THE OTTER PATH
PART 1
Two years into the war, our village ran out of boys – the useful variety, that is, who could handle a team of horses or milk twenty cows before sunrise. We still had plenty of the useless kind, the worst by a whopping mile being Derek Patterson, who was in my class at school and whose idea of fun was making girls cry. Last week he’d upset my best pal Mabel by stealing her jam sandwiches. She didn’t have much, Mabel, which made it worse.
When he wasn’t upsetting people, Derek hunted otters along the river with his dad. Their dogs – lolloping, bearded things with curly coats and husky barks – chased the otters for hours on end, which to me didn’t seem a fair fight either.
That spring, with eighty acres to farm, we found ourselves in a tight spot. The healthy men were off fighting the Germans, and as the Ministry of Food wanted more milk, more wheat, more spuds, we needed help on our farm. The only thing we had plenty of was rats, in the barns and climbing the gutters into our roof. There were so many you’d even catch sight of them in daylight hours.
The War Office said they’d send us two strong young women from London with glowing references to help, though even on the day they arrived, Dad still wasn’t convinced.
“What do I want with city girls on my farm?” he grumbled. “They’ll be as good as useless.”
Yet Mum and I were both looking forward to it: having someone modern and different staying with us was bound to liven things up. There had been a farm at Higher Hope for hundreds of years. House, barns, the whole lot was made of grey flint with walls as thick as a castle’s, so all yesterday Mum and I did our best to make the place look welcoming. We made up the big front bedroom with its views over the river, and lit a coal fire in the grate to lift the chill. Our land girls, I decided, would be like older, glamorous sisters.
“Imagine it, Cathy,” Mum chatted excitedly as we’d cleaned. “Young women who’ve seen the world!” Lately she’d been reading novels from the library with dashing titles like Arabian Adventures and Queen For A Day, which she hid inside recipe books when Dad was in the room.
Being Monday – a school day – I wasn’t allowed to stay home to meet the land girls, who were coming on the eleven o’clock bus. Still, I was excited enough to wake extra early. Grabbing my coat and satchel off the peg, I’d enough time to spare to walk to school the long way round, which meant cutting across Longhorn Meadow down to the river.
On the bank between the trees was a faint path. It ran alongside the main, well-trodden one, except you almost had to squint to pick it out. It was the sort of path you sometimes saw in fields, made by rabbits or badgers. This one was an otter path.
If you were really quiet, you’d sometimes catch one scampering along it, their webbed feet and fat, heavy tails flattening the grass.
These days, though, you’d have to be really lucky. Otters were getting rarer. We’d not had a breeding pair here for a couple of years, though if you listened to Mr Patterson you’d think they were as plentiful as the rats in our barns.
You could follow the otter path almost as far as the village. That morning, as I ducked under the trees to join it, I was busy contemplating our land girls. Until, that was, I heard a loud watery plop. I stopped. Craning my neck over the riverbank, I caught sight of an animal rump disappearing into the water. The long pointed tail. The wet, sticking-up fur.
An otter.
People said they were pests for eating too much brown trout and, with rationing on, you could get a good meal out of a plate of fish. But I’d gladly go without trout if it meant the otters got left alone.
Out on the river now the water looked still. This stretch of river was particularly deep where it ran under a line of willows. I kept watching. Not moving a single muscle. I counted to one hundred, then another hundred.
Almost.
A dark head popped up. Two round little black eyes glinted at me. Then, a few yards on, a second head. They both watched me like I watched them. Not moving. Not twitching. I almost believed we’d stay like that all day.
No such luck.
Something startled them. A tail swish and they were off. Ripples spread across the river, reaching the bank. Then the water went back to being dark and still.
I waited, hoping for another glimpse. But in the end, disappointed, I started walking again – faster than before. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been watching the otters but I’d a worry I was going to be late for school. And there were two things our teacher Mrs Melrose didn’t like: dirty noses and lateness.
PART 2
I was in trouble when I got there. Lessons had started. Everyone was already hard at work on their sums. Though I tried to sneak in at the back, I didn’t escape Mrs Melrose’s eagle eye.
