A Heartbeat Away. Eleanor Jones

and it made my mom cry. I don’t know why, but she rubbed her eyes and they were wet, so she must have been crying.

      “I’m sorry,” my mother said, and her voice was a bit quivery, as well. “Everything seems to have gotten on top of me this morning. Lucy’s playing up and I’ve missed the bus for work.”

      I stared at my shoes and pulled the worst face I could, but the lady just patted me on my head.

      “Come on now, Lucy McTavish,” she said. “Be a good girl for your poor mother.”

      I looked up at her and lifted my chin as high as I could. “My dad has gotten a horse,” I told her, and she didn’t laugh.

      “It’s true,” I repeated defiantly. “My mom says all his money has gone on a horse, and she’s mad because he hasn’t got any left, but I’m glad, because I really like horses. And…” My voice sank to a wobbly whisper and I glared at my mother. “And now he won’t come home, and it’s her fault.”

      There was a funny silence then. I felt my mom’s hand get even tighter on mine. She gazed at the lady, and did so with such sad eyes that I felt bad inside.

      “It’ll be all right soon, though,” I told her, wanting everything to be okay again. “Because he’s gone away to try to get some more.”

      The silence deepened and the lady reached for my other hand.

      “Don’t you worry,” she said to my mother. “I’ll handle this. You get yourself off to work now.”

      “Are you sure?”

      My mom was all happy and her eyes were wet again. I wanted to shout at her to stay, but I didn’t dare, so I stared down at my red shoes once more and thought about my dad.

      “You be a good girl for Mrs. Brown,” she told me, and then she kissed me on the top of my head and walked away.

      The lady, Mrs. Brown, lifted me to sit on the wall, and then she lifted her boy to sit beside me. I hadn’t seen him until then because he must have been behind me.

      “Daniel,” she said in a very serious voice. “This is Lucy McTavish and she needs some help.”

      The boy turned to me and I liked his face. It reminded me of Timmy Brocklebank’s puppy—happy and kind, with warm brown eyes—so I smiled at him and he smiled back.

      “I don’t like Mollie Flynn,” I told him. “She pinches my arms and she steals my books so that Mrs. Meeks will tell me off.”

      Daniel Brown frowned and his eyes went dark and cross.

      “Well, I’ll tell her not to,” he said, running his hand through his curly blond hair so that it stuck right up on the top.

      “And I’ll tell Mrs. Meeks about it,” promised his mom.

      

      That was the first time I’d spoken to Daniel, the first of lots of times. He was my hero, always there for me, always quick to help me when I had a problem. After he spoke to Mollie Flynn, she didn’t nip me anymore and, sometimes, she even smiled at me when we met in the canteen.

      He lived in a rambling farmhouse, just down the lane from our gray-stone, terraced cottage. I used to go there sometimes on the school holidays when my mom was at work.

      His house was very old, with lots of corridors and windows that resembled a face if you stood right before the front door on the smooth green lawn. We weren’t allowed to play on Mr. Brown’s lawn, but around the back was a huge overgrown area with bushes and trees and a swing and a slide. Daniel and I spent hours there, tunneling dens and building tree houses that always fell down. Daniel was good at making things.

      The farm was called Homewood, and I thought that it was the best place in the whole world. I used to dream that one day we would all live there together, when my dad came home.

      

      It was on the day that I found my mom sitting on the bottom stair in the hallway, a letter in her hand, that my dreams began to fade. Her thin face was all crumpled and tears ran in tiny rivers down the lines at the sides of her mouth.

      She waved the letter at me, then threw it across the dark hall. It fluttered onto the floor and her head dropped forward into her hands.

      I watched the tears run through her fingers and drip onto the floor, making small pools on the worn carpet, and I knew that something very bad must have happened. Fear washed over me in great big waves and I clasped my arms around myself, moving from foot to foot, wondering if I should go get Mrs. Brown—she always knew what to do. Then suddenly my mom looked up at me and her eyes were all glassy and red.

      “Now see what your precious father has done,” she yelled, pointing at the letter.

      I just stood and stared at her, my mouth wide-open and a lump inside my chest. She picked the letter up and screwed the paper into a tiny ball, twisting and twisting and twisting her fingers.

      “They’re going to take our house away,” she shrieked. “And it’s all your stupid, useless father’s fault.”

      “Is he coming home, then?” I cried. “Will we see him?”

      “Lucy.”

      My mother stood very tall, and her face was so white that it shone in the murky light of the hallway.

      “I think it’s time you faced up to the fact that your father is never going to come back. He has deserted us, and now he’s lost our home.”

      I felt a tide of disappointment well up inside me and overflow into a flood of emotion that took over my small body, emotion just too great for a six-year-old to bear. So I threw myself on the floor, rolling and screaming and hurling abuse at my poor sad mother, who had all of a sudden gone so quiet. She looked down at me, arms crossed over her chest.

      “Well, you’d better get used to it,” she eventually said in a dull, flat voice. “I’ve had to.” Then her arms dropped to her sides, and she turned her back on me and started to leave. I felt a really bad pain deep inside my heart, and I sat up and stretched my hands out toward her.

      “Mom,” I called. “Mom.”

      She hesitated, and I scrambled to my feet, pleading with her not to go. She glanced at me with sad eyes.

      “Mom,” I whispered.

      The gloomy hallway felt as though it was closing in all around me. She held out her arms, and suddenly I was being squeezed so tightly that I couldn’t breathe and we were crying together.

      We sat like that for ages, my mom and me, on the bottom step in the murky hallway, until I had my good idea.

      “I know,” I said, feeling happy and sad at the same time. “My dad can sell his horse and then we’ll have some money.”

      My mom sucked in a great gasping breath, and she began to laugh louder than I’d ever heard her before, even when my dad was here and they used to be happy. She laughed so loudly that it started to frighten me because her eyes were wild. When her laughter turned to sobs again and her arms fell away from me, I went out of the front door and began to walk toward Homewood Farm. Daniel would know what to do.

      The farm seemed a long way down the lane. I stopped to watch a big fat bumblebee inside a purple flower, buzzing and buzzing so that the flower shook and wobbled. After the bee flew off, I picked the flower and tried to stick it into my hair, but it kept falling out, and in the end I just left it lying on the ground and carried on walking along the hot, dusty lane.

      The farm was a lot farther than I had thought it would be, and after a while I sat on the grass beside a wooden gate because my legs felt very tired. I wasn’t frightened, though—at least, only for my mom. And then I remembered the wild scary look in her tired eyes—the look that had made her appear like someone else—and I clambered to my feet. I had to get Daniel and Mrs. Brown. My aching muscles brought fat tears to my eyes, but I forced my feet into a jog and set off again along