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was just scared, the whole time, of displeasing her. Doing the wrong thing. Saying the wrong thing. Dropping something, breaking something. Being told she was stupid.
    Stupid, useless, hopeless. Clumsy, gawky. Nothing but a liability, can’t ever do anything right. Totally moronic! Drive me up the wall.
    These were all things I’d heard Mrs de Vito say to Honey. When she’d had too much to drink she actually used to jeer at her. Make fun of her.
    â€œLook at it! Great lumping thing! Can’t even walk straight.” And then she’d imitate Honey moving across the room, bumping into chairs and knocking stuff over. “What’s the matter with you? You got cerebral palsy, or something?”
    She could be really nasty. Sometimes she used to try and rope me in. She’d look at me and roll her eyes, like she was expecting me to agree with her. I hated it when she did that! It made me feel so bad for Honey. I mean, they were cruel, the things she said. She didn’t deserve Honey being so loyal! Maybe, in spite of everything, Honey still loved her; I guess it’s always possible. I just don’t know. But I honestly did feel she had to get away, I really did! I wasn’t only thinking of me. At least, I don’t think I was.
    That evening, I sat upstairs in my bedroom laying trails of bread crumbs…all the way to Glasgow! First off, I doodled hearts and flowers all over my school books, with the name DUNCAN in big capitals. (I chose Duncan rather than ferret face. I couldn’t stand the thought of being linked with ferret face!) Then I took our surnames, McAleer and Rutherford, and crossed out all the letters we had in common. Precisely two! I’d have been in despair if he’d really been my boyfriend.
    I got a bit carried away with the doodling. I was still at it when Mum and Dad got home from the shop (the Steeple Norton Mini Mart. Oh, please!) and I had to go downstairs and report on school and whether I’d done my homework. It was like the Spanish Inquisition everynight. Dad used to say, “This doesn’t please me any more than it pleases you.” He never did it with Kirsty because Kirsty could be trusted. She’d never bunked off school or failed to hand in her homework three weeks running. But all that had been back in the winter term! Back when I was still mates with Darcy. It was very belittling that Dad still kept grilling me.
    I told him that I was doing my homework. Dad said, “You’d better be.” I said, “ I am !” and went rushing back upstairs to scatter more bread crumbs. I would look up train times! On the computer, Birmingham to Glasgow. I knew the first thing the police would do when they started to investigate would be to take away the computer and examine it. They can find out all sorts of things, from a computer. Just to make sure, I even wentto Google and put in the word “Glasgow”, so they’d think I’d been looking at the map. I’d have liked to put in Stonebridge Park, which was where Darcy had gone to live with her sister. I knew that Stonebridge Park was in London, and I knew you could get there on a tube train, cos Darcy had told me. She had said it was totally brilliant.
    â€œYou can be in the West End in thirty minutes!”
    I wasn’t bothered about trains from Birmingham; I knew there were plenty of those, all times of the day. Money was the real problem. I had some saved up in a piggy bank-an old china pig with a slit in its back, which had belonged to one of my nans when she was a girl-and I thought I probably had enough for a single fare to London, but it wasn’t going to leave very much over. What did other kids do when they ran away? Did they steal off their parents? I couldn’t steal off mine, or only very tiny amounts. Dad didn’t believe in having large sums of money lying around. He’d been robbed twice at the shop and it hadmade him very grim. But I