Free Looking for a Hero by Cathy Hopkins Page A

end of the afternoon with our cases to whisk us away to the airport. I couldn’t wait.
    ‘Will there be any boys at your grandmother’s party?’ asked Brook.
    ‘Maybe,’ I replied. ‘A few.’
    ‘Anyone you know or fancy?’ asked Leela.
    I shook my head. ‘Not unless there’s someone new there – it’s mainly going to be family and I know most of my cousins.’
    Brook looked disappointed. ‘No one?’ she asked. ‘There must be one boy over there.’
    ‘There’s Bruno. His parents own the hotel we’re staying at.’
    ‘Why are you staying in a hotel?’ asked Zahrah. ‘I thought you had loads of family over there.’
    ‘We do but Nonna’s house is packed out already. It’s going to be a big do. Loads of people will be staying at the hotel. Dad’s known the owners since he was a boy and I used to play there when I was little.’
    ‘Weeth Bruno,’ said Leela in an Italian accent.
    I nodded.
    ‘Rewind a mo,’ said Brook.‘So who’s Nonna?’
    ‘Nonna is Italian for grandmother,’ I explained.
    ‘Tell us more about Bruno,’ said Leela.‘I like his name.’
    ‘You so wouldn’t be interested in him. He put a frog in my bed once and thought it was really funny. My main memory is of trying to get away from him because, when he wasn’t finding insects or creatures to annoy me with, he wanted to fight. I won once and he got really sulky and said that hair pulling, which was my technique, was girl fighting. But Bruno as potential boyfriend material? Never in a million years. He was a clumsy oaf with a face like a potato which, no doubt, he still has. He isn’t my type at all.’
    Leela laughed. ‘Sounds like love to me,’ she said.
    ‘When did you last see him?’ asked Zahrah.
    ‘Ages ago. He was twelve and I was nine.’
    ‘Haven’t you been over there since then?’ asked Brook.
    ‘Yeah, we go every year to see Nonna, but he’s been away when we’ve visited the last few times – at summer camps and on school trips, stuff like that.’
    ‘So he’s three years older than you,’ said Zahrah. ‘He’ll be eighteen or nineteen now and might have grown up to be a babe.’
    I laughed. ‘Bruno? Hah. I think you can pretty well see how boys are going to turn out, so – fanciable? No way but hopefully there will be some other boys there. You never know.’
    The afternoon flew by and, by four o’clock, Kate, Dylan and I were squashed in the back of the car and Mum and Dad were in the front. Lewis was meeting us at the airport and Aunt Sarah, Ethan and his wife Jessica and their twins had gone out on a morning flight. Kate and I did a good cruise of the airport shops once we got to Heathrow and I bought a magazine for the journey and some lip-gloss at duty free. On board the plane, I fell asleep for what felt like a few minutes and then we were landing at Naples airport.
    ‘Hope the brakes work,’ said Dylan when we touched down with a soft thud and the noise from the plane engine grew into an earsplitting roar as we careered down the runway.
    After getting off the plane and collecting our luggage, we made our way out to the car park where the black Mercedes that Nonna had sent for us was waiting. Once in the car, we settled back into the leather seats, and Kate and I listened to our iPods for a while, then Dylan and I played word games to pass the time because it was dark outside and we couldn’t see anything out of the window. Usually this is my favourite car ride in the world – the Amalfi coastline is stunning. On this particular night, all we could see were the lights of Naples in the distance, more lights as we drove past Sorrento, Positano and Amalfi and fewer as we got on to a mountain road which wound around and around up to Ravello.
    ‘Here at last,’ said Dad after an hour and a half and we saw a dimly lit narrow cobbled street in the near distance.
    Our driver drove into the street through an ancient-looking archway then parked the car and we all got out and stretched our