Chapter 5

Tap tap tap…Dad was busy in his study, typing on the laptop. Tilly listened. The taps made a sort of pattern, a rhythm, as if Dad was playing a tune instead of writing a story. The stories he wrote were for grown-ups and looked boring because there were so many words and no pictures at all. Mom wanted Dad to write a book for children one day, so she could do the illustrations.

Tilly picked at a piece of toast with butter and honey. She was glad it was Saturday and there was no school. But she still wasn’t hungry. She took the toast with her out into the garden, and the bird flew down from the tree as if it had been waiting for her.

The garden was waking up in the sun, but it was still chilly and the grass was wet with dew. Spiders’ webs stretched out like fairy nets across the lawn; bigger spiders had made traps by spinning long, sticky strings between the bushes on either side of the path. Tilly stopped to watch a speckledy-brown spider sitting very still in the middle of its web. Spiders were good at waiting.

She went to check on the rose-petal perfume in the shed. The liquid had turned sludgy brown and stank. Tilly chucked it out over the ground next to the rose bush in disgust. She hadn’t made rose scent after all.

She wished there was a swing in this garden. Or a tree house or a pond or something more interesting than grass and flower beds and an old vegetable plot. She sat under the tree for a while but it was too cold. She put her hands in her coat pockets and felt something warm and furry. Little Fox! She had forgotten she’d put him in there. She fished him out and sat him on the arm of the bench so he could see the garden. His beady eyes twinkled in the sun.

Tilly looked around quickly. But there was no one there, no one to see and be mean and tell her she was too old to play games like this…

Little Fox didn’t like sitting still. Little Fox wanted an adventure. Come on, Little Fox said to Tilly. What are you waiting for? He led the way to the gate. He could slip through easily, but Tilly needed to undo the latch and open the gate properly. Tilly looked back at the house, once. She could see the windows at the top of one end of the house, but no one was watching.

It was sunny and much warmer on this side of the gate. The hedge sheltered the grassy path. The hedge smelled sweet and strange.

Now where? Tilly asked Little Fox.

Little Fox wanted to explore the grassy path, to see where it went, but then he saw the wooden gate. This way, Little Fox said.

Tilly pushed the gate to make a bigger gap, big enough for her, and it squeaked as it inched wider.

“It’s another sort of garden,” Tilly whispered. But the grass hadn’t been cut for a long time. It grew tall and papery, almost higher than Tilly. Big, overgrown clumps of purple flowers were mixed in with the grass, and baby trees were pushing up everywhere, where seeds from a big tree had taken root. This will be a forest one day, Tilly thought, if no one cuts them down.

Tilly pushed through the long grass. Crickets clicked and jumped ahead of her. Insects hummed and hovered and buzzed. She stopped to watch two ladybugs climbing down a spear-shaped leaf. Farther along, she found a wild brambly patch with a few overripe blackberries still clinging to the prickly branches. Tilly picked and ate the ones she could reach. The juice stained her fingers red: like blood, Tilly thought. When Tilly trailed her hand along the top of a rough hedge with gray-green leaves, the smell made her sneeze. Lavender! She found a thicket of overgrown roses, with a few last pink flowers and huge thorns along the wiry stems. Like in Sleeping Beauty, Tilly thought. Perhaps there’s a castle on the other side.

This was a wild garden. Anything might happen here. A secret garden, just for her and Little Fox to play in. It was a magic garden, Tilly decided, where the sun always shone and she could be happy and safe, and no one would know she was here. Unless…

She thought about the sound she’d heard the other day, like someone singing. Perhaps it had been a bird after all. There was no sign of anyone else ever coming here. It was all overgrown and wild, as if it had been neglected for a long time. But there was much more to explore. Maybe, if she went farther in, she would find a house and a girl a bit like Ally, who would be her friend.

She’d been out for a long time. Dad would be looking for her.

“We can come back,” Tilly whispered to Little Fox. “But we can’t tell anyone else. They might try and stop us.”

For the first time since they’d moved, Tilly felt a little bit excited.