Precious Time by Erica James

secure jobs, they had spent the last two years fruit picking in the summer and early autumn, then hooking up with fellow full-timers and travelling south to Spain and Tunisia for the winter.
    Now, as she tooted Winnie’s horn at them, Clara wondered what Louise and the rest of her friends would make of Ron and Eileen.
     
    With the map spread open on his lap, his elbows resting on the armrests at either side of him, and his finger planted firmly on the streak of blue that was the motorway they were following, Ned looked every inch the seasoned navigator. That the map was upside down was neither here nor there. By Clara’s reckoning they had about thirty miles of motorway driving left before they would strike out cross-country.
    ‘Shall we stop at the next service station to stretch our legs?’ she asked. Ron and Eileen had said that if there were free facilities to be had it was their duty to take full advantage of them rather than waste their own resources.
    Ned looked up from the map. ‘When Nanna says that, Granda
    says his legs don’t need stretching. He says he’s tall enough already.’
    Clara smiled. ‘It’s called a euphemism.’
    He tried the word out for himself. ‘Eu-fer-miz-um. What does that mean?’
    ‘Well, it’s when we use a word or phrase to disguise what we’re really saying, to make it sound more polite. I was really asking you if you wanted to stop and go to the toilet.’
    He thought about this. ‘Like when Nanna asks me if I want to spend a penny?’
    ‘Exactly.’
    ‘Eu-fer-miz-um,’ he said again.
    Ned’s vocabulary was quite advanced for his age, and Clara put this down to his having spent more time with adults than children.
    Neither her parents nor her friends had ever talked down to him: they had always treated him as a mini-adult and he had responded accordingly, absorbing information at a phenomenal rate. With so much adult company around him, she had dreaded him turning into a precocious brat, but thankfully there seemed little likelihood of that.
     
    After they had euphemistically stretched their legs and spent their pennies, they joined the motorway once more, and, with the map the right way round, Ned looked at it hard and asked where they were going.
    She gave him a sideways smile. ‘You’re not catching me out that easily. I told you, it’s a surprise. Wait and see.’
    ‘But will I like it? Surprises aren’t always nice.’
    ‘I’ll make you a promise. If you don’t like it we’ll move on somewhere else.’
    An hour later, and with the M6 behind them, Clara took the B5470 out of Macclesfield and found herself driving through rolling hills of lush green farmland crisscrossed with a threadwork of drystone walls. It came as such a surprise that she slowed down to take a better look. It was beautiful, just as Ron and Eileen had said it would be. ‘If we could get the work up there, that’s where we’d spend our summers,’ Ron had said. ‘Believe me, you’ll love it. It’s terrific walking country.’
    But it wasn’t hill walking that had drawn Clara to this part of the Peak District, it was what, according to the guide books, had also drawn Victorian day-trippers from the neighbouring industrial towns and villages: the chance to see a mermaid. Not a live one, but an underground cavern that claimed to have a rock formation that looked just like the real thing and granted wishes for those prepared to dip their fingers into the clear still water of its pool. Given Ned’s love of Mermy - who was currently in his hand - and his desire to meet a real one, this was probably as near as she could get to fulfilling a dream for him.
    They drove on, the road becoming steeper, the houses fewer and the scenery even more stunning as it stretched before them beneath a picture-postcard blue sky with puffy white clouds. Suddenly, making her jump, Ned pointed Mermy at the window to his left and cried, ‘Mummy, look at all the sheep on the green mountains.’
    ‘Those are