NOTES:
I never did get round to giving it a proper name... My feelings about this story are mixed these days. Written in a wintry fortnight during my gap year, it’s a departure in that it was the first story I wrote for kids since I was one. I wanted to write a story like the ones I used to read, with ignorant grown ups, secret societies and hidden bases down the park. This is the second draft, some 4000 words longer than the first, and by the time I’d finished it I had had enough fuzzy warmth to last me a lifetime.
So I include this story for completion’s sake, seeing as it pretty much marks the point in time where my stories became altogether darker. Last year I walked back through the park in Southend where the story is set, only to find the bushes in which the characters make their base had been uprooted years ago to make way for a Holocaust memorial garden. How fitting.
