Hide & Seek - James Patterson [9]
“Damn it,” Dr. Engles said, cuffing him with his free hand. “You little shit! You little monster.”
Will opened his mouth. His front teeth were red. “I don't want to go to England,” he howled. “Can't we stay here?”
Please, Daddy.
Please, Mommy.
Please, somebody help me.
I didn't mean to kill my daddy. I didn't mean to do it.
Daddy, please stop looking at me like that. Please, Daddy.
CHAPTER 6
WILL WOULD NEVER forget his first few hours in England. He and his brother might as well have traveled to the moon.
Aunt Eleanor met them at the landing gate. She was a fat, fussy, powder-white-faced woman who was, Will guessed, more scared of him than he was of her. He disliked her instantly. She can't hurt me, he decided. No one will ever hurt me again, but especially not her.
She explained that Aunt Vannie had stayed home to cook a special dinner for the boys. It'll taste like crud, Will decided. England is the worst place ever.
On the way from Heathrow Airport, Aunt Eleanor never stopped talking, and the boys had little chance to observe their surroundings. Whenever they looked away from her, she would jab a finger and remind them to pay attention. Will seriously thought of biting the finger off.
“A great many people who work in London live outside the centre. Close to an Underground stop. We live in Fulham, for example, and we have ever since your mother moved out to make her fortune in America. And I suppose she did, didn't she, marrying your father? She'll inherit all his money, you know, with nothing for you except as she chooses to give it, and goodness knows nothing for us, though we never expected anything from her. Not her.”
No. Never expect anything from my mother. Will knew Aunt Eleanor taught history in primary school, and that explained why she droned on, but her smell was of sweat, and who was she to be talking about his mother? He could tell Palmer didn't like her either. He was pretending to be asleep, the little faker.
At last the cab pulled up in front of a three-story house, red brick with tiny windows and six steps leading up to the front door.
“Here we are,” announced Aunt Eleanor cheerfully, but Will thought about the trees and space and sunshine in San Diego and his chest grew tight.
There were similar houses crowding in on each other on both sides of the street, and the one tree he could see was bent and beaten by the rain, and it had no leaves. Palmer took one suitcase, Aunt Eleanor another, and Will carried his own two up the steps, straining with the effort.
Before they reached it, the front door was flung open, and a woman appeared wearing tight black trousers and a black turtlenecked sweater.
Will gave a little, muffled cry. He felt his heart pound and his face suddenly grow hot.
The woman was young, with ash-brown hair falling halfway down her back. Her eyes were blue and her skin was pale. It's my mother, he thought.
Only of course, she wasn't.
She was his Aunt Vannie, his mother's younger sister, but she reminded him achingly of the woman who once, long ago, it seemed, held him, cuddled him, told him she loved him, and then went away. And he was filled with a curious mixture of dread and delight. He wanted at once to fling himself into her arms, and to run away screaming down the street.
“Take off your shoes before you come in,” Vannie said. “We don't want dirt trodden all over the house, do we?”
The house. England. His new home. His new life. His very own horror story. It was just beginning.
CHAPTER 7
THE LEGEND BEGAN early, and it never really varied.
Will is an extremely intelligent and very clever boy, but he seems to be an incorrigible master of the Charming, Audacious, Very Big Lie! So wrote the headmaster of the Fulham Road primary school in the spring of 1970.
If he worked harder, his marks would be much improved, but he seems interested only in sports, where he excels, and in picking fights with his classmates, where he is the acknowledged champion. I personally