Free Tommy Glover's Sketch of Heaven by Jane Bailey

since the villages are nestled into the slopes, and their ageing stone merges so well into the landscape that a thin mist can hide them altogether. Some mornings a whole hill can disappear under the mists.
    Even with the arrival of jeeps and combine harvesters, chewing gum and jitterbugging, this little pocket of Gloucestershire seems secluded in spirit. Tommy says the hills were nothing but sheepwalks once, and the land nothing more than herbs and wild grasses to feed the famous – the glorious – Cotswold sheep. Now the drystone walls remain, but the fields are being stuffed with wheat and barley, potatoes and mangolds, and every bit of fallow pasture is ploughed up for the war effort. It’s all wrong, according to Tommy. He says we’ll never get the fallow land back, and it’s storing up problems for the future. The land needs to breathe, to rest, to renew itself. He shakes his head. He’s afraid his good earth is ruined for ever.
    When the church bell strikes ten o’clock and I’m certain Aunty Joyce will be out, I take Tommy down to the back field behind our house to play with the kittens.
    Kemble is lying slumped in a patch of sunlight behind the shed, and two of her kittens are suckling. The other two are bouncing and leaping around the garden, falling over each other and attacking imaginary foes.
    Tommy’s face lights up. He can’t stop smiling.
    â€œLook at that one – he’s bonkers!”
    The black kitten is doing a somersault over a leaf he has found, then pushing the leaf with his paw so that it moves and he can attack it all over again.
    I laugh too. “He can be yours, if you like.”
    Tommy looks at me, open-mouthed. “You’re allowed to keep ’em?”
    â€œWe’re keeping them till they’re weaned. Uncle Jack says so. You can have Bonkers and I’ll have Boomer and Heinrich is mad about the little tortoiseshell. He calls her Kitty!”
    I pick up Bonkers and give him to Tommy to hold, then hold Boomer up and smile into his dear kitten face. I try to detect a smile on Boomer’s face, but he looks off into the middle distance and wriggles free.
    â€œBest not get too attached,” says Tommy. “They won’t let you keep him.”
    I consider this for a moment. Whatever happens I will continue to see Boomer. I’ll visit whoever owns him every day, or else I’ll hide him.
    â€œIt’s Aunty Joyce,” I say, biting my lip. “She doesn’t like me.”
    â€œWhat makes you say that?”
    I pick at a few tufts of grass and hold them up to the kittens. “She doesn’t like you and she doesn’t like me. I know she doesn’t like me. She had a whole load of girls’ clothes hidden away – nice stuff – and she makes me wear this, and I know what’s going on because it’s all the right size, and the reason she hasn’t even let me try it on is obvious!”
    â€œWhat?” He looks strangely worried. Almost panic-stricken.
    â€œThere’s just something about me she can’t like, no matter how hard she tries. What is it, Tommy? What’s wrong with me?”
    He breathes out a long sigh and smiles. “It’s not you.” He shuffles up closer to me by the wall and puts his arm around me. “These clothes weren’t meant for you, look. She collects things.”
    â€œNo she doesn’t.”
    â€œOld family stuff, she does. And look, I can promise you, you’re very lovable, you are.” He gives my shoulder a squeeze, and I flop into it, taking grateful wafts of his woollen sheep-smelling jacket.
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    When it is teatime I have an idea. I go upstairs and take out the little key from my curtain hem, where I’ve hidden it. I open the door and select the yellow gingham dress and try it on with the pair of red shoes and a lemon-coloured cardigan. I creep into their bedroom and look at myself in the dressing-table mirror,