Tiger Moth Read Online Free Page A

joke.
    I recognised Mum straight away. She was sitting on the wall next to the tallest boy, her arm round his waist, a gap-toothed grin lighting up his freckly face. Standing on the wall next to Mum
was another girl with long blonde hair, her hands on her hips, her cheeks puffed out and her eyes tightly shut. Standing at the gate and looking back across at them was a tall man with a rounded
tummy. His black hair stuck out from underneath a cap, his hands were the size of dinner plates and resting on his foot was a tiny black dog. I turned away, not looking at the rest of the people in
the photo. I didn’t want to see any more. I didn’t care.
    ‘That’s my dad,’ Mum said with a sad smile. ‘He didn’t have many things. He wasn’t interested in money, but when he died he left a will saying that he wanted
his only grandson, you, to have his cottage. It’s yours.’
    ‘Why?’ I said angrily. ‘I don’t want the stupid cottage! Can’t we sell it then we’d have some money? Then we could stay here!’ I shouted at her.
    ‘I can’t, Zack. At the moment that cottage is all we have and if I owned it, if it was my house, the bank or the taxman would take it away from me and sell it to pay off Dad’s
debts. But because it belongs to you it means that they can’t touch it. You can’t sell it until you’re eighteen.’
    Eighteen! That was six years from now. That was forever.
    ‘Zack, please. Try and understand. We’re really lucky. Exmoor is a wonderful place to grow up. You’re going to love it, Zack. The cottage is right on the beach so you can do
lots of water sports; you’ll like that. If it wasn’t for Granddad, you and I would be homeless.’
    Homeless? The word scared me. It made me think of those people you see outside the Tube.
    Mum keeps saying how sorry she is, but I’m so cross that I’ve started being a bit mean to her. I can’t help it. I try and be nice, like when I saw her packing all of
Dad’s old clothes into big brown boxes I saw she was sort of crying. I went to get some tissues, but as my hand reached out to the tissue box I caught sight of my empty bedroom, the
miserable, lonely mattress, and I swiped the box on to the floor.
    So I’m twelve years old and I own a cottage that I don’t even want to see, never mind live in, but I don’t have a choice. I have a right to be mad at Mum, don’t I? I have
a right to be mega-angry at Dad, don’t I? I’m starting to think I sort of hate him and I know I already HATE the stupid cottage by the sea.

5
Alice
    Do you look a bit like your mum? Or does someone always tell you that you look just like your dad? Maybe there’s another relative in your family who has the same hair
colour or the same blue eyes? Perhaps you’re really good at playing the piano, just like your mum? I’m not. I don’t look anything like my mum or my dad. I don’t look like my
aunt or my uncle.
    My mum has golden hair and eyes that are almost grey. Mine are not. My dad has reddish-blond hair and freckles all over his face, his arms, his hands, and his eyes are as blue as a swimming
pool. Mine are not. My mum has skin that is so pale you can see the veins in her arms, and every summer she has to wear a hat and lots of suncream. So does Dad. So does his little sister, so do my
cousins, but I don’t. I don’t look like them at all. My name is Alice Isabella Richardson, but I don’t look like anyone in the Richardson family.
    My hair isn’t blonde or red or even brown, it’s black. Blackest black. My skin isn’t pinkish or pale or even freckly. My eyes aren’t grey, blue, green or anything in
between. They’re darkest brown. Dad says I have eyes that are shaped like large almonds and Mum says they’re the colour of melting chocolate. She says I have the thickest spidery
eyelashes that she has ever seen and that when I cry they sort of stick together like the bristles of a paintbrush. Mum is tall, very tall. They both are. Tall and skinny. And