Free The Bower Bird by Ann Kelley Page B

don’t want them to be divorced. I need a family .
    I spend the day in my attic, my turret room, my garret, my lofty tower, the cats surrounding me, trying to comfort me. Rain hammers on the roof, and the wind is howling in sympathy with my emotions. I am a victim, a hard-done-by heroine with the world against me. No one understands me except Charlie, who curls up on my tummy and gazes at me sorrowfully with her viridian eyes.
    ‘Gussie! Gussie! There’s someone for you.’
    I ignore Mum. It’s probably the library police. I’ve been shopped by the tramp, the only witness of my crime and delinquency. (I found that word in our Chambers . It means failure or omission of duty .)
    ‘Gussie!’
    ‘What?’
    ‘It’s Brett for you.’
    Oh brill! Brett’s come to see me. I dry my tears, brush my hair and clean my glasses. Oh shit, I should never look in a mirror. I am always dismayed. What do I imagine I look like? Not this puny, pale-mauve shrimp with a red nose, that’s for sure.
    He comes up and has to bend down to miss the beams on the ceiling, he’s so tall.
    ‘How’s it goin?’
    I lurv his accent and he doesn’t seem to notice my nose, or he’s too polite to comment.
    He says hello to the cats and scratches Charlie behind her ears. He’s good with animals. He looks out the window and admires the view and we watch the young gull for a while. He says he and his dad have a herring gull’s nest on their roof too. Most people in St Ives are lucky enough to have gulls living close to them. Brett’s gull comes right into their house and walks around looking for titbits. Since I was ill in the summer, he and his dad have hand-raised a young raven they found under a bush. Brett’s mum gets very cross because Buddy the raven tears off wallpaper and picks up newspaper pages and tears them up. He follows Brett on his bicycle down the road, flying close to his head all the time even when a car goes by.
    ‘I’d love to meet Buddy.’
    ‘You will,’ he says, and then, ‘You aren’t really reading Roget’s Thesaurus for fun, are you?’
    ‘Yeah, it’s interesting. Listen: “Deceitful – false; fraudulent, sharp, guileful, insidious, slippery as an eel, shifty, tricky, cute, finagling, chiselling, underhand, underhanded, furtive, surreptitious, indirect, collusive, covinous, falsehearted.” Oh dear, falsehearted – that’s what I will be when I have my transplant.’
    He laughs loudly.
    ‘Gussie, you are so weird.’ He knocks off my England cricket cap with a brush of his hand and tousles my hair. No one’s ever done that, apart from Grandpop.
    ‘The rain’s stopped, Guss, let’s go birding.’
    He has his binoculars around his neck.
    ‘Okay’ I say, nonchalantly. ‘Cool. Rippa.’ I grab my bins, retrieve my cap and we go downstairs to tell Mum we’re off to the Island.
    ‘Are you sure you want to go? You look pale. Take your parka. Have you got your bleep?’
    ‘Mum, I’m not stupid.’
    Brett manages to walk slowly enough so I don’t get left behind. I’m not very good at talking as I walk, not enough breath for both activities, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He rambles on about what he’s been doing this term. I wish I was at school too.
    We walk around the harbour. Sparrows and starlings peck at the ground hopefully. The Island is just around the corner from the harbour, next to Porthgwidden Beach. It’s a peninsula really, not an island at all, but that’s what it’s called. In the old days locals used to spread their sheets out on the grass slopes to dry in the sun.
    It’s windy on the Island, but I don’t mind. My cap is firmly on my head and I am wrapped up well. I’ve got my ex-army parka that we bought at Laurence Corner. Quilted and warm. Mum took up the sleeves for me. I’m also wearing camouflage fatigue trousers with lots of pockets. It’s a good idea to wear natural colours when bird-watching. That way you merge into the background. We shelter by a large rock covered in