Sarah Lean - Harry and Hope

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2015

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd,

1 London Bridge Street

London, SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright © Sarah Lean 2015

Illustrations © Gary Blythe 2015

Cover photographs © Mark harris (dog), Cavan images / Getty images (boy), Shutterstock (all other images)

Sarah Lean asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.

Gary Blythe asserts the moral right to be identified as the illustrator of the work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007512263

Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780007512256

Version: 2015-02-05

“Sarah Lean weaves magic and emotion into beautiful stories.”

Cathy Cassidy

“Touching, reflective and lyrical.”

The Sunday Times

“… beautifully written and moving. A talent to watch.”

The Bookseller

“Sarah Lean’s graceful, miraculous writing will have you weeping one moment and rejoicing the next.”

Katherine Applegate, author of The One and Only Ivan

For my little sister

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for Sarah Lean

Dedication For my little sister

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Sarah Lean

About the Publisher

It must have snowed on the mountain in the night.

“Have you seen it yet, Frank?” I shouted downstairs.

“You mean did I hear?”

“I know, funny, isn’t it? The snow’s so quiet but it’s making all the animals noisy.”

We didn’t normally see snow on Canigou in May, and it made the village dogs bark in that crazy way dogs do when something is out of place. Harry, Frank’s donkey, was down in his shed, chin up on the half open door, calling like a creaky violin.

Frank came up to the roof terrace where I’d been sleeping in the hammock. He leaned over the red tiles next to me and we looked at Canigou, sparkling at the top like a jewellery shop.

And it’s the kind of thing that is hard to describe, when snow is what you can see while the sun is warming your skin. How did it feel? To see one thing and feel the complete opposite? I only knew that other things didn’t seem to fit together properly at the moment either; that my mother and Frank seemed as far apart as the snow and the sun.

“Frank, at school Madame was telling us that the things we do affect the environment, you know, like leaving lights on, things like that,” I said. “Well, I left the lights on in the girls’ loo.”

Frank smiled. Frank was my mother’s boyfriend, but that won’t tell you what he meant to me at all. He’d lived in our guesthouse next door for three years and he wouldn’t ever say the things to me that Madame had said when I forgot to turn the lights off. In fact, what he did was leave a soft friendly silence, so I knew I could ask what I wanted to ask, because I wasn’t sure about the whole environment thing.

“Did I make it snow on Canigou?”

“Leave the light on and see if it snows again,” he whispered, grinning.

He made the world seem real simple, like a little light switch right under my fingertips. But there were other complicated things.

“Remember when the cherry blossom fell a few weeks ago?” I said.

He nodded.

“How many people do you think have seen pink snow?”

“Only people who see the world like you.”

“And you.”

I looked out from all four corners of the terrace.

South was the meadow, and then the Massimos’ vineyards that belonged to my best friend Peter’s family – lines and lines of vines curving over the steep mountainside, making long lazy shadows across the red soil paths. I thought of the vines with their new green leaves twirling along the gnarly arms, reaching out to curl around each other, like they needed to know they weren’t alone; that they’d be strong enough together to grow their grapes.

North were the gigantic plane trees with big roots and trunks that cracked the roads and pavements around the village.

East was the village, the roofs of the houses stacked on the mountainside like giant orangey coloured books left open and abandoned halfway through a story.

West were the cherry fields, and Canigou, the highest peak that we could see in the French Pyrenees. It soared over the village and the vineyards, high above us.