The Exiles

them back downstairs, where she dug out a couple of bags. ‘Look at the time! And I’ve got so much to do today. Give me a kiss, it’s time you were gone. And make sure you bring those bags back. And don’t go bringing a lot of rubbish home with you!’
    ‘It’s our pictures and projects,’ said Rachel, hurt dreadfully at this remark. ‘Nearly all my pictures have been on the wall.’
    ‘Mine’s mostly rubbish,’ agreed Phoebe cheerfully, ‘but I’m bringing it home anyway. There’s too much to throw away. I’ve been saving it for you.’
    Mrs Conroy sighed at the thought as she shepherded them out of the house. ‘Cross the road with the lollipop lady,’ she called.
    ‘Don’t you want to see my pictures and projects?’ asked Rachel mournfully, but her mother had already closed the door.

    Ruth and Naomi arrived back that afternoon to find their mother at the gate, impatiently waiting for Rachel and Phoebe to return.
    ‘They’re bringing their bags of junk home,’ Ruth reminded her. ‘That’s what’s taking them so long.’
    ‘You two go and meet them and give them a hand then,’ her mother replied. ‘They should have been home half an hour ago. I think they walk more slowly every day.’
    ‘It’s the weight of their brains,’ remarked Naomi.
    They found their little sisters three quarters of the way back already, a weary looking pair, travel stained and burdened by the fruits of a year’s industrious paperwork. Phoebe had a newly grazed knee that still trickled blood down onto her sock, and both of them bore traces of recently dried tears on their cheeks. Bulging carrier bags weighed them down, and they hugged uncurling rolls of pictures to their chests with one hand, while between them they carried a huge paper and balsa wood model of the town centre that had been constructed by the entire school in the course of several weeks’ geography lessons. It looked very heavy, and had obviously been dropped many times already; a lot of the houses and the entire church tower had become loose and were lying in the river, which was a real river, lined with a plastic bag and filled with water. Even now not all the water had leaked away.
    Rachel and Phoebe lowered their prize carefully to the ground and stood waiting for their sisters.
    ‘Look what we’ve got,’ said Rachel proudly. ‘They gave it to us to share.’
    ‘They gave it to us for nothing ,’ stressed Phoebe, ‘and it’s probably worth pounds and pounds!’
    ‘Well, I’m going,’ said Naomi after one horrified glance. ‘Somebody might see me with you. Unless you promise to leave it there and walk quietly away.’
    ‘I think,’ said Ruth from the kerbstone where she was sitting to enable her to laugh in comfort, ‘we’ll probably be arrested if we just leave it here.’ Rachel and Phoebe started to cry. It had been a hard journey.
    ‘Don’t you think it’s lovely?’ wailed Rachel.
    ‘Pick up the other side, Naomi,’ ordered Ruth, ‘and we’ll run with it as fast as we can.’
    ‘Me?’ asked Naomi, ‘carry that thing?’
    ‘Yes, quick, before anyone comes.’
    ‘Damn!’ said Naomi gloomily, but picking up her end nevertheless. ‘I wish I’d never come! Well, let’s run fast and get it over with.’
    So they ran fast, and Rachel and Phoebe followed screeching, ‘You’ll break it! You’ll spill the water!’ while they stooped to pick up stray trees and house roofs, and dropped their rolls of paper every time they bent.

    ‘They must be mad at that school!’ said Mrs Conroy when she saw her daughters. ‘Letting you cart home a thing like that. I don’t know what they’re thinking of, and I’d go and tell them so if I wasn’t so busy this week. And where do you think you’re taking it?’ she asked Rachel, who had got hold of one end of the construction and was bumping it up the stairs, leaving a trail of flaked off paint behind her.
    ‘Nowhere,’ answered Rachel, who got more like her big sisters every day.
    ‘You’ll have to put it in the garden – it can stay there until the dustmen come. I’ll have to ask them to take it specially.’
    Rachel and Phoebe started mechanically to cry, Phoebe reflecting that it got easier to make real tears come every time.
    ‘My class painted the streets and grass,’ she grizzled.
    ‘Very badly,’ commented Naomi dispassionately. ‘Why are the banks of the river purple?’
    ‘Why can’t I ever have anything?’ snuffled Rachel. ‘Why can’t I take