The Runaways Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1 Nobody likes me

  2 The day of the money

  3 Found out!

  4 In trouble

  5 Taking off

  6 Beside the seaside

  7 Discovered

  8 On the run

  9 Stowaways

  10 A dangerous moment

  11 A nasty accident

  12 Elizabeth

  13 A terrible hill

  14 On the moor

  15 A bad storm

  16 Disaster in Porlock

  17 Hunted

  18 The end of the adventure

  About the Author

  Also by Ruth Thomas

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Julia and Nathan have no friends to speak of. They’re misfits of Mrs Henrey’s class – always the last to be picked for the team, and always without a partner. Then they discover a stash of money in a deserted house and suddenly, instant popularity seems just around the corner. But so is trouble, in the shape of the adults who start asking difficult questions. There is only one thing the pair can do now, and that is to run away!

  THE RUNAWAYS

  Ruth Thomas

  To Justin

  1

  Nobody likes me

  The air was clogged with heat. Through open windows streamed the dusty sunlight of another city afternoon. An undercurrent of fretfulness rippled round the room. The children were irritable and niggly and Mrs Henrey couldn’t stand them in the classroom any longer. Class 8 were going to the park for the last hour, to play rounders.

  Only two of the twenty-four children didn’t want to go, and one of those two was Nathan Browne, sitting at the front. Nathan looked like an ill-natured goblin. A small, black boy, glaring at the world through thick-lensed glasses, and hating most of what he saw, Nathan had no friends. He sidled out of his seat now, and put his request. ‘Please, Mrs Henrey, can I stay behind?’

  ‘No, Nathan, you can’t,’ Mrs Henrey snapped. ‘We’re all going.’

  ‘I could stay in Mr Abbott’s class,’ he suggested.

  ‘No, Nathan. Last time you stayed with Mr Abbott you picked a fight with two of his boys.’

  ‘I didn’t! It was them. Can I stay then?’

  ‘NO!’

  Recognizing defeat, Nathan slunk back to his seat. He regarded Mrs Henrey with scowling dislike. She looked, he thought, rather like a lady pig, with her small eyes, fat cheeks and pursed-up mouth. She had a mole near her chin with a few piggy hairs growing out of it. Nathan imagined Mrs Henrey snorting round a farmyard with a lot of other lady pigs, and the thought made him feel better. He made a face at her back, and that made him feel better still.

  Julia Winter, also sitting at the front of the class, saw the face and called out, pleased to be the supplier of important information. ‘Mrs Henrey, Nathan made a face at you!’

  Mrs Henrey didn’t want to know about the face Nathan had made. ‘Don’t tell tales, Julia. That’s a nasty habit you’ve got. I’ve told you about it before.’

  A shamed blush covered Julia’s long, thin cheeks. Her eyes, pale as dishwater, blinked rapidly. Her lips went into a pout, and she tossed back the straggly pigtails of sandy hair which reached just below her shoulders and petered out to a meagre wisp beyond the elastic bands which secured them. Julia would never understand the grown-up world, she decided. They wanted you to be good, but when you showed them how good you were, by pointing out how bad other people were, then they didn’t like it.

  Julia didn’t want to go to the park any more than Nathan did, but Julia didn’t ask to stay behind because she was afraid Mrs Henrey would be cross. She was afraid of Mrs Henrey being cross because she wanted Mrs Henrey to like her. Indeed, she wanted very much to be liked by someone, just someone in the whole wide world. But sadly, no one did like Julia, no one ever had.

  Julia was an only child. When she first came to school she was five years old and had never played with other children, so she had no idea how to behave with them. She grabbed all the crayons for herself, pinched the other children, and whined complaints all day. So gradually the others turned against her, and no one wanted to play with her. Nowadays Julia no longer pinched people or took their pencils. Indeed, she was rather afraid of them. There were so many of them, and only one of her. But somehow she had never been able to live down those early mistakes. And now, with her face set permanently in an expression of slightly anxious unhappiness, and her shoulders hunched into a despondent stoop, Julia was a fairly unattractive sight as well. She thought she was ugly, which she wasn’t. Not pretty of course, but not exactly ugly. Actually she had rather nice teeth, but since she hardly ever opened her mouth to smile, very few people had noticed. Julia herself had no idea how much difference a real smile would have made.

