Beyond The Stars. Sarah Webb

a canopy over the top that I can put on the back of my elephant and ride him around Sydney on sunny days.” But then her father said “You mean a houdah,” and she’d stopped calling it that (the first thing) and started calling it that (the second thing) instead.

      She’d seen one in a shop off Market Street and it cost three hundred dollars and she’d managed to save two hundred and eighty-seven so she wasn’t far off.

      Downstairs, Lucy showed Henry her fossil collection and Henry had the good manners not to point out that he had rocks exactly like these in his back garden and had even been considering making a rock museum out of them, only his mother had told him that normal people didn’t play in the mud like that.

      “How long have you had this elephant?” asked Henry, wondering what on earth his mother, Eleanor Brocket, would say if she knew that he was consorting with a family who kept such outlandish pets in the house.

      “Oh, since he was a calf,” said Lucy. “A circus was visiting Sydney and they left without him. Abigail found him wandering the streets and brought him home.”

      “Don’t your parents mind?” asked Henry.

      “Oh no. They’re very accommodating people.”

      “My parents would go mad if I brought an elephant home,” said Henry.

      “Perhaps they wouldn’t notice?” suggested Lucy.

      “But they do take up a lot of space.”

      “Your parents?”

      “No, elephants.”

      “Well, are they observant?” asked Lucy.

      “Elephants?”

      “No, your parents.”

      Henry thought about it. “I’m pretty sure they’d see him,” he said. He fed some more nuts to the elephant, held out his hand for the toucan, patted the koala bear on the head and popped a few nuts in his mouth. Then he sighed a little as the rain pounded on the window because he was still quite sad.

      “Here’s a book to cheer you up,” said Lucy. “I think you’ll like it. It’s about a pilot. It might give you some ideas.”

      Henry looked at the title page. It was called Biggles in the Baltic. The cover showed an illustration of a pilot seated behind his control panel, swooping down on a boat in the sea.

      “I’m sorry about your dog,” said Lucy, wanting to pat Henry’s hand to console him but worrying that she might go bright red if she did.

      “It’s all right,” said Henry, putting the book in his bag, thinking he might give it a go later. “He was quite an old dog. And he’d lived a good life.”

      “Will you get another one?”

      Henry shrugged. “I want to,” he said. “But my parents say that normal people don’t just get a new dog to replace a dead one. They say we need to go through a grieving process.”

      “And how long will that take?”

      “At least a year.”

      “They want you to be sad for a whole year?” asked Lucy in astonishment.

      “That’s what normal people do, according to them,” said Henry.

      “Well then,” said Abigail and the two children turned round to see the older girl standing there, eavesdropping on their conversation. “Who wants to be normal if that’s the case?”

      The following Saturday – no longer stormy, but still quite cold and damp – Abigail was in work when the Dimplefords from Bogota Avenue came in with their two dogs, Hound and Distinguished Lady.