Dane Hilditch, aged 13 and one-quarter, stared sullenly and silently out the window of his dad's BMW. The car was old and still in immaculate condition but Dane was angry and tempted to place the gum he was chewing under his seat just so it wasn't so perfect. It wasn't that his dad couldn't afford a new car, it's just that Malcolm Hilditch didn't like to waste money. Dane didn't know whether it was that his dad was a stereotypical "tight-arsed" Scotsman as the boys at school had teased him (shoes two sizes too big at the start of the year so he'd grow into them) or that he had a divorce to settle and four kids to feed and house.

Divorce.

An ugly word.

Painful and soul destroying. Dane was losing his family and there was nothing he could to do stop it.

He'd welcomed the call from his school chum, Neville, not just because it was a chance to see the Huntington's huge country estate and to run with his mates, no in his mind with him away, his two younger sisters Lydia and Lizzie sent off to Aunty Helen's and his older sister Jane abroad with friends their parents would be alone, alone to remember that they loved each other. Tom and the girls would come home to find dad had moved back into the house and his family would be okay. He'd leave for Eton not with two half homes but with one solid unit.

No, as much as he hadn't wanted to leave his mum, as much as he had tried to be the man of the house, this would be perfect. Neville, their friend George and Neville's (in his words at least) "painful' cousin Charlie, plenty of trees to climb, horses to ride and places to fish and explore. All together for two weeks during the summer holidays. Two weeks and then home for two weeks before heading off to their new school, to boarding school, to a new adventure, Eton. He had been terrified and excited in equal measures about moving up, that was until the D.I.V.O.R.C.E talk and the move from the family house to a much more modest place with his mother and the girls, a place by the coast, granny's old house, a house of great summer memories but not home, not his home. His home had a for sale sign on it now.

He stared out the window. Dad was talking but Dane was only half listening, the usual lecture – be good, offer to help, good manners, blah, blah, blah. They were almost there and then his dad could go to his mother and things could fix themselves.

Of course, he didn't really believe it. Not really. But he had to have hope and this time away gave him that.

"Nearly there son!" his dad said jovially, pulling Dane back out of his head, back to the car. In front of them were huge black metal gates, a little box was fitted into a brick wall to the side. His father hit the intercom switch and talked to a security guard, it was all a bit surreal, more so when suddenly the gates were swinging open in front of him. What lay on the other side of the black gates was something from a movie or a television show. It was a more like a park than a front yard. The biggest most stately white Georgian-style home stood at the end of a sweeping tree-lined drive.

Dane's eyes bugged out and his dad laughed.

"Bit bigger than home hey Dane Thomas," his dad offered, still trying to be friendly, still trying to pretend nothing was happening. He loved dad a lot but Dane would be glad to get away from his father, his parents and they're endless 'don't worry it will be alright" it felt anything but alright. The safe world he knew was gone and it didn't feel like it would be "alright" ever again. No-one wanted to say that though, no-one wanted to treat him like the man he was becoming, they wanted to treat him like a child but his childhood was disappearing fast.

Dane glared at his father.

"Which one?" he asked sullenly.

"It will be all right son," his dad offered again.

Dane blew out an angry breath and stared intently at the trees outside the car, they were old, large and very green, some with branches that swept across the road. It was like being in a fairytale, or Midsummer Night's dream – the play his mother had taken he and his sisters to in London.

And then up ahead, up in a tree, just before they got to the house, Dane saw something curious. Something curious indeed. It was a figure, a child, a boy about his own age sitting in a tree in front of the house, legs dangling down over the road. He couldn't see the face, a large book obscuring that from view and a cap leaving him unable to work out if it was red-haired George or dark-haired Neville, but from the length of those legs, it wasn't either, unless they'd had massive growth spurts in the past few weeks. It had to be Charlie then. Dane was curious, curious to see what he was reading, curious to see what he looked like, just curious.

His father pulled up in the drive outside the house, the car tyres crunching on the gravel drive as it stopped. Exiting the vehicle he turned around just in time to see Charlie – looking for all the world like Puck from Midsummer Night's – drop the book to the grass below and climb nimbly down the tree. The long legs, not unlike his own, meant "Puck" was at the car in a matter of seconds. Dane still couldn't really make out his face, the cap pulled down tight, casting shadows until the child was right in front of him. And then a surprising thing happened.

