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into birds, are you?’ said Kim. ‘But they’re incredible, those kites. So big! Where do they nest?’
    ‘Here,’ I told her, ‘in trees. They used to be really rare. You’d have had to go to south Wales to see them, once. But they’ve been released here and it’s worked really well. There are supposed to be two hundred and something breeding pairs in the Chilterns, and they’re spreading.’
    Kim stared at me. ‘The things you know! How do you do it?’
    I shrugged. ‘Dunno. I read stuff, and remember.’
    ‘Well, it’s totally amazing! Isn’t it, Kevin?’
    ‘Kuh,’ went Kevin.
    It’s embarrassing, this sort of thing. I mean, why should anyone be surprised? Facts are everywhere–the only way
not
to find them would be to walk around with your eyes and ears shut. I’m lucky, Mum says, to have such a good memory. But I know that some people at school think I’m a nerd for knowing stuff and remembering things. That’s why I usually keep quiet in class. When I’m with Mum or Mike or Dad, though, they like me coming out with interesting facts, specially Dad.
    When we moved off, Kevin came up close behind me and said in my ear, in a parroty squawk, ‘
Did you know? Did you know?
No, I didn’t,’ he went on, dropping his voice, ‘and you know what? I couldn’t give a toss. Duh!’
    He’d got me down as a geeky know-all, too. So I don’t know why I carried on, but I did. ‘
Milvus milvus,
that’s the red kite’s Latin name.’
    Kevin rolled his eyes. I took no notice. The last day of the year ought to be a good one if you ask me, and it was great up here. If he wanted to trail along looking grumpy, that was up to him. But when I noticed that Jamie was lagging behind as well, I stopped to wait.
    ‘That was boss, wasn’t it?’ I said to him. ‘The kites? Did you get a good look?’
    ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Only I don’t like their eyes.’
    ‘Don’t be soft! They’re not going to swoop down on you. They eat mainly dead things, anyway–carrion. And you couldn’t have seen their eyes, not at that range.’
    ‘I did, though,’ he insisted. ‘They stare like lions. Only they didn’t talk to me. The lion did.’
    ‘The lion talked to you? What are you on about?’
    ‘He did,’ Jamie said in a small voice. ‘He talked to me. He told me something.’
    ‘Oh, yeah? And what was that?’
    ‘I forget,’ said Jamie.
    Something made me turn round. There was Kevin, close behind us, with a smirky little grin on his face that made me want to hit him.

6
    J AMIE’S D REAM

    ‘I need to explain something,’ Dad said. ‘The thing is, Js, next time you come to stay, Kim will have moved in as well.’
    We were in the van, going home. It was New Year now, January the second. We’d stayed up to see the New Year in, Dad and Jamie and me–not Kim, because she’d left with Kevin so that he could go to a party. So the three of us had jacket potatoes and cheese and beans for dinner, and watched a film, and played this game Dad had got for us called Dingbats, and tried to stay awake (Jamie failed, but we woke him up for Big Ben) and it was just the way I liked it.
    But now this.
    ‘What d’you mean, moved in?’ I said. ‘I thought she had her own house.’
    ‘She’s selling it,’ Dad explained. ‘There’ve been a few hitches with her buyer, but the sale’s going through now. So she’ll be moving all her stuff in. The week after next, we hope.’
    ‘All her stuff?’ I repeated. Then it dawned on me. ‘You mean Kevin?’
    ‘Er, yes.’ Dad was waiting to pull out at a roundabout. ‘He’ll have to change schools–it’ll be tough for him, halfway through Year 8.’
    Jamie was sitting between us, and I didn’t think he’d been listening properly, but he had. ‘Kevin? Kevin’s going to live at your house?’ He was almost yelling in Dad’s ear. ‘You’re having Kevin instead of us?’
    ‘No, no, boys, it’s not like that,’ said Dad. ‘It’s not only my house, see–it’s mine