Robert Swindells - Daz 4 Zoe

We rested briefly to catch our breath and to marvel at our escape. I told Daz about the letter and what had happened at school. Daz hugged me and said I was a hero and I said no, he and his mother were the brave ones, and then suddenly we both burst into tears, which never happens to heroes in the movies.

We weren’t safe yet, of course, and so once we’d got our breath back and dried our eyes and decided which way was west we moved on quickly, intent on putting as much distance as possible between ourselves and the city by dawn.

I was hungry, which isn’t surprising when you remember I hadn’t eaten anything all day unless you’re going to count Grandma’s letter, but I was too happy to care. We’d almost died, but here we were alive. Instead of the end we were moving toward the beginning of something. I knew we were. I felt it getting closer.

I could feel it getting closer.

There’s this hill, right? Pinkney Hill, a few miles west of the city. It’s a long climb, but quicker than going round, and beside there’re woods on the far slope where we knew we’d be safe through the day. It was still dark when we started up, but dawn was breaking as we reached the top.

Well, we stood for a minute looking back, and though the sky was lightening in that direction the plain was still in shadow. There was Rawhampton and there was Silverdale, and as we watched the bouncers switched off the spot lamps and then it was impossible to tell where the city ended and the suburb began.

Robert Swindells left school at the age of fifteen and joined the Royal Air Force at seventeen-and-a-half. After his discharge, he worked at a variety of jobs before training and working as a teacher. He is now a full-time writer and lives with his wife, Brenda, on the Yorkshire moors. Robert Swindells has written many books for young people, and in 1984 was the winner of the Children’s Book Award and the Other Award for his novel Brother in the Land. He won the Children’s Book Award for a second time in 1990 with Room 13, and in 1994 Stone Cold won the Carnegie Medal and the Sheffield Book Award.