Girl Writer: Castles and Catastrophes

Chapter One
Author or Bust

I have just found an old letter I wrote to Father Christmas in Candice’s ‘special things’ drawer. I can’t imagine how it got there because I swear I saw it go up the chimney all those years ago when I was six. But it proves one thing to me for certain: I was born to write.

Deer Santer,
I wood lik Fury Barbie horse wiv wings.
A bisicle.
A leaf.
A lion.
Pink ink and proper quill pens.
Parchment.
Trayners wiv lites on.
A book wiv lessens on how to be a famus riter lik mi aunt, Laura Hunt.
Luv to Rudelf.
From yor fan, Cordelia.

See? I couldn’t spell well, but I could spell parchment and quill. I’ve always liked old stuff, even back then. I wonder if Rudolph minded about me spelling his name wrong? Or maybe there was a rude elf in Santa’s band of little helpers who got really cheered up by my message because I was the only person who was ever nice to him?
I’m still trying to be a writer nearly six whole years later. So far I’ve written:
Lots of beginnings and lots of endings,
Twelve poems,
Woof – a short book about dogs,
Ant Girl – a long book about a girl who has been shrunk and is trying to find the cure,
Three Bees Go Boating – for the Three Bees (that’s Aunt Laura’s grandchildren: Bessie, Bertie and Bobby). They are only three so they haven’t read my story yet but Aunt Laura says she has read it to them six times.

Aunt Laura is my dad’s big sister. She is twelve years older than my dad and had her own children ridiculously young, which is how she got to be a granny already. She is also the bestselling children’s author Laura Hunt, whose website has fantastic ‘tips for budding authors’ which are going to make me a megastar too.
My dream is to become a bestselling author between now and next Monday. That’s when I start my repulsive new school, Falmer North. So only the lottery, suicide, a fatal accident, kidnap, spontaneous combustion – that’s quite a lot of things already – but, most likely, bestselling authoring can save me now.
Can you be rocketed to fame and fortune that quickly? I don’t see why not – look at Big Brother.
My major trouble is that, until this summer, I had three good friends and not ONE of them is going to Falmer North. Meg has gone home to Ireland. Emily is going to St Hilda’s and Callum, my best friend in all the world, is going to Arlington Oratory, the boys’ school. I begged and begged my parents to send me to St Hilda’s, but they just said they weren’t made of money. I can see they’re not made of money, obviously – they are made of bones and bits of skin, like everyone else. But I got the point and felt spoiled for asking. You may find this odd, if you have thought about these things, but I was really shocked. I never knew you had actually to pay money for some schools. I did know Candice (that’s my mum) wanted me to go to a ‘good’ school and I did the exam for Barnaby High and I FAILED. All the clever kids from my old primary school got in there. But then they all had tutors and I didn’t.
Candice used to go on and on about how she couldn’t possibly send me to Falmer North because it was full of ‘hoodies and banshees’. She meant scary boys in hoodies and scary girls who scream with laughter, shout rude words and drop litter all up the road. She said nobody wants to send their kids to Falmer North because it has a ‘reputation’. But now, because there is No Alternative, she is trying to be falsely bright and make out like it will be OK. The result of all this parental worrying about ‘standards’ and ‘drugs’ and ‘hoodies and banshees’ is that I am honestly scared stiff, like a stiff, scared thing. I used my fabled imagination and came up with the brilliant idea of dressing up as a boy and going to Arlington Oratory with Callum, but it turns out you have to pay for THAT school too, so all my hopes and dreams have come to naught . . . I would make a good boy though – I’m short and scrawny and could get a short scrawny wig to match.
I am dreading, dreading, dreading Falmer North. But if I can make stacks of money like my Aunt Laura does, just from writing a few old books and putting them in pink sparkly covers, then I could afford to go to St Hilda’s with Emily. YES! Or at least afford a tutor to get me in somewhere nice. I am really one of those kids who would like to be home educated, allowing me plenty of time to run free, climb trees, write poetry and gaze dreamily at the sky. I did suggest this.
‘How on earth could I possibly find time to home educate you?’ asked Candice, looking anxious and guilty. ‘You know I’d love to, darling, but the gallery takes every available moment . . .’
‘I could do it myself. At the library,’ I said.
Candice sighed tragically in reply.
So it’s Falmer North for me, and it IS scary. But there is one ray of hope: Candice told me she heard some kind parent has given the school money for a writing competition ‘to encourage the Year Sevens in a love of literature’.
So now I am determined to win. I have been plotting an olde-fashioned romance with knights and ladies and castles and dragons and horses and murder and adventure. I don’t want to read any more books about problems with school, or friends, or miserable families. I get enough of all that in real life.
I want to ESCAPE, reach for the stars and all that. So here goes. Before I write, I often check out my dear old Aunt Laura’s writer’s tips.