"Puck" pulled off his cap, shaking his head so that a wild riot of brown hair spilt out around his face. Except it wasn't a he, no, although dressed like a boy and not particularly curvy yet, this was definitely a girl, a strange girl indeed. A few years later, reading the first Harry Potter, Dane couldn't help laughing recalling this moment, the first moment he met her, wondering if JK Rowlings had used his good friend as an inspiration for Hermione Granger because she looked and acted for all the world like Hermione. He made sure they saw the movie together not as a date, they didn't date, it wasn't them, they were just, well, them. But he laughed and pointed when he finally saw Hermoine on screen, Charlie had huffed indignantly saying they were nothing alike while subconsciously touching her brown hair to make sure none of the parts of the wild creature on her head had escaped its ponytail tethering.

But at this moment on the Huntington Estate in the middle of Surrey, they were years from Hermione Granger, years from Cambridge where they would both go to study, years from adulthood.

They were just two gangly, and what Dane didn't realise at that moment, lost young children needing a friend.

At this moment his mouth flew open. He heard his father chuckle behind him but he didn't turn, he couldn't. He was caught in her eyes, big and green - luminous and intelligent, watchful.

She thrust a hand out towards him.

"You must be Dane Thomas Hilditch, I'm Sarah Charlotte Huntington but my family calls me Charlie – I don't care for it much, my best friend calls me Fox – as in Fox Hunt – Huntington, I like Fox –you can call me Fox if you like. Can I call you Dane or maybe Willy – you look like the actor who plays Willy Wonka, he's got those curls too?" she said all in one burst hardly stopping to draw breath.

Dane gaped.

Here in front of him was a force of nature, that was apparent immediately. He looked down at the hand still being offered to him, at the book now tucked under Sarah Charlotte Huntington's arm "Midsummer Night's Dream a Fairytale".

He smiled and ran a hand nervously through his mess of bouncy blonde curls which he had indeed been told (on a great number of occasions) made him look like Gene Wilder from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. 

Blue eyes still wide taking in the curious creature in front of him, he tentatively moved his hand forward towards her and she took it smiling, pumping it vigorously before leaning in conspiratorially. For a moment Dane was worried she was going to kiss him and went to move away but instead she looked over to his father, the older Hilditch now out of the car and walking towards them, and whispered in his ear.

"Aunt Charlotte told me about the divorce, the boys don't know," she hissed quickly.

"I lost my mother this past winter; dad's an archaeologist on a dig in Greece, that's why I'm here with Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Harry. My aunt thought you might need a friend to talk to because other people don't understand what it's like to have your world change like that."

She pulled away and looked at him, her eyes briefly sad, but it was gone in a flash and then she turned to greet his father like she'd known him for years.

Dane watched her.

She was something different.

He liked different.

He wanted to feel angry at Neville's mother for telling this stranger, this strange girl, about his personal life. He didn't like people knowing things about him, not things like that.

But somehow it was okay.

Somehow he sensed Sarah Charlotte Huntington could keep a secret, that she was a kindred spirit and it suddenly felt, not better, but not quite so unbearable. 

Somehow Dane knew even at that moment that he had a friend.

Maybe a friend for life?

Life would certainly be interesting with her in it that's for sure.

He smiled as she went to the door and called for the others, it felt like the first time he'd really smiled in weeks and it's what he needed to do in front of the other boys. He didn't want them to think he was weak, the hurt lion was always picked on by the others, he'd learned that at school already. No, he needed his upper lip stiff and a smile on his face.

And then suddenly he went from alone to overwhelmed, engulfed by people, Neville, George, Neville's parents, welcoming, organising, showing him around this way and that until he was sure he'd get lost just trying to find the bathroom. The boys took him to his room while the parents "went to the drawing room to talk" and in the confusion, Sarah Charlotte slipped silently out of the house. The other boys didn't seem to miss her but Dane wondered, she'd been so confident with him but then when everyone else descended she'd looked lost. He'd find out later she didn't like crowds, they'd find out later she had anxiety disorder and high functioning autism – Aspergers - but right now it was like she really was a sprite, there one minute and gone the next.

But she hadn't gone far.

Just back up her favourite tree.

He saw her out the window and he smiled again.

The book was back in front of her nose, legs were dangling and she was lost to the outside world.

He didn't see her again until dinner but the Sarah at dinner was an entirely different creature. Washed, cleaned and out of the shorts and T-shirt she'd worn earlier, she was now in a dress and looking more girl than boy. She also looked decidedly uncomfortable, not at all like the person he'd met earlier in the day. Her hair had been pulled back neatly into a ponytail by some brave Lion-tamer if not by the girl herself. She sat by her aunt, the only girls in a decidedly male household. It felt weird to Tom who so used to being engulfed by females that anything else didn't seem normal. But she was normal, normal for his world, like his own sisters she didn't sit there and listen or talk about boys, she was having an animated discussion with her uncle, her father's older brother, about the fox hunt he was organising in a few weeks. Sarah Charlotte was a greenie, he smiled, she had good arguments and he was amazed at how much she knew and how much she was willing to say to her uncle, how much he took from her. When Neville sneered and asked what a silly girl would know about men's business, his father said he liked an educated passionate woman and made him apologize. This wasn't his world, Dane didn't know enough to comment but he agreed with Henry Huntington on that point. He knew too why Charlie preferred Fox – she liked irony and she liked to stir the pot and Dane liked her more and more. With dinner out of the way, they adjourned to the drawing room where they played charades and Dane relaxed, relaxed for the first time in weeks and enjoyed the moment.

