They just looked forward through each term to having a brilliant time together in the holidays. It had been a cruel blow when their parents had decided Donny had to go to school in Singapore, but it was fine now. The forest was such a fantastic place to live. To some people it would have seemed a hard and lonely life for the two English children, but they loved it. Ben and Mary Walker both worked for an international company called Lifeforce, which financed the refuge. Their parents were the wardens of an orangutan refuge, out in the wilds of one of the last great rain forests. Here in the sleepy quiet of a tiny tropical airport, no one knew or cared that Taylor Walker was one of the five teenagers whose existence had just been announced, who were the most astonishing people on the planet.ĭonny and Tay had lived in Kandah State, a small independent country on the north coast of the giant island of Borneo, since Donny was five and Tay was seven. No one was supposed to know who she was, but she almost expected a horde of journalists to leap out, waving cameras and microphones. This was the first time she'd been in a public place since the story broke. Tay walked around, looking at the familiar souvenir shops, sniffing the spicy-food scents from the cafeteria bar-a thin girl with golden-brown hair, wearing a blue cotton dress, a Yankees baseball cap and desert boots.

They were in luck on Airport Road and got through the police checkpoints with no delay, which meant they had ages to wait before the plane from Singapore arrived. Lucia Fernandez the graduate student came with Tay instead. Mum and Dad couldn't come to the airport to meet Donny, but that was okay: he would understand.

Taylor Five by Ann Halam