I start a lovely clean page. I dip my pen in my purple ink . . . The Lady of the Rings: Volume One.
Phew. Have written out the whole title. Knackered already.
I must break off from my exhausting task of writing for a quick MIRROR CHECK, just so you can get to know me better.
I don’t know why I do this. It’s always the same. I’ve never looked in the mirror and seen the Goddess of My Dreams smiling back at me, but I live in hope she’ll turn up one day and take me away from all this, i.e. Me.
Resemblance to Lady Cordelia (the heroine of The Greatest Novel Ever Written): nil.
Hair: lank and beige. Beige like a mushroom, and also mushroom-like in being flat, boring, clammy, dome-shaped thing drooping around a straight-up-and-down stem, which is more or less the shape of my body. No hot, fevered, heaving bosoms or anything along those lines. And I don’t want any either, you can bet on that.
Neck: Unswan-like. Trussed chicken, maybe?
Come to think of it, how did I get ink on my neck? What a ridiculous person I am. Maybe I should start writing my novel on the computer instead of with the fabled fountain pen given to me by Candice in hopes of fulfilling my natural genius.
Why don’t I just call Candice ‘Mum’, like any normal person, I hear you ask? Because she doesn’t want me to. She says, when you go to the supermarket and someone shouts ‘Mum’ at least half the women turn their heads. She says she ought to be addressed as an individual, not a category. That’s all very well, though I’m worried it might lead to people at Falmer North putting me into a category for calling my mum Candice, and that category is Weird, which nobody nearly twelve years old wants to be in. Candice says it’s OK to be different and that all the best people are different. But I think maybe I’m a bit too different, what with being called Cordelia, looking like a boy and wanting to write books about faire ladies and gentil knights rather than hang out with all those scary boys in hoodies at Falmer North. Anyway, got distracted, as usual. Back to Mirror Check.
Dress? Excellent. Green velvet. Colour of emeralds? No, tinned peas. Amazing amount of ink stains too.
Knees: horrible. Scabs all over, like boys’ knees. Should I stop tree-climbing with Callum now I am starting at vile Falmer North?
Callum is the lifelong best friend in all the world that I mentioned earlier. If I was born to write, then he was born to draw. You should see his pictures. He is going to be the illustrator of my book, if only I can get him to draw faire ladies instead of superheroes. I don’t want The Lady Cordelia Arbuthnott looking like the Incredible Hulk. Callum’s parents are my parents’ best friends, so Callum and I have been hanging out together since before we could walk. We went to playgroup together, then primary school. Callum can wiggle his ears. I used to nod, knowingly, as if he was sending me secret messages in code; everyone used to crowd round and ask what he was saying. We made it all up, of course. Callum turned out to be dyslexic later, so people still have trouble understanding him, only now it’s when he’s writing stuff. Poor Callum.
However, not Poor Callum today. Our Lifelong Friendship is under threat. He said he’d be here at nine-thirty to go swimming if it was warm enough – and it’s actually quite hot today. It’s our last few days of freedom, before I start foul Falmer North and he goes swanning off to snotty Arlington Oratory, so how can he be late? (Apart from the fact that he’s always late, of course.)
I’ve just noticed that I’ve written Falmer North about a million times. Am I obsessed? Perhaps I am getting school phobia and can get a sick note about not going. If my book doesn’t work out, that could be the best option. Nothing for it but to return to The Greatest Novel Ever Written.

