“Coo, posh, aren’t ya?” said Jim with a grin. He extended a filthy hand with black-rimmed nails, and Nicky gingerly shook it. “Pleased to meet you, Nicky. Well, go on, get them boots off.”
Nicky sat down to pull off his boots. Jim watched curiously. “Gimpy leg, eh?”
Nicky didn’t respond, but the shame crept back.
“Me da had a gimpy leg, too, sort of. Shark bit half his leg off. Didn’t stop Da, but. Got himself a peg leg, didn’t he?” Jim said cheerfully. “Well, you get on with fetching your slipper. I gotta get on. I made a real find this morning.” He disappeared behind a scraggly bush and reappeared lugging a battered and muddy portmanteau.
Nicky had no trouble recognizing it. “That’s our portmanteau!”
“It’s mine. I saw it first. Rules of salvage.” Jim said and heaved it onto the handcart.
“But it belongs to me.”
Jim snorted rudely. “My arse it does! I found it on the beach this morning, and I hauled it all the way up here, so it’s mine!”
“But it contains all the possessions Mama and I have!”
“Good try, but I wasn’t born yesterday. Finders keepers. You get the slipper, I get this.” He pulled out a piece of string to tie the portmanteau to the cart.
Nicky ran forward and tried to pull the portmanteau off him. “No! It’s not yours. You can’t have it!”
Jim shoved Nicky backward hard and stood over him with clenched fists. “Try and stop me.”
“Very well.” Nicky scrambled to his feet and put up his fists, ready to fight the bigger boy. He’d had lessons in the art of pugilism. He moved closer and jabbed at the boy. In return, Jim swung a punch, then followed it with a hard kick to Nicky’s bad leg. With a cry of pain, Nicky went sprawling in the mud.
As he struggled to stand again, his fingers encountered a stone, and remembered Mr. Renfrew’s advice to his mother. Seizing the stone, he ran at the boy, yelling at the top of his voice, and hit him hard on the nose.
There was a horrid sound, the boy’s dirty face blossomed with blood and he fell to the ground. Nicky stared in horror, and dropped the stone. He had not meant to hurt the boy, just stop him from stealing the portmanteau.
“What the devil is going on!” Mr. Renfrew exclaimed from behind. “Who is that?
Nicky’s lip trembled. “His name is Jim, and I think I have killed him!”
Four
Callie woke slowly, coming to consciousness as if gradually floating to the surface of a very deep lake. She awoke feeling safe…cared for.
Stupid. Dreaming foolish dreams again. Painful dreams. Dreams that made her ache inside. Dreams forgirls, not a woman like Callie. She had done with such things. She knew better now.
She had the love of her son. That should be enough for anyone. And Tibby loved her, too, she knew. A son and a friend; more than many people had, she told herself.
She reached out to check Nicky as she did countless times in the night. These days she always slept with him in touching distance. She did not dare to let him sleep alone.
Her fingers only found sheets, cold and empty.
Nicky! Her eyes flew open and she sat up. Scarcely stopping to fling a rug around her shoulders for modesty’s sake, she ran down the stairs in bare feet.
“Where’s my son?” Callie burst into the kitchen. “What have you done with him?”
“Your boy?” Mrs. Barrow looked up from the pot she was stirring. “He’ll be off in the stables or sommat, I expect.” She smiled at Callie. “No need to ask you how you slept. Like death warmed through, you were last night and here you are, blooming and—”
“Where have they taken him?” Callie demanded.
“Who?” Mrs. Barrow frowned. “Nobody’s taken your boy anywhere, don’t you fret. He’ll turn up when his stomach reminds him. Boys always do.”
Callie searched the woman’s broad, ruddy face for lies, but could see nothing but placid honesty. “Nicky isn’t the sort of boy to run off.”
“Well, I’ve been working down here since just after sunup.” Mrs. Barrow nodded at a bowl of apples on the sideboard. “Someone took some apples. And the outside door was unbolted when I came down. He’ll be in the stables. That’s where boys usually go.”
