

THE ENGLISH REFUGEE

Jonathan Pidduck

# Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2015 Jonathan Pidduck

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Sometimes I worry that it was my fault that everything went so wrong. I haven't told anyone else that; it makes me feel really bad, just thinking it. All those people hungry, all those people dead. Maybe us, too, soon. I don't want people to hate me for starting it all. But as your eyes are shut, and you're not saying anything, it makes it easier to tell you.

Life was pretty normal up until my dream. I went to school; I played on the swings and slides at the park (Ben thought I was getting too old for that, but Mum told me that she would have played on them too if her bottom wasn't too big!); I had a Happy Meal at McDonald's most Saturdays (Ben always had one as well, so maybe he wasn't as grown-up as he kept telling me). We were a normal family, living in a normal street, and we loved each other like normal people do, even though Mum and Dad argued so much near the end. Just like you and your family loved each other, I bet, before the bombs started falling.

Ben told me once – when we were on the way back to Ramsgate - that he knew what was coming. It had been in the papers, he said. It had been on the News at Ten. But I'd never seen him read a paper in his life, and he went to bed at half past nine, so I think he might have just been trying to make himself look grown-up. It helped a little, though, thinking that maybe all this was going to happen, whether I'd had the dream or not. I don't know what I'd do if I found out it was all down to me.

It was different from any dream I've ever had. When I've had bad dreams before, they were all about forgetting my words in a school play, not having any clothes on when I go out, losing Teddy (you can guess what Ben has to say about me still having Teddy at my age). But I'd never dreamt of people dying.

I was standing outside my house, still in my pyjamas, with Teddy tucked under my arm. I have no idea why I was out there; that's what dreams are like I guess. I could see Mum and Dad and Ben walking along the road towards me, chatting away to each other, without a care in the word. But I just knew that something bad was going to happen. I called out to them, telling them to run away and hide.

"What's up, Jack?" Dad called back. "What's wrong?"

I didn't know. It was just a feeling, if you know what I mean. I shrugged. I still wanted them to run, but I just couldn't explain why, and I didn't want to look stupid.

They carried on walking towards me.

The feeling got worse.

"Run!" I cried. "Run!"

There was a plane overhead. There were lots of little sticks dropping from it, heading down towards the four of us. Bombs. They had to be bombs.

I tried to call out again, but my voice wouldn't work. My legs wouldn't move either. I pointed up at the plane, praying that they would see the danger, that they would take cover and be safe. But they just kept walking towards me, smiling all the time.

There was an explosion, a flash of light, but most of all there was a bang, a bang so loud that it woke me up. I'd never had sound in my dreams before, as far as I can remember, let alone a noise so loud enough to wake me up. That was weird. It made it all more real.

I sat up in bed, shaking. I was sure that it wasn't just a dream, that one of my family – maybe all my family - was really dead. I looked over towards Ben's bed. He was sound asleep, and snoring a little. He was alright, but I still didn't know about Mum and Dad. He wouldn't be happy if I woke him up, so I left him alone. I thought (wrongly) that it was Monday, a school-night, and now he was at big-school he was always telling me that he needed his sleep because the stuff they did during the day was much harder than all the baby-stuff we still did at my school. But I needed to talk to someone. I needed someone to tell me that it was just a dream, and that everything would be fine by the morning.

I decided to go and check on Mum and Dad, to make sure that they were alright. If they were fine, then I could go back to sleep. I would ask them to phone Nan in the morning, just in case anything had happened to her in Canterbury, and I would be a little worried about my friends until I had counted them all in at school, but if my family was okay then I could at least go back to sleep.

I was just putting my dressing-gown on when the bombs fell for real.

#

The explosions came one after the other, really close together. On TV, in cartoons, you hear a whistle, gradually getting louder, and then a big bang. But this just seemed to be bang after bang after bang, like the beat in a song, only turned up really loud.

"They're bombing us!" said Ben, suddenly awake.

"I'm sorry," I told him, feeling like it was my fault. There had been no bombs before I'd dreamt them.

"Under the bed," he said. "Quick."

I wanted to go upstairs to my parents' bedroom. They'd know what to do, how to make it safe. Parents are good like that. But he said it again, and it didn't seem the right time for an argument, so I pulled enough toys out from under my bed to make room for an eight year old boy, and commando-crawled beneath it to keep him happy.

There were footsteps on the stairs. Mum and Dad were on their way down. The bombs were getting louder. There was a crash as some badly-balanced books toppled off the top of our book-case on to the carpet. My Dr Seuss, I think, as Ben always puts his books away carefully.

I could see Dad's bare-feet from under the bed. There was a click as he tried to turn on the light-switch, but it stayed dark.

"Turn the light on," Mum told him. She sounded almost as worried as the time I'd fallen from the top of the slide in the pub play area when they were inside getting our food (which was pretty worried because they'd taken me to hospital for a check-up after that, although it turned out I was fine). "Turn the light on!"

"What do you think I'm trying to do?" Dad replied. He sounded cross, as if this was her fault. Maybe she had had the same dreams as me.

"They're gone," she wailed. "Look; their beds are empty. Where have they gone?"

"We're here," I called to her, to let her know I was okay, wanting to look after her so she could look after me. I crawled out from beneath the bed. She had me in her arms before I was even standing up. As she hugged me, I could see Ben wriggling out from beneath his bed, too. I was better at crawling than him, so I got out first.

The bombs were still falling. I wondered why. Ramsgate is not a big town. It wouldn't take long to bomb. We must have been the only house still standing by now.

"Stand under the door frame," Dad told us.

"Isn't that for earthquakes?" Mum worried.

"What does it effing matter?" (He didn't say "effing", you understand. He said the swear-word which I'm not supposed to know, let alone to use. They must think I'm deaf since I've lost count of the number of times they mutter it under their breath or say it when they're sitting in the front seats of the car with us in the back. But it's a rude word all the same, so I'll just say "effing" if that's okay).

"There's no need to swear at me. I was just asking."

Dad and Ben stood under the door frame of our bedroom. There was just about enough room for me and Mum to squeeze in as well.

There were the loudest bangs yet, four or five of them, and the whole room shook. I had a picture of Taylor Swift on the wall, taken when she was much younger than she is now (back in her early days, when she was still in her twenties). It wasn't mine, but it was above my bed as Ben had run out of space for it on his wall. It shook loose, falling on to my pillow near where my head had been. Mum started crying. I squeezed her hand and told her everything was going to be alright, which made her cry all the more. She told me that I was her brave little soldier, which made me cringe in front of Ben (because I knew he'd say it back to me, in her voice, later on).

The room was brighter now. It was lighter outside, as if morning had come early.

I needed the toilet, but I didn't think it would be a good time to ask.

And then it went quiet, all except for a car-alarm which was going off outside.

"Is that mine?" Dad asked.

Mum laughed, as if the question was stupid.

"What?" he asked.

She ignored him. "Are you guys okay?"

I nodded. "Can I go to the toilet?"

She nodded, too.

"Will they be back, Dad?" Ben asked. "Do we need to hide somewhere?"

I decided to wait around to see what the answer was. I shuffled out from beneath the door-frame, though, as it was a bit crowded under there, and I like to have a bit of space.

Dad looked at Ben for a while, and then at Mum. He started to say something, but then changed his mind and just smiled instead. "No," he told him. "It's all over now. It's all over."

It wasn't, of course. It was just the start.

#

I get that I'm young, but it seems that whenever something bad happens my parents start treating me like a little baby. Especially Mum. She followed me to the toilet and insisted on standing right outside the door while I was in there, calling out to me from time to time that she was still there. The lights were still broken (I'd pulled the chord but nothing had happened), so it was kind of nice in a way, but I knew that Ben would tease me later. I was half expecting him to start straightaway, but when I went back out on to the landing he asked me if I was okay, which surprised me as usually he's not very nice to me at all. I told him it would take more than a few bombs to scare me, and he laughed (which surprised me as well, as it wasn't really meant to be a joke).

Dad was gone. The car-alarm stopped, so I guessed he was outside. Mum was tidying up our room, putting the books back on to the book case in alphabetical order of writer (she does that to keep Dad happy, as he likes everything to be in alphabetical order except breakfast cereal boxes). Ben went to help her, as he likes it tidy, too.

I went down the stairs so Dad wouldn't have to be alone. The door was wide open. It didn't look as dark out there as I thought it would be. I thought that maybe it must have been nearly morning.

He was standing on the driveway by our car, the keys still in his hand, staring down the street. I looked where he was looking. Halfway down the road, three or four of the houses had gone. Just gone. Where they had stood, there was nothing but a pile of smoking bricks. The houses on either side had lost part of their fronts; the bricks were all jagged, like a half-finished jigsaw. The one on the right, the one nearest to us, was on fire, which was why it was lighter than it should have been at that time of the morning.

I saw something blowing down the street to us. I was going over to pick it up, but Dad took hold of the arm of my dressing-gown to keep me by his side. I watched it as it blew past our house. It was a bill or something, like Dad gets for the electricity (even after all these years, he won't let Mum get them online like everyone else does). I wanted to go and get it, to take it back to where it belonged. But Dad kept hold of me, and I stayed where I was.

More pieces of paper blew by. Pages from a newspaper, I think, or a magazine.

Dad looked at me. He smiled (one of those brave smiles that grown-ups give to cheer you up when you're sad). "You were very brave up there," he said. "I was proud of you."

I smiled back. I shrugged as if it was nothing. Being brave was easier when your parents are there to look after you. I know that now.

#

Dad was the first to notice that I was on fire. Well, I say on fire; it was really just little spots of orange on my dressing gown from sparks which had floated down from further along the road. He put them out with his hands without burning them, which was cool. He must have had harder hands than me.

Mum came out. "What are you doing out here?" She sounded cross, as if she had caught us skiving off. I hurried back indoors. Dad came in too, without answering her. They had been like this for weeks, always snapping at each other, always angry, and I couldn't understand why. We have always been a really close family, always cuddling and stuff (except for Ben, who says he's too old for that, and that I should be, too, so I only let them cuddle me when we were indoors and no-one could see us). But just lately, all that had changed. I guess that they must have known about the bombing before it happened, and been worrying about that. I hoped so, as that would mean that the bombs would have come whether I'd dreamt about them or not. I also hoped that now it was all over, now the bombs had fallen and were out of the way, everything could go back to normal, as they were starting to worry me. It didn't seem that they liked each other much anymore.

"Half the street's gone," Dad told her when we were back indoors.

"Do you think it's everywhere? Not just here?"

He shrugged. "I guess so. I can't see why we'd be singled out. There's nothing here."

"What about Mum?" she asked, (she meant Nan). "She's on her own."

"Call her. I'm gonna get dressed and go up the road; see if there's anything I can do to help."

"No. We need you here. With your family."

He laughed, as if she had said something funny. She glared at him, but said nothing. She went into the living room, over to where we keep the phone. She had her back to me, but I could tell she was dialling because I could hear it. Dad tried to turn the lights on for her, but there was no power down there either. He went to fetch a torch to check the fuse-box.

Ben came down. "What's going on? I can see fire down the road."

"Mum's phoning Nan to check she's okay."

Mum turned round to look at us, the phone to her ear. We caught her looking worried. She gave us both one of her brave smiles, like Dad had given me outside. Grown-ups do that quite a lot. "Just checking that your Nan's alright. I'm sure she will be."

"I've told Ben that already."

She turned her back on us again, as if they would stop us from hearing what she was going to say to Nan. She wasn't saying anything yet, though. Nan couldn't have answered.

There was a clicking sound behind us as Dad tried the switches in the fuse-box in the cupboard under the stairs. Ben went to watch. He likes that sort of thing, because it's what dads do. The lights stayed off.

"Come on, come on," Mum was muttering under her breath. "Pick up, Mum."

Dad and Ben came back into the living room. Dad started searching round for the remote control for the telly (Dad and Ben always put it back where it belongs, but the Mum and me leave it wherever we happen to be when we last use it, which drives Dad mad as one of us lost it for three days once and it turned up on the bookcase in my room). So it's hard enough to find the remote in the daylight, but it was even harder when the room was still quite dark. I found it for him, tucked down the side of a cushion on the sofa where Mum sits.

Mum stared as if he was mad when she saw the remote control in his hand. "You're not going to watch the telly when I'm trying to phone my Mum?"

"I need to check the news. Find out what's going on."

She humphed, and turned her back again. I was starting to get a bit upset. We'd just been bombed. I needed them to make me feel safe again. I didn't want them to start arguing.

Dad held out the remote in front of him and pressed the on-button at the top. Nothing happened. He crooked his arm a little, holding the remote like maniacs hold guns in films when they're about to shoot someone at close range (yes, I know I shouldn't be watching those sort of films, but we're allowed to stay up late at Christmas, and my friend George at school tells me all about them anyway as he says that his Dad lets him watch them whenever he wants, even the ones with kissing and stuff). That didn't work either. He walked towards the telly, standing just a few feet away, and tried again and again. Still nothing. It was broken, like the lights.

He threw the remote across the room. It bounced off a wall and came to a rest on the dining table. I started crying. I didn't like it when he got cross.

Ben took me by my hand and led me back upstairs. "Let's go back to bed. It'll be alright in the morning."

"Stay here," Mum said, her ear still pressed to the telephone. "I want you both where I can see you."

"They're fine upstairs for now," Dad overruled her. "Go on, up you go. I'll be up in a second."

He closed the door behind us as we left the room. He had stuff to talk to Mum about which he didn't want us to hear. It was dark upstairs. I wasn't afraid of the dark; I've had the light off in my room for as long as I can remember, because Ben can't sleep if there's any light at all. All the same, I was glad he was there to keep me company.

The door downstairs opened again when we were halfway up. It was Dad. "Ben, could you see if your i-pad's working, please?"

Ben scurried upstairs, glad of something to do. I scurried straight after him, just in case he needed help. Behind me, I could hear Mum putting the phone down. She hadn't got through to Nan.

For the first time, I started to worry that this might not be over after all.

#

Ben's i-pad worked, but we couldn't get on the internet with it, so when Dad came up he asked us to turn it off again.

Mum passed our bedroom door on her way back to her bedroom. "Pack an overnight bag," she told us. "We're going to see if your Nan's okay."

"We don't need an overnight bag to go to Nan's," Ben pointed out. "She's only in Canterbury."

Dad insisted. "I don't know what it's going to be like on the roads. It might take longer than usual. Best to take a bag, just in case we have to stay there tonight. I'm gonna pack some food to take with us, too. Either of you want to help me?"

We both nodded, but Dad wanted one of us to keep Mum company, and Ben chose me for that. So I followed her upstairs while Ben and Dad went downstairs to the kitchen to make some sandwiches.

Mum was looking for her overnight bag. She hadn't used it for years. She knew it was in a cupboard in her bedroom, but she couldn't find it. I told her I would look for it while she sorted out a change of clothes for us. She hugged me tightly, as if I was doing something brave, but it was just a bag.

"Is Nan alright?"

She nodded, and screwed up her chin a little, as if she was trying not to cry. "She's fine, Angel. We're just going to check if there's anything she needs. She's all on her own."

"Since Grandad died."

She nodded again, and her chin screwed up even more. I wished I hadn't said that. Grandad only died a year ago. I didn't want to make things worse. I do that sometimes, without meaning to.

I found the bag. She stuffed some clothes into it, and we then went back to my bedroom and she found a change of clothes for Ben and for me. She noticed for the first time that my dressing gown was singed in a couple of places, and fussed over me for a little while, until I suggested that I get changed so I was ready to go. She'd already packed up my favourite top, but I found another one without making a fuss about it, and went to find Ben to tell him to get dressed, too.

Dad was still making sandwiches. I don't know how long he thought it was going to take to get to Canterbury – it's normally only half an hour in the car – but he had a pile of buttered bread there which was nearly as tall as the toaster. Ben left him to it so he could go upstairs and change, after Dad told him that he could manage on his own for a while. Besides, I was there to help out now.

I helped him put the filling in the sandwiches. He'd put the kettle on earlier, and now he filled a flask full of tea.

"Who bombed us?" I asked.

"Bad men," he replied with feeling. I think he thought I was still about four years old.

"But who? And why?"

"Flooding in China," he told me, but that made no sense at all.

"Flooding?"

"I'm kind of busy here, Little Man."

I sighed. I would ask Ben later. I wasn't sure how much he actually knew, but at least he would make more sense than Dad.

Mum came down, just as Dad was putting all the sandwiches in sandwich bags.

"Aren't you ready yet? We have to go!"

"I've been making sandwiches."

"What for? She's only in Canterbury!"

"That's what I said," I told her, not wanting to take sides, but wanting her to know that it was a good point as far as I was concerned. Dad had definitely gone overboard on the sandwiches, whatever he said, especially as most of them were tuna which is fishy and disgusting.

Dad shrugged and went upstairs to get changed. Mum followed him to the foot of the stairs. "Ben! Are you ready? We've got to go!"

"I'm ready," I told her, sensing the opportunity to score some points over him. She ruffled my hair, but I didn't mind as I'd forgotten to brush it so there was no harm done. "Good boy."

"Why did they drop bombs on our street?"

"Ask your Dad. He's good at explaining these things."

Not that good, I thought. He just keeps going on about flooding! But I didn't say that. I was in her good books for being the first one to get ready, and I didn't want to ruin it all by pestering her about stuff she didn't want to talk about.

#

Dad and Ben only took a few minutes to get ready. We went out to the car. Our next-door neighbour - the bald man who never gives us our football back when it goes over the fence – was packing up his car, too, only his was full of teenage daughters and suitcases. I could see him talk to Dad through the window from the back-seat where I was sitting.

"That's a lot of suitcases you've got there, Tom," Dad said, as he was about to get into the driver's seat of our car.

"Don't know how long we'll be away," our bald neighbour replied, as he carried on cramming his luggage into his car. "Don't know if we'll be back at all."

"It can't be that bad."

"We've just been bombed by the Reds. That's about as bad as it gets."

I thought the Reds were Liverpool, but I didn't think they'd be bombing anyone. Not even Manchester United would do that. I filed it away for future use, though, as it was a clue. It was another question I could ask Dad when he was more in the mood to talk.

Our bald neighbour slammed shut the boot of his car. He came over and shook Dad by the hand. "Good luck, Ben." Dad's called Ben, too. My brother Ben's named after him. It's a good job we call him "Dad", as we'd have all sorts of mix-ups if we had to call them both by the same name.

Dad looked worried. "Yeah, you too, Tom."

Mum beeped the horn, anxious to be on our way. Dad looked as if he wanted to throttle her (which is just a saying, by the way; he wouldn't really have tried to strangle her as he'd be sent to prison if he did, and he wouldn't have liked that at all because they tell you what to do all day). He likes to be in charge, and he doesn't like being interrupted when he's talking.

He went back to the front door, and double-locked it. He rattled the door-handle to make sure it was locked. Mum huffed in the front passenger seat. He walked back to the car, and opened the door. "Do you think we need to take more food?"

"Seriously?" Mum asked.

"Did you see how much stuff Tom had in his car? He doesn't think they're coming back. A few more sandwiches wouldn't hurt."

"We need to go. Please. I need to make sure Mum's alright. We can get something to eat in Canterbury when we've checked on her."

Dad got in and turned the engine on. We started driving down the road. Mum fished around in her bag and produced a pack of cigarettes. I noticed her hand was shaking as she tried to take a cigarette out of the pack. "Not in the car," ruled Dad. She put them back in her bag, but kept the bag in her lap, as if she needed to be close to the cigarettes even if she couldn't actually smoke them.

We passed the houses which were on fire. Dad drove as far on our side of the road as he could, actually scraping the kerb as he tried to keep as far away from them as possible. I guess he was worried that the houses might explode, like cars do when they flip over in films. Mum stared at the flames as we drove by. I couldn't see what Dad did as he was in the seat in front of me, but he was always careful not to have any distractions when driving (we couldn't even listen to our music if he was driving, though Mum was fine and always turned it up loud if Dad wasn't there) so I guess he would have kept his eyes to the front.

Another thirty second' drive further on, there were two or three people loading their cars with suitcases. Dad slowed down. Mum glanced over at him. He kept driving. And then, another 100 metres or so (it may have been more but I'm not great at distances) there was a whole row of flattened houses. It was starting to get light by now, so I could see everything clearly. Some people were digging in the rubble, trying to find something or someone. A lady was wailing like a fire engine. I hoped that if they were trying to find someone, that they would be okay, but it didn't seem likely. They would have been squashed flat beneath all those bricks. I was glad it wasn't our house, as I didn't think that standing under a door frame would have saved us.

And then there were more people packing up their cars; maybe four or five of them by the time we got near the end of the road. Dad pulled over, and stopped.

"We need to pack."

"We need to see Mum," Mum said. She sounded cross with him again, even though he was just trying to look after us all.

"It won't take a minute."

"Please don't do this to me. We've wasted so much time already. I have to see her. She's on her own now."

"We have to think of the kids."

"Don't you dare say that to me!"

I flinched. I was used to the two of them arguing lately, but I'd never heard her shout at Dad before. It was the voice she usually only used when Ben and I kept getting up when they were trying to watch TV downstairs, and I didn't think that she ever used it on grown-ups, let alone on Dad!

The car drove forward again. Like I said, I couldn't see Dad, but Ben kept looking at him, and I guessed that Dad wasn't very happy that she'd used her "get-back-in-bed-now!" voice on him. Mum looked over at him, too. She clutched her bag to her tummy as if it would make everything better.

"I'm sorry," she told him. "I'm just worried about Mum, that's all."

She touched his arm.

"Not while I'm driving," he said, and she put her arm down again.

The road curved round to the left. We followed it round. Dad braked quickly. He swore. Mum put her hand over her mouth.

I looked ahead. The road had run out. There was just a giant hole, maybe half the length of a house. We had come to a stop just a few metres away from the edge.

Getting to Canterbury was going to be a lot harder than we thought. Maybe we would need more sandwiches after all.

#

We turned round. As Dad was doing a three-point turn, we were nearly shunted into the hole by a car coming round the corner. It missed my side of the car by a metre or two. Dad shouted at the other driver. I could see the other driver shouting back at Dad. I tried to shrink into my seat so I wouldn't get in the way. And then he drove backwards, Dad finished his three-point turn, and we were driving back the way we'd come.

We went back past the people packing their cars, and back past the houses which were still on fire. Dad stopped to tell the people packing their cars that the road was "impassable" ahead (I thought he was saying "impossible" at first, but after a couple of times I realized he wasn't). I could see Mum looking more and more tense every time he stopped the car, but she said nothing. She just clutched her handbag tighter and tighter, like it was a teddy-bear or something.

I could see her relax a little as we drove past our house. I think we were all expecting Dad to stop and start packing bags left, right and centre, but he kept on going. He must have done it for Mum, so maybe things weren't so bad between them after all.

We had only been driving a minute or two past our house when he had to stop again. This time, a house had actually collapsed into the road. It was knee-deep in rubble.

"Can't you move it?" Mum asked. "Clear a path? There's not all that much there."

Dad laughed, but he didn't sound like he thought it was funny. He did another three point turn. We were on a straighter stretch of road this time, so there were no near misses with other cars.

"We were so lucky," Ben said to me. It was the first thing he'd said since we'd got in the car. "Bombs both sides of us. That could have been us."

I didn't like to think about that, especially after my dream. We had Mum and Dad upstairs anyway. They would have kept us safe, like they always had before.

Back home. We went in the house. Our bald next-door neighbour was letting himself back in, too, but none of us spoke to him and he didn't speak to us either. There wasn't much to say.

"What are we going to do?" Mum asked, when we were back indoors.

"We stay here until the power's back on," Dad told her. "And then we turn on the TV and find out exactly what's happening. There'll be advice from the Government. They'll tell us what we need to do."

"But Mum. What about Mum? We've got to go and see her."

"What else can we do? We're not walking to Canterbury. Not with the kids."

"I'll go, then."

"No."

"No, Mum, please don't," Ben said. "It's dangerous."

"Do we know anyone with a bike I could borrow?" she asked.

I held her hand. She looked at me. Her chin wobbled again. "I don't want to leave you guys, but she's old. I'm the only one she's got."

Dad held her other hand. "The power will be back on soon. And the Council will clear the roads. Or maybe the army, even. We can drive there this afternoon; it'll be quicker to wait for that than to walk all that way. It'll take you all day to walk it. Wait here, see what advice we're given, get the travel news, and then we go and see your Mum as soon as the roads are clear again. Okay?"

She nodded. I'd never seen her look so sad.

Dad went upstairs to pack a suitcase. Overnight bags weren't enough anymore. Ben went with him to keep him company. Mum and I made sandwiches until the bread ran out.

#

After everything that had happened that morning, it felt really weird playing Monopoly. I think Mum and Dad just wanted to take our minds off things while we were waiting for the power to come back on. They would usually have left us to watch films or play games on our i-pads but I think they wanted to do something we could all do together, so Monopoly it was. For the record, I won. I don't think Mum was concentrating as she didn't say anything when I landed on all her hotels on Park Lane and our rules are that if someone doesn't notice when you land on their properties, then they've only got themselves to blame. Ben usually tells on me (and I tell on him) but he couldn't have been concentrating as he didn't say anything either.

The power didn't come back. Dad had left the TV on so that it would come on straightaway when the power was back again, but it stayed off. He sometimes pressed the on-button on the remote control, just in case, and double-checked the fuses again, but there was no power at all. He went next-door to see his bald friend, but they told that they didn't have any electricity either. Mum suggested another game of Monopoly, but no-one's heart was in it.

Ben and I ended up in our room. I think Mum had wanted us to stay together, but Ben kept pestering her to let him go and see his friends and in the end I think she decided that the only way to keep him quiet was for them to be in different rooms from us. It didn't keep him quiet, of course. It just meant that I was the only one who had to listen to him moaning about being stuck indoors.

"It's dangerous out there," I pointed out. I've never been a thrill-seeker. Ben's ideal day would be spent at a theme park: Chessington or Thorpe Park. Mine would be reading a comic on the beach, with as much ice cream as I could eat on the way home. I love ice-cream. It's the best food ever, everyone knows that.

"Sam's only five minutes away. It's not like I'm gonna fall into a hole or anything. I'm not stupid. I'm eleven for God's sake! Nearly twelve!"

"You should stay here. We might have to go in a hurry when the power's back on."

"They could pick me up on the way past. Besides, Sam's Dad's got a four by four. It would be easy to see Nan using that. Dad could drive over bricks and everything in a car like that."

"Can they do that?"

"Easy. That's what they're for. They drive them through rivers in the countryside."

"Would they lend it to us?"

"If they're not using it."

"Should we tell Mum? Maybe we could go and see Nan after all, without waiting for the roads to be cleared up? It would be cool driving there in a car like that. Maybe we could drive through some rivers on the way."

"I can't ask Sam to borrow it, though, not when I'm stuck here. If she lets me go round there, I'd ask his Mum. She's really nice. I'm sure they'd let us borrow it. We could be at Nan's for tea if she lets me go out now."

"Shall we tell Mum, then?"

"There's no point in me asking. She won't let me go. You can ask her if you want, though."

I didn't want to, though. I'd wanted him to do it, in case asking made her cross. "Can't be bothered," I told him. "He's your mate, not mine."

He played on his i-pad for a while. The battery had run out on mine, and I couldn't re-charge it, so I tried reading Dr Seuss instead. It was hard to concentrate, though. I wanted to talk.

"Were you scared?" I asked him.

"Wait for me to get to the next level," he said. I waited for what seemed like ages. After about a million years, he saved his game, and came and sat next to me on the bed.

"What was the question again?"

"Were you scared? When the bombs fell."

"Course not. We're safe here. Were you?"

"Not at the time. It was quite fun." It wasn't actually fun at all, but I thought he might be impressed if I said that. "But then when I saw all those houses outside. And you said that it could have been us. It got me thinking, that's all."

"I was just teasing."

"You didn't sound like you were teasing. You said it all serious, like. I wouldn't want our house to be squashed flat. Not when we were all in it."

Ben looked at me sternly. "You're not gonna go all girly on me, are you?"

I shook my head. "Course not."

"I thought I had a brother. If you start worrying about bombs, I'm gonna have to treat you like a sister instead. Maybe put a dress on you or something."

I shook my head again. I didn't want him to treat me like a sister. They played with dolls and stuff, and they were rubbish at games on the i-pad as far as I could make out from school. A lot of them didn't even like football, which was crazy!

I heard Dad rushing up the stairs. He hurried past the door to our room and ran up the stairs (two at a time, which I'm going to do all the time when my legs are bigger if I live that long) to his bedroom. Ben and I followed him up, because I wanted to know what was going on. We found him pulling an old suitcase out from beneath his bed. It was full of old junk that he and Mum never used but hadn't quite got the heart to throw out. He took out a radio, which was older even than Ben.

He turned it on. Nothing. "Batteries," he said, and he was off down the stairs again. We followed him again, as we had nothing else to do. There was no way I was going back to my bedroom, just in case there were any more questions from Ben about whether I was his brother or a sister.

Dad was going through drawers in the kitchen. "Where's the effing batteries?" he asked (he didn't say "effing" though). Mum came in. She went to an overhead drawer, and found the batteries straightaway. "Where they've always been," she replied, as she handed them to him. That was quite funny, as Dad's usually the organized one and Mum doesn't usually know where anything is. He didn't laugh, though.

He looked around the room. "Where did I put the radio?"

That was funny, too.

She raised her eyebrows and pointed to the radio he'd left on top of the microwave. He snatched it up and put in the batteries as quickly as he could, as if it was a race or something. He turned it on. Still nothing.

"Some of them might not work," Mum said, handing him some more batteries.

"Then why haven't we thrown them away?"

"You tell me! I'm not the battery monitor, you know!"

He took off the back of the battery compartment, huffed when he couldn't get the batteries out with his fingers, and grabbed a fork to help him wriggle them free. The old batteries came out, the new batteries went in. Still nothing.

"It's not working."

Maybe they're all old batteries."

"Well that's not much effing use, is it?"

"Don't swear at me."

Mum left the room. Dad looked at us. "Have you guys got any batteries?"

"Nothing that would fit in something that old," Ben replied. "All my stuff charges up from the mains."

Mum came back in with the remote control for the TV.

"Is it working?" Dad asked, hope in his voice.

She shook her head. "No. I'm just getting the batteries out."

He took the remote control from her. I guess he felt that the radio was his idea, and he wanted to see it through himself. I used to be a bit like that with my Meccano set when I was younger, when Ben wanted to finish off the stuff I was building and I wouldn't let him.

After a little more popping out of old batteries with the fork, the batteries from the remote control went into the radio and he switched it on. There was quiet static. He turned it up. There was loud static. He turned the dial. There was someone speaking French. He yelped in delight.

"Got it!"

Ben leaned in towards me. "If he wanted the radio, he should've told me. I've got a radio-app on my i-pad he could've used."

"Probably best not to tell him that," I advised.

There didn't seem to be many channels on the radio, and the ones there were all seemed to be in French. He kept trying, though. And then, all of a sudden, we heard a voice in English, repeating the same minute-long message over and over again. It made Mum cry. For a minute, I thought Dad was going to cry, too, but he stopped himself. I guess he was worried that Ben might start calling him "Mum" if he did.

#

The message said:

"Last night, the Russian army landed in Ireland. All resistance there is at an end. It is expected that they will cross over to Wales and South West England this morning. Further landings are expected on the south coast today. They are anticipated to target all major British cities including London, Cardiff, Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester. Although Scotland was not involved in the fighting in Scandinavia, it is thought that they too are likely to face invasion.

The expected invasion was proceeded by heavy bombing last night across England and Wales, focusing on densely populated areas, broadcasting and telecommunications centres, and ports which might be used for evacuation.

The British Government is taking all possible steps to oppose the invasion, but contingency plans are being drawn up, including possible evacuation of children to France, the Netherlands and Belgium.

Further bulletins will be issued on this channel as and when available. In the meantime, the Government has appealed for calm, and for all citizens to keep public order."

#

Mum couldn't stop crying. Dad hugged her. It was good to see that they were friends again.

He sent us back to our bedroom. On our way up the stairs, we could hear him telling her, over and over again, that everything was going to be alright. He was using the same voice that he used when I fell off my bike last year and banged my head on a lamppost (I've had quite a few accidents, even though I'm much more careful than Ben and he hardly ever gets hurt at all). I didn't think she would believe him when he told her it was going to be alright (and I hadn't either).

We were bored upstairs. Ben said the battery on his i-pad was getting low, and he wanted to save it in case we needed the radio app. I tried reading, but it was hard to concentrate when I could hear Mum sobbing downstairs. I wanted to go to her, give her a cuddle and tell her that I thought that everything was going to be alright, too, but I'm not sure she would have believed me either. Dad knew more about these things than me, so I thought it was better coming from him.

He called us down after just ten minutes or so. Mum looked a little better. We had lunch. The gas cooker was as dead as the lights and the television so we couldn't have anything hot. We ate some of the sandwiches which Dad had made earlier. There were plenty to spare, as he'd made what looked like hundreds of them!

Mum mentioned Nan again. If there was a war on, it was even more important that we go and visit her, she said.

"I'm sorry, Love," Dad told her. "It's too dangerous. They said on the radio that they were bombing the cities."

"Canterbury's not a city."

"It's got a cathedral."

