‘And that’s Archie,’ said the girl, running down the path towards him.
Tom would never forget the way she had laughed. It wasn’t malicious. She just laughed, smiled at him innocently, and, despite his scowl, held her hand out to help him up. Many times later his cheeks would burn as he saw himself look at the floor, ignore the hand held out to him, push the dog away and hoist himself to his feet with an audible growl of irritation.
‘I’m sorry. He must like your smell,’ the girl said, undaunted. ‘He doesn’t do that to many people.’ She scanned him from top to toe, that smile still on her face. Tom’s arms were caked in mud and he could feel moisture seeping through his shorts. Inside, he felt like a volcano about to erupt. ‘Oh, look,’ she said. She bent down to pick something up from the ground. ‘You’ve lost a button.’
He looked at the open hand held out to him. The blue button that had ripped off his shirt when he fell sat right in the centre.
She stepped closer, still holding her hand out, like someone trying to feed a wild bird some crumbs, and he could hear the laughter on her breath. ‘I can sew it back on for you, if you like. I’m rubbish at sewing, but I can do buttons.’
He grabbed the button, and pushed past her, cursing the dog under his breath. Aunt Emily was saying something to him, but he was too blistering with embarrassment to hear what it was.
He climbed into Maggot and hurled his stick to the floor.
Aunt Emily was on the harbour wall. ‘Thomas.’ There was a razor edge to her voice. He untied the painter and coiled it with shaking hands, aware of the others on the wall now with his aunt. ‘Since you’re in the boat, would you be kind enough to take Maggie and Joel for a little excursion on the river, while I show their parents the house?’
Tom knew this was Aunt Emily’s way of throwing him a lifeline. Of saving him from humiliating himself even more.
He glanced up and saw Maggie standing with her toes on the edge of the dock, looking towards him and biting her lip.
He jerked the cord and the engine spat and growled, sending a twist of smoke into her face. He wrenched the throttle and didn’t look back as the boat accelerated away.
CHAPTER 6
Retrieving Skylark was even more difficult than Tom had expected. The entrance to the bay was still being guarded by the police boat he had seen before the crash, so he had to beach Maggot and clamber through trees for half an hour to get to the edge of the water without being seen. The bay was as busy as a film set. The Teal, looming above the jetty, was crawling with police, peering into hatches with torches and sealing doors with blue tape.
A few weeks before, Jim had mentioned that the grand old house overlooking the bay was being opened as a freshwater study centre, to coincide with the start of the Lakes Summer Festival. That must explain the tightened security, Tom thought. From the restored building came the sound of hammering and shouting, as the covering of scaffolding and plastic that had hidden it for months was being removed, to reveal stonework as bright as a freshly peeled orange.
As he rounded some trees, he felt a jolt of panic as the helicopter, now parked on the lawn, came into view. He hesitated for a moment. The engines were silent and no one was around. Behind it was the clump of rhododendrons where Skylark had crash-landed. To Tom’s amazement the drone was still there, even though it was clearly visible from the lawn, clinging on by its tail halfway up the bush, ready to drop with the slightest breath of wind.
He crept through the trees in a wide arc until he came to the back of the rhododendrons. The bushes were as high as a barn and bare enough on the inside for him to force his way through, until he could poke his stick up into the branches and shake Skylark free from inside. The machine came down with a rustle of leaves and Tom nursed it in his arms, checking for signs of damage.
As he turned to leave he heard the snap of a twig, and nearly let out a yell. A man was standing in front of him, blocking the way out. He must have been hiding in the bush, camouflaged by his green flying kit, waiting for the owner of the drone to come and collect it.
‘I was wondering when you were going to turn up,’ he said, taking in Tom’s rabbit-in-the-headlights expression with a grim satisfaction.
He was black, a good six inches taller than Tom, with a pair of aviator-style sunglasses pushed back on to his head. ‘So what were you playing at back there?’ he continued. ‘I was seconds away from calling a full-scale terror alert.’
He spoke with the brisk military style that Tom knew well.
