The Sleeping Sword. Michael Morpurgo

It was becoming obvious that I couldn’t go back to school with the others on Tresco, that sooner or later I’d have to go to a ‘special’ school for the blind. There was no school for the blind on Scilly. I’d have to go to the mainland. I’d have to leave home.

      When the time came my mother tried to break it to me as gently as she could. ‘All the kids have to go to school on the mainland at sixteen anyway, for their sixth form. You know that, Bundle. You’d just be doing the same thing, only a few years earlier, that’s all. And it’s just the right place for you. Dad and I have been to see it. They’ve got all the right equipment, all the specialist teachers you need. Lovely grounds, too. It’s only up at Exeter. Not far. We can come and see you, and you can come back home often. I promise.’

      It was the final confirmation that I was indeed different from everyone around me and that, therefore, I was to be treated differently.

      ‘It won’t be until the end of the summer, Bun,’ said my father, laying a hand on my arm. ‘And it won’t be so bad, honest it won’t. You’ll see. I went away to school at your age, and I loved it. Lots to do, lots of new friends.’

      I was to be separated from home, from everyone I knew and loved, my mother, my father, from Liam and Dan, and from Anna, too. It was more than I could bear. I lay there all night thinking it through. By the time I heard the dawn chorus of gulls and oystercatchers, I had made up my mind.

      There was only one way out, and I would have to take it.