We all started to laugh. Somehow, it was now just really, really funny. I mean, it wasn’t funny at all of course, and we all looked around us a little bit as we were standing there, just in case, but that didn’t stop the tears of comedy, or those pains in my stomach from too much laughing. The kriks were funny now. Funny.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘It might take us a couple of hours to get to the castle.’

I lifted up one of the garden forks; Kate and Lana bent down to grab theirs. James tucked one water pistol into the belt of his trousers, and slung another two over his shoulders.

‘Shall we get changed now, do you think?’ said Kate. ‘I want to wear that gold dress.’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘We might get dirty on the way. We can get changed when we see the castle.’

‘Did you pack a mirror for our make-up?’ said Kate.

‘No,’ said Lana. ‘But it’s OK. We can just do each other’s.’

James passed everybody a box of matches.

There was another explosion from the sea, but none of us turned round. We didn’t need to see what was behind us. I reached out for James’s hand, and I clasped the fork tighter in the other one. Beside me, Lana picked up the rucksack.

‘This time,’ I said, ‘let’s go along the road.’

Standing there on that sand-covered tarmac at the edge of Long Street, we could see the road stretching straight up, past the houses, into the hills beyond. The birds still circled over the fields, and the sheep still ambled across the top of the cliffs. We couldn’t see where the road went, and we couldn’t see the castle. But it went away from here, and away from the Jellyfish.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the staff and students of Luckley House School for the role so many of them have had in this book. I am very lucky to work in an environment where creativity is an active part of the curriculum, and where any crazy schemes I have had for promoting literacy have been so supported by staff. I appreciate the freedom and encouragement given to us by the best senior management team I’ve ever worked for: Jane Tudor, Sally Hills, Ian Vallance and Claire Gilding-Brant.