"No she didn't. She said, 'We'll see.'"

"Yeah, and then she didn't say anything else about it ever since."

"Yeah, well, now she has, hasn't she?"

Peter squinted into the sun. "Come on," he said, and jumped back down off the wall.

"Where are we going?"

He didn't answer. He picked up his bike and Jamie's and managed to wobble them both into his garden. I got mine and went after him.

Peter's mam was hanging out the washing, with a line of clothes-pegs clipped to the side of her apron. "Don't be annoying Tara," she said.

"We won't," Peter said, dumping the bikes on the grass. "Mam, we're going in the wood, OK?" The baby, Sean Paul, was lying on a blanket, wearing nothing but a nappy and trying to crawl. I poked him tentatively in the side with my toe; he rolled over, grabbed my runner and grinned up at me. "Good baby," I told him. I didn't want to go find Jamie. I wondered if maybe I could stay there, mind Sean Paul for Mrs. Savage and wait until Peter came back to tell me Jamie was going away.

"Tea at half past six," Mrs. Savage said, reaching out absently to smooth down Peter's hair as he passed. "Have you your watch?"

"Yeah." Peter waved his wrist at her. "Come on, Adam, let's go."

When something was wrong we mostly went to the same place: the top room of the castle. The staircase leading up to it had long since crumbled away, and from the ground you couldn't even really tell it was there; you had to climb the outer wall, all the way over the top, and then jump down onto the stone floor. Ivy trailing down the walls, branches tumbling overhead: it was like a bird's nest, swinging high up in the air.

Jamie was there, huddled up in a corner with one elbow crooked across her mouth. She was crying, hard and clumsily. Once, ages before, she had caught her foot in a rabbit hole when she was running, and broken her ankle; we had given her a fireman's lift all the way back home and she had never cried, not even when I tripped and jolted her leg, just yelled, "Ow, Adam, you thick!" and pinched my arm.

I climbed down into the room. "Go away!" Jamie shouted at me, muffled by her arm and tears. Her face was red and her hair was tangled, clips hanging off sideways. "Leave me alone."

Peter was still on top of the wall. "Are you going to boarding school?" he demanded.

Jamie squeezed her eyes and mouth tight, but choked-up sobs broke through all the same. I could barely hear what she was saying. "She never said, she acted like it was all OK, and all the time…she was just lying!"

It was the unfairness of it that knocked the breath out of me. We'll see, Jamie's mother had said, don't worry about it; and we had believed her and stopped worrying. No grown-up had ever betrayed us before, not about something that mattered like this, and I couldn't take it in. We had lived that whole summer trusting that we had forever.

Peter balanced anxiously along the wall and back again, stood on one foot. "So we'll do the same thing again. We'll have a mutiny. We'll-"

"No!" Jamie cried. "She's paid the fees and everything, it's too late-I'm going in two weeks! Two weeks…" Her hands balled into fists and she slammed them against the wall.

I couldn't stand it. I knelt down beside Jamie and put my arm around her shoulders; she shook it off, but when I put it back she left it there. "Don't, Jamie," I begged. "Please don't cry." The green and gold whirl of branches all around, Peter baffled and Jamie crying, the silky skin of her arm making my hand tingle; the whole world seemed to be rocking, the stone of the castle rolling beneath me like the decks of ships in films-"You'll be back every weekend…"

"It won't be the same!" Jamie cried. Her head went back and she sobbed without even trying to hide it, frail brown throat turned up to the fragments of sky. The utter wretchedness in her voice cut straight through me and I knew she was right: it was never going to be the same, not ever again.

"No, Jamie, don't-Stop…" I couldn't stay still. I knew it was stupid but for a moment I wanted to tell her I would go instead; I would take her place, she could stay here forever… Before I knew I was going to do it, I ducked my head and kissed her on the cheek. Her tears were wet on my mouth. She smelled like grass in the sun, hot and green, intoxicating.

She was so startled that she stopped crying. Her head whipped round and she stared at me, wide red-rimmed blue eyes, very close. I knew she was going to do something, punch me, kiss me back-

Peter leaped off the wall and dropped to his knees in front of us. He grabbed my wrist in one hand, hard, and Jamie's in the other. "Listen," he said. "We'll run away."

We stared at him.

"That's stupid," I said at last. "They'll catch us."

"No, no they won't, not right away. We can hide here for a few weeks, no problem. It doesn't have to be forever or anything-just till it's safe. Once that school's started, we can go home; it'll be too late. And even if they send her anyway, so what? We'll run away again. We'll go up to Dublin and get Jamie out. Then they'll expel her and she'll have to come back home. See?"

His eyes were shining. The idea caught, flared, spun in the air between us.

"We could live here," Jamie said. She caught her breath in a long, hiccuppy shudder. "In the castle, I mean."

"We'll move every day. Here, the clearing, that big tree where the branches do that nest thing. We won't give them a chance to catch up with us. You really think anyone could find us in here? Come on!"

Nobody knew the wood like we did. Sliding through the undergrowth, light and silent as Indian braves; watching motionless from thickets and high branches as the searchers clumped past…

"We'll take turns sleeping." Jamie was sitting up straighter. "One of us can keep watch."

"But our parents," I said. I thought of my mother's warm hands and imagined her crying, distraught. "They're going to be really worried. They'll think-"

Jamie's mouth set. "Yeah, my mam won't. She doesn't want me around anyway."

"My mam mostly only thinks about the little ones," Peter said, "and my dad definitely won't care." Jamie and I glanced at each other. We never talked about it, but we both knew Peter's dad sometimes hit them when he got drunk. "And anyway, who cares if your parents worry? They didn't tell you Jamie was going to boarding school, did they? They just let you think everything was fine!"

He was right, I thought, light-headed. "I guess I could leave them a note," I said. "Just so they know we're OK."

Jamie started to say something, but Peter cut her off. "Yeah, perfect! Leave them a note saying we've gone to Dublin, or Cork or somewhere. Then they'll be looking for us there, and we'll be right here all the time."

He jumped up, pulling us with him. "Are you in?"

"I'm not going to boarding school," Jamie said, wiping her face with the back of her arm. "I'm not, Adam. I'm not. I'll do anything."

"Adam?" Living wild, brown and barefoot among the trees. The castle wall felt cool and misty under my hand. "Adam, what else are we supposed to do? Do you want to just let them send Jamie away? Don't you want to do something?"

He shook my wrist. His hand was hard, urgent; I could feel my pulse beating in its grasp. "I'm in," I said.

"Yes!" Peter yelled, punching the air. The shout echoed up into the trees, high and wild and triumphant.

"When?" Jamie demanded. Her eyes were bright with relief and her mouth was open in a smile; she was poised on her toes, ready to take off as soon as Peter gave the word. "Now?"

"Relax," Peter told her, grinning. "We have to get ready. We'll go home and get all our money. We need supplies, but we have to buy them a little every day, so nobody gets suspicious."