"Okay, Mr Pedantic. But it's not a big city. Which ones did they say? London. Birmingham. Liverpool. Nothing the size of Canterbury."

"They couldn't list them all, though, could they? Just the big ones, to show it's all over the country. If they bombed Ramsgate, there's no way they would've left Canterbury alone. Besides, we haven't got a car. How are we supposed to get there?"

"We could walk."

"Walk? With the kids? No way. It's thirty five miles return."

"We only need to go one way, though. We could stay at Mum's until the roads are mended and then get a taxi back."

"The roads aren't going to be mended, are they? We're being invaded. It's safest to stay here. Maybe the phones will be back on later. If we're walking to Canterbury, your Mum might try and get through and there will be no-one here to take her call."

"Why would they mend the phones and not the roads?"

"He mentioned telecommunications on the radio. They're important. The government will want to make sure people can phone each other to stop them panicking and roaming around the countryside to see relatives who are probably much safer than we are. Your Mum's a tough old bird. It would take more than a few bombs to rattle her. She's fine, I know she is. She'd want you to stay here anyway, I know she would."

"We've got to go."

"Tomorrow, then." Dad had resorted to stalling, I could see that straightaway. He could see that nothing he could say would change Mum's mind about going, and stalling was the next best thing. "We stay here tonight, we listen to the radio – no turning it on for music or anything guys, it only goes on for the news bulletins, okay? – and we see if they mention Canterbury. If, from what they say, it sounds safe where Nan lives, then we stay here; it's not worth making the journey if there's been no bombing there. If there has been bombing, then of course we must go. I wouldn't want her to be on her own at a time like this."

"You've never liked my mother."

"Agreed? One more night, and then we go and find her if she needs our help?"

Mum reluctantly nodded, but she didn't look at all sure about it. If I knew he was stalling, then I'm sure she must have known, too.

"One more night," Dad repeated, as if she was simple.

"We might as well finish the sandwiches for tea," Mum replied, which seemed like she was changing the subject to me. "If we've got no fridge, they'll be disgusting by tomorrow. We don't all want sickness and diarrhoea if we're walking to Canterbury."

"I thought we'd save some, just in case. It's the only cold food we've got in the house except cheese and breakfast cereal. The cheese will probably be off by now."

"We've got 2 packets of crisps left," I pointed out, to be helpful, but everyone ignored me.

"I'm going to Tesco's," Dad decided. "To stock up. And get some money out, in case we need it later on."

"Don't they close at four on a Sunday?" Mum asked.

"That's just the big one. They're open until late down the road. I'll go now. It might get busy. You know what people are like with their panic-buying. I'll get there first and buy as much as I can before some other bugger does."

I could have said the "B-word" then, by the way, but I don't think that bugger is as bad as the "F-word" so I left it in. Maybe I should have changed it, to be on the safe side. I will next time. I'm not sure whether you can hear me or not, but I wouldn't want to upset you with bad swear words if you can.

"I'm coming with you," Ben told Dad.

"And me," I said, not wanting to be left out.

"No. I'm going on my own."

"We'll all go," Mum put in. "You always stray off the list when you see something on special offer, so I need to be there to make sure you don't come back with ten loaves of out of date bread, and a bagful of cat-food that was on special offer."

"We haven't got a cat," I pointed out. It had died (like Grandad).

"That's kind of my point. Come on, get your coats on. I'm going to go mad if I have to be stuck in this house all day. The exercise will do us good."

"It might be dangerous," Dad protested. "The buildings might not be stable. You saw the one that collapsed in the road."

"Then we'll have to be very careful, won't we? I'm not staying here, no matter what you say. There's only so much (B-word) Monopoly you can play in one day."

Dad went to get his coat. He knew the tone in Mum's voice; there was no arguing with her when she used it. He had won the important victory over putting off our trip to see Nan in Canterbury, and I think he must have decided that a family trip to Tesco's was a small price to pay for it.

But he was wrong.

#

As it turned out, our trip to Tesco's was a lot worse than the bombing.

We'd been there a thousand times before (Dad tells me off for exaggerating, but if it wasn't a thousand times it must have been pretty close). Mum would get the groceries, and quite often Ben and I would get a magazine or some sweets if we pestered her enough. Sometimes it got a bit boring while she wandered round the aisles trying to find the baking powder or the aspirins, but the magazine made it worth going all the same. This time, though, I wished I had stayed at home.

It wasn't too bad getting there. We had to climb over the rubble at the end of the road which had stopped us driving to Canterbury. It had looked pretty solid from the car, but it was actually all loose bricks and twisted metal. Mum tripped over a half-melted television and cut herself on both elbows as she fell, but Ben and I are really good at climbing so we were okay. Mum went really, really slowly after she fell, and Dad held her shoulders to support her, and we made it across without any further accidents. I wondered whether it might be harder getting back when we were carrying shopping bags, but I didn't say anything as I didn't want to worry anyone.

When we came round the corner, Tesco's was just a couple of hundred yards further along the road. Dad groaned as we were walking towards it. It was closed. The glass in the automatic doors was shattered, as if someone had thrown a brick at it. That's called vandalism, and you can go to prison for it for a very long time.

We walked up to the garage nearby, where Dad stops for petrol. There was more rubble in the road on the way. If we had made it out of our street in the car, we wouldn't have got much further. I started to think again how lucky we were that our house hadn't been hit by a bomb, because a lot of other people had been.

Someone was sitting on the rubble of one house, with their head in their hands, sobbing quietly to themselves. Ben started to go over to see if they were alright (he's very grown up like that) but Dad took his hand and kept on walking. I think he was keen to get bread so he could make up some more sandwiches, and didn't want anything to slow him down.

The garage was closed, too. There were a couple of teenagers cupping their hands to the window, looking inside. Mum said they looked like they were up to no good, so maybe they were the ones who'd smashed the glass-door at Tesco's. We went back down the road before we could find out whether she was right.

When we got back to Tesco's, there were a couple of people at the cash-point. Dad queued up behind them, his card at the ready, while we waited for him nearby so the other people didn't think we were trying to look at their secret numbers. The person at the front took ages. She took her card and stomped off, without saying anything to anyone. The lady behind her took ages, too. She got her card back, said something to Dad, and left. As it was just Dad left, we went to find out what was going on.

"She says it's out of order," Dad told Mum, "but it doesn't say so on the screen. I'll give it a go, see what happens."

He put his card in. He put in his secret code (I could see what it was, but I'm not allowed to tell you). He waited. His card came back out. The message on the screen said "Error." He tried again. The same thing happened.

"At least they've got electricity here. Try it again," urged Mum. "We're going to need money."

"I'm worried it might keep my card if I do it three times," Dad replied. "I'll try another machine later."

We continued in our hunt for groceries. There was a newsagents about five minutes' walk away, just the far side of the recreation ground with the swings and slides in it. There were more bombed houses. Every so often, we passed a person or a family walking in the opposite direction, but we never said anything to any of them and they didn't say anything to us either. At the traffic lights, there was more rubble in the road, and a car was sitting on top of it. It must have tried to drive over the rubble and got stuck. It was only a little car. I was surprised that it made it as far up the rubble as it did. It was a shame they didn't have a four by four, like Ben's friend, as they could then have driven over it easily.

Within a few minutes, we were at the newsagents. Dad groaned again. This time, the shop was open, but the queue outside was massive. I won't say how many people were in it, because you'll think I'm exaggerating again, but it was three houses long.

We took our place at the end of the queue. People were coming out of the shop with arms full of stuff. Dad looked worried.

"I can't see any bread or milk," he said, having closely checked out the groceries as they walked by. "I bet they've run out of essentials."

"It's only a little shop," Mum agreed. "Maybe we should try somewhere else?"

"Not now we're in the queue."

A family of four walked by, a bit like ours but with two girls instead of two boys. Considering they had about ten carrier bags of groceries between them (they must have brought their own bags as everyone else was carrying their stuff in their arms), they didn't seem very happy. The Mum looked the crossest of the lot. "Two hundred and forty quid just for that?" she complained. "It's disgusting, putting his prices up like that. I'm never going there again."

Mum (our Mum) looked at Dad.

"How much money have you got?"

"About thirty quid."

"Thirty quid? That's not going to get us much!"

"I was going to get some at the cash-point. So how much have you got?"

"I haven't brought my purse. I thought we were going to stick it on the credit card."

"They don't do credit cards in here."

"But I thought we were going to Tesco's. They take credit cards in Tesco's."

There was the sound of arguing from the front of the queue. Mum stepped out of the queue to see what was going on. She came back within seconds. "Someone's trying to push in at the front."

I could hear shouting. And arguing. And then people weren't queueing up anymore, and everyone was trying to pile into the shop at the same time. Two men started fighting in the road. A woman was shouting "get off him, get off him," at them, but I don't know which of the men she was talking to. Someone pushed past us, nearly knocking me over. Ben grabbed my arm and pulled me to one side. An old man with a hat tried to walk over him, but he fended him off. He's quite strong for his age, although I'd never tell him that because he'd get all big-headed about it.

"Wait there," Mum called out to us. And then she and Dad were in the crowd of people fighting to get into the shop. Dad was using his elbows to push through the people around him. Mum tried the burrowing method. She's thin enough and small enough to squeeze through gaps that Dad wouldn't have even thought about (I know I said earlier that Mum said she couldn't go on slides because her bottom was too big, but she was only joking about that and I think she could have got on some of the slides we went on, even though she was a grown-up).

It was just a little shop, like Mum had said. There was just a normal door, which was held open by the bodies trying to get through it; none of your double automatic doors stuff like you get in supermarkets. Other people were trying to fight their way out at the same time, which made things worse. Someone tried to grab a bag from one of the people who had already done their shopping, and a fight broke out in the doorway, which didn't help anyone at all.

Dad was four or five people back from the doorway, and Mum was a little further back. I lost sight of her for a while, and I was worried that she had been trampled to the ground. But then she was there again, closer to the doorway than Dad. She looked like she was enjoying herself. Dad really wasn't, though.

Ben looked worried. "I'm going in after them," he told me.

"Mum said wait here."

"Look at that, though! All those people, pushing and shoving. They should be queueing!"

"You sound like Dad." And he did.

Dad was being swept backwards. He wasn't as tough as Mum, even though he was a lot bigger than her. I think that he was still worried about upsetting people by being too rough, but she didn't mind about that at all. More people were joining the scrum all the time, coming in from the side rather than the back. If it had been rugby, they'd have been yellow-carded for an off-side like that.

Mum disappeared again.

"I'm going in," Ben repeated.

"If you do, I'm coming with you." I was bluffing. I was just saying it to stop him going. There was no way I was going anywhere near all those people. I'd be trampled to pieces. He would be, too, though. I didn't want the blame for letting him go without saying something. I had to do my best to keep him there.

He looked at me with narrowed eyes, trying to work out if I meant it. He took a few steps back towards the shop. I did, too. He stopped.

"I'll only be a minute," he pleaded.

"Me, too," I bluffed.

I must have sounded like I meant it, as he made a cross little strangled noise (he did that sometimes when people were stopping him doing what he wanted to do), and stepped back to where we had been standing. I followed him. I caught sight of Mum. She had reached the door. She was lifted up in the air a little, like in a line-out (sorry; rugby again, but you're not allowed to do that in football). She was shouting at the people around her, but they didn't seem to care. Dad was trying to force his way to her, his arms raised in the air towards her, but she was too far away for him to help.

The shopkeeper appeared behind her. He was trying to close the door. His customers were having none of it. Someone punched him. The crowd of people pushed him back inside the shop, but he didn't go far as there were too many people trying to get out behind him, blocking his way.

Mum disappeared again. I was worried about her. She's quite small, even for a Mum. I was tempted to tell Ben that he could go and help her after all, but he was even smaller than her (though not by much) so I kept quiet. I didn't want to lose both of them.

I kept expecting the police to turn up. That's what they're supposed to do when there's trouble. If you do anything wrong, my parents had told me, the police will come and arrest you, and you'll spend the night in prison. But there were no Police, no sirens. I guess their cars were stuck behind the rubble in the road we had seen earlier, and it would take them a long time to get here on bicycles.

Dad started fighting with the man next to him; I think the man was upset that he had tried to shove his way past him through the crowd. Dad took a punch to the face. He started punching him back. The man looked frightened, but kept lashing out at Dad. Someone tried to pull Dad away, and then he started hitting Dad, too; two against one. I was even more worried. I wanted to do something, to go to his rescue, but I was eight. I didn't know what to do. I started crying, as it was all I had.

Ben was screaming at the men to get off our Dad, but there were so many people there, so much noise already, that I didn't know if they could even hear him. His voice was higher than everyone else, different from theirs, so they might have done. But if they did, they ignored him.

Dad was taking more punches to the head and shoulders. He gave up on reaching Mum in the shop-doorway. Under attack, he started forcing his way back towards us. I was surprised he had given up on Mum, but was glad at the same time because I didn't want those men to keep hitting him. Maybe he was worried about leaving Ben and me alone now that people were getting violent. It was best to give up on the shop. We didn't need food that badly; we had crisps at home. Two different flavours.

As he moved away, the man he had been arguing with let him be, and went back to trying to push through the crowd towards the shop. The man behind him kept going, though, hitting him another four or five times to the head as he tried to squeeze his way back to us (I wonder now whether that might have had something to do with how he was later on). Dad elbowed him sharply in the face a couple of times, and hunched his neck into his shoulders like a tortoise to try to keep his head safe, but didn't look back. He caught Ben's eye and ploughed his way towards us. It was easier for him to move the nearer he got to the back of the crowd, as people weren't quite as tightly packed as they were by the doorway. The man stopped hitting him, but shouted swearwords at him, some of which were so bad I can't even give you the first letter.

Dad reached us. He picked up Ben first, which made me sad, bearing in mind I was crying and needed a hug most. Then me. He held me against his chest. My face was close to his. I pulled away a bit, even though I was desperate for a hug, as he had blood running down his cheek and I didn't want it to touch me.

"Have you seen your Mum?" he asked, as he put me down. "Have you seen your Mum?"

"I think she's in the shop," Ben replied. I wasn't so sure she'd made it, though. Maybe he was just saying that to cheer Dad up, or stop him going back to look for her. "Are you okay?"

Dad nodded, but he didn't look okay at all. He had blood on his face and his white England rugby-shirt. It is hard to describe the look on his face. It was sort of angry and frightened at the same time.

"Can I go and look for her?" Ben asked. Now that Dad was back to look after me, he felt that it was okay to leave me and check on Mum.

Dad shook his head. "No way. You're both staying here with me. Tell me when you see her, and I'll go and get her."

"But that man might hit you again," Ben protested.

"I'd like to see him try," Dad said crossly. It was one of those things that grown-ups say that don't really make any sense. He would not like to see him try to hit him again at all. He'd seen him try the first time, and his face was a mess because of it. I didn't want to see the man hit him, no matter what Dad thought, and decided that if Mum appeared anywhere close to the nasty men in the crowd, I would keep quiet until she had wriggled past them, just to be on the safe side. They wouldn't hit Mum, after all, because she was a lady.

The three of us kept a worried look-out for her. Time dragged by. I was starting to get tearful again, worried that Mum might have got squashed in the shop, but Ben gave me a cross look and I kept the tears bunched up inside me in case he gave me a dead arm.

Dad was looking even more scared than me. I could see him watching the crowd, trying to work out if there was any way he could make it through to the door, but there were more people there now than ever, and some of the people at the doorway had been there for ages, just trying not to get knocked over, so it didn't seem there was any hope at all of getting inside.

And then there was Mum, popping out from between two old people over to our left, running towards me, hugging me without dropping the tins she held in her hands. I was glad that she'd chosen me first, because Dad had picked Ben. It seemed only fair that we should both get picked first once.

She stepped away from me and hugged Ben. Dad hugged her while she still had her arms round my brother. "I was so worried about you," he said. "I thought you'd been crushed."

"I'm fine. It was quite fun, actually. What happened to you? Are you okay? You're covered in blood!"

"You should see the other guy," he said, with an embarrassed look on his face.

"The other man's fine," I told her, just in case she was worried that Dad would be arrested by the Police. "Dad hardly hit him at all."

Dad gave me a look, as if he was telling me why he got on better with Ben than with me. I cuddled Mum again as a distraction (that's where you do something to stop people thinking about something else).

"What have you got?" Dad asked her, always the sensible one. I was glad he had changed the subject.

She held up four small tins, two in each hand. She looked really pleased with herself. "Four tins of tuna," she announced proudly.

Dad seemed less than impressed, and I couldn't say I blamed him as I hate the stuff, as I think I've already told you. It's way too fishy. "We've got plenty of that in the cupboard already."

She stared at him open-mouthed, and then she turned round and started walking home as fast as she could. I hurried after her, with Dad and Ben close behind me.

"I was just saying," Dad called after her. "I was just saying."

#

On the way back home, we found out that the bombing in our street could have been a lot worse. We returned home a different way from the way we'd come, as we didn't have to go past Tesco's and the garage. As we walked up the road, we saw that half the houses in one road had gone. It was less than ten minutes' walk from where we lived. I knew what Dad was thinking from the look on his face, as I was thinking it, too. That could have been us.

There were a couple of people wandering over the broken bricks a few houses down, as if they were looking for something. A lady was standing by the ruins of the house next-door, shouting and swearing at them, calling them B-word vultures, but they were ignoring her. Although she was shouting at them, she didn't seem to want to get too close to them, and after what had happened to us at the shop I could see why.

Dad looked over. She caught him staring. "And what are you staring at?" she screamed at him.

He looked away.

"Are you going to help yourself, too? He was a good man. A good man. You people disgust me."

"I wasn't doing anything," he protested. He'd raised his voice, but it was gentle all the same, as if he was saying sorry to her.

"Vultures, the lot of you," she screamed back at him, which didn't seem fair as he was only looking.

We walked on. She carried on screaming. I looked back over my shoulder as we were walking, and saw that she had crossed to our side of the road and was following us. I went a little faster, not wanting to be at the back if she caught us up in case she grabbed me or something.

"Poor woman," said Mum.

"Mad cow," replied Dad, whispering so there was no chance of the lady overhearing him. "It's all I did was glance over, to see what was going on. There's no need for her to go mental at me."

"She's lost everything. I'd be like that, too, if that were me."

"Vultures, the lot of you!" the poor woman/mad cow screamed after us again.

"Maybe we should let her stay in our house while we're visiting Mum?"

Dad stared at her as if she was as mad as the lady behind us. "What? Tell me you're joking."

"Why not? She could look after it for us. She's got nothing, Ben (she meant Dad-Ben, not Ben-Ben). It would be the right thing to do."

"It's because she's got nothing that I wouldn't want to give her the keys to our home while we're away. We'd come back and find the house empty."

"No, we wouldn't. She'd have nowhere to take it all. Her house is gone."

"She'd hide it all under a bush or something. That's what mad people do. We're not doing it, okay? She's mental. Just listen to her, ranting away at us."

"Ranting away at you; we weren't gawping at her like you were. That's just her grief talking anyway."

"Well I'll be grieving too if you let her in our home and she steals my telly."

"What would she want with a telly, if she's got nowhere to plug it in?"

"I said "no", okay? Can we just leave it at that? The boys must be getting sick of us arguing. We've got more important things to worry about right now."

Mum looked at me. For one awful second, I thought she was going to ask what I thought about asking the lady to come home with us. I really didn't want to be asked. You don't get in the middle when grown-ups are arguing if you have any brain at all, especially if it means taking sides between your parents. And besides, I really didn't want that woman to come home with us when she kept shouting at us all the time, and Mum might be disappointed with me if I told her that.

"I'm gonna give her some of this tuna, then," Mum decided. "Just a couple of cans."

"She doesn't have a tin-opener," Dad pointed out. "She'll think you're taking the mick."

"She can borrow ours."

Dad changed the subject. He was good at doing that in an argument. I tried to do the same thing when I was arguing with Ben, but usually he noticed and brought it right back round again. As they carried on arguing, I noticed that the lady had given up shouting at us, and was going back to what used to be her home, as if there was something left there which was worth guarding. I don't think she would have liked our tuna anyway, as it's way too fishy, like I told you.

"I thought you didn't have any money?" Dad was saying. "How did you get the tuna without any money?"

"In case you didn't notice, there was a riot back there! How do you think I got it?"

"You stole it!"

"I borrowed it."

"That's looting. You could go to prison for that."

"Everyone else was doing it. I'll tell you what, I'd have taken more if there was anything left worth taking. I was going for the corned beef, but someone got there first."

"What's that poor man in the shop going to do now? That was his livelihood."

"That poor man in the shop had a sign over the bread charging ten pounds a loaf! Ten pounds for a loaf of bread! And it had still all gone! I've got no sympathy for him at all."

"Supply and demand."

I don't know what that means. I heard that again this afternoon, when the man on the beach shouted it at Ben (I'll tell you about that later). I think it's got something to do with buying stuff.

"Don't give me that rubbish. He was ripping people off, and they didn't like it. What happened back there was Karma. He got what was coming to him."

"That's a good lesson for the kids to learn, isn't it? If you don't agree with what someone's doing, it's fine to steal all their stuff and leave them with nothing."

"It was four tins of tuna, for eff's sake! You should be thanking me. Isn't our family more important than some rip-off merchant down the shops?"

"You're hardly in a position to lecture me on family, are you? Not after you know what!"

"Not in front of the kids. We agreed."

"Whatever."

They carried on arguing.

We were nearly home. I ran ahead, not wanting to hear them going on and on about tuna any more. I waited for them at the front door. I noticed that smoke was still coming from the house further down our road which had been hit by the bomb the night before, although I couldn't see any flames any more. Ben came with me, as tired of the argument as I was. He usually said that running ahead was what babies did, but this time round he decided that it was okay.

Dad let us in. We both went upstairs to play, leaving Mum and Dad to carry on their argument downstairs. On a different day, I would have said that Dad was right; stealing is bad, and you can go to prison for it. But it seemed to me that there was no more police around, which meant no more prisons, which meant that people could do whatever they liked.

And it turned out later that I was right.

#

Considering everything that was happening outside – the riots, the shouting ladies, the bomb craters – everything was surprisingly normal back at home. We still didn't have any electricity for the TV, and Mum and Dad wouldn't stop arguing, but other than that it was like any other day. It would be the last day that things were almost normal. I wish that I would have appreciated it more now.

Ben and I were bored again. Dad tried to get the Monopoly set out again, but it's not the kind of game you play more than once a week unless you're some sort of Monopoly geek, which I wasn't. We couldn't use our i-pads, as mine was dead and Ben was saving his battery. I still wasn't in the mood for reading either; I wanted to be round people rather than doing something all on my own. So Ben and I talked in our room, while Mum and Dad stomped around downstairs like little kids.

Dad came upstairs after a while to wash the blood off his face and to change his rugby shirt. He looked in on us afterwards, gave us a fake smile, asked if we were okay up here, and then went back downstairs to shout at Mum a bit more.

After what seemed like a very long time indeed, it was time for tea. More tuna fish sandwiches, as Mum wanted to use them up before the bread went hard and Dad wanted to use them up before the mayonnaise went bad. There wasn't much left in the house which we could eat without cooking first anyway. Mum said that she and Dad had decided that we were definitely, definitely going to visit Nan tomorrow, whatever happened, and that Nan's cooker would be working and we could eat whatever we wanted when we got there. Dad didn't look so sure, but he didn't say anything.

We went to bed early. It was only about seven o'clock, even though I usually go to bed an hour later than that, except at Christmas when I can stay up as long as I can stay awake. Mum told me that we had to get plenty of sleep as we had a long walk tomorrow, and Dad added that it was too long a walk for small children and then they started arguing again. I was actually quite glad to go to sleep, though, so I didn't have to listen to it any more. At the time, I thought there couldn't be anything worse than having nothing to do all day except hear your parents shouting at each other, but I know better than that now.

I woke up in the middle of the night. It was still dark. I tried to turn on my night-light but the power was off so it didn't work. "What was that?" I asked Ben. "Did you hear that?"

He didn't answer, so I said it again louder. There was someone knocking loudly on the door downstairs. It was a bit scary, as no-one ever knocked on our door during the night, except when the police-man came round last year to tell us that Grandad had been run over in a car accident and had died. I hoped that no-one had come with a message about Nan.

Ben woke up. He listened. He got up and put on his dressing gown. I put mine on, too. "Should we get Dad?"

He shook his head. "Best find out what it is first. I don't want to wake them up if it's something stupid. They need their rest."

I wasn't sure he was right about that. They always went to bed much later than we did. But he was in charge while they were asleep so I went along with it.

We went downstairs. We opened the front door. We have a little glass porch. There were two men outside, wearing dark coats. One was knocking on the window of the locked porch door (our doorbell was broken) and the other was standing a metre behind him with a couple of black bin bags in his hand.

"Open the door, lads," the man said. He sounded friendly enough. "We need to speak to your Dad. Is he home?"

Ben nodded. "He's upstairs. Shall I get him?"

"Yeah, yeah. Just let us in first. We'll wait downstairs. It's cold out here."

Ben went to open the door. He stopped. He looked at the two men again, and then at me. "Do you think it's okay to let them in?"

"Maybe we should ask Dad first?" It was nice to be asked for my opinion, but I wasn't used to making decisions like this on my own. I thought that maybe he was only asking me so he could blame me if it turned out to be the wrong thing to do. That was way too much responsibility as far as I was concerned. Best ask Dad; he would know if it was okay or not.

"I don't want to wake him up if I don't have to," Ben repeated. "He needs his sleep, too."

"Let us in," the man repeated. "Your dad will be cross if you leave us out here in the cold. It's really rude."

Ben took the key in his fingers. The man with the bag came nearer to the door, standing next to the one who had been doing all the talking. He looked rough from close-up. Ben took his fingers off the key again. He was nervous, and that was making me nervous too.

"Open the effing door, Kid" the first man said. He didn't say "effing", of course. I've already told you earlier why I don't say that word.

And then Dad was coming down the stairs, with Mum just behind him. I was so pleased to see him, as I was getting really nervous that something bad was going to happen, and it would be alright now he was here. Dad waved us out of the porch, and he spoke to the men through the glass door. Mum held our hands as they talked.

"What's up? What were you saying to my kids?"

"Let us in. We need to talk to you."

"Not until you tell me what you want."

"Let us in. I can't tell you standing on your doorstep."

Dad stepped back indoors, and closed the front door behind him, without even saying goodbye (which surprised me as it seemed a little rude). There was a bang, I think one of them must have kicked the porch door. Mum shrieked. Dad opened the front door again, and went back out into the porch. "Eff off! I'll have the Police on you!"

"Good luck with that, mate," the first man said, and he kicked the door again, really hard. It moved, but stayed shut. I didn't like it. I was afraid they would hurt us if they got in.

Dad turned to us. "Go back upstairs," he told us. And then to Mum. "Go get their baseball bat."

The man kicked the door again. I'd seen people break doors open on TV. I think you need to run at them and hit them with your shoulder. It worried me that if he remembered that, then he'd be able to get in and hit us.

"Give us your effing food now," the rough man shouted. "Or we'll break your effing head open in front of your kids."

"Get up the stairs," Dad told us again. Grown-ups are better at not being scared than children are. Mum was going upstairs already. I went after her, to show her where our baseball was. Ben stayed with Dad, which was very brave of him as I couldn't bear to see them trying to break the door down any more.

The man kicked the door again. I heard something crunch, even from half way up the stairs. I didn't think the door would last much longer.

Dad turned to Ben. "I won't ask you again," he said. Ben caved in. He followed me upstairs. While Mum went back down with the baseball bat, he pulled back the curtains in our bedroom and stood at the window, his face pressed tight against the glass, trying to see the men outside. But our bedroom was right above the door, so he couldn't see much at all.

There were more kicks on the door. It sounded like both men must be attacking it now; the kicks were coming too quickly for it to be just one of them. Mum started screaming at them to go away. They were swearing back at her, threatening her, threatening all of us. Dad said nothing. I guess he was just standing there with the baseball bat, ready to protect us if they came through the door. He was always good at looking after us, but there were two of them and I didn't know if he would be able to stop them coming upstairs after us, even with my baseball bat to help him.

And then there was an explosion. The room shook, and all my books fell back off our bookcase again. Above the rooftops, we could see a huge ball of flame and smoke. The bombers were back, and this time they had hit something really big.

"That's got to be the petrol station," Ben told me, as we watched the fire light up the night sky. "Nothing else would explode like that."

The banging on the door stopped. I could see the men running off down the road. "Good riddance!" I shouted after them through the closed window, to show them that I wasn't scared, but only because I knew they couldn't hear me.

We went back downstairs again. Dad had opened the porch door to watch the men as they were running down the road. I popped my head round to see how badly damaged the door was. There was a hole all the way through one of the panels. Mum dragged me back in again.

"We're definitely going to Mum's in the morning," she said. "I'm not staying here another night."

"But we need to stay here," Dad replied. "To look after the house."

"Bugger the house (sorry, B-word I mean). There could be men like that in Canterbury, breaking in to Mum's flat. And the kids aren't safe here anyway; those men might come back tomorrow. You can stay and protect the furniture if you want, but me and the kids are going, with or without you."

He nodded, knowing when he was beaten. There was no way he'd let us go on our own, especially after what had just happened. I felt a little sorry for him. I knew how important the house was to him. And I wasn't any happier than him about other people going through my stuff while we were away, taking my things. I would have to take Teddy with me, to make sure he was safe.

But Mum was right. Much as I hated to lose my stuff, I didn't want to stay home another night if people were going to try and break in and hurt us. I didn't think they would do that in Canterbury, as Mum always says it's nicer there (she wanted us to move there too when Nan moved into her flat, but Dad liked Ramsgate too much, and he was better at winning arguments back then).

"Pack up the important stuff," Dad told us all. "Not too much; we're going to have to carry it. We're leaving as soon as it's light."

#

There wasn't much for me to pack. I'd have liked to take some of my board games, but they wouldn't fit in the Tesco carrier bags I was given (the over-night bags would be too heavy for me to carry all the way to Canterbury, Dad said). So I took a few of my favourite books, my i-pad (the battery was flat, but it cost too much money to leave behind) and some photos of the family which Dad had given to me. And Teddy, of course. I wasn't going anywhere without Teddy, however much Ben told me that people would think I was a baby if they saw him.

Mum tried to leave with her big blue suitcase, but Dad wasn't having any of it. "I'm the one who'll end up carrying it," he pointed out. "Just take a sports bag with a change of clothing, that's all you'll need. We're coming back here as soon as we've checked on your Mum." They agreed in the end on the small suitcase. Mum argued that she had to take changes of clothes for Ben and me as well as for herself, as we hadn't allowed space for clothes in our carrier bags (to be fair on us, there's not much room left in a carrier bag once you've put Teddy and an i-pad in it). So she took the small suitcase instead.

I stayed close to Dad when we left, in case the men from last night were hiding nearby, but it was actually really quiet out there at first, as if everyone else had left already. Dad had spent the rest of the night sitting by the front door, looking out for them, with our baseball bat across his knees, so I guess he would have seen them if they had crept back again. But it was better to be safe than sorry, and it made me feel better anyway.

I wished we could have taken the car. Everything would have been much easier if the roads weren't blocked off, and it was Monday now and the roads would have been quiet as the school-run hadn't started yet. We could have driven to Nan's to make sure she was alright in no time at all. I've never been a great fan of walking. Or any exercise really. Ben has always been really good at PE and stuff, but I'm really bad at it. I'm hypermobile, which means that my joints are too bendy, and my knees go in a bit where they should go out. I wasn't looking forward to the walk as I knew that it would hurt a lot.

Just before we set off, Dad went through the cupboard and the fridge to see if there was anything we could eat on the journey without it being cooked first. Believe it or not, he found some slightly out of date bread and he made more tuna sandwiches (even though we had them for lunch and dinner the day before). Mum had got the tuna from the shop (without paying), and although he had spent so long telling her off about it the day before, he wasn't going to see it go to waste now we had it. I wished that she had stolen a tin of hot dog sausages instead.

Mum carried her own suitcase at first, but she was struggling before long and Dad took over with a roll of the eyes. One of the wheels on the bottom of the case fell off on our last holiday (Ben was pulling me around on it at the time), so he had to carry it. Dad started flagging by the time we were walking past what was left of the harbour, and kept changing the suitcase from one hand to the other. A lot of the boats in the water were burnt black, twisted and half-sunk, which made me sad as I liked watching them when we used to go to the harbour to eat. It looked like the bombing had been worse here and Ben told me that the bombs had probably been dropped on our town to stop people using the boats to get away. I wasn't so sure, though. Our house is miles from the harbour, and my friend George at school says that the planes nowadays all have what's called precision bombing so that they can take out a terrorist on his mobile phone without hurting the person standing next to him (which sounds awesome). I was surprised there were any terrorists left when they could do that. Maybe some of them didn't have phones.

"What's in here, anyway?" Dad asked Mum, holding up the case a little.

"Clothes," she said, sounding a bit cagey.

"Why have you locked it, if it's just clothes?"

"In case we get mugged."

"It's not like they're gonna run off with this. It weighs a ton. Give me the key, I want to open it. See what you've packed."

She stalled for a while, but gave in when he said he would give the case back to her to carry if she didn't hand the key over that instant. He put the case flat on the pavement, and opened it. I went over to have a look. Mum came too, to explain herself.

