Long Lankin by Lindsey Barraclough

hands. They’re hard like leather, like the soles of your shoes, most probably because she does loads of it — whacking.”
    “Must have hurt her at first, though, when she first started.”
    “She probably did it for a penance at the beginning,” Pete went on. “Then God made her hands hard in a miracle, so she could stop us being so wicked, like if we talk at dinners.”
    “They’re the Sisters of Divine Mercy,” I told Cora.
    At last she lifted her head.
    “There’s this teacher at my school — Mr. Diamond,” she said. “The boys say if you’re naughty and he catches you, he’ll hit you with a slipper with nails sticking out of it.”
    “Blimey! Do you know anybody he’s done it to?”
    “No — nobody I know.”
    It was sweltering. Pete pulled out his handkerchief, knotted the corners, and stuck it on his head like Grandpa used to do, except Grandpa’s hadn’t usually been blown in over and over again then left in his pocket for weeks till the lumps of snot had gone green and hard.
    Cora put her head down again. She was walking oddly — I suppose because of her banging her leg against the table and falling on the floor. There was a big red patch on the side of her face and some small half-moon nail marks on her arm. Mimi kept tugging on her skirt and trying to get her to talk to her.
    As we got nearly to the top of the hill, we pointed out the old pillbox, a concrete bunker from the war, behind the trees on the right, but Cora didn’t seem that bothered. Then, as we passed Glebe Woods on the other side of the road, round the back of the Treasures’, I tried to cheer her up by showing her the bit of broken fence where you can get through. As long as you’re careful to pull it back behind you, from the road nobody need ever know you were in there.
    “There’s a ruined castle in the woods,” said Pete.
    “Oh, yeah,” said Cora, as if it was a fib. It wasn’t a fib, actually. There were heaps of old stones and half-buried bricks all covered in trees and bushes and moss. It was really fun, climbing over them and exploring. Once, Mr. Crawford, the Treasures’ gardener, spotted us from the garden and chased us out, shouting and swearing. We don’t go in there that often, because we’d get into big trouble with Mum if we were caught, but if we hear the mower on the front lawn, we know he’s round the other side of the house, so we creep through the fence and jump around on the castle until the engine stops, then run away quick.
    Just after Glebe Woods, there’s a stream that runs under the road and behind the pillbox on the other side. If it’s clear, you can drop bits of twig on one side of the road and see if they come out on the other, but more often than not it’s choked with grass.
    We carried on up the lane and crossed over the main Daneflete road opposite the Thin Man.
    To get to Bryers Guerdon, you walk down the Daneflete road a bit, then cross over to go down Ottery Lane, which leads into the village. It’s like going through a green tunnel, the top end of the lane, because the trees lean over towards each other and their highest branches meet up in the middle.
    There’s a deep ditch running along the right-hand side of the road. I pushed Pete in it once when he was little, and felt awful afterwards because Mum had to throw his coat away. He swallowed some of the water, and for days afterwards, I thought he was going to die of the fever.
    When you get to the place where the houses start, there are bridges over this ditch. Each house has its own bridge.
    The first house on the left is Mr. Granville’s shop. He’s the butcher, and he’s got a big moustache that goes up at the sides in two points. When I asked Mum how it stays up, she said he puts wax on it. A bit farther down on the other side, there’s Mrs. Wickerby at the post office, then, over the road from her, there are two grocers together. Mrs. Aylott’s is the one we go to — the other one never seems to have much in