The War of Jenkins' Ear: Part 5

By MICHAEL MORPURGO

Toby sat in the babble of the dining-hall and looked down at his shepherd's pie. The others were eating already. He could not. The daddy-longlegs were trying to dance their way up to the top of the window. There were lots of them this year.

'Always the same in a dry summer,' his mother had told him. She'd be home from the station by now. They'd all be home, except him. Little Charley (no one called her Charlotte) would be shuffling around on her bottom, finger up her nose. His father would be back from the office (Toby never really knew what he did at the office). He'd be clipping the lawn edges, therapeutic he said; and Gran, trembling with Parkinson's disease in her wheel-chair, would still be doing the Telegraph crossword.

Toby ate the first mouthful of the first course of the first meal and swallowed without tasting. He'd had no breakfast, picked at his lunch, but he still had to force it down. You couldn't leave anything at Redlands, only as much as you could hide under your knife.

Price: $14.95

Publisher: Mammoth

Age group: 10 plus years