There were clothes at the top, as if to hide what was underneath. A make-up bag, deodorant, four toothbrushes, another make-up bag, shower gel...

Dad held the shower-gel up. "Why did you bring this?"

"Why do you think?"

"We can't have a shower in the street!"

"We can at Mum's."

"I expect she'll have her own shower-gel, don't you?"

He threw it away. Mum glared but bit her lip. Dad continued to rummage around. He produced three photo albums. I recognised them by the covers. The white one (with the overlapping love hearts) had their wedding photos in them, the light blue one had Ben's baby photos and the green one had mine. Ben's was bigger than mine.

"You've packed photo albums?"

"No way was I leaving them behind. Not with those men around."

"No one's gonna steal photo albums, are they? They wanted food, not our bloody wedding snaps!"

"But the house might get bombed."

"We might get bombed!"

"But if we do, I won't miss the photos, will I?"

Dad looked like he wanted to throw them away. He touched the front of the wedding album. He looked at Mum. He sighed. He put all three albums back in the case. He threw away her Jackie Collins novel, which was just to spite her, I think, as it didn't weigh much, and he zipped up the case. He left it unlocked. I think he was hoping that some of the stuff inside would get stolen.

"Thank you," she said.

"They're my memories, too," he replied.

We walked on.

#

It wasn't long before I started getting tired. As I've mentioned, walking's not my thing. Mum used to like going for long walks on her own, but she stopped doing that not long after her and Dad started arguing all the time, and we never went with her anyway. I could never see the point of walking when we had a car. It got you where you wanted to go so much quicker.

"My legs ache," I complained to no-one in particular.

"Stop being a baby," Ben told me. I almost wished he had stayed at home.

"But they hurt!"

He decided to ignore me. I decided to try working on Mum; she was usually my best bet. I heard Ben hiss "don't you dare" as I drew level with her, but I ignored him. I wanted to sit down for a while.

"My legs hurt."

"I'm sorry, Angel. But we need to keep walking for a bit longer."

"Can't we have a sit down for a bit? Maybe go to KFC?"

"They'll be closed."

"But it's Monday. They'll be open on a Monday."

"Not after the bombing they won't be. Everywhere at the harbour was closed, didn't you notice?"

I hadn't. I'd noticed that some of the buildings were no longer there at all, but I hadn't paid much attention to the ones that were still standing. Somehow, it had never occurred to me that KFC would be closed. It seemed wrong somehow, as I really like their bargain buckets. I had a horrible feeling that McDonalds would be closed as well, which would make this the worst day ever.

"Can we just sit down then? My legs hurt." I knew I was repeating myself, but I didn't care. I wanted a rest.

"Mine do too," she said, as if that would make it better.

"I'm younger than you, though. My legs are smaller than yours."

"Well that means I've got more leg to hurt than you have."

I gave up on her. I tried Dad. Ben started hissing at me again, and tried to catch the arm of my coat to hold me back, but I shrugged him off. This was important. I was going to have a sit-down, whatever it took.

"Dad?"

"Your legs hurt. I heard."

"Can we stop for a bit, then, please? Just for a minute."

"We've only been walking for half an hour," he pointed out. "It's nearly twenty miles to your Nan's. We've only come a mile or two so far. Can we do another couple of miles before we stop? Four miles, rest, four miles, rest; that's the plan. How does that sound? We'll be there in no time if we don't keep stopping every five minutes."

I stopped. I wasn't going any further without a sit-down, whether they liked it or not. They walked on for a bit, with Mum calling over her shoulder for me to catch up, but I was staying put. "Bye, then!" Mum called, to make me think that they would leave me behind, but I hadn't believed that when I was three and there was no way I'd believe it now.

Mum came back. Dad put down the suitcase and his sports bag and waited. Ben stayed with Dad, as if he was a grown-up too.

"We've got to keep going, Angel," Mum said. "You want to see Nan, don't you? She'll have chocolate biscuits."

"I'm tired," I told her. "I need to sit down. Just for a minute."

"Just a bit longer. Dad wants to go another couple of miles, that's all."

"I'm staying here. My legs ache."

"We have to go."

She took my hand and tried to pull me after her. That used to work when I was little, but not now. I pulled my hand away, and refused to budge.

"You're being selfish," she said. She sounded cross. "Think about other people for a change. Think about your poor Nan."

I said nothing. I crossed my arms to show her I had made up my mind.

Dad came back (with Ben following him). "Move," he said.

I avoided eye contact and stayed quiet. He was strong enough to drag me along after him if he wanted to, which made me nervous because that would make me look babyish.

"Move," he repeated. "You're not too old for a smack."

"He's tired," Mum defended me. "He's only eight. He's not used to walking."

"We've only just left home, though!" Dad exploded. "How tired could he be?"

"You're making them argue again," Ben hissed at me (he did a lot of hissing; I guess it was how you spoke to your little brother when you went to big school). "Get moving, or you'll be sorry later."

I crossed my arms tighter still. There was no way I was moving now, as he would think I was only doing it because he had told me to. I wasn't having that. It was kind of his fault now that I was staying put. If they blamed anyone, they should blame him.

"Don't talk to your brother like that," Dad told him.

Ben looked at him as if he had stabbed him in the back. "I'm trying to help!"

"He's only eight," Mum said again, and I nodded in agreement. I was.

"We have to get going," Dad pleaded with me. "If we stop every ten minutes, it'll take days to get to Nan's. We'll have to sleep rough tonight. I've not brought any blankets; I thought we'd be there this afternoon."

"We could go back and get some," Mum suggested.

"I'm not going home for blankets. Especially not with him stopping every hundred yards for a sit-down! All we have to do is walk. It's not an unreasonable thing to ask, is it, not when we've been bombed for the last two nights?"

It was stalemate, like you get in chess when no-one can make a move. I sat down on the pavement, to show that no amount of talking was going to work on me. Mum scolded me for making my jeans dirty but I didn't care. Dad and Ben glared at me (they looked quite similar when they were glaring, and I wondered if I had the same frown as Mum to make it fair).

"Look, there's a bench round the corner. Three minutes' walk, tops. Is his Highness willing to walk just a little bit further so we don't all have to sit on the dirty pavement?"

I got up. I nodded. I wasn't an unreasonable child.

Dad strode off, with Ben walking behind him. Mum offered me her hand. I took it, to show her that I hadn't taken offence at all the nasty things everyone had been saying about me when I said I needed a rest.

When we reached the bench, Dad and Ben were sitting down already. Mum made them shuft up so there was room for us, too. "Anyone hungry yet?" Dad asked.

I shook my head. I was frightened he would give me more tuna sandwiches to punish me for being naughty.

#

I wanted to try the same thing an hour later, but there were too many people around.

We had reached the airport by now. There hadn't actually been any planes fly from there since Mum and Dad were little children, and most of it was now covered in houses, but we all still called it the airport anyway because that's what it had always been called, as long as I could remember.

Once we were on the main road out of Ramsgate, there were more and people walking along beside us. Most of them had suitcases, and a few of them had dogs (I like dogs but we've only ever had a cat and even that got run over when I was six). One of the men had his bags in a wheelbarrow, and there was a lady on crutches who was all on her own.

There was a little girl, much younger than me, kicking and screaming on the grass by the side of the road, and I saw some of the looks people were giving her as they went by. I didn't want people to look at me like that. I was eight years old, not a baby any more, and now the road was busy I couldn't just refuse to walk, not in front of witnesses. I would wait until it was quieter before I made another stand, unless I could talk Dad into taking another break first. He said that he wanted to go four miles, but I wasn't sure how long that was. I think a mile is longer than a kilometre, but I wouldn't swear to it. And I'm not quite sure how long a kilometre is anyway. I know it's longer than a football field, but not as long as a marathon.

"Are we stopping soon?" I asked Dad.

"Soon," he replied.

"When?"

"Soon."

"When, though?"

"Maybe in another half an hour. There's a big roundabout up ahead. When we get there."

"Half an hour? I don't think Ben can make it that long. He's looking tired."

Dad smiled. He hadn't smiled much since the bombs had first dropped, so it was good to see. It told me that maybe things would return to normal now that we were going to Canterbury.

"He is, huh?"

"He is. He'd deny it if you ask him – you know what he's like – but if I were you, I'd let him have a bit of a rest as soon as you can."

I glanced over my shoulder. Ben was just a few yards behind me, talking to Mum. I hoped Dad wouldn't say anything to him. I thought I was probably in for a dead arm for refusing to walk earlier, and I didn't want a dead leg as well for blaming our next stop on him.

"Shall I ask him if he can make it as far as the roundabout?" enquired Dad, still smiling.

"No, that's okay. I think he can make it that far. I'll have a word with him, talk him round. Leave it to me."

We walked on. I was getting more and more tired, and my knees were starting to hurt quite a bit. I tried running ahead so that I could have a sit-down while the others were catching me up, but Mum didn't want me going too far and if anything the running made things worse.

We were just a few hundred metres from the roundabout, and I was ready to run ahead again so I could be the first one to have a rest, when this woman hurried over to Mum.

"Holly? Oh my God, Holly!" (Holly's my Mum's name).

"Daisy?"

They hugged, really tightly (like women do, but men only do with their children). Dad put down his suitcase and sports bag, and waited patiently for them to finish. A man came over, with two children with him. The older one was a girl, maybe just a little older than Ben. The younger one was a boy about my age. The man stuck out his hand for Dad to shake. He shook it.

"Ben," said the man.

"Dave," said Dad. I expected him to say something else (maybe ask him how he was, or talk about the weather) but they had said all they needed to say.

They waited for Mum and the lady to stop hugging.

"Oh, this is awful," the woman exclaimed, when they'd finished. "Who would've thought it? Abroad, yes, but here? Here in England? I never thought I'd see the day."

"Me neither," Mum agreed. "They only just missed our house last night. All the houses round the corner have gone. Nothing left but bricks. I was so scared. I keep thinking, that could have been us."

"Me, too. You remember Debbie? Debbie from accounts? She lived just round the corner from me."

"Lived? Don't tell me she's...?"

The woman nodded. She started crying. "Her whole family. Dave went over to see if there was anything to be done. There was nothing left but bricks, like you said. She was such a nice girl. I've known her for years."

"She was at your wedding, wasn't she?"

"She was. That dress she wore..."

"I know! That's Debbie for you!"

It occurred to me that this was the first time that Mum had told anyone that she had been frightened. I wondered why she hadn't told Dad. I looked at Dad to see if he would tell Dave that he had been frightened, but they just stood next to each other, looking slightly awkward, and said nothing. I'd noticed before that women tend to say things to each other that men wouldn't say, and I thought this was an important lesson for me. As a boy, I should try to keep things to myself a bit more, and only cry when I really had to.

"Boys, this is Daisy," Mum told us. Daisy came over and gave us a cuddle, even though I don't remember having ever seen her before. Ben let her, so I did, too.

"This is Dave," she went on, pointing to the man, who held up his hand and wriggled his fingers with a little smile. "And these are Rebecca and..."

"Faye," corrected the woman.

"Faye? Of course it is. Faye and Noah."

"All right?" Faye asked.

Ben put out his hand for her to shake, as her dad had done to my dad. I think he was trying to impress her by being grown-up. She looked at him as if he was a complete loser. He dropped his hand, looking very embarrassed. It made me smile a bit.

"All right," I said, and felt as if I'd won a little victory over Ben when she said "all right" back (without her giving me the look she'd given him). Ben glared at me, as if I'd stabbed him in the back. I would definitely be getting that dead leg later.

The lady – Daisy – was talking again. It turned out that she did a lot of that, and Mum talked a lot more now she had a friend to listen to her.

"Are you going to Canterbury?"

"We are. Mum's there. We're checking that she's okay."

"And then what?"

"We go back home."

"You're very brave, going back, what with the bombing and all."

"Or we can stay at Mum's, if it's safer there. We haven't decided yet."

Dad visibly stiffened. I saw Dave gave him a sympathetic look.

"What about you?" Mum asked. "Aren't you coming back, then?"

"Not until it's safe. You've got to think of the kids, haven't you? Dave suggested we go to Canterbury, see what's going on. There's the army barracks there. They'll know what to do. There'll be an evacuation programme, for the kids at least (hopefully for all of us), like there was during the war. They'll know what to do, where to go, won't they, Dave? We'll be safe by tonight, I'm sure of it."

Dad looked doubtful, so I looked doubtful, too. He knew about these things.

I glanced at Ben to see if he was looking as doubtful as Dad and I were, but he was just staring at Faye while she wasn't looking at him. I knew that boys got all soppy about girls when they went to big school, and I hoped that it wasn't happening to him. She was just a regular girl, as far as I could see, and she hadn't even spoken to him yet. There didn't seem anything special about her at all. She was quite skinny, so she'd have been rubbish at football, and she wouldn't be able to play rugby to save her life.

"Shall we all go together?" Daisy asked.

"Safety in numbers," Mum replied. She looked at Dad, who shrugged and nodded at the same time. Dave did much the same thing.

I felt a bit sorry for Dad. He had been in charge up until now. He liked being in charge. But I could tell already that Daisy would be calling the shots from now on, with Mum as her second in command. He had fallen quite a long way down the pecking order. I had too, as I was the youngest (or maybe second youngest) of eight now instead of the youngest of four. I would see what Noah was like. If he was fun, I'd ask Mum if we could all stay together. If he was mean, I'd tell on him to Dad, and say that Ben wanted us to go our separate ways.

#

We stopped at the roundabout for a rest, as Dad had promised. Dave wanted us all to keep on walking, but Daisy said we had children with us, and of course we must have a break if we felt like we needed one. Dad had already put down his case and his bag, trying to stay in charge if he could, even though Dave and Daisy were still talking about whether we should stop or not. So Ben and I put down our carrier bags, too, to show him that we were still listening to him, even if no-one else was. I think that this may have helped everyone else decide to stop as well, as us three putting our bags down meant that it was a fate accomplished, or whatever it's called when something like that happens.

As we sat by the side of the road near the roundabout, Mum and Daisy chatted away about old times, when they were still young. Dave offered Dad a cigarette, but he just looked at him as if he was trying to poison him. I didn't think that they were going to be best friends, as they were too different and both of them still wanted to be the boss (and they were both wrong as Daisy was more of a boss than both of them put together).

Ben and I sat with Faye and Noah, and I tried to think of something to say which would make me sound cool and fun in front of our new friends.

Ben was talking a lot, and everything he said was to make himself look big in front of Faye. It was all about music, and most of the groups he was talking about were ones I'd never even heard of before so I couldn't join in. She nodded from time to time, and didn't seem too interested, but it didn't seem to put him off. He just talked more and more. Every so often, he told her about the groups I like to try to make me look babyish, which was just nasty, and I wanted more and more to find something to say to show her that I wasn't the little boy he was making me out to be.

And then I had it. "We've been in a fight!" I told her, proudly.

Noah looked interested. Faye did as well.

Ben was less impressed that I had interrupted the list of the bands whose songs he was pretending he had downloaded during the summer. "No, we haven't."

"We have! Outside the shop, where we get our newspapers from."

"Dad got in a fight. You just stood there and watched like a baby."

"You did, too!"

"Only because you wanted me to stay with you. You were scared, so I stayed, when I should have been helping Dad."

"I wasn't scared."

"Not much! You were all like, oh no, they're fighting, let's stay over here in case we get hurt."

"I didn't say that!"

"You did. You were like a little girl."

"That's really sexist," said Faye. She didn't sound pleased.

Ben looked at her in panic. "What?" he asked. I could see that he knew very well what she had accused him of, but he was playing for time to think of an excuse. It made me smile, because he was the one who was being given a hard time now.

"Sexist. Are you deaf as well as stupid? Why would he be like a girl, just because he was frightened?"

"I wasn't frightened," I put in, but she ignored me. It wasn't my battle any more.

"Girls are just as brave as boys. Braver, I'd say. You don't have to have babies like we do."

"You don't either," Ben pointed out. "You're only twelve."

"I'm thirteen, fourteen in three months, and that's not the point. The point is that you're being disrespectful to women. You should stop being sexist, and apologise right now."

He blushed. I'd never seen anyone other than our parents have a go at him before. I thought he was really good at arguing (he always told me he was), but he didn't seem to be very good at it at all. He decided to surrender.

"Sorry. I didn't mean it like that, though. I was just saying that he was frightened, that's all."

"And why were you having a go at your little brother anyway? Of course he'd be scared if he saw your Dad in a fight. Anyone with a shred of humanity would be."

"I wasn't scared," I said again, but quieter this time as I was beginning to think that being scared was a good thing after all. Still, I didn't know Noah's thoughts on the subject yet, so I decided it was best to keep my options open.

"Of course you were," Faye contradicted me. I wasn't going to argue with her; she'd used the words "shred of humanity" when she was having a go at Ben, and anyone who could use words like that in an argument was going to win hands down every time. You say "hands down" when the other person hasn't got any chance of beating you, by the way.

"I stayed with him when he asked me to," Ben replied. "I looked after him."

"He did," I confirmed. I was tempted to stay quiet and leave him to it, but I was starting to feel a little sorry for him. He was my brother after all.

Faye gave him a look, as if there was a lot more she wanted to say, and she was deciding whether to go for it or not. He looked uncomfortable. She bit her tongue. I wasn't sure if she felt sorry for him, too, or whether she just decided that he wasn't worth the bother.

I looked over to where all the parents were sitting, just a few metres away. Daisy was looking over towards us. She looked proud, as if her daughter had said something important, rather than just having a go at my brother for being nasty to me. Dad was looking uncomfortable, maybe because he is always protective towards Ben or maybe he was worrying in case Dave offered us cigarettes later on (because he's always going on about how bad for you they are). Mum and Dave were chatting away, which surprised me as when he was standing with Dad he had hardly said a word.

It was time to move on. Us children walked ahead, and we paired off. Ben chose to walk with me, which was a bit annoying as I wanted to talk to Noah to find out if he was nice or not. Our parents followed along just behind us.

We'd got as far as the Minster roundabout when we saw the plane heading towards us.

#

"Is it one of ours?" Dave asked Dad, as they looked up at the plane.

Dad stared at it really hard, like he would know the difference if he watched it closely enough. "I'm not sure. It's too far away to tell."

And then it was firing at us.

When you see these things on the TV, there are little chips of cement (or whatever roads are made of) flying up where the bullets have hit it, but this wasn't like that. It wasn't like that at all. There were great big chunks of cement and people being flung up into the air as the plane ripped the road to pieces. I couldn't see why they'd need bombs when bullets did so much damage.

I'd never seen anyone die before. I'd heard about it from the policeman who knocked at our door when Grandad got run over. That made me cry as Grandad was really nice and he gave me sweets and biscuits all the time. But this was different. This was people being torn in half right in front of me.

Everything was happening so quickly. One minute, we were staring at the plane, the next minute we were watching as the people on the road ahead of us were being blown in half.

Dad left his bags behind, and grabbed me in his arms. "Run!" he screamed. Dad doesn't normally scream - he's got quite a deep voice – but this really was a scream. It made me even more frightened, knowing he was that scared. He started running off the road on to the grass. "Ben, run!"

Mum was screaming, too. Everyone was screaming.

When Dad saw that Ben was following us, he didn't look back again. He kept running, as far from the road as he could. I could hear the road getting churned up behind us, as the plane roared overhead, still high up in the sky.

I thought Dad would stop when we were off the road, but he kept going, running at right angles to the direction we had come from (a right angle is ninety degrees). I tried to peer past his arm to see if Mum was following us, but I couldn't see her. People were running around all over the place. I shouted out for her, but I couldn't hear her shout back.

Ben was jogging at Dad's side. Dad is a faster runner, but he was carrying me and I was slowing him down. I shouted out for Mum again. I was scared that something would happen to her; that something might have happened already. I didn't want her to be dead. I started crying, even though Ben could see me and would probably tease me about it later.

Dad was still running. I told him to stop, to go back for Mum, but he ignored me. I told him again.

I could hear the plane make a different noise. It had shot way past us, but if I craned my neck backwards and to one side I could see that it was changing direction, turning back round.

Ben was watching it, too. "It's coming back, Dad." As if there was something Dad could do about it.

Dad nodded as he ran, but said nothing. He kept on jogging.

I called out for Mum again, but quietly this time. I was frightened. It's silly thinking about it now, but it was almost as if shouting too loud would draw attention to me, Dad and Ben, even though there was no way the man in the plane could ever have heard me over all the noise everyone was making.

People were still shouting, screaming, crying. It was hard to think straight with all that noise going on. They'd run in all directions. Some were heading the same way as us, others back the way we had come, others were on the far side of the road. I could see big chunks of concrete had been thrown up from the road, bodies mixed up with them, and I prayed that Mum was not squashed up beneath one of the chunks.

The plane came down again. This time, it was at an angle to the road rather than directly above it. We've not done angles at school yet, except for right angles, but I know what one is. The guns started firing again, and the earth in the field on the far side of the road exploded into the air. I could see people change direction, trying to get out of the way, but it was going so fast they didn't have time. More men and women died, though less than before as they were more spread out now. I couldn't stop myself crying seeing it all and knowing than Mum might be one of them.

I was worried that the bullets were heading for us. Dad still had his back to the plane so he couldn't see it coming. He could hear it, I'm sure, but not see it. I saw the road torn up again, just for a second, and then the bullets were in our field, coming in our direction. I wanted to tell him, but my voice wouldn't work. I covered my face with my arms. I knew it wouldn't protect me. But I couldn't bear to watch if we were going to be killed. I remember thinking how sad Mum would be if she was still alive and she saw us die like that.

I couldn't see what was going on any more (because I was covering my face), but I could still hear the bullets, the explosions of earth, and the screaming carried on the whole time.

And then the plane was going. The engine grew quieter, and I looked around again. Dad stopped running, and watched as the plane grew smaller and smaller in the sky. Ben stopped, too.

"Where's Mum?" Ben asked.

Dad looked around. I could see he was worried. "I don't know. I thought she was behind me. Jack, did you see where she went?"

"No, Dad. Do you think she's safe?"

I wanted him to say "yes", but he just carried on looking worried, which meant that I was worried, too.

"Is Mum alright?" I asked again.

He nodded. "I'm sure she is. Let's go and find her."

He put me down.

We went in search of Mum. I had a bad feeling in my tummy, as if something was wrong. I hoped that if anyone had died it would be Daisy or Dave, as I didn't know them very well, and I couldn't bear it to be my mum as I loved her too much.

#

We found Dave first. He was with Noah. They were looking for Faye and Daisy. They were worried as well. Dad nodded at them, but didn't stop to talk.

"Tell Daisy I'm looking for her over here, if you find her before I do," Dave called after us. Dad said nothing, so I called back that we would. I needed to make myself useful.

The road had been busy when the plane had struck. Ramsgate had been quiet, but once we were on the open road there had been people everywhere. Hundreds of them, all walking along in the same direction as us (and some on bikes). There were a lot less now, though.

Ben was the first one to spot Mum. She and Daisy were walking towards us. Daisy was holding Faye's hand. Daisy had blood on her face and her clothes.

I broke free of Dad and ran to meet her (Mum, not Daisy). I launched myself at her, and hugged her as hard as I could. She dropped to her knees and kept hugging me back. Ben caught up with me, and she hugged him as well, without letting go of me.

Dad arrived. "Thank God you're okay. I was-"

His voice cracked up, and he stopped talking.

"Have you seen Dave and Noah?" asked Daisy.

Dad pointed to the far side of the road. "They're over there. They're fine. Are you okay? What happened to your face?"

"Tarmac from the road. It was going all over the place. Over there, did you say?"

"Right there. No, there. Just to the left of that woman in the blue coat. Yeah, there. Do you see him?"

She nodded and hurried off, towing Faye behind her. Ben tried to give Faye a brave smile as she went by, but she didn't notice.

Mum stood up and cuddled Dad. That made me smile. I liked it when they weren't arguing.

"Where's our bags?" she asked him.

"Over there somewhere. I dropped them when the plane came over."

She scowled. "I hope no-one's taken them. We'll need a change of clothes. And the boys' photos are in the suitcase."

He opened his mouth to say something, but thought better of it. "You're sure you're okay?"

She shrugged. "I've been better. How about you? And the kids? They didn't get hit, did they?"

"We're all fine."

We went in search of our bags. There was no sign of them. Mum thought they had been stolen, but Dad pointed out that was a big crater in the road where he had dropped them, and that they had obviously been blown up. Mum didn't look happy. I think she was sad about the photo albums more than anything.

Faye and Jack joined us, with their parents not far behind.

"How could this happen here?" Mum asked Daisy. "In Kent of all places! It doesn't make any sense."

"And where were our guys?" Daisy added. "How could they let that happen?"

I was expecting Dad to say something, to explain things, as he always did. But Dave got there first. "During the War," he said, "Germany bombed our boys on the beaches, and all the soldiers complained that our planes were nowhere to be seen. But they were further inland, trying to stop their planes from getting through. There's no use trying to stop them when they've already reached their target; it's too late by then. You have to stop them before they get there, even if no-one can see them back there."

"They didn't make a very good job of stopping that one," Dad put in, determined to have the last word, even if he had no hope of having the first one with Dave and Daisy around.

"You don't know how many they shot down, though. Maybe that was the only one of dozens to get through."

"One was all it took, though."

"Quite."

They were quiet for a while.

"What now?" Mum asked. "The road's not safe. What do we do now?"

She'd said this to Dave and Daisy. That was the moment that I knew that she and Dad were in big trouble. However much they had argued in recent weeks, he'd always been the one she'd turn to when she needed help. By the look on his face, I thought that he was thinking the same thing, too.

"No point going back," Dave ruled. "Canterbury will be the safest place to go, I'm sure of it. The army's there. They'll have anti-aircraft guns and everything. It's the only place the planes can't get at us. We have to keep going."

"Not on the main road, though," Dad said. I recognized the tone of voice. It was the one he used when Ben and I were being naughty, and he was giving us one last chance to behave ourselves. "We'll cut though Preston and get into Canterbury the back way. There's less chance of us being attacked by planes again if we do that."

"What do you think?" Mum asked Dave! What was she thinking? Dad looked furious, as if he'd caught her kissing someone else or something.

Dave shrugged. "Sounds like a plan."

"That's definitely what we're doing," Dad told him. "Are you coming with us? Your choice. You can stick to the main road if you want."

"No, your way sounds good. Besides, we'll have someone to blame that way if it all goes tits up." (Sorry; I should have said the T-word or something, but I'm not sure you'd know what I meant as there's a lot of words that start with "T").

Dave laughed at his own joke. Daisy did, too. No-one else seemed to find it funny, not even his children (they seemed a bit embarrassed if anything). Dad looked like he wanted to punch him. I thought him saying a rude word was a bit funny, but I wasn't sure if it was sexist or not, so I didn't even smile, just in case Faye told me off.

We set back off again, walking close to the road, but not actually on it, just in case the plane came back and we had to run away again.

I tried not to stare at the dead bodies as we walked, but there were too many of them to ignore. There would be an awful lot more before my journey had finished.

#

We only made it a further hour or so before we had to stop. My knees were hurting a lot. They do that if I walk too far (because of my hypermobility syndrome), and I'd never had to walk that far in all my life. Sometimes they dislocate, but I've got quite good at banging them back into place myself. Ben used to tell me how brave I was when that happened. It always took me by surprise when he was nice to me.

"We're half way there," Dad said. "Can't you go a bit further?"

"He's only eight," Mum pointed out. "He's done really well already."

"My boy Noah's still going strong," said Dave, which I didn't think was very helpful at all.

"It hurts," I told them. "I want to keep going. I want to get to Canterbury to see Nan. But it really hurts."

I looked at Mum. She was my best bet. Dad had never seen my knees dislocate before, and I don't think he knew quite how much trouble I had with them. Mum knew. She'd seen them when they were dislocated, and it always really freaked her out. She'd look after me.

"How about another hour or so?" Dave suggested. "Then we can have another rest, and then finish off the journey before it gets dark."

I started crying. I couldn't walk any more. If it was just me and my family, I knew I could talk my parents round, make them see that I really was in too much pain to walk any more, but I was worried that Dave might talk them into keep going.

Dad looked in two minds. I could see how much he wanted to get to Canterbury before it got dark. I could see him tensing up every time we stopped for a break. But the more Dave kept saying we should keep walking, the more Dad looked like he might say we should stop and rest, just to be difficult. I don't think he liked him very much.

Fortunately, Daisy came to my rescue anyway. "It's been a long day for him. For all of us. It can't hurt to have another break, just for a little while."

"I don't want to be out here after dark," Dave protested. "They might start bombing again. The army can't protect us out here."

"We're staying," Dad ruled. "Just for a little while, like Daisy said. You can go ahead, if you like. We wouldn't want to hold you back."

"I wouldn't hear of it," Daisy told him, although Dave didn't look so sure. "We're staying here with you. I expect we're all hungry by now, anyway. Have you brought any food with you?"

"It was in the sports' bag," Mum told her. "All our food. Ben dropped it when the plane came over."

"I was looking after the boy," he protested.

"You could have taken it with you."

"Not to worry," Daisy interrupted, as anxious as I was to avoid another argument starting. "You can share ours, can't they Dave?"

Dave nodded. "A tenner a sandwich, does that sound fair?"

Daisy punched him playfully in the arm. "What are you like?"

We ate. It wasn't tuna. The grown-ups sat together, as did us children. Quite a lot of people walked past us, although less people than before now we had left the main road. A few of them had dogs on leads, as if they were just taking them out for walks (although they had their bags and suitcases with them). Did I tell you that I like dogs, but we've never had one? One lady had a cage with a towel over it, and I could hear a cat meowing inside. We used to have a cat, before he got run over (like Grandad). His name was Michael, which is a funny name for a cat. I'm not sure why he was called that.

Ben sat next to Faye. I think she rolled her eyes when he sat down, but I wasn't sure. I don't know why she didn't like him. Everyone liked my brother as far as I could tell. He was always telling me how many friends he had at school.

"Why are they doing this to us?" I asked Faye. None of the grown-ups would tell me what was going on, but she seemed like a girl who would know things. "Why are they bombing us?"

"They're Russians," Ben said. "They don't need a reason. It's just what they do."

"How old are you?" she asked him.

"Eleven." He looked pleased that she was talking to him.

"You don't know much for an eleven year old, do you? I bet you don't even read the newspapers."

"I do!"

"The sports pages, right?" (She was right).

"And the news on TV." He didn't, as that was on after bedtime.

"Well that's all right then. That makes you clever enough to comment on world affairs, doesn't it?"

I felt sorry for Ben. She sounded like a grown-up when she argued. He didn't have a chance.

"I was just saying. They don't care what they do. They don't have a reason for doing this. They're just doing it because they can."

"So how do you think China fits into all this? Any thoughts on that, Einstein?"

"China?"

"China."

"They don't. This has got nothing to do with China. It's Russia that's bombing us. What are you going on about China for?"

"Go and ask your Mummy, little boy."

Ben opened his mouth to answer her back, thought better of it, and closed it again. He reminded me of Dad when he did that. He got up. He gave me a look to see if I was going to walk away with him as a sign of solidarity (that means that you do something to show that you're friends with someone else, even if you don't really want to do it), but I was afraid that I would look stupid, too, so I stayed where I was. He went over and sat with Dad. Every so often, he glared over at Faye. I didn't think he liked her any more.

"What's China got to do with it?" I asked her, hoping she wouldn't be as nasty to me as she was to Ben, but I needed to know what was going on. Somehow, I thought that if I could understand it a bit better, it might not be so bad.

"Ask your Mum," she replied. "She'll know."

"I'm not sure she will. Dad will, though."

"Why would he know more than her? Because she's a woman, is that it?"

I shook my head as hard as I could. "No, it's not that. Not at all. It's just that she reads magazines all the time. She doesn't like newspapers. She says they're too depressing."

"What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing. Magazines are good. I'm just saying, that's all."

I was puzzled. She had just been having a go at Ben for not reading the newspaper, but now she was having a go at me for suggesting that Mum should have been reading them (which wasn't actually what I was trying to say anyway). Sometimes, I was quite glad that I was still at primary school, as girls were usually a lot easier to understand when they were my age.

I looked at Noah. He was smirking. I wasn't going to get any help there.

"I have to go and ask Mum something," I told Faye. I nearly said Dad, but thought she would be happier if I said Mum. I didn't want to be sexist, like Ben had been.

"You're fine where you are," Faye replied, waving me back down as I started to stand up. "Stay there and rest your knees. We'll probably be off again soon."

"I don't think I can walk yet."

She shrugged, "Whatever. Rest anyway."

I tried smiling at her. That usually worked when I didn't know what to say. She smiled back. "You're cuter than your brother," she told me.

"I know," I replied, which made her laugh.

#

Dad was upset that his sports bag had been blown up by the plane. His radio had been in it, and he really wanted to listen to it while we were sitting there waiting for my knees to feel better.

"Faye's got her i-pad with her," Dave told him.

"We need a radio," Dad said, as if Dave was a bit simple. "I need to hear the announcements they've been making; see what's been happening."

"We can listen to the radio on the i-pad," Dave replied, as if Dad was more simple still. "I do it all the time."

