The Cuckoo Child by Katie Flynn Read Free Book Online Page A

grabbed her, saying chidingly, in a strong Lancashire accent: ‘Hold up, lass! Ee by gum, how they do shove to be first on t’ train. You want to be careful when you’re in the front. Someone give you a push, did they? Aye, I felt it meself. That’s why I grabbed a hold of you.’
    Dot, feeling quite weak with shock, mumbled her thanks and, as she got into the train, turned to look behind her, though she knew that she was unlikely to be able to pick out whoever had pushed her – if indeed anyone had – in the motley crowd. Infuriatingly, there were at least three people now jostling aboard the train with ferrety faces and large caps, but Dot was pretty positive that none of them was Ollie. However, she was also pretty positive that Ollie was far too fly a character to hang around after committing an act of aggression. He would have got away immediately or would simply have moved smartly to his right or left, getting aboard the train through another doorway. For a moment, she hesitated, thinking it might be safer to fight her way off the train and simply go home, but then common sense reasserted itself. If she had been deliberately pushed – and she was by no means certain that this was the case – then it simply must have been Ollie because Mr Rathbone, she knew, would be in his shop, particularly on a Saturday morning, with all his customers hurrying in to buy their Sunday joints.
    ‘Hey, Dot!’ It was Fizz, sitting comfortably on his laundry basket and grinning conspiratorially at her. ‘Wanna seat? There’s room for two if you can fight your way down here.’
    Dot began to wriggle past strap-hanging passengers as the train started to move, cursing inwardly. It was just like Fizz to call attention to her when the last thing she wanted was to be noticed, but she sank down on the laundry basket, then glanced furtively round her. To be sure, she was low down, but after a couple of moments of staring she was reasonably certain that the weasel-faced one was not amongst those present and felt her heart, which had been thumping noisily, slow to a steadier pace.
    ‘Dot? Whazzup? You look all hot and bothered.’ Her pal grinned at her. ‘Someone pinch your bum when you was in the crowd on the platform? I saw you lurch forward, like – give me quite a turn it did.’
    Dot stared at him. ‘Someone shoved me,’ she said in a husky whisper. ‘Did you see who done it, Fizz?’
    Fizz gave a hoarse guffaw. ‘Someone shoved you? I reckon half a dozen shoved me. I near as damn it went down in front of the train. It were only me laundry basket what saved me. You’d think that folk off for a bit of a holiday would be more careful, but not them. Anyroad, what makes you think you’re so special?’
    Fizz had a loud voice, which he had to raise in order to combat the train’s clatter. ‘Hush! I don’t think I’m special,’ Dot said, wincing. ‘It were an accident, I’m sure; I just wondered if it were someone from school, playing a trick on me, like.’
    Fizz grunted. ‘I didn’t see no one I knew, but then I didn’t look, pertickler,’ he said. ‘I wish me mam had something good planned for Monday, but she’s a bit short of the ready right now. Wharrabout your Aunt Myrtle? I don’t s’pose she’s plannin’ to take you an’ your cousins off for the day, is she?’
    Dot made a derisive noise in the back of her throat. ‘Poor Aunt Myrtle never has a penny over once we’s all fed,’ she told her pal. ‘And if she had, Uncle Rupert would get it off her, though things are lookin’ up a bit now Sammy’s earnin’. He told me uncle straight out that if he tried to touch a penny of his wages – Sammy’s, I mean – he’d go straight to the nearest scuffer and report he’d been robbed. Uncle Rupert tried to give him a swipe but Sammy punched him on the nose and it bled buckets, so now Aunt Myrtle’s made the same threat and I do think me uncle’s a bit more careful . . . he asked Aunt Myrtle for a couple