Free Back to Blackbrick by Sarah Moore Fitzgerald Page B

believe me. Please.”
    My voice got smaller and smaller. Suddenly I felt kind of humiliated. I think it was because of the way he was looking at me, and how extremely weird he obviously thought I was. I could feel myself sort of slumping down as if the air had been let out of me. I was scared that I was in the middleof wiping out my own future, but as well as that, I was disappointed. If you’ve been all geared up to meet the young version of your gran and then you realize that in fact you’ve collected someone who isn’t actually her, that’s disappointing in its own strange way.
    â€œAnd all I need you to do is listen carefully to me . Because this is the last time I’m telling you: Maggie McGuire is coming with us to Blackbrick. Nothing’s going to stop that from happening. Do you understand? If you’re still planning to thwart me, then I will do you another injury, and this time you might never recover from it. But I don’t think you really want to thwart me, do you?”
    If I’d known what “thwart” actually meant, I might have been in a better position to comment.
    He took his foot off my chest, and I sat up.
    By then Maggie had climbed off the cart.
    â€œKevin? God almighty. What in heaven’s name are you doing to Lord Corporamore’s poor nephew?”
    They stood quite close to me, but for a while I couldn’t get up off the ground. I grabbed clumps of mud out of the earth and kind of threw them so they scattered off in a load of different directions.
    After that he didn’t say another single mean thing to me. He waited for a bit until I calmed down.
    â€œAll right, easy there,” he said. “You are being a terrible nuisance, but all the same I don’t like to see anyone so grieved.”
    I felt like telling him if he didn’t like it, he shouldn’t have given me that punch in the head.
    â€œKevin, what’s happened to you? What on earth . . .? This boy doesn’t wish us any ill. He’s helping us. Aren’t you, Cyril?” She looked at me and smiled one of her fantastic smiles.
    I wondered if he really did feel bad, or whether he was just trying to impress his girlfriend.
    â€œI didn’t mean to be so rough with you,” he said quite softly then. “But you see, I’m not letting anyone come between me and Maggie, and the fellow who threatens to do that will make me furious. That’s my position on the matter. I’m not apologizing for it, though I do admit to having gotten a bit carried away there. Now I’m going to ask you this one question, and the question is: Are you still going to help us?”
    I rolled over on the cold ground and I pushed myself up onto my feet and staggered around for a bit.
    I know it’s a pretty unlikely thing to happen, but in case you ever meet your granddad when he’s young, don’t be too aggressive to him, not even if you’ve been provoked.
    â€œOkay, okay. I’ll still help,” I said, even though something inside my brain felt like it was sinking into the quicksand of time.
    So then we were up on the cart again, and Maggie laughed a little bit and said, “Well, goodness me. I’m very glad we got that sorted out.”
    And that’s how Kevin’s plan to bring her to Blackbrick was suddenly back in the middle of happening, and the horses were trotting up the north avenue, and I knew then that if I was going to have any chance of existing in the future, I was going to have to figure out a plan of my own, and I was going to have to do it quite soon.
    By then my young granddad didn’t seem to care about anything apart from her. They kept looking at each other without blinking, until eventually I had to say, “Guys, delighted you’re so happy to see each other and everything, but would you mind waiting until we get back to the stables for this, because I’m the one who has to steer the cart, and I