The Homeward Bounders: Part 4

By DIANA WYNNE JONES, Illustrator DAVID WYATT

The arguments my father couldn't seem to stop were always over me. The main one was because I was in my last year at school. School cost money. My school cost rather more than my father could afford, because it had pretensions to grandeur. It was called Churt House, and it was in a dreary building like a chapel, and I remember it as if it were yesterday. We had all sorts of pretend-posh customs Ð like calling our teachers Dominies and a School Song Ð and that was why my mother liked it.

My mother desperately wanted me to grow up to be something better than a grocer. She was convinced I was clever, and she wanted a doctor in the family. She saw me as a famous surgeon, consulted by Royalty, so she naturally wanted me to stay on at school. My father was dead against it. He said he hadn't the money. He wanted me at home, to help in the shop. They argued about it all the last year I was at school.

Publisher: HarperCollins, $14.95 Age group: 9-12 years