A Place of Hiding

Paul knew the dog was only trying to protect him. He also knew that anyone with a grain of common sense would have understood that. But the world was not a place where one could depend upon people having common sense, was it? This fact made them dangerous because it made them afraid and sly.

So he had to get away from them. Because she hadn’t come to see what the ruckus was all about, Paul knew that Miss Ruth couldn’t possibly be home. He would have to return when it was safe to do so. But he couldn’t leave the remains of this disastrous encounter with the other Brouards behind him. That, of all things, would not be right. He went back to the kitchen and paused in the doorway. He saw that despite the Viking woman’s words, she and Adrian were already in the process of wiping up the floor and cleaning off the top of the cooker. The air in the room still hung with the odour of scalded milk, however.

“. . . an end to this nonsense,” Adrian’s mother was saying. “I’ll have him sorted out straightaway and make no mistake about it. If he thinks he can just walk in here without a by-your-leave...as if he owns the place...as if he’s not what he patently is, which is a useless little piece of common—”

“Mother.” Adrian, Paul saw, had spied him by the door and with that single word, so did Viking Woman. She’d been wiping off the cook top but now she was standing with the dishcloth in her hand and she balled it up with her large, ringed fingers. She gave him such a scrutiny from head to toe with such a look of disgust on her face that Paul felt a shiver come over him and knew he had to be gone at once. But he wasn’t about to leave without the rucksack and the message it contained about the plan and the dream.

“You may inform your parents that we’re hiring a solicitor about this business of the will,” Viking Woman told him. “If your imagination has led you to believe you’re walking off with one penny of Adrian’s money, you’re very much mistaken. I intend to battle you in every court I can find, and by the time I’m finished, whatever money you schemed to have off Adrian’s father will be gone. Do you understand? You will not win. Now, get out of here. I don’t want to see your face again. If I do, I’ll have the police after you. And that bloody mongrel of yours I’ll have put down.”

Paul didn’t move. He wouldn’t leave without his rucksack, but he wasn’t sure how to get to it. It lay where he’d kicked it, by the leg of the table at the centre of the room. But between him and it stood both the Brouards. And nearness to them spelled certain danger to himself.

“Did you hear me?” Viking Woman demanded. “I said get out. You’ve no friends here despite what you apparently think. You are not welcome in this house.”

Paul saw that one way he could get to the rucksack was to scramble beneath the table for it, so that was what he did. Before Adrian’s mother finished what she was saying, he was on his hands and knees and scuttling across the floor like a crab.

“Where’s he going?” she demanded. “What’s he doing now?”

Adrian seemed to realise Paul’s intention. He snatched the rucksack at the same moment Paul’s own fingers closed about it.

“My God, the little beast’s stolen something!” Viking Woman cried.

“This is the limit. Stop him, Adrian.”

Adrian attempted to do so. But all the images that the word stolen planted within Paul’s brain—the rucksack gone through, the discovery, the questions, the police, a cell, the worry, the shame—gave him a strength he otherwise would not have possessed. He yanked so hard that he pulled Adrian Brouard off balance. The man crashed forward into the table, fell to his knees, and smacked his chin against the wood. His mother cried out, and that gave Paul the opening he needed. He jerked the rucksack away and leaped to his feet.