  So now among the girls Julia was the funny one, the odd one, the gawky one who stood head and shoulders above everyone else – sometimes the object of scorn and ridicule, more often just ignored. At eleven years old, Julia had never had a friend.

  ‘Line up with your partners,’ Mrs Henrey told the class – and this was the moment Julia had been dreading. Because no one would want to walk with her, no one ever did. There would be fussing and pushing and the chaos would sort itself out into a column of twos with herself, as usual, left skulking at the back – left conspicuously, shamefully, alone.

  Nathan also would be left without a partner, and that was the reason he didn’t want to go to the park. One of the reasons. He didn’t crave a friend, particularly. If that lot didn’t want him he didn’t want them, so there! But he didn’t like being left without a partner.

  So there were two outcasts whom nobody wanted, and worst of all, to each the crowning indignity, they would be made to walk with each other.

  Mrs Henrey counted the pairs of children. Julia was the last but one, pretending to be engrossed in a comic as she stood in the line, pretending desperately not to care.

  ‘Put that rubbish away, Julia. Are you the last? Oh no, there’s Nathan. Nathan, Julia will have to be your partner. Well come and stand by her, then. Come along, we haven’t all day, she won’t bite you.’

  Nathan, who had been sulking by the windows, kicking resentfully at the pipes behind him, shuffled unwillingly forward. He cast one look of murderous hate at Mrs Henrey, and another at Julia. He came to rest a couple of paces behind his allotted partner.

  ‘Stand with her,’ Mrs Henrey insisted, exasperated by the heat and by Nathan.

  Nathan moved forward a step. ‘Rat-bag!’ he hissed at Julia.

  Julia hitched away, sniffed and blinked and turned her back. ‘Do I have to walk with him, Mrs Henrey? Can’t I walk with you? Can’t I be your partner?’

  ‘No, Julia, you can’t walk with me. Nathan is your partner. Denise and Sharon, Sanjay and Paul, you go and get the rounders things. Meet us at the gate. Now come along, the rest of you.’

  Outside, the sun beat down, bouncing heat off the hard playground and the brick walls surrounding it.

  ‘It’s too hot for rounders,’ someone complained.

  ‘It’ll be cooler in the park,’ said Mrs Henrey firmly.

  The crocodile straggled up the road. Nathan lagged behind, disassociating himself from Julia. A tabby cat on a garden wall greeted him with a plaintive yowl, and Nathan stopped to stroke it. He liked cats. Cats were much nicer than people. The cat arched its back with pleasure and rubbed its head against his hand. Then it leaped off the wall and began weaving round his legs. The feel of its silky fur against his bare calves made Nathan happy, just for a moment. Then Mrs Henrey’s sharp voice was cutting through his enjoyment, shouting at him to keep up with his p
artner. The class had halted, to wait for him.

  Mrs Henrey wasn’t the sort of teacher you could muck about with. You couldn’t play her up like you could some teachers. Nathan moved forward, scowling and scuffling his feet. The class moved on again.

  Nathan trod on Julia’s foot, hard, to punish her for being his partner. ‘Ow!’ said Julia – her foot really hurt.

  ‘Not so much noise, Julia,’ called Mrs Henrey from the front.

  ‘Nathan kicked me,’ Julia whined.

  ‘I never,’ said Nathan – and trod on Julia’s foot again to punish her for telling, as well as for being his partner.

  ‘He kicked me again,’ Julia wailed.

  ‘Walk properly, Nathan,’ called Mrs Henrey, without looking back.

  Nathan aimed a third kick at Julia, which she dodged. Then he ignored her again, seeing the prospect of more sport ahead. Paul and Sanjay were walking decorously just in front, carrying the rounders bats. Paul and Sanjay were the goody-goodies, Mrs Henrey’s toadies. Nathan gave them a hard kick each, from behind, for being goody-goodies.

  ‘Stop it, Nathan!’

  ‘It wasn’t me, it was Julia.’

  ‘It was you,’ said Sanjay. ‘I saw you.’

  ‘Less noise back there,’ called Mrs Henrey.

  Nathan went to kick Sanjay again, to punish him for seeing, but Paul was too quick for him. Forgetting to be a goody-goody, Paul swung a well-aimed punch at the side of Nathan’s head, to which Nathan responded with fury. Lovely, to be so angry – a good fight was just what he felt like. So Nathan went at Paul in earnest, head down to protect his glasses, punching and flailing and kicking, like a savage little animal.

