Llama United

1

MEET THE GRAVYS

Frank Gravy looked out of the window. It was grey, cold and blustery outside. Through the murk he could see his eleven-year-old son, Chipsn, playing football in the puddles in the yard. Not really! He wasn’t called Chipsn; that would mean he would be called Chipsn Gravy. What a stupid name that would be. Frank’s son was actually called, rather boringly, Tim.

Tim was playing in the puddles on his own because he didn’t have any friends. Two months ago he had lived in the city and had loads of friends at his school. But Frank had decided that he didn’t want to work selling photocopier ink anymore and fancied becoming a farmer in the ‘middle of nowhere’. Which is just next to ‘I’ve never heard of it’ and on the borders of ‘I’m lost, where is this place again?’ The family wasn’t pleased with this sudden job change. It made them all really miserable. The kind of miserable you feel when you discover someone has forgotten to get the pigs-in-blankets for Christmas dinner.

Tim is eleven, average height, average build, average hair colour, average shoe size, average eye colour, average-sized nose, just average all round really. He would wrongly describe himself as ‘all right’ at everything. He was actually quite good at sport, quite good at English and quite good at computer games, but he always felt there was someone better than him. Tim didn’t have the self-confidence to really push himself to be brilliant at anything. He took small parts in school plays, was the reserve keeper in the football team and was happy coming third or fourth in everything on sports day. Tim didn’t really mind – he had some good friends and was fairly content with being an average sort of fellow. But that all changed when the Gravys left the city.

Tim’s new school was tiny. It was attended by just twenty children and he was the only child in Year Six. Not only was he the eldest, but he was also the only child in the school with all his own teeth. This sounds odd doesn’t it? But there is a good reason. Every summer, all the children have swimming lessons in the village pond. Large, dark and incredibly cooling in the hot summer months, it’s also green, slimy and full of hidden nasties. The truth is, swimming in the mucky pond not only rots teeth, it isn’t very good for the brain either. Not that the villagers have worked this out. They just think they all have bad teeth because the nearest dentist lives fifty miles away (and they have never even bothered to think about why they aren’t very clever).

This made Tim, with his average teeth and average brain, stick out like a sore thumb. Every time the teacher asked Tim to answer an easy question, all the other children would laugh, point at his normal set of teeth and scoff at his cleverness. They also mocked his height, his age, his hair and even his choice of socks, which were usually just black. This went on every day for two months solid and made him thoroughly miserable. He was no longer average. Poor Tim; I do hope the rest of this story will make him a bit happier.

Tim has two very different sisters. Monica is seventeen and, if my maths is correct, the eldest of the Gravy children. She’s a rarity when it comes to older sisters; incredibly cheerful, helpful, resourceful, intelligent, caring and brilliant with computers. Luckily for Monica, she goes to college in the nearest town, which has a normal swimming pool. Although Monica doesn’t really like swimming.

The youngest child is Fiona, and she is everything Monica isn’t: annoying, loud, selfish and demanding. She’s probably about six, and is prone to leaping out of cupboards and demanding sweets. Fiona goes to the same school as Tim but is incredibly popular because she is the only person with blonde hair. So unusual is her hair colour in the village, she is treated like a princess by her fawning classmates. She thinks this is brilliant and is thinking of changing her name to ‘The Lovely Fiona’.

Then comes Mum, or Beetroot as she is affectionately called by the rest of the family, because that’s the colour she goes when she’s been exercising. She used to be a dance instructor at an old people’s home. There are hardly any old people’s homes in the countryside and usually the last thing country folk want to do is learn how to twerk. She now spends her time making cakes and cookies and doing squat-thrusts. The farmhouse is bursting with tins and boxes full of sweet treats. There are only so many slices of cake you can eat in one day. Believe me I’ve tried. Ten pieces of Battenberg cake one teatime is my record. My sick was pink and yellow for a week.

Pets next? Nope, the Gravys have no pets, which is rare for a farming family. Tim had never understood what all the fuss was about having a pet. The prospect of picking up warm dog poo and putting it in a plastic bag made him shiver.

Then right at the back is Dad, or Frank as everyone is going to call him in this book, because hardly anyone is called Frank anymore and I think it’s a name that needs a bit more glory. Most footballers in my day were called Clive or Frank or Roger . . . oh yes, or Pelo. No, not Pelé . . . what a foolish name.

