has got that look again. ‘Have you seriously never been to school?’ he asks.
Kate and I don’t answer him. He knows what we’d reply.
‘It’s a place you have to go to learn things.’
‘Then school is here,’ I tell him. ‘We learn everything we need.’
‘I don’t know whether to feel jealous or sorry for you,’ Ellis says. I can tell by his eyes that he’s not being cruel.
‘I know I’m happy for you that you’ve come to Seed,’ I say, summoning a smile for him.
We’re silent again. We watch Ellis tying the laces on his shoes.
‘So why are you here, then?’ I finally ask.
‘I told you. That Smith guy makes my mum happy.’
‘What do you mean?’ Kate asks.
Ellis clears his throat. ‘She says it all makes sense, now she’s met him again. That this is what will make her better.’
‘Better from what?’
‘She’s been in a bad way.’ He’s looking at the ground, scratching the dry mud with his fingers. ‘Smith said he’d help her.’
‘He will,’ I tell him. ‘We will.’
‘What was wrong with her?’ Kate asks.
I think that Ellis is uncomfortable. He picks up a piece of grass, rolls it tight between his fingers. ‘She’s been really down, that’s all.’
‘She’ll be happy here.’ I want to touch Ellis’s arm, to reassure him.
‘But why was she in a bad way?’ Kate won’t leave him alone. ‘Is that what happens on the Outside?’
‘It does to people who’ve got a dad like mine.’ Ellis seems to say it to himself.
‘Your dad?’
Ellis stands up, brushing leaves from his jeans. ‘Aren’t I meant to be in the work barn?’
I think Kate has finished her questions because she gets up, sandals in her hands. As she makes her way out of the woods, we follow.
I watched the red car as it drove up the long, winding drive. A woman got out, a girl, a young man. And I wanted to shout to them and break my window glass. Run! I wanted to scream. Run while you still can. But my dry mouth stayed clamped shut.
Flickers of memories reach me. They lick around my shadow and slip inside. My mother, my sister and me, driving up that drive. But before, before that. In a shop, where I had wanted the blue shoes with the rainbow strap. My weary mother and the stranger who came up.
‘Are you all right?’ he had asked her.
‘I’m fine,’ she answered. But she wasn’t, and somehow he knew.
‘You look unhappy,’ he said, and touched her arm. He was younger than my mother. His face was warm and handsome, but already I didn’t like him.
‘I’m fine,’ she said again.
‘Really?’ He persisted. ‘I can help you.’ And that was all it took.
The next day, we were driving up this same drive, with everything we owned in the back of our car.
The next day, everything changed.
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