by Helen Peters
Hannah shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s weird. He’s so moody at the moment. He hates the new landlord. That always sets him off on one. But I never mentioned the landlord, did I?”
Lottie drew in her breath sharply.
“What?” said Hannah.
Lottie grabbed Hannah’s arm. “I forgot. I meant to tell you. My mum’s friend – you know, Jeanette, she’s a real gossip – came round last night. And – and I know this can’t be true – but … it’s just … I heard her telling my mum that your new landlord wants to demolish the farm. And build houses on it.”
Hannah burst out laughing. “Don’t be stupid! He can’t do that – we live here!”
Lottie’s shoulders relaxed. “I know. I told you it was just a silly rumour.” She dusted off a baby photograph of Hannah. “Look at those fat cheeks!”
Hannah ignored this. She picked up a picture of her father and grandfather standing outside the granary. They were dressed identically in patched blue dungarees with leather belts. They both had their heads thrown back, laughing. Her dad must have been about fourteen. Shortly after that picture was taken, Grandfather died and Dad left school to take over the farm. Usually the picture made Hannah feel sorry for him, but today she just felt cross.
“I can’t believe he won’t let us have a theatre. How can I get to be an actress if I can’t do any acting? It’s so rubbish that we don’t do drama at school.”
“We can’t just give up. Isn’t there anywhere else we could use?”
“Everywhere’s full of stuff. Animals or machinery or feed. Well, there’s the old stables, I suppose.”
“They wouldn’t work,” said Lottie. “There’s partitions everywhere.”
“Anyway,” said Hannah, “they’re right in the middle of the yard. If we tried to turn them into a theatre he’d notice straightaway.”
Lottie took a breath as if she was going to speak. Then she shut her mouth again. She wandered over to the window sill and drew patterns in the dust with her fingers.
“What?” said Hannah.
Lottie hesitated. “It’s just – well, Mum said I could join the Linford Youth Theatre if I wanted. You know, the one Miranda and Emily go to. It’s supposed to be really good.”
Hannah stared at Lottie.
“I’d only join if you came too,” Lottie said.
Hannah shook her head. “I can’t. You know I can’t. You have to pay to join.”
“My mum would pay for you.”
Hannah’s voice came out louder than usual, as it always did when she was irritated. “I wouldn’t let her do that. And neither would Dad. And he wouldn’t let me go anyway. Drama is a waste of time, remember? And I have to be home to get the tea ready, you know that.”
“All right, don’t bite my head off. It was only an offer. It’s your dad you’re mad at, not me, remember?”
Lottie wiped the dust off a faded photo with her sleeve. Then she frowned and peered closely at it. She took it into the middle of the room and stared at it under the light.
“What are you doing?” said Hannah.
“Hannah, what’s that?”
Hannah looked at the photo. Then she looked at Lottie. How could she be so insensitive?
“It’s my mum.”
“I know it’s your mum. I meant, what’s that behind her?”
Hannah took the faded photograph. Her mother stood in a field, a bucket in one hand and baby Hannah balanced on the other hip. Hens pecked around in the bushes.
That was all Hannah had ever seen in the picture. But now she saw that in the background was a long, low shed, surrounded by bushes.
“Which shed is that?” asked Lottie.
“I don’t know. How weird. I’ve never noticed it before.”
“Maybe it’s on another farm.”
Hannah held the picture closer to the light. “No, look, that’s the wood behind. And those look like the orchard railings. So she must be standing in North Meadow.”
“But there’s no shed around there now, is there?”
Hannah shook her head. Then she opened her eyes wide and stared at Lottie. “Unless…”
“What?”
But Hannah was already halfway out the door, the picture in her hand. “Come on! We’ve got to see!”
She ran across the hall and into the gloomy back passage, her heart racing. If they went out this way, they were less likely to bump into anyone and be waylaid with chores.
But as they passed the kitchen, she heard a plaintive, “Hannah, is that you?”
