The Guilty One by Lisa Ballantyne Read Free Book Online Page A

around it, like a nest, to warm it, closed the drawer and was about to start downstairs when, as an afterthought, he went back into the room and took his mother’s necklace from under his pillow and placed that in the nest too, right beside the egg. He checked his back and buttocks for scratches from the goat’s horns. He had two grazes on either palm from when he fell.
    Minnie was winding a pink woolen scarf around her neck. She was still wearing the same gray skirt and boots that she had worn the day before. On top of her long cardigan, she put on a green coat. It was too tight for her to button up, and so she went out like that, with it open and the pink scarf swinging.
    Minnie said they were going to register Daniel at the local school and then they would buy him some new school clothes.
    “We’ll walk,” she said, as they walked past her car. It was a dark red Renault with spiderwebs strung across the right-hand rearview mirror. “Need to show you the way to school anyway, don’t I?”
    Daniel shrugged and followed her.
    “I hate school,” he told her. “I’ll only get kicked out. I always get kicked out.”
    “Well, I don’t wonder if you have that attitude.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Think positively. If you do, you might just be surprised.”
    “Like think about me mam getting better and then she will?”
    Minnie didn’t say anything. He was a pace behind her.
    “I wished that for years anyway and it never ’appened.”
    “Being positive’s different to wishing. What you’re talking about is just wishing.”
    It was fifty feet from her house before they reached a proper path. Minnie told him it was a twenty-minute walk to school.
    First they walked through estates, then a park, then a field with cows in it. As they walked, Minnie told Daniel about Brampton, although he told her he didn’t care. He wouldn’t be staying long.
    Brampton was just two miles south of Hadrian’s Wall, she told him. When he said he had never heard of the wall, she said she would take him one day. It was ten miles to Carlisle and fifty-five miles to Newcastle.
    Fifty-five miles, Daniel thought as he walked behind her.
    “You all right there, pet?” she asked. “You’re looking right down in the mouth today.”
    “M’all right.”
    “What is it you like to do? Not used to boys, so I’m not. You’ll need to keep me up to date. What is it you like, eh? Football?”
    “I dunno,” he said.
    They passed the park and Daniel turned to look at the swings. There was a heavyset man alone on one of them, letting his foot gently rock him.
    “Want to have a shot? We’ve got time, you know.”
    “That bloke’s there,” he said, squinting at the sun, which was now high in the sky.
    “That’s just Billy Harper. Billy’ll not bother you. He loves them swings. Always has. He’s all right. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. Around here, pet, everyone knows everyone else. It’s the worst thing about the place, you’ll find out. But the good thing is, once you have everyone’s measure you’ve nothing to fear. There’s no secrets in Brampton.”
    Daniel thought about that: no secrets and everyone knowing your measure. He knew small places. He’d been put in a few of them, when his mam was sick. He didn’t like small places. He liked Newcastle. He wanted to live in London. He didn’t like people knowing his measure.
    As if she had heard his thoughts, she said, “So you like Newcastle then?”
    “Aye,” he said.
    “Would you like to live there again?”
    “I want to live in London.”
    “My, really? London, I think that’s a fine idea. I loved it there. If you grow up and move to London, what do you think you’ll be?”
    “I’ll be a pickpocket.”
    Daniel thought she might tell him off then, but she turned and gave him a little push with her elbow. “Like Fagin, you mean?”
    “What’s that?”
    “Haven’t you seen Oliver Twist ?”
    “Maybe. Aye, I think so.”
    “There’s an old man in