Autumn Softly Fell by Dominic Luke Page A

argument—’
    ‘Don’t take it to heart. Grown-ups are always having disagreements . It never amounts to anything.’
    ‘But why does my uncle hate Papa so much?’
    ‘Well, let me see. I’m no expert of course. I’ve not had much to do with your uncle, being away at college and so on. Some people in these parts consider Mr Brannan an interloper. He’s
not one of us,
as Mrs Somersby would say. But Mother’s always got on with him, and she’s no fool, so….’
    ‘But the argument, what was it all about?’
    ‘Well, now, what can I say?’ He caressed the steering wheel absently, weighing his words. ‘I only know what Mother’s told me. She says it’s all to do with the elopement.’
    ‘What’s an … elope…?’
    ‘An
elopement
. It’s when two people run off together without telling anyone. That’s what your parents did, or so Mother understands . I suppose you can see that your uncle might be angry about it, when it was his own sister and it was your father she ran off with.’
    Dorothea looked at him in astonishment. ‘Why did they do it? Why did they run away?’
    ‘For love, I suppose. People do the rummest things for love – or so I’ve been told.’
    ‘And now I’ve run away and Uncle Albert will be angry with me, too!’
    ‘I’m sure he won’t be angry. He’ll be glad to have you safe and sound. You’re his niece when all’s said and done. Blood is thicker than water, as Mother always says.’
    Dorothea looked at Henry from under the hat with the ear flaps and wondered what it was like to have a mother. She thought of the sister who’d eloped, someone she had never known, a stranger. You couldn’t call a stranger
mother
. Mrs Browning was the nearest thing Dorothea had ever had to a mother but it had never crossed her mind – it wouldn’t have seemed
right
– to call Mrs Browning
mother
. Not that she’d ever felt she was missing out, not having a mother. She had her papa, and that was enough.
    Except that now he had gone.
    She shivered inside Henry’s dust coat. Grey clouds scudded across the vast sky. The cold wind gusted round her. The road stretched ahead, rutted, muddy, empty. Fields receded endlessly in every direction . It was a wild and cheerless place and Henry her only friend in all the world. He looked rather comical with his black eye and the matching smudge on his jaw. She smiled but the smile faltered and tears came into her eyes as she thought how Henry was afraid of the dark, how he’d cried as a boy for his father, how people called him cracked because of his enthusiasm for autocars. Why did she feel so miserable? Why did the world seem so topsy-turvy and beyond repair? And all she had to look forward to was returning to the big house, being locked in the nursery again. It filled her with a sense of despair. No one would ever come for her, no one cared, she would end up forgotten, discarded, like the old woman in the basement.
    ‘Hey now!’ Henry was watching her anxiously. ‘Why the long face? It can’t be as bad as all that, surely?’
    But it was. It was all hopeless. All the same, she swallowed her sobs and put on a brave face for Henry’s sake. And she thought of her papa, too.
Gee up, Dotty. Look on the bright side. There’s always a bright side, no matter how well hidden.
    Henry was the bright side – meeting Henry. Nora, too. Perhaps Roderick, if she ever saw him again. And what about the boy with the big dark eyes? Might he become a friend too? But she didn’t even know who he was! Perhaps Henry might know.
    ‘What boy’s this?’
    ‘He said his name was Richard.’
    ‘Ah. That boy.’
    ‘I didn’t know he was there until today.’
    ‘He often seems to get overlooked, one way or another.’
    ‘But who is he? Why is he in bed?’
    ‘He’s Richard Rycroft, your aunt’s nephew. A delicate creature, they say, but I don’t really know what is wrong with him. You’d have to ask Mother.’
    ‘He wanted me to stay but I couldn’t. I was