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if he saw me there looking through the window. Jenny says he is a lovely old man, and it’s a shame that since he was sick he doesn’t really know what’s going on, and that when he gets afraid he shouts.
    Jackson so fancies Jenny, it’s really obvious. He doesn’t really look at me or speak to me as he is so focused on her. He’s so not my type anyway, dressed in a rugby shirt and pristine jeans, with sun bleached hair and a posh accent. Also, he talked about things that had nothing to do with me and I think that’s just rude.
    Also, he complains a lot. The next thing he said was, ‘Something is going on with Mr Walsh and I can’t work out what it is.’
    ‘Mr Walsh is the estate manager,’ Jenny explained.
    ‘It’s like since Grandad’s illness, Mr Walsh thinks the place is his, and any time I ask questions or ask if I can see the accounts, he treats me like I’m some interfering kid who has no right being there.’
    I decided that this Mr Walsh has the right idea about how to treat Jackson. I might try treating himlike an itrritating kid myself! He has this annoying habit of swaying when he talks, backwards and forwards with his hands deep in his pockets. Give him a pipe and he could be someone’s Dad. I have never, ever met someone my age who is so un-hip. I mean, there’s Dolores from the year below me with the glasses thicker than a cake, but apart from her.
    They talked about Mr Walsh for a while and I was half tuned-out. Then when Jackson said something about Mr Walsh buying paint and hiring people to paint the east wing, I realised he might be that man I’d seen in the village.
    ‘I know him, he wears a checked shirt and bought twenty pots of Jasmine White emulsion.’
    ‘Ten’, Jackson said.
    ‘No, twenty,’ I insisted, ‘I remember because our house is number 20.’
    ‘It only takes ten,’ he mumbled. ‘I know because we did the exact same thing four years ago. I wonder why he bought so much extra?’
    This thought made Jackson go all quiet and fidgety so Jenny said, ‘Why don’t we go for a walk to the lavender field?’
    The Park is huge. Enormous. We walked for ages, past the lake, then past the Big House and a cutelittle fancy stone hut thing, and then through the lavender field (even bigger than the one you can see on the way to the village) and on to a funny looking single storey building which Jenny said was the old tearooms.
    ‘They used to serve afternoon tea here, and have dances, but it’s been closed down for over thirty years,’ Jackson explained.
    Then they both began to talk about when they were little and would play together for the summer. The abandoned tearoom was their favourite place to play until three summers ago Mr Walsh decided it was dangerous and locked the place up entirely. They didn’t fight it because it was the same summer that Jackson had to start learning about the estate and Nanny Gloria got Jenny started with the good citizen bit.
    The tearoom is about the size of six classrooms, and has amazing doors, ceilings, and windows, but it’s really dirty and run down. It was a single huge space like a nightclub, but a daytime, old-fashioned one, with chairs and tables stacked at the sides. We didn’t go in because Jenny once saw a rat there, which Jackson said was a mouse. I wasn’t in the mood for either.
    As we headed back through the lavender field it suddenly began to rain. So we ran back to the tearoom, but the doors were locked. For a second I thought about kicking in the door and getting in that way, but I knew it would look bad. I had to do something because the rain was now getting quite heavy. Luckily, there was a window with no glass that was pretty high up, but big enough to get through. I had Jackson give me a leg up and I got through and jumped down the other side. Then it was easy to unbolt the door and let them in from the inside.
    I didn’t tell them about how we used to break into the school gym during the holidays, and how I always