She hauled herself out of the water and settled down beside him. It was a scary sight: she was six foot long and reminded him very much of a picture in one of his storybooks. She had short, sturdy legs, lumpy spines all down her back and a long tapering tail. But somehow Jimmy did not feel afraid.

He told her what his friend Eli had said about the dragon in the lake. ‘But you look more like a crocodile to me.’

To his surprise, her eyes filled with huge tears, the size of marbles.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you,’ he said.

She shook her head, flinging the tears away, and clattering her teeth alarmingly. ‘It’s been like this ever since they took me from my river in Africa. They told the king that I was a dragon, and at first he was very proud of me, showing me off to all his courtiers. But when I overheard them laughing, saying, “What an ugly dragon,” it made me sad.

‘After a while the king decided that he didn’t want an ugly dragon that people laughed at, so he threw me out of the palace. I managed to find a river and swam and swam till I found this place. It’s quiet here, and no one bothers me.’

‘So why are you so sad?’

‘I don’t want to be ugly. I just want to be normal, like any other dragon.’

7

On the last day of the spring term we finished early and Dinah, one of the girls from my maths class, said they were going to a coffee bar to meet boys from the local grammar school. Why didn’t I join them? she suggested. The others were all friends and, although they acknowledged me perfectly politely, soon resumed their conversations: the boys talking about the chances of success for Colchester United the following weekend; the girls gossiping about other girls, homework and clothes. But I didn’t mind too much; I was happy to sit and listen – until one of the boys, Frank, who seemed a little older than the rest, with a wispy ginger growth on his chin and upper lip, turned to me.

‘So where have you popped up from, Molly?’

‘I live in Wormley. My father’s the new vicar.’

‘How come we haven’t seen you around before now?’

‘We only moved here just before Christmas.’

‘Where did you live before?’

All these questions. Was he really interested or was he simply being kind?

‘London,’ I said.

‘Wow.’ He seemed impressed. ‘Did you stay there all through the war, with the bombs and everything? We had a few dropped around here, but nothing like you got in London.’

‘Actually we moved out to stay with an aunt when my dad went off to France, but we came back after the war.’