Geoff’s trip to the beach had started well. After calling at Tom’s house to borrow a towel, he had taken Aquila up to a couple of thousand feet, pointed its nose south and headed off for France. A few minutes later he had crossed the Channel, three minutes after that he passed Paris somewhere to his left and, changing course to south-south-east, he had simply kept flying until he got to the Mediterranean.
The sun was shining, the sea was a deep, sparkling blue and he had followed the coastline west for a few miles before coming to what looked like a particularly pleasant sandy beach, where he parked Aquila behind some rocks. He got changed into his swimming things, checked there was no one watching before climbing out, and strolled down to the water.
‘It was brilliant,’ he told Tom. ‘Really brilliant. But then …’ he hesitated. ‘But then I sort of lost track of the time.’
‘How long were you there?’ Tom asked.
‘About two hours, I think.’ Geoff had left Aquila outside the window and was standing in Tom’s bedroom, studying his reflection in a mirror. ‘It wasn’t too bad to start with, but flying home it seemed to get worse.’ He lifted up his T-shirt. His chest was the same colour as his arms and face, and his whole body radiated heat. ‘You think anyone’ll notice?’
‘Of course they’ll notice!’ said Tom. ‘And they’ll want to know how you got like that. What are you going to tell them?’
‘I don’t know.’ Geoff chewed at his bottom lip. ‘That’s why I came here. I thought you might have an idea.’
‘Well, I don’t,’ said Tom. ‘I don’t see there’s anything you can say.’
‘Perhaps I could hide in the Eyrie until it’s gone.’ Geoff patted cautiously at his skin. ‘How long would that take?’
‘Days,’ said Tom. ‘And you can’t hide anywhere because …’
But before he could explain why hiding for several days was not a good solution, the door opened and Mrs Baxter came in.
‘If you give me those trousers,’ she was saying, ‘I’ll put them in the wash before … Geoff?’ She stopped in surprise. ‘I didn’t know you were here!’
‘I let him in,’ Tom explained.
‘Oh, I see. Well …’ Mrs Baxter’s voice trailed off again as she noticed the colour of Geoff’s skin. ‘Oh, my goodness! What on earth have you been doing?’
‘I … I’m not sure,’ said Geoff.
Mrs Baxter stepped forward for a closer look. ‘That’s sunburn!’ She frowned. ‘How did you get sunburn in this weather?’
Geoff opened his mouth to answer, but no sound came out and it was Tom who had a moment of inspiration.
‘I think,’ he said, ‘Geoff might have been spending too much time under one of those UV lamps.’
‘Oh, you haven’t!’ Mrs Baxter tutted anxiously. ‘Didn’t your parents tell you how dangerous those things are?’
‘No,’ said Geoff. ‘No, they didn’t.’
‘Well, they should have,’ said Mrs Baxter firmly. ‘You’re far too young for that sort of thing. How long did you have it on?’
‘I’m … not sure,’ said Geoff.
‘Look at the state of you!’ Mrs Baxter studied Geoff’s arms and neck. ‘I’ll get you some lotion, but you really must be more careful in future.’
‘I will be,’ Geoff promised, and when Mrs Baxter had left the room, he turned to Tom. ‘What’s a UV lamp?’
‘They’re special lights people use to get a suntan in winter,’ he said. ‘Mum’s got one.’
‘So I could tell everyone that’s what happened?’
‘Well …’ Tom hesitated. ‘It might work.’
‘Fantastic!’ Geoff sat on the bed and grinned up at his friend. ‘I knew one of us would think of something!’
It was, he thought, why he and Tom made such a good team. Whatever happened, one of them always seemed to know how to sort it out.
There was still a bit of the afternoon left after Mrs Baxter had finished putting on the lotion, and the boys took a quick trip down to Salisbury Plain to look at Stonehenge. Geoff did the flying, so that Tom could do his maths homework on the way – with Aquila’s help, of course.
Sitting in the lifepod, Tom read out the problems Mr Duncan had set him on ordering negative numbers, and Aquila produced the answers, with the full workings, in the air in front of him. All Tom had to do was copy them out. He felt a brief stab of guilt as he did this – it was cheating after all – but life was so busy at the moment it was the only way he could think of to get everything done.
The homework took no more than ten minutes and, by the time he had finished, they were hovering directly above Stonehenge. There was a crowd of visitors walking round the outside – they were not allowed to get close to the stones themselves – but Tom and Geoff had no such problems.
Geoff flew them down to the outer ring of sarsens, then round in a slow circle before taking them through one of the gaps to the next ring and finally into the centre, where they paused above the stone which Miss Poulson had told them was where a sacrifice was made each year when the sun rose on midsummer’s morning. Sitting there, with the rain pattering gently on Aquila’s hull, was rather peaceful.
‘Are you going to take a chip off one of them,’ asked Geoff, ‘as a souvenir?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Tom. A chunk of one of the stones would be a nice addition to his collection and he had brought his geological hammer but, now that he was here, it didn’t seem quite such a good idea.
‘They’re pretty big,’ said Geoff, looking around. ‘I don’t think anyone’s going to notice if a bit goes missing.’
Tom agreed, but decided in the end to leave the stones as they were. Instead, they sat in the lifepod in the centre of the great circle and he told Geoff about lunch at the Royal Oak and spilling cola and Alan and his mother talking about the party. And somehow, surrounded by the stones that had been put there over four thousand years before, none of it seemed to matter quite as much.
That was what Tom had always liked about rocks. Rocks didn’t worry about things. They didn’t want you to do anything or to make polite conversation, they just … were. Millions of years might pass, but a rock was still a rock and a stone was still a stone, solid, patient and enduring.