I was honestly about to put pen to paper when I heard the familiar BRING, BRING, BRING of our own dear old telephone.
‘CORDELIA!!!’
‘WHAT??’ quoth I, rather crossly.
‘Callum ON THE PHONE!’
Reluctantly leaving The Greatest Novel Ever Written, I went downstairs to the phone.
‘I don’t know why he doesn’t call your mobile,’ Candice said.
‘Yes, you do,’ I replied. ‘It’s because you encouraged me to be a dreamy, impractical person who can’t remember to ever charge her battery.’
‘Anyone would think you didn’t want to talk to people,’ Candice said, shrugging. She went back to helping Howard (that’s my dad) find his glasses before going out to work. This is a challenge in our house. Firstly, none of us knows how to tidy up. Secondly, every surface is covered with pots and bowls and jugs from Candice’s ceramics gallery and all these pots and bowls and jugs like to eat missing wallets, homework and glasses. I don’t know why she doesn’t say to Howard, ‘Anyone would think you didn’t want to see people.’ He’s a college lecturer in medieval English, so if he doesn’t have his glasses he can’t see the notes of the lecture he’s giving (and probably has given ever since it really was medieval times), Alas Alack and Woe Is Him. But then hopefully he also can’t see all the students that will probably be texting each other or falling asleep.
My folks are, honestly, a bit eccentric. I suppose they are ‘arty’. Howard is round and balding and cuddly and wears moth-eaten pullovers and tweedy jackets like fathers in olde books. He is dreamy and constantly looks mildly surprised, like a teddy bear who has just found out he has to give lectures and talk to students when all he really wants is to gaze into space or hang out with other teddies at the odd picnic. Candice is always trying to tidy him up, though she can’t tidy herself up and dashes out of the house with her arms full of pottery, her scarf trailing behind her and her bag undone. She is tall and thin and anxious and always in a hurry. On this occasion she was so busy looking for Howard’s glasses that she’d neglected to notice that she’d dropped the receiver in Xerxes’s bowl. I fished it out.
‘Hello, Clammy, where are you?’ I said to the silence I assume is full of Callum at the other end.
‘Prithee, standing opposite thy noble doss-house,’ Callum’s voice replied. It is really sweet how he has started talking like my book. For weeks now, ever since I got that faint ray of hope about the writing competition, he’s been trying to encourage me to get on with my Medieval Romance by doing this daft medieval-speak to get me in the mood. Or ye moode.
‘Thou buffoon,’ I said, peering into the street from the hall, and there Callum certainly was, skulking behind a tree with his mobile to his ear.
‘Thou mewling pox-marked vassal,’ he replied.
‘I thought we were going swimming, thou paunchy milk-livered lout,’ I said, sticking one thumb in my ear and my tongue out at Callum, but he couldn’t see me. Xerxes, our lazy old cat could though, and hissed in retaliation before wandering off grumpily into the kitchen. ‘It’s our last days of freedom.’ (The cat didn’t say that, I did.)
‘Come outside, I’ve got to talk to you,’ Callum said. He sounded different to usual, so I said yes at once.
‘Candice, I’m going swimming with Callum!’
‘That’s right, abandon us when Howard’s having the worst glasses crisis ever,’ came a distant, distracted voice. As I ran upstairs to collect my swimming things, something glinting caught my eye on the telephone table in the hall.
‘They’re in the fish tank. Byeee,’ I called, running downstairs again. Glasses in fishtanks. Phones in cat bowls. My parents are really very strange, I thought to myself as I went out the front door. I made a mental note to buy a friend for Blue, the goldfish. He gets so excited when things happen, like glasses falling into his tank, and of course he doesn’t get out and about much. He must be lonely.
Callum was pacing up and down by a tree.
‘The worst thing in the world is happening,’ Callum said, almost before I got within earshot.
‘You’re dying of the dreaded flowering-willy syndrome, one of nature’s cruellest jokes,’ I suggested. ‘Or your dyslexia’s spread to your feet so you don’t know what direction you’re going in. Your mum’s cut her head off with a designer kitchen appliance. Your dad woke up to find he was a giant herbivore.’
‘Worse than all that. He’s got a secret girlfriend.’
That shut me up.
‘Are you sure?’ I said eventually.
‘Well, I’m hoping I’m wrong,’ replied Callum.
‘But your dad’s old and fat,’ I said, without thinking. I didn’t understand for a moment why Callum looked so hurt. ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ I continued quickly. ‘It makes it less likely that he has a girlfriend.’
‘I thought you LIKED my dad,’ Callum said quietly.
‘I LOVE your dad,’ I protested. ‘I’ve known him since before I was born. Well, you know what I mean. My dad and yours went to school together, got married in the same week – not to each other, of course. Your dad’s, like, my dad’s oldest friend. And my mum and your mum too.’
It’s true. Callum’s folks, Peter and Andrea, have been best pals with my folks forever. We’re almost like the same family, except they’ve got about five times the amount of money we’ve got.
‘Anyway, I’m sure he does have a girlfriend,’ Callum groaned.
‘He can’t have. Therapists don’t DO things like that. They know what damage it causes families,’ I told him brightly, not feeling very convinced. Callum’s dad may spend his time trying to help people, but he earns a fortune and when I thought about it, Howard always says men with money can afford girlfriends, unlike poor university lecturers like him.
Callum kicked the tree. ‘He has. I know he has.’
‘How do you know?’
‘He’s got a funny look in his eye.’
‘He always had. He squints.’ I could feel myself digging a deep hole. I tried to make it better. ‘At least your dad can see with his own two eyes though, even if they are looking in different directions – Howard’s always running around moaning he can’t find his glasses.’
I became aware of Callum looking as if he was about to attack me.
‘Sorry,’ I said, meekly. ‘Honest, I love Peter. And your mum. Andrea and Peter get on really well. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt her, surely?’
‘He’s always on the phone when Mum’s out these days,’ Callum went on. ‘Then he starts whispering or hangs up if I come in the room. He’s been writing a lot of e-mails too, but I can’t read them without knowing his password. And he’s been sending off letters in fancy coloured envelopes. I offered to post one when I was going out yesterday, and he got all shifty and said he’d do it. What does all that mean if it isn’t a girlfriend? It’s just like how people go behind each other’s backs on TV.’
I pondered on this for a bit as we set off to the beach. Callum is certainly very oversensitive just now. Maybe he is falling in love with me. I expect that’s it. It often happens with really close friends at about this age. Maybe it is not quite right to have a boy as a best friend now I am becoming mature. Maybe I should try to get to know some girls at my new school. Maybe there will be another budding writer, like me, who will understand my true inner depth.
Callum interrupted my thoughts.’You wouldn’t like it if your mum or dad was seeing someone else.’
My mum or dad? Don’t make me laugh.
Despite Callum’s worries, we still had an excellent morning on the beach – just like the old days.
After our swim we dug a hole in the pebbly bit of the beach and covered it with a plank that had washed up. Then we found some tough washing line that we attached to the plank, smothered the lot with pebbles and seaweed and just lay back to watch.
‘Where have you got to in your book?” Callum asked.
I quoted a few lines and Callum looked at me with awe.
‘Thou rapturous elfin-fingered artiste,’ he murmured.
‘Odds bodkins, Old Lady Alert!’ I responded, seeing a couple of anciente crones tottering dangerously towards our booby trap.
Old Lady Alert means one of us has to stand by the trap looking at the sky, as if it was painted by Picasso or something, so the old lady has to step round us, clucking crossly (could evolution have it wrong, and actually we’re all descended from chickens, not apes?) and not fall in, so avoiding breaking every bone in her body and getting us hung, drawn and quartered for senior citizen abuse. Kids never fall in of course – they jump right over it; they can smell a booby trap like dogs smell bones.
‘You’re going to be a great writer, you know,’ Callum whispered after I came back and we were lying very still (except Callum’s ears, which twitched gently – I wonder if he knows they do that? I’m afraid all that practice at primary school might have damaged his nervous system) and we concentrated all our psychic powers on the seaweed, and making it an irresistible lure for the next passerby.
Some poser in lime-green swim shorts and mirror shades turned up, trying to chat up three girls who were shrieking with laughter at his jokes, but not meaning it. Callum fingered the rope.
‘I envy you being able to do that,’ he said to me. ‘Whatever your worries are, you can always put it right in a story.’
‘But it’s not real life,’ I said. ‘I spend more time thinking up stories than anyone I know, but even I know it isn’t the same as real life.’
‘It’s true,’ said Callum, looking up now as Lime-green Shorts approached the point of no return. ‘Wrong stuff in life can be hard to fix.’
Lime-green Shorts paused to flex his sinews and flick his hair at the trio of girlies.
‘Now!’ said Callum, pulling the rope. The plank skidded away from under the seaweed and Lime-green Shorts dropped neatly into the hole. He began squeaking and hopping up and down, to the hysterical giggles of the girlies.
‘Hope that jellyfish wasn’t still alive,’ said Callum, as we ran for it, giggling hysterically ourselves.
‘Callum! You didn’t put a jellyfish in that hole did you?’
When we’d put some distance between us and the scene of the crime, we looked back. Then Callum looked at me.
‘Do you think we’re getting too old for this kind of thing?’ he asked.
‘Nah,’ we both said at the same time, and doubled up laughing.
‘Your hovel or mine?’ I said, when I’d recovered.
We went back to my place as Callum wanted to hear the beginning of The Greatest Novel Ever Written. Candice met us in the hall.
‘Look at the state of you two,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you getting a bit old for this kind of thing?’
But I want to stay eleven forever. I want to climb trees and dream and have adventures. I don’t want to be forced to wear high heels and nose studs and be a ladette before my time.
I spotted Candice smiling a rueful smile. I think she wants me to stay a little girl too, sometimes. She proved it by bringing us banana milkshakes and a plate of biscuits up into my room, where Callum had snuggled under my duvet to read my book. He looked about six and I made a mental note that if, unlikely as it is, I make any friends at Falmer North, I had better change my Postman Pat duvet before I ask them home. And how many kids my age still fit into their Angelina Ballerina pyjamas?
‘It’s good stuff this,’ Callum said, deep in The Lady of the Rings. Lucky he is a slow reader, as it is exactly a page long so far. He seemed to have forgotten his worries for a while. Books can do that to you, maybe even my book can.
‘I wish you could tell me how to start,’ he said. ‘I’d like to write one too.’
‘Ah,’ said I. ‘Forsooth. That’s another story.’

Callum seemed a bit cheerier when he went home, but I found myself getting all hot and bothered at the thought of his folks splitting up. What would we do at Christmas? And in the summer? Our two families always do holidays together . . . I can’t afford to lose Callum, especially now I am plunging into the dreade new cesspit of Falmer North.
I will lose myself in my art yette againe. Soone I will be so loste that no one will find me and then I will not have to go to ye sinke school of ye centurye, while Callum swans off to wear blazers and play cricket with MPs’ sons at Arlington Oratory.
Quick writer’s tip check to get me in ye moode againe.

