The Runaways

by Ruth Thomas

  The shops seemed to be open, so it wasn’t too late after all. They found a place which sold anoraks, and Julia tried one on. The warm feel of it was heaven, after the chill wind on her bare arms. ‘I’ll have it,’ she said. ‘My other one was stolen.’

  ‘That’s a pity,’ said the woman in the shop. ‘Have ’ee told the police?’

  ‘No,’ said Julia. ‘It was only a old one.’

  While they were about it, the children bought themselves a warm pullover each, and Julia bought some underwear and a spare tee-shirt. They put Julia’s things in Nathan’s beach bag, since Julia had lost hers.

  ‘I see your mum trust ’ee to buy your own things then,’ said the lady in the shop. But she was only making conversation. She didn’t seem suspicious at all.

  ‘Our mum ain’t very well,’ said Julia. ‘We have to do all the shopping for her.’

  ‘Oh what a shame. Never mind – I can see you’m good children to your mum. You on holiday yur then?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Not vurry nice weather today. Better tomorrow I expect.’

  The children left the shop and went to buy fish and chips at the place they’d seen in the other street.

  ‘They talk funny in this country,’ said Julia. ‘Not like they talk in England.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Ju, this is England.’

  ‘How do you know? Might not be.’

  ‘Must be. We haven’t gone across any sea.’

  ‘Might be Scotland.’

  ‘Nah, can’t be Scotland. There’s nobody wearing kilts.’

  They took their fish and chips and cans of Coke and sat on a seat by the harbour to enjoy them.

  ‘Shall we get our tents tomorrow then, Nathan?’

  ‘Yeah – tomorrow.’

  They’d faced enough problems for one day. Just now they could relax, warm in their new pullovers in spite of the cold wind. The cave would do for tonight. It was a bleak and stony prospect, but it was only for a few hours. Tomorrow everything would come good again. Probably. Tomorrow was another day.

  The tide was still out, and the little harbour banked with unpleasant-looking thick grey mud. There was a big ship right ahead of them – well, big compared with the little sailing vessels scattered around. An old man, who looked like a local, plonked himself on the seat beside Nathan, and said ‘Evening,’ very pleasantly, so Nathan asked him where the big ship was going to. ‘That’n? Norway I reckon,’ said the old man. And the fantasy Nathan had toyed with all through the long sunny days in Brighton came a step nearer reality. It was still a very private thing though, not to be shared with Julia, not to be shared with anyone. Nathan put his fantasy away for another time.

  There were very few people on the promenade now. The evening was chilly and closing in. Black rain clouds loomed threateningly. Everyone was indoors, the children thought, in their homes or their boarding-houses or their caravans. Watching television, most likely. Warm and protected anyway.

  ‘We better go back to that cave, I suppose,’ said Nathan, reluctantly.

  ‘Yeah, we better be quick an’ all. They’ll think it’s funny if they see us going on the beach when it’s raining.’

  Back to the stony beach and the rocks. The cave offered scant comfort. There were sharp edges, and it dripped a bit – but at least it was out of the wind and if rain came, as looked probable, they would be reasonably dry. There was not another soul on the beach. Julia and Nathan sat huddled side by side, watching the sea at last creep nearer, as the grey light faded into darkness.

  Sleep was unlikely. It was really a matter of waiting out the night, until the shops would be open and they could buy their tents. ‘It’ll still be cold though, inside the tent, won’t it,’ Julia speculated, shivering now in the damp night air.

  ‘We’ll have sleeping bags,’ said Nathan who knew about such things from his reading.

  ‘Will we? That’ll be good. What else will we have?’

  ‘I dunno. Yes I do, we’ll have a little cooking stove and a pan to go on it.’

  ‘A real cooking stove? In a tent?’

  ‘A little tiny one. You have some special stuff to burn in them.’

  ‘Fancy our own cooking stove!’ Julia was enchanted by the idea, she could hardly wait. ‘What else will we have, Nathan?’

  ‘Well – we’ll have some tins of food, to warm up on the cooking stove.’

