The Power of Five Oblivion

I talked to him.”
    Rita’s shoulders sagged. It was a very deliberate movement. She did that to show she was annoyed. Then she turned on her heel and hurried into the kitchen, where John and the last member of our little household – George – were having their tea.
    I don’t need to tell you a lot about John. He never said very much. He was a small, white-haired man – shorter than Rita – who spent most of his time sitting there with a sort of half-dazed smile on his face. He wasn’t stupid. I think he just didn’t want to get involved. George was another matter. He was eighteen, three years older than me, and like me he had no parents. He worked at the village bakery and you could tell that just by looking at him because he was quite fleshy and he was always covered in a thin coating of flour. He had blond hair, which he never combed, and blue eyes. They were his best feature. Nobody thought George had very much to offer, but I knew him better than anyone and if I’d had to choose one person in the village to stick up for me, it would have been him.
    The two of us had grown up as brother and sister, looked after by Rita and John. George was very shy and always seemed to be uncomfortable when I was around. I sometimes thought that when Rita and John died, we’d simply take over the house and end up living together … and well we might have if things hadn’t turned out the way they did.
    “There’s been a stranger in the village,” Rita announced as I followed her into the room.
    “A stranger?” John looked up from his porridge – or whatever slop he was eating.
    “I found him in the churchyard,” I said.
    “Where did he come from?”
    “I don’t know. He was just there.” I wasn’t going to tell them about the door. That still didn’t make any sense to me.
    “So who was he?” George asked. “What was his name?”
    “He said his name was Jamie. I didn’t talk to him much. He was just a boy about the same age as me. And he had a funny accent. I don’t think he was English.”
    “And you raised the alarm…?”
    This was the big question. Everyone waited for me to answer.
    “I didn’t have a chance to. Simon Reade and Mike Dolan found us together. They grabbed Jamie and they sent me home.”
    “They found you talking together? And you hadn’t raised the alarm?” Rita stared at me.
    I nodded miserably.
    “You don’t realize how much trouble you’re in. You broke the first rule of the village. The moment you saw him, you should have called for help.”
    “I know. But he was so young. And he was hurt. He was covered in blood.”
    “He’ll be worse than that when the Council have finished with him.”
    “You shouldn’t be angry with her,” George said. He had a way of talking, slow and deliberate, that always made you feel he’d thought very carefully about what he was about to say. “Holly didn’t help this boy come here and it wasn’t her fault she saw him first. And if he was hurt, it was only right she should try to help him.”
    “Simon and Mike won’t see it that way.”
    “They’ll try to make trouble. They always do. It makes them feel important.” George got up from the table and fetched the saucepan. “You’d better have something to eat,” he said. “We left you some stew.”
    “I’m not hungry.”
    “You should eat anyway.”
    I did as I was told. It was getting dark and Rita nodded at George, who got out a couple of candles and lit them. I would have preferred an electric light. The little flames somehow emphasized the darkness rather than illuminating it. I could feel the world outside and all sorts of unnamed troubles pressing in on me. But there was no reason to waste a battery. They were only kept for emergencies.
    There was a knock at the door. John went out and I expected him to return with Simon Reade or Mike Dolan, so I was relieved when it was Miss Keyland that he showed into the room.
    Anne Keyland was one of those people you couldn’t help liking. She was about sixty, but young with it, full of energy, striding around the place in her yellow wellington boots. She had lost a lot of weight recently and there were rumours that she was ill, but even if that had been the case, she would never have admitted it. She still ran the village school. She was also deputy chair of the Council. I guessed at once that was the reason she was here.
    She gave me a hug. “Holly. Trust you to get into trouble! A stranger in the village and you have to