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children dispersed and Jamie heard the girl with the blond pig-tails say, ‘He’s cute.’ and he turned away to hide his blushes.  Jason was out of earshot when Isabel had made the remark, otherwise he would have been planning some further retribution for Jamie.
    Jamie had been placed in the top form based on reports from his old school and he wasn’t disappointed when he discovered that Jason and the members of his gang were all in a lower grade. 
    By the time the first day at his new school was over most of his new class mates had heard about his confrontation with Jason.  It amused Jamie that he had gained a reputation for being a hard lad from Liverpool because he had never had a fight in his life and he certainly wasn’t hard.  Jamie knew from experience that reputations at school can stick and he reckoned that Jason must have heard the exaggerated stories about him being a real tough nut because he walked passed Jamie on the way out of school without saying a word.  Jamie had prepared his meanest expression just in case Jason turned around.  It was a look that frightened his sister, so it might just work on Blobby boy, but it wasn’t needed.
    Jamie walked most of the way home with Ethan, one of the boys from his class who lived in the next street to Jamie’s and it soon became clear that Ethan was struggling to understand Jamie’s rapid fire speech.  Jamie could understand Ethan, but had to stop himself from yawning when Ethan was telling him about his stamp collection and his other hobby, fishing.  He asked Ethan if he liked footy, but quickly changed it to football when he saw the blank look on his classmate’s face.
    ‘I’m not really a sporting sort of person,’ Ethan replied and then added, ‘but I do like playing dominoes with my Da, even though he does cheat sometimes.’
    Well at least Devon dads had something in common with those from Liverpool and Jamie wondered if dads the world over cheated when playing games with their sons.
    Jamie and Ethan had stopped at the corner of Jamie’s street where their paths separated when Jamie’s dad drove passed them.
    ‘That car’s awesome,’ said Ethan, eager to use the new word that was one of Jamie’s favourites.
    ‘Not a word I would use to describe my da’s bone shaker,’ Jamie remarked, deliberately using the name Ethan used instead of dad.
     ‘It’s like a bat mobile with that smoke trail.’ 
    Jamie smiled, figuring that Ethan was obviously a batman fan.
     

CHAPTER FIVE
    Jamie was slinging his school bag in the cupboard under the stairs when he heard Leanne talking at a rapid rate the way she did when she was excited.  At least she wasn’t moaning about being homesick as she told her mum and dad how great her new school was.  Kevin and Debbie had to admit defeat later and gave up asking Jamie about his first day at school after he had answered the fifth question with the same reply as the others which was a simple, ‘It was all right.’
    It had been painful for Jamie having to wait until after dinner before he was allowed back in the computer room to continue his attempts to come up with the correct password.  He’d had a few ideas while he was at school, including memorising the local streets, but it wasn’t long before Uncle Stanley was on Jamie’s hate list after another marathon session failed to gain access.
    Jamie eventually ran out of ideas to try and come up with the correct password and gave up in despair and joined the family in front of the television.  His dad was especially sympathetic, but still had no information on Uncle Stanley that might help his son.  Jamie was beginning to think that if he didn’t get lucky soon then he really would have to start saving up for some new software and install it from scratch.  He was looking at the cost of the software in a computer magazine when his sister asked him if he had tried entering the cat’s name as the password.  The family members guessed he hadn’t when