“Twenty minutes late, Cathy Crawford!” She pointed at the clock on the wall. “You’ll be staying behind at the end of the day to make up the time.”
I was horrified. “What, today?” I couldn’t stay after school. Didn’t she realise our land girls were coming?
“Yes, today,” Mrs Melrose said irritably. “Sit down and get your workbook out.”
Everyone was looking at me. That included Derek Patterson, who, despite sitting right at the front with the naughty kids, turned round to smirk.
“Yes, miss. Sorry, miss,” I muttered.
Red-faced with embarrassment, I took my seat next to Mabel.
“Where’ve you been?” she whispered, looking worried.
“Watching the otters,” I whispered back. “First I’ve seen there in ages.”
She rolled her eyes like I was a hopeless case. But at least she let me copy her answers.
All day, I kept thinking of our guests. Did they like their new bedroom? Had Dad been grumpy and rude? If he had then I hoped Mum had made up for it with a nice tea of scones and jam. The thought made my stomach rumble.
Finally, at three o’clock, the bell rang. Mrs Melrose dismissed each row at a time.
Ours, being the back row, went first.
“See you tomorrow, Cathy,” Mabel said, pulling a sympathetic face.
Only twenty minutes of sums, I told myself. Then I’d go home the road way, which was quicker. At the very latest I’d be back by four.
The last to go were the pupils in the front row. As they filed past my desk, I overheard Derek speaking to his pal Tommy Bell.
“I’m going down to the river, see if I can catch a bit of sport. Da’s out with the hounds today.”
I felt my face go tight with anger. Before I could stop myself, I blurted out, “Not on our stretch of river, you’re not.”
It was a stupid thing to say. Straightaway I knew I should’ve kept quiet. I didn’t have any right to say it either: my dad had never stopped the hounds crossing our land. A lot of people in our village followed the hunt for fun. Going against it wasn’t good form in our village. And rumour had it Mr Patterson had a temper on him. It was why Mrs Patterson had moved away to live with her sister, so people said.
Worse than that was the way Derek looked at me, a nasty little glint in his eye. He’d be sure to make a beeline for the very spot I was warning him off, the place where the river cut through our fields. Of course he would. He knew I was trying to protect something. He was spiteful and mean, Derek Patterson, but he wasn’t daft. I was the stupid one for putting those otters at risk.
I couldn’t concentrate after that. All the sums I did, I got horribly wrong, which meant I had to do them again until they were correct. By the time I’d finished it was gone four o’clock. As I rushed out of school, I could hear the otterhounds yammering in the distance. The sound got louder when the wind carried it in my direction. So did the blasts from the hunting horn. I felt suddenly, horribly sick.
I should’ve gone home. Shut the doors and windows. Eaten jam and scones with our land girls to take my mind off the hunt. What could I do now, other than keep out of the way, and cross fingers and toes that the hounds wouldn’t find my otters?
Instead I went towards the river. Straightaway, I saw the flattened grass, much wider than this morning’s otter path had been. People had passed this way – lots of them, with dogs. The sight of paw prints and boot prints in the mud filled me with dread. Pushing through overhanging trees and wet grass, I started running.
The path was slippery. It dipped down and up, over tree roots, round rocks. I was sweating under my coat. Another half a mile and a stitch jabbed at my side. I slowed up. The sound of the hunt was louder now. Still no sign of the dogs, but they’d been here all right.
By the time I reached the willow trees at the bottom of our meadow, I knew I was too late. The grass wasn’t just flattened, it was churned. And down at the river’s edge the stones were splashed with blood. I felt completely hopeless. This was my fault.
Hugging myself, I sat on the riverbank. The grass soaked through my coat and school skirt but I didn’t care. I just kept seeing those beautiful creatures playing in the water. And now, hours later, they were dead. All because I’d not kept my mouth shut.
I didn’t hear the rustling straightaway. Then, fearing it was a hound strayed from the pack, I scrambled to my feet. The noise was coming from the reeds over by the bridge. I relaxed a little, thinking it was a bird – a moorhen, maybe, or a duck. But what appeared was a tiny brown head – too big for a water vole, too small to be an otter. Whatever it was was crying. A sad little noise like a kitten would make when it was hungry.