Tom blinked. ‘I . . . I’m sorry, I hadn’t seen you. And then suddenly you were right in front of me.’
‘Suddenly?’ The helicopter pilot scratched his neck and looked at the ground, exasperation in his voice. ‘I would have thought a Puma helicopter at three hundred feet was pretty hard to miss, if you were keeping your eyes open.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Tom said again. ‘I was looking in another direction.’
‘Oh.’ The word was full of reproach. ‘And what were you looking at?’
‘Sorry?’
‘What were you looking at on the ground, instead of keeping a lookout for other aircraft?’
‘Um. Nothing.’
The man shook his head and reached out to take Skylark from Tom’s hand. He held the drone at arm’s length, feeling its weight in his gloved hand.
‘What’s your name?’
Tom swallowed hard and tried to sound confident. ‘Tom Hopkins.’
‘Where did you get this UAV from Tom?’
‘I made it myself.’
‘You made this?’
‘Yes.’
‘From scratch?’
‘Yes.’
He turned the machine over, like someone judging a bird at a poultry show. ‘Flawless aerodynamic sculpting. Perfectly balanced delta wing. Triple prop configuration: two forwards and a pusher at the back, all able to swivel up, so you can lift off vertically like a helicopter, and fly horizontally with the speed and efficiency of a fixed-wing aeroplane. Nice bit of kit. Cruising speed?’
‘Forty knots.’
‘Range?’
‘Twenty miles.’
He flicked a piece of dirt from the fuselage. ‘No way, young man. It would take a full-on aeronautical genius to make a tricopter like this. Who gave it to you?’
‘I told you. I made it myself.’
‘OK, Tom. And how did you make it?’
‘I . . .’ The question startled him. Skylark was the gateway to Tom’s secret world, and here was a flesh-and-blood helicopter pilot quizzing him about how he had made it.
‘Yes?’ The life vest draped around the pilot’s shoulders obscured his name badge, but Tom recognized his shoulder braid as that of squadron leader. Maybe he should tell him everything. If he couldn’t trust an RAF pilot, who could he trust?
‘I used some CAD software at school, ripped some motion-control components out of an old Wii, persuaded the tech teacher to let me use the 3D printer, made a wind tunnel in my workshop—’
The pilot took a step closer. ‘If I believed you were some hobby flyer admiring the view, I wouldn’t have jammed your kit. But you just happened to be nosing around a sector under surveillance, flying a military grade piece of hardware, and took evasive action when we clocked you.’
Suddenly the man’s hand was gripping Tom’s arm. Tom braced himself and tried to pull away, but the hand was firm. ‘I need to know who I’m up against here when I’m talking to you, you see?’ Tom saw, in the half-inch of skin exposed between the edge of his grey flying glove and the hem of his sleeve, a tiny tattoo depicting a running man with wings, carrying something golden. He let go. ‘I need you to tell me exactly what you were doing and for whom.’
Tom rubbed his eyes with a knuckle, and for a fraction of a second some part of him – the part still catching up from the immersion of his flight earlier that morning – wondered whether this conversation was even real. When he flew he was always alone, swooping through the valleys, skimming the craggy tops
, his body in the workshop, swaying with the movement of the drone, left behind like a shell. Sometimes he’d land and realize his bladder was bursting, or he was late for something, or his aunt was standing in front of him with some ironing, or a cup of tea, looking bemused. And then the flight would stay with him all day, like the lingering aura of a half-remembered dream, after waking suddenly.
Now he forced himself to bring the two worlds of his existence into focus. The words coming out of the pilot’s mouth seemed to overlap with what Tom had seen out there in that other world – the sinking cruiser, the three suspicious-looking people on the fell tops. It all seemed connected. But how? And who could he trust? He gathered himself together and held his hand out for the drone. He needed more time to work out what was going on.
‘There was a girl. Up on the hilltop. On Brockbarrow. I was just watching her, that’s all.’ The pilot looked at him and the tiniest hint of a smile flickered on his face, and then was gone. But he seemed satisfied with Tom’s explanation. Over his shoulder Tom could see divers in the water, bobbing around the hull of the Teal. ‘Why? What’s going on?’
