The White Hare by Fishwick Michael;

Author:Fishwick, Michael; [Fishwick, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Head of Zeus

16

IT WAS a long way to Alice’s, but he made it in the end.

He didn’t want her parents to see him, so he waited up the road for her to come home from school, his hood over his head just in case. He had texted her to tell her where he was. His phone had been full of texts from everybody, he had deleted them all without bothering to read them. The battery was going, anyway.

He looked around him. Alice lived on an estate on the outskirts of Sherborne. Rows of new houses marched together like soldiers on parade. Sometimes a bus stopped at the end of the road and people got out and mingled, then disappeared home, leaving everything neat and regimental again.

Suddenly there was Alice coming towards him in her school uniform, eyes singing with excitement.

‘You’re in so much trouble,’ she exclaimed. She gave him a big kiss. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Coming to see you.’

‘You’re out of your mind.’

‘Yeah, you’re not the only one thinks that.’

‘You can’t come over to mine. My mum and dad will call the police. Or your dad.’

‘Not sure which is worse.’

‘Come on, what’re you doing here?’

‘Running away.’

‘Really? And where are you going?’

She’d got a point.

‘Need to find somewhere to hole up for a while.’

‘“To hole up”? Robbie, your dad’s in a total state. Your sisters are too. Jess called me. Oh, and the police came and pulled me out of school.’

‘What for?’

‘To see if I knew anything, ’cos Sheila told them we were friends.’

‘She’s all heart.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘Stay with you. Haven’t you got a shed or something?’

She looked round conspiratorially. ‘There’s the garage. Dad’s car’s being serviced and there’s some part they haven’t got they’ve sent away for so he’s not getting it back for at least a week.’

She took him to a row of garages painted a dull blood colour. Some of them had cars outside on the tarmac, which sloped down to the road.

‘Wait here,’ she said. He watched the strings of red and blue beads bobbing in her hair as she ran, then he sat down on the warm ground. He was almost asleep by the time she was back.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Mum wouldn’t stop talking, and it was hard to get the key without giving something away.’ She twisted it in the lock, wrestled with the handle and pulled. Inside, the garage smelled of wet concrete. It was almost bare, except for some cupboards and some used paint tins stacked up on top of each other.

‘Ta da!’ sang Alice, pirouetting. A mattress was propped on its side, almost invisible against the dirty whitewash of the back wall. ‘But, Robbie, am I going to get into trouble over you? Won’t I be aiding and abetting or something? Isn’t that what they call it?’

‘I won’t be staying long. And you’d go to the ends of the earth for me, you know you would.’

‘Ends of the earth but not the Youth Court or whatever, that thing you went to.

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