Frank had sunk all of his money into the farm, which was horribly overpriced considering it only had two fields and one of them was full of rubbish. His other problem was that he knew absolutely nothing about being a farmer, expect for wearing wellingtons and occasionally leaning on fences to slowly give directions to people who were lost. This wouldn’t be enough to keep a farm running. Farming is hard – as Frank and his family are about to find out.

2

THE BOY IN THE BUSH

Tim’s walk to and from school wasn’t particularly pleasant. To avoid the dangerous pavement-less road that the farm sat on, his classmates and his annoying younger sister, he had found a shortcut through the woods. It was a treacherous ten-minute scramble, but it was a small price to pay to avoid being teased before and after school.

On this particularly grotty Tuesday afternoon, Tim was making his way back from another thoroughly unfulfilling day at school, where he had, once again, learned nothing new. Being able to comfortably recite all the times tables up to twelve had left the rest of the class in fits of laughter for a good twenty minutes. Even the teacher was smirking at him. She had purple hair and carried a fish in her handbag, but no one ever commented on this or thought it was unusual. She could only do up to the three times table, and she really liked swimming in the village pond. Tim felt totally helpless. Spending five days a week in this school made him want to melt into a wall and become an untroubled, happy brick.

Tim had just grabbed a small, wet branch to stop himself sliding into a puddle as he negotiated the uneven path, when he noticed a pair of wellington boots sticking out from a thick bramble bush. One boot was green and the other was red, and they appeared to be attached to a pair of legs.

Tim approached with caution. The legs belonged to what looked like a boy of his age. The boy definitely didn’t go to Tim’s school, so he wondered where he had come from and what he was doing in the woods. The bramble bush looked really painful and Tim thought the boy must have tripped and fallen into it, probably knocking himself out in the process. His eyes were shut and his mouth was wide open.

Tim found a long, thin stick and poked the boy ever so gently in the stomach with it. Like you do with things you are not sure about. The boy didn’t move. Perhaps he was dead, Tim thought, backing away.

Then, the boy suddenly let out the loudest snore ever and woke up.

He stared at Tim for a while from his thorny bed. ‘Am I dead?’ he asked in a rough but perky voice. He sounded like a local, but Tim had never seen him before.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Tim, lowering the stick ever so slightly. He wasn’t sure if this boy was going to be a threat. The stick was his only protection.

‘Well, that’s good isn’t it? You never know what woodland creatures might have had a little nibble on you while you are trying to have a sleep, do you?’

Tim shrugged. He’d never wanted to sleep in a bramble bush, or even go camping for that matter. He liked his duvet and the nice, boiling-hot radiator in his bedroom at home too much.

The boy pulled himself out of the bush and stretched to his full height, which was exactly the same height as Tim. Tim took a step back and eyed him suspiciously. He was dressed like he had escaped from a charity shop. Above his mismatched wellies was a very battered pair of black tracksuit bottoms that had the word ‘girlfriend’ written in pink across the front. Clearly these were girls’ tracksuit bottoms, and he was wearing them the wrong way round. On his body he wore what looked like chain mail over a computer game T-shirt. His face was fairly normal looking apart from the thin moustache he’d drawn in felt-tip pen above his top lip. His clump of black hair was full of twigs and looked like he’d just slept in a bush. Which he had.

‘I’m Cairo, pleased to meet you,’ said the boy, with a cheery wave.

Tim wasn’t sure he had heard him correctly. He can’t have said Cairo, his brain flickered curiously. Nobody is called Cairo.

‘Hi Carl,’ Tim’s mouth said carefully. ‘I’m Tim.’ He casually tossed his stick into the nearest bush; this boy seemed friendly.

Cairo gave him a funny look and burst out laughing, showing a full set of normal white teeth. OK, some were a bit yellow round the edges, but whose aren’t at eleven? Tim did a little inward sigh of relief. Clearly Cairo hadn’t swum in the village pond.

‘It’s Cairo, not Carl. Like the capital of Egypt. Cairo.’

‘Oh, sorry,’ replied Tim politely. He desperately wanted to say ‘Who the broken auntie is called Cairo?’ and ‘Are your parents a bit bonkers?’ but decided that would be rude, especially to someone he’d just met.

‘Don’t worry,’ the strangely dressed boy said with a grin. ‘I get it all the time. My mum is a big fan of going on holiday. She loves Greece and wanted to call me Athens, but she got in a fluster when she was registering my name and blurted out Cairo instead. I’m glad, ’coz Athens is a girl’s name.’

