How the Trouble Started Read Online Free Page B

How the Trouble Started
Book: How the Trouble Started Read Online Free
Author: Robert Williams
Tags: Modern and Contemporary Fiction (FA)
Pages:
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all heading back behind the red doors began. The last one finally disappeared, the door banged shut, and the playground was empty again. The sun went behind a cloud, I was back to thinking about the dead little boy in Clifton and I felt so sad that I couldn’t move for a few minutes. An old man passed with his dog and gave me a wary look, like I was about to jump up and throttle him with his own lead and kill the dog. I waited until he was long gone so he didn’t think he was going to be done over and then I pulled myself up and carried on around the cricket pitch and back home. That night I didn’t even try a vanishing; I knew it wouldn’t work. I just lay there thinking about those kids, about how small they were, how vulnerable. How easily they would break. It made me shudder to think like that. I hoped someone was keeping an eye on each and every one of them.

5
    I’ve only ever come close to telling one person about what happened in Clifton. Mum always said that it was important to keep the door shut on the past, and over the years she’s watched like a hawk to make sure I’ve done that. She said we were lucky that I was too young to have my name in the paper, and I shouldn’t go ruining our fresh start in Raithswaite by talking about things that can never be changed. And I was careful for years until I nearly told Fiona Jackson. I first met her when we were both nine years old, not long after we’d moved to Raithswaite, and she was just the same then as she is now – dark eyes and darker hair. Stern and lovely. The only difference is that seven years later her beauty comes complete with curves. There’s an old limestone quarry called Crosshills between our two houses. The back wall of the quarry is sixty feet of vertical rock with trees and grass growing out of it; the bowl below is a maze of tracks, sudden big rocks and tiny steep hills. A few years ago the shrubs and trees began to take over and the place is mainly green now with only the odd patch of grey quarry rock showing through.
    I’ve never made friends easily; all of it is unclear to me and I’m not sure how it normally happens, but with Fiona it happened because of the quarry. She would often be down there avoiding her dad and her brothers, and I would be there too, hiding from Mum on her dark days. It was easier for us to walk around together than to try and pretend the other person wasn’t there, and over the years we became easy in each other’s company. These days when we meet she’s usually got her music and her cigarettes. We sit down if it’s sunny, or wander about if it’s cold, and she gives me an ear of her headphones, which has got tricky since I grew half a foot in six months, but never offers me a cigarette. I don’t want to be misleading – we aren’t best friends. Sometimes we don’t see each other for days, and sometimes we see each other and she might want to be left alone. But most of the time we have a chat and a wander.
    It nearly happened because of her brother. He’d just been found guilty of GBH and was starting a two-year sentence. Fiona was angry, but not with the sentence, with her brother. She told me how hard he’d been to live with, how stressed he made her feel and how she was pleased that he was going away. Her hands were shaking and she was pulling on the cigarette too fast and I couldn’t work out the right thing to say. But it got worse when she suddenly burst into tears. We were stood at the side of the quarry nearest my house, and she was sobbing and I’d never been alone with a crying girl before. I was useless. I knew I was supposed to hug her, comfort her, but we’d never touched in all the years I’d known her, and I just couldn’t move forward and put my arms around her. Gradually she calmed down a little. She was telling me that it was a shit thing to say, but she was relieved when her brother got sentenced, that it meant the house might be normal for a while. ‘The thing is, I can’t say
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