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come?’
    â€˜Well, me and Milo were in the back garden building a summer-house. . .’ I paused, expecting Tressa to butt in and tell him it wasn’t much of a summer-house considering it was made of four poles and a sheet, and it kept falling down, but she didn’t. So I carried on.
    â€˜We heard Jean from next door calling us from the other side of the hedge. We couldn’t ignore her, so we crawled through the gap to see what she wanted.’
    â€˜Is that the same Jean who owns the house you’re staying in? She lives next door to you in London?’ asked Hamish.
    I nodded.
    â€˜We call her the birdwoman,’ Elspeth whispered. ‘She comes up every year and just sits on the cliff with her binoculars.’
    That made sense; my story was to do with birds too—the birds in Jean’s garden.
    â€˜She said the woodpecker had taken some of the chicks from her bird box, and she was trying to makeit woodpecker-proof. The problem was, the ladder kept wobbling, probably because she’s a bit wobbly herself, so she wanted someone to hold it steady.’
    â€˜Which was me and Jack,’ Milo said.
    â€˜And what a great job you did,’ said Tressa, rolling her eyes.
    â€˜Who’s telling this story?’ I glared at Tressa. ‘Anyway, the ladder suddenly tilted when Jean was half way up, and I thought she was going to land on Milo, so I made a grab for her and she landed on me instead.
    â€˜She felt so bad about it that she offered us her house up here for the summer, considering she couldn’t come herself, what with a broken ankle and everything.’
    Duncan told Elspeth to write, ‘The birdwoman fell from a tree and gave them the key to her house in Morna.’ Then, while she was writing it, he asked Tressa, ‘What did you expect to find here?’
    Tressa said, to be honest, she thought it was going to be really boring. ‘I was dreading it—no offense!’
    â€œâ€˜They didn’t know what they would find here.” Write that,’ Duncan told Elspeth. “‘They were ignorant and afraid.”’
    When she had finished writing, Duncan asked her to read the whole thing back.
    â€˜The history of the new members,’ Elspeth read. ‘They came from a city choked with noise and fumes. It was a dangerous place full of bad people. The birdwoman fell from a tree and gave them the key to her house in Morna. They didn’t know what they would find here. They were ignorant and afraid.’
    She gave the paper and pen to Tressa for her to sign and pass on so that we could all sign it to show we agreed it was true.
    â€˜But this makes London sound horrible,’ Tressa said, her pen hovering above the paper.
    â€˜So London isn’t full of traffic noise and pollution?’ asked Duncan. ‘It’s perfectly safe to roam around on your own? You feel everyone is nice?’
    â€˜Well. . .’ goes Tressa. ‘It’s not true we were ignorant and afraid!’
    â€˜You said you thought it would be boring here,’ said Duncan. ‘Are you bored?’
    Tressa frowned.
    Duncan said, ‘You told us you were dreading it. You’re the one who knows all the words. Doesn’t dread mean fear?’
    Tressa shrugged and signed the paper. She passed it to me and I signed it before passing it on to Milo.
    â€˜Now you’ve heard our history, could we hear the history of the Binding?’ I asked.
    Duncan nodded to Elspeth, who sorted through her papers and took one out. She read it to us.
    â€˜The secret history of the Binding. In the beginning, there were four. Duncan Fairfax was the Lawmaker, Hamish McFee was the Deputy, Elspeth Anderson was the Teller and Fin Anderson was the Warrior. They found the bothy and made it into a secret place. The Lawmaker made up the name and the ceremonies of the Binding, and the Teller wrote them down.’
    â€˜Who’s Fin?’ asked