Adiel set off for boarding school, a big one outside Bristol. He had all his things in a trunk, rather like Omri’s old chest only made of metal. They wouldn’t see him again till half-term. Omri missed him and didn’t miss him. Even when he missed him, he didn’t miss him half as much as he missed Kitsa.
He was sure now she would never come back. He tried to resign himself, to think of her being free, enjoying the naturalness of her new life, but the trouble was, she wasn’t used to the country and when he let himself think about it, he didn’t see how she would manage. She’d never hunted in her life, beyond a halfhearted pounce at the odd bird - and the time she’d nearly killed Boone, of course, but that was just a fluke.
And there was worse. They hadn’t been there a week before a fox got into the henhouse and killed three of their hens. If it could do that, it could surely kill a little town cat. Thoughts of her nagged him like an aching tooth he kept biting on to see if it still hurt.
One evening at supper — meals were only just stopping being picnics — Omri’s father said, “Oh, by the way, Omri. I was talking to the bank manager today. Your mysterious package has arrived at the local branch and is in the safe.”
Gillon looked up. He hadn’t heard anything about the package till now. “What’s this?” he asked.
“Nothing,” said Omri quickly, and signalled his father, who caught on at once and refused to say any more.
Gillon, however, wouldn’t leave it alone.
“What package? What was Dad talking about?”
“Oh, mind your own business!” Omri yelled at last.
That was it for the moment, but the next day at school, Gillon found Omri in the playground and said cockily, “I know what your mystery package is.”
“You do not.”
“I do. It’s your cupboard, isn’t it?”
Omri felt the blood rush to his head. He gaped at Gillon.
“Your face! Did you think I didn’t know?”
“Know… what?” Omri half gasped.
“That you’re hooked on it. But putting it in the bank? Pretending it’s valuable? Get real. The bank’s only for really valuable things, like jewellery or gold.”
Omri bit his tongue and said nothing. He kicked the turf and stared at the toe of his trainer.
“If I told Dad what it was—”
“Tell him if you like.”
“If I told him, he’d go straight away and get it out. It’s using up space. The bank safe isn’t for toys.”
“You gave it to me. You should be pleased I like it.”
“Yeah, but — the bank — it’s just stupid.” They stood for a moment, staring out across the acres of green, so huge, so different from the hemmed-in tarmac playground in town. “There’s nothing special about it. Is there?”
“It’s special to me. It was smashed up in the storm, and I mended it. I don’t want anything else to happen to it.
“And did you put the key with it?”
Now Omri visibly jumped. “What key?”
“The one you locked the cupboard with when you were playing with it. The one with the red ribbon that Mum used to wear on a chain.”
Omri felt winded. He couldn’t think what to say, and every second he didn’t turn it all off with some careless remark made it more obvious to Gillon that he’d stumbled on a really important secret. He was staring at Omri now with an ever more beady look of interest and excitement.
“I know there’s more to that cupboard than you’re telling,” he said at last. “I’m sorry I laughed about the bank. Maybe it really is valuable. I wish you’d tell me.”
There was a long silence. Then Omri suddenly shouted, “Well, I’m not going to!”
Turning, he ran fast towards the hedge at the far side of the playground. It was about a hundred yards away. When he got there, panting, he sat down on the grass in a hidden place. Gillon hadn’t followed him.
Omri put his head on his knees. He was shaking. Something terrible had almost happened. He’d had a strong urge to tell Gillon. He had wanted to tell him. Gillon of all people, who made fun of him, who could never in a million years keep such a secret to himself. What had come over him? Why had he had to run away fast to stop himself from blurting it out?
He didn’t understand this feeling. It felt more like loneliness than anything else. People did really crazy things when they were lonely. But how could he be? He had his family, he was making new friends at school… Of course he missed Patrick… and Emma… and what he thought about as ‘the old world’. But that wasn’t it.
It couldn’t be old Kits, could it? You couldn’t miss a cat so badly that it made you weak and apt to do stupid things, blurt out a vital secret just to share it with someone?
He’d have to watch himself.
He heard the bell in the distance. He got up slowly and walked back to the school, saying over and over again, “Never. Never. Never. Never must I tell.”
Omri’s father lost little time in getting the re-thatching of the roof underway.
He had been making enquiries among neighbours and people in their local village and pretty soon some men arrived in a beaten-up old car to inspect and measure the roof and talk money. A very great deal of it. That evening Omri saw his mother carrying a large tumbler of brown liquid across the lane to the big workshop his father had adopted as a painting studio.
“Is that whisky, Mum?” asked Omri with interest. (The cowboy, Boone, had been a great whisky drinker, but his father wasn’t.)
“Yes,” said his mother somewhat grimly. “Your father has had a shock. Alcohol was invented for times like this.”
“How much of a shock?”
“Fifteen thousand pounds’ worth,” she replied.
“Blimey! Just for a bit of straw?”
“Just for a bit of straw.”
But it wasn’t only for that, of course. Thatching was a skilled craft, and not many people still knew how to do it properly. And it wasn’t straw. It was reeds, and the right sort only came from a particular place in France, because in Britain the reed beds were protected and couldn’t be used. The work would take about four weeks. And they had to do it at once because it couldn’t be done in winter - the whole of the old roof had to come off.
“Like when the storm blew our other roof off!” said Omri the next day at tea when all this was being gone into.
“Dad, it’s going to be so cold!” said Gillon.
But their father said tersely, “We’ll all have to be terribly brave about that, won’t we, Gillon?”
“Lucky old Ad, safe and snug at school,” muttered Gillon, who certainly hadn’t shown any envy for his older brother so far.
“Look out of the window, boys,” said their mother suddenly.