  ‘And a light for when it gets dark. Shall we buy a big torch, with a battery in it?’

  ‘That’s right. I forgot about the light. It’s going to be fun, isn’t it, Ju?’

  ‘I wish it was morning now:’

  They slept a bit towards dawn, and woke stiff and cramped, chilled to the bone once more. In the murky light they saw that the tide was again retreating over the rocks and the seaweed.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ said Julia.

  ‘The shops won’t be open yet. We better hide a bit longer anyway. We don’t want people to see us out too early.’

  Even so, the streets were still deserted when they climbed the steps from the beach, and emerged on to the road with the quaint little houses. They dawdled, knowing there would be nowhere yet to buy food. This time Nathan took more notice of his surroundings. He was getting used to being without his glasses. He could even read the signs on things now, if they were near enough and the letters were big. He noticed that lots of places seemed to be called ‘Lorna Doone’ something, and the name reminded him of a story he’d read last winter. Well anyway, he’d read a bit of it. Actually, he wouldn’t have read even that bit, only the lady in the library said she thought the book would be too hard for him, so he took it anyway, to show her up.

  In fact she was right, the book was too hard for him. He did like one part, in the beginning. Something about a river, with fast dark water and great boulders in it, and a boy wading against the stream, and finding a little girl who’d been captured by robbers. Nathan read that bit over and over. He tried to get past it, and kept getting stuck, so he took the book back to the library and told the lady he’d read all of it, because of course it would be too much shame to admit he hadn’t.

  Nathan thought a lot of people in this town must have read that story.

  On their way towards the shopping street, the children passed the shop window with the map in it. A thought struck Nathan and he frowned, turned back, and pressed his nose against the glass, trying to read the names on the map.

  ‘What you looking at that stupid map for?’ said Julia.

  ‘It’s not stupid. I think it’s a map about where we are. Come here, Ju, come and tell me what it says.’

  Julia scuffled reluctantly back. She would not be able to read the words on the map, of course. ‘Where?’ she asked, ungraciously.

  ‘There – just tell me the letters. I can’t quite see them.’

  Julia concentrated. The word he was pointing at did not look too long. She would not endure the shame of having to tell Nathan the letters, she would read the word. She would. ‘Ex – ex – m-m-m- moor. Exmoor,’ she pronounced, triumphantly.

  ‘Exmoor, are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what it says.’ Julia glowed with pride. She had actually read a new word, all by herself.

  Nathan squatted on the pavement, frowning and thumping his head.

  ‘What are you doing that for?’

  ‘I’m thinking.’

  ‘Do you know where we are, then?’

  ‘I know where we are a bit. I know what Exmoor is. I saw a programme about it on the telly, and it was about a story – Lorna Doone. There was some robbers on this moor. It’s all wild up there, Ju, and hardly any people.’

  ‘Is this Exmoor then?’

  ‘Nah, can’t be, can it? But it must be somewhere near. Be good to camp up there. Shall we get our tents, and go to Exmoor?’

  ‘All right. How are we going to know where it is though?’

  ‘I dunno. We’ll have to ask somebody.’

  ‘Let’s get some breakfast first.’
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  In the little shopping street, the children found a small shop which had just opened. They bought milk, and two packets of biscuits, and Nathan asked if there was a shop where they could buy a tent. The counter assistant, a young man with red hair and a long nose, looked rather surprised.

  ‘A tent? Did ’ee say a tent?’

  ‘Yes – you know, for camping.’

  ‘Well . . . not yur, I don’t think. Not that I know of. Not in Watchet.’

  ‘Where, then?’

  ‘Well . . . Taunton I suppose.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘You know Taunton. You must know Taunton.’

  ‘Well I don’t,’ said Nathan.

  ‘We’re on holiday here,’ Julia explained. ‘We don’t know the names of all the places.’

  The young man looked puzzled. ‘Should have thought you’d know Taunton though. Everybody knows Taunton. Wur you staying then?’

  ‘Oh – in the caravans. Up there.’ Julia waved a hand vaguely, and the young man nodded.