Well, I’ve written loads tonight and I’ve talked enough about it, so I’m sure you can’t wait to get a taste of The Greatest Novel Ever Written, begun that very week and written just as I originally wrote it, with all my deep writerly thoughts included.

The Lady of the Rings

‘Alas, alack and woe is me! The end is nigh, unless I flee!’
Princess Duchess Madam The Lady Cordelia Arbuthnott threw back her swan-like, ivory-white neck and threw her shining, luminous, lustrous eyes to the heavens. (They made a loud boing sound as they hit the bejewelled ceiling of her boudoir, bounced off the head of the stuffed aardvark on the wall and fell into the fish tank, disturbing the two piranhas, Eric and Ernie, who swallowed them in a flash, briefly turning the water into a tumult of boiling red, and knocking over the plastic lighthouse on the bottom.)
‘Woe is me a thousand times more!’ quoth The Lady Cordelia. ‘How will I see my way to flee now?’ (I must take my story seriously, or no one else will. But it’s so easy to get distracted when you’re an author, and there’s no teacher glaring at you telling you to sit up and concentrate . . . Phew, this is hard work already. Where was I? Ah yes, ‘throwing her lustrous eyes to the heavens’.)
‘Alas, alack and woe is me,’ cried The Lady Cordelia Arbuthnott, again and again, hoping that the youthful and finely-chiselled form of Lothario, her devoted Italian stallion of a manservant, would come to her aid. ‘Gadzooks! Is he deaf?’ (Did anyone ever understand what this poomplex language meant? Note to self: must remember to check if ever used in olde books. Or is it just gibberish to convey ancientness? In period novels it’s very important to get the language right. Maybe thirtieth-century authors will be throwing in ‘wicked’ and ‘awesome’ all over the place to convey the long-lost era of the twenty-first century, if the planet hasn’t been flooded by global warming or hit by an asteroid by then. Meanwhile, back in the twelfth century . . .)
She tossed her tumultuous mane of golden curls, which normally grew all down her back, but today stood out in a frenzy of alarm, as it always did when The Lady Cordelia’s seventh sense, famed throughout the kingdom for its magical, mysteriouse, mystic powers, sensed PERIL.
Ever since cock-crow, the toads had been croaking ominously in the moat. The Black Swan of Deth had been circling the castle, making whatever noise it is swans make. (I wish I knew more about stuff like that, I should pay more attention in science lessons.) The seagulls had been flying, whirring amid the throng of twisted, gnarled, scabrous trees in the Enchanted Forest and even in the very heavens, hanging ominously low and threatening over the jagged, melancholy, misty mountains, the dark clouds almost scraped themselves against the narrow stained glass window through which The Lady Cordelia peered in deep dismay, aghast. Dimly, through the gathering fog, she perceived, as if in a darkening nightmare, a knight-mare indeed. (Hah! Excellent word play, forsooth . . .)
’Twas the faint figure of a young man bedecked in glittering armour astride an exquisitely dappled palomino steed, galloping, galloping, galloping, ever closer. She could discern, encircling his noble brow, brighter than his shimmering golden curls, a shimmering golden crown, like as those worn by Zeus and Kubla Khan from Xanadu and other olde fogies embedded with precious shimmering gems. (Erm, maybe it would be too hard to see this much detail through mist, fogge and portents . . . maybe re-write to make it a sunny day?)
‘Alas, it is true. A prince comes. I am undone!’ she cried, fiddling frantically with her hundreds of pearl buttons while tearing at the bejewelled pendulum that encircled her noble swan-like neck and beating her strong, womanly, richly-bejewelled fists against her angry, hot, scalding, fevered breasts. She drew her precious amulet to her snowy breast and scooped up her paintbrush with the other.
‘I WILL NOT marry a prince. Not this one, not that one, not another one, nor anyone! They are all of them, dissembling, clay-brained codpieces!’ she announced to her faithful, though youthful, Italian manservant who did her every bidding and was just now attending to her duvet. ‘I was born for better things,’ bellowed The Lady Cordelia. ‘I was born to be an artist! I LIVE for my art. I will DIE for my art.’
(That’s more like it. Not sure about dying for art, but people carried on like this a lot more Back In The Day, and they probably didn’t mean it. Anyway, they died so fast of plagues, invading hordes, ravening wolves, witchcraft and such things, that it probably wasn’t such a big deal to bang on about it.)

But ye prince on ye horizon – I think I’ll call him Prince Kevin – was The Lady Cordelia’s very own Falmer North. I should maybe have just packed my bags and fled, or fainted into a frenzy on my Postman Pat duvet. In my Angelina Ballerina pyjamas. But considering it was the dreade starte of school the next day, and with all the interruptions I’d had, it wasn’t bad for a first bash.