They were the reassuring presence that told you not everything in life has to change.
When Tom tried to hand in his homework to Mr Duncan the next day, he found the maths teacher was not at school.
‘He’s had to go to the hospital,’ said Miss Taylor when the boys reported to her office at lunchtime. ‘His wife had a car accident on Saturday. Blacked out and drove straight off the road into a field. They’re giving her tests to try to find out what happened.’ She took the homework and looked at the pages of neat calculations. ‘Did this take you very long? Mr Duncan was worried he might have given you more than you could manage.’
Tom said he’d worked at it on Sunday afternoon, which was true, and Miss Taylor nodded thoughtfully before taking off her glasses and swinging them between her fingers for several seconds before continuing.
‘Would you mind,’ she said, slowly, ‘if I gave you both some advice?’
Tom and Geoff assured her that they wouldn’t mind at all.
‘It’s very good to see you doing all this work,’ said Miss Taylor, ‘and asking your teachers all these questions about Stonehenge and Norway and how to find out what the weather’s like in the Mediterranean, but … I’m a little worried that maybe you’re pushing too hard.’ She held up a hand as if to ward off an interruption. ‘Don’t get me wrong! Asking questions and being interested in things is all very wonderful, and the last thing I want to do is discourage you, but –’ she hesitated – ‘perhaps you should remember there are other things in life besides work. It’s important to find the right balance in life, you know. You need to have a bit of fun occasionally as well.’
‘You … you think we’re working too hard?’ asked Tom.
‘I do.’ Miss Taylor nodded.
‘And you want us … to have more fun?’ said Geoff.
‘Yes.’ Miss Taylor nodded again. ‘Having fun is important too, you know.’
Neither of the boys was quite sure what to say.
‘My advice would be to throttle back a bit.’ The Deputy Head leaned back in her chair. ‘Particularly on things like experiments with UV lamps. We don’t want you to burn out, do we? Not in any sense of the word. You understand?’
‘Wow,’ said Geoff when they left the office. ‘Miss Taylor telling us not to work too hard. That’s a first!’
‘Norway …’ said Tom. ‘I haven’t been asking any questions about Norway. Have you?’
‘I thought it might be a nice place to visit one day,’ said Geoff. ‘It’s got fjords and things, hasn’t it?’ He set off briskly down the corridor. ‘Come on, let’s get some lunch. I’m hungry.’
They had lunch in Aquila, sitting in brilliant sunshine at ten thousand feet and, as they ate their sandwiches with miles of dazzling white cloud stretched out beneath them as far as the eye could see, Geoff remarked that it was hard to believe how much life had changed in the last few weeks.
Tom agreed. Life at school was certainly very different from the way it had been even recently. And the odd thing was that, despite all the extra work, despite all the looking things up in books and asking teachers questions, school life was actually a lot more relaxed.
Before, if a teacher had spoken to them at all, it would probably have been to ask why they hadn’t handed in some work or to demand, suspiciously, where they were going. These days, however, if Mr Bampford saw them in the corridor, he would stop them to say he had a magazine article on gravity he thought might interest them. Or Miss Poulson would wave them down to say she had a new book on Stonehenge. And when Mr Urquart saw them come into his classroom at break, he would give a little chuckle and ask what it was they were after this time …
For some reason, all the teachers seemed to approve of them, and it was surprising how much difference that approval could make.
At four thirty, they went back to the Eyrie for tea – two large slices of chocolate fudge cake – before flying over to the Stavely recycling centre.
They usually had a look around the recycling centre at least once a week. It was astonishing what people threw away and, one way and another, the centre had provided a lot of comforts for the Eyrie. It was where they had got the colour television, the bookshelves and two of the chairs, and today they were looking for a microwave oven. Tom thought it might be more convenient for heating food than using Aquila’s laser – and probably safer. Last time he had tried to reheat a piece of pizza with the laser, he had managed to evaporate not only the food, but the plate it was on and a small section of the table.
The centre closed at four thirty, which meant that when they flew over the locked gates and landed in the parking area, they had the place to themselves. They didn’t find a microwave oven but, in one of the bins, Tom found a large oil painting of mountains which he thought would look good on the Eyrie wall, while Geoff found a dartboard and a huge pile of comics. Cheered by their finds, they took them back to the Eyrie before Geoff flew Tom back to his house. Almost the first thing they saw there was Alan’s silver Lexus parked in the driveway.
‘Looks like your friend’s here again,’ said Geoff.
‘He is not my friend,’ said Tom, surprised at how quickly his mood had changed at the sight of the car.
Geoff looked at him. ‘You really don’t like him, do you?’
‘It’s not that I don’t like him,’ said Tom, ‘I don’t like him or not like him. I don’t know anything about him, do I? He could be a bank robber for all I know.’
Geoff considered this.
‘You haven’t asked him what he does?’
‘No,’ said Tom determinedly. ‘I don’t talk to him if I can help it.’
Tom had decided, as far as possible, to avoid all conversation with Alan. Talking to him might make it look as if he were interested, and Tom wanted it to be quite clear that he was not interested in Alan at all.
‘There’s other ways of finding out about him without talking to him,’ said Geoff. ‘If that’s what you want.’
‘Like what?’
‘Well …’ Geoff ran his fingers lightly over the lights on the dash. ‘We have the perfect spying machine here, don’t we? If you want to know anything about Alan, all we have to do is follow him. If he does rob banks for a living, it wouldn’t take long to find out.’