The Exiles

to Naomi. ‘Your joints get stiff and you’ve read all the good books and everyone expects you to be a dear old lady.’
    ‘No one expects you to be a dear old lady.’
    ‘Praise be,’ said Big Grandma. ‘Have you fought with your sisters?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Graham?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Yourself ?’
    ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘I got stuck on the rock and couldn’t get down.’
    ‘I wish I could dig over that patch where the cabbages were,’ said Big Grandma, ‘but I don’t suppose I ever will. I believe I mentioned it to you before?’
    ‘Do you want me to do it this minute?’ asked Naomi. ‘In the dark?’
    ‘Tomorrow would do. What else did I miss?’
    ‘Rachel hooted in the cave and scared Graham. Phoebe made Ruth angry by crawling down a badger’s hole to look for badgers.’
    ‘Tell on, tell on,’ urged Big Grandma, giving Naomi the tomatoes to carry and leading the way back to the house.
    ‘Graham fell asleep with his mouth open. He snored.’
    ‘Burnt shepherd’s pie for tea,’ said Big Grandma. ‘Any more thrilling events? Hope you don’t mind it burnt?’
    ‘We can scrape the top off,’ said Naomi. ‘Ruth found a lot more bones for her collection. Leg bones and another head, but they’ve still got stuff sticking to them.’
    ‘Dear God,’ said Big Grandma. ‘Quick Naomi, I can’t run. Don’t let her put them into the fridge!’

    ‘What you have to do,’ explained Ruth, consuming pie and salad at a startling speed, ‘is simply bury them in a large anthill and the ants eat all the meaty bits off.’
    ‘How long does it take?’
    ‘Several months – my book says so. Will you dig them up when they’re done and post them to me, Big Grandma?’
    ‘Certainly not!’ said Big Grandma.

Chapter Ten
    It was morning. Just. A bare grey light seeped in through the windows, into the rooms where Phoebe and Rachel and Ruth and Big Grandma lay fast asleep, and Naomi stood wide awake and dressed. Outside it was either very misty or drizzling with rain, it was difficult to tell which from indoors.
    ‘It’s rain!’ thought Naomi as she got outside and felt it. ‘Damn!’
    But she went anyway, and far sooner than she had expected she reached the quarry.
    Things dreaded, dentists’ appointments for example, always come faster than expected. Naomi’s thoughts were swinging between two daydreams. One was of herself, dead, and everyone being stricken with guilt. The other was of herself, alive, and everyone being rescued from sheer rock faces in howling gales by Naomi, heroine, Blue Peter gold medallist. Not that she wanted a Blue Peter gold medal of course, but she would enjoy donating it to the school bazaar. That would make their eyes stick out.
    Past the badger setts (no badgers about), and on into the quarry and up the path to the big cave. It was very quiet, and the rocks and slopes still clutched the last dim blurs of night around them. There was no wind, nothing but grey light and misty, soaking rain. Here was Graham’s precious staircase. The way he’d gone on about it, thought Naomi, you’d think he’d personally gnawed it out of the rock with his teeth. In a couple of minutes she reached the top and glanced round the upstairs cave. Very boring indeed.
    ‘Well, I’ve been here!’ thought Naomi, and she stuck the notice she had made, NAOMI WAS HERE, in the middle of the cave and put a stone on the top to stop it blowing away.
    Then she started back.
    ‘It’s easy,’ she thought, standing on the place where the awful panic of the day before had struck and looking downwards.
    ‘Jump then,’ suggested the nasty spirit that haunts high places and sheer drops. The ragged bramble bush tangle of the quarry lurched as Naomi stared at it.
    ‘It swayed,’ she thought. ‘No, I swayed. It’s too high.’ And now she was clutching hard onto the wet rocky side of the path.
    ‘Relax!’ she told herself, with her eyes screwed tight shut. ‘It’s easy! You climbed up all right!’
    She felt herself slip and opened her eyes in alarm. The world seemed to be heaving and swinging. She couldn’t see properly.
    ‘Hold on,’ she thought. ‘Mountain Rescue will find you!’
    Her hands shifted on the wet slate and a bit broke off. Then her knees caved in. Then, with a huge feeling of relief, she fell.

    It should have been noisy, falling like that, not so dead quiet. There should have been trumpets and shrieks and sirens, and huge explosions, but