I inched forwards for a better look. Oh my goodness! It was an otter – a baby one. Looking for its parents, probably. Which made me sick with guilt all over again.
Now, I knew you couldn’t make wild animals into pets. But an otter cub this small would never survive without feeding. And a not-so-distant blast on the horn reminded me the hunt wasn’t far away, either.
I inched towards it. The cub was on my side of the river. It looked up at me, mewled a bit, licked its lips. Maybe it was hoping I’d feed it. Kneeling on the bank, I could just about reach it.
“Come here, little one,” I murmured.
It wriggled – as slippery as a fish, and strong too. But once I wrapped it in my scarf it settled again. Or maybe the struggle had worn it out. It fell asleep. Little beady eyes tight shut, its nose blunt and twitching.
Not knowing what else to do, I decided to take it home. I was late already. Dad wouldn’t like it: he’d say we’d enough work without trying to hand-rear wild animals, so I knew I’d have to keep it secret. I’d hide it in one of our barns and feed it milk from the goat. When it was strong enough I’d bring it back to the river – a different part of it, where the hunt didn’t go. It seemed like a simple enough plan.
PART 3
Back in the yard, the kitchen lights were on. The windows – steamed up from cooking – were open, and from inside came a laugh I didn’t recognise. It threw me for a second, till I remembered the land girls and, despite everything, felt a rush of excitement. Then the back door swung open. The smell of gravy wafted out, making me hungrier than ever.
“There you are, Cathy!” Mum stood on the step, wiping her hands on her pinny. “Where’ve you been?”
“Sorry, Mabel fell over in the lane.” It wasn’t a difficult lie. Mabel only had one pair of decent shoes and no rubber boots to speak of, plus I was splattered in river mud as proof.
“Get the worst of that muck off you then,” she said. “Dinner’s in five minutes.”
She seemed in a good mood, and when she went back inside the laughter started again. As I’d hoped, the land girls sounded fun. The noise had woken the cub again. It started mewling for food.
“Sssh!” I told it as I hurried across the yard.
First stop, the goat shed. The milk for today had already been collected. Hyacinth, our milking goat, wasn’t impressed at being asked for more. Luckily, the few drops I squeezed out of her were enough for a hungry otter. Though the cub didn’t want it at first.
“Come on, come on,” I muttered, fretting that any moment Mum would be calling me again.
The trick was to rub some on its gums. After that it licked greedily from my fingers, holding them steady between its own front paws. We’d soon run out of milk though, and it was too late now to fetch any more. Out in the yard I’d heard Dad coming in for dinner. The bang of boots having the mud knocked off them, the opening and closing of the back door.
When the coast was clear, I slipped across the yard to the hay barn. Inside were bales, boxes of old tools, rusty plough parts, empty feed bins. And rats. You could hear them rustling, scratching. When I moved a hay bale, two big ones darted out from underneath. Another one ran across the floor. I kept seeing fast-moving things in the corner of my eye. It worried me they’d harm a baby otter.
So, emptying out a box of tools, I tucked the cub inside. Then I heaved the whole thing up on to a window ledge, where I hoped it’d be out of harm’s way.
“I’ll be back,” I told the otter. “Don’t worry.”
It blinked at me. Then started mewling again. It was still hungry. I’d have to try again later.
Our kitchen was a whirl of people serving up shepherd’s pie and passing plates around. The table looked suddenly cramped. One of the land girls – tall, blonde-haired, all legs and elbows – was sitting in my usual seat. Mum made me pull up a stool.
“Don’t make a fuss,” she whispered to me, though she was looking at Dad when she said it.
The laughter from earlier had stopped.
“Hello, I’m Vera,” the girl said as I squashed in next to her. “You must be Cathy.” She had a plummy voice and shook my hand so hard I felt the bones in it creak.
I smiled, glad to get my hand back in one piece. “Hello.”
The other girl was called Helen. Like Vera, she wore a uniform of breeches and a pine-green sweater with a shirt underneath. She was small, sharp-faced. Neither girl was what you’d call glamorous. I’d seen more lipstick on Mabel’s big sister Rita, and she’d never been to London, let alone lived there.