  ‘Stop it!’ thundered Mrs Henrey, marching towards the combatants like an avenging angel. ‘Stop it, both of you. How dare you fight in the street! Paul, I’m surprised at you. I really thought I could trust you to be at the back.’

  ‘Nathan started it,’ said Julia, virtuously.

  ‘I didn’t ask you,’ Mrs Henrey snapped. A trickle of sweat ran down the side of her fat nose. Her dress was damp, and sticking here and there already. She began to wonder if going to the park had been such a good idea after all ‘Nathan, come and walk with me at the front. Julia, you’ll have to walk by yourself. Now – any more trouble from anyone and we’ll go straight back to the classroom and do . . . er . . . spelling!’

  Nathan grinned, maliciously. There was nothing he would have liked better than to go back to school to do spelling. He excelled at it. It was one of his best lessons. His other best lessons were reading, and writing stories. Nathan considered in his mind how he could do something so awful that Mrs Henrey would take them all back to school to do spelling. He didn’t care about the others. Let them miss their silly rounders.

  But while Nathan considered, the opportunity passed, and soon they had arrived at the park – shady in part, and green to be sure, but hateful to Nathan because of the horrible game he was going to be forced to play. The cruel, humiliating game of rounders, with the hard ball that would come at him out of nowhere. Even with his glasses, things like balls coming were hard to see. So he would miss it, and keep on missing, to the accompaniment of loud jeers from everyone else, from all those who were good at rounders. There was no one who played rounders worse than Nathan. Except Julia, of course.

  ‘Sharon and Paul be captains, and pick up teams,’ said Mrs Henrey.

  ‘My foot hurts,’ said Julia, with sudden inspiration. ‘I can’t run on it.’

  ‘Run on the other one,’ said Mrs Henrey, unkindly.

  The choosing of teams proceeded, without pity. First the good players were chosen, then the average ones, then the downright bad ones. Finally, inevitably, the two unwanted ones were left – shamefaced and embarrassed, pretending not to mind.

  ‘We’ll have Nathan,’ said Paul, the recent fight totally forgotten.

  ‘All right, we’ll have Julia,’ said Sharon.

  Sharon was a muscular black girl, good at games and immensely popular. Julia would have liked above all things to be friends with Sharon. She might as well have aspired to friendship with the Queen.

  The outcasts mooched sullenly forward to their respective teams. Paul’s team was batting first, which meant that Julia was on the fielding side. She positioned herself, unasked, at the far edge of the pitch, as far from the ball as possible. No one challenged her for choosing her own position. No one cared where Julia stood. There was a lot of activity round the bases, a lot of shouting and exhortation and jumping up and down, but it was all a long way away. Julia lapsed into a vague daydream about Mrs Henrey asking her to stay behind to clear up after school.

  Suddenly everything was happening. There were cries of ‘ooh’, and there was the dreaded ball hurtling towards Julia off the end of someone’s bat. ‘Catch!’ Julia heard. Willing, but without hope, she stumbled towards the flying ball. She missed it of course; worse than that her foot caught a tuft of grass and she fell headlong. Groans of derision stung her ears. ‘Get it, throw it, here,’ her team was still calling.

  Her knees smarting and stained with grass, Julia scrambled to her feet. She found the ball and threw it blindly, clumsily, ineffectively. It fell short, as she knew it would, and as the others jeered she turned her back on them, swallowing fiercely, the tears burning her eyes. Would this horrible afternoon never be over?

  It was Nathan’s turn to bat. With a heart full of hate for rounders, he swiped mechanically as the ball came towards him. He didn’t expect to hit it, he hoped only that it would not strike him in the face and break his glasses, for the third time that term. As the ball flew past his elbow Nathan started to run. Not very fast. With any luck he would be out at first base and then he could sit on the cool grass, under the big tree, for the rest of the innings. He reached first base and someone was still calling, ‘Run!’ Nathan was confused. Where was the ball? Even though he hadn’t hit it, he could still make half a rounder if he could get all round. He ran again. ‘Not you, Nathan!’ a dozen voices shouted – but it was too late. Nathan reached second base but Jennifer, who was just in front of him, and had been forced to run because he did, was stumped at third.

  ‘Jennifer’s out,’ said Mrs Henrey.

