The Girl Who Didn't Know What To Believe

THE GIRL WHO
DIDN’T KNOW WHAT
TO BELIEVE
A story by
Àngels Codina, Flora McCrone and Neil Stoker
Illustrations by Flora McCrone

Contents
Introducing Meritxell
Sunday:
Meritxell’s world turns upside down
Monday:
Meritxell feels lost in space
Tuesday:
Meritxell meets some scientists
.
Wednesday:
Meritxell and global warming
Thursday:
Meritxell discovers superfoods
Friday:
Meritxell and the Media
Saturday:
Meritxell goes back home
4
10
16
28
38
50
58
72

Introducing Meritxell

Meritxell was born at noon. Her head appeared
at the first deep boom of the big wooden-cased
clock in the hall. And at the moment
it struck 12, she took her first breath
which, as the sound of the clock still echoed around the
house, she let out in a despairing wail.
And in that moment she chose her own name, because
Meritxell is the word for ‘midday’ in the mountains of Andorra.
That was where her Mother had spent her summer
holidays, clambering over rocks, and rolling down grass
meadows so fast that she became quite dizzy, and gulping
down glasses of milk still warm from the cow’s udder. (And
if you have never been to Andorra, and think it is an odd
looking name, you can pretend the ‘tx’ is a ‘ch’, as if it were
‘Merichell’, and you’ll be doing just fine. Just don’t ask why
they didn’t use ‘ch’ in the first place, or we’ll never get on
with the story!).
Punctuality is not a bad quality, her Mother observed,
and midday is a very considerate time at which to be born,
as it gave the midwife time to have her breakfast beforehand,
tidy everything up afterwards, and be home in time
for tea. And as Meritxell grew up, consideration for others
was something that was very important to her. Indeed some
might say that she was a little too considerate. Meritxell was
so keen to please people she sometimes forgot what it was
5

she wanted herself. Imagine if everyone was only thinking
of other people and never of themselves, no-one would
ever go through a door, because they were all waiting for
the others to go first!
Meritxell was actually so considerate that she also believed
whatever people said. If her Mother said that it was
important to wash your hands before mealtimes, then Meritxell
believed her, and would wash them very carefully. If
her teacher said that the world is round, and the stars in the
sky are burning balls of gas, then Meritxell believed her and
tried hard to learn everything she was taught. If her neighbour
told her that babies are brought by storks, then she
would believe her. And if one of her classmates said that
Justin Bieber and Rihanna and Harry Stiles had visited her,
she would believe them too. Meritxell believed everything,
because, after all, if people said something, they must say
it for a reason, and it was only kind to take what they said
6

very seriously indeed.
Meritxell had two very best friends. Her first best friend
was her Grandpa. He was the funniest, kindest, wisest person
she knew. He lived with Meritxell and her Mother, in
the same house where the little girl had been born all those
years before. Grandpa was always tinkering with things that
he was either taking apart or putting back together on the
kitchen table. Meritxell was never sure which, and sometimes
she thought he didn’t know either.
When he wasn’t tinkering, Grandpa was reading. He
didn’t read books that you or I would think were exciting.
No-one was on an adventure, or learning to be a magician.
He also didn’t read books you’d think were useful, like how
to make a cake or grow redcurrants, or how to become a
successful YouTuber. Instead he read books by Philosophers,
people who thought very long and very hard - so
7

hard you could imagine their heads might explode from the
sheer effort - about the meaning of life. “It’s only polite,”
he would say, “to see what has come out of the heads of
people who have thought so hard!” It seemed to Meritxell
that he was taking their heads apart just as he might do with
a pocket watch, spreading their thoughts on the table and
trying to fit them all back in again.
Meritxell’s other best friend was her Grandpa’s dog,
Hume. Hume was very hairy, very black, and loved
everything and everyone so much he would rush from one
thing to the next, sniffing it, wagging his tail, and snuffling
happily to himself. His eyes, when you could see them
through all the black hair, were an even deeper black. It
might not surprise you that Grandpa had named him after
a philosopher, and when Meritxell asked why he was called
Hume, Grandpa would say, “Well he’s a dog, and can you
imagine calling out ‘Xenophanes’ every time he runs off?”
“What’s more, Meri,” he would add, as if her name was far
too long too, “he’s a Scottish dog, so should have a Scottish
name”, and that would be the end of the matter.
Oh, and you could say that her third best friend - though
I’m really not sure if things can be friends - was her pocket
computer. She pretended it was a wizard’s mirror into the
rest of the world, and she called it Merlin, in honour of
the wizard in one of her favourite books. She could sit at
home, or on the pile of rocks on top of the hill, and talk to
her school friends on Merlin, or play chess with someone
in another country, or watch her favourite programmes, or
post her photos on Instagram. And that, I’m sure you’ll
agree, is a little bit like magic!
So Meritxell’s life seemed almost perfect. Her house
8

was on the edge of the town, with houses and shops and
schools in one direction, and fields and trees and hills in
the other. She would have breakfast with her Mother and
Grandpa, walk to school, and after school she and Grandpa
would take Hume out for a run through the woods
and along by the river. Then she would sit and do her homework,
and learn everything she was told to, and text her
school friends to find out what they were doing. And at
weekends she would help her Mother at home, except on
Saturday afternoons, when she would serve tea and cakes in
the Tea Shop. She looked after everyone there, and loved to
see them relaxed and happy.
But if that was all this book was about, it might be very
short, and even a little dull, because though we like to be
happy, we don’t seem to really want to read about other
people being happy. This book is about something that
happened, and about an adventure that this led to. And it
was an adventure that would change Meritxell, and maybe
others too, but we’ll have to wait and see about that.
9

Sunday
Meritxell’s world turns
upside down
10

The Day Her Life Changed started off seeming
quite ordinary to Meritxell. And if your ordinary
days are full of people you love, and opportunities
to please them, then that was not a bad
thing at all! It was a Sunday, and she and her Mother were
sitting at the kitchen table on a sunny day, peeling apples. It
was that time of year when there were lots of apples on the
ground and you have to pick them up swiftly or they’ll go
brown and mouldy and start to shrivel. So they sat with a
big bowl of juicy apples, and an enormous slightly battered
silver saucepan, and peeled and cored and sliced the fruit
and tossed it into the saucepan. Her Mother would then
make it into apple puree, which Meritxell loved to gobble
up with ice cream. Hume rather liked that too, because
somehow he always managed to eat some too.
Grandpa came into the kitchen with another bowlful of
apples, sat down, and took off the sun hat he liked to wear.
He leant down to ruffle the top of Hume’s head which he
always did with an affectionate ‘grrrrrr’. But this time, he
stopped at ‘grr..’, and when Meritxell and her Mother looked
up, they could see something was not right. His eyes were
wide open, and his face was pale, and he looked like someone
concentrating very hard on something. “Grandpa,
what’s wrong?”, blurted out Meritxell, and her Mother put
down her knife, jumped up and rushed round to him. Just
11

as she did, he took a breath and said in a slightly strange
voice, “Oops, had a bit of a turn there, maybe I should go
and lie down for a little.” Her Mother knelt down and held
his hands and looked into his eyes, and said firmly, “No, off
to the hospital with you!”, and ignored his protests as she
started to gather some things together.
“Meri,” Grandpa leaned over and whispered conspiratorially,
”it looks like I don’t have a choice. I am absolutely
fine, a lie-down is all I need, so this trip is just to make your
Mother happy. She does fuss sometimes!” And Meritxell
stopped worrying, and put her arms round his neck and
gave him a big hug. If he said there wasn’t a problem, then
she believed him, and she smiled inside at how silly her Mother
could be sometimes. So they all bundled into their little
car, with Mother driving, Grandpa next to her, and Meritxell
sat in the back with her arm round Hume, as he poked
his nose out of the window and loudly sniffed the air.
The hospital was a big white building with lots of signs
everywhere in case you wanted your eyes or ears or feet or
practically any part of you looked at. They left Hume in
the car, as he wasn’t allowed inside, and he watched them
walk through the main door before settling down for a nap.
Inside the hospital, Mother walked briskly up to the main
desk, where a nurse sat in a pale blue uniform, and Grandpa
followed a little behind, holding Meritxell’s hand, and
walking more carefully than usual. When they reached the
desk, Mother was already explaining the situation. The
nurse asked a few questions, wrote some notes, tapped on
her computer keyboard, and told them to take a seat.
“Everything’s fine, Meri”, Grandpa said as they sat and
waited, and Meritxell looked at her Mother, who had cal-
12

med down now that they were here and Grandpa wasn’t so
pale. She nodded at Meritxell and smiled, saying, “Nothing
to worry about!” and Meritxell beamed from ear to ear, because
it made her happy that Grandpa was OK. She sat and
played a game on Merlin where you had to squash tomatoes
before they squashed you. Eventually a doctor came out of
a nearby door, called Grandpa’s name, and they all went in
and sat down. Meritxell knew she was a doctor because she
wore a white coat, and just in case she was unsure, she had
a badge pinned to her coat saying ‘Doctor Rey’. Mother
and Grandpa answered the doctor’s questions, as Meritxell
looked round the room, at things to measure your height
and weight and blood pressure and who knows what else!
“I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about”. Meritxell looked
up as Dra Rey spoke to Grandpa, “and we will just keep
you in overnight while we do some tests.” Grandpa looked
at Mother and said with a grin, “now look what you’ve
done! Lucky I brought a friend with me.” He pulled one of
his philosophy books out of his top pocket, patted it, and
turned to Meritxell and said seriously, “Now young lady, I
am perfectly healthy, and I want you to take good care of
Hume until I get home, will you do that?” Meritxell nodded
vigorously and gave him another of her best hugs. The
Doctor had said he would be fine, and Mother had said
he would be fine, and he had said so too, and she felt very
happy and secure, because he was her Grandpa and her
friend, and was a very special part of her life.
Meritxell and her Mother sat in the little hospital cafe,
and relaxed a little. Meritxell liked sitting in cafes because
she could watch everything that was going on around her.
It was something she and her Mother and Grandpa did to-
13

gether on Saturday mornings after doing the shopping. In
contrast to her Mother, who drank tiny no-nonsense cups
of black coffee, Meritxell always had a milky mix of coffee
and chocolate, which was, she thought, what you’d get if
you asked a magician to brew a frothy potion of pleasure
mixed with self-indulgence.
She was just using her spoon to scoop up some of the
foam, when everything happened at once. She was thinking
about going for a long walk with Grandpa and Hume
the next day after school. And then the gentle buzz of the
hospital and the people making the coffee was interrupted
by a noise that was so loud, it forced its way into your
head and bounced around before escaping again. BEEP
BEEP BEEP...! Doors opened, and people in loose green
overalls and plastic shoes ran out past Meritxell and her
Mother. And up the corridor came Dra Rey, in long loping
strides. As she hurried by, she turned and looked at them,
and though she didn’t say anything, her eyes met Meritxell’s,
and said, as clearly as words on a page, that things were not
fine at all.
I could tell you so much about what happened after that,
but then you’d feel as confused as Meritxell did. Everything
seemed a blur, but the result stayed the same. Grandpa was
definitely very ill indeed; he was in a bed with tubes coming
out of him all over the place, and a plastic mask over his
face, and machines were beeping. One showed a picture of
a heartbeat every time it beeped, as if it were a television
saying, look, he’s alive, but only just! At one point, Dra Rey
was speaking softly to Mother, and she could hear words
like ‘touch-and-go’, which sounded to her about as far from
‘fine’ as it was possible to get.
14

