Four

Four. Part 2: Spring

The deliciously expectant smell of spring hit me as I walked to school. The daffodils, like splashes of sunshine, spattered a carpet of green meadow.

I skipped through the fields, singing at the top of my voice. 

'Fridays' I loved them. Five months is a long time when you're thirteen years old. In that small space of time I'd turned fourteen, fallen in love twice and suffered the excruciating pain of a broken heart.

However, the reason for my buoyancy that morning was the new boy from London. He'd arrived in my class four weeks previous. His smile made school a good place to be.

We hit it off instantly. He'd asked if he could sit next to me for Friday morning maths lessons; my easy grasp of numbers impressed him.

My stomach skipped a merry dance at the thought of a whole hour sat with cockney Gavin. 
I'd taken a different route to school that morning, one that took me through the fields; I was filled with romanticism and wanted a scenic journey to match my mood.

My head, full of romantic expectation, meant I forget Mum forbade me to walk this way to school. I remembered why, when pulled from my daydreams by the sound of angry cursing as I approached the tree darkened entrance of the road that led to the Neegan Farm.

The man espousing the profanities was known as Mad Terry. He stumbled down the lane spitting, cursing and nodding his head violently from side to side while shouting, "It's not right, it's just not right!" He stopped dead when he saw me and composed himself. 

Terry was considered odd by the townsfolk, but his size and strength ensured he was regularly in demand as an able manual labourer to the surrounding farmers. 
"Oh, excuse me young lady, I wasn't expecting anyone here." His polite manner wasn't what I expected given his reputation. 
"What's not right?" I asked. He shook his head and looked me in the eye, "Them Neegan brothers, it's not right the way they treat that sister of theirs."

What he said next sent an alarming jolt of recognition through my body. "And another thing, I'm sure I saw a new born in the..." He stopped. "Ahhh, I'm sure it wasn't," he mumbled, nodding his head in disbelief.

I ran none stop to school, arriving out of breath and desperate to talk. 

Cockney Gavin smiled broadly as I collapsed at my desk panting. "Crikey pickle, are you training for the marathon?" 

"No!" I said, sounding sharp. Suddenly Gavin became less of a love interest and more of an ally. 

I longed to share my experience and concerns about the Neegan family with someone my own age. I launched into a wall of hurried words, "Gavin, can we go for a walk in the woods at lunch time, there's something I need to talk to you about. I found a body, he killed himself and I think their feeding babies to pigs." He looked at me as if I were mad. "No problem pickle, but you're making no sense at all, calm down and we'll go for that walk." He took out his books, and tried to distract me with numbers; but my head remained at Neegan Farm.

I told him everything as we munched our packed lunches on a tree stump in the woods surrounding our school. It felt good to talk to someone without the usual put downs and dismissive adult commands to mind my own business.

"Holy moly, that's a lot to take in Pickle. I've never seen a dead body, hope I don't have to either." He began to talk with a measured and rationale tone that belied his young years, "Firstly pickle, we know that Terry' a bit mad, so I wouldn't take much notice of what he says. And secondly, if they're feeding babies to pigs, where they getting them from? It'd be all over the papers and the news that babies were going missing."  I still had niggling doubts, which I expressed with my reply,