Free Ralph’s Children by Hilary Norman

‘they’ll lock us up.’
    ‘Separately,’ Pig said, grimly.
    ‘They might not believe her,’ Ralph said, quietly, and explained that she thought Rose Miller might be fiddling social security, because she’d been keeping an eye on the
cleaner herself, had tracked her as she went to jobs in three other villages in the district, had even stood behind her in the post office in Ashbury one afternoon when she’d been collecting
her benefit.
    ‘So we could blackmail her,’ Jack had said with relish.
    ‘No,’ Ralph said. ‘But if worst did come to worst, she might not be believed.’
    ‘I wish,’ she had said to them, on the morning itself, ‘you wouldn’t do this.’
    They were not in the Smithy at that hour, but in the former vegetable garden at Challow Hall, plenty of kids around, Ralph having walked past the four carrying her battered attaché case,
casually stooping to pick up the dented football they’d been kicking aimlessly around.
    ‘You’re not going to tell, are you?’ Pig had asked her anxiously.
    ‘Of course not,’ she’d said. ‘I just want you to think about it one more time.’
    ‘We’ve thought about it,’ Roger said.
    ‘You need to understand –’ Ralph spoke quietly – ‘that however rotten she is, it doesn’t make what you’re planning to do right.’
    Right and wrong, good and evil, still separated in her mind back then.
    ‘We,’ Roger said, quite sharply. ‘You’ve helped us, remember.’
    ‘Of course,’ Ralph said, and saw Simon glance uneasily around.
    ‘Are you going to stop us?’ Jack asked.
    ‘Without reporting you,’ Ralph answered him, ‘I don’t see how I can.’
    She bounced the football, caught it, scanned the garden, saw that no one was remotely interested in her or them, and handed the ball to Jack.
    Simon looked at the others. ‘I’m not quite sure about it.’
    ‘I am,’ Roger said. ‘I’m looking forward to it.’
    ‘You just want to do the acting,’ Simon said.
    ‘It’s not,’ Jack said, ‘as if we’re going to really hurt her.’
    Ralph looked from one to the other, all in their uniform grey, and felt a pang of something like loss.
    ‘You do remember,’ she said, ‘that I can’t join in this one at all, don’t you?’
    ‘We know,’ Roger said. ‘You’ve said.’
    ‘Just as long as you don’t shop us,’ Jack said.
    Ralph felt the threat underlying his words, and was suddenly afraid, not for herself, but for him, the boy-thug.
    ‘She never would,’ said Simon, tenderly.
    No active participation, but she had been there nonetheless, could not keep away.
    Had to watch from a distance, just in case.
    Their Chief, after all. Guardian, more like.
    It had started well enough, according to plan.
    They took the cleaner’s dog, which was called Billy, while his mistress was at one of her jobs and the children were at school – and there was no husband or live-in boyfriend, which
had made things less complicated – and after dusk, Roger had made an anonymous call from a public phone to say that the dog had been spotted tied to a fence on Bartlet Down.
    ‘Who is this?’ Rose Miller asked, but Roger had already hung up.
    She came, as they’d expected, though they were all relieved she came alone, had been afraid she might have brought the children, but it was cold and dark and she had done just what Simon
had guessed she would; left the kids on their own and walked up towards Bartlet Down, bundled up in an anorak and woolly hat, shining a torch in front of her.
    The dog was there all right, its muzzle tied with a scarf – a long green woollen thing pinched by Jack out of a woman’s shopping basket on the bus – to stop it barking, though
his whines were more than piercing enough, and there was no time to lose.
    ‘Billy boy,’ Miller said, shock in her voice. ‘My poor—’
    She began to stoop, and they were all on her.
    Ralph, hidden behind a tree but close enough to see the action, felt suddenly and violently sick,