Hidden Among Us Read Online Free

invented so many different explanations over the years, I’m convinced the real one couldn’t possibly surprise me:
Uncle Miles is deformed and refuses to see anyone. Uncle Miles has got leprosy and his face has gone rotten
. That bright idea came when we were doing Medieval England in Year Five.
Uncle Miles has gone mad like Mr Rochester’s wife in
Jane Eyre. Or – a more recent notion –
Uncle Miles was Mum’s secret boyfriend and Dad found out
. It was Alice who thought of that one. All these years to puzzle over this mystery and my best friend came up with the likeliest story.
    Isn’t that a bit gross, though?
Alice had screwed up her nose as if she could smell something bad.
Brother and sister together? Eugh!
    Uncle Miles isn’t Mum’s real brother,
I’d explained for the tenth time.
He’s her stepbrother. It’s not the same
.
    Alice could be very stupid sometimes.
    The train didn’t stop.
    It just crept on through the station, slow but still going. Frantic, I pressed the black rubber button by the doors but they stayed stubbornly shut. The train picked up speed again. I’d missed the station. I gripped the handle of my bag, trying to ignore the horrible burning prickling at the backs of my eyes.
    I’d made a huge mistake.
    Don’t cry,
I told myself, fiercely.
Don’t be such an idiot. It’s fine. All I have to do is get off at the next station and phone Mum. It’ll only be a few miles. It’s not my fault the train didn’t stop. She’s going to be furious anyway
.
    But when I took my phone out of my pocket, there was no signal. I had to push away the panicky feeling that the train was going to keep moving till it got to the Welsh sea. At last the train did stop. I leapt off onto the platform, bag banging into my legs as I stumbled. The station was in almost complete darkness; there was just a circle of orangey light spread by the lamp standing next to a bench. Somebody was sitting there. Waiting. A man or a boy, hooded.
    I could hear my heart beating now, blood pounding. It was stupid of me to be so ridiculously terrified of a man on a bench. I glanced down at my phone again. Still no signal. Hardly any at the house. What kind of place was this? Like going on holiday to another century. I ran into the station building – just a silent ticket office and a bare‑bricked waiting room with a few plastic seats. No lights on anywhere at all. Nobody there; no phone. OK. It would be OK. I’d just have to walk down into the town, or village – wherever it was. I could get help. But outside the ticket office there was nothing except a dark, tree-lined country road, shadowy houses just visible in the distance. Not even a single streetlight. I stopped, glancing back at the station. I was kidding myself, trying to put off the moment where I’d have to start walking, ask a stranger for help, which would all somehow make this more serious, even more proof that I wasn’t capable of doing anything for myself.
    What have you done, you idiot?
I thought.
    And then, from out of the shadows, somebody spoke.
    “You seem afraid. Are you all right?” A smooth, light voice.
    My heart raced off again. I could smell this person, I realized. Musty. Clothes left in the washing machine too long. Dry hot dust, too, and the faint mouldy scent of last autumn’s dried leaves. There was something else, as well: sweet and cloying. I just hugged my bag to my chest. Children are always told not to speak to strangers, but I wasn’t a child. I was fourteen. Seven and seven again: a fairy tale age, magic. In the near distance, I could hear a car. I was all right. Completely safe.
    He stepped forwards so I could see him. And then there was nothing I could do but stare.
    He was beautiful: high, arching cheekbones like a model, a wide hood shadowing his face. What was he wearing? It looked like a
cloak
, fastened at the neck with a gold brooch which seemed to shift and change even as I watched; first just a dry leaf caught in the folds