the garden and sprawled himself on the grass next to Mr Grantham’s deckchair.
‘Suit yourself, young lady,’ grunted Mr Grantham. ‘It’s your garden too.’
‘Chloe,’ she said. ‘My name’s Chloe.’
‘And mine’s Mr Grantham.’
They settled into silence, broken only by the sounds of nature and Chloe’s pages being turned.
‘What’re you reading?’ asked Mr Grantham at length. ‘One of them Harry Potters?’
‘Not this time,’ said Chloe. She held it up. ‘It’s a book called Holes. It’s about a boy in America …’
‘Oh, don’t tell me the plot,’ said Mr Grantham quickly, waving skinny fingers at her. ‘Nothing so boring as hearing the plot of a novel second-hand. Drives you potty.’
Chloe refused to be annoyed by this old man. She always considered herself good at charming reluctant people and this was a challenge.
‘Harry Potty?’ she said.
Mr Grantham, despite himself, chuckled.
‘Very good, very good.’
‘I always carry a list of my top twenty favourite books,’ said Chloe, taking a folded sheet of paper from her jeans pocket. ‘Do you want to hear it?’
‘Not especially. Do you want to hear my life story?’
He was being sarcastic and was startled when Chloe replied, ‘Yes. I expect it’s very interesting.’ She put the book down in a deliberate way. Nelson gave a great big yawn and rolled over onto his back, his remaining three legs sticking in the air. His eyes were looking up at Mr Grantham’s face as if in expectation.
‘Well,’ said Mr Grantham, flustered. He waved away a wasp that came too near. ‘I don’t expect it’s that interesting, to a young person like you.’ He changed the subject. ‘This your cat? What’s her name?’
‘Our cat, and his name’s Nelson.’
‘Likes water and sailing ships, does he?’
Chloe smiled. ‘No, of course not, but he’s lost a limb – in the same place as the admiral.’
‘Oh, very good.’ Mr Grantham made an attempt at tickling Nelson’s tummy and received an indignant glare in return. ‘Where are you from, Chloe? You from India? Were you born out there?’
‘No, I’m from here. I was born in Portsmouth,’ she replied, without any asperity. ‘My dad was half-English – he wanted us to have first names which sounded British – but my mum’s parents came from Bengal. My brother Alexander was born in Brighton. Jordy was born in the West Country, I think. Minehead. He’s not my real brother, he’s my step-brother, but we get on OK. Where were you born?’
‘Funnily enough, India,’ he said. ‘My dad was in the army out there. So I first saw the world in the Far East and you’re from England.’ He turned awkwardly in his deckchair. ‘That dark-haired one. The smaller boy. He passed me in the hall without a good-morning or a how-are-you.’
‘That’s Alex. He doesn’t mean anything by it. He’s just quiet. Lost in a world of his own. He wasn’t being rude. Sometimes I get annoyed with him and yell at him to pay attention to me, and he simply looks startled – you know, like a rabbit with a fox or something. You can tell he’s somewhere else, on another planet. Some boys are like that. Most girls are like me though, aren’t they? Chatterboxes.’
She smiled, knowing by his amused look that she was charming the socks off Mr Grantham. He was a crusty old man, even Dipa and Ben had said that, but Chloe was good at getting under the armour of such people. When they had had their dog, the woman at the kennels had been regarded as a ferocious dragon, but Chloe had made her a friend.
Her new step-father had been an easy nut to crack at first, but she noted with some chagrin that now he was family he was not so swiftly charmed. Neither she nor Alex had liked him in the beginning, though that had not stopped her from being enchanting. Ben was not what they would have chosen for their mother as a second husband. He didn’t seem ambitious enough. Ben seemed happy to remain just a paramedic, which was not much different from a nurse, while Dipa was way above him as a doctor.
Their own father had been a businessman, full of drive.
‘Penny for ’em.’ Mr Grantham interrupted her thoughts. ‘’Less they’re private, of course.’
‘I was thinking about my dad.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘Not the one you’ve seen, my real dad. He died of a heart attack two years ago.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
‘That’s all right.’
‘You have a new dad now, then?’
‘Ben’s divorced. His wife ran off with a neighbour.’
Mr Grantham’s eyebrows went up. ‘That’s a bit more information than