Feather Boy

Robert Nobel, otherwise known as Norbert No-bottle, is being bullied by Jonathan Niker. The butt of Niker's jokes in class, he despairs of his newly divorced parents at home and is hopelessly in love with Kate Barber. Robert is also haunted by dreams that seem to tell the future as well as the past, as he discovers when a storyteller called Catherine invites some of his class to Wayfield House, the local old people's home. Robert has never been there before, except in his dreams. Once there he meets Edith Sorrel, a spiky old lady who chooses him as her partner in the Elders' Project.

Robert has been given a strange task by Edith Sorrel, the old lady he's met as part of his class Elders' Project. She tells him to find a place called Chance House, and it is only by chance that he finds it - a derelict and boarded-up house at 26 St Aubyns. Robert finds a way into the house but discovers that, although derelict, it is not empty. Having propped a door open as a safe retreat, he hears footsteps and the slamming of the door. Someone or something is with him in Chance House.

Robert Nobel feels bullied by everyone – his parents, the kids at school, and especially Edith Sorrel, his partner in the Elders' Project. She's bullied him into visiting the top floor flat at Chance House, a half-derelict Victorian mansion. He bunks off school to go there and climbs to the top of the house. As he climbs he hears the sound of wings beating and a voice calling to him, urging him on. He reaches the door on the very last flight and, as it swings open, sees a blast of light and three feathers falling from the ceiling.