The Runaway

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.The RunawayBy Claire Wong Lion Hudson PlcCopyright © 2017 Claire WongAll rights reserved.ISBN: 978-1-78264-242-8CHAPTER 1RHIANNONI never meant for this to happen.I could still turn back before I pass the last houses and really have to commit to this. I could make the walk home along Church Road and onto Heol-y-Nant, where the window ledges are bright with marigolds at this time of year. But this is not how it was supposed to be.I'd expected a shout to follow me down the road. I scripted the whole apology, and prepared how I would react on receiving it. I'd pictured it so perfectly: Aunty Di running after me, my cousins hugging me so that we look like a real family. People would have stopped what they were doing and turned to watch as we made our way back through the village. The twitch of net curtains would have betrayed the nosiness of our elderly neighbours. But I would have smiled reassuringly to all the families I know on these roads, as if to say don't worry, I'm not going anywhere after all, and I would have seen the relief in their eyes. I'd be known after today as "Rhiannon, who we almost lost forever". And I would have been far too gracious and sensitive to tell them it should be "whom".I would have let them persuade me to come home, if anyone had followed me. But nobody came. Instead, here I am, already at the edge of the village, with Dyrys Wood spread out across the hills before me.I don't understand how no one has noticed, but I won't go back, not after everything that has happened. I grit my teeth and walk on. The road slopes down towards the farmhouse where the Evanses live, and after that the river snakes southward, and the green valley rises back up and then there's nothing but Dyrys Wood as far as the eye can see. If we'd grown up in another age, we'd have probably been allowed to play there as children, but these days no one thinks they are safe, and Aunty Di worries more than anyone I've ever met - not that she would ever admit it. So of course I was never allowed there without an adult to walk with me and call me back to the path when I ran off. Maybe that is why I find myself heading straight for the woods now.Shifting the shoulder straps of my rucksack, which is already uncomfortable, I keep walking down the road, though it is becoming more of a muddy track now, and my feet are sinking deeper with every step. Not many cars come this way - just the occasional farm vehicle or some lost hikers looking for their campsite. Most turn back before the bridge anyway, because it's so narrow. People like to say that our village, Llandymna, was never built for an age like this: nothing seems to cope well with cars or technology round here. Visitors call it quaint; everyone at school calls it boring.I stop on the bridge for a moment and look around the valley. It's peaceful here. The only sounds are birdsong and farm animals in the distance. I breathe in the clear air deeply and lean forward over the low wall. Blood rushes to my head as I tilt my weight down to get a better look at the waters ambling below. They say the basin this river runs through was first hewn out by ice millions of years ago, carved from its slow crawl across our land. The stones that make this bridge might be that old. They might remember the years when everything was frozen white, before sheep and humans and green grass came to cover the slopes.Thinking about the oldness of everything calms me, and suddenly this afternoon's row with my aunt seems less important. Not so unimportant that I will forget it, mind. She treats me like a child, and it's time she learned to take my threats seriously. If I go back, she will think I didn't mean it when I warned her I'd run away from home. I thought I meant it at the time, but standing here on the bridge I feel so unprepared for whatever follows next that I wonder how sincere I really was. I will never let anyone else ask that questio