Girl Writer: Spies and Lies

Chapter One

Golden bikinis, gleaming metal stilettos, a turban glittering with precious gems. Drinks only champagne, eats raw egg. Paints her toy boys gold . . . Goldwobbler, Goldflinger, Goldfangle . . .
It was a week into the summer term and I was scribbling this inside my geography notebook under the beady eye of our batty new geoggers teacher, Ms Parker. I was thinking that, maybe, if I scribbled fast enough for smoke to start coming off the page, she would think I was a Keen Student pouring out my amazement at the Wonders of our Wonderful Planet. She’s still amazed about all that stuff, which is really something when you consider she was probably born before the dinosaurs.
But all I really wanted to do was get back to my own proper writing, which was going to lift me out of dreary old Falmer North Comprehensive and on to breakfast TV. I was scrawling the character of the arch-villain of my fantastic new spy thriller, The Girl with the Golden Pun, starring Jane Bond, but the trouble was, it was the hottest first week of summer term in living memory and my biro was melting, and my green velvet dress – which shows that I am an original thinker and not a slave to fashion – felt like it was made of pulped porcupine stirred with glue.
‘It’s global warming!’ bellowed Ms Parker, her gigantic round head nodding furiously like Noddy, so that her huge Planet Earth earrings bobbed up and down like the little bell on Noddy’s cap.
Shame they’re not bells, I thought. We could use the excuse to take a lunch break.
This always happened to me in school, especially when it was hot. I drifted into daydreams in which I was accepting the world prize for literature, maybe dressed in a green velvet trouser suit and red top hat. But I was brought back to reality with a jolt when Ms Parker heaved off her bizarre camouflage jacket (bit of a daft thing to be wearing that day) to reveal her emerald green T-shirt saying ECO-WARRIOR in enormous letters. Luckily, or maybe not, she is enormous enough to fill this T-shirt, which looked like the sail of a galleon in a high wind. Before I knew it, my hand had shot up.
‘Please, Miss, we’re not allowed to wear slogans,’ I said.
‘You are not allowed to wear slogans,’ she boomed, ‘but as your teacher I have a vital educational message to put across. My slogan is not depicting violence, discrimination, profanity or vulgarity, but is a clarion call to save our beautiful planet. I see you’ve been taking copious notes, Cordelia.’ (Help, she knows my name already. Maybe she’s a good teacher after all . . .) ‘Would you care to share them with us?’
‘Oh, it’s just, erm, scribble really,’ I mumbled, feeling a red hot wave of embarrassment washing all the way from my toes to the short, scruffy, beige, mushroom-like mat that I call my hair. Ms Parker had put her quite considerable nose right into my book, like a bird digging for worms. Shame to have quite such a long beak with a name that makes it so easy to get called Nosy Parker, of course.
‘Mmmm, Goldflinger, Goldfumble, Goldwobbler, what can this be?’
I thanked my lucky stars – and kind Ms Parker – for not reading out the bit about gold bikinis and toy boys, but of course I was awash in a sea of giggles from the whole class anyway.
‘Please, Miss, it’s word association,’ whispered a little shy voice. It was Viola, come to my rescue as always. ‘You see, Cordelia is a writer, and, like all writers, she uses word association to get her ideas going. Those words are obviously about the rich and greedy who are despoiling our beautiful planet,’ said Viola in a rush. It was one of the longest speeches she had ever made.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ I said, throwing Viola a look that I hoped clearly conveyed that she was my best friend in the universe and that I would walk on boiling poo for her sake.
Ms Parker smiled. With her strange combination of very round face and elongated Pinnochio hooter, she suddenly reminded me of the Big Friendly Giant.
‘Well, I trust you’ll put those skills to good use, Cordelia, because this term I am involving the whole of Year Seven in a fabulous global warming project. We are going to work on some displays for a very special parents’ evening at which we will demonstrate how to save the planet! And we are going to do some real research for this. Proper grown-up fieldwork! Mr Frost has arranged to accompany us on a magnificent field trip at half-term!’
There were deafening groans at this. Mr Frost is head of PE, and he’s obviously descended from the people who did the Spanish Inquisition. He makes people run round the field even when it’s raining hard enough to wash you away. Jolene pointed this out to Ms Parker.
‘Oooh, alas, that we might all drown in a spot of English rain!’ she snapped. So she was just the usual type of sarky teacher after all.
‘Will we go to the rainforest, Miss?’ said Tobylerone. He’s named Toby, really, but he’s tall and skinny with a triangular head so he’s quite like the chocolate in some ways, except not very sweet.
‘Or the North Pole? So we can measure glaciers melting?’ asked Eric Cubicle, waving his ruler about excitedly. Eric gets excited about anything to do with measuring. There’s a rumour he measured all the boys’ willies in his primary school and put a list in size order on the loo door. This was apparently quickly removed, though whether by the boys at the bottom of the list or by teachers worried about Eric’s future as a member of the community is hard to say. Anyway, Ms Parker said she wouldn’t be taking the class to the North Pole unless we were all eccentric millionaires, but she wouldn’t say anything else about the destination either.
‘I’ll tell you at the end of the lesson,’ she said mysteriously. ‘It’s all about our carbon footprint.’
‘Oooh, monsters,’ said Eric gleefully.
‘Yes, in a way.’ And then Ms Parker told us all about how each of us has a carbon footprint, which means how often we use electricity or petrol or aeroplanes or fridges, and how each of us can do our bit to reduce it. We’ve all heard it about a million times before – but she still managed to make it sound interesting.
‘I’d like you all to start keeping a diary about how much packaging you use,’ she gushed, and then produced a whole bag of stuff that she said was an average person’s packaging for a week. I was shocked. It contained burger cartons, pizza boxes, loads of plastic sandwich cartons and carrier bags and yogurt cartons and plastic bottles galore.
‘We never use all that,’ said snobby Sasha, whose mother doesn’t let her eat takeaways.
‘I’m glad to hear it, Sasha, but perhaps your house has different packaging: bags of salad, bottles of olive oil – who knows?’
Sasha looked thoughtful, but Ms Parker was drawing a huge picture of the world’s carbon footprint on the whiteboard. Little Britain did not do too well on this map. It was embarrassing to think of how much stuff we’ve got and how little stuff other people have got.
Even the hoodies and banshees who smoke and cuss your mum were hooked by Ms Parker because she was so passionate, jumping around and flapping her arms like a flying Noddy. She was campaigning to get the whole school to recycle everything and said one of the best things we could do as individuals was to buy energy-saving lightbulbs straight away.
‘My mum says they’re well expensive,’ Jolene said. Zandra agreed, as usual. Jolene went on. ‘Easy for rich folk to make sacrifices, know what I’m sayin’? Anyway, global warming means we’ll all be able to get a wicked tan just hanging out in the street, rather than stinking up the air with all them aeroplanes going to Benidorm an’ that, so it’s a good thing, innit?’
‘Energy-saving bulbs last ten times longer than normal bulbs and are seventy-five per cent more efficient,’ said Eric Cubicle, measuredly. He likes sticking to the point.
‘Yes, Eric,’ said Ms Parker gratefully. ‘That’s why they save money in the end, because they use less energy and last much longer than regular bulbs.’
She showed us pictures of the rainforests shrinking because they’re being cut down and of glaciers melting and little wombat-like creatures that are becoming extinct and told us even tigers are at risk of dying out. Tigers! Oh no, we all thought, when we heard about the tigers – a world without tigers was not a world that we wanted. Even though we’d never actually seen them outside the zoo. But whether it was the tigers or the glaciers, I reckoned that by the end of the lesson the whole class felt really excited, so we didn’t all rush out like a herd of galloping horses when the bell went. In fact, we all dawdled behind, except for Jolene and Zandra.
‘So, are we going to Disneyland, Miss?’ someone asked. ‘Year Ten graphics went there to pretend to study design.’
‘Did they, indeed? Certainly not. We’re going to somewhere much more romantic and beautiful.’
‘The Himalayas?’
‘Italy?’
‘Sorry to disappoint you all. It’s Norfolk.’
Groan. Sigh. But a husky voice from the back of the class murmured, ‘What’s Norfolk?’
Everyone turned to look. It was the new boy, Vladimir Vyshinsky, already named Vlad the Lad, because he looks a lot more like Johnny Depp than most twelve-year-olds, but who so far had not said a word to anyone.

