Caught in the Web Emmy Ellis (best ereader for textbooks txt) 📖

told off.” Lies were good if they were for covering up what she did. What The Man did. “I always do as I’m told, me.”

“Yes, you do. So why were you crying?”

“I had a bad dream.” And it was like a bad dream, living there, so that hadn’t been a lie this time.

“Oh dear. Do you want to tell me about it?”

He shivered. “No, thank you.”

Gran handed him a sandwich. It was already lunchtime, and that was sad. She’d picked him up from school yesterday and brought him back to her house. He’d been tired from his week in class and the trauma of home in the mornings and evenings, but he had the whole weekend, the coming week, and the following weekend of freedom to look forward to with Gran, and now some of it was gone. Her and The Man had gone away on holiday. She had married The Man while he’d been at school yesterday, and the holiday was called a honeymoon.

He stared at his sandwich. The bread would be soft—Gran always had soft bread—and the ham was the sort that was cut off the bone, bought from the butcher’s shop. Gran used butter, too, not the cheap margarine that sat in a tub at home—the tub just for him as she wouldn’t eat that ‘crap’, she preferred the more expensive stuff, and if he dared touch it, The Man would soon be told all about it.

“Thank you.” He smiled up at Gran.

She gazed down at him, her eyes wet, then sniffed and went to the fridge, where she poured him a glass of fizzy pop. He didn’t know what to say—she had told him he couldn’t have it because it made children hyper, and hyper wasn’t good.

Gran placed it down beside his plate, and the scent of the cola wafted up his nose. His mouth watered. It smelled so tempting.

“I’m not allowed that,” he said.

“I know, but I won’t tell if you won’t.”

Worry gnawed at his stomach. “I’m not allowed to lie to Mum.” He hated having to say that word, mum, but he’d had no choice. If Gran knew he thought of her as her or she, she’d ask more questions.

“But it isn’t lying if you just don’t say anything, is it?” She rested a hand on his shoulder.

Did every adult have signals? She put her hand on his shoulder if other people were around, and it usually meant he had to keep his mouth shut. Should he not speak now? He wasn’t sure what to do. This was all so confusing.

“What do you think?” Gran asked.

Relieved his dilemma had been solved because Gran had asked a direct question and would expect an answer, he said, “What if she asks what I had to eat and drink here? She does sometimes.”

“You could forget you had the pop?” She stroked his hair away from his eyes.

He frowned. Gran was encouraging him to lie, and he didn’t understand, because she’d always told him to tell the truth. Why was it different this time?

“Or I could tell your mum that you’d said you weren’t allowed, but I’d said that when you’re on holiday, you get to eat and drink all the things you don’t usually eat and drink. And you’re on holiday here, so do you think that answer would be okay?”

Would it?

“I think so. Maybe,” he said.

“That’s settled then. You can eat and drink whatever I give you, but only if you like it. I wouldn’t expect you to eat anything you hated. It wouldn’t be very nice to do that. People who force others to eat or drink things they hate aren’t very nice people.”

Gran was so different to her.

She gave him things he hated on purpose.

“Does anyone make you eat or drink things you don’t like?” Gran asked.

“No,” he said. “I like everything.”

“I see. It’s just that I thought… Never mind.”

“I love you, Gran.”

“Oh.” She lifted a hand to her mouth, slapped it across her lips, and her eyes went wide. They watered. “Oh. Well. That’s lovely, that is. I love you, too, and I wish I could have you living with me all the time, I really do.”

“Why would you want me living here?” Why, when he was an ugly little fucker who should never have been born? Why, when he was a pain in the arse and was nothing but trouble?

“Because…because I get lonely, and you’re such good company.”

More confusion. Gran said things that didn’t make sense. How could he be good company? She didn’t want him to be with her at all. She only suffered with him because she had to. The teachers said nice things to him, too, but she had told him they were paid to say that ‘shit’ and had to be nice to children.

“Mum wouldn’t let me,” he said.

“I’m not so sure about that now,” Gran muttered and walked off to the sink. She plunged her hands into the bubbly water and washed a dish.

He ate his sandwich, desperate to drink the pop but not daring to. It was too much, keeping the pop-drinking to himself, wasn’t it? A responsibility he didn’t think he could handle. Or the resulting slaps if she found out he’d had some, no matter that Gran would smooth the way with her food-and-drink-on-holiday idea.

So he settled for sniffing the cola instead. He could sort of taste it by doing that.

And it was good.

He hadn’t meant to drop off. His heartrate accelerated. Had he been asleep for long? Had he ruined everything by napping? He scrabbled up from the sofa where he’d given himself permission for a short rest before he went through the rest of the day’s itinerary. An automaton, he walked to the clock on the wall above the fireplace