Stay Where You Are and Then Leave Read Free

goose.”
    â€œAnd you believe that, do you?” Margie said, looking up at him, her eyes red-rimmed with tears. “You believe what they tell you?”
    â€œWhat else can we do but believe?” said Georgie. “We have to hope for the best.”
    â€œPromise me, Georgie Summerfield,” said Margie. “Promise me you won’t sign up.”
    There was a long pause before Alfie’s dad spoke again. “You heard what Old Bill said, love. It might be easier on me in the long term if—”
    â€œAnd what about me? And Alfie? Will it be easier on us? Promise me, Georgie!”
    â€œAll right, love. Let’s just see what happens, shall we? All them politicians might wake up tomorrow morning and change their minds about the whole thing anyway. We could be worrying over nothing.”
    Alfie wasn’t supposed to eavesdrop on his parents’ private conversations—this was something that had got him into trouble once or twice in the past—but that night, the night he turned five, he sat on the staircase where he knew they couldn’t see him and stared at his toes as he listened in. He hadn’t intended to sit there for quite so long—he had only come down for a glass of water and a bit of leftover tongue that he’d had his eye on—but their conversation sounded so serious that it seemed like it might be a mistake to walk away from it. He gave a deep, resounding yawn—it had been a very long day, after all, as birthdays always are—and closed his eyes for a moment, laid his head on the step behind him, and before he knew it he was having a dream where someone was lifting him up and carrying him to a warm, comfortable place. The next thing he knew, he was opening his eyes again, only to find himself lying in his own little bed with the sun pouring through the thin curtains—the ones with the pale-yellow flowers on them that Alfie said were meant for a girl’s room, not a boy’s.
    *   *   *
    The morning after his fifth birthday party, Alfie came downstairs to find his mother in her wash-day clothes with her hair tied up on her head, boiling water in every pot on the range, looking just as unhappy as she had the night before, and not just the normal unhappiness she felt every wash day, which usually lasted from seven in the morning until seven at night. She looked up when she saw him but didn’t seem to recognize him for a moment; when she did, she just offered him a dejected smile.
    â€œAlfie,” she said. “I thought I’d let you sleep in. You had a big day yesterday. Bring your sheets down to me, will you? There’s a good boy.”
    â€œWhere’s Dad?” asked Alfie.
    â€œHe’s gone out.”
    â€œGone out where?”
    â€œOh, I don’t know,” she said, unable to look him in the eye. “You know your dad never tells me anything.”
    Which Alfie knew wasn’t true, because every afternoon when his father came home from the dairy, he told Margie every single detail of his day from start to finish, and they sat there laughing while he explained how Bonzo Daly had left half a dozen churns outside in the yard without the lids on and the birds had got at them and spoiled the milk. Or how Petey Staples had cheeked the boss and been told that if he continued to complain he could just go and find another job where they put up with guff like that. Or how Mr. Asquith had done the poo to end all poos outside Mrs. Fairfax from number four’s house and her a direct descendant (she claimed) of the last Plantagenet King of England and meant for better places than Damley Road. If Alfie knew one thing about his father, it was that he told his mother everything .
    An hour later, he was sitting in the front parlor drawing in his new sketchbook while Margie took a rest from the washing, and Granny Summerfield, who’d come around for what she called a bit of a