Then they were back in the car, and Hume was so happy
to see them he jumped into the front and right back again,
but seemed a little confused about where Grandpa was.
When they were home, Mother picked up Meritxell in a
big embrace, which was very surprising because she hadn’t
done that for years, and Meritxell was much taller now than
she had been then. “I’m sure Grandpa will be OK,” her
Mother said, but Meritxell did not feel happy inside. All
she could hear in her head was ‘touch and go’, which Merlin
confirmed was definitely something to feel concerned
about.
15

Monday
Meritxell feels lost
in space
16

Meritxell woke in the morning from a fitful and
not very restful sleep. She opened her eyes,
and in one sense everything looked perfect:
the sun was making the curtains glow bright
orange, Merlin was on the table next to the bed, and the
birds were singing loudly outside the window. But things
were far from perfect, and she felt a tight knot of worry
about Grandpa in her stomach as if she’d accidentally swallowed
her flannel when she’d washed her face the night
before.
More than this though, something else had changed. It
was as if she had ‘borrowed’ the Wizard’s magic spectacles
and secretly put them on, and the whole world looked different,
but the glasses (being magic!) wouldn’t come off.
The world was no longer full of people who told her the
truth, people she could safely believe. Instead she found
herself looking at a world of lies and half-truths, where
other people could not be trusted. Meritxell sat up and
in a very uncharacteristic way, felt angry at the world, and
angry at the hospital, and Dra Rey, and even at her Mother
and Grandpa.
There was a snuffling at the bedroom door, and it started
to open. Hume slid in and ran up to her excitedly, as
if he hadn’t seen her for months, as he did every morning.
Meritxell let him jump onto her lap, and she said quietly,
17

“Hume, I think you are the only person in the whole world
I can trust.” Hume licked her face, as if to agree.
It seemed odd to Meritxell that she had to go to school,
as if nothing had happened, but her Mother insisted. “It’s
best to keep that mind of yours busy,” she said briskly, “and
besides I’ve got lots to do. Grandpa must be all right or
they’d have phoned, and I’ll visit later on this morning.” So
that was that, and Meritxell took Hume out for a run, then
forced herself to gather her things, and set off down the
road to school.
It was the same way she always went, but it all looked
different. The trees had the same shapes, but now looked
unfriendly. The sun struck her face, which used to delight
her, but this time it annoyed her. The sound of her trainers
on the gravel was harsh, instead of energising. She looked
straight ahead and tried not to let her thoughts stick long
enough in her head for her to hear them.
School itself seemed less real, and she avoided contact
with friends, and wished her desk was right at the back rather
than in the second row. Even Miss Borges, who used
to be Meritxell’s favourite teacher, seemed different: in her
lips there was no trace of her usual smile, and her velvet
voice now sounded scratchy in the little girl’s ears.
Meritxell and her classmates had been working on a project
about space for a while now, and Miss Borges was talking
to them about the Moon. “The Moon orbits the Earth
almost 400,000 km away. Can anyone remember how old
is it?”, said Miss Borges. Meritxell knew the answer to this,
because she learnt everything she was told to, and then a
little bit more.
But as she sat there with the answer sitting so near to
18

the tip of her tongue, that it was in danger of falling off
the end, she found herself forcing her mouth tight shut so
it couldn’t escape. Not only did she not want to answer the
question, she found that she did not believe the answer was
true anyway. All sorts of thoughts, that she’d never seen
before were coming into her head, crowding out the ones
she was used to. It was as if she was sitting in her favourite
cafe, sipping froth, when a coachload of tourists appeared
and crowded in and took the other chair, and made so
much noise she couldn’t even concentrate on the taste of
the chocolate.
These thoughts said things like, “How does she know?”,
“How does anyone really know?”, “Maybe she’s making it
up!”, “What if everything they tell you at school is a lie?”,
and a whole lot more. “La la la la la, ” thought Meritxell
very loudly, to try to control what was going on in her head,
but to no avail.
She must have looked odd or maybe she snorted with
the effort of it all, but Miss Borges turned and looked straight
at her, and mistaking Meritxell’s anguish for excitement,
said, “Meritxell, what do you want to say?” And some of
the considerate Meritxell must have still been there to make
her open her mouth obligingly, or more likely the new thoughts
just tricked her, but her mouth did open, and out they
came.
“How do you know how old the Moon is, and how do
you know how far away is it, and how do you know it’s going
round the Earth, and how do you know what it’s made of?”
she said, almost defiantly. Miss Borges, who was inclined to
get a little flushed anyway, became as red as a beetroot. This
was not what she was expecting at all, and children were
19

not supposed to ask anything, only to listen and answer her
questions. ”Um, I know that because I’ve read all about the
Moon, and all the answers were in those books”, she stuck
her chin out a bit, as if she had just made a good chess
move, and was saying “Ha, knight to bishop 7, check!”
The new Meritxell, awash with new powerful thoughts,
barely noticed; it was as if Miss Borges’ answers had burned
up in the red-hot atmosphere of Meritxell’s angry disbelief
before they reached her ears. “But maybe the books
are wrong” said Meritxell. This caused a reaction from the
other children, who had been feeling a little sleepy, but now
were fully awake, and all eyes turned to Meritxell. “It’s in
the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and it was on the telly, and
in the newspapers!”, yelled Miss Borges, her eyes fixed in
Meritxell’s. “But before they said those things, didn’t they say
different ones, that they thought were just as right?”, asked
Meritxell, “because you said people used to think the Earth
was flat or not very old at all.”
Miss Borges took the mug she had on her table and noisily
sipped some tea, her eyes still fixed on Meritxell. She
then breathed deeply, just as Hume did when he was really
tired and wanted to go to sleep. “Do you mind if we talk
about it later, Meritxell? We still have a lot to learn today
and we are spending our precious time with silly questions”,
said the teacher with a trembling voice.
While Miss Borges intended that to be a kind but firm
‘checkmate’, Meritxell got busy in a different way. Like
most modern children, she was very skilled at using Merlin
during lessons without being seen. Being considerate, Meritxell
was always discreet about this; she had typed ‘Lying
about the Moon’ into it. To her surprise, the answers that
20

came back were clear and startling. They said things like
‘Moon landing was a hoax’, and ‘Moon landing FAKE’.
And while she was wise enough to at last bite her tongue,
she felt another flush of anger at the idea that everything
she held dear might be a lie. Her Mother, her Grandpa,
Dra Rey, and now Miss Borges and her books, all told lies.
Like an apparently dormant volcano, it felt as hot and angry
forces were building up inside her, and all her defences of
trust and belief were failing and about to be overwhelmed
by an eruption of (she was shocked to realise) ...scorn!
Later at home, she sat in her room, warmed by Hume,
and thought about everything. There was no change with
Grandpa, and she was aware that everything in her head was
unsettled. Suddenly not knowing what or who she believed
or why was definitely uncomfortable inside her head, and it
made her tense in her stomach too. But she was also aware
that at the same time it also felt quite exciting, and she felt
that something important was happening to her. Maybe,
she thought, as you grow up you have to have brain shifts,
just like you have to start wearing bigger sizes of clothes?
It was clear that she couldn’t just go back to where she had
been before. It was like everything had been pulled out of
a very tightly packed suitcase, and it would only fit back in
again if she carefully examined and folded and maybe got
rid of some things first.
She thought of the Moon, and how she and Miss Borges
just believed it when they read how far away it is. And
how would you know people had really gone to the Moon,
or just pretended? After all, she’d seen movies where they
pretended exactly that, and it looked super-real to her. She
was using Merlin to looking at the NASA webpage, where
21

they talked about space missions, when she suddenly, she
had a brainwave: she’d try to talk to an astronaut, someone who
hadn’t just read it all in a book, but been there.
That was just the sort of magic Merlin was good at, and
Meritxell was really very clever at helping him. She knew
that Important Companies often gave their phone numbers
because they had to, but hid them in tiny print at the bottom
of a page so you had to stumble across by accident. She
also knew that the magic of the Internet meant she could
talk to someone on the other side of the world instantly.
Having a problem to solve focused her mind, and half
an hour later Merlin was ringing numbers for NASA. The
first two didn’t answer, but with the third, the ringing stopped,
the screen wobbled a bit, and a head appeared, with
ginger hair in a crewcut on top of a pink face that looked
like it had an enormous nose. “Good day”, said a deep voice
with a southern US twang, “This is Commander Bloomfield.
How may I help you?”
“Hello,” said Meritxell excitedly, “my name is Meritxell
and I have a very important question about space. Um, are
you really from NASA?” “Maam,” drawled Bloomfield, and
the corner of his mouth turned up in a half smile, “Ah live,
eat and breathe NASA. Ah like to say that ah’m part of
the heart and soul of NASA. Ah even wrote it on myself
in case ah ever forget.” And there was a blurry movement,
and his forearm with an elaborate tattoo appeared on the
screen, before the nose returned. “Say,” he added, “you are
mighty young to be calling here. What can ah do for you?”
Meritxell hesitated; she hadn’t actually thought what
words she might use. “Er, my Grandpa is really really ill
in hospital and I’m not sure I believe anything anymore or
22

trust anyone and my teacher told me we went to the Moon
but she doesn’t really know and lots of people say that was
just a lie too and I didn’t know who else to ask...”. It all
tumbled out in a rush with words bouncing about like ping
pong balls and having to work very hard to stay in the right
order so they still made sense.
Bloomfield smiled a big Southern smile. “Well, Miss
Mer…?” “Meritxell.” “Well, Miss Meritxell, it sure is dandy
to talk to you. Ah’m so sorry to hear about your Grandaddy,
you must be real anxious. It sounds like you’ve been
knocked caddywompus, as my own Grandaddy used to say,
and you don’t know whether you’re coming or going.”
Meritxell liked this man who was thousands of miles
away, and able to see right inside her head in such a kind
way. “So are you an astronaut? Have you been in space?
Have you seen the Earth like a blue ball in the sky?” she
asked. “Have ah been in space?” Bloomfield said, “You bet
your bobby socks life ah’ve been in space. Ah’ve floated
like ah was a piece of cotton candy, ah’ve looked through
the window and watched the Earth spin below. It’s something
ah’ll never forget because it’s mighty fine. And you
know you said, you don’t believe things? Well it’s one thing
to see a picture and it’s absolutely diggedy doo quite another
to see something yourself, ah reckon it changes you
inside somehow. Say, have you ever seen something you
thought was outstanding?”
Meritxell decided that ‘outstanding’ probably meant
‘very very special’, as opposed to homework she hadn’t finished,
and she thought about that. She had seen the evening
sky glow red as if it were on fire, and she had seen frost-covered
cobwebs which looked as if they’d been embroidered
23