  ‘I see,’ he said, doubtfully.

  ‘That’s why we want a tent,’ Julia improvised. ‘There ain’t much room in the caravan, with our mum and dad as well, so we want a tent for us. Actually, we want two tents.’

  The suspicious frown faded from the young man’s face. ‘Oh, I see. You’d better go to Taunton then.’

  ‘How do we get there?’

  ‘Had’n your dad got a car?’

  ‘Yes, but he’s busy.’

  The frown came back. ‘You better go on the bus then.’

  ‘Where do we get the bus from?’

  ‘Top of the road, you’ll see.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Julia, to Nathan. She was beginning to feel uneasy. The young man was staring very hard – she could sense his gaze boring into her back as they left the shop. ‘I think he suspects something,’ she said, as they walked in single file along the narrow pavement.

  They sat on the seat at the bus stop, Nathan’s beach bag between them, drinking their milk and eating their biscuits. The early morning breeze was chilly, but the day promised to be fine.

  ‘I wish there was somewhere to wash,’ said Julia.

  ‘When we get our tents, we’ll put them by a river,’ said Nathan. That was what people did in books. It was the country here, so there were sure to be plenty of rivers about.

  ‘I wish the bus would come,’ said Julia.

  So did Nathan. Accustomed to the city, where buses arrived every few minutes, he had naturally expected to be out of Watchet in no time. But the milk and biscuits were finished, and they’d played a game of I-Spy, and still the bus had not come. A few early shoppers joined the children on the bus stop seat, and at last the green bus was in sight, sedately approaching them down the hill.

  ‘Here it is,’ said Julia, joyfully.

  ‘No it isn’t,’ said Nathan, screwing up his eyes, peering as the bus came really close. ‘It don’t say Taunton on the front, it says Minehead.’

  They sat down again, frustrated and disappointed.

  ‘They have funny names here, don’t they, Nathan?’ said Julia. ‘Minehead, that’s a funny name. And Watchet. Watch it, Nathan!’ She giggled at her joke, but stopped giggling when Nathan nudged her sharply, and pointed across the road. Coming towards them was a woman with a gleam in her eye, and an unmistakable purpose. Someone was intending to ask them questions.

  From the way she was dressed, she was a summer visitor rather than a resident. She wore pink trousers which were much too tight for her, and a pink tee-shirt which was similarly inappropriate. Her several chins quivered as she spoke, and you could somehow tell she was a nosy sort of person. She advanced on the children, showing all her false teeth in an insincere smile.

  ‘Come on bus,’ muttered Nathan.

  Puffing a bit, from the effort of heaving herself up the hill, the woman sat down beside them and began a sort of conversation.

  ‘What’s your name then, my dear?’

  ‘Beverley,’ said Julia, coldly. She wanted to say ‘None of your business,’ but thought that might be a bit too rude.

  ‘Are you sure it’s not Julia?’ said the woman in the pink trousers, peering keenly at both children.

  ‘Of course,’ said Julia. ‘I told you, it’s Beverley.’ She gave the woman a look which she hoped said ‘Why are you asking me these mad questions?’ She was keeping her head, but the panic was beginning inside.

  ‘And what about you, young man? Let me guess. I bet your name’s Nathan. There – aren’t I right?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Nathan.

  ‘Well – you do seem to be on your own, don’t you.’

  ‘We’re staying with our mum and dad,’ said Nathan. ‘In the caravans.’

  From the corner of his eye he had seen another bus coming down the hill. Surely this must be the right one. Another few moments and they would be out of the clutches of this horrible, dangerous woman.

  ‘Oh – which caravan site is that?’ The woman was really excited now. Her voice was actually trembling with the excitement of catching Nathan out, asking him a question he couldn’t answer.

  Nathan glared at her, hating her. ‘You know, that one, that one up there,’ he floundered. ‘The Lorna Doone Caravan Site,’ he tried, in sudden inspiration.

  The woman’s face fell. ‘Oh I know it,’ she admitted, looking quite disappointed, ‘up West Street. Here’s your bus then. Bye-bye.’