Dad's never had an i-pad so he doesn't know what they can do. By now, we were all sitting in one group (I had made an excuse that I needed the toilet so that I could leave Faye and Noah to go and sit with my family, and they had come over to join us soon afterwards). Dad looked at me to see if Dave was right about the radio app. I nodded, trying not to let anyone else see that I was helping him. I hoped that he wouldn't tell Ben off for not telling him about his i-pad when we were back at home, looking for batteries.

"I do, too," Dad said to Dave, trying to stop himself looking silly (a bit like Ben had done earlier with Faye). "I just like my old radio, that's all. It's retro."

He looked quite proud of himself for using a word like "retro" (grown-ups always look proud when they use a word that children don't understand). Dave didn't look so sure, though. He smiled with his lips turned in, as if he was trying not to laugh. I didn't like that. It was okay for Faye to tease Ben, but I didn't want anyone laughing at my parents.

Daisy fetched the i-pad from her bag (their bags hadn't been lost or blown up when the plane had shot at us, like ours had). She turned it on, and found the radio for Dad. Dad complained that there was no "long-wave", which made Dave smile again. Daisy skipped through the channels, as we stood around her to listen, but everything was in French so we didn't know what they were saying. Most of it was music, which was weird. It seemed strange to me that the whole world was going wrong, but in France they were still playing records on the radio. They weren't very good records, either.

Dad sighed. "There was a channel before with news bulletins on it. I think it was on long wave, though. So much for modern technology."

"This isn't modern technology, Ben," Dave contradicted him. "This has been around since the twentieth century."

"Not in my house, it hasn't," Dad said, as if that made all the difference. I think he'd forgotten that he'd just told Dave that he listened to the radio on the i-pad all the time. To be honest, I was a little embarrassed for him. I thought that Dad would be in charge, no matter who we met on the road, but Dave was clearly better than him at arguing, and whoever is the best arguer always ends up as the boss in the end.

"I'll go back to one of the French "talk" channels," Daisy said. "I can speak French."

"You can?" Dad asked. He sounded surprised. I could see Faye was giving him a look. I think she thought that Dad was suggesting that women weren't good at foreign languages, but it wasn't that at all. Dad was always surprised that anyone could speak French. We'd gone to Disneyworld in Paris when I was six, had made friends with another family in the hotel, and he wouldn't shut up for weeks about how good the father had been at French, just because he could "hello", "goodbye", "please", "thank you" and "can you tell me the way to the toilets?" in another language.

"I spent three years working in Paris when I was younger," Daisy told him. "No-one spoke any English, so I had to pick it up pretty quickly."

"You spent three years in Paris?"

Dad was just repeating what she was saying now. I could see that Faye was getting more and more cross, and it was only a matter of time before she said something (the only thing which was stopping her from saying something already was that he was a grown-up). Then it would be three against one (her and her parents against Dad) which wouldn't be fair at all. I could try and help him, but I knew I wouldn't be much good in an argument.

"Before I had the kids. You've got to do these things while you can, haven't you? Have your adventures before you settle down."

Mum was nodding her head to show how much she agreed. She looked a little sad. Dad nodded his head, too, but you could tell he was only doing that as everyone else was. He wouldn't have liked going to Paris for three years. He kept saying how nice it was to get home when we came back on the train from Disneyworld, and we had only been there for a week. He always does that, wherever we go. He doesn't like fun very much.

Daisy had found one of the talk-channels. Everyone watched her as she listened to it. She frowned.

"What is it?" Dad asked. "Is it bad news?"

"You don't make a chocolate brownie like that!" Daisy replied. "For a nation which prides themselves on their cooking, they have some funny ideas about baking sometimes!"

"Cooking?" said Dad, still repeating what she was saying.

She nodded. Her fingers slid over the i-pad screen and the voice changed two or three times.

"That's better. This might help."

"What are they saying?" Dad asked.

"Can I make a suggestion? You lot leave me alone to listen to it for a while, and then I'll give you a summary later. If I try and give you a running commentary, I'm not going to hear half of what they're saying."

"Interpreters can do that. Talk and listen at the same time."

"And very clever they are to. Sorry, Ben, but I'm not a professional interpreter. I'm just a woman who's spent some time in France. Why don't you go and talk amongst yourselves for a bit and I'll be over as soon as I've found out what they've got to say. Go on. I won't be long."

"Can I stay with you, Mum?" asked Faye. "I'll be quiet."

"Of course you can, Darling. Maybe you can help me. Your French is pretty good now."

"She learns it at school," Dave put in. "She's picked it up really quickly. And Chinese. That might be useful soon, don't you think! We're very proud of her."

"Ben does French at school, too, don't you, Ben?" I put in. I thought I was being nice, talking him up, but the look he gave me told me that I was not. Maybe he was worried that Faye would challenge him to a French-speaking competition and beat him. He wouldn't have liked that. Girls are often better in class, as they listen more, but they're rubbish at football so it all evens out in the end.

We sat in a group, far enough away from Daisy so that we wouldn't drown out the radio if we talked, but not so far that she might feel lonely. The grown-ups said things from time to time, but no-one seemed to want a proper chat. Everyone kept looking over at Daisy, to see if she was giving any clues about whether the news was good or bad. I was expecting her to look either happy or sad, but if anything she just looked angry. She talked to Faye a little, to tell her the bits which were making her most cross, but we couldn't hear anything she was saying.

Dad started to stand up. I think he was going to go over and ask what she had found out so far. But Mum asked him to sit back down again, and Dave agreed that he should, and Dad sat down but didn't look very happy at all.

It seemed like ages before Daisy and Faye came and sat with us. Faye put the i-pad back in her bag. Daisy didn't start talking straight away. I think she was deciding what order to tell us the things she had found out. When she came over, she said the signal had just gone, and she couldn't pick up anything else on the radio except static.

"What did they say?" Mum asked. "It's bad, isn't it? I can tell by the look on your face."

"It's not great. It was a radio-phone in. They were talking about English refugees."

"That's us," Ben told me.

I nodded. I wasn't stupid.

"There's a camp. At Sangatte, where the refugees used to stay when they still wanted to come here, only much bigger now. Our people are being detained, there."

"Detained?" asked Dad. "What do you mean, "detained"? They can't detain us! We're English!"

"That's what they said they were doing on the radio. But it gets worse than that."

"Kids, why don't you go and sit over there while we're talking?" Mum suggested. "They don't need to hear this."

"Faye knows," I pointed out. "We should hear it, too."

"She'll tell them later anyway," Dave agreed. "They might as well get it from the horse's mouth."

"I won't!" insisted Faye, but Daisy was talking again, so no-one paid her any attention except for Ben (who was still doing it sneakily, when she wasn't looking).

"There's a quota. They're taking in two hundred and fifty thousand refugees, and then they'll start turning people back. They're nearly halfway there already."

Dad shook his head. "They can't turn people back. We're both in the EU. Free movement of workers, and all that crap. After all the money we've paid their farmers, they have to let us in."

"Not according to the radio, they don't. Quarter of a million, and then the doors are shut. End of story."

"People will just go to Belgium instead. Or Spain."

"Belgium are taking twenty thousand over five years."

"You're joking! Twenty thousand! That's no effing good!"

"Can you not swear in front of the children, Ben? I can't ask them not to swear if they hear us doing it."

Dad said sorry, and stopped talking for a while.

Dave started talking instead. "What about Spain, though? Are they taking people in?"

"They didn't say. One of the callers just said that France should have the same policy as Belgium."

Dave looked like he wanted to swear as well, but he was better at holding it in than Dad. "Twenty thousand over five years? A country the size of France? You're kidding?"

"There was this one lady who didn't want any of us. She said she'd been on the waiting list for a council house for a year, and she was damned if she was going to go back to the bottom behind hundreds of thousands of "roast-beefs". And before you say anything, Ben, "damned" is not swearing."

No-one said anything for a while. I looked from grown-up to grown-up, waiting to see what they would say. Grown-ups always know what to do. It was a little scary that they were so shocked by the news. I wasn't sure what it had to do with us, though. We didn't want to go to France. We were off to see Nan in Canterbury. You don't even need to get on a boat for Canterbury, as there's a road all the way there.

"Maybe we should all go straight to Dover," Dave suggested. "Catch a ferry while they're still letting people in."

Mum shook her head. "We can't. I have to see Mum. I thought you were going to the barracks?"

"We were. But you heard what Daisy said. Everyone's going to France. They wouldn't go if there was anything here for them. We should go now, while we still can."

"Not until I've checked on Mum."

Dad touched her arm. "Maybe he's right. We've got the children to -"

"Don't you dare. We agreed. We agreed! This doesn't change anything. We find Mum, and then we go catch your stupid ferry if you still want to."

"Hold on, though. I don't think there'll be any ferries running," Dave told her. "Not with the bombing and all. But there'll be some sort of evacuation plan. We've got one of the best bloody navies in the world, for God's sake!"

"Not in front of the children."

"Sorry. But we have. They'll get us to France. But we should go now, before they lock the doors on us."

"To Sangatte?" asked Mum, determined to win the argument. "We can't have the kids staying at Sangatte! I've heard what it's like in refugee camps. There'll be disease; we could all end up with typhoid or something. We'd be lucky if we get half the food and drink we need, they're so underfunded. If we're going to starve to death, I'd rather do it in my own home."

"I've got plenty of sandwiches left," Dave protested. "And two-thirds of a family-sized pork pie."

Mum stared at him as if he was mad. I think he must have realized that he'd said something stupid, as he looked down at the floor and looked embarrassed.

"We're going to Canterbury, aren't we Ben?"

Dad nodded. He didn't look happy.

"And we are, too," Daisy said. "There's safety in numbers, like I said before. We've got to stick together, whatever happens."

"We'll be safe if we stick together," Mum agreed.

Dad and Dave looked at each other. I could tell from the looks on their faces that they didn't think that we would be very safe at all.

#

I spent the rest of the day trying to get to know Noah. He didn't say much; he just watched everyone else, and laughed when anyone said something funny. Sometimes, I wasn't even sure why he thought it was funny, but it was nice to have someone my own age around anyway.

We did that thing you do when you're trying to find something you both like, so you've got something to talk about.

"I support Liverpool," I told him. "It was my Dad's team when he was little. He says they're gonna be back in the Premiership one day."

"I don't really watch football much. Dad says it's too sweary."

"Sweary?"

"Yeah. He says they swear at the referee all the time. He says that one of the referees got beaten up last year and nearly died in hospital."

"Beaten up? By a player?"

"By a linesman, I think."

"A linesman? Why would he beat up the referee?"

Noah shrugged. "Don't know. I'm not allowed to watch it."

"I'll find out on Youtube when I get my battery charged. It sounds cool."

We were quiet for a while, while we thought of something to say.

"I like cricket," Noah told me.

"It's alright."

"And rugby."

"Me, too. Football's better though, don't you think?"

"Maybe."

We were quiet again.

"Do you like music?" I asked.

"It's not bad. We listen to the "Guantanamos" a lot in the car."

"I haven't heard of them."

"They're from the olden days, I think. Dad says they're from the Twenties."

"Oh. I only like new stuff."

More silence. There had to be something we both liked. I asked him if he liked Taylor Swift, because she started off in the olden days, too, but he wasn't all that keen.

We tried television, but he stayed up later than me so most of the programmes he watched were on after I'd gone to bed, and I thought he smirked a bit when I told him the programmes I liked so I changed the subject to films. He liked a lot of horror films, though, which children aren't supposed to watch. He told me about one, where a ghost started haunting a monster who had killed him when he was still a human, and the monster killed itself in the end as it got so scared, but I didn't really want to hear it as I was having nightmares already.

We finally gave up. Everyone knows that the only things to talk about are football, music, telly and films, in that order (although girls talk about clothes and boys, too), and if neither of us liked the same thing as the other there was nothing left to say.

"It was scary when the plane came down," I said. I'd given up talking, so thought I'd just tell him what was on my mind.

"Really scary," he agreed.

Maybe we did have something in common after all.

#

I had my dream again that night, only it was different from before.

It started off the same. I was outside home, in my pyjamas, with Teddy to keep me company. Mum and Dad and Ben were walking towards me, and I knew that there were going to be bombs falling, and I shouted for them to run, but they couldn't hear me.

Noah was there. He was telling me about horror films. I turned round, and asked him nicely to stop talking as I had to save my family. He went away. I turned back, and Dad had gone. I looked all around, trying to see where he had gone, and all of a sudden he was back again, but now he was a ghost, and he was saying that he had been blown up and it was all my fault. And then I saw that Mum had gone, too, and it was just Ben left. I shouted at Ben to run, because I didn't want him to be a ghost, too, in case he blamed me as well. And then Mum was a ghost, and she was telling me off for not telling her about the bombs, and I started crying, but they kept telling me off all the same. And then Ben was a ghost, and all three of them kept shouting at me, really nasty shouting, that made me scared, and I kept asking them to stop it and leave me alone, but they just got louder and louder, and angrier and angrier, and then they were shouting at each other, too.

I woke up. I looked around. It was night time. Mum and Dad were sleeping nearby. Ben was on the other side of them. None of them were shouting. "It was just a dream," I told myself, two or three times until I really believed it. "It was just a dream."

I looked around to see if Noah and Faye were awake. I couldn't see them. They had been next to us when I had gone to sleep. Some other people had stopped nearby to sleep as well, but not many as most had kept going for Canterbury on the main road. It was just the ones with children and old people who were resting. And an old man in a wheelchair, with a lady who was probably his daughter. There were only about twenty people there apart from us.

I stood up and had a look around. It was cold; I was glad that I had my coat on.

It took me a while before I realized what had happened. Noah and his family had left during the night. They had promised to stay with us. Safety in numbers and all that stuff. But they had crept away when we were fast asleep.

They had left us all alone.

#

I woke Dad up to tell him they had gone. I thought he'd want to know. He woke up Mum. I was going to wake up Ben as well, but they wanted him to get his sleep, even though I was wide awake and I'm youngest so I needed my sleep more than he did.

Dad was not happy. He swore a lot, and said that he knew that they would sneak off as soon as they had the chance. He'd had a bad feeling about them from the start.

Mum was really quiet. She looked quite upset. I think that she had quite liked having another woman around so they could talk about things she couldn't talk to Dad about, and now she had lost all of that. Maybe she was embarrassed, too, because it was her friends who had left us.

"And they've taken the radio!" Dad complained. "What are we going to do without the radio?"

"It was an i-pad," she pointed out. "The kids have got i-pads."

"My battery's run out," I told them. "But Ben's is working."

"Can he get radio on it?" Dad asked.

I nodded. "Of course he can."

"And nobody thought to tell me that when I was trying to get the telly to work so we could listen to the news?"

"I thought you knew." This may actually have been a bit of a lie, as in fact I hadn't even thought of the radio at the time, but he was the grown-up and he should have asked for an i-pad if he wanted one, so it was his fault either way.

"It won't be any use, though, will it?" asked Mum.

"It's got batteries. We've been saving them for you specially. Just in case you might need it – for anything."

"But none of us speak French, Jack."

"Ben does. He does it at school."

"I've helped him with his homework. He can tell us that the cat is in the kitchen or the pencils are on the desk, but he's not going to be able to tell us whether Russia has reached Canterbury yet."

"He's only little," Dad put in. "He's doing very well for his age."

"Yes he is. I didn't say he wasn't. But there's no point making him listen to the news in French; he'll only pick out the odd word here and there, and that will just upset him. We press on to Canterbury, and see for ourselves."

"You're really sure you still want to go on? Your friends have given up on it."

"My friends? That's the way it's going to be, is it?"

"They were your friends. I've only met them a few times. They just effed off and left us on our own," (he didn't say "effed").

"I didn't hear you complaining about them when Daisy was telling us what they were saying on that chat-show!" Or when she was sharing out their food with us.

"She was alright. But he was a real know-it-all."

"Takes one to know one."

"That's just childish!"

"Good. Look, we're going to Canterbury, okay? I'm fed up having this conversation again and again and again. You must be, too. I'm going to Canterbury, and that's an end to it. You wait here with the kids if you think it's for the best. If you'd have let me go on my own, I'd have been there and back by now."

"If you hadn't been blown to pieces on the road, that is."

"But I wasn't, though, was I?"

"But you might have been if we weren't with you. You would have been further up the road. Anything could have happened."

Mum breathed a very deep breath indeed. She said nothing for about half a minute. I was expecting Dad to use the chance to have another moan, but he kept quiet, too. I think that was wise.

When she spoke again, her voice was quiet but firm. "I'm going when the sun comes up. Are you coming with me? You don't have to; not if you think it's safer for the kids to stay here. But I'm not going to leave my Mum alone for one more day. She could be buried under a pile of rubble for all I know, waiting for me to come and help her. When we've found her, we can do whatever you think best. You're the practical one; just tell me what you want us to do. But for now, I've got to do what I think best, and what I think best is to go and help my Mum, because she might really, really need me right now."

She started crying. Dad cuddled her, and stroked her hair, and told her that of course we'd come with her and he was so, so sorry. I went and laid down next to Ben. It was a bit embarrassing watching them have a cuddle, because they were quite old and it's cringey watching old people do that sort of thing, even when they're not kissing or anything.

Besides, I needed my sleep. It sounded like we would have a lot more walking to do in the morning, and my knees were hurting a lot already. I decided that I would walk into Canterbury, however sore my knees were, so that Mum wouldn't have to cry again, so the more sleep I had, the better. But it took me ages to nod off again, and when I did I had my dream about bombing again, only this time everyone started crying when the bombs came down.

#

Ben woke me up in the morning. He wanted to know where Faye had gone. He didn't say Faye – he said "the others" – but I knew that she was the one he was asking about.

I told him what had happened the night before. He told me that it was ever so important that I didn't keep stopping, no matter how tired I was, because we had to make it to Canterbury in time to catch a boat to France before they closed the doors on us. I asked him if you could catch boats from Canterbury, but he just rolled his eyes and told me that I was "such a child". I thought it was probably best not to ask him what doors they would be shutting.

Mum and Dad were still asleep, but some of the other people who were sleeping nearby were already on the move. As Ben seemed quite chatty for a change, I decided to have another go at finding out more about why the Russians were invading us. At least I knew it was the Russians now, so that was something, but I wasn't really sure who the Russians were or why they wanted to fight us.

"Why are they invading us?"

"Who?"

"The Russians."

"Why do you think?"

"I dunno."

"You're such a child."

I know he was right – I am a child – but I was getting fed up that he kept saying it all the time. It was getting boring. He was a child, too, even though he'd never admit it. Just because he was born before me, it didn't mean that I was more babyish than him. George at school said that his brother was fourteen and had a big bushy beard and a job at the bank, which just goes to show that age doesn't matter all that much. There's not much that his brother couldn't do; he had a job at the circus last year, walking on a tight-rope over the tigers' cage. He said that he used to be a girl as well, but I don't think I believe that.

"You don't know either, do you? You're not telling me, because you don't know. You're just as babyish as me." (I wasn't babyish, but I knew it would make him cross saying that).

"No-one could be as babyish as you. You should still be wearing a nappy."

Dad woke up We might have been talking quite loudly.

"Are you two arguing again? Could you stop it? We've got a long way to go yet and it's not gonna help if you guys are bickering all the time." It was funny him saying that, bearing in mind that him and Mum bickered miles more than we did, but you can't say that to grown-ups so I decided to have a go at Ben instead.

"He's being nasty to me. He said I was a baby and that I should be wearing a nappy."

"I said you were a child. You are, in case you haven't noticed. You're eight." (He said the word eight as if it was the worst thing in the world).

"So? My friend George has a brother with a beard."

"Well that's relevant, isn't it?"

"Of course it is!"

"Enough," said Dad.

Mum woke up. "What is it? What's going on?"

"The kids are arguing."

"Stop it."

"We weren't arguing," I told her. "We were just having a discussion." It's what Mum and Dad often said when they were arguing, and I'd remembered it so I could avoid getting told off next time Ben and me were arguing. It always seemed okay for them to have a row if they said they were just having a discussion, so I thought it would be a good "get-out-of-jail-free" card for me, too. I was wrong, though.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Dad asked. He sounded cross. "Are you trying to be funny?"

That confused me. He knew what it meant, as I'd heard him say it to me lots of times. I wasn't sure what to say. I looked to Ben for help, but he was smirking so I knew I'd get no help from him. I shrugged. "Nothing. Just saying."

I noticed that Mum was trying to laugh. I don't know why it was making Dad cross when Mum thought it was funny, and I don't know what was so bad about it anyway, but I decided that it was probably best not to say it again, unless I absolutely had to. Not when Dad was around anyway.

As we didn't have anything to pack up, we were on the move straightaway. We didn't even have to brush our teeth or anything, as our tooth brushes were in the suitcase Dad had lost. It worried me a little that our teeth might go black and fall out, but I decided that as long as we could buy toothbrushes in Canterbury then one night shouldn't make a difference. So Dad just picked up our carrier bags for us and off we went.

"Baby," Ben muttered under his breath, so Mum and Dad couldn't hear him, as we walked along.

"You like girls," I whispered back, and he went a bit red so I think I got the best insult in there.

And then the plane came back.

#

"Run," shouted Dad, even before the plane started shooting at us. I started to run along the road, but he grabbed my arm and pulled me away into a field. Ben came with us, and Mum did too this time.

There weren't many people on the road, not like the first time we were shot at. There were only maybe a dozen families or so. There didn't seem to be any reason for it to shoot at us, as we couldn't have done any harm to anyone. But the plane came down really low this time, so that it was only two trees up (if you put one tree on top of another), and the road exploded all over the place. It was only a short burst of bullets, lasting a second or two. And then the plane was roaring off into the distance. Gone.

It was all so quick. One minute we were walking along, whispering insults to each other, and the next we were standing in the field, watching the plane fly away. I heard someone shouting "bastards" (maybe I should say "B#####ds", but I'm not sure how bad that is as a swear-word) but I bet he wouldn't have said it if the pilot could hear him.

"Is he coming back?" Mum asked.

Dad shook his head. "I don't think so." He sounded a bit quiet, as if he didn't really want to say anything. I should have known then what he would be like later, if I was good at guessing that sort of thing.

"Why would he shoot at us?" (That's just what I had been thinking).

"I don't know. Target practice. Or maybe he thought it was funny."

"Funny!"

"I don't know, do I? You'd have to ask him!" (That was a weird thing to say, as he was already gone, and he wouldn't have been able to hear Mum talking over the sound of the plane anyway).

We walked back to the road. We had to walk at an angle, as the bit we had been standing on was all torn up and blackened. Even where the road was still flat, it was covered with lumps of broken concrete.

There was a dead man lying by the side of the road, like road-kill. I don't know if he had family or not; probably not, as I couldn't see anyone with him. He only had half a head left, with stuff spilling out of the half he had left. I looked away. I felt sick. I don't know why, but this was worse than before. We had seen dead bodies before, when the plane had shot at us the last time. There had been so many of them, but I had just been pleased that Mum was okay. But this time, there were hardly any of us there, and I kept thinking that it could have been one of us, lying there with half a head. I could see Dad like that in my mind, and then Mum, and then Ben. And then I could see me. It was horrible, so I looked at the ground so I wouldn't have to see it again.

But then I heard Dad shouting. I looked up, and I could see that a man was leaning over the dead man, the one with half a head, with his hand inside the pocket of his jeans.

Dad charged over, and we all followed him, not wanting to be left on our own in case the plane came back. "Get off him! Show some respect for eff's sake!" Dad was really cross – crosser than I'd ever seen him before – and his face was all purple.

"Waste not want," the man replied. "It's not like he's gonna miss it."

He took a wallet from the dead man's pocket and put it in his jeans. He had to take his mobile phone out first to make room. He tried to get the phone back in his pocket again but it wouldn't fit, so he threw it away. "It's not much use now anyway."

"That's despicable," Dad told him. He could hardly talk, he was so angry.

"I've got a family over there, mate. My wife's going through his bags to see if there's anything worth having, while I'm getting his wallet. We need to live. You're just p###ed off because I got there first. Now eff off, and take your scummy little family with you."

Dad hit him. I was really shocked. I know that he had got in a fight when we were queueing up for food, but he was just defending himself then; the other men had hit him first, and there had been two of them against one when it started. But this time, Dad had hit out first. I don't think he hit him very hard – the man looked more surprised than hurt – but even so. He would have gone mental if Ben or me had done that. You could go to prison for hitting someone, unless it's self-defence or you're having a boxing match.

The man hit Dad back. He must have hit him much harder than Dad had hit him, because Dad fell over backwards and landed on the ground. Mum started screaming at the man, and the man's wife ran over and started screaming at her back. The woman pushed her. Mum grabbed her coat and tugged it really hard so that she took a few steps forwards. And then all of a sudden the lady was on the floor, and Mum was on top of her, punching her. Not slapping her, like girls do when they have fights at school. But actually punching her with her fists, like tough men do when they have fights on TV.

I was expecting Dad and the man to start fighting like that, too, but Dad pulled Mum off the lady, and the man pulled his wife away when she tried to attack Mum to get her own back for Mum hitting her. And all the while the lady was swearing at Mum, and the man was swearing at Dad. Mum was swearing at them both as well, but Dad didn't say anything. He just looked really tired and really old and really frightened.

Dad held out his hands for me and Ben to take. I took one. Ben stood by his side, but wouldn't take his hand, because he's too old for that sort of thing. Dad started walking away. Mum swapped a few more swear words with the man and the lady and then she came, too, turning back to shout at them when they kept swearing at us.

"Are you all right?" she asked Dad. She used a really bad swear-word about the man who had hit him. "They call us scum after what they were doing to that poor man's body!"

"They're the scum, all right," Dad agreed, but he was speaking very quietly again. It was hard to hear him unless you listened really carefully.

"You shouldn't have pulled me off. I would've taught that bitch some manners."

"That's not us."

Mum snorted. "It might have to be from now on. The world's gone mad. Maybe we should, too."

"It's just for a few days. The Police will be back soon. Or the army. It can't carry on like this. You see if I'm not right."

Mum looked at him. She smiled. "That's what I love about you. You're so effing optimistic all the time."

"Can we stop swearing now? We're upsetting the kids."

But we'd just seen Mum and Dad fighting in the road over a man with half a face. A few swear words weren't going to make much of a difference to us at all.

#

I was tired, and my knees hurt a lot. I tried to keep walking, but it was hard. The only thing which stopped me asking for a rest was that I knew that the man and the lady were somewhere behind us, and if we stopped walking they might catch us up and starting fighting with Mum and Dad again.

I was holding Mum's hand now. I had stopped holding my parents' hands before the bombing, as I was worried my school friends would see me and call me a baby, or that Ben would see me and call me a baby, or that people I didn't know would see me and think I was a baby, even if they didn't actually say it out loud.

Dad wasn't saying much, which was a bit worrying. Mum kept trying to talk to him, but he just answered with a "yes" or a "no", which made it hard for her to keep the conversation (that's when two people are talking to each other) going. After a while, she gave up, and we walked on without saying anything at all.

I was really hungry, but I was even thirstier. We had ran out of food and drink the day before (Dad said he had expected us to be at Nan's by now, but he was wrong and he should have known that I wouldn't be able to walk very fast) and what with all the walking my throat was really dry. We could probably have shared Noah's food and drink again if he hadn't left us during the night.

It was getting harder and harder to keep walking. It's hard to explain how I felt, but it was like everything was just too much and I just wanted to sit down on the pavement and cry my eyes out.

Mum told Dad that I was looking really pale, and that we had to find something to eat and drink soon. Dad said that we were just coming in to Wingham, and maybe they'd have a cash-point for him to draw out some money and buy provisions at the shop. His voice was tiny now. It was the most he'd said since he'd had his fight after the bombing, and it turned out that it would be the last thing he ever said, so it was a shame that none of us believed him. I was only eight, but I knew that if there was a cash-point machine it would be empty and if there was a shop it would be closed.

We made it into Wingham not long afterwards. It was just a little village; one road with houses and a few shops on either side. By then, Dad was looking over his shoulder every so often, as Ben had spotted the rude man and the lady were walking our way and were catching us up. They had a little girl about my age with them (I don't know where she had been when they were fighting us), but they were still walking quicker than we were. Maybe it was because they had stolen the dead man's breakfast and were feeling better than we were.

They overtook us on the other side of the road. They kept looking over at us when they passed us by, and the lady said a few nasty things under her breath which were just loud enough for us to hear, but Dad kept his eyes firmly to the front, and Mum kept quiet even though I could see that she was dying to say a few things back. I was glad that she didn't, as I didn't want everyone to start fighting again. I didn't think that Dad would have been very good at fighting, when he was like that.

Ben was the first one to see the tables up ahead, two of them, side by side. There was a lady standing behind one of them, with her hands behind her back, and another lady sitting next to her on one of those garden chairs that you can fold up when you've finished with them. They both had grey hair, so they must have been old (older than Mum and Dad, and maybe even as old as Nan).

The lady in the chair stood up as the family we had been fighting walked towards them. "Cup of tea?" she asked them.

Mum hurried after them, not wanting to miss out. We followed her, although Dad lagged behind.

"Tea?" the man was saying. He sounded as if they were trying to trick him. "How much?"

"We're not selling it, love. One cup each. I'm afraid we don't have any milk left, but there's plenty of sugar if you want it."

"I want milk," said their little girl.

"You'll drink what you're given," her Mum told her. "Three cups."

"She didn't say "please"," I whispered to Mum. We were always told to say "please". It was rude not to.

"She's very rude," Mum agreed. She said it quite loud. The man and the woman both glared at her, but said nothing. I think she was a better fighter than them, and they probably didn't want to get her angry again.

They were handed three cups of tea – even though they had not asked nicely – and then they shifted over to the far table to make room for us. Dad arrived.

"Four cups of tea?" asked the lady, giving us a friendly smile.

"Thank you," Mum replied, smiling back. I didn't dare look at the other family, because I was sure they would think that Mum was saying it on purpose to teach them some manners.

She poured out two plastic-cups of tea from a flask on the table. The flask was empty before the second cup was full, and I was worried that they had run out, but they took another flask from a box on the ground behind them, and there was enough to fill all four cups.

More people were arriving, and she waved them over with a smile. "Come on over, folks. Plenty for everyone."

"That one there's been round twice already," her friend told her. "We're going to have to say something."

"How can you make tea?" Mum asked.

"The W.I can always make tea," the woman with the flask laughed. "It takes more than a few bombs to stop us. There you are; four cups. Sorry about the cups. Plastic rubbish. Anyone for sugar?"

I had three sugar-cubes to hide the taste of tea without milk. I could hear the other family tutting that I was taking so much, but I think they were only doing it because Mum had told them off for not saying please earlier. I was sure to say thank you every time I picked up a cube, just in case.

They started pouring tea for the other people who were arriving. One of the ladies gave a stern look over the top of her glasses to the man she said had been round twice already, but she still served him anyway.

The family we had had a fight with moved on.

Dad was just standing there with his plastic cup in his hand, without drinking his tea.

"Drink up," Mum said.

He lifted the cup to his lips, and took a little sip.

"And again."

He did as he was told. Mum looked at him. She looked worried.

I was worried, too. He didn't seem all there to me.

#

We were ready to move on.

"Thank you," Mum said to the ladies behind the table, as if they had done something really, really important.

"That's alright, Love," one of the women replied. "If you'd have got here a bit sooner, we were dishing out biscuits, too. Custard creams and bourbons."

"I'm still hungry," I told her. "Have you got any biscuits left?"

"Just a tin full of crumbs."

"I like crumbs." (I don't really, but I was so hungry that I decided that crumbs would be fine if it meant that I could eat something).

She took out a tin of Quality Street chocolates from under the table. I prefer Roses, but there were no chocolates in it so it didn't really matter. There were crumbs in the bottom. I tipped up the tin so the crumbs rolled into my hand. Just as I was putting them in my mouth, Mum told me to share them with Ben, but it was too late. I'd eaten them.

"I'm sorry," I told him, although to be honest I was quite glad that Mum had asked me to share when it was too late, as there wasn't enough to go round.

He wasn't happy. "You're so selfish!"

"I'm hungry."

"Don't you think I'm hungry, too? Why didn't you share?"

I started crying. He was right. I felt really guilty for eating all the crumbs myself (although there weren't actually many of them) but it was too late to give him any now. They were all gone.

I could tell how cross he was. He pushed me.

"Ben," Mum said, in her warning voice. "There's no point crying over spilt milk." (It wasn't milk, they were crumbs, and I was careful not to spill any of them).

"But I'm hungry, too, and he ate all the biscuits."

"They were just crumbs," I said, feeling really sorry for myself now. "If Mum told me to share a bit sooner, I would've shared them. But I didn't know. It wasn't my fault."

Mum guided us away from the table by our shoulders, and started walking down the road which ran through Wingham. Dad followed on behind us like a shy bodyguard, saying nothing at all.

There were shops and pubs in Wingham, but all of them were closed. One of the older houses had wooden boards nailed across the windows. Another had the glass broken in the porch door, which made me think of the two men who had woken us up in the night, kicking our front door to get in to our house. I decided to hold Mum's hand, in case they were here.

On the other side of town, I recognized the signs to the play area we had visited a few times in the car when we were younger. There were two slides, a swing, some animal or other on a spring so you can rock backwards and forwards on it, and a couple of rabbits who run away if you got too close. We hadn't been here for a long time, as Ben said he was too old for play areas when he started big school. I used to really like it, though.