She stopped. “I’ll just check he’s OK.”
Sam was sitting at the big table in the middle of the kitchen. He had cleared a space amid the piles of unironed laundry, unopened post and oily tractor parts and was drawing a large picture of a tractor pulling a plough.
“Oh, Sam, that’s lovely,” said Hannah.
Sam looked up proudly. “It’s a Kverneland 4 Furrow Reversible.”
“Wow. Well done.”
“What’s for tea?”
Hannah shot a hand to her mouth. “Blast, I forgot to get the casserole out of the freezer.”
“I’m starving.”
“Sorry, Sammy. We’ll have to have scrambled eggs again. Have you collected the eggs?”
Sam nodded. Hannah looked at the clock. Was it really five already?
“I’ll be back in a second, Sam.”
Lottie followed her out to the scullery.
“Sorry, Lottie, I’ve got to get tea.”
Lottie’s eyes widened. “No way!”
“But if we go out now,” Hannah whispered, “someone’s going to come looking for me and then they’ll all find out and then it’s all over. You saw what Dad was like. If we do find anything, we’re going to have to keep it secret.”
Lottie groaned in frustration. “But if we’re going to enter the festival, we have to send the entry form tomorrow, remember? With the name and address of our theatre on it.”
Sam’s voice came from the kitchen. “Hannah! I’m really, really hungry.”
“Coming!” She lowered her voice. “Can you come up later?”
“Sure.” Lottie’s mum worked in London. She didn’t get home until late, and even when she was at home she was too tired to notice where Lottie was most of the time.
“Meet me by the orchard fence. I’ll say I’m taking Tess for a walk.”
They jumped back as the scullery door opened. “Hello,” said Jo, kicking off her boots. “What’s for tea? I’m starving.”
“Scrambled eggs.”
“Again?”
“Sorry. Casserole tomorrow.”
Jo went into the kitchen. Hannah shut the door.
“Seven thirty,” she whispered. “And bring a torch.”
The farmyard was pitch-black except for a dim light in the pig shed. Through the darkness came muffled grunts and snuffles from the sties. Hannah heard the distant clanking of buckets and her father’s voice saying, “There you go, old girl. That’ll sort you out.”
She couldn’t risk switching her torch on yet. She let her eyes adjust to the dark and then she crept through the yard and on to the track.
A sudden shriek pierced the night and made her gasp.
Only a Little Owl, she told herself. Get a grip.
She ducked under the fence into North Meadow and climbed on to the orchard railings to wait for Lottie.
It was a really dark night. No moon and no stars. She was still too near the pigsties to use her torch. The icy wind cut right through to her skin. She pulled her scarf up over her mouth.
What was that?
Something rustled in the long grass at the edge of the field. All Hannah’s muscles tensed. Please not a rat. What if she stepped on it in the dark? What if it ran up her leg? She drew her legs up higher on the railings.
Come on, Lottie. Please don’t be late tonight.
A light appeared at the top of the track. Was it a bike light or a torch? The track was a public footpath and people used it to wa
lk their dogs. It could be anyone.
But then the light started to swerve madly from one side of the road to the other. Hannah relaxed. Definitely Lottie on her bicycle. No one but Lottie would swerve around in that crazy way just to avoid a bit of mud on their clothes.
Hannah listened to make sure her dad was still in the pigsties and then flashed her torch on and off three times. Lottie braked at the railings.
“Bring your bike into the field,” whispered Hannah. “Dad might see it if you leave it there.”
“It’s so dark up here,” whispered Lottie as they lifted her bicycle over the fence. “It’s spooky.”
“It’s fine,” said Hannah. She felt much braver now she wasn’t alone. “Have you got a torch?”
Lottie took one out of her pocket and switched it on. “So where’s the shed?” She shone the torch around in every direction.
Hannah grabbed her arm. “Don’t do that!” she hissed. “Dad’ll see it!”
“Oops, sorry.”
