The Runaway Read Free

and Stella’s school was closed. Terry Darnell would be taking his daughter to the Metropolitan Police social club to celebrate the wedding of Princess Anne, the Queen’s only daughter, to equestrian Olympic gold medallist Mark Phillips.
    Terry had promised Stella they could watch the wedding live on a big television and she would play games with the children of other officers. There would be souvenir party bags to take home. This had only made Stella think that she didn’t know where she would be taking her bag. This worry was overtaken by another: the news that there would be cake and Coca-Cola. Stella disliked sweet things and fizzy drinks and was no good at any sort of game as most of them relied on fast response. When the music stopped, Stella was still pondering the best course of action. Unlike her mum, she thought Mark Phillips quite handsome, but she didn’t want to go to a party because of him.
    While she was getting on and off a chair, putting each plate back, one by one, on the pine dresser next to the fridge, Stella mused that a wedding couldn’t be special. Her mum and dad had had a wedding and now they were going to live far away from each other. They would not see each other again. Stella had understood that the Access Weekends were only for her.
    After the party Stella would be going to Barons Court. She was fair-minded and it wouldn’t have occurred to her to have a preference for either parent. However, she did suppose it would be easier if she stayed with her dad. All her things could have stayed in their places too and she would know where they were. Her dad would know where she was. She worried he wouldn’t find Barons Court even while supposing that, being a policeman, he would easily know the way. Yet if she stayed, her mum would be in Barons Court having her Fresh Start all by herself. Many times since her parents told her they were splitting up, Stella had been troubled by this conundrum.
    When she returned to the hall, the dog was leaping and jumping by the door, mewing like a cat. He wanted a walk. Mechanically, Stella took his lead down from the end coat hook and clipped it to his collar. She reached up and retrieved her parka with the fur-lined hood. Grasping the lead, she opened the front door and stepped outside. She pulled the door shut behind her with a click of the latch.
    This was a starting gun for the dog. He rocketed down the path, jerking the lead taut, wrenching Stella’s arm. She struggled in his wake as he took off across the little cul-de-sac and made for the scrap of land between Black Lion Lane and the Great West Road, with its paths framing some scrubby grass. He led Stella along one of the paths. Clutching the lead in both hands like reins, she skidded and tripped over the damp asphalt.
    He stopped by the railings that protected the ramps down to the subway under the Great West Road and Stella panted to get her breath.
    Above her the cross on St Peter’s Church spire was silhouetted against a blue November sky with not a cloud in sight. The shadows of the bare boughs flitted across the pavement. On the Great West Road, cars, lorries and coaches streamed into London, banking up at the approach to Hammersmith Broadway. A driver in the near lane glancing to her left noticed a little girl with flyaway hair and a dog. This prompted a fond memory of her daughter when she was little and she gave the ghost of a smile. A lorry driver in a British Leyland truck laden with iron girders spotted a man near a church doing up his shoelace some metres away from the little girl. While David Cassidy sang about being a daydreamer in the rain on his cab radio, the man fell into a daydream of his own. The man must be the girl’s dad, because he kept glancing up to check she was in sight. She was waiting for him to catch her up. Letting out the clutch, the driver revved past the church and fell to thinking about his own daughter and how whatever happened he