"Can we go in the play area, Mum?" I didn't ask Dad, as he was still looking funny, and I was a little bit afraid of him as he wasn't himself.

"Seriously?" she asked. "We're trying to get to Canterbury here!"

"Just for five minutes."

"I thought your knees were hurting?"

"They are. But they'll be alright if I'm sitting on the swings and slides. It could be our rest."

Mum was just about to say "no". I wasn't expecting her to agree to the play area, as I knew she wanted us to keep going, but I thought that there was no harm in asking, just in case. But then she seemed to change her mind. She smiled. "Why the Hell not? You two deserve some fun, after everything that's happened."

We went into the play area. There's a fence around it, with a heavy door, but I'm big enough to open the door on my own now. I ran from swings to slide, hoping Mum wouldn't notice that I wasn't sitting down, like I promised I would be. Ben sat on a bench with Mum at first, but I saw her nudging him and after a few minutes he came to play with me. Dad watched us from the other side of the fence, without saying anything.

My knees were hurting really bad, but I didn't care as I was having fun for the first time in ages. Ben didn't look too bothered at first, but after a while he started enjoying himself, too. He even pushed me on the swings for a while, which was very good of him after I'd eaten his share of the biscuit crumbs.

"Time to go now," Mum told us after a while.

"Just another ten minutes," I said.

"No. Time to go."

"Five minutes, then."

"Jack!"

"Okay, okay, I'm coming," I grumbled. She was spoiling my fun. Parents do that a lot.

We came out of the gate.

"My knees hurt," I told her.

She laughed, which wasn't very nice.

Dad followed us back towards the main road. As we got nearer, we saw that there were quite a few people walking along it, back towards where the ladies were with their tables. That was a bit surprising, as until now everyone had been walking the same way as us. I looked at Mum to see what it meant, but she seemed a bit surprised, too.

"Why's everyone going that way, when they should be going the other way?" I asked. "The bombs are that way, aren't they? Where we're coming from."

Mum nodded. Yes, they were. She started walking a bit quicker. We did, too, which made my poor knees hurt even more (maybe the swings and slides weren't such a good idea after all).

"Mum?"

"We'll ask them, okay?" She sounded a little cross. I hoped she wasn't still blaming me for eating all the biscuit crumbs earlier on.

#

All the time we were walking to Canterbury, I thought it would be safe. I thought that if Mum and Dad were taking us there, then it must be the best place to go. They knew about these things. Dave and Daisy had thought so, too. We would get to Canterbury, find Nan, check that she was alright, and that would be the end of our journey. It was when we stopped the lady – about Mum's age with a long winter coat even though it wasn't really winter yet – that I started to worry that Canterbury might not be the best place to go after all.

"Excuse me," Mum said to the lady. "Can you tell me what's happening? Why's everyone going this way? I thought you'd be heading towards Canterbury?"

The woman shook her head. "I've just come from there. It's not safe anymore."

"Why not? Why's it not safe?"

"They've reached Kent. They reckon they'll be in Canterbury some time today."

"Today!"

The woman nodded. She started to walk on. Mum took her by the arm. The lady glared at her, but she didn't say anything. Mum let her go anyway.

"Please," said Mum. "Just one minute. I've got kids with me."

"Turn back, then. Canterbury's full of refugees. They've been shelling Ashford and Maidstone. The Russians, I mean. The stories they've told me. The women especially. Don't go there. It's not safe."

"Where's everyone going?"

"Ramsgate, Margate, anywhere with a port. Most people are heading for Dover, but I think it'll be too crowded there. Have you come from Thanet? Are they evacuating people there?"

"Not when we were there, no."

The lady closed her eyes. She took a deep breath. She opened them again. "It's too late to go to Dover now. I've got to keep going."

She tried to walk past Mum. Mum tried to take her arm again, but she shook her off. "I can't help you. Just don't go to Canterbury, okay? It's not safe there. Not when you've got kids."

"I have to."

"Your choice." She walked on.

Mum looked at Dad. He looked back, but didn't say anything. "What do we do?" she asked him.

He didn't say anything.

"What do we do?" she said again, a lot louder this time. She sounded cross again, like he was not answering her on purpose.

Still nothing from Dad.

"I want a divorce!" she screamed at him.

That scared me, but Ben laughed out loud. She turned on him. "What? What's so funny, young man?"

"Good luck getting a divorce now!"

She stared at him. I thought she was going to smack him for a moment, even though she's never smacked either of us before. But then her shoulders relaxed. She laughed. And laughed and laughed and laughed. It was probably only for a minute, but it seemed like longer. I was happy when she stopped. If she ended up like Dad, we would be totally screwed.

#

We had walked a further hundred metres up the road when Mum came to a halt. We all stopped, too.

"We can't do this."

"Huh?" asked Ben.

"We can't do this. It's not safe for you guys, especially when your dad's not...not feeling very well. We've got to turn back."

Ben shook his head. "We can't leave Nan on her own."

"I don't want to. But it's too dangerous."

"Mum, we have to." Ben started walking again. Mum followed him.

"Ben, no. It's too dangerous. We should go back. You heard what that lady said."

He kept walking. "We have to find Nan."

She looked unsure what to do. I could see how much she wanted to look for Nan. But it did sound very dangerous going to Canterbury, from what the lady had said to us. And Dad had been against it from the start.

Mum took Ben by the hand, and made him stop walking. "Ben, are you sure? Are you really, really sure? If you don't want to do this, I won't make you. We can go back to Ramsgate; go home; wait to see what happens."

"We have to do this," he told her.

She hugged him for what seemed like ages. "You're so brave. You're so brave. My little man is all grown up."

He looked embarrassed but he let her hug him anyway. When she'd finished, she looked at me.

"Are you okay with this, Jack? Just say the word and we'll go home."
I felt trapped. I didn't want to go to Canterbury. I loved my Nan, but I was scared that the Russians would take me prisoner, or shoot me, or shoot Mum and Dad. But I could see the look that Ben was giving me, and I could see that Mum wanted me to say yes, and when I looked at Dad I could tell that he wasn't going to be any help to me at all. I nodded my head, trying to look brave so I would be her grown-up little man as well. "Let's go and get Nan."

I held Mum's hand. I didn't care what Ben would say. I needed to hold it.

"You're sure? You're absolutely sure? Don't say yes unless you really want to."

I nodded. "I'm sure." I wasn't, though. It was way too dangerous.

She took another look back the way we had come, and just for a second I thought she was going to change her mind and take us back home again. But Ben started walking again, and Dad started following him, and she hurried after them, towing me behind her.

"We find Nan, and then we get out as quickly as we can," she told me. "One hour, tops. I'll keep you all safe, I promise."

I squeezed her hand, and she smiled at me. It made me happy, because I think she thought that I was being brave, too. I wish she hadn't of promised that, though, because she'd never broken a promise before.

#

There were more and more people walking past us, heading the way we had come from. All of them had suitcases and bags and carrier bags. Some had stopped by the side of the road to eat and drink, which made me jealous as I was really hungry by now. But we had no food left, and we kept walking.

My knees hurt so much. I was getting shooting pain in my knee-caps. It was making me walk slowly. But I wanted to get to Canterbury before the Russians, so I kept walking to keep everyone safe.

There was a big fight in Littlebourne. Everyone was beating up three or four men on the far side of the village. Mum asked someone what was going on. A man told her that they had been trying to take people's stuff off them as they were going through the village, and it seems they had picked on the wrong group. Other people were joining in. Some of the men were shouting and screaming. Two of them weren't moving any more. I couldn't help looking, even though it was scary. None of them tried to hurt us, so we carried on walking. I noticed that no-one was walking the same way as us now; everyone was going in the opposite direction. Even the people Dad had his fight with walked past us, but there were so many people around that I was the only one of my family to notice them. The man saw me looking at him, and I looked away quickly in case he wanted to have another fight, even though he didn't look cross any more. Just worried.

I was still holding Mum's hand. I can't remember if I've told you this already, but I don't do this much now I'm eight, in case my friends see me. But the nearer we were getting to Canterbury, the more scared I was getting. I couldn't really understand why Ben wasn't scared as well. I guess big school must make you braver.

"Are you okay?" Mum asked.

I nodded. I didn't want to speak, in case I sounded frightened, because then she'd know I wasn't being brave after all and I really wanted her to be proud of me.

"You'd tell me if you weren't?"

I nodded again.

She started talking about things. Nothing important, nothing scary; just things. I think she was trying to take my mind off where we were going. But there was only one thing I wanted to know, and that was why this was happening. I had kept asking people, but no-one seemed to want to tell me. I asked again, just in case. This time, she wouldn't be able to tell me to ask Dad, as he was still being very quiet. I thought that maybe if I knew what was going on, everything would be better somehow.

"What's happening?"

"How do you mean?"

"The Russians. Why have they come here?"

"They're invading us, Angel. They're trying to take over our country."

"I know that. But why?"

"It's complicated."

"Please. I want to know."

I was starting to think that she didn't know. But then she told me everything.

#

"It started with the Chinese."

"I thought it was the Russians invading us?"

"It is the Russians. But it started with the Chinese. Do you know what global warming is?"

"Kind of. It's when the world gets too hot and all the icebergs melt."

"That's right. Clever boy. Well, all the icebergs melted, and the sea-level went up."

"They must have been big ice-bergs for the sea to go up."

"They were. And lots of them."

"How many?"

"Do you want to hear this story or not?"

"Yes. I just wondered how many, that's all."

"Just be quiet for a moment, will you, and listen? Where was I?"

"The ice-bergs were melting."

"Oh, yes. The ice-bergs melted, and the sea-level went up, and all the places without flood defences were under water. And that included half of China. So there were millions, no, make that billions, of people in China with nowhere to live. So they invaded Russia. And they had a big fight, and the Chinese won, and the Russians had to find somewhere else to live."

"And they chose here."

"No."

"No?"

"No. They chose Finland and Norway and all of those countries. And Poland, I think. They're always invading Poland."

"So why are they here?"

"I'm coming to that. When they invaded Norway, we sent planes and ships to help."

"Help the Russians?"

"Help the Norwegians. But it didn't make any difference, and the Russians won, because they have more planes and soldiers than we do."

"But not as many as the Chinese?"

"No, I guess not. Shall we save the questions to the end, Angel, so Mummy can finish the story? So now they're in Scandinavia – that's Norway and Sweden and those countries, okay? – and China is in Russia. And if we hadn't helped Norway that would have been the end of it. But the Russians didn't like it that we helped Norway, so they've sent all their soldiers over here to get their own back."

"Can't we go to Norway, then?"

"Sorry?"

"If all their soldiers are over here, can't we go to Norway?"

"No. I didn't mean all of their soldiers. Just some of them. Anyway, no-one thought that they would invade us, because we thought that Germany and France and all the big countries in Europe would tell them off if they did. But it looks like we were wrong."

"Why won't they tell Russia off? It's naughty, taking over people's countries."

"Maybe they're frightened that their countries will be taken over too if they complain too loudly. Especially after what's happened here when we stood up for Norway."

"So we're all alone?"

"Scotland's on our side. We used to be part of the same country twenty years ago."

"Can we go there, then?"

"It's a long way away. And I don't think it will be safe there for very long either."

"So where is safe?"

She looked at me. She gave me a smile, but it didn't look like a very happy one.

"I wish I knew, Jack. I wish I knew."

#

We kept on walking. I got hungrier and hungrier, and I started getting thirsty again, even though I had had a cup of tea in Wingham (the cup wasn't as big as the mugs we use at home). I told Mum that I was hungry and thirsty, and she told me that I could have a juice and a sandwich when we got to Nan's, but I don't think either of us believed it.

We stopped from time to time, but my knees were getting worse and worse. They would have ached anyway – I've never done so much walking in my whole life – but what with my hypermobility, they hurt so much it made me want to cry. I didn't cry, though. I had decided not to cry any more, as Mum had enough to worry about while Dad wasn't himself. I hoped she would notice that I was being brave, and be proud of me, but if she was she didn't actually tell me about it.

There was a field on both sides of the road, and it was covered in tents as far as I could see. Most of the tents were different, although some looked similar (which means that they look almost the same). Some were quite big (not like circus tents, but big all the same), and others were so small I think you would only have been able to fit one little person inside them.

There were quite a lot of people sitting around between the tents. I could hear music coming from somewhere, which surprised me, as I thought that everyone would be saving their batteries for their i-pads and their radios, like Dad had told us to do before he went all quiet.

I could smell cooking, too; a bit like a barbecue. I looked around me, but I couldn't see where it was coming from. I wished we could cook, as I couldn't remember the last time I had eaten something hot. I'm not really into cold food, though even tuna fish sandwiches would have tasted good when you were as hungry as I was, however fishy they were.

Mum went over to a tent. She tried to knock on the flap at the front, but it was a flap so it didn't really make any noise. "Hello?" she called out. "Is there anyone home?"

If there was, they must have been shy or asleep, because no-one came out.

She looked around. The nearest person who was up and awake was only about 20 or 30 metres away. She started walking through the tents towards her. "Hello? Hello?" We followed her. I took Dad's hand as I was worried that he might wander off and get lost.

"Hello?"

"Alright?" the lady answered, when we got a bit nearer.

"Not really," said Mum, and they both laughed (I'm not sure why).

"Have you just come from Canterbury?" Mum asked.

"We left last night. We couldn't stay. They were starting to shell us."

"They were shelling Canterbury?" Mum sounded as if this was the most shocking thing she had ever heard, which I guess it was. "Why?"

The lady shrugged. "Because they can, I guess."

"Are our guys there? Our soldiers."

"They were. I saw them march out yesterday."

"They're not there now then?"

"No. I came past the barracks on the way here. They're empty."

Mum looked around. "I don't know if my Mum's here. She's sixty seven – no, sixty eight now. Quite tall. A bit bossy. She's got a perm."

The lady laughed. "Good luck finding her if she is. There's got to be a thousand tents here, maybe more. And people are coming here and moving on all the time. I've had two new neighbours here already, and I've only been here half a day."

Mum looked helpless. Ben took her hand. "Come on, Mum. We'll look for her in Canterbury. She won't be here."

"Why not?"

"Can you imagine Nan in a tent? She doesn't even have one."

"That's true."

It was strange. It was like Ben was suddenly a grown-up. He was talking to Mum as if he was as grown-up as her. I wished I could do that, but I knew that I would just look silly if I tried. Maybe when I went to big school, I would find it easier, because they seemed to learn all sorts of stuff there.

All of a sudden, I really missed Dad. He was standing next to me – I was still holding his hand to stop him wandering off – but he wasn't the same. He was staring ahead of him, and he wasn't saying anything at all. He was letting me lead him around, like he was a horse or a donkey or something. I had felt safer when he was there – really there - when there were two proper grown-ups in charge. It was good of Ben to try to be a grown-up while Dad was acting like this, but it wasn't quite the same. I needed my Dad to be with me, more than ever. He wasn't there when he should have been, and I know it wasn't his fault but I started to feel a bit cross with him all the same.

#

We walked past the army barracks maybe half an hour later. There was a high fence around it, with barbed wire on the top (I'm not sure whether it was to stop people getting in or out). There was a gate at the front, with a little house on either side for soldiers to stand in. But there was no-one there. The barriers were up, and the army was gone, like the lady had said. I wondered where they were and whether they were safe. I hoped that they were shooting the Russians and that the Russians weren't shooting back. If they beat the Russians in a big tank battle, then maybe we could go home again and everything would be alright.

There was smoke rising up into the sky ahead of us. It had been there all morning, and I had thought that it was from more bombing, but the lady in the tent-city had told us that they were shelling and I thought that that might be different from bombing (although I wasn't sure how).

We reached the car-park we used to park in when we drove to Canterbury, and I thought again how much quicker things would have been if we had been able to drive. Until you actually have to do it, you don't really understand how hard it is to walk a long way. It had taken us a day and a half to walk a journey which we could have driven in half an hour, and we had seen things on the way which you don't usually see when you're driving to Canterbury to see your Nan.

I was still holding Dad's hand. Once, I saw that he was crying. Not crying like I would have cried – he wasn't making any noise at all – but I could see that he had tears on his face. I felt a bit guilty that I had been cross with him earlier, and hoped he hadn't noticed. I squeezed his hand to let him know that everything was okay. He didn't squeeze it back, but he stopped crying soon afterwards so I think that maybe he knew that I was being nice.

Nan lived in a flat near the station. It's called sheltered housing, Dad told me. I don't know why, because all housing is sheltered (shelter means that it has got a roof on it). Nan said she's too young for sheltered housing, but Mum talked her into it when we lost Grandad, what with her bad hands and everything. It's nowhere near where we park, but Dad always parks there anyway as he says it avoids all the traffic on the ring-road. Mum says it's because Dad is tight and it's five pounds an hour cheaper there.

We walked along a road which goes towards the ring-road. The shops in Canterbury are just on the other side of the ring road, but we weren't going there. We were going to see Nan. So when we got to the ring-road, we would be turning left and following the road around until we got to the station.

Mum started walking more quickly, and Ben did, too. I found it hard to keep up with her, as my knees hurt so much, but I didn't want to be left behind with Dad (especially when he wasn't talking) so I walked as quickly as I could. I could hear she was breathing hard, as if she was tired, but Mum never got tired as far as I could remember. She was used to going on her long walks, even before the bombs came down.

I looked ahead of me, and between the hotel on one corner and the big old office block on the other, I could see Canterbury. Or what was left of it.

There had been shops all the way down to the other station on the other side of town. Shops, and cafes and restaurants. And a McDonalds and a KFC, of course. Everywhere's got those, I think. I bet you've got them where you live. But they were all gone. There were clumps of shops further down, just four or five here, and four or five there, but most of them were just heaps of rubble now. I thought the bombing had been bad in Ramsgate, where some of the houses had disappeared, but this was worse than I could ever have dreamt about.

I looked at Mum. She was staring to her right. There was an old church tower or something, with the top blown off. There were a few shops still standing, so I couldn't see the tower very well, but between the gaps it looked like there wasn't much building attached to it.

"Is that a church?"

"That's the cathedral," Ben told me. "Canterbury Cathedral."

"It's been there for a thousand years," Mum said, really quietly. "A thousand years. And it's gone, just like that."

She looked really upset. I thought it was a shame, too, although it seemed a bit odd that Mum was more sad about the cathedral than she had been about the people who had been blown up by the plane the day before. I suppose she hadn't known them, so it wasn't so bad somehow, but she knew the Cathedral (when we had been there she told me that she had gone too when she had been a little girl) so that made it worse for her. I guess it would've been the same if they had blown up my school, although in a way I might have quite liked that.

I wanted to take a closer look at the blown-up cathedral. I started walking towards the subway, but Mum stopped me.

"You don't need the subway, you dork," Ben said. "We can use the road. There are no cars."

"It might be dangerous down there," Mum told me. "It might fall down on us. There's nothing to look at, anyway. We need to go and see Nan."

She was already looking to her left, over to where Nan's flat was. Most of the buildings on the other side of the road had gone. I tried to see past the ones which were left to see if I could see Nan's flat from here, but the few buildings that were left were in just the wrong place so I couldn't see. We would have to walk a bit further before we knew.

I expected Mum to cut the corner, crossing through the blown-up shops, but she kept to the road. I don't know whether it was because it was safer there or whether she didn't want to get to Nan's too soon in case it wasn't there anymore. She seemed to be walking slower than before. I could keep up with her easily now.

Most of the buildings on the left side of the road were still there. It was weird; it was if the road had somehow kept them safe. Some had gone, but most were still standing. Mum made us walk in the road as much as possible, just in case any of them fell down as we were passing by, but sometimes we had to walk on the pavement as the road was all busted up.

It only took a minute or two to get to a part of the road where we could see Nan's flat. I let go of Dad's hand and held Mum's hand instead. I thought she needed it more.

#

There was nothing standing where Nan's flat had been. The station had gone, too. Maybe that was what the bombers were aiming at, as it seemed unlikely that they would be bombing my Nan on purpose.

There was just rubble, like there was with the shops. In a couple of heaps, like sand dunes in the desert. Mum let go of my hand and started running over there, and Ben went with her. I walked after them. I didn't have it in me to run any more, and I could see where she was going so there was no hurry anyway.

I knew that Nan was gone. I didn't know whether she was under the rubble, or whether she had maybe been out shopping at the time and escaped the bombs, but I just felt it in my bones that she was gone and that I wouldn't see her anymore.

I was sad. I was really sad. But I didn't cry. I thought I would, and I was surprised I didn't. But it was just too much. I guess I was too tired, even for tears.

Mum started wandering around on the rubble, as if she was looking for something. Ben waited for her on the pavement. I was going to climb up the rubble to help her, but Ben told me to leave her alone, so I stayed with him and Dad, and we all watched her as she walked around on top of what was left of Nan's flat. I wasn't sure what she wanted to find.

A couple of times, she held out her hands on either side of her, like you do when someone asks you a question and you don't know the answer. Two or three times, she squatted down and looked at something in the rubble, but it couldn't have been what she was looking for as she stood back up again and carried on walking. After what seemed like ages, she finally sat down, and she put her head in her hands. She looked like she wanted to cry, but she couldn't cry either.

I went over to her, telling Ben to look after Dad. He tried to stop me, but I shook him off. I sat next to her. I touched her arm. She looked at me. Her face was really, really sad. Sadder than I'd seen her since we lost Grandad. I gave her a little smile to try and cheer her up.

I tried to think what she would have said if it was me who was that sad.

"It's going to be alright," I told her.

Her lip went all trembly. She shook her head. "No, it isn't."

"It is. It seems bad now. But it'll be better in the morning, you just see if I'm not right."

She almost smiled. She gave me a big hug. Ben came over, and she hugged him, too. Dad stayed on the pavement, so he missed out.

"I'm hungry," I said.

"Me, too," she said, but that didn't help me very much.

"What are we going to do?" Ben asked.

Mum shrugged. "I don't know, Angel. I really don't know."

"I think we should go back home," I said. It would be better there. It was where I knew.

Ben gave me a look, but Mum was nodding so I must have been right.

"Let's. At least we've got a roof over our heads there (shelter, she meant). But we need to get some food and drink first. We can't make it back home when we're this hungry, can we?"

"Maybe Dad will get better if we go home," I suggested. I was happy that we were going back to Ramsgate, even if it meant that we had to walk some more. It had been scary when those men had tried to get in, but it was worse still out here, and I wanted to be back in my own bedroom again. I thought that maybe Dad would be thinking the same thing.

"Where do we eat?" Ben asked.

"McDonalds?" I suggested, but then I remembered that McDonalds was gone so I felt a bit stupid for saying it.

"Two quarter pounders with cheese, and a happy meal each for the kids," Mum said, as if she was talking to one of the people who work there. She pretended to pay him. "Thank you very much."

"Don't forget the milkshakes," I laughed. I felt a bit bad about laughing, what with Nan being missing and everything, but it made me feel a little bit better, and it was good to see Mum and Ben smiling, too. It would be the last time we all had fun together. It's how I like to remember her now.

"Strawberry?"

"What else?"

She pretended to pay for those, too, and handed them over to us. I wished they were real, but I pretended to drink mine all the same. "KFC next?" But they had got bored of the game, so no-one answered me.

I was still hungry and thirsty. "So where are we going?"

Mum thought for a bit. She looked at the nearby houses. I looked, too. There were no places to eat there; they were just houses. I decided to keep asking until she gave me a proper answer. "Where are we going, Mum?"

"Well, I never thought I would ever say this, but -"

She stopped. She looked at Dad, as if he was going to tell her off for something. He didn't even seem to notice she was talking.

"-But we're going to burgle some houses."

"Mum, no! We can't!" That was Ben who said that. I think he was trying to say what Dad would have said if he could, just like I was trying to think what Mum would have said earlier. "It's wrong."

But she had made up her mind. "You're right. It is wrong. And I wouldn't normally do it. But we'll never get home unless we find something to eat and drink. I promised I'd look after you, didn't I? You two can wait outside."

"Mum!"

"This isn't open for discussion. I'm doing it, okay? I have to. For you guys. And your Dad, too. Just one house, and then we'll go home. Everything will be fine. Trust me. Deal?"

I nodded. "Deal." I was hungry, and my throat was starting to hurt as I was so thirsty. It's bad to steal things from people's houses, I know that, but they were all living in tents near the army barracks and if there was any food left behind then maybe they didn't really want it anyway.

Ben shook his head. "It's wrong."

"Well that's just too bad," Mum told him. She sounded like she was starting to get angry. I think she was upset about Nan, and Ben wasn't helping her at all. I glared at him to show him that he was making things worse, but he didn't even notice that I was doing it. I tapped him on the arm and pointed at my face, so he would see the look I was giving him, but I could see that he still thought it was a bad idea.

I wish now that I would have said "no", too. If we had both said "no", we might not have burgled that house. And if we hadn't burgled the house, I might never have lost them.

#

The explosions started at exactly the same time as we reached the house Mum had decided that we should burgle. Mum said they were still quite a way away, although they sounded very loud to me. And there was the sound of guns firing, too. There was a battle, and it was coming our way. It was almost as if Someone-Up-There had done it on purpose, to hurry us along and stop us breaking the law. Mum looked worried, but she didn't change her mind. "You need food," she told me, as if it was all my fault we were doing this.

She found out that breaking into someone's house isn't all that easy. She tried to break the porch door with a brick from the rubble of a house, but she couldn't hit it hard enough and it hardly scratched it. She tried kicking it, like the men had done to our front door, but that didn't work either. She swore a lot, first at the door, and then at Dad for not helping her. She asked Ben to help, but he wouldn't, which was naughty.

We went round the back of the house. She tried using the brick on the patio door, but that didn't work either. She didn't bother kicking it this time.

She rattled on the door handle. "I wish I had my credit-cards on me," she said, as if she would be able to get the door open using one of them, but I didn't think she would be able to. People on the telly can open doors with credit cards, but if everyone could really do that there would be no point anyone locking their doors at all. They can also start cars without car-keys, which is kind of cool, but I didn't think she would be able to do that either, even if there was any flat roads to drive on.

"Effing double-glazing."

We went in search of a house without effing double-glazing. The firing stopped while we were walking, and the explosions stopped straight afterwards as well. I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Mum didn't seem to notice. She was too wrapped up in getting us some lunch.

We followed the ring road away from where the explosions had come from, back the way we'd come from. We found a house with an old-fashioned front door. The top half was glass and the bottom half was made of wood. This time, Mum knocked first (I don't know why, because she hadn't knocked at the first house). No-one answered. She still had her brick with her. She hit the glass. It shattered but didn't break. She hit it again. Her hand went right through the glass, and she cut herself badly. Ben started fussing, but she shushed him. She used the brick to knock out the glass, she put her hand through the opening, and opened the door. She smiled. She looked pretty pleased with herself.

"Wait outside," she told us.

"There's shooting outside," Ben pointed out. "We should come in with you."

A day or two ago, she would have told him to do as he was told and wait outside, but since Dad had gone all quiet she seemed to pay more attention to what he was saying. She nodded. She went in first, and left the door open so we could follow her in. "Mind the broken glass," she said. Ben followed her inside, and I came, too, leading Dad behind me.

"Where's the kitchen?" she asked, but I think she was talking to herself and no-one said anything back.

We waited in the hallway while she searched the house. We closed the door behind us, as if that would keep out the Russians if they marched by. They would have seen us through the broken glass, of course, but somehow I felt a tiny bit safer with the door closed.

She had found the kitchen. She came back with a three-quarters empty tin of "assorted crackers" (the ones you put cheese on, not the ones you pull at Christmas), and a packet of gravy (which I didn't think would be much use to us). She tried the taps but there was no water running for some reason. Ben told her that we could get water from the tank above the toilet, but she told him that we weren't that desperate, and she went upstairs.

She was only up there a minute or two. All she had when she came down was a glass of water which she had found next to the owner's bed. Someone had already taken a big sip out of it. She told Ben and I to drink half each. I didn't want to drink from it, when someone else had been drinking from it. Maybe the owner had put their false teeth in it or something. But Ben drank, so I drank too. I think he drank more than half, but I decided not to tell Mum as she was busy having a look in the back garden, and it was only fair when I had eaten all the biscuit crumbs anyway.

"There's a rain butt out there," she told us when she came back in.

I tried to look interested, but wasn't sure what that was, let alone why she was telling us.

"Do you think we can drink from it? It's rain water, right? You can drink rain."

Ben didn't look too sure. "It'll be all dirty in there."

"What do you know? You're eleven. You wanted us to drink from the toilet a few minutes ago! We're drinking it."

She had another look round the kitchen, and came back with two empty plastic milk containers. Neither of them had been washed properly, so they still smelt of milk (I know that because I gave them both a sniff). She went into the garden and filled them both to the top. She came back in, and told us to follow her into the kitchen. There was an old wooden table against the wall, near the sink. She sat us down, put three glasses on the table, and filled up all of them from one of the milk containers. Mine was so full that water spilt on the table. I think she had forgotten Dad, as he hadn't followed us in, and she hadn't set a glass for him. We had left him in the hallway.

Ben went to drink his.

"No, wait," she said. "Is it safe?"

"What do I know? I'm eleven."

"Don't be smart with me."

I was quite pleased that she was treating him like a child again. I didn't want to be the only one that everyone treated like a baby.

She held her glass up to the window. "Is that clear?"

Ben and I held our glasses up, too. My glass wasn't washed up very well, so it was hard to tell.

Ben pulled a face. "Mine looks a bit murky."

She peered into his glass, as if it would be different from hers somehow. "I can't see anything."

"I'm not drinking it."

"Ben, I'm trying to keep us alive here. If we don't drink, we'll all die."

"If we drink this, we'll die sooner."

"You don't know that."

"You don't know that we won't."

"You're so like your Dad!"

He smiled.

She shook her head. "That wasn't supposed to be a compliment!"

I was getting confused. "Should I drink it, Mum?"

"I don't know. Ben? No, why am I asking you? I'm the grown-up here. Your Dad would know. He knows about this practical stuff. It's just rain-water though. It must be safe, mustn't it?"

There was another explosion outside. It made us all jump. It sounded really close.

Mum suddenly looked worried. "Where is your Dad anyway? Didn't you bring him in?"

"Not unless he's invisible," Ben replied. He was sulking because she wasn't listening to him about the water.

I thought he'd get told off for that, but Mum jumped up and ran out of the room. Ben followed her. I took a really big swig of water before I followed after them. I was so thirsty, and I didn't think that Dad could have gone very far. He would probably be standing in the hallway, exactly where we had left him.

I was wrong.

When I got outside, the first thing I saw was the tank. Well, maybe it wasn't quite a tank, because it didn't have a big gun sticking out the front, but it did have tracks like a tank does. And there was a man looking out of the top of it, a man with a machine gun which was attached to the tank (or whatever it was).

The second thing I saw was Dad, walking towards the tank, quicker than I'd seen him walk since he'd stopped talking. He was halfway there already. Mum was running after him, shouting his name, shouting for him to stop, to come back, to stop, to stop!

The man with the machine gun was shouting at him, too, but he was speaking in a foreign language and I didn't know what he was saying. He sounded cross though. I think he wanted Dad to stop walking towards him.

Mum kept shouting, and the man kept shouting, and I was shouting, too, and I started running towards them, but Ben grabbed me and he began pulling me back towards the house. I nearly got away from him, I nearly did, but he is three years older me, and he's stronger than me, and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't quite do it.

The tank was still coming towards us. I could see another one behind it. There was rubble in the road between Dad and the tank, and I thought that it might have to drive around it, giving Mum a chance to catch him and pull him back to the house, like Ben was doing to me, but the tank drove right over it and kept on coming towards him.

The man started shouting even louder. He fired his machine gun in the air above us. But Dad kept walking. And then the man was lowering his machine gun, down towards Dad. And Mum was screaming, and Mum was running as fast as she could, but she couldn't run fast enough to catch him.

I heard the bullets. Just for a second or two, that's all it took to take them both away from me. Dad jerked and fell backwards. Mum was just behind him. She jerked, too. And then they were both lying on the ground, and they weren't moving, and I wanted to run to them, but I couldn't as Ben was pulling me back, back to the house, and it was like the dream I had, where they died, only it was bullets instead of bombs, and then I was back in the house with the door shut behind me, and I was crying and Ben was crying, and – and – and my Mum and Dad were dead.

#

We went back outside to look at Mum and Dad's dead bodies after the soldiers had gone. Ben gave both of them a cuddle, but I couldn't because they were dead and I was scared to touch them, even though I really wanted to say goodbye.

There was a lot of blood, but I don't really want to talk about that. I hope you don't mind. I know I said I'd tell you all about what happened to me, but I can't tell you about what they looked like after they got shot. It makes me too sad.

I felt lost. When you're sad, you go to your parents and they make you feel better again. But I couldn't go to them now, because they were dead in the road. It was just me and Ben now, and Ben was only eleven and I was still at little school, and there were men in tanks with machine guns who would shoot you just for being on the same road as them. And there were planes, and there were men who fought you if you told them off for taking the wallets from dead people. And there was us.

"Do you think anyone will take their wallets?" I asked Ben. I don't know why, but I didn't want anyone to do that to my Mum and Dad.

"They haven't got any money to take."

I waited for him to tell me what we were going to do next, but for a little while he seemed as lost as I was, which was scary. He had to be the grown-up now, because I was too young to do it.