But it was short lived.

In the dark.

In his bed.

Reality returned.

He cried.

Not a teenager - an almost man. 

A little boy lost.

Alone.

His family imploding.

Suddenly homesick.

Suddenly missing his mother, his older sister, even the babies, he missed his twin baby sisters. He could be the big boy around them. But here..........

He didn't cry loudly but noise carries in an old house.

A gentle knock.

A figure at the door.

"I thought you would like this," she said quietly creeping in uninvited but not entirely unwelcome. In her hands, she held some tissues and a bottle of water.

"I know I need to replenish after I've had a good cry," she said handing him her offerings. He took them staring at her. She was wearing a T-Shirt and soft sleep shorts like him. Not the nighties that his sisters preferred, her eyes were red-rimmed too and he realized she was here as much for herself as for him. She needed him, though she'd never admit it – he knew that already just a few hours into their friendship. It made him feel better; it made him feel less alone.

He opened the bottle and took a sip, handing it back to her and she took a swig too.

"Day is okay – you can forget during the day, get busy. But at night it comes back."

He nodded earnestly.

"I just want it back the way it was!" he sighed sadly.

"Yeah me too."

Her eyes looked sad and he thought she might cry but she didn't, she wouldn't, so instead, they sat in companionable silence passing the bottle back and forward between them, just glad to have someone who understood a little.

"How did she die?" he asked finally, quietly as they came close to finishing off the water, breaking the silence.

"Cancer, it was horrible and sad and she was in a lot of pain and then she wasn't and my dad couldn't cope so he dumped me here and took off to work until he didn't feel as sad," she said matter-of-factly handing him the bottle, Dane took a final swig. He wanted to feel sorry for her, to comfort her but she didn't seem to want or need it so he kept his opinions to himself, he was becoming good at that, not wanting to rock the boat between his parents or make it worse, no matter how much he wanted to tell them they were being silly.

Her smile was watery and so was his. 

"But I have Aunty Char and Uncle Harry and Neville, though I could do without him."

Dane laughed.

"Neville's okay!" he said defending his friend but only a little, Neville was a great guy but he could be a bit of a dick and he didn't have a clue about girls, certainly not about Sarah Charlotte. She wasn't annoying she was funny and clever.

"You're not related to him!" she said rolling her eyes, they both laughed then and Dane changed the subject quickly to her book, to Shakespeare, to the play – which she'd seen too thanks to her Aunt.

"Actually I want to know all there is to know about him – maybe write books like dad does on Ancient Greece," she said her eyes lighting up.

"That'd be so cool!" he enthused not really knowing if it was a job you could actually do and be paid for but not willing to admit that to his new friend. He didn't want to scare her off or make her leave by saying the wrong thing. Too many people seemed to be doing that in his life at the moment. But looking at how she sat comfortably cross-legged on his bed she wasn't going anywhere for a while.

"What do you want to do?"
"I want to be an actor!" Dane said without hesitation, surprising himself.

He didn't know why he told her, he hadn't really told anyone yet. It was just an idea. Something he'd toyed with. But he'd loved that play and he loved the plays he, his sisters and cousins had put on in the backyard at grannies. He was starting to realise that people did it for a living and it seemed like something he'd be good at.

"Oh wow really?? Maybe one day you could be in a Shakespeare play and I could help you, we could work together!"

"Fox and Willy, Shakespeare experts," she laughed and he smiled at her.

"I think I like Will – you could call me Will if you like, it's like Willy Wonka and William Shakespeare?"

Her face lit up at that and she nodded, her wild brown hair shaking around her like a halo. She was looking tired now and he was finally feeling that way too. As if to illustrate the fact,  she yawned widely, getting up off the bed and stretching.

"Thanks, Will!" Fox said heading to the door, yawning again for good measure.

"I'd like that!"

"Are you going to be okay now? I'm just next door if you aren't and my door's always open," she said quietly.

"Yes," he nodded snuggling back down into his bed before turning onto his side to face his retreating new friend.

"Thanks Fox, my doors always open too," he said.

"I know!" she said quietly and disappeared into the night.