Read Online The Farm Beneath the Water by Helen Peters - Free Book Online

us.”
    Dad looked at the tabletop and ran his hands through his thinning hair. There was a long pause. Hannah held her breath.
    Eventually, Dad raised his head.
    “It’s not going to happen,” he said, “which is why I haven’t mentioned it, but I suppose you’d have found out anyway soon. They’ll be announcing it any moment now.”
    “Who?” said Hannah. “Announcing what?”
    “The water company. Aqua, or whatever stupid name they call themselves these days.”
    “The water company? What’s the water company got to do with anything?”
    Dad took a deep breath, as though he were preparing for a long swim underwater.
    “They want to take the farm.”
    They stared at him. This made no sense.
    “Take our farm?” cried Sam. “They can’t take our farm. What do you mean?”
    “Take it?” said Hannah. “Why? What does the water company want our farm for?”
    In a flat voice, Dad said, “They want to flood the farm and turn it into a reservoir.”
    There was a stunned silence.
    “ What? ” said Martha eventually.
    “Flood the farm?” asked Sam. “Why would they flood the farm?”
    “What’s a reservoir?” asked Jo.
    Hannah couldn’t speak. She had studied reservoirs in geography. She knew what a reservoir was.
    She stared at her father. “You’re joking. You are joking, aren’t you?”
    “No. It’s true.”
    “Daddy, what’s a reservoir?” said Sam.
    Hannah searched Dad’s face desperately for a sign that he wasn’t serious. But her father didn’t make jokes.
    “The whole farm?”
    “Pretty much.”
    Hannah couldn’t think straight. Her brain didn’t seem to be working.
    “But … but they can’t. Can they?”
    “No, of course they can’t,” said Dad. “It’s a ridiculous idea. So don’t you worry about it, all right? Now, I need to get round those pigs.”
    He left the room. The others looked at Hannah.
    “What’s a reservoir?” demanded Jo.
    Hannah felt flat and unreal. It was as though all her feelings had been switched off. In a daze, she rooted through her school bag for her geography book.
    “It’s a big artificial lake.”
    “What do you mean, an artificial lake?”
    “It’s a lake that’s made by deliberately flooding a valley. Sometimes they dam a river and sometimes they pump water into the valley.”
    “But why would they do that?” asked Sam.
    “To store water. They take the water from the reservoir and send it through the pipes to houses and factories and whatever.”
    “But how can they turn our farm into one of those?” asked Jo. Her voice sounded panicky.
    Hannah flicked through the pages of her geography textbook. “Look. This is a reservoir in Wales.”
    They looked at the picture of a large tranquil lake surrounded by green hills.
    “Eight hundred acres were drowned to make that. There are twelve farms and a whole village under that water.”
    “But what about the people who lived there?” said Sam. “Did they drown, too?”
    “No, they didn’t drown. But they all had to move out of their homes.”
    “Well, they were stupid, then,” said Martha. “They should have refused to go.”
    “They did. There were loads of protests. We saw a film about it. Marches and banners and chanting. But it didn’t make any difference. The government just went ahead and did it anyway.”
    “Are they going to drown our farm?” cried Sam. “They won’t drown our farm, will they?”
    “But our farm isn’t a valley,” said Jo.
    Hannah remembered what the woman in thesitting room had said that day.
    It’s a totally unsuitable site.
    She thought back to the tea party, and Sophie’s visit, and those people today. So that was why Dad had invited them to the farm. To help him stop it being turned into a reservoir.
    But what if they couldn’t stop it? What if the water company was stronger?
    In her mind’s eye, Hannah saw the sheep grazing in the fields, the new calves in the barn, the ancient cowsheds with their roofs covered in moss and lichen, the