“I’m not afraid of working horses, Mr Crawford,” Helen was saying firmly. “I’ve grown up with them.”
“In London? Ploughing Oxford Street now, are they?” Dad replied in that half-bristly, half-joking way of his that left you never quite sure what he meant.
Mum shot me a nervous look, but Helen seemed unfazed. “We had dray horses – two of them. Shires. My father ran a brewery.”
“Is that so? Well, it’s a rat-catcher I’m needing,” Dad said.
On the front of Vera’s sweater was a gold badge shaped like a shield. Putting down her fork, she angled it so we could see it more easily.
“Rat-catching,” Vera said proudly. “That’s what I’m specially trained to do. At your service, Mr Crawford.”
After what I’d seen in the barn just now, this was such a relief. Dad, though, didn’t look up from pouring gravy on his pie.
“You’d better be good then,” he muttered.
“Oh, she’s good, all right,” Helen replied, a wry expression on her face. “She’ll happily tell you how she does it too, right down to the goriest of details.”
Mum stared at the pie on her plate. I didn’t suppose this was the “interesting talk” she’d had in mind.
By the time I left for school the next morning, the traps were set. The goat shed, the hay barn, the stalls where the horses went when it was too cold to turn them out – Vera had gone through each with mind-boggling precision. She’d even been round the house and up in the attic. The traps had to be in just the right place, at the right angle, she said. Where there wasn’t space for a trap, she’d left little piles of poison for the rats to eat. Vera told me all this on the back doorstep. She was taking off her coat just as I was putting mine on.
It occurred to me – horribly – that if she’d gone through the hay barn, she’d have found the otter cub. She might easily have heard it. When I’d tried to feed it this morning all it did was cry. And cry. It didn’t want the milk I’d brought it, or the crusts from my toast. The noise it made was weaker today. The same couldn’t be said of the rats, who sounded livelier than ever, especially the ones in the hay loft above my head.
Thankfully Vera made no mention of the otter. Though she’d clearly seen the worry on my face.
“Those rats’ll be gone in no time,” she said, patting my shoulder. “Rest assured, I always get my man.”
Which didn’t reassure me in the slightest.
PART 4
I arrived at school tired and on edge. If Derek even dared to brag about yesterday’s hunt, I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold back.
Yet it soon became clear there was no Derek.
“He’s poorly, miss,” said Tommy Bell. “I called in for him this morning. His dad said he had a fever and was staying in bed.”
“Oh.” Mrs Melrose frowned. It made a squiggly line between her eyebrows. “Right, thank you, Tommy.” And she wrote something in her register.
“I wonder what’s wrong with him,” Mabel whispered to me.
I could think of a whole list of things, but said, “Germs from the river, I expect.” And it served him right, frankly, for going hunting there in the first place.
“Hope it’s nothing nasty like polio or liver fluke,” Mabel sighed.
I scowled at her. “Since when did you start caring about Derek Patterson?”
She went pink – a nice, fetching pink, not the blotchy kind. I honestly didn’t know what to say.
All day I kept worrying about the otter cub. Would the rats find it? Would Dad discover it? Would it escape its box and nibble Vera’s poison? This last one being the least likely because the cub was refusing to eat.
Looking at the clock every five minutes didn’t help. Nor did copying really long sentences from the blackboard or reading a story from centuries ago about a man called Piers Plowman.
When finally it was time to go, Mrs Melrose, for once, let the whole class out together. There was a mad scrum for coats in the cloakroom. Then another big crush at the school gates.
“I’d better dash,” I said to Mabel, before she could suggest going to the post office for mint humbugs.
“You’re not cross with me, are you, Cathy?” she asked, concerned.
It took me a moment to realise she was still talking about Derek.
The road way home took ten minutes if you were quick. I ran all the way up Higher Hope Lane, but couldn’t resist pausing at the top to watch Dad and Helen as they worked the horses over in our east field. They were too far away to speak to, yet just from looking it was obvious they’d made amazing progress. What this morning had been a field of winter grass was now furrow after furrow of soil. I couldn’t imagine Dad doing it that fast by himself.
