Unexpected Twist Page 10

  Shona stared at the floor. She did like Miss Cavani, but not when she did her “investigating” thing. When she did that, it was like you were in the changing room at LQ Sports, and Miss Cavani had decided to get in there too, squashed up against you, asking you about what shampoo you used. Well, huh! Guess what, they were squashed in a little room, though Miss Cavani hadn’t got on to any shampoo questions yet.

  Miss Cavani was talking, and Shona was hearing, but not listening.

  Shona lifted her head and looked at a series of pictures on the wall. An actor – or was she a dancer? – was in different poses with different faces: one moment hunched up and old, the next bold and upright, the next sad and mournful. It could almost be different people, but it really was the same person. Amazing. What would that feel like, where you didn’t have to be yourself? One moment you’d be Shona and the next you could be Nan, the next you could be, well, Miss Cavani! Why not?

  As Shona thought of how you could “be” Miss Cavani, the clasping and unclasping of the hands, the pushing back of the hair on the side of her head, Miss Cavani’s words drifted in on Shona.

  “…at a staff meeting and we’ve been alerted to the fact that…”

  Why is she telling me this sort of stuff? Shona wondered.

  “…warn you that an out-of-school gang operating…”

  Hmm… Hmm… Shona felt irritated to see that the nail on her little finger had broken.

  “…phones.”

  Shona heard that. Miss Cavani was talking about phones? And a gang?

  “…hear of anything like that, not saying that you…”

  It was like Désol’é trying to explain “evaporation”. One moment it was a complete fog, then turned round the other way, it suddenly became clear. A gang? Phones?

  Unlike “getting” evaporation, where she had felt relief she’d got it right, hearing what Miss Cavani was saying did just the opposite. Shona felt her stomach drop inside her. She wanted to gasp but stopped herself so as to not give anything away. It was like when you’re in the pool and you’re underwater and some idiot kid thinks it’d be really funny to push your head down and you feel panicky and breathless and water is rushing past your ears and eyes.

  “…you’ve got a new phone, can I ask…”

  No, no, don’t tell her how. This is too big for Miss Cavani.

  “My dad,” Shona said quickly.

  Miss Cavani looked closely at her. “I’ll just say this, Shona dear. The way these things start always looks kind of nice. You know: generous. But it’s much, much bigger than that. Things are taken, well, stolen, and passed along a line. The people taking the risks aren’t really the ones making the money. It’s people standing behind people. Things look like one thing but really they’re another.”

  Miss Cavani leant forward, made to put her arm on Shona’s shoulder – but stopped. She went on: “These people are always on the lookout for someone who can hand something on, keep things moving down the chain, get things sold, get the money moving around so that it all looks legal. Do you understand me?”

  Shona “got” some of it, but not all of it. The bit that was “sticking” was the thing about “handing something on … getting things sold…”

  “…now, I’m not going to go on about it any more…”

  A picture came into Shona’s head yet again: that time she was walking up to Nan’s stall and there was that guy handing Nan a box and when the pair of them saw her, he slipped away like a fish in the water, and Nan started talking about something else. It was just a shifty moment. Nothing more. But somehow it chimed with what Miss Cavani was saying now.

  Was it possible that Nan…? Nan?! She just ran a stall in the market. But then, what was it that Miss Cavani was saying about getting things moved on, sold? The picture of Nan’s stall came to mind, and how one time she had gone to the caff to get Nan a cup of tea and when she came back, there was a row of hairdryers on the stall, all in their boxes. Just like that. A row of hairdryers. But how had Nan got them? Where did they come from?

  But Nan, lovely Nan, who had hugged her tight, and looked after her so often…

  Shona felt tears come into her eyes. It was all getting to be too much. Much too much.

  CLASS X10 READING COMPREHENSION

  Oliver was walking along on an errand for Mr Brownlow, thinking how happy and contented he ought to feel; when he was startled by a young woman screaming out very loud. “Oh, my dear brother!” And he had hardly looked up, to see what the matter was, when he was stopped by having a pair of arms thrown tight round his neck.

