Like Father Read Online Free PDF Page A

You tell me to go, I go.”
    She did this sometimes. They all did: Oma, Danny, his father. They could switch, just like that, from happy to sad, from calm to angry. One moment she had been buzzing like the bees in Little Rick’s hives, and now she was upset, as if she realised how futile it was to hope for a happy family ever again.
    “Of course we don’t want you to stop, or go anywhere. What would we do without you?” He kicked at a stone on the path, awkward, knowing that she had trapped him into saying things. Go on, tell me you love me!
    She was smiling now.
    “I only keep going because my family needs me. So tell me, Daniel Schmidt: you want things how they were?”
    Danny nodded. If only... “Yes, I’d love things to be how they were.”
    They walked back towards their flat in the main school building. Luke, one of the founding members of the Trust, was bent over in the undergrowth, hauling at the ground elder. When they passed him Oma nudged him in the backside. Instantly, she bounded off like a ten year-old.
    Danny looked at Luke, sprawled in the weeds, and then at Oma’s retreating figure, and then he was after her. Around the corner of the old chapel, they stopped, gasping for air, giggling like little children. “Is funny, ja ? He stick his fat ass in the air like that – what does he expect?”
    ~
    Tuesday afternoon, Danny trailed out of the school gates, loosening his tie. He headed up Morses Lane, and then turned right onto the track that followed Carrant Brook back over the fields to Wishbourne.
    A woodpigeon flew across the track and up into the willows that lined the brook to his left, then immediately it changed its mind and flew off again.
    He walked to one side of the track, avoiding the puddles in the ruts left by the wheels of farm vehicles.
    Cassie Lomax was ahead of him. Alone, just as he, too, was alone.
    They weren’t completely on their own, of course. There were groups ahead of Cassie on the track, and Danny could hear voices from behind. They seemed very distant though.
    She was dangling her bag so that it almost dragged along the ground at her side, the long straps bunched up in her right hand. Her bare calves flashed pale in the afternoon sunlight as she walked.
    Danny kept looking down, looking away from her, as if someone somewhere might be watching him.
    Watching him watching her.
    He felt his heart thumping and he made himself breathe more slowly, more calmly. At lunchtime he’d seen her with Kate Jordan and Jo Lee, talking and laughing. He hadn’t heard what they were talking about. He hadn’t wanted to get too near, in case they thought he was weird.
    Halfway along the track, Cassie paused and glanced back over her shoulder. She’d seen him now, he was sure. She was going to wait for him. Probably ask him something stupid about his star sign or whatever. Or ask him why he’d been watching her at lunchtime, even though he was certain she hadn’t noticed him.
    When he looked back up, she was still walking. She wasn’t going to wait for him after all. Wasn’t going to ask him something stupid.
    He realised that he was disappointed. He felt very alone at the moment. But he was relieved, too.
    He watched her. The way that she walked. The way she dangled her bag.
    She looked back again. She was smiling.
    Was she playing games with him? Winding him up?
    At the end of the track she turned right, away from Hope Springs, and so did Danny.
    He was keeping his distance, and the kink in the road by the old railway line took her from his sight for a time. Long enough for him to wonder what on earth he was doing and then to squash that thought like an ant. He came round the high walls of the garden of Forge Cottage and she was there, ahead of him. Closer now: either she had slowed or he had quickened his pace when he had lost sight of her.
    She looked up, not quite back at him, and turned down Swiss Lane. She must live in one of the wooden chalet-houses, he thought. Someone had once