The Exiles

Chapter One
    There was red brick in every direction. The back of the house and the fronts of the coal sheds enclosed two sides of the garden, and a high wall surrounded the rest, defending it from the neighbours in one direction, and the back alley (commonly known as Gassy Pad), in the other.
    It was the last weekend before the summer holidays.
    Naomi Conroy crouched uncomfortably at the end of the garden reading a book. As usual, she had spent her Saturday morning at the town library, searching the too familiar shelves for something new. On her left was the stack of books she had read since she returned, and on her right was the pile she hadn’t opened yet. She kept her elbow leaning on that pile to guard them from her permanently book-hungry sisters. Even now, she could feel herself being watched, and without looking up knew that Ruth was hovering close by, waiting for her to finish, when by law of the family the book would become common property, free for anyone to read.
    Ruth watched the flickering of her sister’s eyes as they moved across the page. She watched Naomi’s grubby fingers curl and turn the pages over. She measured the thickness of book left to read, compared it to that read already, estimated the time it would take in minutes, deducted an amount for half pages and illustrations and sighed. Ruth was banned from the library. The librarian was holding her tickets to ransom in the hope of extracting at least part of the amount Ruth owed to the library in fines.
    But I’m one of your best customers,’ Ruth had raged when this ultimatum was delivered.
    ‘Worst customers,’ corrected the librarian. And so Ruth (who had no money and would not have handed it over if she had) was reduced to surviving on the books her sisters chose and grudgingly handed over.
    Naomi finished the chapter and closed the book. For a few seconds she could not see, and then her eyes refocused on the small, sunshiny garden. It was overcrowded, she thought. Too many plants, too many scattered belongings, too many book-starved sisters waiting to pounce.
    Naomi was eleven years old, and Ruth was thirteen. They were the Big Ones. Phoebe and Rachel, aged six and eight, were the Little Ones. Although Ruth and Naomi had been known as the Big Ones since Rachel’s arrival into the family, they still resented it. It gave them an uncomfortable feeling of being shoved on from behind, and neither of them took kindly to being shoved.
    ‘One more week,’ Ruth remarked, ‘and then we’ll be finished with school. That’ll be one less torture anyway.’
    ‘I’d rather be at school than stuck here all summer,’ Naomi answered. ‘I’d rather do anything. Even prison would be better.’ She rolled over onto her back, pillowing her head on the pile of books. ‘Solitary confinement, everyone locked out except me, that’s what I’d like.’
    ‘Anything for a change,’ agreed Ruth while gently easing a book away from Naomi’s heap. ‘We ought to run away.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘Like Robert did,’ said Ruth, referring to an uncle who had made family history by disappearing in his youth and never coming back.
    The book came away with a jerk and there was a short fight.
    ‘Yes,’ agreed Naomi, when it was over, ‘but the trouble with running away is where to run to. If we went anywhere where we know someone we’d be sent back, and if we went anywhere where we don’t, then we’d be lost. It’s knowing where to start.’
    ‘We’d start here,’ said Ruth, sucking her bleeding knuckle.
    ‘Well, then, it’s knowing where to end.’
    ‘Yes.’
    The garden was quiet as they pondered, not for the first time, the problems of running away.
    At the other end of what their father, Mr Conroy, liked to call The Lawn, Rachel and Phoebe were racing stolen maggots around the lid of a tin. The maggots belonged to Mr Conroy, and were bought for his fishing on Sundays. As well as the usual revolting white ones there were others, dyed, for some unfathomable reason, pink and green. Rachel always took a pink one, and Phoebe a green. They scooped them out of the tin with the silver spoon that belonged in the tea-caddy, appropriated for the purpose by Rachel. Maggot racing already showed signs of becoming the summer’s main occupation. The rules were very strict. You could prod your maggot in the right direction, but not push him forwards. If they stopped you must allow them to start again of their own accord. Rachel always prodded hers with a