Once upon a time, around half past cockadoodle-doo, a girl woke up in a hole in a hedge. Not just any hole in any hedge, but the Hocus Pocus Hole in the Hedge that she called Home.
She woke bright and breezy because she was so excited. Just the day before, she peeped through the Hocus Pocus Hole in the Hedge and saw a girl and a boy around her age moving into the old house at the top of the garden. It was the first time in over 20 years that anybody her own age lived there, so she had high hopes for great fun and games again, never mind a bagful of new stories.
In the old house, around the same time or maybe closer to cockadoodle-dee, 10-year-old Callie Drudge woke from her first sleep in the family’s new home.
The house belonged to her mother’s Great Aunt Dympna but was empty since the old woman packed her bags one morning and just disappeared. All Great Aunt Dympna left was a note for her milkman, which began:
“Dear Malcolm…”
(He was known as Malcolm the Milkman for obvious reasons.)
“Dear Malcolm,
I will not need any milk for a while as I am travelling to the other side of the world to escape the coming plague and to learn how to surf. When you read this, I will be hanging ten and catching some serious waves in Waikiki. Dympna.”
Nobody had seen nor heard from her in years.
