Vengeance Child Read Online Free PDF Page A

cook Jamaican food never mind put a love spell on you. Go put an ad in the paper. “Lovely blonde, thirty, seeks handsome man. GSOH.” Now, I’ll drop this off, then my time to watch some television in bed. See, told you I’m a lonely shrivelled old prune!’ With a hearty laugh she sailed away down the corridor.
    Laura checked her watch. Other members of staff would be switching off dormitory lights in the wing that accommodated the younger children. After a fraught day a silence had finally crept over the building. Good silence? Or a bad silence? Only time would tell. Sometimes when it got quiet like this in Badsworth Lodge it was like sitting on a time bomb. At least she had good news for Jay.
    She found him sitting on the bed in his pyjamas. Rain clicked at the windows. A brittle sound that tugged your nerve endings until you wanted to shout, ‘Stop that!’ Jay stared at the picture of a ship in a comic. Maybe he’s beginning to remember?
    â€˜Jay,’ she sat beside him. ‘Good news. I’ve just had confirmation from my boss: the trip to the island is back on. We’re leaving tomorrow afternoon.’ She refrained from adding ‘after Maureen’s funeral’. ‘You must be pleased about that.’
    He stared at the picture. A red ship sliding across the ocean.
    Gently, Laura added, ‘I haven’t been there, but I’ve heard it’s a nice place. It’s an island in a river, not the sea. We can have barbecues. They tell me there are otters, deer and even wild mink.’
    Without letting his eyes wander from the ship picture he asked, ‘Will I meet new people?’
    â€˜Some.’
    â€˜That’s frightening.’ A simple, matter-of-fact statement.
    â€˜You’re going to be frightened of people on the island. Why?’
    â€˜No . . . I’m frightened of what I’ll do to them.’
    â€˜Jay.’ She put her arm round his shoulders. ‘That’s nonsense. You’re the kindest, most considerate boy I’ve ever met.’
    â€˜Nobody says Maureen’s name in front of me. They know I killed her.’
    Laura had overheard what the children were saying to each other. Jay’s done it again . . . the little witch made the bus crush Maureen . . . She leaned forward so he could see the smile she now wore. ‘You mustn’t say that. It was an accident. What happened was tragic, and it makes us all hurt inside because we loved Maureen, and we miss her.’ Laura made a point of talking about feelings to the children. They were accustomed to suppressing grief until it festered dangerously inside of them. ‘Do you want to talk about Maureen?’ she asked.
    â€˜Do you think she ever went on a boat like this?’
    â€˜I guess so. What made you ask that?’ Maybe he’s having flashbacks of when he was on the ship. With that thought came memories of seven years ago when the news was dominated by the sinking of the N’Taal , taking hundreds of refugees with it. Just one four-year-old boy had been picked up from an inflatable raft.
    Slowly, he shook his head. ‘Grown-ups won’t talk about Maureen in front of me, just like they don’t talk about Tod Langdon.’ He turned those large brown eyes to her. ‘Tell me what really happened to him.’
    â€˜Well . . .’
    â€˜You can tell me a made-up story; that’s OK if it makes you sad to tell the truth.’
    Her mind whirled back six months. Just hours after Jay arrived at Badsworth Lodge she had found him in the kitchen. The eleven-year-old sat on his floor with his back to the fridge door. Emotionally withdrawn, face clammy enough to shine beneath the fluorescent lights, he could have been a mannequin sitting there. A fragile one with jet-black hair, and large – strangely large – eyes that were dark as a shadow. And then Jay began to speak from the depths of