  “Don’t,” cried Oliver, struggling. “Let go of me. Who is it? What are you stopping me for?”

  The only reply to this was a great number of loud cries from the young woman who had embraced him; and who had a little basket and a street door key in her hand.

  “Oh my gracious!” said the young woman, “I have found him! Oh! Oliver! Oliver! Oh you naughty boy, to make me suffer such distress on your account! Come home, dear, come. Oh, I’ve found him. Thank gracious goodness heavins, I’ve found him!”

  With these incoherent exclamations, the young woman burst into another fit of crying, and got so dreadfully hysterical that a couple of women who came up at the moment asked a butcher’s boy, who was also looking on, whether he didn’t think he had better run for the doctor. To which, the butcher’s boy: who appeared of a lounging, not to say lazy disposition: replied, that he thought not.

  “Oh, no, no, never mind,” said the young woman, grasping Oliver’s hand; “I’m better now. Come home directly, you cruel boy! Come! He ran away, near a month ago, from his parents, who are hard-working and respectable people; and went and joined a set of thieves and bad characters; and almost broke his mother’s heart.”

  “Young wretch!” said one woman.

  “Go home, do, you little brute,” said the other.

  “I am not,” replied Oliver, greatly alarmed. “I don’t know her. I haven’t any sister, or father and mother either. I’m an orphan; I live at Pentonville.”

  “Only hear him, how he braves it out!” cried the young woman.

  “Why, it’s Nancy!” exclaimed Oliver; who now saw her face for the first time; and started back, in irrepressible astonishment.

  “You see he knows me!” cried Nancy, appealing to the bystanders. “He can’t help himself. Make him come home, there’s good people, or he’ll kill his dear mother and father, and break my heart!”

  “What the devil’s this?” said a man, bursting out of a beer shop, with a white dog at his heels; “young Oliver! Come home to your poor mother, you young dog! Come home directly.”

  “I don’t belong to them. I don’t know them. Help! Help!” cried Oliver, struggling in the man’s powerful grasp.

  “Help!” repeated the man. “Yes, I’ll help you, you young rascal! What books are these? You’ve been a stealing ’em, have you? Give ’em here.” With these words, the man tore the volumes from his grasp, and struck him on the head.

  “That’s right!” cried a looker-on, from a garret window. “That’s the only way of bringing him to his senses!”

  “To be sure!” cried a sleepy-faced carpenter, casting an approving look at the garret window.

  “It’ll do him good!” said the two women.

  “And he shall have it, too!” rejoined the man, administering another blow, and seizing Oliver by the collar. “Come on, you young villain! Here, Bull’s-eye, mind him, boy! Mind him!”

  Weak with recent illness; stupified by the blows and the suddenness of the attack; terrified by the fierce growling of the dog, and the brutality of the man; overpowered by the conviction of the bystanders that he really was the hardened little wretch he was described to be; what could one poor child do! Darkness had set in; it was a low neighbourhood; no help was near; resistance was useless. In another moment he was dragged into a labyrinth of dark narrow streets, and was forced along them at a pace which rendered the few cries he dared to give utterance to unint
elligible. It did not matter, indeed, whether they were intelligible or not; for there was nobody to care, had they been ever so plain.

  Chapter 14

  Shona was running down the road. She didn’t know what she was running from. Or what she was running to. Should she go home – huh, home! – or go and see Nan and ask her what was going on? Or what?

  In amongst all her worries about being in trouble, there was also the feeling that she had been so stupid. So, so, so stupid. If only you could get hold of all those feelings and bundle them all into a bag and stuff them in a wheelie bin. One of those big ones that ran alongside the market. The market – yes, go and see Nan and just sort it. Yes, Nan would know how to do that.

  The air was full of a damp mist, that wasn’t rain and wasn’t fog. Just a cold wetness that hung in the air.

  She headed for the market, round by the Lennox Lewis estate, and slipped into the shortcut alleyway that ran past the old people’s sheltered housing. That’s when she heard something. Ahead of her, where the alleyway turned sharp right and sharp left, she heard some voices, scuffling sounds and a cry.

