The Lie Read Online Free PDF Page A

after him. He kicked Frederick with his boot and Frederick’s face went forward and banged on the skirting board. Mr Dennis was shouting at him to get up like a man. Frederick scrambled up, on his hands and knees, and backed away from his father towards the stairs. I couldn’t see him any more because Mr Dennis was over him, blotting him out. Frederick whimpered and wriggled across the floorboards.
    ‘Get up those stairs!’ shouted Mr Dennis in a thick voice as if he was drunk. ‘Get up those stairs and don’t let me see you again.’ Frederick crawled upstairs with Mr Dennis behind him, kicking and beating him. Each time Frederick tried to get away, Mr Dennis was on him. Each time he left off, Frederick jerked like a fish.
    A bell rang below: the front door. There were footsteps and a voice. A woman’s voice. Not my mother, or anyone I knew. Mr Dennis stood still, as if he’d forgotten about Frederick. I willed Frederick to run, but he didn’t move. Slowly, Mr Dennis settled his jacket. He put up his hands and smoothed his hair. His hands travelled down his face, over his whiskers, as if he was making sure of who he was. Without looking at Frederick, he turned and went away down the stairs.
    I slipped out from behind the clock. I was frightened that if the man came back he would kill Frederick. ‘Frederick!’ I whispered. He didn’t stir. I went to him and huddled on the stair beside him. He shrank away. ‘Frederick, it’s me.’ I heard him gulping for air, so loud that someone might hear it. I had to pull hard, jerking him, before he would move. I put my shoulder under his arm, the way I’d seen the big boys do when someone was hurt at a match, and we went down to the landing and along the corridor to the back stairs. We could get out of the house through the scullery door, without going through the hall. Frederick wasn’t crying. There was blood on his forehead where he’d fallen against the stairs.
    The garden wasn’t safe enough. ‘We’ll go down mine,’ I said. We slipped through the streets and I held Frederick’s hand tight because I was scared of the way he looked. Rain was pouring, thicker than ever, and it hid us. No one was about. We went into ours through the yard, and into the house. It was dark and cold in the kitchen without my mother there. ‘Take off your boots,’ I said. We went upstairs, and I lifted down the big jug from my mother’s washstand and put it on the floor. She kept clean rag in a basket, and I took a piece, soaked it and twisted it, and wiped Frederick’s face. The cut wasn’t so bad. I wiped off all the blood while Frederick sat there on my bed, not saying a word. He was shivering. I got the quilt from under him and pulled it over us both, and we lay down. Frederick was stiff and cold and I had to push him over to the wall to make room for me. I didn’t know what to do. I was scared of the way he wasn’t talking. I held on to him tight and after a bit he stopped shivering. I kept on holding him, as tight as I could. I could hear the rain rushing off the gutters and into the launders below. The window square was almost dark, although it was the middle of the day. I wished that Mr Dennis would die and Frederick would live with us for ever.
    The rain was still rushing when I woke up, and my mother was there, standing over us with a candlestick. She put out her hand and touched Frederick’s face. Already it was going dark with bruises. I knew her so well that I could see the thoughts moving in her. She was afraid.
    When Frederick was seven and Felicia five, Mr Dennis remarried. Naturally the new wife didn’t like the old order. Felicia made the mistake of clinging to my mother and screaming when her ‘new mother’ tried to take possession of her. Soon we were down the hill again and my mother was back to cleaning. I’d forgotten how to be hungry but I quickly learned again. Even so, those three years of Dennis food set me on. When it came to my army medical at