Abomination by Robert Swindells Page A

knew Martha had a shout like that.
    ‘Ssssh!’ I hissed. ‘Everybody’s staring.’
    ‘I don’t care.’ She looked furious. ‘How could you think Mary’d let somebody live in a cage? Her own kid? She thinks they had it adopted when it was a few days old. They told her they would but they didn’t, because of the Righteous.’
    ‘The Righteous?’ I stared at her. ‘You’ve lost me, Martha. What have the Righteous got to do with it?’
    She sighed, shook her head. ‘You don’t understand, Scott. You’d have to be a member to understand. We can’t just . . . babies are for married people, see, and Mary wasn’t married, and if my parents had . . . look, we can’t stand here talking about this.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Come home with me and I’ll try to explain, but you mustn’t do anything.’ She gazed at me. ‘You mustn’t do anything, Scott, like – like try to take the kid or something. D’you promise?’
    ‘Well . . . yeah.’ I nodded. What the heck would I do with a kid anyway? Nothing was further from my mind. We set off up the hill.

42. Martha
     
    I told him, sitting on the bed in my room. Got out the postcards. Showed him Mary’s references to the kid in the ones she wrote to Mother and Father – those oblique references I hadn’t understood for the first three years or so. I left him reading through the cards while I went down to see to Abomination. When I got back he’d finished and was staring at the floor. ‘Well?’ I asked, with one eye on the time. All I needed now was for one of my parents to walk in and find him.
    He shook his head. ‘I don’t know how you’ve kept quiet all this time, Martha. It’s an awful thing your folks have done. Awful. Normal people just don’t do stuff like that.’ His voice was unsteady, his face dead white. ‘It explains the Pampers though. Can’t have nappies out on the line, can you? Dead giveaway that’d be.’
    I gazed at him. ‘I didn’t realize, Scott. You don’t, when you’re little. You think everybody’s home’s like yours. You assume other kids’ parents are like your own. I was eight when I realized other mothers buy their children’s clothes, they don’t sew them. Before that I didn’t understand why kids laughed at me. And I was nine before I worked out the truth about Mary. First I thought Abomination was Mary – that she’d changed in some horrible way overnight. Then for a long time I believed he must be my little brother, though I couldn’t work out why he had to be a secret. I suppose I was ten when it dawned on me he was Mary’s. I’d discovered you don’t have to be married to start a baby, you see. It all fell into place after that, but by then I was used to the situation. I mean it didn’t feel right, but it didn’t seem strange, as it must to you. I wasn’t shocked into action. It’s always seemed important to me to protect my parents. Guard their secret . . .’
    ‘Yes, but what about the kid ?’ He stood up. ‘Living like a chicken in a cage with a name like Abomination. Still in nappies at six. We can’t . . . just leave it, Martha. We can’t . We’ve got to tell somebody. Listen.’ He grabbed both my arms. ‘What about Mary? What d’you think she’d do if she knew?’
    I shook my head. ‘I don’t know, Scott, but she isn’t going to know because I don’t have her address.’
    ‘What if I knew of a way to contact her? Would you let me?’
    ‘I . . . I suppose so, as long as my parents didn’t find out, but how could you possibly . . .?’
    ‘The Internet.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘The Internet. You know what that is, don’t you? You’ve heard kids at school talking about it.’
    ‘Yes, sort of, but you need special stuff, don’t you? On your computer. The ones at school haven’t got a . . . whatsit.’
    ‘Modem. No, but mine at home has. I could post a message, hope she sees it.’
    ‘But she’d have to have a . . . a modem too, wouldn’t she? I can’t