Free Hazel Wood Girl by Judy May Page A

was nothing to snoop after. At least that’s what I thought until she said it, but now I’m not so sure.  And if there was nothing to be found, why was she there? What was she looking for?
    I bet this has something to do with the food that’s disappearing. Adam has Trug on guard duty outside most of the time and he hasn’t barked or anything. But he’s probably used to the Grangers. I bet it’s them.
    Adam says that they don’t make much money from the Egg Farm because most people these days want free-range eggs where the chickens get to roam about, not the kind where the hens are all in rows in a shed, like on their place. I thought the Grangers must have been there forever but he told me they only moved in three years ago when Mr Granger’s brother moved to the city to find easier work.
    After lunch I phoned the place where Dad gets a lot of the farm equipment and they agreed to lend us a large wooden platform, four-feet-high and nine-feet-square, which will be perfect for a stage. In return we are going to let them put posters for their business around the walls of the barn.
    I got a bit bogged down in all the organising, and so I just listened to the French stuff again for a while to get my mind off it. I am now imagining myself staging rock gigs in Paris so I’ll need to get the next level of lessons because I only know the words for things like ‘fish’ and ‘timetable’ and ‘excuse me,’ but not for ‘distortion peddle,’ ‘chick’ or ‘sound check.’

DAY FORTY
    We all showed up at rehearsal with the same idea that there is something hidden in the barn, something valuable that the Grangers didn’t want us to lay our hands on. Em-J was certain it must be jewels, Christophe reckoned old, gold coins, and Beau thought maybe a Viking’s head. I hoped Beau was wrong as we got down on our hands and knees and up on chairs and searched every inch of the big, stone barn inside and out. After an hour we gave up and felt a bit silly.
    Still, it is all a bit strange, Mrs Granger in the barn, and the stuff still disappearing from around the farm. Today some wool was missing from one of the sheep. It looks pretty funny now with a big bit hacked out of it. Dad isn’t happy because in a couple of days when the shearers come he won’t get a good price for that sheep’s fleece.
    Sammy-boy spent the morning pestering Christophe to bring him camping, and to stop him interrupting the rehearsal he agreed. Then Beau amazed us all by suggesting they camp just outside the stone barn to see if anyone comes there at after dark. So they are setting up the tent there tonight. At first Sammy was disappointed that his hero, Beau, wasn’t included so now all three of them will be there. Em-J suggested that the next time we should all go. Now that would be wild, but I can’t see her parents or mine agreeing to it. Or Christophe, come to that.
    I spent the afternoon on the phone to get chairs. Most people will want to stand, but I think we need fifty chairs for around the sides. The hotel said they need theirs, but there’s still a chance that the café might let us have twenty.
    I didn’t go to the evening rehearsal because I’m starting to feel like a bit of a spare. There’s no reason for me to be there and I don’t want the others to start to wonder why I’m hanging around instead of getting on with my production jobs.
    I felt another twinge of ‘left-outness’ just now, but pushed it away. I’m not letting myself feel bad any more.
LATER
    Instead of getting sad, I wrote a song, my first proper one apart from the ones I would make up in the car when I was little and they’d last hours and be about the postman and the goldfish. This one is all about feeling locked into a different world from everyone else. It’s called ‘Whisper Me A Morning’, and the chorus is about hearing someone from another world whispering secrets to me in the early morning as the sun rises and telling me that everything is going