y fairies, and she had watched a newly born foal stagger up
onto its legs for the very first time (which was possibly the
most outstanding thing she’d ever seen). She told Bloomfield,
who said “Well those sound real special, and I bet you
a dollar for a nickel that seeing ‘em was different from being
told about them, or even seeing a picture?”
He was quite right, thought Meritxell, hoping that didn’t
mean she had to give him a dollar or even a nickel, because
she had neither. She’d learned about spiders’ webs in
school, and read about them in books, but to see one, and
think about the spider who’d spent all night making it, and
about all the flies minding their own business in a buzzy
way, when ‘wham’ they’d be caught, and wriggling would
only make it worse. Yes, seeing them was a different thing
entirely. And even though she could describe it to other
people with all the special adjectives in the dictionary, she
couldn’t take them there to see to really make them understand
how special it was.
“So have you been to the Moon?” Meritxell asked Bloomfield.
“No Maam”, he replied “There’s only a handful of
astronauts that were lucky enough to do that.” “So how”,
Meritxell continued, “do you know they went at all? People
on the Internet say it was all pretend!” “Well, ah can’t know
in the sense that ah was there,” Bloomfield replied, “but
ah’ve been in a rocket and been launched into space, so ah
know that part’s as real as the shoes on my feet. Then ah’ve
spoken to people who ran the Moon missions, and ah’ve
spoken with people who know the men who did go, and
ah’ve worked here in NASA all my life, and ah trust the
people here. They’re people who’ve always told the truth
about things ah do know about, so ah also trust them on
24

this. You said you don’t believe anyone any more - that
sounds real uncomfortable. It also sounds kind of confusing,
after all if you talk to two people, and one says we landed
on the Moon, and the other says we didn’t, then if you
don’t believe one, you’re believing the other! Me, ah go with
my gut, and ah believe people ah trust until there’s a reason
not to. Then ah might change my mind, but that’s OK too.”
There was a sound of a telephone, and Bloomfield
looked round, then back at Meritxell. “Listen, Miss Meritxell,
it’s been fun chatting to you on the other side of the
world, but my coffee break is over and ah have to go and
see a man about a rocket ship. You take care y’all, and good
luck working it out!”
“Good bye Commander Bloomfield,” said Meritxell,
and thank you so much for talking to me!” The screen clicked
off, and she was alone again, except for her thoughts,
and Hume of course. “Goodness,” she thought, ”did I really
just talk to an astronaut?” It seemed somehow unreal, as if
part of her own brain was saying “Huh, you say you talked
to an astronaut? Prove it!” And of course she couldn’t,
because she was sitting alone in her bedroom, but she did
believe she had because she could remember it so vividly.
Commander Bloomfield’s nose filling the screen, the sound
of his accent, the way he pronounced her name. Yes, it
had happened! But if she had to justify that to her own
head straight afterwards, how much harder it would be to
convince herself in the morning, or in a year’s time. And
it would be even harder to persuade someone else entirely.
Then as she started to get ready for bed, she thought
about what he’d said. “So part of knowing things seems to
be about how much you trust people and why?” she won-
25

dered. Just as she believed she’d spoken to an astronaut
because she trusted herself, Commander Bloomfield hadn’t
been to the Moon, but people he trusted had, and he believed
them. Did that explain why her teacher believed it too?,
she thought. Did Miss Borges just trust the books she’d
read and the TV programmes she’d watched? “Is that all
there is to it?,” Meritxell was thinking as she drifted off into
the land where none of this mattered the slightest little bit.
26

27

Tuesday
Meritxell meets
some scientists
28

The next morning there was a big surprise for
Meritxell. “I need to spend time at the hospital,”
her Mother said, “and the school have agreed
you can have a few days off, so you’re going to
stay with your Aunt Dora.”
Normally Meritxell would have been thrilled. Aunt Dora
lived in the City, so she could see things she never got to
here. She was also allowed to stay up late, and be a little
bit more grown up than her Mother liked. However now
wasn’t a good time. She was feeling confused inside, and
she wanted to be near Grandpa too. But there was no changing
her Mother’s mind, and the only saving grace was that
she was allowed to take Hume with her, so she could look
after him, as she’s promised Grandpa. She would look after
him, and he in turn would look after her with all the power
in his small and very hairy body.
So an hour later, she and Hume were at the railway station,
and climbing into a train, with a small suitcase and a
shoulder bag containing Merlin, a small book of Grandpa’s
that he had been reading before he went to Hospital, some
chocolate and other essential supplies.
She was pleased there was an empty compartment, as
she didn’t particularly want to talk to anyone else. They settled
down, with Hume half lying on her lap, and Meritxell
was just starting brood about the unfairness of life
29

in general, and Mothers in particular, when there was a
commotion outside. As a whistle blew, and the train started
to move, there was some shouting and banging, and the
door to her compartment was slid open by a very sensible
looking brown leather shoe at the end of a leg dressed in
equally sensible thick stockings. Then as the door started
to slide shut again, it was halted by a bottom, covered in
a tweed skirt. Having wedged the door open, the owner
of the shoe and bottom straightened up, and tumbled into
the compartment, carrying two big bags. She was a stout
woman with a round face and spectacles that looked, thought
Meritxell, a bit like a butterfly, that might fly off at any
moment. “Excellent,” she said brightly, “Room for us and
our specimens”.
Then a second woman appeared, who was as tall and
gangly as the first woman was round and stout. They deposited
their luggage in the racks and on the floor, sat down
facing each other, with a sigh of pleasure, and, as if only just
aware of her, turned their heads as one towards Meritxell
and Hume. “Good morning, young lady!”, said the round
tweedy woman, “I do apologise, I believe we’ve intruded
rather on you and your Canis lupus familiaris. My name is
Eva, this is Hillary, and we’ve just been on a scientific expedition,
and a highly successful one I might add.”
Meritxell wasn’t sure what she’d called Hume or why,
and being generally put out at their appearance, decided it
was not a polite thing to call people or animals names before
you knew them a lot better. However, despite everything
she mustered up the energy to say, “Good morning, my
name is Meritxell and this is Hume”, although not enough
to add any warmth to it.
30

Pleasantries exchanged, they all lapsed into silence as
the train rocked and fields passed by, and Meritxell stroked
Hume as she stared miserably and determinedly out of the
window, and wondered how Grandpa was. She seemed to
be almost in a trance, and was shaken out of it by a thump
and a cry of annoyance. She looked round, and saw the
stout woman, Eva, bending over a pile of papers and books
and that had spilled out of a bag onto the floor, gathering
them in again. Some had skidded over by Meritxell’s feet,
and as she bent over and picked them up, she knocked her
own bag off the seat, and its contents joined the general
mess.
This, along with her annoyance at not being alone, but
really mostly due to everything that had happened the day
before, and to her constant anxiety about Grandpa, felt too
much for her brain, and her body took over. She started to
cry, silently at first, but then she started to sob helplessly,
and her brain watched as this happened, startled but unable
to intervene. Hume looked up at her with his dark black
eyes peering out of his black fur, and licked her, which in
his experience solved most problems.
Eva, who had by now kneeling on the floor as she tried
to scoop everything up, realised what was happening, stopped,
looked up and said, “Goodness, child, what on earth
is the matter?” And despite these being people she’d never
seen before, and ones to boot that she was not pleased with,
and partly perhaps because Eva had spoken quite gently
and was looking at her intently, Meritxell, with tears streaming
down her face, told her exactly, though not always
intelligibly, what the matter was.
As Meritxell’s flow of words started to slow, Hillary, si-
31

lent until then, but just as watchful, leant forward with a
large handkerchief, which Meritxell gratefully took to wipe
her eyes, as well as her nose which had joined in by running
quite unpleasantly. Meritxell also used it to hide behind a
little, to cover her embarrassment as her breathing shivered
and jerked, and then calmed down, allowing her brain to
recover its composure, and try to take charge as if nothing
untoward had just happened.
The storm having passed, Hillary and Eva became quite
maternal and very practical, which is another way of saying
that they unpacked a flask, poured a cup of hot sweet tea in
a plastic cup, and handed it to Meritxell along with a ginger
biscuit. This got the attention of Hume, who decided he
would like to become friends too, and got down and started
exploring among the spilt papers on the floor, all the time
keeping an eye on the biscuits. As Meritxell slowly sipped
her hot tea, Hillary poured two more cups for them, and
then she bent down and picked up Grandpa’s book, which
had fallen onto the floor in the commotion.
“Ah,” she said, “Aristotle! This is your Grandpa’s book
is it?”, and she thumbed through it, noting the pencil marks
in the margins where Grandpa had found something particularly
interesting. “One of my heroes,” she continued,
“Some call him the first scientist, and the first serious biologist!
Eva and I are biologists too, though not always,” and
here she winked at Eva, “as serious as we ought to be.”
Eva saw that Meritxell, whose energies were being rapidly
restored by tea and biscuits, looked a little interested,
and chipped in, “So Meritxell, you say that you don’t trust
anyone or believe what they say any more?” Meritxell sipped
and nodded, a little uncomfortable at implying that
32

she didn’t trust these people, who were feeding her, either.
“Well,” continued Eva, “you are in good company, because
scientists are trained not to believe things either!” That,
thought Meritxell, seemed quite absurd. Fancy being trained
to not believe things! “Excuse me,” she said, “but I don’t
understand.”
Meritxell’s newfound companions needed no more
encouragement than that. Glancing at each other as they
spoke, Eva and Hillary started to explain, starting and finishing
each other’s sentences, so that it became hard to
work out who was saying what. “Scientists are people who
try to understand how the world works, by asking lots of
questions, and using something called the Scientific Method,
which is the best way to find out if something is true
or not,” they said in their higgledy-piggledy way. “We said
Aristotle was the first scientist, and in many extraordinary
ways he was, but he was trying to make sense of everything
in the world on his own, and he got lots of things right and
lots of things wrong. And everyone believed him, or not,
for 2000 years, but they didn’t know how to decide what
was right or wrong either.”
“For example,” said Hillary, “he thought that everything
was made of a mixture of earth, fire, air and water.” “And
aether,” interjected Eva with a chuckle, “don’t forget, he
added aether.” Meritxell thought that was very odd, as she
had been told from when she was very small, that things
were made out of atoms and elements like iron and sulphur,
and you breathed things like oxygen and nitrogen. And of
course she had believed that without question. And while
she’d now noticed those beliefs and marked them down as
something to think about later, she couldn’t imagine ever
33