‘He doesn’t know where Norfolk is,’ said snobby Sasha, at break.
‘So? Where is it then?’ said Jolene. ‘And who cares? Anyway, he’s not from round here is he? I reckon he’s from Spain. Probably his dad’s a bullfighter. Phwoooar. Talk about global warming . . .’
‘Yeah. Think I’ll do my project on him,’ sniggered Zandra. ‘Anyway, you’re not catching me going to Norfolk. It’ll be all mud and slime and we’ll have to wear welly boots.’
‘Eeeek, welly-boots,’ shrieked Jolene.

‘Haven’t they got anything more interesting than boys to talk about? Anyone would think that’s the only thing worth saving on the planet,’ I said to Viola on the way home. ‘I think this global warming project will be really fun. Nosy Parker’s a lot better than our last geoggers teacher, who was all about colouring in maps.’
‘Mmm,’ said Viola, vaguely. She didn’t seem to be listening. ‘Look! There he is!’
‘Who?’
Viola pulled me into the hedge.
‘Vlad!’ she whispered in awe, as if he was Jesus.
Sure enough, we’d just turned into my street and Vladimir Vyshinsky was going into the ancient crumbly block of flats just opposite my house.
‘So that’s where he lives,’ said Viola, almost as though she had been thinking about nothing else all week. How boring.
‘Ugh. I hate those flats,’ I said. ‘They’re haunted. I’ve heard puddles of wee suddenly appear on the landings when there’s no one there.’ Viola looked horrified. ‘Just joking. But there is a weird old woman with about five hundred cats on the ground floor. Callum and I used to think she was a witch.’
Viola ignored this.
‘He’s living right opposite your house!’ she squeaked. ‘And you never even noticed!’ She looked at me in true amazement with her eyebrows all up high nestling under her fringe in an amazed way.
‘What a pain, he’ll probably want to walk to school with us,’ I groaned.
‘Do you really think so?’ said Viola. ‘I think he’ll be too shy, like me.’
‘Hope so,’ I grumbled.
‘Am I coming round to yours for tea?’
‘No. Got work to do.’ I really didn’t want to listen to Viola going on about Vlad. And I stomped inside, thinking, is this it? Are my days of climbing trees and having fun well and truly numbered? Has it all got to be lip-gloss and girls’ magazines about what shape you have to be, from now on? Has even Viola gone bonkers just because a boy looks about sixteen and has a husky voice?
No. That was just my imagination, surely . . .
And to prove it, Callum phoned the second I got in, demanding a meeting in the tree house.
‘You’re not going straight out again, are you?’ wailed Candice. (That’s my mum, by the way. I think I am the only person at Falmer North who calls their mum and dad Candice and Howard, but then I’m probably the only person to have parents called Candice and Howard. All right, I know I’m lucky to have two whole parents at all, who actually live together, even if they have got silly names.)
‘What about your homework? Have you fed Xerxes and Blue? And what about your writing? You’ll never get your book finished if you go out playing all the time.’
This is typical of Candice – she always thinks three reasons are better than one to stop me having any fun. I threw some food into Blue’s fish tank, feeling guilty as usual because he looks so lonely swimming around on his own. It’s a point of principle with Candice that I feed him, even though it takes half a second to do. And Xerxes too, who is too fat and lazy to forage in the wild and murder little mice and birds like sensible cats. I think he needs an exercise programme actually. Maybe I could do a pet exercise DVD to fund my career as a novelist.
Candice likes the idea of me being a writer but says I’ll never make any money from it. I point out to her that I actually have an aunt who makes loads of money – Laura Hunt, who’s a famous writer of books for young people, although she doesn’t write about exciting things like I do, about romance and adventure and spies and stuff.
I love Aunt Laura and I’m always looking up her writer’s tips for inspiration, but, if I’m honest, I get a bit bored by all the ‘issues’ she writes about and I’m not that sure how good she is really. Maybe it’s Candice’s snobbery affecting me. Candice wants me to write Great Literature. I don’t think she’d be crazy about Jane Bond. All I’ve told her so far is that it’s an action-packed contemporary drama, which seemed to satisfy her.
I spent so long trying to find a bowl for Xerxes, rummaging around the barmy collection of Candice’s homemade pottery that accumulates in our kitchen, that Callum rang a second time to ask where I was.
‘Bowls,’ I said to him, still rummaging with one hand. He knew what I meant.
Finally I found a shallow thing that looked like a small canoe with horns on it. Everywhere you look there are daft unusable coffee pots shaped like the Empire State Building and jugs made like pianos and you can never find anything useful for your Weetabix. Anyway, I emptied two tins of Chat Supreme into this thing.
‘You know this stuff costs two pounds ninety-five pence a tin!’ I squealed at Candice. She’s always moaning about money and how Howard never gets a decent pay rise for his lectures and teaching and stuff and how nobody appreciates art and literature any more, but she has absolutely no idea how to shop. Anyway, I rinsed out the Chat Supreme tins and put them in the recycling box, feeling a smug glow.
‘Maybe we should let Xerxes forage for his own food, like cats since the Dawn of Time,’ I pondered out loud.
‘He’d starve,’ said Howard, who’d just come into the room, looking even more like an absent-minded teddy bear than usual. ‘He can barely stand, let alone hunt. Mice would play practical jokes on him.’
‘You should hear what Xerxes says about you,’ I told him. ‘Anyway, I’m off to meet Callum. I won’t be long.’
‘Don’t go near the playground,’ shouted Candice as I left. ‘They’ve cordoned it off – something nasty in the paddling pool. Chemicals, I think.’
I wasn’t really paying attention to that then. But I would soon.