  ‘I think there’s a new rule,’ said someone hopefully.

  But Mrs Henrey did not know about the new rule. ‘Jennifer’s out,’ she decreed.

  ‘You made me out,’ Jennifer accused Nathan, furiously.

  ‘I never,’ said Nathan. He had though, and he knew it.

  ‘Yes you did,’ said Paul.

  ‘You did, Nathan,’ said three or four others together. Jennifer was the best batter on Paul’s side. They were a hostile crowd, penning Nathan in.

  Angry with himself, and needing to lash out, Nathan hit the nearest one who happened to be another black boy, a tough character called Wayne. Wayne hit him back and Nathan’s glasses went flying. Nathan lost his temper entirely. Rage lending strength to his small arms, he punched Wayne to the ground, and went on hitting him even after Wayne’s nose started bleeding. Mrs Henrey had to get Paul and Sanjay to help her separate them.

  ‘Just look at you both,’ said Mrs Henrey. ‘Who started it this time?’

  Everyone agreed that the culprit was Nathan.

  ‘Right,’ said Mrs Henrey. ‘We’re going back to school this minute. And, Nathan, you’re going straight to Mr Barlowe. I’ve had enough of you and your temper. Line up, everyone.’

  There were lamentations and pleadings, of course, but Mrs Henrey was adamant. Grumbling its resentment, the class assembled in twos once more. Nathan retrieved his glasses, which fortunately were not broken, and dragged to the back of the line.

  Julia was relieved to be going back to school, but she found she was not yet forgiven for her own mistake. ‘Why don’t you throw harder?’ Sharon hissed at her as they stood in the line. ‘You throw like a baby!’ Sharon was angry really because they were going back to school, but the boys would deal with Nathan, whose fault it was,
and Sharon wanted someone to get at too. ‘Why don’t you throw proper?’ she taunted Julia.

  ‘Don’t want to,’ said Julia, pouting her lips and tossing back her stringy plaits. She noticed that Sharon was chewing gum, which was strictly forbidden. She sidled up to Mrs Henrey and whispered in her ear, ‘Sharon’s chewing gum.’

  ‘Take that rubbish out of your mouth, Sharon,’ said Mrs Henrey, crossly. ‘And don’t tell tales, Julia.’

  Why couldn’t she remember that Mrs Henrey didn’t like tales, Julia wondered bitterly? And why did she tell tales on Sharon, when really she only wanted Sharon to be her friend? It seemed she couldn’t help herself. Telling tales was the only way Julia had of getting back at the others when they hurt her.

  The unhappy procession moved down the road. Nathan, once more supposed to be walking with Julia, trailed a long way behind, scuffling his feet and muttering darkly. Mrs Henrey halted the line to wait for him to catch up. Paul, his saintly image again forsaken, turned and mouthed at him as he approached. ‘We’re going to get you, Nathan, after school.’ Wayne, his face still smeared with blood from the fight, turned to add his bit. ‘Yeah, we’re all going to get you. You made us lose our rounders.’

  Nathan knew they meant it. He was no coward, but all of them together could do a lot of damage. He brooded. The procession was nearing the turning to a side road. Nathan saw his chance and took it. Without warning, he bolted round the corner, and the next anyone saw was the back of his small figure, head forward, feet pounding, rapidly disappearing down the side road and round the next turning.

  ‘Nathan’s gone, Mrs Henrey,’ shouted Julia, again forgetting not to tell tales. But for once she had done the right thing, and the others supported her. ‘He’s gone, Miss!’ ‘Shall we catch him for you?’ ‘I can run fast, shall I go?’

  ‘Leave him,’ said Mrs Henrey, grimly. ‘Mr Barlowe can deal with him in the morning. And if I have one more sound out of any of you, there’ll be no playtime for a week.’

  She didn’t mean that, everyone knew quite well. Mrs Henrey was strict, and she often got cross, but she was quite kind really. She was just at the end of her tether now, after an exhausting day. Nevertheless, fractious with the heat and the disappointment and the boredom of the half-hour’s silent reading which Mrs Henrey imposed on them, Class 8 was not feeling well disposed towards their teacher. Usually there were plenty of willing helpers ready to stay behind and tidy up after the bell, but today there were none. Everyone discovered they had pressing engagements elsewhere. Except Julia.