"Shall we bury them?"

He shook his head. "We haven't got a spade."

"That man who lives here probably has one in his garden."

"Okay, then. Let's look."

We went in the garden to look. There was a shed, but it was locked. Ben suggested that we drag Mum and Dad into the garden to stop armoured cars (I think he meant tanks) squashing them while we were trying to get the shed open. He tried to move Dad on his own, but he was too heavy. He tried to move Mum, and I helped him (even though it felt funny pulling her wrists and I didn't like it that her eyes were still open), but it was really hard work, and I worried that we would hurt her as we pulled her along the road, even though we couldn't really hurt her anymore as she was dead.

We had a lot of trouble pulling her up over the kerb. It wasn't a big kerb, but it was just high enough to make it hard. We managed it, but it took a while, and I was worried that the tank would come back while we were trying, and then we'd be dead as well.

Ben looked back at Dad, and I asked him what he was thinking. He told me that he thought that Dad would be too heavy for us to move, and maybe we should take Mum back where we found her, as he wanted them to be together. I suggested that we leave Mum by the kerb, while we went inside for a snack and to have a think about how we were going to move them both.

I wanted to wash my hands, and Ben told me that that was a good idea as there might be germs as Mum was dead. We washed our hands using the water butt in the garden, which turned out to be a big barrel with a tap at the bottom. Ben said we weren't to drink from it, as there was no sign on it saying "drinking water", but he thought it would be safe to wash our hands if we gave them a good dry afterwards.

We finished off half of what was left of the box of crackers. It was hard eating them without a drink, and I kept trying to make spit in my mouth to make it easier to eat them. Ben put the rest in his pockets and said that we would share them out equally. I was worried that he would eat them all on his own when I wasn't looking, but he said "Truthfully," which is what we used to say when we were little when we weren't telling lies, and we both knew that if he was lying when he said "Truthfully" then I would never believe him again. So I decided to trust him, just this once.

We decided against eating the gravy. I told Ben that we could mix it with the water from the water butt, and drink it cold, but Ben reminded me that we weren't allowed to drink water from the butt, even if it was mixed with gravy, so we put the gravy back in the cupboard to be tidy. I hoped that Dad was watching from Heaven, because he would have been proud that we did that.

I was starting to get a bit worried that I had drunk some water when Ben thought it was poison, but I didn't want to tell him that I had drunk it after he had said I shouldn't. Mum had said I could, so I didn't think I was being naughty, but Ben thought he was the boss now so I thought I would keep quiet and only tell him if I got sick.

We looked around for the keys to the lock on the shed but couldn't find them anywhere. Maybe the man who lived here had taken them with him when he left, although I couldn't think why he would need them when he was gone. We tried to break it open with a hammer from a tool-box we found indoors, but Ben said we were making too much noise and the soldiers might hear us, so we gave up.

We peeped out the window in the kitchen, keeping down so only our eyes were above the window sill, to see what was going on outside. There were more soldiers, and more of the tanks without guns; the armoured cars, I mean. We ducked out of sight so they couldn't see us.

"What are we going to do?" Ben asked. "How are we going to go home?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. I'm only eight." I felt a bit mean putting it all on him, but he went to big school, and it was up to him to look after me now Mum and Dad were gone.

I started crying. I didn't cry for Nan, even though I really tried, but I cried for Mum and Dad a lot. I won't tell you about every time I cried, as it would be boring for you, but I don't want you to think that I stopped thinking about them after they went. I think about them all the time. I'm thinking about them now.

I started feeling a bit sick. It was only a little bit at first, but it got worse during the afternoon. And my tummy hurt, too. I didn't tell Ben at first, because I knew it was the poison from the glass of water and I still hadn't told him about that.

But then I needed the toilet really badly. I ran upstairs. I was frightened that the man might have taken his toilet paper with him, but it was still there. While I was going to the toilet, I thought I was going to be sick, but I managed to hold it in.

I was ill for two or three days. I won't tell you about it, because it's not very nice, and it's a bit embarrassing for me. Ben found some paracetamol to give me, and I told him that I needed Calpol, but he said I would have to take what he could get as he wasn't a B-word chemist. I think he thought it was okay for him to swear now our parents weren't around to tell him off for it.

He went out three or four times. I begged him not to, as I didn't want to be left in the house all on my own, especially when I felt so ill. The soldiers might come in, or the man might come back to find his crackers all gone, or I might die and have no-one there when it happened, but he went anyway.

The first time he went, I thought it was to go and get Mum, but she stayed outside as he couldn't drag her in on his own, and I think he still wanted her to be close to Dad, even though she wouldn't be able to see him again.

The second time, he came back with two half-empty boxes of breakfast cereal and a full bottle of squash. We didn't have any milk to put in the cereal or water to put in the squash. He made me try them anyway. The squash tasted nasty without water but I still drank some. The cornflakes made me sick (and I could see them, all crunched up on the floor, when I was).

"Did you steal these?" I asked him.

"No. I found them."

"Truthfully?"

"Just drink your squash, okay?"

"Say "Truthfully", or I won't believe you."

"Drink your squash, I said."

"You can't tell me what to do. You're not my dad!"

"I wouldn't want to be. You're too whiny."

"I wouldn't want you to be neither."

"Either, not neither."

"Whatever."

I drank some squash (not because he told me to, but because I was thirsty).

The third time he went out, he came back with more toilet roll, which was a good thing as we were running out quickly, what with me being ill and all. I was hoping he would bring back more food as well, but he hadn't been able to find any.

By the fourth time he went out, I was feeling quite a lot better. I even asked to go with him, but he wouldn't let me. I don't think he wanted me to see him stealing from someone's house, even though we both knew that that was what he was doing.

It was lucky that he wouldn't let me go, though, as he is a faster runner than me. And on the fourth time he came back, he was being chased by the Russians.

#

I had been sleeping in the double bed upstairs while I was ill. I didn't like it, as it had old-man's sheets on the bed instead of a duvet, and photos of people I didn't know on the bedside cabinet (which I put in a drawer to stop them looking at me). But Ben said it was the comfiest room. He was going to sleep in the single bed in the next room, but I asked him to sleep in the same bed as me as I didn't want to be all alone in there, and he told me that he wasn't scared or anything but that he thought it was a good idea that we stayed together if that's what I really wanted.

Although I was feeling better, I was still in bed when he came home that fourth time, as we only went downstairs to eat. It was getting colder outside, and it was warm under the blankets so if I stayed in bed I didn't have to put my coat on.

I heard the door slam downstairs, and Ben's feet running up the stairs, and I jumped out of bed and went into the hallway to see whether he had brought any food home for us. And then he was shouting, "hide, hide," so I ran back into the bedroom and tried to hide under the bed, but there were suitcases under there and there was no room for me.

Ben ran into the bedroom. He was puffing and panting, and his face was all red. "Hide!" he said again. "They're chasing me."

"Who are?"

"Just hide!"

We heard the door opening downstairs. Someone called out, but it was in a foreign language so I didn't know what they were saying. It sounded like a question.

There was nowhere to hide in the bedroom, except the big wardrobe at the end of the bed. It wasn't a good hiding place; it would be the first place I would have looked if I was playing hide-and-seek, but we were too scared to leave the room so we jumped in the wardrobe and closed the door behind us as quietly as we could.

Another voice called out. I think it was another voice. It sounded different from the first. In my mind, it sounded like the Child-catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, trying to catch children with sweets or lollipops or whatever it was. Someone who was trying to sound nice, even though he really wasn't.

I looked at Ben. It was dark in there, but I could just about see him. He had his finger to his mouth, telling me to stay quiet. I nodded. There was no way I was going to say anything at all with the men in our house.

I could hear them moving around downstairs. They were still calling out to us. The first man sounded quite normal, but the second one was putting on a funny voice, as if we were babies. I tried to burrow behind the clothes hanging up in the wardrobe so the men wouldn't see me if they opened the door, but Ben stopped me as he thought I was making too much noise.

And then I heard them coming up the stairs.

I heard the door to the bathroom open. There was nowhere in there to hide, so they closed the door straightaway. And then I heard them walk into our room.

The first man said something in foreign again. The second man laughed loudly; he sounded like he was right outside the wardrobe. The first man shushed him; I think he must have been in charge.

And then the wardrobe door was open, and a big man in army uniform was peering right at me. His breath smelt like Dad smells at Christmas and on his birthday. He went to grab me, and I tried to go further back into the wardrobe, but it wasn't deep enough for me to escape, and he had my wrist and he was pulling me out. And he was laughing again, as if I was funny.

Ben punched him in the side of the head. He swore (it was in Russian but I could tell from the way he said it that he was swearing), and he raised his hand to hit Ben back. But then the other man was beside him, pulling him away, shouting at him and the man stepped away, telling us off as he went.

The new man was older than the first, and he didn't smell like Dad at Christmas. He smiled at us. He seemed nicer than the first man, but we didn't trust him. He was Russian and he was in our house.

He put his hand in his pocket and brought out a bar of chocolate. I hadn't seen that sort of chocolate before; the colours on the wrapper were different from all the ones I had seen before in the shops. They were black and yellow, like a wasp. But I could tell it was a bar of chocolate from the shape.

I put out my hand to take it from him, but Ben told me not to, so I just stood there looking at it. Maybe he thought it might be poison.

We stood there, looking at each other for a while. The big man said something which sounded rude, but the other one told him off, and we carried on just standing there. I hoped they would go away soon, as I wasn't one hundred per cent better and I was worried that I might need the toilet in a hurry if we were standing there too long. No way was I going with them two there, though.

"Chocolate," said the older man, as if we didn't know. He held it out again. "You take."

I looked at the chocolate, but didn't take it.

"You want drink?" the man asked.

The other man said something, and laughed, but the older man told him off again.

"We do need some drink," I told Ben. "Water, maybe."

"Not from them. They killed Mum and Dad."

I tried to back into the wardrobe again. "They did? They're the ones in the tank?"

"Well probably not them, but they're all in the same army, aren't they?"

"Not them, though?"

"Probably not."

"I'm hungry."

"So am I."

I took the chocolate.

"Jack, no!"

"I'm hungry."

The older man said something to the big one. The big one complained, but the older man said it again louder and he left the room.

"They might be getting reinforcements," Ben told me.

"Reinforcements?"

"More soldiers. To help catch us."

It seemed unlikely that they would need more soldiers to catch us, as they were much bigger than us. Ben was eleven and I was eight. But I wasn't sure so I didn't answer him.

I unwrapped the chocolate. I stared at it. It might be poison. But I was really hungry, and I really wanted to eat something which wasn't breakfast cereal or crackers.

The man seemed to know what I was thinking, even though I was thinking it in English. He broke a bit off the end for me, and he ate it himself. He didn't die. I broke what was left in half, and gave the smallest half to Ben. I really wanted to eat the chocolate, but it would feel like I was being naughty unless Ben ate some, too.

Ben ate a little bit. And as soon as he had taken a bite, I was cramming mine in my mouth and eating it as quickly as I could. And the man was laughing, but not in a nasty way like the other man had done.

We came out of the wardrobe. There didn't seem to be any reason to stay in it, now he had given us chocolate which wasn't poison. He stayed between us and the bedroom door, though, which made me nervous. I would have liked it if he had given us all his chocolate and then gone away with his friend.

"Have you any more chocolate?" I asked him.

Ben looked at me as if I had done something awful.

"What? I'm hungry. It's only chocolate. It's not poison."

"You shouldn't be asking him for stuff. They killed Mum and Dad."

"You said he didn't."

"They all did."

"They all did? That doesn't make any sense."

"You're such a baby."

"Then it's alright if I ask him for more chocolate then."

"Baby's don't eat chocolate."

"I do."

I held out my hand. "More chocolate please."

He patted his pockets and shrugged. "No chocolate."

"See," said Ben. "He won't give you any."

"Maybe he's sent his friend to get some more."

"He's getting reinforcements. I've told you that already. And when they come back, they're going to put us in prison and make them tell us stuff about what we've seen when we were coming here."

"We haven't seen any stuff when we were coming here."

"We've seen loads of stuff. You just didn't notice because you're a baby."

"Stop calling me a baby."

"Says the baby."

"Stop it! I'm ill, remember."

"You don't sound ill."

"Who died and made you the doctor?"

"You'd be dead now if I hadn't been looking after you."

"Good. I wouldn't have to listen to you being bossy, if I was."

The Russian soldier was watching us as we argued. I think he was trying not to laugh. They must find different things funny over there, as it was very serious, what we were saying, and nothing to laugh about at all. Ben was calling me a baby, and I wasn't having it.

We carried on arguing for quite a while. There was nothing else to do, as the man wasn't letting us out of the room, and I didn't want to go back to bed with him standing there, watching me. After a while, we ran out of things to argue about, so we just stood there, waiting for something to happen.

"Hello," the man said when he saw us looking at him, which was a silly thing to say as he had been in the room for ages. I think maybe he just wanted something to say.

After what seemed like ages, the other man came back. He didn't have reinforcements so Ben was wrong about that. He was puffing a little bit. He had two big bottles of water in his hands. He offered one to Ben, but he wouldn't take it. He offered the other one to me, and I took mine. Ben moaned at me, but I decided just to ignore him. The man gave me a little bow as he was giving me the bottle, as if I was a prince or something, which was a bit weird, but I guess that's just what they do over there.

The older man pretended to drink from an invisible bottle. I took the top of my bottle myself (I didn't need any help) and drank. I never used to like water all that much, but after drinking nothing but orange squash (without water) while I was ill it tasted really nice.

"Drink it," I told Ben.

He shook his head. "No. It might be drugged."

"If you don't drink it, you'll die, and then you can't look after me."

He looked a bit tempted.

"Go on. It's fine. Drink your drink, and then you can look after me if you want."

He took the bottle, and was just about to open it, when the older man said "drink," and it put him off. He kept the lid on after all. Dad wasn't the only one who didn't like being told what to do.

The big man went back downstairs. I thought he might be looking for the squash, but I could hear him going through the drawers, so he must have been looking for something else as you don't keep squash in drawers.

The older man looked from one of us to the other. He got a photo from his pocket. It was a picture of two little boys, maybe a little bit younger than me. He showed it to us, but he wouldn't let me hold it. He put it back in his pocket after I'd looked at it for a bit. He gave us a little smile. "Home," he said.

"Home," I said, too, though I didn't really know why as we were in someone else's house. I was just trying to be polite, really. It seemed to make him happy.

"Will you help us bury Mum and Dad?" Ben asked him. That surprised me, as he wasn't supposed to be talking to them. "They're outside. I want to bury them, but they're too heavy."

"Mum and Dad?"

"Outside. In the road."

"The road?"

"Yes. Mum and Dad. Can you help us?" he pretended he was digging. "Bury them. In the garden."

"Garden?"

The man didn't understand. He was just saying the same words as Ben was saying, without knowing what he meant. I pretended to dig, too, in case that helped, but he looked even more confused than he did before.

"Drink," he told us.

"Dig," we told him back.

"Dig?"

"Dig."

"Dig water? No. Water here." He pointed at the bottle in Ben's hands. "Water here."

Ben stopped digging. "What's the use? They won't help us anyway."

The big man came back in the room. He had put some stuff in a carrier bag. I hoped he wasn't stealing our cornflakes. He said something to the man who had given us chocolate, who looked at his watch and nodded.

"Drink," the older man said to Ben. He walked to the door. He gave us a wave. The big man waved too, and said something in a baby voice. I think he was trying to be funny, but the joke was on him as we didn't know what he was saying so he was wasting his breath.

"More chocolate," the older man said. "Tonight. More chocolate. Stay. Not there."

He pointed outside, and then threw his arms up in front of his face as if he was afraid of something. "Not there."

And then they were gone.

#

Ben wanted us to go as soon as the Russians had left, but they had given me chocolate and I was staying put. If they came back, they might bring more.

At first, I tried to talk him into staying. I was still a bit ill, I told him, and I didn't think that I would be able to walk very far. My knees were still hurting from when we walked to Canterbury, but if we stayed a few more days I thought they would be alright. I was too hungry and thirsty to go to Ramsgate, but another couple of chocolate bars and I might just make it. All these things were true, actually, but Ben thought I was just making it all up. He said I would be fine when we started walking and that we were going whether I wanted to or not.

So I fell back on what I do when Mum wants me to go somewhere but I don't want to go (like going home when we're at the children's play area). I refused to budge. He could do what he liked, but I was staying there, whatever he said. He tried to do what Mum does, and said he was going anyway, with or without me. He really went as well, which made me worried, as when Mum does it I can always see her, however far she has walked. But then I heard him coughing, and I knew he was standing just outside the front door, and then I heard the sound of a car or a tank or something, and he came back in. And he sulked a lot, but we stayed put.

I had a dream that night. Just for once, it wasn't about bombs. It was about Mum and Dad. We were at home, doing family stuff, and at the back of my mind I thought that something bad would happen to them, but it didn't. We just played Monopoly, and they made us dinner while me and Ben were playing on our i-pads. It was nice.

I woke up all of a sudden. And just for a little while, I thought I was back in my bedroom and Mum and Dad were downstairs watching TV. But then I felt Ben moving around next to me, and I knew that we were in a double bed in a stranger's house far away from home, and that my Mum and my Dad were dead and rotting away in the road outside.

I cried. I tried to cry quietly so I didn't wake up Ben, but it's hard to cry quietly when you're really upset. I would have gone downstairs so I could cry louder without waking him, but I didn't want to be on my own in the night-time (it was bad enough going to the toilet in the night, but at least that was in the room next-door so I could run back into the bedroom if anything scary happened). And then I wanted Ben to be awake, so he could tell me that everything was going to be alright, so I cried a little bit louder, and then a bit louder still, until he opened his eyes.

"Jack?" He sounded all sleepy, which wasn't surprising really.

"Are you awake?"

"I am now."

"Sorry. I was trying to cry quietly."

"Why are you crying? Do you feel ill again?"

"I had a dream about Mum and Dad."

He didn't say anything to that.

"I miss them." And then I was crying really loud, and he gave me a cuddle to make me feel better. It was really good of him. We don't cuddle, us two, not at all. Not for as long as I could remember. And we only had a cuddle one more time after that, as far as I can remember. But I really needed it, right then, and he seemed to know that, and he gave me a cuddle and for some reason him being nice to me made me cry all the more.

#

The older man came again the following day. He didn't bring the big man with him, which made me happy as I didn't trust him at all. He brought bread with him instead, which was nice but not as nice as chocolate. And much more water.

Ben started talking about him while he was there, because he knew that he couldn't understand English very well. I think Dad would have told him off for that, as it's rude, especially when he was giving us stuff, but Ben was being nice to me and I didn't want to make him upset so I just nodded and smiled.

"He's treating us like pets," Ben said. "Bringing us food and stuff. Like we're little doggies. He'll be stroking us next."

I nodded, but I hoped he was joking because I didn't want anyone stroking me.

"Good doggies."

"Doggies?" asked the man. "What is doggies?"

I think he thought that "doggies" meant chocolate, as when Ben didn't answer him he patted his pockets and shrugged to show that he had not brought any with him. "No doggies."

Ben laughed. I laughed, too, and the man joined us. Ben stopped laughing when the man started, as if he didn't want to share the same joke with him, but I carried on as it was funny that the man thought that chocolate was called "doggies" when it's really called "chocolate".

The man pointed to his chest. "Valerie."

"Valerie?"

He repeated it.

"Is he saying his name's Valerie?" I asked Ben.

"That's a girl's name," Ben replied. He was smiling. I think he was glad that the man had the name of a girl. "Maybe the other man is called Megan or Grace or something." (Megan and Grace were girls in his class at big school).

"Or Honey," I said, who was a girl at my school I quite liked.

"Honey's not a girl's name."

"It is."

"Valerie," the man said again, as if we hadn't heard him the first time.

"Jack," I replied.

"Don't tell him your name!"

"Why not? What difference does it make?"

"It just does."

Valerie was looking at Ben. "Fido," said Ben, pointing at his chest, thinking he was being clever. "Fido."

Valerie put out his hand to shake. "Hello, Fido."

Ben shook it and barked at the same time. Valerie gave him a bit of a weird look, but then shook my hand, too. "Hello, Jack."

I barked as well. I don't know why, because I hadn't called myself Fido, but it seemed kind of funny. I laughed. Ben laughed, too.

"Doggies!" Valerie said, and we laughed even more.

I hated living here, just me and Ben, with no Mum and Dad to look after us. It was lonely and it was scary, and even with the chocolate and the water we were still hungry and thirsty all the time. But I thought that with Valerie looking after us, we might be safe, even if it was just for a little while.

#

I had another dream again that night. I don't remember having all that many dreams before the bombs dropped, but I seemed to be having them all the time now. This time, it was just me and Mum. We were going to see a film together, and then we were at football practice together, and then we were going home. I kept cuddling her, even when we were walking along the street, which was weird as I don't cuddle outdoors any more in case someone sees me. But in my dream, I didn't care about that, and I cuddled her all the same.

We were walking along the road, and I knew that we'd be home soon, and I would see Dad, and we would be making something together (I can't remember what now). But then all of a sudden I was awake. Ben was pulling me out of bed. I shouted at him. I didn't want to wake up; I was with Mum, and I was going to see Dad, and I was going home, which is where I wanted to be most. He had ruined it all. But he shouted back, and I was out of bed, and he was pulling me towards the wardrobe we had hidden in earlier.

"Let go of me!"

But he wouldn't.

And then I saw the man in the doorway; the big man, Valerie's friend. He was holding the doorframe as if he would fall over if he let it go.

We couldn't get out the room, not with him standing there, but there was no way I was staying in bed. Ben pulled me into the wardrobe. It wasn't safe in there – not at all – but it was the safest place we had. Ben stood in front of me. He raised his hands; I think he was showing the man his fists but I couldn't quite see as his back was in the way.

"I'm scared," I told him.

He shushed me.

The man came and sat on the bed. I peered round from behind Ben's back, and could see that he was waving at us. We didn't wave back. We wanted him gone.

He tried to take off his shoes. This seemed to take him a long time, and he stopped and sat there, staring into space, between shoes. A bit like Dad had been at the end, before he died.

"What's he doing?"

Ben shushed me again.

He got the other shoe off, and he laid down on the bed where we had been sleeping. He pulled the covers over him. And then he was snoring.

"What do we do now?"

I was expecting Ben to shush me again, but he didn't. We stepped out of the wardrobe, and left the room.

"We're going," he said. "We're going now."

I nodded. I wasn't going to argue this time.

Ben went to get what was left of the breakfast cereal (we had saved it, as we had been eating what Valerie had brought us), along with half a bottle of water we had left over from what Valerie had given us. I went with him, as I didn't want to be left on my own with the man asleep upstairs.

We went to the front door and looked out. There were two Russians standing nearby, guns over their shoulders. They were talking to each other in foreign. We had been very quiet, so they didn't see us. Ben pointed to the back door. I followed him out to the back garden. It was surrounded by a wall, about as tall as Dad.

"Can you get over it?" he asked me.

I shook my head. It was a bit embarrassing. I think that all the boys in my class would have been able to get over the wall easily, but I was never very good at climbing. I hated PE. Mum gave me a letter whenever Dad wasn't looking, saying I had a cold and couldn't do it, but Dad wanted me to do PE and didn't like it when he found out that I was missing lessons. He said it was good for me, but I don't think it was.

"I'll give you a bunk up."

Ben stood by the wall and cupped his hands. I stood in them, as if I was getting on a horse, and he tried to lift me up into the air, but I lost my balance and fell over on my back. I bumped my head, but it was only grass so I was okay. We tried again, but I was frightened of hurting myself, and though I could touch the top of the wall I wasn't even close to getting over it.

"Maybe if we get a chair?" he suggested.

I wasn't too sure that would help very much. "It's a long way down on the other side."

"We can't stay here."

"I know."

"I'll get a chair."

He went inside. I went with him. He got a chair from the kitchen and pulled it towards the back door. It made a screeching sound on the floor. We stopped. Someone called out from upstairs; the big man had woken up. We listened. And then he was coming down the stairs, and we were running into the kitchen looking for somewhere to hide, but there wasn't anywhere, and I was scared that he would hurt us.

He came into the kitchen. He gave us a stupid wave again, and started talking, but I didn't know what he was saying. He tried to pat me on the head. Ben punched him in the arm, as hard as he could. The man swore (you could tell he was swearing, even though it was in foreign) and pushed Ben hard in the chest. Ben fell backwards, banging his head and shoulder on the kitchen cabinet.

Ben jumped right back up again. The man held out his hands in front of him, as if to say that he didn't want any trouble. Ben looked scared and cross at the same time. I hoped he wasn't going to hit the man again, because he was twice his size, and he was a soldier, and if they had a fight my brother wouldn't have stood any chance at all.

And then Valerie was there. He looked surprised when he saw his friend there. He asked him something. The man gave a long reply, slurring his words a bit. He pointed upstairs, and then at Ben. Valerie spoke over him, and pointed at the door. He was telling him to go. It's funny how sometimes you sort of know what people are saying, even if they can't speak English properly.

And then Valerie was taking me by the hand, and Ben tried to hit him as well, but Valerie held him off with his other hand without hurting him.

"We go," Valerie said. "We go."

Ben tried hitting him again. Valerie let go of my hand and grabbed both of Ben's wrists. Ben tried to pull away but Valerie was too strong.

"We go. Men come. Not safe. We go."

"Ben," I said. "I think the Russians are coming here. Let's go with him."

"I don't trust him."

"We were going to go anyway."

"Not with him, though."

"Ben!"

The big man came back. He said something from the doorway. Valerie nodded.

"Soldiers come. Soldiers come now."

"Ben!"

He made that little noise he makes, as if someone was strangling him. He didn't know what to do. I felt sorry for him. But I knew we had to go with Valerie.

"Better the devil you know," I said. It was something Dad said when you could choose between two things and one of them was something you had done before which was bad and the other was something bad which you hadn't done yet. I was quite pleased with myself for saying that, because I had never said it before and it made me sound quite grown up.

Ben shrugged. And then nodded. "Alright. But don't say I didn't warn you. It's your fault if he hurts us."

I smiled at Valerie. "Okay. We go now." I said it like that so he could understand.

"We go?"

"We go."

He was going to take my hand again, but thought better of it and just waved for us to follow him. "Come, Jack. Come, Fido. We go."

I thought we would be going out the front door, but he took us into the back garden. He jumped up and sat on top of the wall. He held his hands out for us to follow him. Ben told me that he would go first – he still didn't trust him – but I told him that he would need to give me a bunk-up so I had to go before he did. He put his hands together – like he had before – and I stepped into them and lifted myself up. Valerie grabbed me, hoisted me over the top of the wall and held me over the other side. I jumped down. It was quite easy, really. And then Ben was on top of the wall and jumping down beside me. Valerie landed next to him.

He stood still for a second. We listened. I thought I heard someone in the house, but I wasn't sure and it might have been his friend anyway.

He started walking away from the house, waving at us to follow him. "Come, Jack. Come, Fido."

Ben held back. He was thinking of running off. Maybe it was because Valerie was calling him Fido.

"I can't run very fast," I pointed out.

"You're such a baby," Ben said, but he didn't say it nastily so I decided to let it go.

Valerie was still walking. "Come!" he was looking back at the house, as if he was expecting soldiers to start climbing over the wall after us at a second. I hurried after him. Ben came, too, but he didn't look very happy.

I didn't know where we were going. I was worried as we hadn't had time to take any food or drink with us, so we would be hungry later. And I was sad, as we were leaving Mum and Dad behind. I didn't think they would be in the road anymore, not after all this time, but they were back there somewhere and now we were going I knew that I had missed my chance to see them again, and give them one last goodbye cuddle.

#

We walked for about ten minutes. We went past the car-park we parked in when we used to come to Canterbury, so we must have been going back in the same direction we had come from. For a little while, I thought that maybe Valerie was taking us all the way home, but he stopped outside a house well before we reached the army barracks and pointed to it.

"One night," he told us, holding up a finger in case we didn't understand him. "One night. Go."

"Does he mean we just stay here tonight?" I asked Ben. "Or can we stay tomorrow, too?"

Ben shrugged. "I don't know what he's on about."

We started to walk to the house. The door was open a little. "One night," he said again.

"Whatever," Ben replied, which I thought was a bit rude, bearing in mind he had just saved us.

"Jack. Doggies!"

I looked at him. He had his hand in his pocket. He brought out a bar of chocolate and offered it to me. I took it. I gave him a hug. He gave me a little hug back and ruffled my hair. I remembered the photo of his children he had shown us when we had first met, and hoped he would see them again. It's horrible, children losing their Dads or Mums.

"Goodbye, Jack."

"Goodbye, Valerie."

"Goodbye, Fido."

Ben said nothing. He just stood there, waiting for me to come to him. I think he was cross because I had given Valerie a hug, but I didn't care as it seemed like the right thing to do at the time, and Mum always said that if something seems like the right thing to do, then it probably is.

Valerie started running away, back towards Canterbury. He looked like he was in a hurry.

I walked towards the house.

"No," Ben said.

"No?"

"We don't know if it's safe in there."

"He said it was."

"I rest my case." (That's what lawyers say on the TV when they've said something clever).

"What are we going to do, then?"

"We're going home."

"What now? It's still dark!"

"It's nearly morning. And the moon's out. I want to go home now you're better. I don't like it here."

I nodded. I didn't like it here either. I wanted to go home, too.

So we went.

#

It was really hard walking back to Ramsgate. My knees were hurting so much, even though I had rested them at the house in Canterbury, and both of us had lost a lot of weight through not eating properly. My belt was two holes tighter around my waist. But I tried not to keep asking for a rest, as we were going home and I would be back in my own bedroom and things would be better when we were there (as long as the men didn't bang on our front door in the night).

There were photos of Mum and Dad back home, which is another reason why it would be good to be back. We had lost the three albums Mum had brought with her, thanks to that plane, but there were lots more in the cupboard, and I really wanted to see their faces again. Every time I thought of them now, they were dead, and I thought that if I could see them in photos when they were alive and happy, it might give me my good memories back again.

We reached the field where all the tents had been. Most of them had gone. Before, there had been an army of them, all over the field, so it was hard to see an empty space on either side of the road. Now, there was just the odd tent or two, a long way apart. They must have all gone when they heard that the Russians had got into Canterbury. Where they had gone was a bit of a mystery; I don't think there would have been enough room for everyone in Ramsgate, as it's quite small as towns go.

Ben wanted me to sit down while he had a wander round to see if anyone had left anything behind worth having. I told him that that was stealing, but he said that it wasn't stealing if they'd left it behind as it meant that they didn't want it any more.

I wanted to come with him, but he pointed out that I needed to rest my knees, which was true. So I sat on the grass while he walked around the field, after he had agreed to always stay in sight of me so I knew where he was if anything bad happened.

He didn't find anything. He said there was a pair of dirty old pants in the mud, off near the trees, and we both laughed about that. But there was no food, and nothing worth having. He had found a couple of empty tents, and we talked about taking one with us, but we decided that it would be too heavy, and once we got home we wouldn't need it anyway.

As we walked off, I asked him whether he had a key to our home.

"I hadn't thought of that. No. Mum and Dad had a key each. I haven't got one."

I stopped walking. "What are we going to do, then? We can't get in."

"We'll get in."

"No, we won't. Those men couldn't get in when they were kicking the door."

"We will. Keep going."

So we started walking again. I watched his face when he wasn't looking at me, to see if he was worrying about the key. It was hard to know what he was thinking. His face was kind of blank.

I didn't like not talking. I felt a bit better if we were saying things to each other, even if they were about things which weren't very nice. "I miss Mum and Dad."

"Me, too."

"Who do you miss most?"

"What?"

"Who do you miss most? Mum or Dad?"

"Both the same."

"Me, too."

"Stupid question."

"I just wondered, that's all."

We walked on. I was having to do all the work when we were talking, as he was just answering my questions. But I still wanted to talk, so I kept going.

"I spy, with my little eye -"

"I'm not playing that game. It's for babies."

"I am a baby."

"I know."

I pretended to cry like a baby. He rolled his eyes, but there was a tiny little smile on his face. I kept going, but the smile disappeared quite quickly so I stopped crying, and tried to think of something else to talk about instead. But before I could think of something, Ben said:

"It wasn't my fault."

"What. What wasn't?"

"What happened to Mum and Dad."

"Why would it be your fault?"

"It wasn't."

"I know. I didn't say it was."

I didn't know what he was talking about. It was the Russians. He hadn't done anything.

"It's just that when Mum was thinking of going back home, after that play-area, I kept walking and told her that we should still go to Canterbury to see Nan. Do you remember? You did, too, but you're only eight so it's not really your fault. I knew that something bad was going to happen. I could feel it, you know? I should have let her take us back home, like she said she was going to. And I definitely should have noticed when Dad wandered off."

"I should have, too."

"You're a baby, though, like I said. It was down to me. It was my job."

"You're not a grown-up. You were trying to be nice. It wasn't your fault."

"That's what I'm saying."

I didn't know what he wanted me to say. He was telling me that it wasn't his fault, and then he was saying that it was, and then he was telling me again that it wasn't.

I gave him a friendly punch in the arm, and hoped that would be enough.