Tim frowned. He wasn’t up to speed on which capital cities were girls’ names and which weren’t. ‘Didn’t your dad stop her?’ he asked.

‘Nah, I’ve never met him, and Mum doesn’t really talk about him either. Means I can only get in trouble with one person I suppose.’ Cairo smiled and did a tiny shrug. Tim wasn’t great at reading people’s feelings, but even he could tell that Cairo was bothered by not having a dad. ‘Think he lives in Europe somewhere and wears shorts a lot,’ added Cairo. ‘I saw a photo of him once . . . well it was half a photo – the bottom half. I would recognize his legs . . .’ He trailed off and concentrated on shaving away at a long stick – produced from inside his tracksuit bottoms – with what looked like an industrial potato peeler. Tim’s mum usually did all the cooking at home, so he’d never had to use a potato peeler before; he didn’t know they could be used on trees! Oh, before you start raiding the kitchen drawers – don’t use your parents’ potato peeler on a tree; it will snap. Cairo’s one is very special.

‘Don’t you go to school in the village?’ Tim asked.

‘Nah,’ said Cairo, grinning. ‘I’m home-taught by my mum. It’s quite good really. Today I’ve been learning about the Three Musketeers.’ He pointed at his silly felt-tip-pen moustache.

‘Lucky you,’ said Tim, wishing he could be home-taught.

‘My mum’s proper job is running an animal shelter.’ The boy waved an arm towards the general direction of the village. ‘Hey, why don’t you come and see it?’

‘Um, erm . . . I’m not really sure,’ said Tim hesitantly. He was desperate to make a new friend in the village, if only to have someone to play computer games with or just to kick a football about. However, Cairo did seem a bit odd.

‘We’ve got some really interesting animals.’

Cairo was just as keen to make new friends. Being home-taught made him quite lonely, and Tim seemed nice and normal, not like the rest of the kids in the village. Cairo’s mum didn’t ever let him swim in the village pond. She was clever.

‘I’ve also got some really good fizzy drinks . . .’ Cairo added quickly. ‘And I’ve made you a sword for the journey.’

Cairo handed Tim the piece of branch he had been working on with the potato peeler; it now looked like a beautifully carved samurai katana.

‘Wow, that’s brilliant,’ gasped Tim, swooshing it around his head.

The katana was amazing. But Tim was also a sucker for fizzy drinks, especially as his mum never let him have them, so the prospect of one of those sealed the deal. Maybe Cairo wasn’t that odd after all.

‘It’s this way back, won’t take us long,’ said Cairo with a friendly smile.

So off the pair trotted back to Cairo’s, Tim blissfully unaware that Cairo sometimes liked pouring custard into his wellingtons to see what it felt like on his feet. Probably best not to tell Tim though. He might change his mind about going to Cairo’s house and then we’d have to stop the book and just hum for a bit.

3

A MAGNIFICENT BEAST

The walk to Cairo’s house was a lot longer than Tim expected, but he didn’t really mind. He enjoyed listening to his new friend talking about his favourite topics, which were animals, sauces and people called Keith. Cairo was a bit odd, but a good kind of odd. Not the dribbling and barking-at-the-moon kind of odd.

Cairo had just started telling him about a cheese and pickle sandwich he’d found on the top deck of a bus once, when they suddenly arrived at his house. I say ‘suddenly’ because it just appeared at the end of a winding path, like a giant had thrown it there from another country and this was where it had landed.

The house was a long, light-blue bungalow with a number of sheds and outhouses attached to and scattered around it. On the roof was one of the biggest satellite dishes Tim had ever seen. He thought it must have been able to pick up channels from all over the world.

‘It doesn’t work, never has,’ said Cairo, when he saw Tim looking at the satellite. ‘It doesn’t even have a wire you can plug it in with.’

‘Oh,’ said Tim, feeling somewhat disappointed. ‘Why don’t you take it down then?’

Cairo laughed. ‘Because it’s the weight of a thousand hippos! It’s only good for target practice . . . anyway, come over here – I’ve got something really good to show you.’

‘Is it the fizzy drinks?’ Tim’s eyes lit up.

‘Er . . . not exactly – we’ll get to them in a minute, after I’ve shown you this thing.’

Tim stopped thinking about