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  I see Gaia the most, though.

  After we left London, there was only one place I wanted to go. Where Gaia was. And we all ended up staying there.

  We eat together a lot, Obi, Dory, Ben, Mum and I. Just like in the old days when we were trapped in the tower. We still eat a lot of pigeon, but now we can have it roasted or in pies and it’s just as good as Dory said it was.

  We’re having dinner tonight, all of us, and Gaia’s coming along too. She comes round for a meal most weeks, and sometimes when we are all together, sitting round Dory’s table, with Gaia too, I almost forget that she wasn’t with us all those times from before. She likes everyone and they like her. She even caught her first pigeon the other week. She didn’t want to eat it though. She let it go before Dory could get the bag out. She told Dory it was an accident, but I saw her lift it up to the sky and let it fly away.

  We aren’t in the same class any more but it doesn’t matter. We just make sure we walk home together and see each other at weekends. We’re just down the road from each other again, but not in towers any more. We’re just walking towards Gaia’s house now.

  It has marigolds in pots on the windowsill, and because of their cheerful yellowness, I think it looks like the happiest house on the street. We say goodbye at her gate and I watch Gaia walk towards her door. She always turns round to give me one last smile, and then I watch the door close behind her. I only go when I know she’s safely inside.

  My house is just a little way down the road. I counted the steps once and got to sixty-eight, which I thought was quite a big number, because to me, it seems like our houses are right next to each other.

  Pigeon’s waiting for me on the wall and he screeches when he sees me and jumps up onto my shoulder, just like in the old days, in the tower.

  The tower feels far away from where we are now. Sometimes I get the feeling that I miss it, but then I think I don’t ever want to go back and I’m not sure what the word for that feeling is.

  I’ve come to like living by the sea. I like how its saltiness reminds me of what protected us for all of those days. And I like seeing its blueness all around us.

  Only sometimes do I get the jolt of a memory, of being surrounded by a silvery-blue that almost engulfed us.

  I have to remind myself that it’s just a memory. That it’s just the sea I’m seeing.

  About the Author

  Polly Ho-Yen was born in Northampton and brought up in Buckinghamshire. After working in publishing for several years, she now works as a primary school teacher. Somewhere in between five o’clock in the morning and sitting down in front of a classroom of five-year-olds, Boy in the Tower was written. She lives in South London with her husband and their very vocal cat, Milo.

  BOY IN THE TOWER

  AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 17332 7

  Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK

  A Random House Group Company

  This ebook edition published 2014

  Copyright © Polly Ho-Yen, 2014

  Cover artwork copyright © Daniel Davies, 2014

  Interior illustrations © Mounir Dahdouh, 2014

  First Published in Great Britain by Doubleday, 2014

  The right of Polly Ho-Yen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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