#

We reached Wingham well after lunchtime (even though we didn't actually have any lunch to eat). I was hoping that the ladies would still be there with their tea, as I really needed a drink. The table had moved from one side of the village to the other, so it looked like they had been given tea to the people coming from the tent-town we had seen that morning. But there were no ladies there now. I wondered where they had gone and whether they were okay.

There were still a couple of flasks on the table, and we tipped them up as high as they would go to see if any tea would come out, but there was nothing left in them at all. Someone else had drunk them dry.

There was a village shop. The door was open. We went inside, as there was no Dad to stop us taking anything if there was anything there worth taking. It was empty. A couple of the shelves had been pulled over, as if someone had got cross, but there was nothing on them we could eat. Not even tuna.

As we were walking through the village, a man came out of his house and waved for us to come over. "Alright, lads?"

Ben ignored him and crossed the road to avoid him. I gave him a wave as it was rude not to.

"What are you doing over there? Come on, lads. I've got food inside."

Ben kept walking.

"He's got food," I whispered to Ben.

"Maybe."

"He has! He just said."

"Keep walking."

The man crossed over the road towards us. He was quite old; older than Mum and Dad, but maybe not quite as old as Nan. "Lads! Where are you going? Didn't you hear me? I've got food indoors."

Ben ignored him. He stood in front of us. Ben stopped, so I stopped, too.

"What do you want?"

"I don't want anything. I'm offering you lunch. You must be hungry. You look as if you haven't eaten for days."

"We haven't," I replied. "Except for chocolate. Doggies, I mean."

I laughed, but he looked at me as if I was mad.

"Valerie thought it was called "doggies." But it was just normal chocolate."

He smiled at me. "Of course it was. You like chocolate, do you, son? I've got plenty of it in my house. Come and see. You can have as much as you like."

"No thank you," Ben said before I could answer for myself. He tried to walk around the man, and I tried to follow, but he blocked my way.

"You can have all the chocolate for yourself, then, if your brother doesn't want any. You shouldn't let him boss you around like that. Come on. I've got plenty to drink as well. Are you thirsty?"

"I'm very thirsty."

"What are you waiting for, then? Come on. I'm just over there. That house. Your brother can wait outside if he likes, but there's no reason why you should miss out, right?"

Ben held my hand. "He's staying with me."

"He can make his own mind up, can't he? He's a big boy now, he doesn't need you to tell him what to do. Come on, Son, let's get that chocolate out the cupboard. What do you want to drink?"

"I want to stay with Ben."

"Of course you do. Okay, just stand in the hallway and I'll get you the chocolate, okay? Where's the harm in that? You don't want to miss out. What's your favourite chocolate? I bet I've got some."

Ben tried to walk past him again. He grabbed his arm. He looked angry now. "Would you get in that house now? I'm asking nicely."

And then a man was coming out of the house a few doors down from us. He ran over to us, and pulled the other man away. "What did I say to you?" he shouted at him. He was really angry, too. "I told you to leave the kids alone."

"I was just checking they were okay. I wasn't doing any harm."

The second man started swearing at him. The man with the chocolate started swearing back.

Ben made a run for it. He ran quite slowly, so I could keep up. I looked over my shoulder, and the second man was punching the chocolate man, who was trying to punch him back (but the second man was winning as he was stronger). I was glad I had Ben with me, as the chocolate man had seemed quite nice, but he couldn't have been or the other man wouldn't be hitting him for talking to us. I didn't really know the rules, and I didn't have Mum and Dad to look after me anymore.

We ran as long as my knees would bear it. We passed the road which we had come from with Mum and Dad, but Ben kept running and I thought he must know where he was going so I followed him without saying anything. I think that must have been the short cut, as we were walking for ages after we went past it. When I couldn't run any further, we stopped. The road was straight, so if the chocolate man came after us we would be able to see him coming and run away again. He was a grown-up, so he would be able to run faster than us, but he was old so he would probably get tired quickly and we thought we would be fine if we had a head-start.

We sat on the grass, keeping an eye out in case we had been followed.

"I'm glad you're here," I said.

"I'm glad you're here, too."

"I thought that man was being nice. I thought he really had chocolate."

"I think he was just saying that to get us in his house."

"Why? What did he want?"

"Bad stuff."

"Such as?"

"It doesn't matter. We're safe now."

I decided not to ask him again. Sometimes, it's better not to know. "Thank you for looking after me."

He shrugged. He looked embarrassed.

I wanted to make him smile again, to thank him for looking after me. I barked, but that didn't work. He just looked sad.

"It wasn't your fault," I told him again, in case that helped.

He hung his head, as if he'd done something naughty. "I know." But it didn't sound as if he did.

#

We saw planes go overhead from time to time. Most of them were going in the same direction as we were, but some were heading back towards Canterbury. We didn't know for sure whether they were Russian planes or ours, but as there weren't any of our soldiers left I thought the planes were probably theirs, too.

We heard bombs falling sometimes, but we couldn't see them. The nearer we got to Ramsgate, the louder they got. We were going home, and they were still bombing us. I started to worry that maybe when we got home, our house would be a heap of rubble like the other houses we saw. But we didn't have another plan, and we wanted to be home so much, so we carried on walking anyway.

It was getting dark now. We had been walking all day. My knees hurt so much that I can't even describe it. My tummy was still a bit ill, too, but you won't want to hear about that. And I was really thirsty. I had kind of got used to not eating, but my throat was so sore from not drinking that I just wanted to sit down and cry. I was walking slower and slower, which was making Ben worried but he didn't say anything because he knew I was trying my best.

There were some men up front, six or seven of them, standing in the road. We saw them before they saw us. Ben stopped, and I stopped, too.

"I don't trust them," he told me.

I didn't say anything back. I didn't trust them either. I didn't trust anyone very much anymore, except Valerie and I didn't think we would ever see him again (we didn't). But we had to walk past them to get to Ramsgate. I was worried that Ben would make us go back to Canterbury again. I couldn't make it back to Canterbury. I wasn't sure I could make it to Ramsgate, and the sign we had passed half an hour ago said that that was just four or five miles away (I forget which now).

They saw us. One of them said something to the others, and they all started looking at us. I half expected them to start chasing us, but they just stood where they were, watching us.

Ben was looking more and more worried. He looked back over his shoulder, as if deciding whether to go back to Canterbury. I was scared to keep walking, but there was no way we could go back. So I started walking forward again.

"Jack, no. I don't think it's safe. I don't like the look of them."

I ignored him and kept walking. I thought about telling him that it was safe, but I know he wouldn't believe me. I thought about telling him that I couldn't go back to Canterbury because my knees were hurting and I felt sick with thirst, but I didn't think he would see that as a good enough reason. So I just kept walking, and hoped he would follow me, because if he stayed where he was I would have to stop as I wasn't brave enough to walk right up to those men all on my own, especially now it was getting dark. Whatever happened to me, I wanted him to be with me when it did.

I got maybe twenty metres before I heard him hurrying after me. I can't tell you how glad I was when I heard him coming.

"I'm still not sure about this."

"Me neither," I said, but I kept walking all the same.

It took us a few minutes to reach them. All except one of them walked into the middle of the road, so they were standing together as we got nearer. The other one sat by the side of the road. He was looking at us, too, but he didn't get up. He was tired, I expect.

It felt really weird, walking towards them when they were staring at us, like being in a school play when the mums and dads are looking at you when you are saying your lines, only worse because there's no way that mums and dads are going to beat you, whether they like you or not.

When we were just ten metres or so away, one of them started walking towards us. Ben stopped. I wanted to keep on going, but I was frightened to without Ben so I stopped as well.

Normally, when grown-ups talk to you, they say something like "hello" or "good afternoon" or "alright?" before they say what they want to say, but this man didn't bother with any of that. "You got any food?" he asked.

I let Ben do the talking.

"No."

"Euros?"

"Euros?" Ben sounded surprised. Euros are what you get in France, and we were still in England. I don't know why he wanted Euros when we use pounds. But that's what he asked us for.

"No. Nothing."

"Turn out your pockets."

Ben turned out his pockets. He had nothing but toilet-roll-tissue, which had broken up into little pieces.

The man told me to do the same. I did as I was told. I had tissue, too, the top of a water bottle, and three squares of chocolate. Ben gave me a look when he saw the chocolate, because he didn't know I had it. I think he thought that I was keeping it for myself, but I wasn't. It was what was left of what Valerie had given me, which I had been saving for an emergency. I thought that one day, Ben might get so hungry that he fainted, and I was keeping the chocolate so that I could give it to him and make him alright again. I knew that if I told him I was saving it, he would make me eat it, and just for once I wanted to do something for him.

The man took it off me.

The man sitting on the ground called over to him. "That's all they've got. Let them go."

The man who'd taken my chocolate looked over at him, but didn't say anything.

"They're just kids, Mike," the man on the ground said. "Let them go."

The man with my chocolate stepped aside, and waved me through. We walked towards the other men who were standing behind him. They were staring at us. I wanted to run, to get past them as quickly as possible, but I knew that Ben wouldn't like that so I kept walking instead. Ben went a little bit ahead of me, so he was between them and me. I think he was protecting me again. When we were living at home, we were always fighting, and he was always being nasty to me, and I wasn't sure that he liked me very much. But since Mum and Dad had gone, he was looking after me all the time, and I really didn't know what I would have done without him.

I took a look over my shoulder, and the man with my chocolate was walking close behind me. He could have reached out and touched my shoulder if he wanted. I walked a bit faster so I was right behind Ben.

We reached the men ahead of us. I looked over towards the man on the ground, but he had his head down. I'd noticed that when people have their head down it usually means that something bad is happening, and I was worried that this meant that the men were going to attack us. I held Ben's hand, to help me keep going.

The men were in our way. Ben went round them, and I went, too. They didn't do anything to stop us. As we went up the road, I could feel them watching us, but I didn't dare turn round to look at them, in case they were following us.

All of a sudden, there was the sound of shooting. Really, really loud.

I tried to start running, but Ben had my hand and he wouldn't let it go. I looked at him, trying to work out why he wouldn't let me run when they were trying to kill us. He pointed up at the sky. There was a plane up there, heading towards Ramsgate. And there were two other planes following it, shooting at it, trying to blow it out of the sky.

I took a look over my shoulder at the men. None of them had followed us. They were all just standing there, watching the planes up above, without saying a word.

"Which one's ours?" I asked Ben.

He didn't answer me. He just kept walking.

So I walked, too.

#

Ramsgate. Ramsgate at last. I wished we had never left. If we'd stayed where we were, maybe we would have caught a boat sooner, maybe we would have got to France, and maybe Mum and Dad wouldn't be dead now. But I guess you never know. Maybe a bomb would have dropped on us anyway, and we would all have died together. That might not have been such a bad thing, though, all going at the same time.

There wasn't much left of the harbour as we went through. It had been so badly bombed that there was hardly anything left standing. I could tell that, even in the dark, with only a little moonlight to see by (there were no street-lights of course). Every so often, there were clouds across the moon, and we had to stop walking so we could make sure that we didn't step into one of the big holes in the ground the bombs had made there.

We heard people talking and calling out to each other on the far side of the harbour, but we couldn't see them and we didn't want to go and look for them in case they were dangerous, so we kept on walking. We saw a few people around, sitting down on the pavement, and we crossed the road to keep as far away from them as we could, even though some of them had children and I thought that maybe they were safe. None of them bothered us, anyway.

Some of the streets in the town were hardly touched, and others weren't really there at all anymore, which was quite strange. I wondered how the Russians decided which streets to bomb and which to leave. I worried again that we would get home and find our house was gone, and all this walking would have been for nothing.

And then we were in our street. I walked over the rubble at the end of the road, and I remembered Mum trying to climb over it and falling over when we were going to Tesco's and I missed her all over again. There were more houses knocked down at this end of the road than I thought there had been, but I wasn't sure whether there had been more bombs here or whether I had just forgotten how bad it was.

Ben started walking faster as we got near our house. I knew he was wondering whether or not it was still there. I wanted to walk slower, for the same reason, like Mum had done before we'd got to Nan's. Sometimes it's better not knowing if something bad has happened

And then we saw it, the shape of our house in the dark. It looked okay as far as I could see.

We were home.

It's hard to tell you how happy I felt when I saw that our house hadn't been bombed. Losing our home would have felt like losing someone you love. It was the place I felt safest, out of everywhere in the world. And I know this sounds funny, but it felt like when we got inside, we would find Mum and Dad there, waiting for us, and everything would be alright again.

I now started worrying again that we wouldn't be able to get in. We hadn't got the key, and we weren't strong enough to break the door down. In films, they can open doors using credit cards, like I said earlier, but I didn't know how to do that and we didn't have any credit cards anyway because we were too young for the bank to give us any.

As it turned out, though, it was easy to get in as the porch door had been kicked in and the lock on the front door was broken. Someone had come into our house after we'd left it. I guessed it was the two men with the bag who had tried to break the door down when Mum and Dad had still been here.

I wanted to go in. We had spent so long walking here, that I couldn't bear to wait outside now we were here, but Ben wanted me to wait outside for a while in case there were bad people inside.

"I'll go in," he told me, "and check it's okay. You wait here."

"Why you?"

"I can run faster than you if I see anyone. You wait here, so you'll have a headstart if we need to get away quickly."

"I don't want to wait here on my own."

"Shush! They'll hear you."

"Who'll hear me?"

"Whoever's inside."

"There might not be anyone in there."

"There might be, though."

"Might not be."

Ben sighed. "Just wait there. Please. I'm asking nicely. I don't want to argue. I'll be two minutes, I promise."

"Truthfully?"

"Truthfully."

He went inside the house. I wanted to go too, but I knew he would be cross. Besides, it was very dark in there. He had to put his hand on the wall as he went in, so he could feel where everything was and not bump into things. If there was anyone in there, he might not know until it was too late. Part of me thought that was a good reason to go in with him, and part of me thought that was a good reason to stay outside like he'd asked me to. I felt guilty that I wasn't braver. If I was brave, I would have gone with him, whatever he'd said. If I was really brave, I would have told him to stay outside while I went in. I hated being eight. If I was a grown-up, I don't think I would have been so scared all the time.

He was gone for a long time, or at least it seemed like a long time. Much more than two minutes, anyway, even though he said "Truthfully". I kept expecting him to come running out of the house at any moment, with bad men chasing him. But nothing happened. He was still in there somewhere, and I didn't know what to do.

After what seemed like ages, he was still not back, and I decided to go in after him. He'd asked me to wait outside, but he'd broken a "Truthfully" so I decided it was okay to ignore him. Like I said, I was really scared, but it was worse being scared out there on my own, worrying about him, than being scared inside. So I stepped through the door and went to find out whether anyone else was in there with him.

#

I can't tell you just how dark it was in the house, what with there being no light at all. I put my hand on the wall, as Ben had done, to help me work out where everything was.

"Ben?" I called out, but really quietly. I wanted him to hear me, but I didn't want anyone else hearing. I thought that maybe he had seen people inside, and he was trying to creep out of the house a step at a time, and if I started shouting his name they would know we were there and catch us both.

There was no answer. I didn't want to call his name any louder, just in case.

He had headed for the stairs. I went there, too. I held on to the bannister, which made it easier to walk up them. You don't really need light when you're holding a bannister as you can guess where the steps are. I tried to walk really quietly, just in case.

I got to our bedroom. I still couldn't see anything. "Ben?" I whispered. No reply. I put my hand on my bed. I wanted to run my hand over the mattress to see if there was anyone on it, but if I had felt anyone's legs it would have scared the Hell out of me so I took my hand off it again. "Ben?"

He couldn't have been in there. He would have heard me. I left the room. Either he was in Mum and Dad's room, or he was using the toilet, or he had come back downstairs without me seeing him and he was looking for me outside while I was up here trying to find him.

I decided to go up to my parents' room.

I felt my way outside my bedroom. I got to the bottom of the stairs leading up to Mum and Dad's room.

And then I heard a scream. A really loud, frightened scream.

It wasn't Ben.

There was someone else in the house.

#

I ran away. I ran as fast as the dark would let me.

I nearly fell down the stairs, but I managed to catch hold of the bannister and keep going.

And then I was out the door, and at the top of the path, and ready to race off down the street.

And then I remembered that Ben was still inside.

I stopped by the gate.

I didn't know what to do.

Ben was still in there. Someone else was there, too. Maybe more than one person for all I knew. And if they were screaming, they must have known he was there.

Then again, if they were screaming, then maybe they were more afraid of him than he was of them. It was dark in there. They probably had heard him without seeing him. They probably didn't know he was just a boy.

What use could I be to him, though? I was only eight. I'm rubbish at fighting. I once nearly got beaten up by a girl at school, for calling her "Specs" (she's got glasses). If I went back inside, I was more likely to get in the way than anything else.

But I knew that I had to go back all the same. Ben was all I had left. If it was me in there, he would have gone back to save me, so I had to do the same for him. I didn't want to; I was really scared. It was worse not knowing who was in there, how many of them there might be, whether they wanted to hurt us or not.

I thought of the men on the road coming into Ramsgate, the ones who had made us turn out their pockets. Maybe they had followed us back, taken a short-cut, got here before us so they could take us by surprise like the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. Or maybe even the man who had had a fight with Dad when he was still normal. Or the men who'd kicked our door. Or someone even more scary we hadn't met yet.

I went back to the door. "Ben?" I called out. I still called it quietly, because even though they knew that Ben was inside, they might not know that I was there, too. It was best to keep quiet, to try to stop getting caught, so that I could catch them by surprise and save him if I could.

"Ben?"

No reply.

I started going back up the stairs again, back to our old bedroom. It was worse this time, because this time I knew there was someone up there. I thought I could hear whispering up at the top of the house, but I wasn't sure. Dad said that old houses make funny noises when it's quiet, but it sounded like real whispering to me.

I made it to the door outside my bedroom. I stopped again. I listened. I couldn't hear anything anymore.

I went to the foot of the stairs going up to Mum and Dad's bedroom. "Ben?" I whispered, quieter than ever.

Someone tried to grab hold of me, someone standing near the bottom of the stairs. I screamed, almost as loudly as the person had been screaming before. I tried to run. I wanted to save Ben, but there was someone trying to grab hold of me in the dark, and no-one can stand still when that's happening to them, however brave they are.

"Jack? Jack, it's alright. It's me."

"Ben?"

"Who else would it be?"

I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. I wanted to punch him in the arm for scaring me like that, but I couldn't see him and I didn't want to accidentally punch him anywhere else in case he punched me back harder.

"You scared me!"

"You scared me, too, with all that screaming."

"I wasn't screaming. I was shouting."

"It sounded like screaming to me."

"Whatever. Who was that? I heard someone screaming upstairs."

"Shouting, you mean?"

"Shut up. It's not funny. Who was it? Are they dangerous?"

"Come and find out."

He sounded happy, for the first time in a long time.

"Who is it?"

"Come and see."

He started pulling me up the stairs. Just for a second, it was like old times, when we didn't get on very well. Maybe it was because we were back at home again. It crossed my mind that whoever was up there might have promised to let him go if he caught me for them. But deep down, I knew that was rubbish. He had saved me lots of times since Mum and Dad had gone, what with looking after me when I was ill, and keeping Valerie's friend away from me, and the man in Wingham who wanted to give us food (I'm still not quite sure why that last time was saving me, but I kind of knew that it was). So I decided to trust him, and I followed him up the stairs.

It was just as dark up there as it was outside my bedroom. I couldn't see anything at all.

"Is anyone there?" I asked. I knew there was, but I couldn't think what else to say.

"Jack?" said a lady's voice. "Is that you, Darling?"

Just for a second, I thought it was Mum, and I didn't know whether to laugh or scream again. It sounded like Mum. But it couldn't have been, because I had seen her die.

And then I knew. I knew who it was. And she must have been able to see better than me in the dark, as she was holding me in her arms and cuddling me as hard as she could.

"Hello, Nan," I said.

#

It was her. It was really her. It was our Nan. And she was safe.

She hugged me for what seemed like ages.

"I've been waiting for you lot to turn up for days! What kept you?"

"There were planes. And bombs. And we made friends with Valerie."

"Valerie? She sounds nice."

"No, Valerie was a Russian soldier."

"You made friends with a Russian soldier!"

"He gave us chocolate."

"I wish I'd have been there, then! Where's your Mum?"

Neither of us answered. She didn't know Mum was dead. Mum was her daughter. How could we tell her something like that?

"Jack? Ben? Is your mum downstairs? And your Dad? Is everything okay?"

She sounded worried now, but I still couldn't bear to tell her.

"Ben. Talk to me. Where are they?"

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so, so sorry."

"Don't tell me she's -. No. She can't be. I'd have known. Is she? Ben, what happened? Talk to me. Will someone please talk to me?"

"Dad walked towards an armoured car. It wasn't his fault; he went all quiet, and wouldn't talk to anyone. We should have been watching him. I should have been watching him. Mum went after him, and the soldiers shouted at him, and they shouted at her, and then – and then – then they shot them both."

"They're dead?"

"Yes."

"Both of them? Your Mum as well?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

She started crying. She hugged me to her even harder than before. And then she was pushing me away, and I heard her sitting on the bed. I had given up crying, so I wasn't sure what to do to make it better for her.

"My baby," she cried. "My baby's dead."

"And Dad," I added, though as soon as I'd said it I thought that maybe that hadn't helped all that much.

"He was walking towards an armoured car? Why would he do that?"

"He was acting funny. Like Ben said, it wasn't his fault."

She made a little "hmn", noise, as if she didn't quite believe us. And then she was crying again.

"You poor boys. You've been alone all this time. And you've made it back here, without any help? I can't believe it. How did you manage? How did you eat? You're back here now. That's the main thing. I can look after you now. It's going to be alright. Come on, sit on the bed. Come on. I need another hug. A big one."

We found the bed (we knew roughly where it was, so it didn't take long). We sat with her, while she cried. At first, it was nice, but after a while I got a bit bored as there was nothing to do but sit there. At least my knees were getting a rest.

After what seemed like a very long time, she stopped crying.

"I'm going to get us all out of here," she told us. "I've got money. We're going to France."

"Have you got Euros?" Ben asked. He must have been thinking of what the men had said when we were walking to Ramsgate. They hadn't been interested in pounds; only Euros.

"Clever boy, knowing they have Euros in France. Yes. I've got Euros. And pounds. And even some dollars from when I went on that cruise in Florida with your Grandad. Everyone takes dollars. We're going to be fine, you just see."

It was daylight before Ben and I went to our bedroom to get some sleep. We hadn't been in our beds since we had left for Canterbury, and I kept nodding off when Nan was cuddling me, so she let us go to bed to get some rest.

The stuff in our bedroom was all in the wrong place. I think Nan had been tidying up, but it was tidy already (Dad wouldn't let us leave our room in a mess) so I didn't know why she would bother.

Ben woke me up. I was still tired, and I didn't want to get out of bed. It was very light now, and my watch said that it was lunchtime. I wished that we had some lunch, but I knew that we hadn't. That was another good reason why we should have stayed asleep. You're not so hungry when you're sleeping.

Ben gave me another shake. "Come on. It's time to go."

"Go? Go where?"

"To the beach."

"Are you mad? Why would we go to the beach? It's not even summer."

"Nan says there are still boats leaving. Boats for France. We're going somewhere safe."

Safe. The word sounded good. I hadn't felt safe for ages. France hadn't sounded very nice when Daisy had been talking about what she had heard on the radio, what with the concentration camps and all, but Nan wouldn't have wanted to go there if it was worse than here. She was a grown-up. She knew about these things. It was good to have a grown-up with us again, especially when she was Nan.

I got up. I went downstairs. Ben took me out into the garden. Nan was digging a hole in the corner with one of those little garden forks.

"Good afternoon," she said. That's what grown-ups say when you get up late, but I don't think she was teasing me as it really was afternoon and it would have been silly if she had said good morning.

"Why are you digging a hole in the garden?"

"To get my money back."

"Why have you buried it in the garden?"

"People have been in and out of the house, looking for money and food. They don't even care that I'm here; they just walk in, look around, take what they want, and go. It's disgusting. I've buried the money in the garden to keep it safe until you were here. I thought your father could look after it for me when he got here, but I guess I'm going to have to look after it myself now."

I looked at Ben. Nan thought that going into other people's houses was disgusting. I decided not to tell her that we had been living in someone else's house in Canterbury. She might be cross with us.

Her fork hit metal. After a lot more scraping, she uncovered a small biscuit tin and picked it up out of the ground. Nan is supposed to have that illness where your bones are old and bad, but she was pretty good at digging as far as I could see. She opened the tin, and took out her purse, which looked much fatter than Mum's purse ever did. I think there must have been quite a lot of money in it. I hoped there was enough there for us all to go to France.

"Done. Okay boys, let's go."

We left. I felt sad leaving the house behind. We had spent so long trying to get home, and now we were going again. I didn't know whether I would ever see it again (I don't think I will now). I knew we were going to France to be safe, but it had felt pretty safe at home, just for that one night, back in my own bed, with Ben in the room with me, and Nan upstairs. The only thing missing was Mum and Dad.

Nan walked even slower than me. It was nice not to be the one holding people up for a change. Her knees are bad like mine, and she's got that "old" thing as well, that hurts her knees as well as her hands. Arthur something, it's called; I can never remember what.

Considering her bad bones, she managed to get over the rubble at the end of the road pretty good. Better than Mum. She didn't fall over once.

"Nan? Why were you at our house?"

"The question is why weren't you?"

"We went to Canterbury to find you."

"And I came here to find you. I'll tell you all about it later. I need to save my breath for walking. I'm not as young as I used to be."

That's another thing grown-ups say that doesn't really make any sense, as no-one's as young as they used to be, so what's the point saying it?

"Do you have anything to eat?"

"I'm afraid not, Love. I brought some food with me, but I finished it off last night before I went to bed. I wasn't sure if you were still coming. I was worried that something might have happened to you. I thought that if you were still coming, then maybe you would be bringing food with you."

"I'm sorry."

"Oh, don't apologise. It's not your fault. It was up to your Dad to keep you fed. You're just children."

"Dad couldn't. He was -"

"I know, I know. It wasn't his fault. I'm just saying, that's all."

We walked on. Even with Nan walking so slowly, it wouldn't take long to get to the beach. I used to think it was a long journey, and hated it when we didn't drive, but I'd been to Canterbury and back since then and it didn't seem very long at all now.

I thought about the boat waiting for us on the beach. And France. There were no bombs in France, from what I could make out. I didn't like the idea of going to another country and leaving Mum and Dad behind here, but I knew it was the best thing to do. It wouldn't take long to get there on a boat, as boats go quicker than cars.

By the time it was dark again, I would be safe, which was my new favourite word.

I wasn't safe, though, was I? Everything's been so horrible since then. I really, really, really wish I had stayed at home. But it was too late. It was way too late for all of us.

#

What with Nan having bad legs, it took about three quarters of an hour to get to the sea-front. There's a cliff-top you walk along on the way, with a railing along it, where you can look down on the beach. I always liked looking over it, because you can see way out to sea, as well as seeing the beach, the harbour and everything. It's really nice when the sun's out.

I ran ahead to be the first to look over the edge (old habits die hard, my Dad would have said). And what I saw worried me. It wasn't the wrecked harbour way over to my right, as I had seen that already when we walked through it in the dark on our way home the night before. It was that the beach to my left was jam packed with people. There were millions of them (well, maybe not millions, but an awful lot of them anyway). Thousands at least.

Nan and Ben joined me at the railings. I heard Nan swear under her breath, which surprised me as I'd never heard her swear before. It was the B-word that rhymes with "rugger" (like in rugby).

"Are they all waiting for a boat, too?" I asked her.

She nodded. "I think so."

"Is it a big boat?"

"Let's hope so."

We walked down the hill towards the harbour. There were people sitting down in the road in groups. I guess the beach was too crowded to sit on, so people had to come here for a rest from standing up.

By the time we got to the bottom of the hill, it was hard to move through the people as they were standing so close together. I had been wondering earlier where everyone had gone, as quite a lot of people live in Ramsgate, and the people from Canterbury and from the tent village must have been coming here, but now I knew. Everyone was here, by the harbour. Everyone was here, waiting for the same boat that we were waiting for.

"We'll never catch a boat here," Ben said.

"Of course we will," Nan told him. "We just have to be patient, that's all. Everything comes to she who waits."

Back before the bombs, I would have listened to Nan. She was the grown-up, and grown-ups knew best, most of the time at least. But me and Ben had been through a lot together, and he had looked after me, and he had made a pretty good job of it. And there were an awful lot of people crowded round the beach. What if he was right and she was wrong?

"Are you sure, Nan?" I asked her.

"Positive, young man."

"Shall we just wait here, then?"

"Yes. I'll need a sit-down. My legs are killing me."

My legs were hurting, too, but I didn't say anything. I had stopped complaining quite a long time before. But it was nice to rest them, even though I was worried that we might miss the boat while we were sitting down.

We walked a couple of dozen metres back up the hill, where it was a bit quieter and there was less chance of someone accidentally standing on us. We sat down.

"How come you were at our house?" I asked again. "We went to Canterbury to find you, and your house was blown up, so we thought you might be – might be – poorly."

"Oh, I know what you thought I was, young man, but it takes more than a few bombs to flatten me. When they started bombing – how long ago was it now? – I tried to call your Mum, God rest her poor soul. But the phones weren't working. I couldn't decide whether to come and look for you, or whether to sit tight, as I knew your Mum would come looking for me if I didn't get to yours first. There was no picture on the telly, but I got some news on the i-pad."

"You've got an i-pad!"

"Yes, hold the front page, Nanny happens to own an i-pad! Don't look so shocked. I'm not that old! Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. I heard on the radio that the ports were being bombed, so I thought maybe it was worse for you than it was for me, and I stayed put for a while to see if you would come over. But you didn't."

"Dad said not to."

"Did he now? Well that's unfortunate. After a while, I got tired of waiting, and I started to worry that maybe you weren't coming, or that something had happened so you couldn't travel, and I decided to come and see you instead.

It just so happened that my next-door neighbour has a motorbike, and he was going to leave Canterbury as well, and he offered to take me. That was really nice of him, don't you think? His name is John and he's seventy three, but he can still ride a motorbike! What do you think of that?

A lot of people would have left me to it, and used the extra space on the bike for luggage or something, but John's always been a gentleman and he knew I was worried about you guys and he said that he would give me a lift.

"You came all the way here on the back of a motorbike?"

"You're sounding surprised again! How old do you think I am? No, don't answer that, I'm depressed enough already! It wasn't easy, holding on, what with my bad hands, but sometimes you've just got to bite the bullet, so I managed fine, thank you very much.

Well we made it halfway to Ramsgate, and I thought we will be there in a jiffy and we'll all be together again. But then these two men flagged us over, and we stopped because we thought they were in trouble, but they dragged us off the motorbike and they rode off on it. I couldn't believe it! In broad daylight! Bold as you like! But there are no police around anymore, that's the problem. People think they can do whatever they like. I hope they broke their necks on the way home.

We carried on walking, but it was hard, what with my Arthur and everything (she didn't say Arthur, but it was something like that, and I can never remember the word for her illness). And then we saw a plane up ahead, over the tree-tops, and it was firing at someone on the ground and we thought that maybe there were soldiers in the road or something.

We kept going, and when we eventually got to where the plane had been we saw the road was all churned up, and there were corpses all over the place, and we realised that that plane had been attacking ordinary people like us."

Ben pointed at the two of us. "We were there. And Mum and Dad. It was firing at us. We nearly got killed."

"You were there?"

"Yes."

"Oh, my poor babies. It must have been terrible. Terrible. Why didn't I see you? Tell me we didn't walk past each other in the crowds!"

"Dad said we should turn off on to another road, so it would be quieter and there was less chance of us getting attacked again."

"Your Dad was right. He was being very sensible. But it's a shame, all the same. If only you had stayed on the main road, we could all have met up and there would have been no need for you to go Canterbury to look for me. And maybe they'd both be alive now."

"Dad didn't know that!" cried Ben. He sounded cross. I think he thought that Nan was being nasty, but I don't think she was.

"I know that. Didn't I just say that he was being sensible? I'm not blaming your Dad for anything. It seemed like a good idea at the time. All I'm saying is that – with hindsight, which is a wonderful thing – it might have been better to stay on the main road."

"But he -"

"Let's move on, shall we? I think we're both saying the same thing, but in different ways. I've lost my train of thought now. Remind me where I've got up to."

"Dad taking us off the main road."

"Oh yes. Well, my neighbour and me, we kept walking and it took us ages to get here. I felt really guilty, because I was the one who told him to stop for those men, but he never blamed me, not once. He was such a nice man, John. A lot of people would have gone off in a huff and left me to it.

When we got here, we split up. We found the house empty, with the door all smashed in. I wanted to stay here and wait for you. He wanted to go and look for a boat. He wanted me to come with him; he said it wasn't safe here, all on my own, but blood is thicker than water so I waved him off and waited for you.

I can't even start to tell you how messy the house was! Someone had been here, and pulled all the stuff out of the cupboards and the books off the shelves. It was awful. Your Mum's never been one for tidying – thank Goodness for your Dad when it comes to that – but I hate mess so I spent most of the first day tidying up your things for you.

It was bit of a shock when people started walking into the house and helping themselves to your belongings, making everything messy again. I shouted at them at first, but they just laughed at me, and after a while I gave up and let them get on with it. There was nothing worth taking anyway.

