at the time, had done nothing but complain and plead his parents to reconsider, desperate not to be torn away from friends, as soon as they'd broken the news to him. Alice on the other hand was kind of excited. Sure she was going to miss her best friend Kaylee, but there was no way she was going to miss the city. It was noisy at night time, busy during the day, and it made thinking about her stories difficult. She also hated her school. James had already gone up to big school, but Alice was stuck in primary, where the playground was all cracked and broken, the library had about twenty five books in it, all of which she had read cover to cover several times, there were forty five people in her class (when Chris decided to show up), which meant there wasn't enough space on the desks for everyone, and then there was Lydia. Lydia was two years older than everyone else and had been held back in class because she had learning difficulties. She already had boobs, and the hair on the top of her lip made it look like she'd put it there with marker pen. Lydia was Alice's nightmare, because everyday without fail, Lydia would pick on her.
When her parents told her they would all be moving, to a brand new house and a brand new school, Alice couldn't believe her luck. Even though they weren't going to be doing it for another two months, Alice went upstairs to her room, and began to organise her things into boxes straight away.
When Alice came down from her new room, the removal men were hard at work drinking cups of tea, while her mum and dad were frantically sorting through the things they'd already brought in, into the rooms they were meant to belong in. Her dad hated spending money, and would have organised the move himself, had Pam not told him unequivocally that she would not be moving at all, if they didn't contract someone to help them do it. Peter's way around this was to tell the removal men to put things into one central location in the house, from where they would distribute the items themselves, thus saving time and money. Needless to say, the only thing it served to do was complicate the whole affair, and ended up costing much more in time, money, effort and stress.
James had bagsied the biggest room, but when the excitement of that wore off, and the reality that he was miles away from his home, and in the middle of nowhere, began to dawn on him, he decided to throw a tantrum.
' It's not fair', he shouted, eyes already red with crocodile tears.
' Not now, James, please', Peter said.
' This is so boring', James said, and stormed off into a room he hadn't been in yet. It was already full of boxes, and there was nothing left for James to do but storm out again, a little embarrassed. He was looking for somewhere to sit down and huff, but the sofas hadn't been brought in yet.
' There's nothing here', James said again, complaining. 'I'm going to have no friends, just like Alice.'
' James', Peter said, while wrestling what looked like a wardrobe towards the stairs. 'Make yourself useful and stop complaining. Help your mother.'
' You've ruined my life', James said and stormed out to the garden.
Alice went with him. She tried to console her brother by explaining all the benefits a life in the country would bring, but he didn't want to listen. Instead he starting taking the tops off the flowers that ran along the perimeter of the garden, with a stick he'd found leaning up against the outside wall.
Alice watched the removal men go back and forth, until the trucks were empty, and all of the contents had been put in to either the front room or the hallway, causing a blockage so big that if Alice wanted to get back into the house, she'd have to climb through a window. Instead, she went to explore the garden, while her dad dealt with the mess he'd created, and her mum told him where to put things.
At the front of the house was the main road through the village, but it wasn't like any road she'd ever seen before. It was a lot
Peter Ackroyd, Geoffrey Chaucer