thinking everything was made partly of fire.
It sounded like a fairy tale, and she found herself asking
a question. “Did people really think everything was made
just from those?” she asked, “That sounds completely
mad!” “People thought that for thousands of years!” repeated
Hillary, “Isn’t it odd to try to imagine yourself living in
a world of different thoughts?”
“So how,” asked Meritxell, “is Science different?” “Ah,
people started using the Scientific Method,” said Eva,
“which is partly about how each person did things, and
partly about how they wrote about it afterwards.” “Actually
there’s not really one Scientific Method,” Hillary butted in,
“there are different ways of getting ideas and testing them
to see if they seem right or wrong.”
“But the key,” said Eva, “is that it is hard to know if
ideas are right, but easier to know if they are wrong. So just
like you, young Meritxell, we spend our lives trying to disbelieve,
trying to prove that other people’s ideas are really
not very good at all.” “It’s an ideas competition, like a big
wrestling competition with lots of rounds,” Hillary added,
excitedly, “All the bad ideas get beaten, and each round the
ideas that are still standing take part again to see if they can
knock anyone else’s idea out.” “And like a real wrestling
tournament,” Eva continued, “the ones still standing at the
end might be the best fighters in the world ever, or might
just not have met the real champion yet. But they are more
likely to be the best than the ones they’ve just vanquished.
That, Meritxell is our Truth: it’s just the best we’ve seen yet.”
“Our best guess,” said Hillary. “But who knows!” finished
Eva.
Eva and Hillary paused in their double act, having be-
34

come quite carried away, and concentrated for a while on
drinking their tea, which was now not very hot at all, but
was still Tea. Eva bent down and picked up one of the papers
still lying on the floor and held it in the air. “And, perhaps
the most important thing of all,” she said to Meritxell
and Hume (who was pretending to listen but really eyeing
the food), “is that we write down what we tried, and what
happened, and what we think that means. So I can write
down my experiments, and Hillary here can read about
them even if she’s on the other side of the world.” “Which
I sometimes do!” said Hillary. “And,” continued Eva, “she
can make up her own mind and try her own experiments”.
“So,” they both said together, paused, looked at each other,
and Hillary finished, “So instead of there being one extremely
bright person like Aristotle, there are thousands of
slightly less bright people like us, who share our ideas and
pass them on to the next generation, who can start where
we left off instead of beginning all over again.” “We stand
on the shoulders of giants!,” added Eva enigmatically.
All this time, Meritxell was thinking furiously, trying to
take it all in. Her decision to disbelieve everyone was a little
shaken in the presence of people saying they didn’t believe
things either, and in fact their whole job was not to believe
things! She felt confused, even without the mention of
giants, as if someone had just told her that they were not
not not hungry, and she had to work out whether to make
them lunch.
But lunch it turned out was exactly what they all needed,
and having tidied up their papers, they all shared sandwiches
and chocolate. Hume was allowed to join in, and
agreed that these were some of the brightest people he had
35

met in a long time.
The fields soon gave way to factories, blocks of flats
and playgrounds, and it was time for Meritxell to brush the
crumbs off, repack her bag, and get ready to disembark.
Eva and Hillary were carrying on to the next station, and
continued talking as one person who had split into two:
“Lovely to meet you”, “Such a delight”, “Try reading Aristotle”,
“But just don’t believe anything he says”, “Except
when it’s true”, even as the train was slowing down. As
Meritxell left, they were starting to pour out more tea.
Meritxell and Hume climbed onto the platform, where
Aunt Dora was already waiting. Dora was being practical
and acting as if everything was normal, much like Meritxell’s
Mother, as she greeted them and took the suitcase.
It was a short walk from the station to the apartment,
and they rode up in the lift to the very top. Meritxell put
her stuff into the room she always stayed in, put a blanket
down for Hume, and stared out over the city, with the people
crawling like ants down below, and the rooftops shining
in the sunshine and stretching into the distance. Life wasn’t
back to normal, it was still very strange and different, and
the train journey with Eva and Hillary felt like a dream that
might or might not have happened at all. But her tears in
the train seemed to have washed part of the stress of the
previous day away. It did for the first time since Grandpa’s
turn, feel better rather than worse, in the way it does when
you’ve started tidying your room, even though you know
you have most of it to do still.
36

37

Wednesday
Meritxell and global
warming
38

Meritxell woke to the mouth-watering smell of
hot chocolate, and the rather less appetising
smell of sleeping dog. She immediately ignored
those and thought about Grandpa, and
wondered how he was, and how strange it must be to sleep
in a hospital with people walking around and machines
beeping. So the first thing she did, sitting on her bed with
Hume beside her, was to switch on Merlin and call home.
Her Mother looked tired on the screen, but was pleased
to see and hear her, and told her that Grandpa was being
looked after as well as possible. Aunt Dora came into the
bedroom and sat beside Meritxell giving her a kiss on the
top of her head. Then she and Hume both squeezed up so
Mother could see and talk to them too, which was lovely in
one way, thought Meritxell, but being in the middle felt a bit
like being a tube of toothpaste.
At breakfast, Meritxell found she was rather hungry, and
while she filled herself up with bread and slices of cheese
and ham and hot milk, she talked to Dora, and Dora listened.
Aunt Dora was very good at that, which frankly most
people are not, because they seem to think that interrupting
and giving their own opinions is more important. But
Dora would nod and look interested, and make little noises
or ask questions just enough and not too much. Even after
Meritxell had finished, Dora just said “Goodness that’s a
39

lot you have to think about!”, and then said she had to go
to work, but Meritxell could come and meet her for lunch
if she wanted.
That suited Meritxell very well, as it meant that she
could be on her own for a while and do some exploring
and some thinking. So half an hour later she and Hume
headed out. As she went down in the lift, she wondered if
Commander Bloomfield would have ‘ridden the elevator’
instead, and smiled. Hume was excited to have a whole new
city of smells to investigate. He seemed overwhelmed at
having to choose just one to sniff at a time as he dashed
from one spot to another uttering strange sounds that were
half whimper and half growl.
Meritxell was idly looking in shop windows, and wondering
what it would be like to sit in the same shop every day,
and if the owners really loved flowers or greetings cards
or children’s clothes that much. Then she became aware
of an odd noise in the distance, as if lots of people were
shouting. She turned the corner into a large square, and
there found herself looking at a large crowd, who were carrying
banners and flags and were singing and chanting. A
wide banner in front of her said in large letters “Don’t be
a fossil fool!”, and another “Stop frying the planet”, and a
third “Turtles against climate change”. Lots of people were
dressed normally, but the turtles banner was carried by two
people in turtle costumes.
“Heavens,” thought Meritxell, “What on earth is going
on? Who are all these people?” Curious, she walked towards
them. “Excuse me,” she said looking up at one of the turtles,
“what’s happening, and why are you dressed like that?”
Hume joined in by sniffing the turtle’s leg. The turtle’s head
40

tilted down and a human face peered out. “Hello,” it said,
“We’re dressed like this because turtles are wonderful creatures
that have been around on this earth for 250 million
years, and because of us, they are in danger, and we need
people to wake up to that now!” He spoke with a real passion
that was infectious, or would have been to people who
weren’t feeling very different at the moment and not believing
anyone.
Meritxell was very interested in the idea of turtles, which
she’d seen on TV and in books and in cartoons but never
face-to-face so to speak, and she decided that talking to a
man in a costume didn’t really count either. She listened to
what he said, and wondered if any of it was true. “What
do you mean, they’re in danger?” she asked. “I mean that
we humans are burning so much coal and oil, that we’re
causing global warming, and that’s going to change all sorts
of things, and beautiful animals like turtles are going to be
the first to suffer. The seas will rise and cover the beaches
they use to lay their eggs on, and this may sound weird, but
a warmer world will mean that most turtles are female, and
that’s not good. And I could go on!”
Meritxell had no doubt at all that he could go on a lot.
She was just making a mental note to ask Merlin about what
makes turtles female, when they were distracted by a chant
that was coming nearer. “Hey! Wake up and hear the warning!
Let’s all stop this global warming!” Like a wave, it
flowed towards them, the turtles joined in, and then it passed.
Meritxell was fascinated, and had also been thinking
about what he said. “So how do you know any of that?”
she asked. The turtle looked down and remembered he’d
been talking to someone. “Don’t you read the papers?” he
41

said, “Don’t you watch the news? Don’t you listen to the
scientists? Can’t you feel that there’s warming? This planet
is on fire, and it’s us, us who’s doing that! Hey, read this.”
He handed her a leaflet, as another wave washed towards
them, “Extreme storms become the norm, our planet’s getting
way too warm!” and Meritxell and Hume left him to
his chants.
It seemed, she thought as they walked on, that the Turtle
man really believed the planet was getting warmer, and
that that was important. He hadn’t seen it for himself in the
same way that Commander Bloomfield had seen the Earth
from space, but he was listening to lots of other people,
including scientists, who believed it too. The people in the
crowd were passionate, colourful, and noisy, and seemed to
have lots of different things they were worried about. “Capitalism
isn’t working”, “No to nuclear power”, “Is meat
worth it?”, they said, and Meritxell wondered how all those
things linked together.
Hume was in charge now, and pulled her round to the
front of the gathering, and Meritxell saw that they weren’t
gathered in that square by accident, but were facing a grand
building with steps leading up to a glass revolving door.
Above the door was a very large and very smart sign that
said “Energy Conference”. People came down the steps in
dribs and drabs. As they did, the crowd chanted at them
“Drill for oil, the Earth you spoil”, and they looked rather
uncomfortable, and trotted away as fast as they could while
still pretending they weren’t hurrying at all.
As Meritxell and Hume went out of the square, she
had so much to think about now that when they passed
a street stall cooking and selling doughnuts, she stopped
42

and bought a bagful. Then she sat down on a bench in the
sunshine, with Hume at her feet, and started to eat the doughnuts.
They were the sort of doughnuts that almost melted
in your mouth, and she took big bites or nibbled them
all round the edges, and Hume collected all the bits she
deliberately dropped. Then she looked at the leaflet she’d
been given, and it had diagrams and stuff about scientists,
so she looked at it more closely. “Scientists agree the Earth
is getting warmer!” it said, and there was a graph next to it,
which Meritxell knew from school, meant that something
was becoming more of whatever it was being.
As she was reading this, a man sat down at the other
end of the bench with his own bag, and stared out into the
distance as he ate. He was wearing a smart suit with a tie,
and on the front pocket was a big badge saying ‘Conference
Speaker’.
“Excuse me,” said Meritxell, feeling very brave suddenly,
“But what is that conference?” The man in the suit turned
to Meritxell, as if he hadn’t been aware that she was there.
He looked tired. “That conference, young lady, is where
all sorts of people in the energy business are talking about
everything there is to talk about in the energy world. And
that’s a lot!” Meritxell ate some more doughnut and thought
how friendly everyone was to her when she asked her
questions, because she guessed he really just wanted to eat
in quiet. “So why are all the people shouting at people coming
out of the building?” she continued. “Well,” said the
man in the suit, “it turns out that a lot of people think that
the energy business is causing harm. We go to really tough
parts of the world - the bottom of the sea or the deserts
or the jungle or deep under the ground - and we do rea-
43

