Read Online The Wild Boy and Queen Moon by K M Peyton - Free Book Online Page A

up and dressed in a cream suede coat over a red cashmere dress, with many gold trinkets and rings. A strong smell of scent came in with her.
    ‘Tony, darling! Whatever have you been up to?’
    Sandy was pleased to see that darling Tony looked as sick as any lad whose mother was an embarrassment to him. He scowled furiously and stood up, swaying slightly, to fend her off.
    ‘So kind of you to take him in!’ Mrs Speerwell smiled. Her large blue eyes were darting about to take everything in. ‘I really never know what he gets up to these days.’
    ‘He came off his horse. I think perhaps a doctor should check him to be on the safe side. Concussion is a tricky thing.’
    ‘Yes, of course. I’ll give Dr Menzies a ring as soon as we get home. So kind of you! Come along, Tony darling! You can walk to the car, can you?’
    ‘Diddums,’ Leo whispered.
    Neither of them mentioned the horse, Sandy thought sadly, as they departed.
    Grandpa came in and said, ‘What’s the pong in here?’
    ‘Mrs Sneerwell,’ said Leo.
    ‘Cor. Like a funeral!’ Grandpa loved funerals. They gave him a superior feeling at outdoing all these young fallers-by-the-wayside. ‘What’s for dinner then?’
    Leo went home for her own lunch on her bicycle. Julia came with her and, after the hill flattened out, Leo let her get up behind for the ride into the village. There Leo went left and Julia right, and they parted.
    Julia, walking the half-mile to her house, hugged herself with sheer joy at the glory of her day. It had been the best Saturday morning she could ever remember. It felt like six days rolled into one, and yet was only half over. Later she would go down and do Faithful for the night. She might even offer to do King of the Fireworks, too.
    Leo let herself in her back door and found her mother cutting up nuts to put in the salad. Her house was cold and silent. Her father was out birdwatching.
    ‘Leonie, you must do something about your hair!’ her mother moaned gently, as was her habit. ‘You look – you look – oh dear! Dirty.’
    ‘I am. I’m covered in horse manure. Smell me. Yum.’
    Leo held her hands up close under her mother’s nose. Then she picked some nuts out of the salad and ate them and her mother gave another moan. I really hate it here, Leo thought.

SANDY KNEW THERE was something wrong when they passed Gertie’s house on the way to school. She stopped and Ian said, ‘What’s up?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    It was raining, not hard but miserably, and the water ran gurgling down the ditch in front of Gertie’s house.
    ‘I’ll just give her a shout. Say hello.’
    ‘If she starts yakking we’ll miss the bus.’
    ‘You go on then.’
    Ian shrugged, scowled, and decided not to wait. Sandy cursed and went round the path to the back door. It was open. Sandy hesitated. Ian was right: the old girl had no idea about catching school buses and what it cost her, Sandy, to do this simple duty. ‘I am foul,’ Sandy thought, and went inside.
    ‘Gertie!’
    There was no answer.
    The cat hadn’t been fed and came running in after her, leaving wet paw marks over the already dirty kitchen lino. The house smelled of old woman. Sandy knew then that it was all wrong. She felt a cold hand claw at her stomach.
    ‘Gertie!’
    She would be dead in bed, Sandy thought. I can’t bear it! Perhaps she should go back for her mother. She was a baby. It was all in the imagination. And to think she had sometimes toyed with the idea of being a policewoman. At least if Gertie was dead, she would be newly dead, not three weeks old like some old women who died alone. They looked after her that well, at least. But Sandy felt sick, all the same.
    She went through the tiny living-room to the foot of the stairs and started up them her heart thumping. Her hands were clammy. Gertie slept in sometimes. She was imagining all this! No.
    ‘Gertie!’
    Gertie was in the bedroom, but not in bed. She lay just inside the door: her face was ghastly and