So Alfie knew that Mrs Barratt hardly ever went into her garden. And that it was overgrown enough to hide in. It was the perfect place for exploring.
At first Alfie and Penguin had followed tunnels through the brambles, Alfie tearing his shorts and staining his fingers and lips scarlet with squishy-ripe blackberries. They’d prowled through next door’s garden like a pair of panthers, Alfie loving the feel of being somewhere he shouldn’t really be, and Penguin pouncing on shadows like the overgrown kitten he was.
Alfie’s own garden didn’t have anything to explore. It was neat and divided up into what Mum called garden rooms. Lots of little hedges, and screens, and statues that popped up and surprised you. But it was so neat, it was useless for having adventures in.
The only good thing about it was that Mum could never quite tell which part of the garden Alfie was in. If he heard her calling him, it was easy to suggest he’d just been lurking behind the sweet peas, when actually he’d slipped back through the loose board, and emerged from behind the shed looking innocent.
Then one afternoon, a few weeks after they’d first ventured into the wilderness, Alfie and Penguin had discovered the tree. It was a huge old apple tree down at the far end of the garden, where it backed on to a little wood. The apple tree’s furthest branches joined the elderberries on the other side of the fence. It was first time they’d explored that far and the ground around the tree had been buzzing with drunken wasps, feeding on the fallen apples. Penguin had sniffed one, and jumped back in shock when it buzzed angrily at him, and flew wobbling away.
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Alfie had stood staring up at the trunk, wondering if he could climb it. He could reach the first branch with his hands, but he’d never get a foot up there. He’d always wanted a treehouse. He supposed Mrs Barratt might notice if he built a house in her tree, but then Mum had said her eyesight wasn’t very good. Surely she wouldn’t notice him hidden in the branches? The next time he came through the fence, Alfie brought an old wooden box that had been round the back of the shed by the compost heap for ages. With that he could just scramble far enough up to get his elbows over the first branch.
He needed to grow. His mum was always complaining that he grew out of things– now for the first time Alfie was actually trying to grow on purpose. He started drinking more milk, but gave up after a week as it didn’t seem to work. He went back to the tree every day and stood underneath it, eyeing the huge branches. He would be able to see everything from up there. As far as his friend Oliver’s house down the road, he thought. Maybe even further. But he still couldn’t reach that vital first branch.
It was soon after then that Alfie found the rope. It was quite close to the house, which was probably why he hadn’t seen it before. He didn’t normally like to go too close, in case Mrs Barratt spotted him. He occasionally saw her, just a smudge behind the kitchen window blind, but no more. He wasn’t quite sure if that made her more scary or less. Alfie sometimes pretended she was a witch hidden behind the windows and if she caught him in her garden she would put him under an evil spell. It made the challenge of climbing the tree – a witch’s tree – even more exciting.
Alfie had heard her scolding Penguin through her window as well, telling him off for sitting on the fence and staring hungrily at the birds on her feeders.
It was one afternoon when he’d been trying to distract Penguin from the birds that Alfie spotted the rope. And it was the rope that got Alfie into the tree.
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“Alfie! Alfie!” Mum was calling from the kitchen door. Alfie stopped daydreaming and peered down between the branches to check that she wasn’t looking over into Mrs Barratt’s garden. Then he slid quickly down the tree trunk, hardly using the rope at all. He was a lot taller than he had beentwo years ago, and the tree was easy to climb into now.
Penguin followed him, loping from branch to branch and springing down into the long grass. In the two years since they’d discovered the wilderness next door, it had only grown thicker and wilder. Every so often, Alfie borrowed Mum’s kitchen scissors to cut himself a way through the brambles, but they grew back like something out of a fairy tale. He was used to getting scratched; it was worth it, to have a whole land of adventure and mystery all to himself.
They shot back through the fence and emerged, wandering carelessly up their own garden.
“Hey, Mum.”
“Oh, there you are! Tea’s ready, Alfie. Just some sandwiches. And please don’t feed them to the cat – you know it’s not good for him.” She frowned down the garden. “Wherewere you?”
Alfie shrugged.“Just playing down at the bottom. There’s a massive spider hanging on a web outside the shed, did you know?”
Mum shuddered. She hated spiders, and the shed terrified her– she had to go in there to get her spades and things, but she did it at a run, not really looking, in case she saw one of the family of huge spiders that lived in the corners. They liked to lurk around the tools and pop out at her. If Alfie was around, she sent him to get the tools for her. Alfie quite liked spiders, but he tried not to get too close, because Penguin always wanted to hunt them. Alfie had seen him several times sitting by the shed looking rather embarrassed, with legs trailing out of the corners of his mouth like a set of extra whiskers. Alfie thought spiders must be ticklyto swallow – they seemed to take a lot of gulping.
Still, the spider distracted Mum from wondering where he’d been.
“Couldn’t you feed it to Penguin?” she asked.
“Mum! I don’t think they’re good for him. Besides, you wanted him on a diet – no snacks, you said!”
“I shouldn’t think spiders are very fattening, Alfie. And he’d probably have to run around to catch it.”
Penguin twirled himself around her legs, purring, and Mum laughed.“Yes, you’d like to eat me up a horrible spider, wouldn’t you? Come on, Alfie, I left Jess with a sandwich, she’s probably wrecked the kitchen by now.”
But Jess was still sitting angelically in her high chair, clapping her hands as Dad sang her“London’s Burning”. It was her favourite song, but only he was allowed to sing it for her. It was as if she knew he was a firefighter.
“I saw Mrs Barratt from next door earlier on,” Mum mentioned as she passed Alfie a sandwich.
Alfie nearly dropped it. Had Mrs Barratt seen him? Had she complained that he’d been messing around in her garden?
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“I haven’t seen her for weeks…” Dad murmured through a mouthful of chicken sandwich, not noticing Alfie’s rabbit-in-the-headlights gaze. “Is she all right?”
“Yes, she’s fine. She waved to me as I was walking past with Jess in the pushchair. She was just saying goodbye to the meals on wheels people. But she won’t be needing them soon, she said. She was very excited about it.”
“She’s not going into sheltered housing, is she?” Dad asked. “She always said she couldn’t bear the thought of it. She loves that house, even if she hasn’t seen most of it for years.”
Mum smiled.“No, nothing like that. Her daughter’s coming to live with her!”
Dad frowned.“Really? The one she never sees? That’s a surprise.”