He Called Me Son (The Blountmere Street Series Book 1) Read Free Page A

the front path, red flowers smothered their rose bushes, and their doorstep left ours looking grey.   Their front door was half open.   In the brightness of their hall, I could see Paula Dibble’s two-wheeler propped against a wall.   I kicked one of the rose bushes and it shed red petals on the path, like drops of blood. There was no way I would ever get a bike.   Even when I got my hands on a measly half crown, I sicked it up.
    As I turned my key, Lori opened her front door.   Her scarf trailed the path as she bent to put an empty milk bottle on her step.   She straightened, and looked directly at me. ‘You look a little peaky,’ she said.   ‘Cigarettes don’t do much good to a nine year old stomach.’  
     

Chapter Two
     
    Most summer Saturday afternoons, I sat on the back doorstep with Paula Dibble from the flat downstairs reading comics.   I was glad her old man’s bushes hid us.   If the Gang or Angela found out, they would call me a sissy.   Angela said Paula was the stuck-up daughter of a stuck-up mother, paraded around in fancy outfits.
    ‘She’s a jellyfish, a spoilt, prissy jellyfish who’s got everything but a backbone,’   Angela said whenever Paula’s name was so much as mentioned.   ‘What if she’s always had every single thing she’s wanted.   Who cares?   And Lily Dribble can carry on all she likes about her wonderful Les ; he’s still a bully.’
    When we told each other secrets, Paula called it confiding.   I liked confiding to Paula.   I didn’t throw stones at her like the Gang did, or chant, “ Dribble, dribble, all she does is dribble .”    But I wouldn’t be caught walking to school with her.   There was nothing wrong with her.   It wasn’t as if she was dirty.   She smelt of soap, nice and flowery, not like that horrible coal tar stuff Mum bought when she had the money.   Inside, I felt guilty as if a thousand worms squirmed.  
     
    ‘I had a nightmare last night,’ I told Paula one thundery Saturday afternoon when the sky was so low it almost touched us.   ‘It’s the same every time, about a giant stomping along Blountmere Street looking for me.   He swooped on both our flats.   He shook them and roared my name.   I hid under the table, but he found me and squeezed me tighter and tighter, until I couldn’t breathe.’   I put my fingers over my eyes to get rid of the picture.   ‘Did you hear me scream?’
    ‘Not really.   Anyway, I expect you hear Dad shouting.   He does sometimes - you know - shout.   He doesn’t mean to …   He … It can be a bit frightening.   In between, well, mainly he doesn’t talk to Mum and me.’
    ‘I never hear a dickey bird.’   I lied.   ‘Sometimes me and Ang used to hide under the bed after our Old Man had a skinful in case he bashed us.   A lot of the time he did, see … and Mum.   He cut her eye once.   She had to wear a patch over it.’   I cast a half glance at Paula.   ‘He used to bring these fancy women home and force Mum to feed them.   One of them came into our room once.   She gave me a bob.’
     
    With the lengthening days, the Gang spent even longer at our camp.   We even went back there after we had all listened to Dick Barton .   We each squatted on our own stone and talked, starting with Dick and his latest adventure, then on to all sorts of other things, while the shadows made the ruins look as if they had stripes painted on them.
    ‘Any of you joinin’ the Cubs up the Wesleyan Church, then?’   Dobsie asked, poking a finger through a hole in the pullover he was always boasting his Gran had knitted him.   I reckoned she had bad eyesight because you could see where she’d dropped some of the stitches.   Both Dobsie’s socks were pulled right up, without even a crinkle.   Dobsie was fussy like that, but when he stretched his legs in front of him I could see he had a hole in the sole of his shoe.
    ‘Kenny Withard said the Cubs have a camp at the seaside