Fire and Hemlock. Diana Wynne Jones

staring with her eyes squinched, she found she could see the misty shape of the Chinese horse too, rearing amid the vapour that was rising all round the four men. The horse and the smaller shape disappeared when she knelt on her bed with her face right up against the picture, but the four men were always there.

      Polly spent some time thinking what Tan Coul’s friends might be like. When she was tired of painting, she wrote Mr Lynn a letter about them. Some of the letter was about Awful Leslie and Dreadful Edna, and some of it was suggestions about how to fight dragons, but the friends were the important part.

       Tan Coul has three frends who are heros too. They are Tan Audel who is sumone I don’t know, and Tan Thare and Tan Hanivar. I know them. Tan Thare is jolly, he can make music sound out of nowhere to friten his enemies. Tan Hanivar is rather a sad case becuse he keeps turning into things and doesnt want peple to know. He can be a wolf or even a dragon, it is very hard for his frends not to kill him by mistake.

      At the end of the week Granny took Polly home, with her paintings, cards, and letter in a new folder. Mum seemed glad to see her. She hugged Polly and told Granny she was grateful. But Dad was gone. His hi-fi had gone too, and an armchair, and a number of smaller things from round the house. The divorce was definite.

      “Definite,” said Ivy, when Polly asked.

      In a way, it made home as peaceful as Granny’s house.

      Polly got very busy then preparing for the Christmas play at school. She remembered to send her Christmas cards, but she clean forgot the letter. After all, hero-business was only a game and school was real.

      Mum and Dad both came to the school play, but they did not look at one another and they sat on opposite sides of the hall. Polly did not know Dad was there until she came on the stage as the youngest of the Three Kings. Nina told her. Nina was King Herod. She had turned out to be far better than any of the boys at ranting and roaring and looking kingly. Miss Green said that none of the boys could get on the stage without looking sheepish, and she made them all shepherds, for obvious reasons, as she said. So Nina was having the time of her life in a wriggly stuck-on moustache and beard, shouting and strutting and having everybody executed. But her eyes kept moving from one side of the hall to the other, keeping tabs on whose parents were there.

      “Your Dad’s come,” she said to Polly out of the side of her mouth.

      “I know!” Polly whispered, with rather a jolt, because she had not known at all. And she got on with trying to offer King Herod some gold.

      “Away with it!” cried Nina. “I am not your King of Kings!” [He’s left your Mum, hasn’t he?] And I know no more than you where he may be.”

      “It is not you but a child, Your Majesty [Yes],” said Polly. “[Shut up.] A star rising in the east told us that he was born.”

      “This is terrible news!” King Herod said to the audience. And to Polly, “[Are they going to get divorced?] And what else does that star tell you? [Is that what that boy Seb was talking about?] Do you know where the child is?”

      Polly sighed and nodded to the first question. She shook her head to the second question, but it was one of the other Kings who had to explain that they were following the star, so she could not speak. This conversation, she thought, was exactly like the way the deeds of Tan Coul were mixed up with the real world. She wished she could have explained it to Mr Lynn like this. She felt prickly anger with Nina for being so nosy, and it made her go cold and stony. She suddenly knew how Ivy felt.

      “Then I tell you what,” Nina was saying as she strutted round the stage. “I’ll entrust the three of you with a very important mission.” She strutted up behind Polly. “[Your Dad’s girlfriend doesn’t want him to see you, does she?] I wish to honour the King of Kings myself. I’d like you to tell me when you’ve found him. [It must feel ever so strange!]”

      Polly pressed her lips together and refused to say more than the lines she had learned. The Three Kings left the stage. Nina had a good rant and then left too.

      She pushed through the angels waiting to go on and found Polly. “Tell me what it’s like not having your Dad at home. Was that boy a detective?”

      “No,” Polly said stonily.

      “My Mum says divorce marks you for life,” Nina persisted. “Do you feel very different?”

      “I’m just the same as ever I was!” Polly said loudly. Miss Green looked round from arranging angels’ wings and shushed. “Now go away,” said Polly.

      Dad left the hall before the play finished. “Why do you think he came?” Polly asked Mum as they walked home.

      “Because I told him to,” said Ivy. “I told him you had a right to have your own father take an interest in you.”

      “I wish you hadn’t,” Polly said. Not wanting to mention Nina, she explained, “He was bored. I saw him yawning.”

      “So was I bored!” Ivy retorted. “I didn’t see why I should be the only one. That play has not changed one word since you started at that school. And before that I was the Angel Gabriel in it myself. I could almost scream by now.”

      This was one of the queer things about divorce which Polly could not have described to Nina – the way Mum said this kind of thing to her that she would normally have said to Dad instead. And the way Dad was not really gone. He was not there, but he hovered in the background all the time. Polly wished he would go right away and get it over with.

      She went away with Mum for Christmas, to Aunty Maud. Aunty Maud’s house was full of tiny cousins, staggering or crawling or lying in cots and bawling. Since they all thought Polly was marvellous, Polly barely had time to notice that Mum was out most of the day. “Ivy needs to relax,” Aunty Maud told her. The only time Ivy was there during the day was Christmas morning, when they all opened their presents. Polly’s big present was a dolls’ house from Dad. He must have forgotten she had one already. Polly tried to be brave. She had wanted a fort, and some tanks and guns. She smiled.