Hannah shone her own torch down the field. The beam illuminated a dense black tangle of bushes in the bottom corner of the meadow.
“See there?”
“You think the shed’s in there?”
Hannah reached into her other coat pocket and took out the framed photograph of her mother. She moved the light on to it.
“See? There’s the orchard railings and there’s the wood behind. And there’s that big oak tree by the bottom fence.”
Lottie shone her torch beam on to the thicket and shuddered. “No way am I going into those bushes.”
“Lottie! Don’t be crazy. Imagine how amazing it would be if we found a building in there. Our own secret theatre that no one else even knows exists!”
“But it’s so dark. Anything might be lurking in the bushes.”
An image of glinting rodent eyes flashed into Hannah’s head. She forced it out again. “There won’t be anything bad. Come on.”
Hannah didn’t voice her worst fear, because she didn’t even want to think it.
What if the shed had been demolished?
Or blown down in a storm?
What if there was nothing there at all?
Lottie stayed close to Hannah as they stumbled down the muddy field. The wind whipped against their faces and made strange noises in the treetops. They kept their torch beams trained on the treacherous ground, where rabbit holes and molehills lay ready to send them sprawling into cowpats at every step.
Hannah caught a rabbit’s eyes in the beam of her torch. It froze for a second, then bolted away. Something fluttered across their path. Lottie screamed and jumped backwards.
“Sssh,” said Hannah. “Do you want Dad to find us? It was only a bat.”
She hoped Lottie hadn’t noticed how the bat had made her jump. Bats were a little too close to mice for Hannah’s liking.
“What was your mum doing down here anyway?” asked Lottie.
Hannah shrugged. “I think she kept chickens once.”
“Why did she stop?”
“A monster crawled out of the woods one night – a dark February night, very like this one – and devoured all the chickens.”
“Stop it!”
A piercing shriek split the darkness.
“What was that?” cried Lottie. She grabbed Hannah’s arm so tightly it hurt.
Hannah was glad of the distraction. She didn’t want to talk about her mother. “It’s a Little Owl. Your dad would love it.”
Lottie laughed. “Yes, he’d be recording it in his notebook right now.”
Lottie’s dad was a mad-keen birdwatcher. His monthly Clayhill Bird Survey was the highlight of Hannah’s dad’s life. The two of them would discuss the results for hours – how many species there were that month and whether some exciting new bird had been spotted on the farm.
They had reached the edge of the thicket now. They stopped, and Lottie tightened her grip on Hannah’s arm even more. Funny how Lottie, so confident at school, could turn into a gibbering wreck when put into a field at night.
Hannah shone her torch over the thicket. It was a mass of bare black thorny twigs, crowded together like living barbed wire.
“There must be a way in somewhere. Let’s investigate.”
They walked the whole way around the thicket, scanning it from top to bottom with their torches. But there was no way in.
“I don’t understand,” said Lottie. “Your mum must’ve got in to feed the chickens.”
“That was ten years ago. It’s just got really overgrown, I guess. We’ll have to push our way through.”
“But there’s no gaps.”
“Follow me.”
Hannah ducked under a branch. Holding the torch in her mouth, she inched forward, snapping twigs and moving brambles aside with her gloved hands. The gloves were thin and the thorns pierced through them. Brambles clawed into her coat and hat and she had to keep stopping to pull herself free. Lottie followed her, letting out shrieks and moans as twigs sprang back and scratched her face.
“What will they say at school tomorrow? We’re going to look like we’ve been in the First World War trenches.”
Hannah wriggled under a hawthorn bush and out the other side. She shone her torch in front of her, expecting more brambles. But the beam illuminated what looked like a hedge of ivy.
Hannah’s heart raced. “Quick. Shine it over here.”
Lottie squeezed through the bush and got to her feet, rubbing her bleeding face. She moved the beam of her torch up and along the ivy-covered surface.
“Oooh!”
“Do you think it is?”
Lottie pulled at the ivy tendrils.