  Nathan gave Julia a triumphant thump, as they climbed on to the bus. There really was a Lorna Doone Caravan Site then! He might have known there would be.

  Back in Brighton the police, acting on information received, were searching the town for the missing children. Now they were interviewing seaside landladies, and a very unhappy Mrs Parsons was talking to a kind young constable in her private sitting-room.

  ‘She seemed such a nice girl,’ said Mrs Parsons, for the fourteenth time. ‘Bless my soul, who’d have thought it? The boy was a bit surly I thought, but the girl! So worried about her mother, and so sensible. All those stories, and none of them true! Bless my soul, who’d have thought it?’

  Mrs Parsons was very upset. She was not good at knowing when people were telling lies, and she had been dreadfully hurt and puzzled when the children’s room had been found empty yesterday morning. She had half thought of going to the police herself, but since she was not good at making decisions either, she had dithered and put it off. And now this nice policeman had come to her house, and it really did seem as though Beverley and Charlie were, after all, Julia and Nathan – the two children from London who had run away from home. The ones whose pictures had been in the paper. And she, Mrs Parsons, had never suspected it for a moment.

  ‘So now – tell me about their appearance,’ said the policeman. ‘The boy wasn’t wearing glasses, you say.’

  ‘No, but when I come to think about it . . . of course he ought to have been. He was going round peering at everything, closely, as though he were very short-sighted. Bless my soul, I ought to have suspected, oughtn’t I!’

  ‘No, no,’ said the policeman, soothingly. ‘You mustn’t blame yourself. You’re not a trained detective, after all. And the girl? Dressed to look older, I understand – with her hair long, loose round her face.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Mrs Parsons.

  ‘No? The man who caught her down on the front described her like that.’

  ‘Oh no, didn’t I tell you? She cut her hair off. It was all over the floor. You’ll be looking for a girl with hair cropped really short. She left it all over the floor. All over the floor, poor child, for me to sweep up.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Parsons,’ said the policeman, and he wrote it down in his notebook.

  11

  A nasty accident

  ‘Did you see how that lady wobbled?’ said Nathan, maliciously. ‘Like a jelly. A great, big, fat, pink wobbly jelly. Strawberry jelly!’

  He giggled, and Julia giggled too. They held thei
r stomachs and laughed with relief, the exploding giggles bursting out of them in mad little spurts. ‘Wobble, wobble,’ said Nathan, to set them off again.

  They sat together near the front of the bus and watched the sunlight move in patches over the endless rolling green.

  ‘Nathan,’ said Julia, suddenly, ‘how are we going to carry the tents?’

  ‘What you mean?’

  ‘You know, Nathan. They’ll be heavy and big – and sleeping bags and all the other things. How we going to carry them?’

  Nathan was suddenly resentful. Everything was going so well, and now she had to spoil it by making difficulties about little details like how they were going to carry the camping things. ‘I dunno,’ he said, crossly. ‘You think. It’s your turn to think. I thought of the tents, you think of a idea how to carry them.’

  Julia was silent. Nathan was probably right, it was her turn. She gazed out of the window, waiting for inspiration to strike. Inspiration was a long time coming, and when it came it was via two cyclists on the other side of the road. Two cyclists with packs on their backs and heavily laden machines.

  ‘I know,’ said Julia to Nathan, ‘We’ll have bicycles.’

  ‘That’s brilliant,’ said Nathan admiringly. ‘Can you ride a bike though?’

  ‘Used to have one, but it broke. Can you?’

  ‘Of course.’ He was not going to admit that he was a bit unsteady, having only ever practised on one belonging to his cousin, who lived the other side of London. No doubt he would soon get the hang of it though. That was a terrific idea of Julia’s. She was a good mate, Julia.

  It was a pretty ride. The bus was taking a long time, meandering round the villages, but Nathan and Julia didn’t care if the journey took for ever. They had never seen country like this, all those green and purple hills, sparkling this morning in the rain-washed air.