lly dangerous work, and that means people have petrol for
cars and fuel for aeroplanes and gas to heat their homes.
And they drive their cars and fly on holiday and keep warm
in winter, and then complain. We’re the Bad Guys, when
they’re the ones using the energy.”
“So are they right? Is the Earth getting warmer?,” Meritxell
asked, “This leaflet says that scientists say it is.”
“Hmm,” he said ”maybe it is and maybe it isn’t, but if it
is, do you think we should just stop making energy? Look
around you, this is a big city. Everyone in this city is using
energy that we extract and deliver. Without it, no city!”
“It says here we should use the sun’s energy and not
burn oil,” said Meritxell. “Well,” said the man in the suit,
“in a way I agree with them. But the only way that will
happen is by us getting a lot better at using the Sun. You
can feel the warmth on your face now, and if we could
really capture enough of that heat and store it, and move
it to where people need it, then we wouldn’t need so much
oil. So at the moment we can’t, we don’t know how, but I
reckon scientists and engineers will sort that out. There’s
a problem, but we can solve it, that’s what we’re good at.”
And with that, he popped the last bit of doughnut into his
mouth, said a brief farewell, and disappeared back toward
the hall.
Meritxell was left trying to digest what he and the Turtle
had said and fit them together somehow in a way that made
sense. They both seemed to be looking at the same thing,
coming to different conclusions, and being very sure that
they were right. The Turtle thought we should stop drilling
for oil, and the man in the suit thought we had no choice if
we wanted cities to work. And both had talked about scien-
44

ce, but again in different ways. The Turtle had said that
science showed he was right, which was confusing because
Eva and Hillary had said science was much better at saying
what was wrong than what was right. The man in the suit
seemed to be talking about science in quite a different way,
that it would somehow solve everything. It was almost as if
they were wearing different ideas just as they wore different
clothes. Meritxell wasn’t sure she’d learned anything, and
her head felt more confused than ever.
The day drifted on, and Meritxell was surprised when
she got to the apartment, that she hadn’t worried about
home or Grandpa at all. Although that made her feel a little
guilty, she realised that it also made her much less anxious,
and feeling anxious seemed to mean feeling uncomfortable
without being able to do anything about it. She told Aunt
Dora about the demonstration and the man dressed as a
turtle and the man in the suit. As ever, Aunt Dora sat and
listened so well that it felt like a conversation even though
Meritxell had done almost all the talking. “So what do
you think about what all the different people were saying?,”
Dora asked. Meritxell didn’t really know, because there seemed
to be so many different conversations going on which
were all sort of talking about the same things, but never
quite connecting with each other. It was a bit like someone
waving at you, and you thinking they wanted to speak
to you, when all the time they were looking at the person
behind you. One of the hard things, she said to Dora, was
that when she was talking to each person she found herself
listening as much to how important it was to them as to the
words they were using, as if they were saying one thing in
her left ear, and another thing in her right.
45

After tea, Meritxell took Hume for an early evening walk
in the park. Hume was very happy to run and sniff the
grass and find little smell messages that other dogs had left
behind. Meritxell had been told once that dogs could ‘see’
smells much better than people, and she wondered what
that must be like. There were certain smells she was very
pleased not to be too aware of, but then Hume seemed to
find those the most exciting ones of all.
They walked along the river, and Hume ran on ahead,
straight towards a man who was sitting very still. When Meritxell
got nearer she could see that he was fishing. There
was a rod propped up, with a line disappearing into the water,
and on the bank was a net and a big container. Meritxell
had always been told not to disturb fishermen or to make
a lot of noise near them, because they liked to sit and be
alone, and somehow the noise warned the fish not to eat
any worms just now. So when she saw Hume nuzzling up
to him, she was very apologetic, and said she hoped Hume
hadn’t spoiled his fishing.
The fisherman’s face had been hidden because he was
wearing a hat with a big brim, but when he turned towards
Meritxell, she saw that he was an elderly man, perhaps as
old as Grandpa, and he smiled at her warmly. “That’s quite
all right, young’un,” he said, with a strong country accent,
“I love dogs, and while I like sitting alone with my thoughts
and the fish, it’s good to talk to people too. And it seems
the fish are out today anyway! What’s his name?” He reached
down and patted Hume’s head, and Meritxell found
herself sitting on his fishing box, chatting to him as they
all three watched the river flow slowly by, and the sun sink
down towards the treetops.
46

So it was not long before the fisherman knew about
Grandpa and why Meritxell was staying in the city, and how
confusing things were in her head. She was wondering at
the same time why she was telling so many strangers such
private things, but then talking seemed to help, as if once
thoughts came out into the open, she could look at them
and tidy them and say, ‘no you’re in the wrong drawer, you
should go in here!’.
When she told him about her adventures that day, he
nodded slowly, and sighed. “I’m an old man now,” he said,
and the world has changed in so many ways, it’s hard to believe
that was me all those years ago. And there have been
all sorts of ructions and commotions in the world of people;
wars and revolutions and new gadgets and ideas. So I
just come and sit and fish, and let myself be with the sun
and the wind and the river. And the fish mostly ignore me,
but occasionally let me catch them, just enough that my
wife believes I really am off fishing. All I do know is that
the river has changed. There were fish here that I never see
now. And eels, there used to be so many eels, I could eat
them for tea almost every day. Now I hardly catch any. Do
you know about eels?”
Well Meritxell knew lots of things, although she wasn’t
currently very sure if any of it was true, so she was a bit
disappointed that he’d picked a topic she knew nothing
about at all. If he’d said seahorses or sticklebacks or tadpoles,
she’d have felt much more able to have a conversation.
“You mentioned turtles,” said the old man, “they are born
on a beach, swim all over the ocean, and then find their way
back to the very same beach. Well eels are extraordinary
animals too. They live in the rivers like this one here, then
47

when they’re the right age, they swim out thousands of miles
into the middle of the ocean! And as if by magic, all the
eels know just where to go. They meet other eels, breed,
and then the babies who’ve never been here before swim
all the way back to the rivers.”
That did seem quite wonderful, Meritxell thought, and
very odd too, and she wondered why on earth they did
things in such a complicated and long-distance way. “So
something’s changed”, said the fisherman, “and maybe it’s
this global warming, or maybe it’s stuff we pour into rivers,
or maybe it’s something else. Humans are certainly doing
enough to change a lot of nature, and it seems to me we
should try to do less damage somehow. We’re like giants
stomping around in the dark, not realising what we’re treading
on.”
The sun was nearly set, and it was time for them all to
head home, so Meritxell and Hume left the old fisherman
to pack everything up, and they walked slowly back to Aunt
Dora’s. As the old man had reminded her of Grandpa, she
called Mother again on Merlin, and then she sat in a chair
by the window where she could watch the city being still
busy at night. She’d been flicking through Grandpa’s book
on Aristotle, and while she wasn’t really reading it and didn’t
understand it all anyway, she was excited to find a bit where
Aristotle talked about eels too. And if there had been lots
of eels in Ancient Greece when he was alive, and lots of
eels here when the old man was younger, it seemed important
somehow to her that things seemed to be changing a
lot right now.
Then she looked out at the cars moving through the
streets, and all the lights in the streetlights and windows,
48

and thought of the man in the suit, and how that was all
energy that people had dug or sucked out of the earth somewhere,
and how easy it was for her to just turn it on or
off at the switch on the wall.
49

Thursday
Meritxell discovers
superfoods
50

The next day Meritxell went shopping. When she’d
got up, she found Aunt Dora rooting through
the cupboard of pots and pans, discarding every
lid, wok and frying pan, letting them clunk loudly
onto the hard granite kitchen surface. Hume was keeping
a keen eye on her, just in case she decided to put something
more edible onto the floor. “Auntie, what is going
on?” exclaimed Meritxell. “Well dear, the first problem is
that we seem to have run out of food, we only have some
porridge oats and a dribble of olive oil left in the larder, and
secondly where is my favourite non-stick perfect-size cookanything-in-it
pan?”
Meritxell had no idea what her Aunt was talking about,
but a little later, all three of them were outside. Dora was
striding purposefully, and just in front of her Meritxell skipped
along the pavement, singing softly to herself, a basket
in one hand, and Hume’s lead in the other. She was looking
forward to seeing who she would meet today, and Hume
was happy just being out amongst all the smells in the street.
Dora was one of the most sensible people Meritxell
knew, except when it came to her health. This was a passion
of hers, and constant vigilance meant that she was always
finding problems with her digestion, joints, weight, energy
levels, or general well-being. She was convinced that any
health problem was caused by what she ate, and therefore
51

the solution lay in changing what she ate. “There’s genes
and there’s diet, ” she said to Meritxell, “I can’t do anything
about my genes, but food is my responsibility.”
That sounded extremely sensible to Meritxell, but what
was confusing was that each time she visited, Dora was excited
about a different food, and had a different theory that
she was exploring. Last time she had been focusing on alkaline
foods. “Some foods are easier to digest, because the
are naturally alkaline,” she said, reading from her book, “so
it’s better to eat more of these, and fewer that require acid
production. It’s a wonderful way to reduce bloating. And
bloating,” she said turning and looking directly at Meritxell,
“is something you’ll want to avoid when you’re my age!”
Acid, Meritxell knew, was generally seen as a bad thing in
life, and bloating was such an odd sounding word, like a
mixture of boating and floating she was not surprised Dora
wanted to avoid it.
This visit, alkaline foods were less in evidence, and Dora’s
focus was now on antioxidants. “Antioxidants are nature’s
way of preventing cancer, and are also effective at
controlling bloating,” Dora had read out to her from her
newest book. That sounded just as sensible to Meritxell as
the reason for eating alkaline foods, as she wondered if and
when she would start feeling bloated, and if that would
mean she would swell up like a balloon.
So shopping for food with Dora was always interesting.
On their way to the greengrocers, Dora stopped, and called
to Meritxell, who was quite a way ahead, to cross the road.
It was a new shop called ‘Sofia’s Superfoods’, and just the
sort of shop that Dora loved. The windows were full of
signs mentioning ‘balance’ and ‘health’ and ‘natural’. Meri-
52