The first time round, I had my money and my food (not much of it, but it was all I had) hidden in the house, but they weren't here long and they didn't find it. I think they were on drugs or something, by the look of them. A lot of young people are, you know, and now the police aren't around it can only get worse. That's when I decided to bury the money in the back garden, to keep it safe. I hid the food in my clothes so I didn't have to keep digging it up whenever I was hungry. It wasn't all that hygenic, putting it in my clothes (especially when I haven't been able to wash them) but I figured that was the least of my problems. There's no need to pull that face, either. It was all gone pretty soon anyway, so I didn't have to worry about that for long.

And I waited, and I waited, and you didn't show up. And I started to think that you weren't coming. I cried a lot about that. I love you all to pieces, you know that, don't you? But I'm not getting any younger and I can't last for long without food. So last night was going to be my last night in the house, and I decided that if you weren't there by the morning I would go in search of a boat. And maybe even see John again, if he hadn't caught one already.

And you turned up, just in time. Ben gave me such a fright. I woke up, and I could hear someone breathing, and I thought that I was going to be attacked in my own bed, and I may have screamed a little, but then it turned out that it was the two of you, and here we are, together again."

She gave us both a hug.

And then there was shouting, round the corner, from where the beach was.

"Now what's going on over there?" Nan wondered.

Ben stood up, walked to the bottom of the road, and peered round the corner. He came back at a run.

"It's a boat! Jack, they're saying it's a boat!"

#

I can't remember being so excited as I was then. I had been worrying about what France would be like, but I knew I didn't want to be here in England anymore. The Russians were here, and people were dying, and Mum and Dad had gone.

When we got to the bottom of the hill, we could see everyone pushing forward, trying to get nearer the beach. It was like the time outside the shop, when those two men were hitting Dad, but this was worse because there were so many people there. Everyone was trying to push their way towards the beach, even though there were thousands and thousands of people in front of them, blocking their way.

Nan held our hands. Her hand was all bony. "Stay with me. I'll never find you if you get lost. Keep hold of my hands, okay, no matter what?"

We joined the back of the crowd. Ben was going to start burrowing in, like Mum did at the shop, but Nan had hold of his hand so he didn't get far. Nan was standing there, like she was in a queue at the Post Office.

"Can you see the boat?" Ben asked her. "How big is it? Is there room for everyone?"

She tried to stand on tip-toes, but the people in front of us were taller than her so she still couldn't see anything. She moved around a bit to try to get a better view. Other people were coming over, and took our place as soon as we moved, so we were even further back than we were before.

"I – can't – quite – see. Did you see it, Ben? You said you saw a boat?"

"I didn't see it. I heard people saying there was one."

"You shouldn't always believe what people are saying. Especially when they're not even saying it to you."

She stopped trying to look over people's heads. "Shall we just sit down, and wait for things to calm down a bit? If there is a boat, I'm sure someone will come ashore and make everyone queue up."

"Nan!" Ben was starting to sound cross again.

"Don't take that tone with me, young man. Grown-ups know best, you'd do well to remember that."

He opened his mouth to say something, but then closed it again, thinking better of it. Dad used to do that sometimes when he was having arguments with Mum. He was a lot like Dad. Nan wasn't anything like Mum, though. I know that Mum would have been dragging us through the crowds, making sure we got on that boat whatever happened. She never liked the idea of queueing.

Ben let go of Nan's hand. She started walking back to where we had been sitting before the boat turned up. Ben started trying to squeeze between two men in front of him, to get a better look what was happening.

And then there was a plane overhead, moving really fast, much faster than when we were shot at on our way to Canterbury. It swooped over our heads, and flew out to sea. A lot of the people in the crowd started shouting, and some started running away, which meant that we would have been nearer the front of the queue if Nan hadn't walked off. Most of them stayed, though, and I could see them looking up, but they were taller than me so I couldn't see what was going on.

There was a boom, and then the sound of a big gun being fired, over and over again, but I still couldn't see anything. More and people in the crowd were shouting things out, like "take the B-word down" and "have him" and lots and lots of swearing.

I needed to see what was going on. I jumped up and down at the back of the crowd, trying to see more, but it was no use. Sometimes, it's horrible being little.

More firing. And then there was another plane overhead, but this time some of the people were cheering it, and others were asking whether it was one of ours, and some people said it was and some people said it wasn't.

More firing. And then one of the planes – I wasn't sure which – was flying back over our heads, higher up this time, and the other plane was not far behind.

It went quiet for a bit. The planes had disappeared, and everyone was looking in the direction they had gone, and Ben took the chance to slip through the crowd while they were looking away. I didn't know whether to follow him or not. I really wanted to see the boat, but I knew Nan would be cross with me if I left her on her own.

The crowd were starting to push forward again. The gap where Ben had gone was starting to close up. If I didn't go now, I'd never find him. I went for it.

I was smaller than him. It meant I could squeeze through smaller gaps, but it was harder to push through if there wasn't a gap to squeeze into. At first, I could see Ben ahead of me, but then he got too far ahead of me and I couldn't see him anymore. I got worried that I would get lost, and then I'd have no-one at all.

I heard the planes come back. I was surrounded by grown-ups, so I couldn't see them, but I could hear them whooshing over-head. And they were firing, and I could hear people screaming, and I knew that one of them was firing at the crowd. I don't know why he'd do that, as we weren't hurting anyone, but the other plane had done the same thing to us before, on our way to Canterbury.

People started pushing back the way they had come. I wanted to keep going forward, to see what was happening with the boat, but they were pushing and shoving me, and I fell over. Someone tripped over me, and someone else stood on my hand as I was trying to get up. I was scared that I was going to get squashed. I managed to get up, but was knocked over again straightaway. And then Ben was there, pulling me up, and dragging me away from them.

We went and stood by the harbour railings, and held on tightly while everyone went by (just in case someone knocked us into the water). I heard someone screaming out a girl's name (I can't remember which one now), and I knew that Nan would probably be screaming our names, but I couldn't hear her in all the noise.

There was more firing, and another boom, but it was further away now.

It seemed like we were waiting ages, while everyone was pushing past us. I think the planes were going, but people were still running everywhere. I think they were worried that they would come back again.

As people left, there was much more room so we ran closer to the beach to get a better look. There was a warship in the sea. Not just a boat; a proper warship. I had seen them before; in films, and when we went to London there had been one in the river you could look around if you pay for it.

There were three boats in the sea, close to the beach. I think they had come from the warship. Two of them were at our end of the beach, and people had swam out and were getting on them. There were loads of people in the sea, too many for the boats to hold.

The other boat – much bigger than the first two - was at the far end of the beach. There were people getting on it; they all looked like soldiers. Other people were trying to get on the boat, too, but they weren't letting them on. That boat must have been for soldiers only, I think. Every time someone tried to get on the boat, they were pushing them away, unless they had a uniform on.

One of the boats at our end of the beach was full now. It started going back to the warship.

"Let's get on the other one," said Ben. "Before it goes."

"We can't. Nan's not here."

We watched as more people climbed on the boat. The other one – the one with the soldiers on it – started going back to the ship as well.

And then the last boat was full too, and it turned round and it was heading away from us. All three boats were full, and leaving, and we were left behind.

"Do you think they'll come back?" I asked him.

He didn't answer me.

People were coming back to the beach. I think they had seen that the planes were gone, and they wanted to come back to get on the boats. I was worried that we would be stuck on the beach, away from Nan, so we walked back to her before it got really busy again.

We hadn't gone very far before we saw men and ladies lying on the ground. They were bleeding. I wasn't sure if they were dead or not. You can tell by looking at their eyes to see if they are staring, and the first one I saw looked like that, but I didn't want to look at the others in case they were too. One of them had their leg bent up at a funny angle as well.

"What happened to them?" I asked Ben. "Were they shot by the plane?"

"Trampled."

We went back to where we had left Nan. She wasn't there. We thought that maybe she had gone to look for us, which would have been bad as it was going to be really hard to find her again, now all the people were coming back to the beach.

But then we saw her.

On the ground.

Trampled.

#

She was at the bottom of the hill where we had been sitting earlier, before the ship came. Her glasses had been knocked off. She was lying there, all curled up, like babies before they are born. She wasn't moving.

"Nan! Nan!"

We tried to shake her awake. It didn't help that people were walking past us all the time – one man even stepped over her – and we were worried that we might get trampled as well, but we didn't.

"Nan!"

She wasn't moving.

"Is she dead?"

Ben shrugged. He looked upset, because he didn't know what to do. "I don't know."

"You put a mirror by her mouth and see if it gets steamed up." I'd seen that on TV. It's the best way to tell.

"Where am I going to get a mirror?"

"Do you want me to go and look for one?"

"No."

He put his hand near her mouth. I think it must have done the same trick as the mirror, as he smiled a little and told me that she was still alive.

"When will she be alright again?"

"I don't know."

"Does she need a doctor?"

"I think so."

"How do we find a doctor?"

"Look, I don't know, okay? I keep telling you that. There aren't any doctors any more. Not here. Maybe in London, but not here."

"Maybe Valerie can help us? The Russians will have doctors."

"No."

"No?"

"No."

I didn't have any more questions to ask.

I wanted to pull Nan up the hill so people didn't keep stepping over her – she was a lot smaller than Mum, so I think we could have dragged her if we tried – but Ben said that he didn't think we should move her in case we made her worse. So we just sat there, with people walking all around her, hoping that she would wake up and look after us again.

I thought that maybe one of the grown-ups might help, but no-one did. It was like we weren't even there. A couple of times, I saw people looking, but they looked away when they saw me looking back.

Ben went through her pockets.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm getting her money."

"You can't do that! That's stealing!"

"She's our Nan. I'm just looking after it for her."

"Why?"

"In case she doesn't wake up. We need it, Jack. We need it to get out of here."

"No we don't. Those men on the boats didn't ask for any money. They'll take us to France for free."

"We're not getting on those boats. Even if they come back three times, ten times, a hundred times, there's too many people here. They're bigger than us. We can't get on."

"And we can't leave Nan behind anyway."

"Hmm."

He didn't look too sure about that, so I said it again. "Ben, we're not leaving Nan behind."

"What if she's dead?"

"Don't say that. She's not dead. You said she wasn't dead. She's just sleeping."

"What if she doesn't wake up?"

"People always wake up when they're asleep. Don't you know anything?"

"But what if she doesn't?"

I didn't answer him. I didn't want to talk about it anymore. Nan had to wake up. I was tired of us two looking after each other. We couldn't have come all this way to find her, only to lose her again. It wouldn't have been fair.

"Jack? What if she doesn't?"

"I don't want to talk about it? You're just being mean."

"I'm not."

"You are. This is our fault. We went away and left her on her own, and now she's sleeping and you're saying that she won't wake up, but she's got to wake up. She wouldn't leave us on our own again."

"It's not our fault."

"It is!"

Ben looked down, which I knew meant that he thought that it was our fault, even if he was saying that it wasn't. "I can't keep taking the blame for everything."

And then he started crying, and I felt really mean for saying what I said. I tried to give him a hug from the other side of Nan, but I couldn't reach him properly and when I walked round to him he didn't want a hug anyway.

He pushed me away.

"I'm alright."

"I'm sorry."

"There's nothing to be sorry for."

He had put her purse in his pocket. I asked him how much was in it, and he shrugged and told me he didn't know. He said he couldn't open it here, not with all these people around, in case they saw it and took it from us. Later on, if he had the chance, he would give me half so that if one of us lost their money then the other one would still have some. Dad used to do that with our holiday money, splitting it with Mum so they had half each, but then they would argue as Mum always spent her half much quicker than him.

Nan made little noises later on, like she was dreaming a bad dream, but she still wasn't moving. I stroked her head for a little while, hoping that that might help, and I told her that I loved her and that I hoped she would wake up soon. And I also put my hand in front of her mouth every ten minutes by my watch, to make sure she was still breathing (which she was).

I hoped that Ben was wrong, and that she would wake up again. I knew he was right, though. It was going to be really hard for us two to get on the boats if they came back. But if we had to drag Nan after us, it was going to be impossible.

#

The boats did come back. Every time they came, we could hear the people in the crowd shouting and see them pushing each other to get there first. The planes didn't come back, though, which was good because I didn't want us to get trampled like Nan.

I could see some people jumping down into the sea from the pier. I think they were going to try to swim from there so they didn't have to get past the crowds on the beach, but it was a long swim and Ben said that by the time they reached the boats they would be full up anyway with people from the beach.

Nan started breathing heavily, and I wasn't sure whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, but it wasn't very nice to listen to.

I know that you'll think this sounds horrible, but we got bored. It's not that we didn't care about Nan – we did, ever so much – but we were used to doing something, or going somewhere, and just sitting there while everyone else tried to get on the boats was awful. So Ben and I took it in turns to walk up the hill on to the cliff-top, where we could look down on to the beach and see what was going on.

There were four boats now, going backwards and forwards, some near the ship and some near the beach. The beach was still full of people. Some of them were swimming out towards the boats. Other people were just standing there in the water, as if they were going for a paddle; I guess they couldn't swim. That must have been really bad for them; standing there, so close to the boats, but not being able to reach them.

I remember seeing one family standing in the sea. There was a man and a woman. The man was holding a little boy or girl (I wasn't sure which from up there), and the lady was holding another boy's hand, and the boy was holding a cat! The cat was wriggling to get down; I don't think he liked the sea! And I thought that that could be us. Not you and me, I don't mean that. I mean me, and Ben, and Mum and Dad. The children looked the same ages as me and Ben. That could have been us, with Mum and Dad still with us, and I thought that if they dumped the cat they could probably have got on one of the boats and gone to France and been safe.

And then I thought that if we dumped Nan, then me and Ben could maybe catch a boat, but then I felt really guilty, because we loved Nan, and it wasn't her fault she was ill. It was my fault, and Ben's fault, for not looking after her and letting her get trampled.

And she was all we had left of Mum.

#

The boats stopped coming.

The ship left.

We could hear people talking. They were saying that maybe that was the last chance they had to get away and they'd missed it. Some people left the beach; I don't know where they went, as there was nowhere else to go. Most people stayed.

Some people near me were arguing whether they should keep on trying to get to France. Maybe it was best just to wait for the Russians to turn up, and do what they said. At least there would be order, they said. Maybe they could even go back home. Things would be different, but at least they wouldn't have to drown trying to catch a boat when the people on the boat probably weren't any safer than the people who were left behind.

I talked to Ben about that when he came back from the cliff-top. Maybe we should stay? But he said "no", we shouldn't. What was the point of being allowed back home, if we were dead with starvation and thirst by the time that happened? He looked at me in a funny way when he was saying that, as if I was hungrier and thirstier than him, but I think we must have been both the same. He said we had to get to France or London – London would be where the war-ship was going, he thought – and as it was too far to walk to London then that only left France by boat.

I knew he was right. We hadn't eaten anything for a long time. Some lady gave us a tiny bit of drink each when she saw we were on our own, but it was more like washing our tongues than actually drinking anything as she held the bottle to make sure we didn't drink too much. She had her own family to look after. I would have done the same if it was me.

More planes flew by not long after the ship had disappeared over the horizon, and we could hear more firing but we didn't know whether they sank it or not as we couldn't see what was going on. The planes didn't come back, so maybe it got away. I like to think it did.

And then Ben told me he was going.

"No! You can't go!"

"I have to. We're never going to get away on this beach. I'll go and find another boat, somewhere else, somewhere quieter. We've got Nan's money (he whispered that bit, so no-one else could hear). We just have to find somewhere without so many people around."

"I'll come with you, then."

"You have to stay here to look after Nan."

"She'll be alright for five minutes."

"I'll be longer than five minutes. I might be gone for hours. Maybe a whole day. I don't know how long."

"No. Please don't leave me here alone."

"You're not alone. Nan'll be with you."

"But she can't look after me. Anyway, she might die. You have to stay here, and help me look after her. I can't do it all on my own."

"Jack, please. I've got to go, can't you see that? We'll die here if I don't."

I knew he was right. I knew he had to go, to try and find a boat. It was our only chance. But I really, really didn't want him to leave me alone with Nan.

I tried one last time. "What if the ship comes back? Or a bigger ship, with lots of boats, and you're not here? Then we all miss out. You should stay here. Just another day, and see what happens." I was trying to stall him, like Dad used to do when he was losing an argument.

"You haven't got another day."

"What? What do you mean?"

"Look at you."

"What's wrong with me?"

"Nothing's wrong with you. You just look really thin, and really ill, and really scared."

"I'm scared because you're going."

"I have to."

He stood up, and he started walking off.

"But what if the ship comes back?" I said again. It was the only argument I had left.

"Get on it," he called out over his shoulder.

"I'm not getting on it without you!" What a stupid thing for him to say!

But he kept walking. I wanted to run after him, even though it meant leaving Nan. I couldn't bear being left behind. And what if something happened to him without me to look after him? We should stay together; that was the only thing I was sure of. But he kept walking all the same, and all of a sudden I didn't have the energy to chase after him.

I sat down next to Nan, and held her hand for company. I watched Ben walking up the hill, getting further away. And then he was round the bend in the road, and I couldn't see him anymore, and I was all on my own (except for Nan, but I couldn't really count her as she was still asleep).

I sat there, hoping he would change his mind and come back. He didn't. I had a really strong feeling that he wouldn't come back ever, but that time I was wrong (because he did).

I laid down next to Nan, still holding her hand. I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore, even though it was still daytime. I was so tired, I didn't even care that I was hungry and thirsty anymore. I just felt that I wanted to sleep or cry, and I didn't really care which. It was all too much, and without Ben there it was worse still.

I woke up every so often, but dozed right back off again. Nan's breathing was getting louder (I think that was what was waking me up), and she sounded like there wasn't enough oxygen, even though there was. Every time I woke up, I knew that I should check on her to see if there was anything I could do for her, but I couldn't face it. I knew how cross Ben would be if anything happened to her while I was asleep, but somehow it didn't seem to matter anymore. So I dozed off again.

One time I woke up, it was dark. I lifted up my head to look around, but Ben wasn't back yet. Nan was quiet again. I went back to sleep.

And then it was day again, and he still wasn't there. It was time to get up; I could see people walking around, and someone nearly tripped over me. But I didn't have the energy to move. I needed the toilet a little bit, but not enough for me to get up. I guess that not drinking anything meant that I wasn't as desperate as I usually am in the mornings.

When I woke up the next time, it was because someone was shaking me awake. I ignored them at first. It was like I didn't have enough energy to open my eyes and face the world. But they kept shaking me, and I opened my eyes to make them stop.

It was Ben.

"Are you alright?"

"No," I told him. "I'm tired."

"I've found someone. Someone with a boat."

"A boat?"

He shushed me, and looked around. I don't think he wanted anyone else to hear him. He leant in close to me. "I've got some soda water, too."

"Why?"

"Why do you think? Come on. It's time to go."

"Sleep first."

"Sleep later. We've got to go."

"Can I have a drink first?"

He nodded. He got a little glass bottle out of his pocket, and unscrewed the lid. I sat up a little, and I took a sip of it. I could see someone nearby looking at the bottle. I knew they wanted it. Ben saw them, too. If there hadn't been other people around, I think they would have taken it from us. It wasn't very nice; it was all fizzy and sour, but I knew that I needed it. So I drunk half the bottle and gave it back to him.

"You have it all," he said.

"No." I laid back down again.

"Go on. I've had one already."

But I didn't believe him.

He shook me again. "We have to go now. We'll miss the boat."

"Sleep first."

"No."

He shook me again. He was making me angry, but I was too tired to shout at him.

"Sleep first," I said again.

He grabbed me by my arm and pulled me up. "We're going."

I tried to lie back down again, but he wouldn't let me. I gave in. It was easier that way.

We started to walk away. I remembered Nan. I couldn't understand how I could have forgotten her. I guess it was because I was so tired, and my brain wasn't really working properly.

"Nan?"

"She's not coming."

"We can't leave her here."

"She's not coming."

And then I knew. I looked back at her. She looked as if she was sleeping, but she wasn't. She had died, while I had been snoozing beside her. I feel really guilty about that now, but I didn't then. All I felt was tired.

We walked. The boat was halfway to Broadstairs, which would have only taken five minutes in the car but there were no cars anymore, none that could drive anywhere anyway. I don't know how long it took us to walk, as I wasn't looking at my watch, but it seemed like ages. I kept telling Ben that I needed a rest, but he said we had a boat to catch and he wouldn't even let me sit down for one minute. I cried without tears, but he didn't pay me any attention. I tried to stop walking, but he pulled me hard to make me walk again.

He was being horrible. I knew we had to catch the boat, but maybe if he was a bit nicer I would have walked without him having a go at me. Maybe not, though. All I wanted to do was to lie down and sleep forever.

We got to the beach in the end. It's in the middle of nowhere. I don't know why he thought to look there for a boat. I guess he'd run out of other places to look.

We walked down this hill, with a toilet halfway down. There was an ice-cream shop at the bottom, on a promenade (that's like a road without cars, where you can walk along and see the sea). I wished so much that that shop wasn't boarded up. If only I could have walked in there, and bought an ice-cream, and sat on the sand with my family, watching the waves coming up the beach and then going back down again. I'd done that a hundred times before, but now it seemed such a treat, it was hard to stop thinking about.

Ben shook me. I had stopped walking, and was staring at the shop. He pointed out to sea. There was a boat, big enough for maybe twenty people, quite near to the beach. That was the boat that we're in now.

"We're safe," he told me. "That boat's for us. We're safe."

The boat looked full to me. There were quite a lot of other people on the beach, including some men who were stopping them trying to wade out to it.

"Eight more places," one of the men was calling out.

Ben let me sit down. "Wait here. It's okay. We've got places already."

I sat down. I was having trouble keeping my eyes open, but we had a boat now so I managed it. I watched as Ben walked across the sand and tried to talk to the man who had called out "eight more places." The man pointed; there was a queue nearby, with maybe twenty people in it. Ben argued. The man shoved him. I thought that Ben would shove him back, as he didn't seem to be scared of grown-ups any more, but he went and queued up like the man was saying.

I was getting worried. I might be eight, but I'm not stupid. I counted how many people there were in the queue. There were twenty three, including children. And eight places on the boat. And maybe some of the people queueing up had family who weren't in the queue with them. I hoped that they had another boat coming, because there was no way we were getting on this one.

The queue moved quickly. I could see that everyone who got to the front was arguing with the man, but it didn't do anyone any good. A couple of people left the queue before they got to the front' I guess they could hear what the man was telling other people and it wasn't what they wanted to hear from him. Some of the ones who got to the front were told to get on the boat, but most of them weren't. Some of them tried to get on it anyway, but the other men wouldn't let them. A couple of them got beat up quite bad.

More people walked over to speak to the man, and he pointed them to the back of the queue. There were seven or eight people behind Ben when he reached the front, even though I'd counted six people getting on the boat since he'd started queueing. Only two places left, but he was next up. We were going to be alright. I was glad that he'd made me keep walking, as we would have missed the boat if I'd had a rest.

But then he was arguing with the man, and I knew that something was wrong. He turned round and pointed towards me. I waved; I felt silly doing it, but it was the first thing that came into my mind. The man tried to push him out of the queue. Ben put his hands up to show that he wasn't fighting, and they started talking again. I heard someone at the back of the queue shouting at him, but he ignored them. He got Nan's money out of his pocket, and gave almost all of it to the man. The man counted it, said something else and wriggled his fingers. Ben gave him the rest. We wouldn't have any money at all when we went to France.

Ben started walking back towards me. He looked back over his shoulder and I knew that he was saying something to the man, but I couldn't hear what he said. The man shouted back at him. "Supply and demand!" I'm not sure what that means.

I stood up and waited for Ben. I had woken up a bit. I don't know if it was because the boat was there, or because I'd had the soda water.

"Have we got tickets?"

"Yes."

"Why were you arguing?"

"He doubled the price."

"But we're still going?"

"Yes."

We walked over to the sea. A man tried to stop us going in, but the other man had left the queue now and waved us past. Two other people were half wading, half swimming to the boat. They must have decided to take on two extra passengers. I wasn't sure where we going to sit as it looked really full already.

Ben gave me a hug. It was my last one I've had from anyone. I didn't really hug him back, as I wanted to get on the boat quickly before there was no more room left. He gave me a little smile, and I smiled back and told him to get a move on. I wish I would have hugged him now, but I guess a smile was better than nothing.

It was hard getting to the boat. I'm a good swimmer; I've got badges and everything. I had to swim as the water was too deep for me to wade all the way. But my arms and legs didn't want to do what they were meant to do.

"Race you," Ben called from somewhere behind me.

That made it a bit easier. It turned it into a game. And we would be in France soon. I swam. I was slow, but I was swimming.

I got to the boat. A man reached into the water and pulled me up (but the man next to him told him off for rocking the boat). He sat back down again once I was in the boat. I had to stand up as there was nowhere for me to sit. Someone tried to budge up for me, but the gap was tiny, and I didn't want to sit down until Ben was safely in the boat, too.

A few other people were pulling themselves up into the boat. The man at the back was shouting at them, but the men on the beach were leaving and there wasn't enough room for the man at the back to come over and make them get off on his own. Some of the people in the boat were helping them up (like the other man did for me), and some of them were swearing at them and saying that there were too many people, but no-one tried to stop them.

I was worried that there might not be enough room for Ben unless he hurried up. I looked back in the water to see where he was. He was maybe ten metres away, standing with the sea up to his chest. He wasn't swimming.

"Ben! Ben! You've got to be quick!"

The motor on the boat started.

"Ben!" I was starting to panic. I didn't want to go without him.

And then he waved at me. He had a sad little smile on his face. And I knew then that he wasn't coming, that he'd only had enough money for me. That was why he was arguing with the man on the beach. I was going and he was staying behind.

I tried to jump back into the sea. I didn't want to go without him. I'd rather starve in England than go to France on my own. The man who had pulled me out of the water grabbed me, and stopped me jumping over the side. I struggled, but he held on tight.

"Ben!"

I looked at my brother. He looked scared. I don't know whether it was because I was trying to jump in the sea or whether it was because he didn't want to be left behind after all. Maybe it was both. He was shouting at me to stay in the boat.

The boat started moving. More people were trying to get in. The man wouldn't let me go. I just kept shouting Ben's name over and over again. He waved again, and then turned his back on me and started wading back to the beach. I kept shouting. "Don't leave me, Ben! Don't leave me all on my own!" But he wasn't listening. He just kept walking away from me, even though he could hear how scared I was.

I kept struggling for a while, but the man kept hold of me and wouldn't let go. And then I saw how far away the beach was, and I knew that I could never swim that far, even in the olden days before I was tired and hungry. And just for a second, I thought that maybe I should jump in anyway and I wouldn't have to go to France all on my own, but that made me scared, too, and I squatted down (there was still no room to sit). I tried not to cry, and I nearly didn't.

I was really cross with my brother for a while. He had put me on this boat, knowing that all I wanted was to stay with him. And I hadn't even had a chance to say goodbye properly. And then I was cross with myself, because I knew that I would never see him again, and the last time we would see each other he had had his back to me and I was shouting at him and making him feel bad about doing something good for me. I whispered goodbye, as I looked back towards the beach, and hoped he could somehow hear me. I wanted him to know that even though I had shouted at him, I still loved him anyway.

#

I'm not sure there's much point telling you about our boat going to France, as you're already here, but you've had your eyes shut all this time so maybe I should. There were too many people for me to move around. My legs hurt because I couldn't stretch them (with my hypermobility, they hurt as much if I keep still as if I walk too much). Once, I needed the toilet, and I held it in as long as I could because I didn't want to go over the side of the boat with everyone watching, but when I got really desperate I did (but people shouted at me for rocking the boat as I was trying to get to the edge).

There was still nothing to eat or drink. Nan had quite a lot of money on her, so I hoped that the man at the back of the boat might have something for all the people from all the money we'd paid, but there was nothing at all.

The sea was a little bit wavy, and someone on the other end of the boat was sick. The sound of them being sick was gross, and it made me feel a bit sick too, and maybe it was a good thing that I hadn't eaten anything because I might have been sick as well.

The boat didn't go very fast. As we were going along, we saw another boat behind us. I felt a tiny bit better knowing there were quite a few of us going to France, as I can't speak their language and I wanted there to be other people who spoke English so I had someone to talk to. I don't like being on my own. Maybe there were other children on the other boat (there were only a couple of girls my age on ours), because grown-ups talk about boring stuff like gardens and clothes and shopping and stuff. No offence. Maybe Noah was there. But then the other boat started going in a different direction, which made me sad.

I started feeling sleepy again. I closed my eyes. I think I must have gone to sleep, as it was quite dark when I opened them again, and the sea was much rougher than it was. Water was coming over the side of the boat (I think it was that that woke me up). There was something wrong with our boat, and it was going slower and slower. The sea was getting rougher, and waves were coming over the side all the time.

There was a bigger, faster boat coming towards us. The man in charge of our boat stood up and waited for it. I could see the black shapes of a few men standing up on the deck of the other boat. We were going to be saved, but it didn't really mean anything as Ben wasn't here with me to be saved as well.

And then there was the light, the bright spotlight, so I could hardly see anything at all. You must have seen that, even with your eyes shut. I couldn't see the men on the boat anymore, as the light was in my eyes and I couldn't see anything at all.

One of them started saying something on a loud-speaker. I thought he would speak in French, but he spoke in English.

"This is the French Coastguard. You are in French waters. You must turn back."

The man at the back of our boat doesn't have a loud-speaker, so he shouted instead. "We can't. We're taking on water."

"I cannot help this. You must turn back."

"We've got kids on board."

"I am sorry for this. But you must still turn back."

Another wave came over the side of our boat. My jeans were soaking wet. Someone started crying and a couple of other people started shouting, but the man on the Coastguard boat didn't pay them any attention.

I could see lights in the distance. That must have been France. I know I said I didn't want to go there, but now we were so close, and I didn't want to stay on our boat forever. I was feeling sick, what with the waves rocking us backwards and forwards. It's horrible being on a boat with nowhere to go.

"Please," said the man on our boat. "There's only a couple of dozen of us. What harm would that do?"

"The President says we are full. I am sorry, but it is not my choice. You must turn back. I will not tell you again."

Someone jumped in the sea and started swimming. They must have been mad; the waves were getting higher and higher, and we were still quite a long way away from France, even though we could see lights in the distance.

We turned round. We started going back towards England. People on the boat were really upset, and they were telling off the man in the back for turning round, but I felt sorry for him because the Coastguard had told him to, and they had a bigger and faster boat than us so he didn't really have much choice.

A few other people jumped in the sea when they saw we were going back. One of them didn't even try to swim. They just jumped in and sank straight away, like a giant pebble.

The only good thing about people jumping out of the boat was that there was a bit more room in it. I came over here and found you. There was space for me to sit down. You remind me of my Mum a bit. Your face is different, but your hair's the same. So I thought I'd sit here and tell you my story while we try to get back to England.

I'm a bit worried about you. You opened your eyes for a second when I sat down and I held your hand, but then you closed them again and you haven't opened them again. I could put my hand near your mouth to see if you're breathing, but I'm scared to, in case you're not. You're the only company I've got now.

The sea is nearly up to the level of the side of the boat now, and I don't think it'll be long before we sink. It's still dark, but I can't see any light in France any more. I can't see any lights in England yet, so I'm guessing we're maybe halfway back.

I want to close my eyes. I'm still tired, and I'm still hungry, and all I want to do is sleep. But I worry that if I stop talking to you, you might give up and then I'll lose you, too. Besides, if I sleep I might not wake up again.

I don't know whether we'll make it back home. It'll be good if we do, because I'd get to see Ben again. If I can find him. I don't think he'll be on the beach anymore, so I'd need to look for him at our house, if I can walk that far, and hope he's there.

But if we sink, that's okay. I'm scared of drowning in the dark, but at least I'll see Mum and Dad again.

I'm going to shut my eyes now. I'm sorry. I wanted to stay awake for you. But I'm so tired. There's nothing else I can tell you anyway.

This was my story.

I wish I could have heard yours.

#

AFTERWORD

This book was motivated by the question "what if it happened here?" What if our children were the ones fleeing persecution?

In September 2015, the British Government announced that it would accept a total of 20,000 Syrian refugees over the following 5 years. About 330 a month.

The UN Refugee Agency estimated that there were 19.5 million refugees in the world in 2014, more than half of whom were children. In October 2014, it was estimated that over 9 million people had fled their homes in Syria.

There is a perception in the UK that Syrian refugees all want to come here. This overlooks the fact that the refugee population in the UK in 2014 was little more than half that in Germany, and that Turkey had given sanctuary to 14 times more refugees than we have. Lebanon had taken in nearly 4 times more refugees than us, despite their population being 13 times smaller.

Perhaps the most striking statistic is that the UK refugee population had fallen from 193,510 to 117,161 between 2011 and 2014, a reduction of about 40% in 3 years, just as the crisis was getting worse.

In this book, the future doesn't look promising for Jack. But there are real children out there, children whose lives are still in the balance. Children we can still help save.

50% of the royalties raised by this book is being donated to UNICEF. If you would like to make a further donation, please feel free to contact any of the various charities who are making such a difference to the lives of children and adults, both in Syria and across the world, charities such as UNICEF, Oxfam and Save the Children.

Thank you so much.

Jonathan Pidduck

November 2015

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