The Exiles

her head and said she did not know.
    ‘Well, hurry up! Have you seen if that door’s still locked?’ For several days the girls had, at every available opportunity, sneaked through Big Grandma’s bedroom to test the lock of the store room door.
    ‘Tried it about an hour ago.’
    Naomi sighed and stared critically at Ruth’s picture. ‘Why are you painting it anyway? She doesn’t like things like that. Think of that whole box of ornaments she gave to Graham for his shooting practice.’
    ‘She’ll like this.’ Ruth put down her brush to ram a handful of loose vertebrae into a skull. ‘What are you giving her? Have you thought of anything?’
    ‘There’s something I’ve got to do for a goodbye present,’ said Naomi cautiously, ‘but I won’t be able to tell you what it is until I’ve done it.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘In case I can’t,’ thought Naomi. ‘What about my lettuces and radishes?’ she asked aloud.
    ‘What about them?’
    ‘Nothing,’ said Naomi sadly. She had given up the daily drenching of their roots with Baby Bio. It seemed to make no difference. Instead she turned her attention to the rough patch of ground where the cabbages had been. The earth was all weedy and lumpy looking, and she remembered the night before she had broken her arm when Big Grandma had said, ‘I wish I could dig over that patch where the cabbages were,’ and she regretted not having returned that night and dug it in the dark. Now Graham would do it, when they were gone, and perhaps Big Grandma would say, ‘I thought Naomi might do that, but of course she couldn’t, not with a broken arm’. Then Naomi, who had so far always contrived to carry out Big Grandma’s gardening challenges, would have failed.

    There was a scholarly group gathered beneath the damson tree. Rachel, seated as if for inspiration on a stack of Shakespeare ( Histories and Poems, Tragedies and Romances, Comedies ), was editing and amending her diary which she had finally decided to bestow on Big Grandma.
    ‘Will you miss me when I’m gone?’ she asked Big Grandma.
    Big Grandma paused and put down the potato she was peeling, made a move on the chessboard that stood between herself and Phoebe, checked the amount of peas her opponent had shelled, and answered ‘Possibly.’
    Naomi arrived to say, with a definite note of panic in her voice, ‘It’s only forty and a half more hours now. This time next week do you know where we’ll be? This time the day after tomorrow we’ll be nearly back. It’s half past three. It’ll be dark in less than five hours and there won’t be time to do anything tomorrow, I’ve got to go to the hospital. How can you all just sit there? Don’t you know how fast it’s going—’
    ‘Naomi, stop!’ commanded Big Grandma.
    ‘And there’s still something I’ve got to do,’ said Naomi, and she gazed worriedly down the garden.

    Evening came with a sunset of flame and scarlet over the sea. Big Grandma, thinking it might be calming, drove them down to the beach to watch it. The sky was fire coloured in the West, pale green overhead, and blue with stars in it above the hills. ‘This time in two days’ time,’ said Rachel mournfully, ‘Mum will be trying to make us go to bed.’
    ‘In our new pale pink bedrooms,’ added Phoebe, remembering the latest phone call from Lincolnshire. ‘My most unfavourite colour.’
    ‘Pale pink bedrooms,’ repeated Big Grandma callously, ‘which will just match your pale pink cowardly little characters. What’s happened to your courage? Packed It?’

    ‘Pale pink cowardly little characters,’ thought Naomi, alone and watchful in the middle of the night, and she got out of bed.
    ‘What are you doing?’ whispered Ruth across the dark.
    ‘Nothing. D’you think Big Grandma’s asleep?’
    ‘I heard her come up half an hour ago. Why? Why are you getting dressed?’
    ‘Ssssh.’
    ‘Tell me where you’re going.’
    ‘You wouldn’t understand,’ said Naomi, who did not quite understand herself. ‘Anyway, I haven’t got time. Not far.’
    ‘How far?’
    ‘Just to the garden if you must know.’ Naomi opened the bedroom door and peered cautiously out. All the lights were switched off, and except for the sound of Big Grandma’s windy breathing the house seemed quiet.
    ‘Bye,’ whispered Naomi, and padded in her socks down the stairs. In the kitchen she pulled on a pair of Big Grandma’s wellington boots, found the torch that was kept beside the fuse