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liked helping us with our homework, although his answers often bewildered our primary school teachers.
    â€˜I don’t think Adolf Hitler did invent a car,’ said Miss Coles cautiously, but Brodie was adamant. ‘Actually he did. He invented the VW Beetle. Daddy says you can look it up if you don’t believe him.’ Miss Coles snapped her ginger brows together and changed the subject.

Chapter 12
    Eleanor gardened in the short skirts and high heels she had worn in London. She bought a grey mini-van at the auction; she had never passed her driving test, but she drove herself and the children, her hand a claw over the gear lever. She travelled slowly, jaws clenched in concentration, unable to speak for fear of crashing or breaking down.
    She was lonely. At playgroup none of the other mothers looked like her when she swept in dangling an armful of children, a female cavalier in her big felt hat and balding fur coats, annual birthday presents, bought in junk shops by Patrick. She feared her brain was suffocating beneath a mound of children’s toys and books, so she began to teach Va Va and Brodie ancient Greek. They sat at the kitchen table, wondering if this was what school was going to be like, while Eleanor recited tiny passages of Homer and chose words for them to learn. Flook sat in his high chair and beat his spoon in time when Va Va and Brodie chanted the alphabet: ‘Alpha, beta, gamma, delta …’
    Va Va, Brodie and Flook waited for Eleanor in the mini-van. They were going to be late for school. Dobe cavorted out ofthe house and bounced towards the beckoning fields. Va Va dragged her brothers out of the car and followed Dobe’s erratic jumping-bean progress into the distance, certain that some great, incomprehensible excitement lurked beyond the next hill.
    Crawling over a bank, Va Va straightened to help her brothers. Kip the gamekeeper, face set in fury like a jungle warrior’s mask, materialized from the bracken. His gun towered, menacing, and the children shrank back, small before his great wrath. Flook howled and the others took his hands, Kip’s fury pouring molten fear over them. Suddenly Dobe was there, icicle fangs bared to the gamekeeper. Kip lowered his gun and stomped back into the bracken.
    Kip would have been a lot less frightened of Dobe if he had ever seen him hunting. Gangling and uncoordinated, Dobe vacuumed his way through hedges, muzzle glued to the ground, while his stubby tail waggled excitement above the scrub. The only time he caught anything was the day a confused and terrified rabbit ran headlong towards him and dropped dead at his feet.
    Dobe was better with aeroplanes. His mornings were spent leaping across the back field like a kangaroo as he tried to grab low-flying jets out of the sky. He never exactly caught one, but his menacing seemed to have an effect. Twice Eleanor saw planes fall from the clouds to crash in the water-meadows.
    Washing baby clothes in the kitchen sink, she looked out of the window. A silver flame on a cloud of black smoke twisted like a spun dagger and disappeared beyond the trees fringingthe river. A booming crash sent the cats scuttling beneath chairs. She called Patrick. ‘I think a plane has crashed.’
    â€˜Dear God,’ he said. He held up a book. ‘I was reading this when I heard the explosion: “I know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above.”’

Chapter 13
    The summer before I started at Mary Hall, Brodie and Flook went to Scotland on their own to stay with Mummy’s sister. I was supposed to go too, but I couldn’t bear to miss a whole week of mucking out and riding. The house was very big and quiet without the boys, and the cupboards, usually empty within hours of Mummy’s weekly shopping trip, bulged with food. Daddy, Mummy, Dan, Poppy and I all went to meet Brodie and Flook at the station, leaving the table laid and decorated for a celebratory supper on