Flightsend
Authors: Linda Newbery
FLIGHTSEND
Also by Linda Newbery
The Shell House
Sisterland
Set in Stone
Linda Newbery
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ISBN 9781407044156
Version 1.0
FLIGHTSEND
A DAVID FICKLING BOOK
ISBN: 9781407044156
Version 1.0
>First published in Great Britain by David Fickling Books,
a division of Random House Children's Books
A Random House Group Company
First published in the UK by Scholastic Ltd. 1999
This edition published 2008
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Copyright © Linda Newbery 2008
The right of Linda Newbery to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This electronic book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
For Liz, again
Flightsend arrived on their doormat, in an envelope
from the estate agent.
'This looks interesting,' said Kathy, opening her
letters by the toaster. 'Here, see what you think.'
She passed one of the printed sheets to Charlie.
These arrived so often now that Charlie had stopped
taking much notice. At first, she and her mother had
read them all carefully, making comparisons, highlighting
important points; they'd visited countless
unsuitable houses and had learned to read through
estate-agent jargon. Even now, with the
Sold
notice in
their front garden and the buyers waiting to move
in, most of the printed sheets went straight into the
recycling bin: too expensive, not enough garden,
too big, too small. If a house looked promising enough
for a visit, Kathy went on her own, always – so far –
returning disappointed.
With each reject, each sheaf of papers to hit the
bin, Charlie's hopes rose. Perhaps Mum would give
up the idea of moving. They'd take down the
Sold
board and stay here, close to the town centre,
close to her friends. Close to the life she knew.
But the life they knew was the one Kathy wanted to
get away from.
On Thursday, while Charlie was at school, Kathy went
to see Flightsend.
'It's perfect!' she reported. 'There'll be a lot of
work, but it's just what I've been waiting for. You'll love
it, Charlie. Just wait till you see.'
They went together on Saturday, a raw autumn day
that was more like winter, stirring memories of foggy
mornings and afternoons dark by four-thirty.
'You'll have to navigate. These country lanes are a
maze.' Kathy put the road atlas on Charlie's lap.
'Here.' She pointed at a tiny black cluster around a
road junction. Lower Radbourne.
'It's a long way from town,' Charlie said doubtfully.
'A long way from anywhere.'
Kathy craned her neck to reverse out of the driveway.
'Yes! A real village. Pub, village shop, church.'
And what am I supposed to do for a social life?
Charlie wondered.
She didn't ask. Mum would only remind her – as if
she needed reminding – that GCSEs were looming,
mocks and then the real thing. As they left the town
and took a country lane between hedges, Kathy sat forward,
her eyes scanning the road as if her perfect
house, her dream cottage, might have moved itself
closer to surprise her. Dried leaves clung to the beech
hedges on either side; an open gate showed a muddy
field entrance, rutted and puddled. Charlie saw horses
sheltering in an open-sided barn and sheep huddled
against a hedge. Ahead, a ploughed field rose to a line
of tousled trees and an unpromising grey sky. Nothing
looked very cheerful today, but Kathy was humming to
herself as she slowed down and pulled over to the
verge for a Land Rover coming the other way. The
driver raised a hand in acknowledgement; Charlie
glimpsed a peaked tweed cap.
'These roads are so narrow,' Kathy said. 'It must be
difficult getting a coach round the bends.'
'Coach?'
'Coach. Bus. School transport,' Kathy said.
She's made up her mind, Charlie thought, before
I've even seen the place. Well, I'd better decide to like
it, then.
There was no one about in the village. The main
street kinked at odd, awkward angles: a dog-leg by the
pub, two sides of a triangle round a village green.
Lower Radbourne consisted of one substantial
Georgian house behind a gated wall; a pub,
The Bull
and Horseshoes
; a tiny shop and Post Office with an
OPEN sign on the door, and a scattering of cottages
and small houses.
'Here's the church,' Kathy said. 'Norman, I should
think.'
Charlie saw a lych-gate set in a hedge; farther
back, gravestones and a sturdy building with a tower
and an arched porch. Kathy turned sharp right down
a track beside the churchyard wall, then pulled up.
'This is it!'
They got out of the car. Charlie turned up her coat
collar against the wind. The cottage, uninhabited for
six months and wearing an air of abandonment, stood
alone, sheltered by the churchyard yews. There was a
tangled front garden, with a gate that hung lopsidedly
from one hinge. Flightsend had blank, staring
windows, and a porch that would probably collapse if
no one did anything about it.
In need of renovation
,
Charlie thought. And soon.
'What does it mean, Flightsend?' she asked.
'I don't know. Flightsend. Flight's End. Well, that's
what it is, isn't it? An end to – well, to everything that's
gone wrong.'
Charlie thought: I don't want ends. I want
beginnings. The gloom of the place settled round her
like fog. She thought of long winter evenings
marooned here, miles from her friends. We'll be castaways,
she thought, me and Mum. Flight's End was
making her think not of settled contentment but of
clipped wings, of pinioned birds.