txell tied Hume up, and as they went in, she noticed a small
round terracotta plaque next to the door that said ‘Susanne
Langer (1895-1985), philosopher, once visited a shop on
this site’. Heavens, thought Meritxell, what a lot of signs
there would be if there were one for everyone who ever
went in any shop!
The shop was unlike any Meritxell had been in before. It
was as if four people had built it, but one had wanted a chemist,
and each of the others a supermarket, greengrocers
and cafe. Dora was talking to one of the assistants, about
the signs above many of the beautiful multicoloured fruits
and vegetables which said ‘great superfood’ and ‘powerful
antioxidant’ and ‘full of vitamins’. “What is a superfood?”
asked Meritxell as she caught up with them. “This is my niece
Meritxell,” said Dora, introducing them, “and Meritxell,
this is Sofia, whose shop it is.” Sofia, a thin woman with an
enormously wide crop of auburn hair, looked down at her,
and said “Good morning Meritxell, thank you for visiting
my new shop. Superfoods are foods that have more of the
good things in them and less of the bad things. They give
you more energy, help your immune system, skin and overall
health.” She sounded a bit like one of the people on
the TV adverts, thought Meritxell, but Dora was nodding.
“More antioxidants, less bloating,” she added, to give her
particular spin on it, and Sofia smiled and said, “That might
be true. I like the American phrase, ‘more bang for your
buck!’.”
“So which foods are ‘super’?”, Meritxell asked curiously,
avoiding looking at Sofia’s hair, and looking at the display
instead. “It really depends on what you need.” Sofia replied,
“If like your Aunt you want antioxidants, then kale and kiwi
53

fruit are excellent. If you want energy, then a something
like quinoa is good.” Meritxell wondered if it was just food
that sounded like it began with a ‘k’, and when she said that
the others laughed, and said that that was not how it worked.
“Broccoli’s a superfood,” added Dora, smiling because
she knew that was one of Meritxell’s least favourite foods,
ever since someone had said it was like eating brains.
Meritxell blanched and deliberately changed the subject.
“Who is that person on the plaque?” She asked. “Ah,
Susanne Langer,” Sofia said, “Have you ever heard of her?”
Dora and Meritxell both shook their heads. “She was an
American philosopher I like a lot,” said Sofia, handing them
copies of a leaflet. “She believed in the constant human attempt
to invent meanings.” When they both looked blankly
back at her, Sofia tried again. “We humans try to make sense
of the world, and we do that for everything, and in different
ways,” she said, “so while scientists pick things apart
and try to find out how they work, other things that can’t be
picked apart are just as important to us, like art and music.
Maybe even more important! And Susanne Langer thought
about what these things mean to us and why.”
Meritxell had sometimes wondered where things that
made you feel fitted into the world of Grandpa’s watches or
Eva and Hillary’s specimens or Commander Bloomfield’s
space rockets, or even Miss Borges’ arithmetic. They seemed
so different, but surely they ought to fit in somehow
into whatever was ‘true’. She wondered if Grandpa had
heard of this philosopher, and what he thought about her
ideas.
Her mind swung back to the kale and quinoa. “How do
you know these are superfoods? Do scientists tell you?” She
54

asked, and Dora added, “Meritxell is on a bit of a quest at
the moment!” Sofia thought for a bit, “Some scientists do,
and some don’t, but I also talk a lot to other people, who
I think talk sense. I really trust my nutritionist, who isn’t a
scientist or a doctor, but really seems to understand bodies,
and what is important to me. Then I listen for people who
see the world in a holistic way, not just trying to pick it apart
like scientists often do. And I also try things out and decide
if I feel better or not.” She smiled at Meritxell, and added,
“I call it my ‘pick and mix’. If it works for me I keep it, if
it doesn’t, I don’t.”
They left Sofia and her shop, Dora with some bags and
Meritxell with a puzzled frown. Could it really be a case
that we can just decide for ourselves what is true?, she was
thinking, and just what Sofia meant by things ‘working for
her’. Dora was watching her from the side. She almost felt
she could see and hear cogs in her head turning, trying to
find a combination that brought some peace to her. She
felt almost privileged to be able to be with her niece as she
struggled to free herself from one mental skin that she had
outgrown.
They walked on to Roots Greengrocers. Where Sofia’s
shop was new and stylish, almost as if it was persuading
you how good everything was just showing it beautifully
and with lots of adjectives, Roots was quite the opposite.
It felt traditional and no-nonsense. You could imagine
Mister Brown the owner up at the crack of dawn at the
big fruit and veg market poking the turnips and popping
strawberries in his mouth to check how sweet they were, or
talking to the local farmers about the best type of manure
for asparagus. It was a shop that Meritxell loved though.
55

The colours, the shapes, the textures of all the fresh fruits
and vegetables made her feel alive, and the perfume of all
the fresh herbs was almost the best smell she knew in the
world.
Mister Brown rubbed his shock of salt and pepper hair
with fingers as thick as carrots and as rough as the earth the
carrots came out of. “Miss Dora?”, he said, being a man
of few words. Dora introduced Meritxell, and he nodded
silently. “We’ve been learning about superfoods!”, Meritxell
informed him, “Which of yours are super?” “Ha ha ha!”
Mister Brown couldn’t stop an explosion of laughter erupting
from his mouth. And then he laughed some more, and
then he laughed so much he went bright red, because when
you laugh you can’t breathe. Meritxell became concerned
and wondered if people ever died laughing.
Eventually he subsided, and wiped his eyes, because
he’d been crying too. “Which of yours are super? That’s
a good’un” he muttered and chuckled again. “Well young
56

Miss,” he continued at last, “I can assure you that all of my
foods in here are super. The lettuce is super, the tomatoes
are super, and the onions are particularly super!” He saw that
Meritxell was frowning, and thought he was teasing her.
“No,” he said, “I mean it. Food is food is food, and I’ve no
time for all that hippy dippy touchy feely nonsense. I could
take some cattle feed like kale, pop a ‘superfood’ sticker on
it and sell it for twice the price. But it’s no better or worse
than any of the rest. Eat everything, not too much, enjoy
the taste, and you can’t go far wrong, is how I see it.”
Dora was surprised, as she’d never heard so many words
tumble out of Mister Brown’s mouth in all the years she’d
known him. She didn’t agree with him particularly, but he
was who he was, she observed to Meritxell as they left the
shop, a bell ringing as the door closed, and walked back
home. They’d bought a pale orange thick-skinned butternut
squash, and a bag glossy green apples that reminded
Meritxell of home. As they wandered back, her head full of
completely new ideas that didn’t agree with each other or
with the other ones she’d already stored in her head, she bit
into an apple, and thought of her Mother, and of Grandpa.
57

Friday
Meritxell and the
media
58

The next morning, Meritxell and Hume rushed
down the stairs and went to the living room and
found Aunt Dora sitting on the armchair. She
was holding a steaming mug of tea in one hand,
and a newspaper in the other. She was concentrating so
hard while reading it, that she didn’t notice the two pairs
of eyes staring at her, until Hume barked, and Meri yelled
“Moooooorning, Auntie!”. Then, of course, Aunt Dora
did notice them! How could she not?! And she reacted in a
funny way.
But before telling you how she reacted, imagine first
that, after a hard day at school, you were luxuriating in a
hot bubble bath, half reading your favorite comic book and
half dreaming, and suddenly you heard a bark and a yell
right next to you?! You might almost jump out of your skin
and drop your comic into the water and splash most of the
water onto the floor. Well, that’s how it was for Aunt Dora,
who leapt out of her seat in surprise, gave a little shriek…
and poured all the tea onto the rug! “Meri, you scared the
living daylights out of me!,” she cried.
Meritxell, was chortling (which in case you don’t know,
is half chuckling and half snorting, neither of which Aunt
Dora thought in the slightest bit appropriate) at the bedlam
she’d caused. But she also felt also a little guilty for having
frightened her Auntie, so ran towards her and hugged her
59

and told her she was really really sorry.
They cleaned up the mess, and, excitement over, Meritxell
climbed into Aunt Dora’s lap and asked “Auntie, what
were you reading?”. “My newspaper of course, Meri. You
do know what a newspaper is?”, Dora asked with a tilt of
her head, looking down at Meritxell. “Of course, Auntie,
duh. It’s not like I’m a baby!” Aunt Dora laughed inside,
because even though Meri was indeed not a baby, she was
also still very much a child, albeit one who was growing up
in front of her eyes.
“Why do you read the newspaper?,” asked Meritxell. “I
want to know what is happening in the world, and newspapers
tell me that,” said Dora. Meritxell, who having met so
many people in the past few days felt a much wiser person,
told her auntie that the only real way to know what is happening
in the world is by going to see it for yourself. This
time, Aunt Dora could not avoid a guffaw escaping from
her mouth. “Of course, my little girl! But the world is enormous!
And in a huge world like ours, there are millions of
things happening at the same time. It would be impossible
to see them all. That is why there are journalists. Their job
is to be our eyes and our ears, to find out what is happening
out there and to explain it to us afterwards. And besides,”
she added, “how would I look after you if I was running
around China or Iceland … or the Amazon?”
Meritxell kept silent and thought hard about what her
aunt had said. She thought it made sense, especially how
hard it was to see everything everywhere at the same time.
When Commander Bloomfield was in space watching the
Earth spin round, he couldn’t be down here at the same
time.
60

“What about scientists?”, Meritxell asked, thinking about
her tea party on the train, “Aren’t they the people who find
out about the world?” “Scientists try to work out how the
world works,” said Dora, “but they’re not the people to ask
about who’s going to be the next American president. And
besides,” she added, “have you ever seen what scientists write?”
Meritxell had to shake her head. “Well let me tell you,
it’s like reading a book written half in words you understand,
and half in words you’ve never seen before. Grandpa’s
books are babytalk compared to them. Sometimes I
think they’re a secret society who just talking to each other
in their own secret language. So journalists also tell us what
the scientists are really saying in words we understand.”
That was confusing, because Eva and Hillary, the two
scientists Meritxell had met, were so easy to understand,
and they’d talked about how open and sharing science was.
And, thought Meritxell, how could Aunt Dora rely on what
those people, those journalists, said? “But how do you
know that what is in the newspapers or on TV is true?”, she
asked. “Journalists are a little like scientists and doctors,”
said Dora, “They have a very strict set of rules they follow
to be called a journalist, and one of the most important
ones being telling the truth. And they know things are true
either because they’ve seen it themselves, or else they checked
by asking other people. My friend Peter, who works in
a newspaper, says they don’t publish or broadcast anything
that hasn’t been confirmed by at least three people! So why
shouldn’t I trust journalists? Why would they be interested
in lying to us?”
“Wow! That’s so … outstanding!” Meritxell exclaimed,
so excited that could not help clapping. Maybe, she thou-
61

