Outside

Chapter Twenty Six

The following day I took the bus up to Abi’s house, sure she would have some information from Samuel about what had happened to Connor. The story she gave me was so ludicrous, I could hardly believe she said it with a straight face.

‘Ellie, you won’t believe it – Connor’s a terrorist!’ She looked at me, waiting for my reaction, but I couldn’t speak. I didn’t understand why she would say such a thing. ‘Ellie, you’re in love with a murderer.’ She was clearly joking. ‘God, he could have killed us all.’

‘Are you joking?’

‘Do I sound like I’m joking? I’m really sorry, Ellie, but they’re going to interrogate him and then they’ll probably shoot him.’ She said this with no regard for my feelings. No words of comfort. She treated it like a piece of juicy gossip. Something to be savoured.

‘You spiteful, evil cow!’ I slapped her on her smug face as hard as I could. Her hands flew up to her cheek. I looked at her and shook my head. ‘Why would you say those things?’ I asked. ‘What could possibly make you be so horrible to me?’ Tears escaped with the shock of what was happening.

Still holding her cheek. Abigail raised her head and looked at me. ‘I’m telling the truth and you’ll regret doing that, Eleanor Russell.’

When I got home, I sat down with my family and we tried to piece together what had just happened. After several hours of tears and speculation, we all reached the same awful conclusion – Samuel and Abi had probably cooked up the accusation out of sheer spite.

‘In which case,’ said Oliver, ‘the army will realise they have no evidence against him and let him go.’

‘But what if Bletchley (I couldn’t now call him by his first name, Samuel, because it was too friendly and familiar. And I accompanied his surname with a retching sound, for good measure) has planted some evidence?’

‘He doesn’t have the brains. He wouldn’t have thought that far ahead,’ reassured David.

‘No, but Robbins does.’ (Ditto the retching sound for Abigail).

‘They wouldn’t go that far, darling,’ Dad said. ‘Look, give it a week and I bet we’ll hear Connor’s van puttering up the Lane and he’ll be telling us all about his adventures. He’s a sensible lad. He’ll realise what’s happened and he’ll plead his case well.’

My family did a good job of trying to calm me down. They had known Connor and I were fond of each other, but it wasn’t until the previous night that they’d seen the true extent of my feelings towards him. I think my cries and tears had shocked them almost as much as his arrest had. I was so relieved they hadn’t believed Abigail Robbins’ ridiculous accusation and my brother Tom was almost as upset as I was. Connor was one of his best friends.

But Connor’s van didn’t come puttering up the lane any time during that week, and I could get no news of his whereabouts. My father called Samuel’s dad for me, but he said they’d had no news from their son and didn’t expect to hear from him until Christmas.

I knew I would have to swallow my pride and my hatred and go and visit Abigail once more. But the thought made me feel sick and I was afraid I would physically attack her if she so much as looked at me with that smug expression… But then I thought of Connor and knew I would do whatever it took to get him back and if that meant sucking up to Abigail, then so be it.