Back at home, the yard looked unusually tidy. Someone had shovelled up the horse droppings and swept the cobbles, and the buckets had all been stacked in one convenient spot instead of scattered about like they usually were. There was no sign of anyone here now though, thankfully.
I went straight to the barn. I couldn’t see any rats today, but they were definitely still rustling. Not for much longer: Vera had laid a trail of poison pellets across the floor. Every now and then the thick white line thinned where something had taken a nibble. Fingers crossed that something was a big fat rat. Still, as I approached the window, I dreaded seeing the box upturned on the ground, the otter gone.
Yet there it was, so deeply asleep inside the box I had to double-check it was still breathing. It looked adorable, curled nose to tail inside my scarf. So peaceful. And very different to the miserable, crying little thing I’d tried desperately to feed this morning.
“You stay right there,” I whispered to it, and went off in search of milk.
Waiting by the goat-shed door for collection was a churn of udder-warm milk. What I needed was a cup or saucer to carry it in. For that I’d have to risk the kitchen.
I decided to tell Mum the milk was for me, although it was a rubbish excuse, since I didn’t even like goat’s milk. As I hesitated at the back door wracking my brains for something better to say, I overheard her talking inside.
“No one’s seen him since yesterday,” Mum was saying.
“Poor chap.” This was Vera. “Have the police been informed?”
I couldn’t hear the reply. A chair scraped the floor as someone got to their feet.
“Well, thanks for the tea, Mrs Crawford,” Vera said. “I’m off to check the traps, but I’ll keep an eye out on my travels. What does he look like?”
“Dark-brown hair, wiry build. He’s got a nasty scar on his right hand.”
Now I was confused. The person they were talking about sounded like Derek – especially the bit about the scar. Mabel once told me he’d got it after an accident with a pan of scalding water, which to my mind meant he was clumsy as well as horrid.
Yet Derek was ill in bed – Tommy Bell had said so. He’d spoken to Mr Patterson just this morning. Which meant Derek couldn’t have gone missing – not when he was sick with a fever. Mum must’ve got it wrong.
PART 5
Derek Patterson wasn’t at school the next day either. I was torn between enjoying the peace and quiet of it, and thinking he must be really sick. It was odd how fast Mrs Melrose put a lid on it if anyone mentioned him. Then, at three o’clock, just before she dismissed us, she said rather cryptically, “Go straight home this afternoon, children. If you see anyone acting suspiciously, don’t approach them.”
No one knew quite what Mrs Melrose meant. But as we left school everyone was on high alert.
“Germans,” Tommy Bell insisted. “That’s what she’s on about.”
“Nah, there’s a spy in the village,” said Graham Watson, whose parents ran the pub. “My dad’s been saying so for months.”
“Or a plane’s crashed in the woods or someone’s found a bomb?” suggested Enid Clarke. She was the cleverest person in our class so if we believed anyone, it’d be her.
The ideas quickly turned silly. Hitler was here for a holiday. A tiger, escaped from Bristol Zoo, had been spotted at Higher Hope. There was a murderer at large.
I could see Mabel getting agitated. Tucking my arm through hers, I hurried her out of earshot. As we stopped at the crossroads to go our separate ways, she kept hold of me.
“Something’s happened to Derek,” she said, straight out. “The curtains in his room have been drawn for two days solid. There’s not even been a light on.”
I was shocked. “You’ve been staring at his bedroom window?”
Mabel didn’t blush this time; she looked too troubled for that. And as I thought of what I’d overheard in our kitchen yesterday, a funny feeling came over me like a spider walking on my skin. Perhaps Derek wasn’t sick at all. In which case, Mr Patterson was lying.
All the way home, it went round and round my head. I couldn’t help but think Mabel’s hunch was right, though you couldn’t just assume things were fact if you didn’t know for certain. The best thing to do, I decided, was to speak to Mum once I’d fed the cub.
I didn’t get the chance. As soon as I set foot in the yard, Mum whisked me inside to help make an early supper. By five o’clock, rabbit pie eaten, we were on to apple crumble and custard. Vera, not wanting any, had gone outside to check her traps.