  She froze. She knew the sound of a fight. She had heard it before. Once when she was in the Infants there had been a fight outside her school when Nan had come to pick her up, and Nan had bustled her away from it. And now, come to think of it … Nan had known their names! At the time it didn’t seem strange, but now … it fitted.

  Shona stopped stock-still. She couldn’t see anything; whatever was happening was going on round the corner in the alleyway. She started to back up very slowly and silently away from the noise when she heard a voice she recognized:

  “I didn’t,” the voice said, and there was more scuffling, the sound of thuds, and the same voice cried out.

  Who was it? She knew that voice. Yes, it was Gazz! Was he being beaten up?

  Standing stock-still, she heard another voice: it was deeper, muttering, and she couldn’t make out the words, but again, it was another voice she recognized. Who, though? Who? She couldn’t stop herself from straining to hear, even though the best thing to have done at this moment was run, get out of there, get out of everything, wash it all off, get away.

  Who was this second voice?

  And again, she got it. It was Ron, the man who had helped them move. Lugging stuff up and down the stairs.

  Shona turned and ran back down the alley, and as she burst out on to the pavement, she ran into a man and a woman, dressed in uniform, with bits of high-vis attached, their pockets swollen with stuff.

  “Sorry, love,” said the woman, stepping to one side.

  Shona looked at her. That rang a bell. The policewoman who had stepped to one side as she had been going through the tunnel in school … and hadn’t she seen her before? In the market, and had heard Nan say “Specials”.

  The woman looked again at Shona, and said, “Shona! You OK?”

  Her head was buzzing with everything that had happened and everything she had thought in the last few hours, and it felt like a can of drink that fizzes out the moment you pull back the ring. She looked from the woman to the alley behind her, and back to the woman and then without even thinking about it, pointed towards the bend in the alley. “There!” she said in a loud whisper, “there!”

  There was something in the way that Shona said that word that clicked with the Specials woman. It was the sound of panic and fear in Shona’s voice, and without waiting another second, she and the other policeman started running towards the bend in the alley.

  Shona knew that she didn’t want to – shouldn’t – couldn’t – hang about. This was all getting too fearsome, too dangerous. She ran towards the market to see Nan.

  As she reached the busy end at the oranges stall, she looked beyond it to Nan’s stall and could see in a blink of the eye that it was empty. It was all set up, but nothing on it, and no one behind it.

  No Nan. Shona had wanted to sit down with her, ask her what it was all about, what was going on, what should she do? But now, nothing. Just not there.

  She pushed her way into the caff and tried to catch Zeynep’s attention. For the moment, Zeynep was busy with a customer who was saying that he asked for tea without milk and didn’t want to drink this stuff and then as Zeynep came back to the counter, she saw Shona.

  Shona didn’t have to ask her.

  “This morning, love,” Zeynep said. “The ambulance came. She’s in the Fenster.” She put her hand on Shona’s arm and shook her head.

  Shona knew what this all added up to, and ahead of her, in her mind, she could see a huge, dangerous space: a nothingness where there was no Nan.

  Somehow she had to get to the Fenster and see Nan. Someone had to help her.

  CLASS X10 READING COMPREHENSION

  We’ll skip ahead, Class X10, to further in the book for the next reading. Oliver at this point has been stolen away by Nancy and the man, whose name was Bill Sikes. He was a brutal criminal, a real tough character, and the pair returned Oliver to Fagin’s base. There he was kept prisoner, so he couldn’t say anything to the police about Fagin and his crew. It wasn’t long before Fagin and Sikes started planning a house robbery in the countryside, with another criminal named Toby Crackit. But they needed someone small, who could fit through a window.

  They needed Oliver, of course.

  They had cleared the town, as the church bell struck two.

  Quickening their pace, they turned up a road upon the left hand. After walking about a quarter of a mile, they stopped before a detached house surrounded by a wall: to the top of which, Toby Crackit, scarcely pausing to take breath, climbed in a twinkling.