Callum shouted down something extremely grumpy from the tree house as I clambered up through the leaves. Cheek, since it’s usually him who’s always late.
But as I yanked myself through the narrow entrance, the leaves making me scratch myself all over like they always do, I was shocked.
‘What have you done?!’
The whole tree house had changed. Callum’s dad built it for him out of an old garden shed when he was six – so it’s got windows (broken) and a roof (leaky) – and it’s been like a second home to me ever since. We’ve had midnight feasts and all sorts of games and plots and adventures up there. He had somehow heaved a battered old sofa into it, hung a curtain and even rigged up some electricity in there so he was sitting playing Nerdzapper Seven on a laptop when I arrived. (It’s a game where you have to spot the geek in a crowd of millions and ‘take them out’ before they infect the rest of the population with brainy ideas. Don’t know why Callum likes it; he is that geek.)
‘Callum, you can’t play computer games in here, it’s sacrilege,’ I said. It was as though another layer of innocence had been stripped away.
I sat down with a big flump on the broken sofa. ‘Ouch!’ I yelped.
‘Sorry about that spring,’ Callum said. ‘I found the sofa on a skip. But I thought you’d like it if I improved things a bit.’ He was looking hurt now. ‘You said we were too old for tree houses.’
‘I didn’t. Did I?’
‘You did!’
‘Yes, but that was when we were starting secondary school and trying to be all grown up. That lasted just one term. Then we came back here, remember? And realised we still needed it.’
‘Well, we do. But now it can be a study, or . . . or . . . a studio. You know, for you to write your books and me to paint. It’ll be like old times . . . but different.’
I was touched now. I could see Callum had kept some of the old stuff: the shelf with a toy horse of mine on it, and some ancient model cars. And the aged treasure chest we lugged up here when we were nine, crammed with emergency rations in case we ever needed to run away. I realised that Callum wanted to go on having it all just as much as I did, but he’d transformed it so that now he could say to his folks, or his new friends at his posh school, that he was going to his studio. Maybe that’s what grown-ups are doing really, when they go into their sheds. It’s as if everyone needs a tree house in some way . . .
‘It’s good,’ I finally admitted. ‘I will be able to write up here. It’s . . . inspiring.’
Callum relaxed.
‘How’s the new book going? What’s it about?’
‘Ah. Glad you asked,’ I said, whipping out the first chapter. Callum is still my greatest fan. ‘This one will be truly excellent for you to illustrate, because it’s all boys’ stuff, although of course with a woman hero.’
‘You’re so sexist. Anyway you mean heroine.’
‘Sexist yourself. Heroine sounds like a drug. Why not hero? Women are called actors these days, and poets. You wouldn’t say poetess, would you? This hero’s a secret agent, 0007, Jane Bond.’
‘Hmm, I see many possibilities,’ said Callum, twirling an invisible moustache like a pantomime villain.
‘She’s James Bond’s younger sister, twice as daring as her famous brother, but modest – so though she’s saved the planet from destruction countless times, nobody has known about her until now.’
‘Cool! So I can draw her car: the full mistress-spy works: jet-propelled Aston Martin complete with retracting chariot-style scimitar wheels, ejector seats for unwanted passengers, a bootful of starving piranhas, a homing device . . .’
‘No, Callum! This is my story. I want to tie it in with my geography project; we’re doing a really important thing on global warming. So I think Jane Bond should drive a pink Smart car, to minimise her carbon footprint.’
I hoped to impress Callum with the carbon footprint thingy, but he knew about it already.
‘Don’t be ridiculous! Spy stories have got to be powerful, thrilling and packed with gadgets. You’ll be having her on a stupid push bike next.’
‘What do you mean, stupid? Bikes are good! Cheap, quiet, don’t mess with the ozone layer . . .’
‘Yeah, but if you drone on about the environment and health and safety, your readers’ll just throw the book away and put on a James Bond DVD. What are you going to do, have her telling M she’ll have to go by rowing-boat to the rendezvous in the Bahamas because planes are bad for the atmosphere? Refuse to chase the evil mastermind if it involves going faster than twenty miles per hour in a built-up area? Remind a hitman to be careful not to run with his knife facing upwards? It’s all ridiculous. You can’t have a book like this without explosions and poisoned umbrellas and car chases and underwater nuclear devices and —’
‘Oh, it’s hopeless talking to you about it. You can’t know what it is to be a writer.’
Callum’s ears wiggled madly, like they always do when he’s angry or upset, or even thinking very hard.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean that, exactly . . .’ I started.
‘Oh, you didn’t mean my dyslexia? Well, at least I can draw,’ he said sulkily.
‘Sorry, Cal. I can see you’ve got a point about it being exciting . . .’
‘Yeah. A mountain bike with wings and flame throwers and —’
I whacked Callum with my folder, full of my fantastic hand-written story (I’m using a fountain pen and purple ink just now as it feels more creative than the computer).
‘Hey, slow down, only joking. Obviously the environment is the big thing in schools because I’m doing it too. My art teacher says I’ve got to enter the “Young Artists Save the Planet” competition. He says I’ll win.’
‘Of course you will; you’re a genius.’
Callum opened his jacket to reveal a T-shirt, which said, I have nothing to declare except my jeanious.
‘It’s a quote from Oscar Wilde, you know, that bloke who wrote The Happy Prince. He did lots of great adult stories too, like . . . er . . .’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘He wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Ballad of Reading Gaol. He was put in prison for being gay.’
Callum’s ears went ballistic.
‘Prison? Just for being gay? When?’
‘About a hundred years ago, but it still happens in some countries.’
‘No! Does it? Will people think I’m gay if I wear this?’
‘Honestly, Callum. Who cares if you’re gay? But there is one thing about the T-shirt . . .’
‘I know it’s the wrong spelling. It’s the dyslexics’ version.’
‘Should I make Jane Bond dyslexic? Brave as a lion and crafty as a fox but can’t read maps, and takes wrong turnings in the final few gripping pages where she’s hunting the nuclear bomb that’s going to blow up the world?’
‘Too many messages. But you do need nuclear bombs. And poisons. And weird deadly things. Like in the playground.’
‘What?’ I asked, forgetting Candice’s warning.
‘You know, they’ve cordoned it off.’
‘The one in my road?’
‘Yeah, haven’t you noticed? It’s got some sort of weird deadly thing in the paddling pool. How come you didn’t see it?’
‘Too busy watching Vlad.’
‘Eh?’
So I told him about boring old Vlad and how he lives in my street and how I don’t want to have to walk into school with him, because the banshees would never leave me alone. And how everyone fancies him, even Viola.
‘Even Viola?’ said Callum, his face falling. ‘What’s Vlad short for?’
‘Vladimir.’
‘That’s a Russian name,’ Callum said. ‘His dad’s probably a spy. Or maybe he’s a spy himself.’
‘Russians don’t spy any more. They’re all into hair products and wide-screen TVs now, like everybody else. But maybe that’s just a blind . . . Vlad is very interested in chemistry. Hang on a minute . . . ‘
‘What?’
‘You know the weird deadly thing in the paddling pool?’
‘Probably a shark,’ Callum suggested.
‘No,’ I replied, remembering what Candice had said. ‘It’s something chemical. Toxic chemicals, geddit? That playground is right next to Vlad’s flat.’
Callum looked at me and I looked at Callum.
I’ll leave you for a moment at this dramatic point of realisation that we had a spy in our midst, and share the first chapter of my amazing Jane Bond book. If only I could decide on Goldflinger/Goldbungler/Goldwobbler’s name.