I’d noticed Dad was in a rather good mood.
“This Helen’s a hard worker,” he confessed. “Got a way with our horses, she has.”
Helen didn’t smile, didn’t blush. She spooned crumble into her mouth as if she already knew all this and Dad was the surprised one, not her.
Mum caught my eye and smiled, glad he’d seen sense. Then she cleared her throat.
“Got something to say, love?” Dad asked.
“I’m going to the pictures tonight with Vera and Helen,” she said all in a rush. “They asked me to come along and I said yes.”
There was a pause. A silence. I stirred my custard, not wanting to look at Dad’s face.
“That wise, is it?” he asked. “What with this lad gone missing and police all over the place?”
He didn’t say no though.
“We’ll all be together, Mr Crawford,” Helen said, sensible, steady. “We won’t be back late.”
Before he could reply, the back door flew open. The wind caught it, making it crash into the wall. Feet, still shod in boots, rushed up the passage. Vera appeared in the kitchen doorway, torch still flashing, hair escaping its pins.
“You won’t believe what I’ve just found,” she gasped. “In the hay barn…”
My throat clamped shut. All the blood seemed to rush to my head. It was as good as wearing a sign round my neck telling everyone what I’d done. I’d gone soft, Dad would say. Gone against nature and proper countryside ways, and what good did it do, eh? You still ended up with an otter who wouldn’t survive.
But no one was paying attention to me. It was Vera they stared at.
“He’s here,” she said, flushed with excitement. “Come and see for yourselves.”
Vera was right: she did get her man. Outside the hay barn was a wheelbarrow full of dead rats, though that wasn’t what she’d brought us to see. Nor was it my otter cub; the box sat undisturbed on the windowsill.
What I could hear was something moving in the hay. And when Vera swung her torch beam up into the hayloft, I saw why. A boy was staring down at us. I didn’t realise who it was straightaway because he looked afraid.
“You’d better come down, lad,” Dad said. “The sooner we sort this mess out the better.”
The boy was Derek Patterson.
“How long have you been up there?” Helen asked. “Are you all right?”
Derek didn’t answer. He moved back from the loft hatch so we couldn’t see him any more.
“We should let the police know he’s here, Mrs Crawford,” Vera pointed out. “Is it a long walk to the village?”
“It’d be quicker to drive,” Mum replied, looking at Dad.
“Don’t ask me, I’ve got animals to feed,” Dad retorted. But he dug deep in his trouser pocket and, pulling out the car keys, threw them in the air. “Here, catch!”
Vera caught the keys one-handed. No one bothered to ask if she could drive; it was obvious she could. Mum said she’d go with her to give directions, then, to me as she left, “You know the boy, Cathy. He’s in your class at school. Speak to him, will you? See if he’s all right.”
“Me?” It was an awful idea. Derek and I had never said so much as a nice word to each other. Ever.
Yet moments later I was the only person still here. Dad had gone to feed the animals, and Helen, insisting a bowl of apple crumble might tempt Derek down, went back to the kitchen to fetch some.
It felt odd being in here, knowing I wasn’t alone. I’d not the foggiest what to say to Derek though, so I tiptoed over to check on my cub. My heart thumped a little. I had an awful feeling it might not be still breathing.
The cub must’ve heard me coming. A little brown head appeared over the side of the box. Then came a chattering noise, a twitching of whiskers. It looked so much better tonight. Happier. I grinned. Yet before I could reach it, the whole box moved, tipped and tumbled off the windowsill. It was only a drop of a few feet, but I panicked. Fearing my baby otter was hurt, I rushed over, flinging myself down beside the box.
Too late.
The box moved. To my utter amazement, what shot out at high speed wasn’t my cub. It was a sleek, long, full-grown otter. I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing.
“Where did you come from?” I cried.
In a flash it disappeared behind a hay bale. The cub followed right behind. There was a hush. Something bumped against the wall. A bucket clanked. Above me, the hay loft beams creaked with footsteps.
“Going to try and catch her again, are you?” said Derek.
