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Mo picked up his coffee cup It still hurt when he ie,’ he said ‘You heard Elinor – it’s not far away And by the end of the day after that you’ll be back in Elinor’s huge bed, the one that a whole school class could sleep in’ He was trying to ie couldn’t She looked at the strawberries on her plate How red they were

‘I’ll have to hire a car too, Elinor,’ said Mo ‘Can you lend ain’

Elinor nodded, her gaze lingering on Meggie ‘You know sohter is very keen on books just now I reot so absorbed in a book that wea pair of scissors and cutting it up And now I’ to think about, eh?’ She folded her napkin and pushed her chair back ‘I’hter who Fenoglio is’

Then she was gone, leaving Meggie at the table with Mo He ordered another coffee, even though he usually drank no more than one cup

‘What about your strawberries?’ he asked ‘Don’t you want thelio is the man rote Inkheart,’ he said ‘It’s possible that as the author he will still have some copies Indeed, it’s more than possible, it’s very probable’

‘Oh, coie scornfully ‘Capricorn’s sure to have stolen theo! He stole all the copies – you saw that!’

But Mo shook his head ‘I don’t believe he will have thought of Fenoglio You know, it’s a funny thing about writers Most people don’t stop to think of books being written by people much like theo – they don’t expect toThey know their stories but not their names, and certainly not their faces And most writers like it that way – you heard Elinor say it was quite hard for her to get hold of Fenoglio’s address Believe me, it’s more than likely that Capricorn has no idea the man rote his story lives scarcely two hours’ drive away frohtfully pleated the tablecloth, then sain ‘All the same, I’d rather ent to Elinor’s house,’ she said ‘I don’t see why …’ She hesitated, but then finished what she had been going to say ‘I don’t see why you want the book so one, she added in her thoughts You tried to bring her back but it doesn’t work Let’s go home

Mo helped himself to another of her strawberries, the smallest of all ‘The little ones are always the sweetest,’ he said, and put it in his h of them, and was always terribly cross if it rained sothat they rotted in her strawberry bed’

A sain ‘Just this one last shot, Meggie,’ he said ‘Just this one And the day after toht Full of Words

What child unable to sleep on a war ship in the sky? I will teach you to see that ship

Roberto Cotroneo,

When a Child on a Suie stayed in the hotel while Mo went to the hire-car firm to collect the car he had booked She took a chair out on to the balcony, looked out over its white-painted railing to the sea shining like blue glass beyond the buildings, and tried to think of nothing, nothing at all The sound of the traffic drifting up to her was so loud that she almost didn’t hear Elinor’s knock