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

of bob last weekend and when she said she hadn’t got it he didn’t belt her, norreven a little bit.’
    Fizz gave her a curious look and Dot realised, with some dismay, that the private life of the Brewster family was something which she had never before revealed to Fizz, knowing his weakness for gossip. Indeed, she would not have done so now had she not been anxious to turn his thoughts away from the shove on the underground platform.
    It was at this point that the train stopped at Hamilton Square and everyone began to get out. Fizz and Dot, thanks to the laundry basket, were amongst the first to alight and presently they set off in the direction of the boys’ school, chatting amiably as they walked. Dot looked around her with feigned interest but in fact she saw very little of her surroundings since her mind was still preoccupied with what had happened just before the train had come into the station. If Ollie had recognised her and decided to kill her, he must have had a hundred opportunities before now. But, thinking it over, she decided that she was almost certainly making a mountain out of a molehill. Weeks and weeks had passed since the robbery and no one had attempted any sort of aggression against her. Why should it happen now? From the back, with her hair plaited and washed to a far paler shade than it had been on the night of the robbery, it seemed most unlikely that he could have picked her out as the girl running out of the jigger. It was not as though she was wearing the necklace, and though she had visited the graveyard several times she had not once disinterred her prize, though secretly she was longing to do so. She wanted to see it in daylight, to see how the beautiful green stones would glitter as sunshine touched them. But she had resisted temptation and had felt a growing confidence that, if she continued to be careful, she would remain safe. It was only if she tried to inform on the butcher and his pal that she might run into trouble, she concluded; or, of course, if she confided in anyone else regarding the robbery, and the murder which had followed it.
    ‘Here we are; we turn in up that long drive and go round the back, Mam says,’ Fizz told her, a trifle breathlessly. ‘Once we’ve got rid of the laundry we can come back to the centre of town and catch a bus up to New Brighton.’
    Dot beamed at him. ‘So we are going to the seaside,’ she said gleefully. ‘Oh, Fizz, you’re a grand feller, so you are! It’ll make up for . . .’ Her voice trailed away. She thought, guiltily, that she really must watch her tongue; she had very nearly given herself away. Fizz looked at her enquiringly, so she hastened to end the sentence. ‘. . . for not being able to go to the Saturday rush,’ she said glibly. ‘Let’s hurry!’
    Crossing the court that evening, Dot thought, blissfully, that the day just ended had been one of the happiest in her life. The sun had shone. She and Fizz had paddled, made a huge sandcastle, and feasted on chips and fizzy lemonade. They had run races along the hard, wet sand, and when the tide came in they had actually bathed; Dot clad only in her knickers and Fizz in his underpants. Dot had gazed at this garment with awe since none of her cousins owned such things, but Fizz had said, complacently, that his mother had advised the donning of them just in case they should end up at the seaside and want to swim.
    Swimming, so far as Dot was concerned, was an activity she could not share with Fizz; boys learned to swim either in the baths on Netherfield Road or in the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, usually up by Tate’s. The water there was warm because the factory jettisoned unwanted hot water into that part of the canal, known to the kids as the Scaldy. Girls, however, rarely joined in the sport, so Dot could not swim. But today she had let Fizz hold her up by the chin whilst she did her best to follow his instructions, and for one or two moments had actually kept herself afloat.