Free Cuckoo by Julia Crouch Page A

She was a little stunned. Where in Karpathos did the boys learn all this language?
     
    The boys scuffled their way across the room, towards the corner where Flossie lay on her lambskin, gurgling at the shiny, pretty toys that dangled from the coathanger.
     
    ‘Cunt!’ Yannis screamed and lashed out at his brother with a kick. His foot narrowly missed Flossie’s head.
     
    ‘RIGHT YOU TWO, CUT IT OUT NOW,’ Rose cried, leaping over to separate the boys. This was worse than the worst class she had taught back in Hackney. And in her own kitchen, too.
     
    Getting the two boys apart was quite a job. Although they looked as if they were made of thin wire and paper, they had an angular strength that rendered them solid to the touch. The energy beneath their skin made them stick together like glue.
     
    ‘Right. You sit there,’ Rose motioned Nico to one end of the table. ‘And you go there, Yannis.’ The child-control techniques she had honed at work were being called on in a way that they never had been with Anna. Rose scooped Flossie up, feeling like an idiot to have exposed her to such danger.
     
    ‘Time out. Five minutes’ silence to calm down.’ The boys sat there glaring at each other. Rose sat in the armchair by the window and fed Flossie, studying them and thinking.
     
    She had planned that the boys would stay at home with her for a week or two while the school stuff got sorted out and they got used to being in England. She had thought about taking them for long walks around the hills that surrounded the village, showing them the British spring and the new animals at the farm down the road.
     
    But this fight made her think that this might not work out as she had planned. For all his crudeness of expression, Nico had been right: the boys needed to spend time away from each other, to be with other children. And school was the best place to start all that. There was also Anna to think of and, after what Rose had just witnessed, diluting the Yannis and Nico effect with some other children might be best for all concerned.
     
    ‘OK, look guys,’ she said at length, buttoning up her pyjama top. ‘I’m glad you’ve both calmed down. Let’s take you up to the school this morning and I’ll have a word with the Headmistress.’
     
    The boys cheered and punched the air, all animosity forgotten.
     
    ‘I’m not sure what she’ll say, but she owes me a few favours.’
     
    ‘Shall I go and wake up Mama?’ Nico said.
     
    ‘No, let her sleep. I’ll deal with it today.’
     
    ‘Hi.’ A sleepy Anna wandered into the kitchen. ‘What was all that noise?’
     
    ‘It was Nico’s fault,’ Yannis muttered, looking at his brother.
     
    ‘You started it, runt!’ And Nico launched himself across the table, knocking the milk jug over.
     
    ‘ Enough ,’ Rose said. Once more, she pulled them apart. It was only after she had sat them down again that she noticed that Anna, her little doppelganger, had got the cloth from the sink and was, very quietly, cleaning up the spilled milk.
     
     
    When everyone was ready, they set off for school. It was quite a cold morning after the clear night, so Rose found a fleece of hers that swamped Nico, but would at least keep him warm. Yannis wore the only warm top of Anna’s that wasn’t pink or covered in flowers. Rose made a mental note to get the boys wellies.
     
    The way to school was down to the end of the garden, then across the field at the back, skirting round the bottom of the hill that rose up like a lone breast from its middle, to the main part of the village about half a mile away. The earlier skirmishes had been forgotten and Anna, Nico and Yannis ran on ahead, jumping up to catch dewladen branches, shaking them and running away from the resulting shower.
     
    Rose walked along behind them, Flossie strapped to her front and carefully wrapped up underneath her Barbour. She looked at the boys with their sun-fed skins, their angles and lankiness under their