The pilot handed Skylark back to Tom, and leant closer. ‘Nothing you need to know about. But I’ll be watching you, Tom Hopkins. Not a word of this conversation to anyone, do you hear? And if that drone crosses my path again, I’ll blast it into the middle of next week.’
CHAPTER 7
On the trip back, the northerly breeze picked up, tilting yachts and sending gulls scything the air. Maggot ploughed through the waves, as if eager to be home, but Tom was dreading it.
Sure enough, Aunt Emily was waiting for him at the stone harbour, just where he had left her. She must have been listening for him coming up the river. And, as he turned in and cut the engine, there she was. And she wasn’t smiling.
‘You must be hungry, young man.’
Tom looked at her. Her hands were on her hips, but the sharpness had left her voice.
‘You missed your lunch, storming off like that.’
Leaving Skylark under a bench in the boat, he tied a figure of eight on the bollard and made his way up the steps. Face-to-face with his aunt he could see that she didn’t look cross, just tired and sad. He’d braced himself for a telling-off, but this was going to be even worse.
‘I’m fine. I’ve got to go to the workshop.’
He tried to edge away, but his aunt halted him with a raised palm.
‘You’re not fine, and you’re going to come inside the house for something to eat.’
She turned away, and he hesitated, then followed her timidly over the lawn and into the kitchen. He sat down, and she pushed a sandwich and a glass of milk towards him.
‘It’s a hard thing you have to do, Thomas,’ she said.
She was right. It was hard to pretend to be the friendly local boy for the holidaymakers, when all he wanted was to be left to himself. But he had been out of order with Maggie and Joel, he could see that. If he wanted any peace, he’d have to make up for it, somehow.
‘It’s OK, Aunt Emily. I’ll show them round a bit tomorrow. Maybe show them where to get the bus to the village, tell them where the cinema is, and the crazy golf, and—’
‘No.’ Aunt Emily shook her head, arms folded. ‘I mean it’s very hard for a young man like you to apologize.’
He stared at the table, not knowing what to say. He longed for this to be over. He needed to see if Skylark was damaged after the crash. He wanted to work out what was going on with the watchers on the fell tops, the Invincible, the Teal, the helicopter pilot who had warned him to mind his own business. He had to piece the whole puzzle together, alone. But Aunt Emily’s words hung in the air.
‘What do you mean, “a young man like me”?’
She poured herself a cup of tea and sat down. ‘Do you think I don’t understand how much you’ve gone through over the last couple of years? First your father going missing, and everyone assuming the worst. Then having to leave your school, and your friends, to live with your old aunt up here in the sticks. And then your accident. No one thinks you have it easy, Tom.’
He looked up at this. She hardly ever called him Tom. And there was a hint of a smile in her eyes.
‘But none of that gives you an excuse for being withdrawn and miserable all the time.’
‘I’m not withdrawn and miserable, I’m just—’
‘You are withdrawn and miserable. And rude. Mr and Mrs Green were mortified at the way you went off like that. As was I.’
He looked at his plate. Suddenly he could see how unkind he had been, not just to Maggie and Joel, but to her. She’d given him space, and time. Trusted him with Uncle Ted’s workshop and tools, and never questioned what he got up to with them. And the very small thing she asked of him, which was to make her paying guests feel welcome, was too big a deal for him. He noticed the sandwich she’d made was stuffed full of crisp bacon, iceberg lettuce and a thick spread of English mustard – his favourite. As Jim said, she did her best. He could see it all now.
‘I’m sorry, Aunt Emily,’ he said. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘I want you to stop feeling sorry for yourself, for a start. You mustn’t let these things turn you into a proud, angry young man who thinks the world owes him a favour. Because that would be the biggest tragedy of all.’
She reached out and put her hand on his. He looked at her, and nodded.
‘And I want you to show Maggie and Joel around properly. You know very well they haven’t come here to go to the cinema and play crazy golf! Take them swimming.’
