The Exiles by Hilary McKay Read Free Book Online Page A

‘you’ll be hungry by teatime.’
    ‘Why?’ asked Naomi unguardedly.
    ‘We’re going on a picnic,’ Big Grandma explained.
    ‘Well, we’ll be taking food then, won’t we?’ asked Naomi reasonably.
    ‘Taking food?’ cried Big Grandma, gobbling toast as if she was starving. ‘I can’t be bothered with food on a picnic! The less to carry the better. Stoke up now, while you’ve got the chance.’

    ‘One of the rules of this house,’ Big Grandma announced when breakfast was finished and Rachel had been thumped on her back several times, ‘is: Those Who Eat Least Wash Up.’
    ‘What do you do when you’re on your own?’ asked Ruth crossly.
    ‘That,’ replied Big Grandma, handing her an apron and a pile of dirty plates, ‘you will never know.’
    Ruth washed and Naomi dried while Big Grandma organised the picnic. This simply meant putting a large bottle of orange squash and a few misshapen paper cups into a very shabby bag she called her knapsack.
    Rachel and Phoebe, who had escaped to the garden to avoid being made to help with the breakfast things, came running back in to ask what they should take with them.
    ‘Buckets and spades?’ queried Phoebe.
    But Big Grandma said no, they weren’t going to the seaside. All they needed, she told them, were comfortable shoes and her trusty knapsack.
    ‘Shall I put it in the car?’ asked Rachel, wishing to seem useful, but Big Grandma replied that they would be walking not driving, and would take it in turns to carry the bag.
    ‘Where are we going?’ asked Naomi suspiciously.
    ‘Up there,’ answered Big Grandma, looking out of the window towards the huge green rounded hill that rose two and a half thousand feet from sea level into the blue midsummer sky.

    Big Grandma’s house was built on a hillside above the village. Looking out of the front windows across the fields you saw the station, the village shop with the pub opposite, and all the houses about it, and then the sea. Far out to sea on a clear day you could see the Isle of Man, a pale blue silhouette floating on the horizon.
    The picnicking expedition set off in the opposite direction to all this, across the steeply sloping field behind the house and through the Fell Gate onto the path that wound by bracken and harebells, by bilberry and heather, up to the heights where nothing grew but thin grass and lichens, and finally to where nothing grew at all, a landscape of wind and bare rock.
    Some hours later Naomi collapsed onto her hands and knees and crawled the last few yards to the great cairn of flat stones that marked the summit. Rachel and Phoebe, who had arrived sometime before, were already running backwards and forwards with lumps of slate, intent on building a rival heap of their own.
    ‘Look what somebody’s done,’ called Rachel. ‘We’re making one too. Come and help!’
    Big Grandma, apparently unaffected by the climb, opened her trusty knapsack and passed around cups of lukewarm orange squash and a packet of extra-strong mints.
    ‘I brought a little something,’ she explained kindly, ‘since you had so little breakfast. Take two, Naomi, most refreshing! Pass them on to Ruth, she looks quite pale!’
    ‘I’m okay,’ said Ruth bravely from the slab of rock on which she had wilted. ‘It’s just my feet and knees and back and legs and stomach and chest and head that aren’t.’
    Big Grandma poked Naomi in the ribs with her walking stick. ‘You aren’t enjoying yourself,’ she accused.
    ‘Why did you bring us here?’ asked Naomi ungratefully.
    ‘To show you my empire,’ replied Big Grandma with a melodramatic flourish of her walking stick, which Rachel very luckily just managed to duck.
    ‘It’s not yours,’ contradicted Phoebe, as Rachel moved prudently out of range. ‘What about the Queen? It’s hers!’
    ‘The Queen,’ Big Grandma told her sternly, ‘lives nowhere near here!’
    Ruth looked around her at Big Grandma’s empire, wave upon wave of purple hills