The Accidental Afterlife of Thomas Marsden Read Online Free PDF Page A

one, they said. And I’m here now, aren’t I?” Thomas asked.
    â€œUrgh. That’s disgustin’, that is.”
    Thomas wasn’t so sure. The idea didn’t bother him quite as much as perhaps it should have, or as much as it bothered Charley, but then, Charley hadn’t grown up helping Silas from the time he could first hold a shovel. Charley hadn’t really grown up anywhere much. He was just always around, sleeping in whatever corners he could find and scrounging food from any folks with some to spare. He was about Thomas’s age, in as much as that was possible to guess beneath several layers of thick grime.
    Thomas had found him sailing a toy boat, pieced together from scraps of wood, in the river shallows. Charley’d seen Thomas first, waving him over to ask if Thomas had any coin to spare. Never one for many words, Charley, but he’d ask that any chance he got. Thomas didn’t, but coins . . . coins were on his mind, right enough. Had been since Silas and Lucy watched Thomas leave, with only a halfhearted attempt to stop him running from the house, his share of pie untouched.
    He scowled down at the rippling surface. Perhaps they knew they couldn’t boss him about anymore, seeing as they weren’t his real parents.
    â€œSo they’ve got no clue where you came from?” Charley asked, flicking his boat away from the edge before it mired itself in the mud.
    â€œNot a one. Silas just picked me up and took me home.” As if Thomas had merely been another treasure surrendered from a graveyard, the very same one where they’d been digging the night before. “After a while, they named me Thomas. Said a boy needed a name, and that was that. ’Cept . . .”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œLittle while after, they had a visitor, they said.” Silas hadn’t wanted to tell Thomas this part; that much’d been clear as water. “Strange chap in a fine cloak who stood inthe doorway and told ’em to take care of me. Gave ’em a whole sackful of silver coins and left again.”
    â€œBet Silas spent those quick as blinking,” said Charley. Thomas nodded. Silas claimed he’d gone after the man, but Thomas could only imagine how divided his attention must have been, between a purse full of money and a mysterious man who might ask for it back given half the chance.
    But, again, it made no sense. The bloke had been rich, clearly, and thus there was no reason why Thomas need have grown up in two small rooms, thieving from the dead so there’d be supper on the table.
    â€œFunny business,” said Charley. The boat was stuck in a sodden clump of leaves and twigs, but he paid it no attention, deep in thought. “I reckon you should go find ’em. Your family, I mean. What I’d do, if I knew where to start, if only to tell ’em to go eat an onion for chucking me out. Maybe they had no choice. You never know. And if they’s rich now, maybe they’ll take you back in.” Charley laughed. “And if they do, tell ’em to take me, too!”
    â€œRight.” Thomas tried to smile. He didn’t have much more of an idea about where to start looking than Charley did.
    But he knew one thing.
    â€œYou on a job tonight?”
    Charley shook his head. “Been too few of ’em recently, to be honest. Could use a nice big haul. I’ll retire like one of those fancy lords, with folks to bring me kippers and cakes on a silver tray.” He lay back on the muddy earth and flung out an arm to pluck an imaginary morsel from an equally imaginary serving dish. “That’d be the life, wouldn’t it, Thomas?”
    It would, indeed. “If it’s fancy you want, we’re off to one of them grand theaters tonight,” said Thomas. “Got the tickets as . . . as a present.” From someone who had left Thomas a strange note. From someone who wanted him to see