The Guilty One by Lisa Ballantyne Page A

it’s gone. Give it back, now.”
    Daniel threw the egg onto the kitchen floor and it smashed with a splat that sent Blitz skipping back to his basket.
    Minnie bent and put the sandwiches into his schoolbag. He ripped the bag from her and threw it across the floor after the egg. She stood up very straight and clasped her hands in front of her.
    “You have to go to school. If you replace the butterfly, I’ll replace the necklace.”
    “I’ll smash yer fuckin’ bu’erfly if you don’t gimme my necklace, you thieving old cow.”
    She turned her back on him. He thought about getting the knife out of his pocket but the knife hadn’t worried her before. He turned and ran upstairs. He had hidden the butterfly under his mattress.
    “Here,” he said, putting it onto the work surface. “Here’s your stupid bu’erfly, now give me the necklace.”
    She was wearing his necklace. He couldn’t believe it. She took it off and handed it to Daniel, then put the butterfly in her pocket.
    “So, what have we learned from that, Danny?” she said as he got his breath back.
    “That you’re a fat thieving slag.”
    “I think we’ve learned that the both of us have precious things. If you respect mine, I’ll respect yours. Do you remember the way to school?”
    “Fuck off.”
    He slipped on his shoes and slammed the door, dragging his schoolbag behind him. On the way he kicked at the nettles and dandelions that grew. He picked up stones as he went and threw them at the cows, but they were too far away. Billy Harper wasn’t on the swings, so Daniel stopped and swung them right round so that none of the other children could play on them. He was late for school but he didn’t care.
    He didn’t care about last chances or new starts. He just wanted everyone to fuck off and leave him alone.
    He got lines on his first day for being late.
    His teacher was called Miss Pringle and she reminded him of the butterfly. She wore a pale blue sweater and had blond hair that hung below her shoulder blades. Her tight jeans had a rose embroidered on the pocket. She was the youngest teacher he had ever had.
    “Would you like to sit at the blue table, Daniel?” Miss Pringle said, bending over a little to talk to him with her palms pressed together between her knees.
    He nodded and sat down at the table, which was beside her desk. There were two other boys and three girls at the table. There was a piece of blue paper taped onto the middle of the table. Daniel sat with his hands under the table, looking at a space on the floor beside Miss Pringle’s desk.
    “Girls and boys, we’re happy to welcome Daniel to the class. Would you like to say welcome to our class?”
    Welcome to our class, Daniel.
    He felt his shoulders hunch, feeling their eyes on him.
    “Daniel moved here from Newcastle. We all like Newcastle, don’t we?”
    There was a sputter of comment and a scraping of chairs. Daniel glanced up at his teacher. She seemed about to ask him a question, but then decided against it. He was grateful.
    All throughout the morning, Miss Pringle kept rubbing his back then hunkering down beside him to find out if everything was all right. He wasn’t doing the work that she had asked them to do, and she thought he didn’t understand.
    The lads at his table were called Gordon and Brian. Gordon said that he liked Daniel’s motorbike pencil case, which Minnie had bought for him. Daniel leaned across the table and whispered to Gordon that if he touched it, he would stab him. Daniel told him he had a knife. The girls at the table laughed and he promised to show them.
    The girls were Sylvia and Beth.
    “Me mam told me you’re the new Flynn foster kid,” said Sylvia.
    Daniel slumped down into the desk, over the notebook that he had covered in pictures of guns, although Miss Pringle had asked them to write about their favorite hobby.
    Beth leaned over and pulled Daniel’s notebook away from him.
    “Give it back,” he told her.
    “How long have you