The Consequences of Fear Jacqueline Winspear (i can read book club .txt) 📖

to look the other way as he passed the body of a man he’d seen murdered while bombs fell across London, probably killing a few hundred more when they landed. Or a few thousand.

It took another ten minutes to find the address, a row of houses still standing in a street that had otherwise been razedto the ground. He looked up at the Victorian terrace house and reached for the door knocker—but the door opened without himeven touching the brass ring. A man holding an oil lamp put his hand on Freddie’s shoulder and pulled him in.

“I don’t want the air raid patrol round here because someone’s seen a light coming from my house,” said the man.

Freddie looked up and saw a scar move. No. Two scars moved, one on each side of his face, and there was another little oneunder his eye too, or was that the way the lamp flickered, making a bit of skin seem extra white? Freddie didn’t like scars—theyfrightened him. But were they scars, or was it just the man’s face? It didn’t matter, because right now this bloke scaredhim something rotten, even though he was smiling. Freddie was as frightened as he had been in that doorway, because he couldhave sworn on his grandmother’s grave that this was the very same man he’d just seen murder another bloke. He was standingright there, in front of him—a killer.

“You’re a brave boy, running through all that. Which way did you come?”

Freddie might have wanted to vomit again, but he was no fool and took care not to reveal his route. “Oh, I took a short cutI know after the bridge—down Chamois Street and then round the back of Watsons’ factory.”

“I don’t know that way.”

Freddie shrugged, looking down at his feet because he didn’t want to see the man’s face again, not if he could help it. “Any message to go back, sir?”

“Just a minute. You can wait in there by the fire.” The man pushed open the door to the parlor, where a small fire was beginningto catch. “Looks like you could do with drying out. Nasty out there when those bombers come in. I’d shit myself every night,if I were you.”

Freddie entered the room and held his hands out to the flames. If he moved closer the growing heat might finish the dryingon his trousers. Funny that, having a fire—it’s not as if it was chilly in the house. Mind you, he never felt the cold much,even in winter. But there were papers in the grate, scorched, as if the man had been burning documents. Freddie knew thatwasn’t unusual—he’d often seen people do that with a message he’d just delivered. They’d take a match to the paper, or openthe door to a stove and push it in with a poker. But there was this room, and it was strange too, he thought. His family didn’thave much, but his dad had an old armchair, and there was a straight-backed wooden chair for his mum, while he and Iris hadorange crates to sit on. And there was a bit of scraggy carpet on the floor that his dad told him had “fallen off the backof a lorry.” This room was almost empty. No pictures, no mirror, no plant in the window—his nan always had a plant in thewindow to stop the neighbors nosing in. Well, she did until she and Grandad were killed when the house was bombed out.

The door opened and the man nodded toward the passage.

“No return message. You can go. Get on home, boy, to your people.” Freddie rushed past, ready to scamper out of the house.“Hey, not so fast, Jesse Owens. Take this.” The man pressed a half-crown into his hand, the long lines on his face appearingto have a life of their own as he smiled and patted him on the head.

Freddie ran down the road, stopping once to slip the half-crown into his sock. If he positioned it right, it would sit nicely on top of the soft bit where there was a hole in his shoe. It would even him up a bit. This coin was one he was keeping. He’d earned it for Mum and Iris tonight, and it wouldn’t be piddled up the wall outside the Duke of Northumberland pub when his father turned out in his cups.

As Freddie ran, doubt began to creep in. The man with the scars on his face had been very generous. Almost kind. Could hehave imagined it all? Could he have been wrong about witnessing a murder—might he have been mistaken, and the second man justsort of fell? His mum would tell him off for reading too many comics if he told her about it; she’d tell him he had a veryactive imagination. His mum was a clever one and said things like that. But even though she used long words and read librarybooks in the evening when his dad was down the pub, she never minded him spending a few pennies to go to the pictures of aSaturday morning, if he wasn’t running. She said he deserved a little dose of fun. Last week his dad had come home drunk andfound her hiding a book behind the clock on the mantelpiece as he walked in the door. He had taken that book down and shovedit in the stove. Freddie had seen the flames leap up as he stabbed it in with a poker, then he’d pulled out that poker andgone for his mum with it. When Freddie leaped up to get between them, the poker landed across the back of his head. No onehad any fun when his dad was around.

Next day at school he’d told the teacher his hair was bloody on account of tripping backwards on a run. His teacher gave him a funny look, but he still won the sweet for sprinting that day when the teacher took the boys out for PT. Not that there were many of them to beat, because a lot of his mates