The Runaway Summer by Nina Bawden Read Free Book Online

breath. For a moment she stayed as still as the boy on the ground. Then she came out of her hiding place between the huts and looked along the beach. The men had vanished. The only living things in sight were the gulls, resting on the calm sea like toys.
    She looked down at the boy. He was lying on his face and her grandfather’s walking stick stuck out from beneath him. She had left it leaning against the steps and he must havetripped over it. Mary pulled at it gently but she couldn’t move it. She was afraid of hurting him.
    She said softly, ‘Get up, you’re not hurt,’ but she knew, even as she spoke, that he couldn’t hear her.
    She said, ‘Oh, please …’ with a sob in her voice but only a gull answered her, swooping over her head with a long, sad cry.
    Mary ran through the huts and on to the promenade. There were people about now, but they were some way away, by the pier. She went down the next flight of steps where there was a woman sitting in a deck chair, hidden from sight until now by a high breakwater. Mary started towards her but stopped almost at once. The old woman was lying back with her eyes closed, her shabby fur wrapped round her. It was the woman she had pulled the mad face at, this morning …
    She couldn’t wake her. And ask her to help …
    Whimpering in her throat, Mary went back to the hut. The boy hadn’t moved. A little wind had got up—no more than a gentle breath—and was stirring his limp, dark hair. His hands lay palm down on the shingles, the thin fingers loosely curled. One foot seemed to stick out at an awkward angle, and the side of his head was jammed up against the bottom step of the hut.
    Mary knelt beside him. She thought she ought to turn him over and make him more comfortable, but she was afraid to touch him.
    She thought—Perhaps he’s dead! And then— If he’s dead, I killed him!
    She began to shake, crouching on the pebbles with her arms hugged round her. She looked up and down the beach. No one had seen her; if she locked the hut and went away, no one would ever know. She could go home for tea and say—if anyone asked her—that she had been playing at the other end of the town, where the shell beach was. Aunt Alice and Grandfather would believe her. Whatever lies she told, they always believed her.
    But this was one lie she couldn’t tell! Suppose, after all, he wasn’t dead? She couldn’t just leave him here! She gave a little groan and put her hand down to his face. His cheek was warm and his breath fluttered against her palm like a bird’s wing.
    She stood up. Her stomach felt hollow and her legs seemed to be moving independently, like someone else’s legs. They carried her up the steps, on to the promenade and towards the pier.
    Just before the pier, there was a small crowd of people. She thought perhaps there had been an accident: there was a policeman there, though he wasn’t in the crowd but on the edge of it, standing and looking out to sea.
    Mary began to run towards him but slowed down when she was a few yards away. She remembered, with awful guilt, the Crunchie Bars she had stolen. Perhaps the man at the kiosk had missed them and told this very policeman. Perhaps he was looking for her now—for a dirty-faced girl with long, black hair. Forgetting she had washed before lunch, Mary pulled out her handkerchief, spat on it, and scrubbed at her mouth. She hesitated, gulped, went closer to the policeman—and then stopped dead.
    The crowd beyond him had thinned and she could see, at the centre of it, the two men who had been in the boat with the boy. Another policeman was talking to them and a third was holding their arms just above the elbow, which was rather silly, Mary thought, because neither of them looked as if they would run away. They seemed far too sad and bewildered, and so out of place, somehow, standing on the sea front in darksuits, with small, shabby suitcases in their hands. Someone near Mary said, ‘Poor devils …’ and she looked up