I looked up. His legs were dangling through the loft hatch. Then both feet found the top rung of the ladder. He started to climb down. I tensed, ready to be angry or hardened or something. Yet when he reached the ground and I saw he was still in his school uniform, I suddenly didn’t know what to feel. He looked crumpled and grubby, and smaller somehow. There was a stonker of a bruise on his right cheek.
“How d’you know the cub’s a her?” I stuttered, for want of something to say.
He shrugged, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Easy when you’ve got the mother here to compare with.”
“The mother?” I stared, bewildered. “Is that who the adult otter is? But I thought she… I mean… How did you—”
“I got to her before the hounds did,” he said.
I blinked. I’d misheard him, surely. The Derek Patterson I knew hunted otters with his dad; he didn’t go around saving them.
“Don’t stare at me like that,” he said wearily. “What else could I do? They’re the last otters left on this stretch of river.”
“But your dad was out hunting that day. I heard the dogs. How did you catch her?” I asked. The baby otter had wriggled hard enough.
“I held my jacket over the den opening, and when she bolted, I bundled her up in it,” he explained. “I came back for the male but…” He trailed off.
“The dogs must’ve got him,” I said grimly. “I saw the blood on the stones by the river.”
“Oh that was mine.” Derek gestured to his face. “I slipped.”
Somehow I didn’t believe him.
“They’re not going to fetch my dad, are they?” he said, suddenly worried. “Because I’ll run off again, I swear I will.”
The horrible truth dawned on me then. He wasn’t ill or missing – not really. The bully Derek Patterson had run away from an even bigger bully. His own dad. And Mrs Melrose, with her notes in the register and her all-day frown, must have guessed as much too.
The barn door swung open as Helen came back in with a bowl of steaming-hot apple crumble. “Get that down you,” she said, placing it in Derek’s hands. “Things’ll seem better on a full stomach.”
Derek tucked in, scraping the bowl so hard I thought he’d take the pattern off. As we watched him, it occurred to me I’d just had a conversation with Derek. A proper one that didn’t involve making anyone cry.
“You can stay here tonight if you like,” I said.
He didn’t answer straightaway. When he did there were tears in his eyes.
Early the next morning, before anyone else was awake, we took the otters back to the river. It was just the two of us, Derek and me, carrying the box between us. We cut down through Longhorn Meadow, then turned right and followed the otter path away from the village as far as we could go.
“Dad never comes this far,” Derek remarked as we set the box down on the bank.
“Exactly,” I replied.
The mother otter appeared snout-first from the box. She was cautious, sniffing the air, listening, then tiptoed across the grass to the water’s edge. The cub bounded after her, all clumsy and rubbery. They slid into the water together. Within a few strokes, the mother had rolled on to her back. She was making an excited, chattery sound, and when the baby joined in, we both laughed. And laughed.
Not long after that, Derek moved away to live with his mum. He never did go home to his dad, or come back to school. In fact, I never saw him again. One day after school, I told Mabel all that’d happened.
“Maybe I got Derek Patterson a bit wrong,” I admitted. “He was nasty because he was scared.”
Mabel nodded. “Remember when he took my sandwiches? He gave them straight back when no one was looking.”
“It’s like he was acting tough to try and please his dad. Underneath, I think he was actually rather nice.”
“It’s when you get to know people that you see what they’re really like,” Mabel agreed. “Look at your dad with those land girls. He never stops singing their praises.”
As usual, Mabel had a point. Vera’s rat-catching skills quickly made her famous throughout the district, and Helen was now in sole charge of the horses, who worked better for her than anyone. Meanwhile, Mum wasn’t hiding her library books any more. She even persuaded Dad to go to the pictures with her one evening.
The otter path was still a special spot for me. One day in late spring as I followed it away from the village, the surface of the water broke with a line of bubbles. Three otter heads popped up – one smaller than the other two. They stared at me. And I stared in wonder at them.
This time I didn’t tell anyone what I’d seen. I didn’t even mention the otter path, which, after all, was just a faint track through the grass. Most people didn’t know it existed. But all you had to do was look closely, quietly. The rest came as a wonderful surprise.