The Legacy: Trouble Comes Disguised As Family (Unspoken Book 2) by T. Belshaw (the best books to read .txt) 📗

‘No, Calvin. Just stay away. Please.’

Calvin held up both hands, palms towards her. ‘Okay, okay, if you want to do things your own way.’

‘I always did want to, Calvin, but you thought you knew better. Look where that got you.’

Calvin dropped his hands. ‘Speaking of where things got me. Jess, I really do need your help. I’m not asking for forgiveness, not that I think I need forgiving for too much, but I’m really going to struggle to get the down payment on the flat in time for January. Do you think you could give me a sub. Just to pay the deposit. I’ve got regular, private tutoring work coming in now, and I think I’ve landed a job looking after the Comp school’s I.T. equipment next term. I just need a bit of help to see me through Christmas.’

‘No, Calvin. You’ve had all the favours you’re ever going to get from me. The last one, was not reporting you to the police after you attacked Sam.’

‘Attack, fending off, the truth is somewhere in between. You know that.’ He looked at her pleadingly. ‘Come on, Jess. I know you. You’re not a hard-hearted person. You wouldn’t see me on the streets, would you?’ He cocked his head to one side like an inquisitive puppy. ‘Could you spare a bit of charity, it’s almost the season for it.’

‘Ask your mother, Calvin. She’s got plenty.’ Jess turned away and took a few steps before turning back. ‘One last thing. Did you put any tracking software on my laptop when we were living in the flat?’

Calvin went a deep shade of red.

‘Spyware… Why would I? Honestly, Jess. I would never do that.’

‘Thanks for being so honest, Calvin. Just so you know though. I’m having the laptop cleaned up. So, the tracker won’t be there for much longer and, if I find out you’ve been spying on me via my computer, you’ll wish you’d never met me.’

Jess turned and stormed away, leaving Calvin standing, open mouthed, by the lychgate, his face, deathly pale.

Chapter 25

On Tuesday morning, Jess heard the sound of the council refuge lorry in the lane. Thirty seconds later, one of the bin men hammered a rat-a-tat on the door knocker.

‘Morning, love, do the scarecrows go with us or do you want to keep them?’

‘Take them away, please. They were someone’s idea of a joke.’

‘Ah, I wondered if your kids had made them. My little girl draws faces like that. She’s six.’

‘No, it was an adult, believe it or not. Art isn’t his niche subject. Thanks for taking them.’ Jess stepped back and began to close the door.

‘They should go in the brown bin, really. But I won’t tell if you don’t.’

The man smiled, then looked over to his colleagues who were loading the mattress onto the lorry.

Jess looked quizzically at the orange-clad man, wondering why he was still on her doorstep.

‘Is there a problem?’ she asked.

‘To be honest, there is. You only paid for the removal of four items. There are six items in your yard.’

‘Yes, but two of the items are made of straw, and weren’t there when I rang to book the collection.’ She looked towards the lane where two other council workers were loading the old spring base of the bed, onto the lorry. ‘Don’t you have enough room for them on the truck?’ She smiled at her little joke.

‘You pay per item, and there are extra items.’ The man stood his ground under Jess’s withering look.

‘Look, I’ll remember you at Christmas, but I really don’t expect to pay to remove what is, in essence, two, small piles of straw.’

The man looked disappointed and, turning away, he shook his head and walked back to the lorry with his thumbs pointed downwards. The three men climbed into the lorry and with a blaring siren, reversed onto the asphalt before pulling onto the lane, leaving the two miniature scarecrows propped up against the side of Jess’s car.

Jess clicked the door shut and sighing a deep sigh, walked through to the kitchen where she opened Alice’s memoir and turned to a clean page in her notebook.

November 1939

During September, Operation Pied Piper was put into action and over one and a half million children, and some mothers, were evacuated from London to save them from the enemy bombing that the government thought was about to begin.

Being so close to Gillingham, which evacuated many of its own children, our little town wasn’t chosen as a major centre for the evacuees, but following an administrative cock up at the same time, the Gillingham evacuees were being transported to small towns and villages around Sandwich and Dover. A train from London, loaded with over a hundred children, arrived at our railway station. Amazingly, instead of just turning the train around and sending it to where it should have been heading, the authorities made a decision to keep the kids in our area and an appeal was sent out by the council leader, begging locals to ‘do their bit’ by taking them in for a short time while their futures were sorted out.

The kids were marched up the road to the church hall where they were made to sit on the floor with their bag of sandwiches, gas mask boxes and tiny suitcases. Hanging around their necks were name tag labels which hopefully matched up with the cases sitting at their feet.

To their credit, a lot of local residents took a stroll up to the church hall to select a child they thought they would be able live with, though some of them, thinking of the ten shillings a week they would be paid for looking after the children, had more mercenary instincts.

Living out in the sticks, I didn’t get to hear about the call to arms until after all the children had been found places. I would have taken at least one, possibly two as I had a