pointed to a coloured chart which displayed the different ice creams and lollipops he had now acquired.
    ‘They’d wash away if we took them outside,’ Ruth said.
    The shopman straightened up and looked indignantly at her. ‘Better not grumble had we? Rain’s what makes the lakes, and the lakes are what the visitors come for.’
    They stomped back up the hill feeling snubbed.
    ‘You’re back quickly,’ said Big Grandma as they came in. ‘Out you go again!’ and before they could protest she had handed Rachel a bundle of letters to post, and shut the front door on them.
    ‘What shall we do?’ asked Rachel, looking at the letters as if they might explode.
    ‘Post them,’ said Ruth, ‘or she’ll never let us in again.’
    ‘Drop them,’ ordered Naomi, and Rachel, who had been trained to obey, dropped them in the mud.
    ‘Now pick them up,’ said Naomi, ‘and come on, or we’ll be out all night.’
    ‘Why did Rachel have to drop them?’ asked Phoebe, running after her as she set off down to the village again.
    ‘She was watching from the window,’ explained Ruth, ‘smirking!’
    ‘Self defence,’ added Naomi, ‘after all, she attacked first!’

Chapter Six
    Once, much earlier in the history of the Conroy family, a coloured pamphlet had arrived at the house through the post. It had been found by Rachel, and Rachel had kept it a secret. As far as she could make out it was offering free books (there had been a picture of the books) to anyone who cared to tick the ones they wanted and post it back with their name and address filled in where it said ‘Name’ and ‘Address’. Rachel had carried out these instructions, and for a long time, even when the twenty four very heavy books had been returned, she had received letters addressed to ‘Dear Sir/Madam’. The books were almost forgotten now, and so was the cost of their return postage, and even the threats of what would happen to her if she ever did such a thing again. All that remained in Rachel’s memory of the incident was the knowledge that you could begin a letter ‘Dear Sir/Madam’, and it would do for anyone in the world.

    ‘Dear Sir/Madam’, wrote Rachel to her parents:
    The sausages here are not like the sausages at home they are all one long one that you have a bit of. We had sausages for tea. Ruth is writing to you and so is Naomi and so is Phoebe. We are having a nice time. [‘That’s a lie,’ Naomi said, reading over Rachel’s shoulder.]
    Love from Rachel
    Do you miss me?

    Phoebe’s letter was very short and she would not accept any help with the spelling so no one knew what it was about. She wrote it lying on the floor with the paper shoved under her stomach, and after a long and painful time she had accomplished one line which simply remarked: ‘I hop you will send my muny son’.
    The rest of the page she filled with kisses, and she drew a picture of money on the back.

    After a lot of staring at the ceiling Ruth began:

    Dear Mum and Dad,
    I hope you are well. I will have to buy another suitcase to put my bones in. I do not know how much they cost. I don’t know what Phoebe is writing – she will not show anyone. Please could you send us some books to read. We have read all of Big Grandma’s and there is no library in the village. Please send as many as you can – it doesn’t matter which. We climbed a huge mountain the day Mum went away and the next day we went to the beach, but it has done nothing but rain since. Big Grandma makes us go out even if it is raining because she doesn’t want us under her feet all day. We have been doing all the work, and washing up after every meal (unless we eat until we are nearly sick like she does). Big Grandma says there are badgers living near here. I’m going to see them if it stops raining. Sometimes (but not often) she is quite nice to us. I hope the books come soon.
    Love Ruth
    P.S. There are a lot of things I would like to say but am not saying, so this is a rather short letter.

    Naomi wrote:

    Dear Everyone,
    Will