“You know, Mrs … uh, Eleanor, I think you'd like my grandmother. She's amazing. I wish you could meet her.”
“Would she come and visit, do you think?”
“I'm sure she would. She's been threatening to do just that.”
“Well, she could stay here with us, if you'd like that. There's a spare room, but it's on the first floor. Could she cope with the stairs?”
“Oh yes. Her house is double-storeyed. She's pretty fit for someone her age.”
“You mean someone my age?”
He grinned at her. “She's one of my favourite people. She's funny and kind and nice without being soppy. She and my sister were the only members of my family who really accepted Brent.”
“She's very welcome to stay for a while here. Why don't you write to her and ask her to stay?”
Jason reflected that Mrs Cumberledge had no idea that he had fled here and that he would rather remain incognito, and then wondered perversely whether she didn't after all have some suspicions.
“I will,” he said. He stretched his legs out into the patch of sun on the veranda floorboards. His grief for Brent remained a black hole in him, but he knew now that he could live with it. Sometimes the black hole would seem vast and very threatening, but he knew he could survive that too. For he had friends: Luigi and Keith and Esmé, Graeme, and Eleanor Cumberledge. And maybe he could see his grandmother and his sister too. The past was the past, but now was good.
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Episodes 1 to 480 (without pictures, 10 episodes per chapter)
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