  “The boy next,” said Toby. “Hoist him up; I’ll catch hold of him.”

  Before Oliver had time to look round, Sikes had caught him under the arms; and in three or four seconds he and Toby were lying on the grass on the other side. Sikes followed directly. And they stole cautiously towards the house.

  And now, for the first time, Oliver, well-nigh mad with grief and terror, saw that housebreaking and robbery, if not murder, were the reason for the expedition. He clasped his hands together, and involuntarily uttered a subdued exclamation of horror. A mist came before his eyes; the cold sweat stood upon his ashy face; his limbs failed him; and he sank upon his knees.

  “Get up!” murmured Sikes, trembling with rage, and drawing the pistol from his pocket; “Get up, or I’ll strew your brains upon the grass.”

  “Oh! for God’s sake let me go!” cried Oliver. “Let me run away and die in the fields. I will never come near London; never, never! Oh! pray have mercy on me, and do not make me steal. For the love of all the bright angels that rest in Heaven, have mercy upon me!”

  The man to whom this appeal was made swore a dreadful oath, and had cocked the pistol, when Toby, striking it from his grasp, placed his hand upon the boy’s mouth, and dragged him to the house.

  “Hush!” cried the man; “Say another word, and I’ll do your business myself with a crack on the head. That makes no noise, and is quite as certain. Here, Bill, wrench the shutter open. He’s game enough now, I’ll engage. I’ve seen older hands of his age took the same way, for a minute or two, on a cold night.”

  Sikes, cursing Fagin for sending Oliver on such an errand, plied the crowbar vigorously, but with little noise. After some delay, and some assistance from Toby, the shutter to which he had referred, swung open on its hinges.

  It was a little lattice window, about five feet and a half above the ground, at the back of the house: which belonged to a scullery at the end of the passage. The opening was so small that the residents had probably not thought it worthwhile to cover it more securely; but it was large enough to admit a boy of Oliver’s size, nevertheless.

  “Now listen, you young limb,” whispered Sikes, drawing a dark lantern from his pocket and throwing the glare full on Oliver’s face, “I’m a going to put you through there. Take this light; go softly up the steps straight afore you, and along the little hall, to the street door; unf
asten it, and let us in.”

  “There’s a bolt at the top you won’t be able to reach,” interposed Toby. “Stand upon one of the hall chairs. There are three there.”

  “Keep quiet, can’t you?” replied Sikes, with a threatening look. “The room door is open, is it?”

  “Wide,” replied Toby, after peeping in to satisfy himself. “The game of that is, that they always leave it open with a catch, so that the dog, who’s got a bed in here, may walk up and down the passage when he feels wakeful. Ha! Ha! Barney ’ticed him away tonight. So neat!”

  Although Mr Crackit spoke in a scarcely audible whisper, and laughed without noise, Sikes imperiously commanded him to be silent, and to get to work. Toby complied, by first producing his lantern, and placing it on the ground; then by planting himself firmly with his head against the wall beneath the window, and his hands upon his knees, so as to make a step of his back.

  This was no sooner done, than Sikes, mounting upon him, put Oliver gently through the window with his feet first; and, without leaving hold of his collar, planted him safely on the floor inside.

  “Take this lantern,” said Sikes, looking into the room. “You see the stairs afore you?”

  Oliver, more dead than alive, gasped out, “Yes.”

  Sikes, pointing to the street door with the pistol barrel, briefly advised him to take notice that he was within shot all the way; and that if he faltered, he would fall dead that instant.

  “It’s done in a minute,” said Sikes, in the same low whisper. “Directly I leave go of you, do your work. Hark!”

  “What’s that?” whispered the other man.

  They listened intently.

  “Nothing,” said Sikes, releasing his hold of Oliver. “Now!”

  In the short time he had had to collect his senses, the boy had firmly resolved that, whether he died in the attempt or not, he would make one effort to dart upstairs from the hall, and alarm the family. Filled with this idea, he advanced at once, but stealthily.