‘Swimming?’ He remembered the one time he had gone swimming after the accident. No matter how hard he tried he went in circles, and the frustration and humiliation had been unbearable.
‘Yes. In fact I’ve already arranged it for first thing tomorrow morning.’
‘But—’
‘Well, you needn’t swim. You can row alongside them and be the lifeguard.’
Tom could see there was no way out. Perhaps he could kill two birds with one stone and take them where he might have a chance of seeing something useful.
‘OK, I’ll take them over to Dowthwaite Bay in Maggot.’
‘Thank you. They’ll like that. And, finally, Thomas, the hardest bit of all – you’ll need to somehow find a way to say that very difficult word!’
CHAPTER 8
Tom thanked Aunt Emily for the sandwich, collected Skylark from Maggot, and headed to the workshop, itching to get back into the sky. He closed the double doors behind him and inhaled. The building was permeated with the smell of two-stroke fuel mix, engine grease and bacon. ‘The smell of invention,’ Jim Rothwell had once declared.
It was after he had come home from hospital, most of his right side in plaster, everyone still assuming he would recover. Unable to do the things he used to do – like morning circuits around Blythe Castle before school, head up, arms pumping, or floating down the Elleray on Sunday afternoons, studying the clouds, or bombing into deep water from the rope swing he’d made on Brackenrigg Point – he had retreated into the workshop. He started playing around with Uncle Ted’s old tools and welding together components cannibalized from half-dead machines with a Frankenstein-like recklessness.
The lawnmower had been a surprise for Aunt Emily’s birthday. Based on a stripped-down Flymo with a motorcycle battery, and a circuit board ripped from an old radio-controlled car, Tom had managed to mow the lawns while sitting in a deckchair. ‘It’s like a demonpossessed hovercraft,’ his aunt had laughed, as it missed her ankles. Once he’d added a timing chip and an obsolete mobile phone that served as a GPS receiver, the machine could navigate a path around the garden by itself with neat square turns.
‘The boy’s a complete genius!’ Jim Rothwell had said to Aunt Emily, when he’d come over to see it. ‘What shall we call it? The Hopkins Hover Mower: the first fully autonomous lawnmower. You could patent that, Tom, make a packet.’
‘I think someone already has,’ Tom had replied.
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br /> It was during a blustery night after this that Jim’s vintage char boat, Swallow, had come adrift, and Tom had taken him out in Maggot to search for her. The waves crumpled into each other in the bay, and crashed against the gunwales, sending spray into their faces. After several hours of combing every bay and inlet, Tom heard the cry of a bird. He looked up to see a lone gull above them, wheeling and spinning, a white stroke against the black clouds. Jim gestured, his pipe clenched in his teeth. ‘I bet he can see where Swallow is from up there, no problem. If only we had an eye in the sky like that, hey, Tom, we’d be back in the warm in no time!’ Tom gazed at the bird for a long time, watching it buffet and adjust its wings against the wind, eyes steady on the water below. And at that moment the germ of an idea had been sown in his mind.
Now, after fitting a couple of fresh propeller shafts to replace the ones that had been bent by the crash, he launched Skylark into a bright summer sky, keeping a careful lookout for the Puma helicopter. The pilot had accused him of ‘nosing around a sector under surveillance’. That sounded like the security services were on patrol for something in particular. And perhaps that something was connected to the things Tom had seen. The pilot had also threatened to destroy Skylark if he saw it again. That sounded like whatever was going on was deadly serious.
Tom decided that higher was safer, and climbed until the southern half of the lake stretched out beyond the islands. The rain clouds had blown to the south, where they now hung, in moist charcoal smudges, over Morecambe Bay. The air was crisp and clear, the lake and hills saturated with colour. A solitary yacht, its sails white in the sun, meandered downwind. Normally Tom would have lost himself in the flight, soaring with the birds, riding the thermals, until drained batteries or unfinished homework called him back to earth. But now his heart was thumping with fear, eyes and ears on full alert.
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