ght, journalists have the key to the truth! They find out
everything that’s happening and check it’s true, and even
help us understand what scientists are saying. “Auntie, can
we go to Peter’s newspaper and meet some journalists? I
would so love to talk to them and see where they work,”
Aunt Dora raised an eyebrow at this, but agreed to ask,
and in just a few minutes she’d phoned her friend Peter,
and arranged for Meritxell to visit his newspaper that afternoon,
although she couldn’t take Hume with her.
And so, a few hours later, Meritxell stepped into the reception
of a large building with shiny black glass. Peter was
already waiting for her. He was a tall, grey haired man who
smelled as if he had just smoked one hundred cigarettes.
He was wearing a grey shirt, grey jeans, and grey shoes. Meritxell
thought that maybe it was of because of the smoke
of the cigarettes that he had become all grey, and imagined
him as a walking column of ash. Or maybe, like meat that
was smoked, he would live forever!
They shook hands and he smiled at her. Her eyes widened
with surprise to see teeth were as huge and sharp
as those of a crocodile. But she realised quickly that rather
than being scary, he was quite the opposite! I know it may
sound the weirdest thing you have ever read or heard, but
even though he had teeth that looked like a monster’s, Peter’s
smile was so friendly that it made Meritxell feel quite
safe, as if she was at home.
Meritxell followed Peter into a lift, and they shot up to
the fifteenth floor of the building. When the door of the
lift opened, and she heard the sound of dozens of telephones
ringing, the clack-clack of hundreds of fingers typing
on the keyboards, loud TVs mounted on the walls, together
62

with mumblings and loud voices, all mixed in a soup of
noise. She clamped her hands over her poor complaining
ears. “Goodness! Is it like that all day? Maybe it’s because
I live near the countryside, but I think I couldn’t bear this!
Do you use earplugs when you work?”
Peter gave a big resounding laugh that showed all his
teeth in their full glory. “Of course I don’t, my beauty! As
a journalist, all my senses have to be razor sharp! My right
ear listens to the BBC on the radio, my left one listens to
local radio stations or to the phone, my right eye watches
the TV, and my left eye is reading my computer screen.
And in my spare time I surf the Internet and look for news
on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, and
YouTube.”
He was saying this as they walked along a wide corridor
with tables on both sides at which stressed-looking journalists
were sitting staring at screens or talking on the telephone.
Meritxell’s eyes were like dinner plates at the very idea.
It was like listening to an octopus explain how it played piano
duets, table tennis and computer games all at the same
time, and she wondered if any journalists exploded, and if
they did whether that would be in the newspapers.
“Goodness, I can hardly do my homework if my dog,
Hume, is sniffing my feet, whereas you manage to make a
newspaper everyday with so many distractions!” Peter smiled
with satisfaction. “Those are not distractions, Meritxell.
Those are The News, my life blood! It’s in my veins to be
like that! I couldn’t work from nine to five in a silent and
boring office, I need action! I work until midnight everyday
to provide the people in this city with the information they
want and need! I don’t have a wife, I don’t have kids, I don’t
63

do any sport. Actually, I can’t. I just work, eat and smoke.
I sleep a little, too, and, occasionally of course, I go to the
toilet. But that’s all. I know that’s the price I have to pay to
have this job. And I’m happy with that.”
“Listen, Meritxell,” he confided, “I’m going to tell you
something very important for me. It’s the thrill of knowing
that I may be the first to find a story and break it to the
world, that makes me get up every morning.” Meritxell
thought about her mornings where a combination of the
smell of breakfast and Hume were the things that made her
leave her warm cosy bed.
They finally arrived at Peter’s desk. He got her a chair
and they sat and he talked about newspapers and answered
her questions. Meritxell thought again about what Dora
had said about journalists. “You talked about the TV, the
radio, the Internet, and social media, but what about going
out to look for the news?”, she asked, “Aren’t your journalists
in India and Argentina and South Africa…, or even
around the corner or in the city centre?” Peter sighed. “Ah,
the good old days!”, he said. “If only we could… What you
say is very old-style.”
Meritxell was unsure what old-style meant, but he was
continuing. “Many years ago, people would learn about
things in America weeks after they happened, because they
had to sail over the ocean to tell people. Then we got telephones
and radio, so we heard the news more quickly, but
it was still just a question of publishing a newspaper once a
day. Then we got 24 hour TV, and now we have the Internet,
and as well as printing our paper, we add news every
few minutes on our website.”
His voice was speeding up as if he was acting it out in
64

eal time. “So we can’t waste any time travelling, we can’t
even waste time talking to the neighbour, or to the scientist
that has made a discovery, or to the novelist who has just
published his masterpiece” he said, “We have to publish,
publish, publish, all the time, and as fast as we can. That is
why we are always connected to the Internet and with our
senses placed everywhere. We have to be the first ones to
give a piece of news, because if we are the first to give a
piece of news, then more people will buy our newspaper
or visit our website. That is why the kind of news that we
publish also has to be interesting to the people. We publish
what people want to read, not what we think they should
know! Imagine that we have two news stories and we have
to decide which one to publish: one is Miley Cyrus having
had a tongue tattooed on her belly, while the other is the
discovery of a new planet. We would choose the news on
Miley Cyrus, of course, because who cares about planets,
haha! And the bigger the audience we have, the more advertisements
we’ll have and the richer we’ll become. Or,”
he added with a wry smile, “at least maybe we won’t be the
next newspaper to go out of business!”
Meritxell was stressed just imagining herself working
there. She remembered the day she had forgotten to do her
maths exercises and did them five minutes before class started,
and she made lots of mistakes. So, she wondered, how
can these people do such this important job of finding and
telling the truth with so much pressure and still get it right?
“Aunt Dora told me that every journalist has to check
with at least three people, that what they write is true. Does
that really happen?”, she asked Peter. “Meritxell, again,
that’s very old-school. That’s what every journalism book
65

says a journalist should do. But do you know how old these
books are? At least fifteen years old - which is older than
you! Things have changed so quickly, that that’s not realistic
at all… You know what I mean, honey? I mean that
they are not close to real life any more. At that time, there
was no Internet, no social media… Only radio, television
and newspapers, and journalists took their time to produce
news. Nowadays, however, we have to work at the speed of
light! If we had to confirm every piece of news we publish
three times, we would publish at a snail’s pace…, and we’d
lose money, and probably our jobs.”
That was not what Meritxell wanted to hear at all. Her
head was buzzing again from the way he talked. It sounded
like running all the time just to stay in the same place, and
spinning plates and juggling balls at the same time. Not the
best way at all to have your head clear and your thoughts
in any sort of order, let alone know if any of it was True.
Then something else occurred to her. She thought about
how things were happening all over the world: babies being
born, presidents giving speeches, storms and earthquakes
and football matches and inventors inventing things and
scientists working out how things worked. And the more
she thought, the more events she thought of, and it was as
if her head was a balloon that was being filled with water
from a tap that would never switch off. It gave her such a
headache she had to shake her head violently to make the
ideas stop. Maybe that was what it looked like in Peter’s
head, and maybe that’s why he’s so grey, she thought.
But she also realised that no-one could write about
everything, and some things might not be interesting to
everyone, like what she had for breakfast every day. “Pe-
66

ter,” she asked, “If there are a zillion things happening
everywhere in the world, how do you choose what goes
into your newspaper? Even with your online thing, surely
you can’t say everything?” She said this with a slight anxiety
that if she was wrong, maybe what she ate for breakfast
was in a newspaper somewhere, and that would be very
peculiar indeed. Maybe there would be a newspaper called
The Breakfast Times or The Croissant that talked about nothing
else? She snapped out of this fantasy as she realised
Peter was answering her question. “We have to choose of
course!” He said, “Some things go in and a lot doesn’t. As I
said, the audience rules, and because we need people to buy
our paper, we ask ourselves whether they are stories people
want to read. And of course different newspapers make
different choices, and tell the stories in different ways.”
Peter took her over to a table covered with different
newspapers. “These are all today’s papers,” he said. Some
papers had words so big they seemed to shout at you, while
others looked much more polite. “So do they all tell the
truth though?”, Meritxell asked. Peter smiled, and said “Ah,
but whose truth?”. Then, the phone rang and Peter told
Meritxell had to leave her because he had to write a story.
He picked up a copy of his newspaper from a big pile, and
handed it to her as a souvenir. Then he took her back to the
lift doors, shook her hand, gave her a final flash of his large
teeth, and he was gone.
She rode the lift down, and as the numbers of the floors
went down one by one, it was as if all the stress that his
office was filled with, seeped out, so that she stepped out
onto the street, feeling only a little shell-shocked. Oddly, his
newspaper world that was supposed to tell us the truth, had
67

seemed so unreal and separate from this warm buzzy city
life of ordinary people doing ordinary things.
As she sat on the bus back to Dora’s flat, Meritxell flicked
through the black and white newspaper, and smiled at the
thought that maybe it wasn’t all the smoking that had made
him grey, but, like a chameleon, he’d taken on the colour
of the work that he was so passionate about. She looked at
the headings and the pictures, and she thought about what
all the stories meant, and why these had squeezed out the
thousands of other stories that could have been chosen.
And while she was reading it, she could not stop thinking
that she still had no idea if these lucky stories that had
forced their way in, were the most important ones, or even
if they were true. If newspapers were printing what they
thought people wanted to read, and people believed that
what they read must be important and true because it was
in newspapers, then it all seemed to go round and round. It
felt like when Hume suddenly saw his tail out of the corner
of his eye, and he would spin like a mad black hairy top
trying to catch it in his mouth, until he became exhausted,
or tripped and fell over and did a sort of somersault that
brought him to his senses. She felt completely let down at
finding how different the newspaper was from what she
had expected, and quite exhausted at the effort of trying to
find something she could trust, something she could hold
on to.
As she lay in bed later that evening, trying to sleep, Meritxell
found it hard to stop thinking, not just about Peter
and the newspaper, but about everything else that had
happened that week. People’s faces, the things they’d said,
and the way they’d made her feel, drifted through her head
68