'Perhaps it's to do with the old airfield,' Kathy said,
shoving the wonky gate aside.
'But the house is much older than the airfield,'
Charlie pointed out. 'A hundred and fifty years old,
the blurb says. Aeroplanes hadn't been invented then,
had they? Not even those ancient ones with wings that
people flapped with their arms. How old's the
airfield?'
'Wartime, I should think. Someone renamed the
house later, perhaps. It's a nice name, anyway. I like it.'
But as for the cottage itself – Charlie couldn't imagine
it as anyone's home, let alone
her
home. She saw
only dilapidation and neglect. The house was perfectly
symmetrical, like a child's drawing: the front
door and porch, windows either side, two bedroom
windows above; chimney-stacks each side of a tiled
roof crusted with lichens. A weedy gravelled path led
to the open-fronted porch and a door that had curls
of paint peeling off; the nearest window showed a
bare, gloomy main room that was probably full of
cobwebs. Kathy stood smiling in the rain, not
bothered about her wet hair. Her love-at-first-sight
optimism was undiminished by cold wind and spattering
rain. Charlie guessed that she saw climbing roses
and honeysuckle, not dereliction and decay.
'It's perfect, isn't it?' Kathy said, turning to Charlie
for agreement. 'I just knew! As soon as I saw it. And
the name. It's just right.'
'But what about the inside? It looks like a ruin.'
'Of course it isn't. People were living here till six
months ago.' Kathy led the way past the frontage to a
yard at the side. 'Plenty of space, that's the really good
thing. Just imagine, Charlie, when I've got it
organized, with a little sales office, and signs up in the
village and at all the road junctions. I can even do
mail-order plants once I'm fully-stocked. Exhibit at
shows, build up a reputation . . .'
Charlie saw ramshackle outbuildings that looked as
if they'd better be pulled down before they collapsed.
An open-sided barn was full of junk – plastic sacks and
what looked like rusty, outdated farm equipment.
'It'll cost a lot, won't it?' she said cautiously. 'Doing
this place up.'
'Oh, well.' Kathy shrugged off the question as if
money were totally irrelevant. She pushed through
shrubs and wet leaves to the front door and opened it
with the estate agent's key.
Inside wasn't much more inspiring. Dust, bare
floors, an ancient strip of carpet that ran up the stairs.
'But look at the thickness of these walls,' Kathy said
undaunted, slapping one. 'And there's nothing wrong
with the plastering. Which bedroom would you
like?'
The two upstairs rooms were almost identical, one
each side of the central staircase, with a bathroom
between – 'Look at the bath! Real claw feet. You'd pay
a fortune to
buy
one like that' – and windows front and
back. Each room had a fireplace with a mantelpiece,
and the back windows, though small, looked over the
garden, with meadows, beyond, sloping down to a
tree-flanked stream.
'Oh, this is nice!' Charlie said, in the left-hand room
that had an extra window at the side, imagining it
curtained and carpeted, with her own things installed.
The three windows gave the room an airy lightness,
even on this dismal day. Bookshelves stretched each
side of the fireplace.
'Good! You have this one, then,' Kathy said. 'It's the
first time you've sounded at all keen. I do want you to
like it! It's just what I want, Charlie. More than that.
It's what I
need
.'
Charlie hesitated. Would it be best to go along with
Mum's new mood of sparky optimism? Or to deflate
her by asking all the questions that came to mind?
(Like: How are you going to make any money, out
here in the sticks? What will we live on?) It was the first
time in months – no, almost a year – that Charlie had
seen her mother so positive, even excited; it would be
mean to turn cynical. She tried not to think that this
cheerfulness might be temporary, brought on by the
new anti-depressant pills her mother was taking. They
couldn't rebuild their lives on pills.
All the same, there were practical considerations
that needed mentioning. She waited until they were in
the car, heading back along the lanes, before saying,
'Mum, aren't we going to be a bit stranded, out there?
I mean, you've got the car, but how am
I
going to get
about?'
'There's the school bus. It stops at the village hall. I
checked.'
'I don't mean just for
school
,' Charlie said. 'I mean –
what about my social life? Unless you want me to join
the Young Farmers, or learn maypole dancing?'
Kathy slowed to pass a horse-rider, who raised a
hand in thanks. 'It's not that much of a problem, is it?
You've got your bike, and I can always give you lifts to
parties or whatever. Anyway, it's only another year
before you'll be seventeen, and then you're bound to
want driving lessons. Your own car, eventually.'
'Yes, but how can we pay for all that? Driving lessons
aren't cheap.'
'Oh, I don't know. We'll wait and see. Things will
sort themselves out,' Kathy said.
Charlie gave up. It was no good trying to reason
with Mum, in this new mood of optimistic vagueness.
She thought: this means so much to her. Too much. If
it fails . . .
If
this
fails, too – then what?
She didn't want to know the answer.