The Runaway Summer by Nina Bawden Read Free Book Online Page A

at the faces round her, but no one else seemed sorry: they were just staring and staring as if they were expecting—or hoping—that something exciting would happen.
    But nothing did. There was a police car at the kerb, and as Mary pushed her way through the crowd, the two men and one of the policemen got into it, and drove away.
    Mary wondered what they had done wrong. They had come from the sea, so perhaps they were smugglers, smuggling gold watches or diamonds. Or burglars—perhaps the boat that had landed them would call for them on the next tide to take them and their loot right away, where the police couldn’t catch them. If they were burglars, it would explain why they had brought a boy with them. She remembered Oliver Twist, and how Bill Sykes had taken him burgling because he needed a boy small enough to get through a window and open the door from inside.
    If the boy was a burglar, it was no good asking a policeman to help him. Or any grown-up, for that matter …
    Mary had a sudden, awful feeling that everyone was watching her. She ducked her head, turned, and cannoned straight into the cushiony stomach of a large lady in a flowered dress. Her husband said, ‘Watch out, can’t you?’
    Mary was going to say she was sorry, but then she saw Simon beyond them, on the other side of the road. He must have been standing there all the time, watching like the others, and now he was walking away.
    Mary dodged round the large lady and flew across the road, looking neither to left nor to right—Aunt Alice would have had a fit if she’d seen her—and called, ‘Simon, Simon, wait for me.’
    She had forgotten he was bossy and inquisitive. She thought, a long time afterwards, that she must have known Simon would be a good person in an emergency, but in fact she couldn’t possibly have known it then. She just acted without thinking, and when he stopped and she saw there was someone with him, she came to a halt and couldn’t think what to say.
    ‘Hallo,’ Simon said. He looked shy for a minute, and then he said, ‘This is my Gran. Gran—this is my friend, Mary.’
    ‘Hallo, Mary.’ Simon’s Gran had a thin, merry face with a long, pointed nose, rather like a cheerful witch. She was pushing a pram with a baby in it. Mary thought it was the fat one she had seen in the play pen.
    ‘That’s Jane,’ Simon said. ‘And our new baby’s called Jenny.’
    Jane blew a large bubble and laughed when it burst.
    ‘Four sisters,’ Simon’s Gran said. ‘Poor, down-trodden boy. Still, I suppose he’ll live.’
    Simon looked at Mary. ‘Were you coming to see us? You came earlier, then you went away.’
    So he had been watching from a window! For a second, Mary felt horribly embarrassed, then it didn’t seem to matter. All that mattered was to get Simon alone, to tell him about the boy. She had the feeling—and it was growing stronger and stronger—that he would know what to do.
    But how to get him alone? His Gran was smiling and saying, ‘Well, why don’t you come and see us now?’ and she set off at a good, smart pace, without giving Mary a chance to answer. She couldn’t even drop back and catch Simon’s eye, because his Gran was talking to her, telling her that the new baby weighed eight and a half pounds, which was two pounds more than Jane had weighed when she was born and three pounds more than Polly-Anna, who were naturally smaller, being twins, but Simon had weighed more than any of them: ninepounds, three ounces exactly. ‘ And his Mum only a little thing, knee-high to a grasshopper!’ she said proudly.
    Mary tried to think of a polite remark on this subject, but failed. All she could think of was to ask Simon’s grandmother how much she had weighed when she was born, but that didn’t seem the right sort of question, somehow.
    ‘You sound like a cannibal, Gran,’ Simon said. ‘Working out which of us would have given you the biggest dinner!’
    ‘Horrible boy,’ his grandmother said calmly. She