and mixed together. Commander Bloomfield, who believed
things because he’d seen them or trusted people he knew.
Eva and Hillary, who believed in science, and in what they
didn’t know, which was hard to understand and must be a
very odd way to live. The Turtle man who believed science
was saying the world was in danger, the man in the suit
who thought that science would save them, and the fisherman
who didn’t seem to have much faith in what anyone
was doing. Sofia who believed her nutritionist and said that
science couldn’t answer every question, and Mister Brown
who seemed to think that we were just thinking too much!
And then Peter and the journalists who were supposed to
be finding out the truth, but were overwhelmed and having
to write what people wanted instead.
Meritxell was looking for something. She wasn’t quite sure what it
was and what it looked like, and was starting to worry how she’d
know when she found it. The air was cold, and all around her stretching
into the distance there were tall fir trees. Above her head a moon
lit her way, but her feet seemed to know where they were going anyway.
It was as if she were a passenger and they were taking her deeper and
deeper into the dark forest, whether she wanted to or not. The moon
was becoming fainter, and she became aware that she was surrounded
by murmuring voices, as if all the trees were telling her something.
Then the earth beneath her feet started to soften. Before she knew it,
she had sunk up to her ankles. She started to try to run, but the more
she tried the heavier her feet became. She sank further into what she
thought must be quicksand, and as it came up to her chest, pressing
in so she could hardly breathe, she realised the voices had all become
laughter. A scream of panic rose inside her throat.
Then she heard a different noise and she was shaking.
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The grip of the earth was becoming looser. She knew that
noise, it was Hume barking, and she was being shaken
awake. Meritxell opened her eyes with a sharp intake of
breath, and looked up at Dora, who was leaning over her
holding both her shoulders. Hume’s face appeared and gave
another little bark.
The nightmare was over, but Aunt Dora was taking
charge, and before she knew it, Meritxell was sitting on the
sofa, leaning against Dora. They were both sipping steaming
mugs of hot milky malty chocolate, and Hume was
lying half on her and half off, as if he was making sure she
was absolutely all right.
“So, little Meri, what’s going on?” Dora asked gently.
And Meritxell wasn’t really sure, as she hadn’t been in control
of her dream, and she didn’t know what to say or where
to start. But somehow, between sips of hot chocolate, she
did start, and she just talked about everything she’d seen,
and all the people she’d met, and what they’d said.
She talked about how scared she was about Grandpa
dying, and how frightened she’d felt when it seemed that
everyone who she’d believed were telling the truth were
lying to her. She talked about how that fear had turned into
anger, and that anger had started to pour out of her, and
change how she saw everything. Then she talked about all
the odd people she met, and the different answers they’d given
her. She talked about how she was trying to make sense
of it all, but how the more she tried, the less sense it all
made. It was a little bit like that moment on the train when
she’d burst into tears and been given tea by Eva and Hillary,
except that she felt even less sure what to think or why.
Aunt Dora just sat and did what she thought was most
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useful, which was to listen with an occasional murmuring
grunt to show she was still there, and exude love and reassurance
to her niece, much as Hume was doing. When
Meritxell’s stream of words had stopped, there was a pause
while they both sipped their drinks, and Dora asked,
“You’ve talked about what everyone else thinks and says,
what do you think? What feels right to you?”
If you’ve ever been asked how you feel about something,
you might know that that can be the hardest question
of all to answer, sometimes because there are things you
are not really allowed to say. “One thing that really confuses
me,” Meritxell said eventually, “is that I feel the person I’m
talking to is right, and that lasts until I talk to someone else.
And I end up thinking that I just don’t know anything.”
Dora smiled, and said, “Well I expect that Grandpa would
tell you about a very wise person, a long time ago, who
said that the only thing he knew was that he knew nothing.
Everyone who’s ever been born has to work out what they
think is important in life, and what or who they trust, and
although I spend lots of time telling myself stories, ‘not
knowing’ is probably the most peaceful place to sit.”
They sat some more, and Meritxell asked, “Do you think
Grandpa will be all right?”. Aunt Dora looked down, and
said “I’m guessing you mean, will he die or not?” When
Meritxell gave a nod, Dora gave her a squeeze and continued,
“Well I don’t know the answer to that, but I think
that either way he’ll be all right.”
71

Saturday
Meritxell goes
back home
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The sun streamed through the shutters, and would
have woken Meritxell, if Hume hadn’t already
been nudging her and generally saying ‘GET
UP!’ in a doggy kind of way, and she hadn’t anyway
been lying there wondering how Grandpa was. She
took him out for a run in the park. When they got back,
Aunt Dora was bustling around in the kitchen. Meritxell
gave Hume his own breakfast, and then she and Dora sat
down for theirs. It was Saturday, and there was a pile of
pastries and fresh bread on the table.
Meritxell was gazing into the distance, lost in thought,
as she sipped her bowl of hot chocolate and ate a small almond
croissant hungrily. She glanced up and saw her Aunt
watching her curiously. “I just spoke to your Mother, and
it’s time to go home, Meri” said the Aunt, “How are you today?”
‘How are you’ can mean almost anything you want it
to, and sometimes lots of things at once, especially after the
night before, so Meritxell finished her mouthful and picked
up an apple and custard slice as she wondered what to say.
“I’ve got so much to think about,” she started, forgetting
her mouth was really rather full, “it’s hard to know
where to begin. And then it feels wrong to spend time thinking
about this and not worry about Grandpa and Mother.”
“Do you think worrying would help either of them”, asked
her Aunt quizzically, with one eyebrow raised. Meritxell was
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getting used to her questions, and knew there was no need
to answer unless she wanted to. “When my head is full,” her
Aunt continued, “I find the best thing is to do something
quite different, and when I check I often find it’s all sorted
itself out without any effort from me whatsoever!”
So Meritxell did something quite different. She helped
wash up, and packed her bags, gave her Aunt a very tight
hug, and not long after, she and Hume were back on the
train, and they were out of the city and speeding through
fields and past villages. It was like watching people’s lives
pass you by, she thought, as she looked out at houses and
schools, and farmhouses.
Then the landscape started to feel more familiar, either
because she recognized things, or perhaps felt she ought
to recognize them, as her own station approached. Hume
seemed to sense it too, as he became more excitable and
started making strange high-pitched noises that were a bit
more than growls and a bit less than barks. Then they were
pulling to the platform and her Mother was standing there,
looking up and down the train. Meritxell and Hume jumped
out and ran to meet her, and there was a lot of hugging by
Meritxell and jumping up and down and barking by Hume.
As they drove home, Meritxell asked about Grandpa. Mother
just said “You’ll have you wait and see, let’s just sort
ourselves out first.”
They pulled into the drive and unpacked themselves.
Meritxell tried to run into the house, hampered by Hume,
who was rushing round and round and through her legs
as if he wanted to be trodden on. Then Hume stopped,
cocked an ear as if listening to the wind, and leapt at the
door, pushing his nose in as Meritxell turned the handle
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and forced his way in before there was really enough room
for him. The reason became clear as Meritxell followed,
and there, sitting in the kitchen, making a fuss of Hume,
was Grandpa.
The next hour went by so quickly, it was hard to remember
the details. There was excitement, and there were
tears, and lots of talking, and (just in case things got too
emotional) tea and cake. Grandpa said that hearts could
be funny things; they had a bit of a flutter and everything
would get very difficult, then they would recover, and the
body would start acting as if nothing had ever been the
matter, and wondered what the fuss was all about. Doctors
had prodded and poked and measured and muttered, and
decided that he could go home, and had timetabled regular
prodding and poking in the future to check that his heart
wasn’t have any more turns.
And finally, as everything calmed down, Meritxell’s mother
busied herself with some pruning, and Grandpa had a
chance to talk to Meritxell about her adventures. They sat
on the garden seat that was like a grown ups’ swing, he in
his hat and she with her feet on his lap. As they rocked gently
in the sunshine, she told him everything. How her world
had felt like it had turned upside down when he’d had his
emergency. She said it felt like she was seeing it all through
different eyes, that nothing was true any more, and she felt
adrift in a sea of lies and no-one she could trust. She told
him about her talking back to her teacher, and talking with
Commander Bloomfield in America. She told him about
the scientists and the climate march, and the food shops,
and the newspaper. And she told him how confusing it all
became, because she realised people weren’t lying, but they
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all believed different things, and had different ways of deciding
what was true.
All through this Grandpa sat with his eyes closed, patting
her feet, and occasionally opening one eye to look at
her. He said nothing until she had finished, and then neither
of them said anything, but just moved slowly to and
fro, as if the swing was also unsure of what to think, and
was being rocked this way and that by everyone’s opinions.
“I pop into hospital for a few days, and look what happens
when I come out!,” he said, “It sounds as if you’ve
had an adventure just like explorers in the past who used
to sail across the seas without knowing what they’d find.
Would they find lions or kangaroos or sea snakes or volcanoes
or the edge of the world? But your adventure has
been looking inside other people’s heads, which is just as
exciting, with far less chance of being eaten or buried in
molten lava or falling off into space! I’ve always loved that
adventure, it’s what I’m doing when I’m reading my philosophy
books.” He looked across at Meritxell’s mother, and
added, “I often think of it like gardening. Thoughts sprout,
as if from nowhere, and unless I pay attention, everything
gets all tangled up and overgrown. So I spend time here or
there trying to keep it in some sort of order, but it feels as
if I’m managing it rather than really being in control. And
that feels enough.”
“Do you know who Hume is named after?” Grandpa
said after another pause, one eye opening. Meritxell knew
it was a Scotsman, because Grandpa had told her that, but
that was all. “It’s one of my favourite philosophers,” continued
Grandpa. “Someone who was above all practical, and
if ideas became too airy fairy, he had no time for them. He
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thought we could only really know things from our own experience,
and even then we could say what had happened,
but not what would happen. That leaves everyone to work
out their own version of the truth, if there is such a thing,
for themselves.”
Meritxell looked up and watched the clouds, that looked
like wisps of cotton wool, and thought about what she
would look like from up there, and what clouds would think
if they could. Maybe they’d look down and make up stories
about that the towns and lakes and mountains were.
Grandpa continued, “David Hume used to say that we
could see the sun rise every day of our lives, which for
me would have been thousands and thousands of times,
and we could still never know that it would happen again
the next day. I know now that just because my heart has
been beating constantly all my life, which probably means
billions of times, I don’t know that it’s going to beat the next
minute. But there’s the sun, and here I am, and we can live
perfectly well without being certain we know anything.”
That fitted with what Dora had been saying, Meritxell
thought, and Hume seemed a very appropriate name for
the dog, who was lying most inelegantly in the shade of
their swing. He seemed astonished and delighted every time
anyone appeared, even if they’d only left the room a little
while before. “I used to believe everyone,” she said, “and
that felt lovely and warm and safe, but then I didn’t believe
anyone or anything, and I couldn’t even if wanted to. I felt
I was like I was completely alone, and that wasn’t comfortable
at all.”
“And yet,” said Grandpa, “even when you felt alone and
uncomfortable and maybe lost, was any of that true? It
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sounds as if you were fine, with clothes and a home and
people and food; you just had a movie inside your head
that said different!” Meritxell liked the idea that there was a
movie or a TV set inside her head, because she could imagine
everyone’s heads being the same, except they were all
switched to different channels. It made her chuckle because
she knew people at school who seemed to watch nothing
but sports channels, and she could imagine funny conversations
between them and other people watching films about
nature. One would be talking about football or skiing or
gymnastics, and the other about butterflies or locusts or
great white sharks. It helped her think about how scientists
and food faddists and climate people could all think they
knew the truth, and why they might find it hard to understand
why the others believed something different. It really
had felt like a different programme had been switched on
in her head a week ago.
Hume, unaware of any of Meritxell’s inner adventure, let
alone his great philosophical namesake, yawned and stretched,
and decided it was time to think about food again.
THE END
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