The Girl with the Golden Pun

‘A medium sweet martini, with a slice of lime. Stirred, but not shaken.’
Secret Agent 0007 Jane Bond’s husky yet musical voice echoed in the cavernous cocktail bar of Miami’s richly carpeted, heavily chandeliered premier casino. Bond swept back her long, silky, golden tresses, which were shiny enough to rival the dripping gems that encrusted the hordes of rich old women who surrounded her, and adjusted her prominent cleavage, casting a languid, thickly-lashed eye over the barman. Cute, she thought, as she took in his svelte form in its nicely fitting, tight little barman’s jacket and even tighter barman’s trousers. But a man should be a mirage – something you can flick on and off, like a light switch.
The smell of smoke and sweat in a casino is repulsive at two in the morning, and Bond knocked back a few martinis to steady her nerves, for she had been waiting at the bar since midnight to catch a glimpse of the notorious Aurelia Goldflinger, whose devious gold smuggling had reputedly made her the richest (and most vilest) woman in the world. Not content with that, Goldfumbler was now threatening to destroy the whole human race.
Bond sipped her fourth martini, her eyes combing the roulette tables.
She cast her mind back to her last meeting with her spymaster, the brilliant and masterful head of operations known only as Z, whom she had seen in London just two days before.
‘The Secret Service holds much secret information that is kept secret even from the most senior officers in the organisation,’ Z had said, secretively. ‘Only my chief of staff and I know absolutely all the secrets there are to know. He is responsible for keeping the top-most secretive-secret record of all, so that, in the event of the death of both of us, the whole story would be available to our successors. All you need to know for now, Bond, is that Aurelia Goldflinger is currently not only the richest but also the most dangerous woman on the planet. She has informed us that unless we hand over the entire gold reserves of the British banking system, the Chinese government and Fort Knox itself, she will unleash a nuclear device that will shatter the whole Earth! We believe that you, Bond, are the best qualified to track her down before she destroys us all . . . You will recognise her instantly, for she wears only a gold bikini.’
‘I like an enemy in a bikini. No concealed weapons,’ Bond had remarked, her triple agent’s brain alerted to the prospect of a new challenging challenge, although her usually cool exterior was belied by a droplet of sweat forming on her elegantly-shaped right eyebrow and threatening to trickle down her high sculpted cheekbone on to her full mouth, coated in just a hint of Caprice lip- gloss ‘for women on the move’. She had seen much action in the past ten years, but, at just thirty-two years of age and looking, as all men said, much younger, the glamorous agent was wondering whether she’d had a touch too much danger and might just pack it in and get an allotment. She betrayed none of this to Z, however, who now appeared to be entrusting her with the future of the entire human race in its entirety.
‘Am I to do it alone? How?’ Bond had enquired, her full pouting lips set in a grim line.
Z looked frostily across at her. ‘Matter of fact, 0007, I had the Treasury on to me only this morning. Their liaison chap thinks that the Triple-O section is out of date. Here’s our chance to prove them wrong. Goldbangle is going public with her threat in six days’ time, or is it seven?’ Z cast around his desk for an old calendar.
‘Every calendar’s days are numbered,’ Bond had quipped, wondering whether, at ninety-eight years old, Z was still the man for the job.
‘Ah, here it is. Yes. Six days. If Goldbungler’s threat is made public, then there will be worldwide panic. We’ll either have to give in to her demands or she will blow us all to smithereens. Naturally, we cannot take that risk.’
‘But if she blows up the Earth, what’s in it for her?’ Bond had asked. ‘Surely she too will die.’
‘This is what’s in it for her,’ muttered Z, pointing to his laptop. ‘She has built herself a planet, orbiting our moon.’
‘A planet?’ expostulated Bond in amazement. It was like something out of those far-fetched books about her brother, James. Could it possibly be true? Jane Bond craned forward to gaze at the tiny golden orb circling the moon.
‘She has been planning this for the last decade.’ Z grimaced, scorn dripping from his every word. ‘She has used her immense wealth to buy the services of the world’s top astrophysicists and rocket scientists to create this new world for herself. She has gathered supplies for a thousand years and a hand-picked army of extraordinarily handsome young men to cater to her every whim, and she has, in her underground cave, two thousand slaves who will run the planet for her. She has been kidnapping them from Romania, Ghana and Uzbekistan . . . One of your tasks will be to free these unfortunates, who are chained in darkness awaiting their fate.’
‘The very handsome young men?’ Bond whistled through her straight white teeth, her tongue flicking fitfully over her full, sensual lips.
‘And the slaves,’ said Z, sternly.
As Z gazed at Bond, the grim expression on his rugged, weather-beaten face folded in on itself like a wedding cake left in the rain. He had seen too much horror and had sent too many agents to certain death over fifty years. Bond was a young woman, she had her life before her; maybe she would want a family one day. ‘Of course, Bond, if you feel unable to take this task on . . . If you’d rather live long and quietly rather than live fast and die young . . .’
‘They say you only live twice. Once when you are born and once when you look danger full in the face. Why squander my days in trying to prolong them?’ Bond responded.
Z smiled. ‘I knew you’d do it. You’ll need this.’
Z handed 0007 a briefcase full of essential spy gadgets and a file. ‘Your contact in Miami is Hunky Misterson. Good luck, Bond.’

When she’d left secret service headquarters, Bond felt hot and cold all at once. She knew she had no choice but to find this monster and stop her at all costs. The allotment could wait!