trottered over to the van. As she opened the door, she said, ‘Vicky’s sleepin’.’ The trumpeter pulled her in, threw down his trumpet, and they started snogging as hungrily as two dogs attacking a box of Milk Tray. The camper van began to vibrate.
I dropped off the oil tank, slipped on a golf ball, got up, dashed over the lawn, fell over an invisible croquet hoop, got up, then misjudged my jump on to the fence-beam. My foot made a splintering whack!
You’re bacon, stated Unborn Twin.
I swung myself over the fence and fell to earth like a sack of logs.
The third cottage was where Mr Broadwas lives. If Mr Broadwas saw me, he’d phone my dad and I’d be dismembered by midnight. Sprinklers swwsss-swwsss-swwwsssed. Drops swept my face where I sat. Most of the garden was hidden by a screen of runner beans.
I had another problem. In the trumpeter’s garden behind me, a woman’s voice called out. ‘Come back, Gerry! It’s only them foxes again!’
‘Tain’t no fox! It’s one o’ them kids!’
Two hands, right above my head, gripped the fence.
I sprinted to the end of the runner beans. I froze.
Mr Broadwas sat on the doorstep. Water chundered into a metal watering can from a tap.
Panic swarmed up me like wasps in a tin.
The woman’s voice behind me said, ‘It’s a fox, Gerry! Ted shot one last week what he thought was the Beast o’ Dartmoor first off.’
‘Oh aye?’ The hands left the top of the fence. One hand appeared in a hole my foot’d punched through the fence. ‘A fox did this, did it?’
Once again, the trumpeter’s fingers appeared on top. The fence groaned as he prepared to heave himself up.
Mr Broadwas hadn’t heard ’cause of the water noise, but now he put down his pipe on the step, and stood up.
Trapped, trapped, trapped. Dad’d murder me.
‘Mandy?’ A new voice came from the garden behind me. ‘Gerry?’
‘Oh, Vicks,’ said the first woman. ‘We heard a strange noise.’
‘I was practisin’ my trumpet,’ said the man, ‘and I heard a funny sound, so I came out to take a gander.’
‘Oh aye? Then what’s this?’
Mr Broadwas turned his back to me.
The fence ahead was too high to jump over, with no finger-holds.
‘I CAN SMELL HIM ON YER! I CAN SEE YER LIPPY!’
Mr Broadwas closed off the tap.
‘IT’S NOT LIPSTICK, YER CRAZY BINT,’ screamed the trumpeter over the fence, ‘IT’S JAM!’
My dad’s gardener walked up to where I crouched, water sloshing in his can. His eyes met mine but he didn’t look remotely surprised.
‘I came in to find a tennis ball,’ I blurted.
‘The easiest way is down behind the shed.’
This didn’t sink in at first.
‘You’re wasting precious time,’ added Mr Broadwas, turning to his row of onions.
‘Thanks,’ I gulped, realizing that he knew I’d lied but was letting me off scot-free anyway. I dashed down the path and around the corner of the shed. The air in the gap was heavy with fresh creosote fumes. Mr Broadwas must’ve been a Spook when he was younger too, then.
‘I WISH MUM’D DROWNED YER IN WORCESTER CANAL!’ The second woman’s scream sliced the cool murk. ‘BOTH OF YER! IN A SACK FULL O’ STONES!’
The moon-rocky fourth garden was a spillage of concrete meringue and gravel. Ornaments everywhere. Not just gnomes, but Egyptian sphinxes, Smurfs, fairies, sea otters, Pooh Bear and Piglet and Eeyore, Jimmy Carter’s face, you name it. Himalayas divided the garden down the middle at shoulder height. This sculpted garden’d once been a local legend and so had its creator, Arthur Evesham. The Malvern Gazetteer’d printed photos with the headline THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE GNOME. Miss Throckmorton’d brought our class to have a look. A smiley man’d served us all Ribena and iced biscuits with pin-men doing sports on them. Arthur Evesham’d died of a heart attack a few days after our visit, in fact. That was the first time I’d heard ‘heart attack’ and I thought it meant your heart suddenly went crazy and attacked the rest of your body like a ferret down a rabbit warren. You sometimes see Mrs Evesham in Mr Rhydd’s, buying old people’s groceries like Duraglit and that toothpaste that tastes of Germolene.
So anyway, Arthur Evesham’s kingdom’d uglified since his death. A Statue of Liberty lay like a dropped murder weapon. Pooh Bear looked like an acid attack victim. The world unmakes stuff faster than people can make it. Jimmy Carter’s nose’d fallen off. I pocketed it, just because. The one sign of life was a candle in an