Free Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans Page B

clock struck the half hour. The last time she’d been in Watford, there’d been plenty of motor traffic, but nowadays the roads were nearly all empty, and it was as quiet as a village. She could hear someone scrubbing a pavement. And sparrows bickering. And a man shouting, ‘Oi, you! You on the wall there! Did you just swear at my boy?’
    She rammed the shoe back on, and started running. She could hear Noel peg-legging along behind her. A bus was coming up the road and she reached the stop and waved a hand,and scrambled on board while it was still moving and Noel jumped up beside her, limp momentarily forgotten. There was the faintest flush of pink in his cheeks.
    â€˜I need to try another place,’ said Vee.
    She took a seat, and peered between the strips of grimy tape on the window. Larger houses, she thought: the sort of places where the kiddies would be away at boarding school.
    It was important to have a plan .
    When they got off the bus again seven stops later, Vee took a newspaper out of her bag. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Mrs Pilcher gave me last week’s Advertiser . There’s a Children’s Corner in it, competitions and suchlike. You can read it while you’re waiting.’ She nodded at the bench beside the bus stop. After a long moment, Noel reached out his hand for the paper. He watched Vee walk away along Linden Avenue, grey coat, grey hat, her head twitching to and fro as she inspected the houses on either side of the road. The first time he’d ever seen her he’d thought of a magpie, but now she seemed more like a pigeon, drab and directionless, pecking at anything that looked as if it might be edible. At one point, she paused to crane over a laurel hedge; at another she started to open a gate, and then closed it again hastily. It was obvious that she was doing something that she ought not to be doing. He felt a little tug of curiosity; it had been a long time since he’d last felt that.
    Vee dwindled into the distance.
    The front page of the Herts Advertiser was all fine print; scores of tiny advertisements for accommodation, lodgers, help wanted. Lady Fremantle recommends her useful maid; good needlewoman, fond of dogs.
    He turned the pages, his gaze bumping across the columns, snagging the odd line: A fine of 5s was imposed on Alfred Field of 27, Cravells Road, Harpenden, at St Albans Divisional Sessions on Saturday, for driving a horse and cart without front lights . Readingfelt effortful. It was odd to think that for years he had sucked up print without thinking. Since leaving Mattie’s house, he hadn’t finished a book. He couldn’t follow a plot any more, the meaning seemed to bypass his brain, or else stuck to it briefly and then fell off when he turned the page, like an inadequately licked stamp.
    Children’s Corner. How to make a useful and decorative letter rack. Take an old picture frame, approximately 12" by 8". You will also need scissors, drawing pins, an old newspaper, poster paints, glue or paste, a brush, a pot of clear varnish . . .
    Without books, he’d had no way of making the time pass quickly. The hours at his aunt and uncle’s house had stretched like knicker elastic. He had done mental arithmetic, or played ludo against himself, rotating the board between each go. And he had written a diary in code, updating it every quarter of an hour. 9.15 Auntie Margery is making an apple pie . 9.30 Auntie Margery is sweeping the kitchen floor. 9.45 Auntie Margery is washing dishcloths. 10.00 Auntie Margery has just looked up at me and sighed. Uncle Geoffrey had removed the diary, and given him a wall-map instead, with a box of red glass-headed pins, so he could mark the advance of the British Expeditionary Force in Europe. And then Germany had invaded Belgium and France and all the pins had gone tinkling back into the box again.
    The sum of £96 4s 1d was raised as a result of the house-to-house collection taken recently