This Northern Sky Read Online Free PDF

used to play with the twins, remember? They’ll have been along here hundreds of times.’
    Dad grumbles under his breath. ‘No excuse for dangerous driving. Fools. They’ll come off the road if they’re not careful.’
    Why does Dad have to spoil everything? It’s a reference to Sam’s driving, obviously. For my benefit.
    Mum tries to smooth things over. She talks about the time when Bonnie and Hannah joined in a sandcastle competition with the boys from the Manse. They made a sand volcano: one of the boys made an actual fire in the top, so it would smoke like a real volcano. But they still didn’t win . . . Dad says he doesn’t remember. He points out a field where you can see corncrakes, according to the guidebook back at the house.
    I walk behind them. I can’t stop thinking about Sam now I’ve started. What’s he doing, right now? Is he thinking about me? What’s going to happen to him? Does he blame me?
    It seems a long way back to the house. My feet ache. I make myself think about Bonnie instead, on her Spanish farm. I imagine her in bright sunshine, the golden light as afternoon merges into evening. I wish I was there with her. Anywhere but here.

Six
    Tuesday morning. Dad’s gone out with the binoculars to watch birds on the loch; Mum’s having coffee with Fiona, who owns our house and lives on the mainland usually but is staying at the hotel this week. I didn’t even know there was a hotel.
    So, it’s just me, looking for something to do.
    I’ve even been to the one-room museum (ten minutes max to see everything), and now I’m busy reading the noticeboard outside the village shop (Ceilidh on Friday night: all welcome; wetsuits for sale; sheepdog puppies ready end of August; meeting about the wind farm project).
    I hear voices. Finn, and the older boy who was driving, and a girl about the same age with long straight dark hair, are coming out of the shop loaded up with plastic carrier bags.
    ‘Finn, it’s your friend again!’ the boy says.
    This time it’s Finn who blushes. But he quickly recovers himself. ‘Kate,’ he introduces me. ‘My brother Piers and this is his friend Thea.’ He emphasises the word friend and everyone laughs.
    ‘Hello,’ I say.
    Thea smiles and holds out her hand to shake mine. This is a bit weird, of course – old-fashionedly polite, like the dad – but I don’t mind really so I shake her hand and then Piers’s too. (I have to ask Dad how to spell the name – Peers? Pierce? It’s Middle or Old English, apparently. There’s a medieval poem called Piers Plowman .)
    ‘We’re going to have a barbecue on the beach later,’ Piers says. ‘You should come. Shouldn’t she, Finn?’ He turns to me again. ‘Finn could do with some company of his own age.’
    ‘Piers, stop it!’ Thea says. ‘Ignore him, Kate.’
    ‘I don’t mind,’ I say. ‘Thanks. It sounds good.’
    ‘You can come back to the Manse with us now. We’ll wait in the jeep, up by the telephone box, while you tell your parents.’
    ‘Sorry. He’s so bossy,’ Thea says. ‘He’s used to being in charge.’
    ‘Someone has to be!’ Piers says.
    I quite like it. It means I don’t have to decide what to do: they all just assume I’ll come along, and seeing as I don’t have any plans of my own I might as well.
    ‘I’ll write a note for Mum,’ I say. ‘I won’t be long.’
    Finn walks to the house with me and waits at the gate while I go inside and write the note and grab my bag and a coat. I check my hair in the mirror quickly – not that it matters very much, seeing as the wind will mess it up the minute I go outside.
    I go to the front door and call to Finn. ‘Should I bring anything with me?’
    He shakes his head. ‘No, we got everything we need at the shop.’
     
    The jeep rattles and bumps and jolts and it’s impossible to stay sitting upright. I keep falling against Finn, next to me in the back with all the bags of shopping. He laughs. Piers puts a disc into the jeep’s CD