Free The Legacy by Katherine Webb

Straight away, we were fascinated. Straight away, we wanted to know him—a thin, dark, naked boy with wet hair clinging to his neck, swimming and diving, all by himself. How old was I? I’m not sure. Four or five, no more than that.
    “Who are you?” he asked, treading water. I shuffled closer to Beth, held her hand tighter.
    “That’s our grandmother’s house,” Beth explained, pointing back at the manor. Dinny paddled a bit closer.
    “But who are you?” he smiled, teeth and eyes gleaming.
    “Beth!” I whispered urgently. “He’s got no clothes on!”
    “Shh!” Beth hushed me, but it was a funny little sound, made buoyant by a giggle.
    “Beth, then. And you?” Dinny looked at me. I lifted my chin a little.
    “I’m Erica,” I announced, with all the composure I could muster. Just then a brown and white Jack Russell terrier burst from the woods and bounded over to us, yapping and wagging.
    “I’m Nathan Dinsdale and that’s Arthur.” He nodded to the dog. After that, I would have followed him anywhere. I longed for a pet—a proper pet, not the goldfish that was all we had room for at home. I was so busy playing with the dog that I don’t remember how Dinny got out of the pond without Beth seeing him naked. I suspect that he did not.
    We kept seeing him, of course, in spite of Meredith’s ban, and we usually managed to keep it secret by giving Henry the slip before going down to the camp where Dinny lived with his family, at the edge of the manor’s grounds. Henry usually steered clear of it anyway. He didn’t want to disobey Meredith, and instead absorbed her contempt for the travellers, nurtured it, let it grow into a hatred of his own. The time she shut us in our parents had gone away for the weekend. We went into the village with Dinny, to buy sweets and Coke at the shop. I turned and saw Henry. He ducked behind the phone box, but not quickly enough, and I had a prickling feeling between my shoulder blades as we walked back to the house. Dinny said goodbye and wandered off through the trees, giving the house a wide berth.
    Meredith was waiting for us on the step when we got back; Henry nowhere to be seen. But I knew how she knew. She grabbed our arms, nails cutting in, bent down, put her livid face close to ours. “If you play with dogs, you will catch fleas,” she said, the words clipped and bitten. We were towed upstairs, made to bath in water so hot our skin turned red and angry and I wailed and wailed. Beth was silent, furious.
    Afterwards, as I lay in bed and snivelled, Beth coached me in a low voice. “She wants to punish us, by keeping us indoors, so we have to show that we don’t care. That we don’t mind. Do you understand, Erica? Please don’t cry!” she whispered, stroking my hair back with fingers that shook with rage. I nodded, I think, but I was too upset to pay attention to her. It was still broad daylight outside. I could hear Henry playing with one of the dogs on the lawn, hear Clifford’s voice, blurring through the floorboards. A wide August afternoon and we had been put to bed. Confined for the whole weekend.
    When our parents got back we told them everything. Dad said, “This is too much, Laura. I mean it this time.” I felt a flare of joy, of love for him.
    Mum said, “I’ll talk to her.”
    At teatime, I overheard them in the kitchen. Mum and Meredith.
    “He seems like a nice enough boy. Quite sensible. I really don’t see the harm in it, Mother,” Mum said.
    “Don’t see the harm? Do you want the girls to start using that dreadful Wiltshire slang? Do you want them to learn how to steal, and to swear? Do you want them to come home lousy and degraded? If so, then indeed, there can be no harm,” Meredith replied, coldly.
    “My girls would never steal,” Mum told her firmly. “And I think degraded is overdoing it, really.”
    “I don’t, Laura. Perhaps you’ve forgotten how much trouble those people have caused us over the years?”
    “How could I