A Season of Secrets Read Online Free PDF Page A

now.
    Catching up with them, she said unhappily, ‘Thea and I have fallen out. She didn’t say so, but I don’t think she’s now coming to see the voles – and I don’t
think she’ll be letting me travel back in the pony-trap, either.’
    Hal raised his eyebrows. ‘Are you telling us the two of you ’ave ’ad a barney?’
    ‘Yes.’ Carrie hadn’t the faintest intention of telling him what the barney had been about. ‘I don’t like her, and she doesn’t like me.’
    ‘Doesn’t mean to say the three of us can’t watch the voles. Olivia still wants to watch ’em, don’t you ’livia?’
    Olivia, who often fell out with Thea and didn’t see anything odd in Carrie having done so, nodded her head. As if to show where her loyalties lay, she moved a little closer to Hal’s
side. From being initially alarmed by him, she now wanted to be friends with him. There was, though, Thea to think about. If Thea returned home without her, there was no telling what kind of
explanation Thea might give their mother and it would probably be one that would get her into trouble.
    She looked towards the pony-trap. Jim Crosby was leaning against the side of it, smoking a cigarette, one foot crossed carelessly over the other and Thea was striding towards him.
    ‘Come on, ’livia,’ Hal said impatiently. ‘What are you waiting for?’
    ‘I want to see if Thea is going to tell Mr Crosby she wants to go home and that he’s not to wait for us.’
    ‘She can tell ’im what she wants, but Uncle Jim takes ’is orders from your ma. He won’t budge an inch until you’re in the trap as well.’
    All three of them looked towards the pony-trap. As Thea reached it, Jim nipped his cigarette out and put it behind his ear in order to give her a hand up. Though it was hard to tell from the
distance they were at, it didn’t look as if Thea said anything to him. She simply seated herself in the trap. Jim, lighting up his cigarette, once again leaned nonchalantly against it.
    ‘There. See.’ Hal clinked a couple of marbles around in his jacket pocket. ‘Now can we get goin’?’
    Olivia nodded, eager to do so. She could never remember a more interesting morning. She was with two new friends – friends who, for the very first time, weren’t family members. She
was down by the river and unsupervised by an adult, for although Jim Crosby was keeping an eye on their safety, he couldn’t be said to be supervising them. Best of all she wasn’t just
pretending
to do something, as when she and Thea played at being pirates or princesses. She was really
doing
something. She was an explorer, about to see little creatures most people
had probably never heard of.
    Unlike Olivia, Carrie was far from happy. As all three walked quietly and carefully to the edge of the river, all she could think of was how disappointed her granny was going to be when she told
her that she’d fallen out with Thea, and that Thea wouldn’t want to see her any more.
    Hal interrupted her thoughts by signalling for her to drop onto her tummy. She did so, pulling Olivia down with her. When they had all wriggled forward far enough to see over the thickly
foliaged bank, they lay still and waited.
    Seconds turned into minutes and then, just as Olivia felt she couldn’t stay still a moment longer, there was movement.
    Even though she had experienced the sight several times over the summer, Carrie felt her throat tighten as two bright little eyes peeped from a tangle of reeds a yard or so to their left. Beside
her, Olivia gasped.
    Carrie squeezed her hand, willing her to remain silent.
    As the water vole emerged from the foliage covering the mouth of the burrow, to be followed by a troop of tiny pups, it was all too much for Olivia. ‘Oh,’ she whispered on a long
drawn-out breath. ‘Look at their pretty little faces, Carrie. Aren’t they just the sweetest things you’ve ever seen?’
    The pups scrambled and half-fell into the water and Carrie nodded,