No Friend of Mine by Ann Turnbull

should know, being responsible for it; but you’ll be hearing from him, never fear.”
    “I think the boy has learnt his lesson,” said George Wilding mildly. “I’m prepared to overlook this incident on the understanding that he breaks off the association with my son.”
    “Overlook it!” retorted Mary. “You needn’t think—”
    “Mary,” said Mum. “That’s enough. Let’s get Lennie home. He needs his tea.”
    All the way home, Mum, Mary and Phyl chattered and exclaimed over Lennie’s head.
    “We told the bugger! And that stuck-up Mrs Martin. I wiped the floor with her.”
    Phyl laughed. “I think he thought you’d just stand there, Mum, and take it, while he gave you a lecture on child-rearing.”
    “I love the way he says, ‘I don’t want my wife involved.’”
    “And the dust! Oh, Mary, your clayey shoes all over that carpet! It was a joy to see!”
    Lennie couldn’t share in their exuberance. He was thinking about Ralph. He had believed that Ralph was his friend, but Ralph had betrayed him.
    “You can’t trust the nobs. They’re no good. They’re all the same.”
    That was Mary’s verdict. And Dad’s. “Best if people keep to their own sort,” he said.
    Lennie sat silent, closed in on his misery, while they talked around him. At least they were all on his side; none of them had criticized him, except for having chosen the wrong person for a friend – and he didn’t need telling that.
    “What a thing to do, though,” said Phyl, who was washing up while Mum dried. “To drop your friend in it to save yourself.”
    “He was no friend of yours, Lennie,” said Mary.
    Doreen was sitting on the hearthrug, listening.
    “I
liked
Ralph,” she said.
    Lennie felt a rush of affection for her.
    Yes, he thought, so did I.
    It was all very well Dad and Mary going on about the bosses and keeping to your own kind; he’d liked Ralph, and Ralph had liked him – surely he had? It wasn’t phoney, like Mary said. So why had Ralph caved in and let Lennie take the blame? I wouldn’t have done it to him, Lennie thought.
    Mum said to Doreen, “Time you were in bed, my girl.”
    “Oh, Mum!”
    “This is none of your business.”
    “But it’s interesting.”
    “It’s all right, Doreen,” said Lennie. “I’m going too.”
    “I’ll help you get your bed out, love,” said Mum.
    “No. I can do it.”
    It was a relief to go into the front room and shut the door on the family’s concern for him.
    He made up the bed and got into it, but sleep would not come. Over and over again his mind replayed the events of the afternoon. Over and over again he heard Ralph say, “No. I never gave them to him.” It was dawn before he fell asleep, and yet he woke at his usual time to the sound of his mother riddling the fire in the kitchen.
    He got up, packed the bed away, and opened the curtains, letting in a grey cold light. He looked at his reflection in the mirror and was gratified by the pale face and dark-shadowed eyes he saw there. If he’d been wronged, he thought, he might as well look the part.
    He pulled out from behind the settee the stack of comics Ralph had given him:
Dandy, Beano, Hotspur
. From their paper bag he took the complete set of bird cards and the letters Ralph had written him from school. He piled all the things in the middle of the floor.
    Mum came in.
    “Can I borrow a shopping bag?” Lennie asked.
    “Why? What are you up to?”
    “Nothing.”
    “That’s no answer. I’m taking Doreen to chapel soon. Why don’t you come?”
    Lennie looked at her.
    She sighed, and brought a hessian shopping bag. Lennie began putting the pile of things into it, aware of her anxious gaze.
    He was relieved when she went upstairs to rouse Doreen. Picking up the bag, he left the house, heading for Love Lane.
    The cottage was deserted, as he’d known it must be. Ralph was probably under lock and key.
    He tore pages from a comic, screwed them up in the fireplace, and put a match to them. They lit