“Look! A wooden wall! It’s a shed, I know it is!”
She turned to Hannah. They could just see each other’s faces in the glow from the torchlight.
“I can’t believe it,” said Lottie. “It’s been here all this time and we never knew it existed.”
Hannah said nothing. Goose pimples sprang up all over her body.
“We have to find the door,” said Lottie.
They felt their way along the low ivy-covered wall, shining their torches slowly all over its surface. Suddenly Hannah’s beam lit up a metal runner, near to the ground. Her heart thumping, she moved the light to the top of the wall. Another runner. She zigzagged the beam downwards and across, searching, searching.
And then she saw it. A rusty iron door handle.
“Here! It’s here!”
Hannah held the torch steady and they stood there for a few seconds, just staring at the handle.
“Wow,” said Lottie.
Hannah looked at the door, her stomach churning. What was inside?
“Do you dare to open it?” whispered Lottie.
“You do it.”
“No way. It’s your farm. You do it.”
It was clear from Lottie’s tone that she wasn’t going to change her mind. Hannah would have to go in first.
It was only rats that frightened her. If there weren’t rats, it would be all right.
She banged hard on the door with her fist and held her breath.
No sound at all. She banged again. Still silent.
“OK. I’m going in.” She grasped the handle and braced herself to pull the door along its runners. But it didn’t move.
“It won’t budge. There’s too much ivy.”
They started to rip off the clinging tendrils. And then, reaching out to grasp a stem, Hannah’s gloved hand hit metal. She shone her torch on to it.
It was a horseshoe. A large iron horseshoe, carefully nailed to the door.
A lucky horseshoe.
It was a sign.
A sign from Mum.
This had been Mum’s shed.
And now it was meant to be theirs.
Suddenly Hannah was desperate to get inside. She had to see what was there. She grasped the handle again and yanked it.
“It still won’t budge. It must be rusted up.”
She dug her heels into the gr
ound as if for a tug of war and pulled with all her strength. Slowly she felt the door start to give. It creaked back on its rusty runners, centimetre by reluctant centimetre.
Hannah’s heart was thumping so fast now she was sure she could hear it.
“Go on,” whispered Lottie. “Shine your torch in.”
But now Hannah didn’t dare. Because as long as she didn’t look inside, she could still imagine it was going to be perfect.
What if the roof had fallen in?
What if there was only this one wall and the rest of the shed had collapsed?
It had been ten years, after all.
A lot could happen in ten years.
“I can’t,” she said. “What if it’s all fallen down?”
“OK, let’s do it together. One, two, three…”
Hannah took a deep breath and shone her light into the blackness.
For a moment there was complete silence. Then Hannah spoke, so quietly it was barely even a whisper.
“It’s here,” she breathed. “It’s still here.”
In hushed reverence, as if they were entering a great cathedral, they stepped inside and shone their torches around.
“Oh my goodness,” said Lottie. She was fidgeting with excitement. “It’s perfect!”
She paced the shed, shining her torch along the walls and on to the ceiling.
“It’s really big – we can divide it into three to make a dressing room and a stage and an auditorium. And look, there’s a door at the other end for the audience. There’s a few gaps in the walls, but we can easily mend them. And the floor’s dry, so the roof doesn’t leak. It’s perfect!”
The strangest sensation flooded over Hannah.
It felt like coming home.
This was Mum’s shed, she thought. She left it here for us to find.
“What shall we call it?” said Lottie. “We need a name. Then I can e-mail the form off when I get home. I can’t believe it! We can enter the festival! What about the Theatre in the Shed? Or, I know, the Rusty Horseshoe Theatre?”
“No,” said Hannah. “I already know what it’s called.”
“What? Tell me! Tell me!” Lottie shone her torch directly into Hannah’s eyes. “Tell me, Hannah Roberts, or there will be consequences.”
Hannah smiled and grabbed Lottie’s hands. “This was my mum’s hen house. So it’s called the Secret Hen House Theatre. What do you think?”
