Free The Children of the King by Sonya Hartnett Page B

sorry!” she bawled.
    May flung a dismissive glance. “What are you sorry about? You weren’t taken from your mother and put on a train and sent to a place you’d never been. You didn’t sit on a floor and hope you were nice enough for somebody to want you. You don’t have to live with strangers every day — even kind strangers are still strangers. You don’t know what that’s like!”
    “Oh, May! Are you unhappy? Do you hate me?”
    “I don’t hate you,” May answered, “and I’m not unhappy. But I might have to stay at Heron Hall for a long time, Cecily. Mum said it might be months and months, depending on the war. So you can’t keep treating me like a guest, or like — like your best friend —”
    “Don’t you want to be my friend?”
    “I
do,
you
are
my friend, but can’t I be — someone you don’t have to
take care of
all the time?”
    Cecily tripped, lurched wretchedly on. She knew what May meant: she meant she did not want a shadow in the shape of Cecily. It was hurtful — Cecily believed the only thing that mattered was to be included, needed, remembered — but she struggled not to be hurt. “I’ll try,” she said. “I’ll try to treat you more like — a brother?”
    “Or a sister?”
    That was a better idea, and Cecily brightened. “I don’t have a sister, so I don’t know how to treat one, but I’ll try my best.”
    “I don’t have a sister either,” said May. Mercifully, she slowed. “I’ve got you, though — and you’ve got me. We can practise on each other.”
    Cecily pranced with happiness. They were nearing the woods, and once past the trees they would be able to see Heron Hall. The prospect made Cecily want to run, to speed back to that place of warmth and certainty. On this far side of the woods, things could be unpredictable. “I’m sorry,” she said, and she really was. “I wish I hadn’t said nasty things to those boys. I didn’t think. That’s what Mama always tells me:
I never think.
”
    May didn’t disagree. She resumed a whippet’s pace over the grass. “Too late to worry now. They’re probably miles away. Especially if they think Mr Lockwood’s going to get a gun and shoot them.”
    “Yes,” said Cecily. “Unless they ate that breakfast you brought, in which case they’re probably already dead.”
    A scruff of laughter escaped May, making her frown all the deeper and walk that much faster. Cecily scurried in her wake. Even as exertion drove the brothers to the back of her mind, a thought occurred to her. Their luxurious clothing had reminded her of something, and now she remembered what it was. A
pantomime:
those boys had been dressed like characters on the stage.

They asked Cecily’s mother to take them to the village, and Heloise agreed as she had nothing better to do. Though there seemed nothing better for Jeremy to do either, the boy assured his mother that he’d prefer to stay behind. “I can read, I can hike, I can sweep chimneys,” he said; but Cecily sensed that, although he intended to do
something,
it wasn’t any of these. With money in her pocket, she couldn’t care what it was.
    By now the sun had gathered sufficient strength to make people shed their coats, if not their vests. The fine weather had brought the villagers out into the streets. Women strolled about in no hurry to go home, their children clamped to their hips or trailing nonchalantly behind them. Boys were unloading vans and polishing windows and carting trays of groceries here and there. Rationing had cast its miserly pall over the country but the shopkeepers were doing their best to present tasty displays to the passers-by, and there was enough for everyone, provided nobody was greedy. The girls wove past the street stalls on the heels of Heloise, looking left and right, bonked on the head by baskets, reaching out for what they shouldn’t touch. Lads laughed, babies cried, women haggled, shop-bells rang. It was surprising to remember that, in places around