Secrets by Nick Sharratt Page A

right old daydream.’
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ I stammered and rushed off – in the wrong direction. I felt such a fool I kept on running. I looked round quickly as I turned the corner, just to make sure he wasn’t following me. He wasn’t the wicked man of my fantasy, just a kind grandad in a too-tight bomber jacket trying to stop me getting run over, but I felt I couldn’t be too careful.
    I couldn’t see him but I didn’t want to retrace my footsteps just in case he bobbed back again. I’d have to trail right into town and go the really long way home – unless of course I took a short cut through the Latimer Estate.
    I did a local history project last year and found out that the Latimer Estate
used
to be Latimer Woods, and all this woodland belonged to the big manor house, Parkfield. Only all the woods got chopped down and built on in Victorian times, and then in the sixties all the little Victorian back-to-backs got pulled down and they built this vast tower-block council estate. Parkfield Manor got pulled down too and they built all
our
houses. We don’t get called an estate, we’re a ‘luxury complex’.
    The Latimer Estate is very big, very bleak and very tough. I’d never actually walked through it but we drive past sometimes. Mum always winds up the windows and locks the car door from inside in case any of the Latimer Estate kids charge up at the traffic lights, stick their hands through the window and try to grab her Rolex watch. It’s only an imitation one she got in Hong Kong when she went there on a business trip, but it looks real.
    No-one’s ever
tried
to steal her watch. The only time anyone’s approached the car it was to wash the windows and even then they backed off quick when Dad flipped his hands and mouthed at them. But Mum and Dad talk about the Latimer Estate as if it’s a suburb of hell itself.
    â€˜It’s all feckless single mums on drugs and gangs of yobs,’ says Mum.
    â€˜Drunks and drop-outs the lot of them. I don’t know why they don’t round them all up and shove them in jail,’ says Dad.
    Whenever we hear a police siren scream in the distance they sigh and shake their heads and say, ‘The Latimer Estate!’
    I hate it when they talk like that.
    My feet hurt in my hard school shoes and my bag was dragging on my shoulder. I didn’t want to trail all the way into town. I decided to be daring. I’d walk through the Latimer Estate all by myself.
    I set off, feeling like Little Red Riding Hood setting off into deep, dark Latimer Woods. I walked very briskly in spite of my sore feet, almost as if real wolves were after me. Two old ladies hauling shopping trollies and three mums with baby buggies wheeling washing back from the launderette didn’t look too scary, but as I got further into the estate, the stained concrete tower blocks high above my head, I started to feel more wary.
    Something wet spattered on top of my head. It wasn’t raining. I put my hand up gingerly to feel what it was. I heard a faraway giggle from one of the balconies. I was obviously a target in a spitting competition.
    I hurried on, looking up worriedly every so often. It was bad enough being spat at. What if they started chucking things at me? Weren’t they meant to have thrown an old television at a policeman only the other day? My own prissy private-school uniform was reason enough for them to have a go at me.
    I huddled inside my duffel coat and walked on as fast as I could.
    â€˜Wibble wobble, jelly bum!’
    It was a sharp-faced little kid about six shouting at me from the dustbin shelter. I tossed my head, ignoring him. He started yelling worse things, swear words I’d never heard said aloud before.
    â€˜Wash your mouth out with soap!’ I said. My voice sounded horribly posh and plummy. He screamed with laughter.
    I hurried on to the next block. There were bigger boys there, swooping