Dear Doctor Lily by Monica Dickens Page A

it. Terry watched from the corner. It looked marvellous. Even the varnished rustic post burned up, right down to the ground.
    Eddie was caught, because a neighbour saw him. A man in a car saw Terry running away from the corner, and a policeman came to his mother’s house. His father was in England, but when he came back, the whole fuss started up again.
    â€˜I told you about Eddie,’ he said. ‘I told you to watch it. You’ve been doing so well, Terry. Why did you have to blow it?’
    â€˜I didn’t do nothing.’
    â€˜Anything. You’re old enough to speak properly.’
    â€˜Didn’t do anything, Dad.’
    â€˜Maybe not this time.’ His father brooded at him, his narrowed eyes alarmingly blue.
    â€˜I’m sorry.’ Terry dragged that out of himself. It was no fun apologizing for nothing, but maybe it would help.
    â€˜Just watch it, that’s all.’
    â€˜Lay off him, Paul. He’s not a criminal.’ Terry’s mother had been giving him a hard time, until his father started.
    â€˜You don’t keep an eye on him. You don’t know where he goes. What was he doing out there after dark anyway?’
    â€˜Really, Paul, he’s not a baby.’
    â€˜You’ve spoiled him enough to make him into one.’
    â€˜
I
spoiled him! You’re out of your mind…’ And on and on in the front hall, until his father banged out of the house without calling goodbye to Terry, listening from the top of the stairs.
    Things were desperate. After everything he’d done, working, boring himself with being good and not getting into rages, the rotten newspaper route and putting up with shit from stinkers like Mrs Jukes… His father was further away from him than ever.
    There was only one thing to do. He would make the supreme sacrifice. ‘I did it for you,’ he would say, and his father would melt and smile again, and come back home. How could he resist such nobility?
    Terry went to see Eddie. He was in the cellar, doing dangerous things with his chemistry set.
    â€˜Hi!’ He looked up and grinned as Terry came slowly down the stairs. ‘C’mon and help. I’m making dynamite.’
    â€˜You’re not.’ Terry began to back up the cellar stairs again.
    â€˜Wish I could. We could put a bomb under Mrs Pukes’s window.’
    â€˜The bathroom window.’
    â€˜Inside, back of the toilet.’
    â€˜In the toilet.’
    They giggled and worked each other up as they always could together.
    Then Terry stopped abruptly. ‘Look.’ He half turned away. ‘I didn’t come to fool around. I have to tell you. We can’t be friends any more.’ He had rehearsed how he would say it, strong and noble, but it came out in a rush, squeaky and feeble.
    Eddie’s grin stayed on his cheeky, funny monkey face. ‘Oh, yeah?’ He grinned at Terry, waiting for the joke.
    â€˜I mean it, Ed. This is it.’
    â€˜Your mother said?’
    â€˜No. I said.’
    Eddie dropped the grin into a stuck-out lower lip.
    â€˜Okay.’ He shrugged and turned back to the bench where he was mixing little piles of different coloured powder on squares of paper.
    If he had raged or cursed or argued… Terry looked at the shoulders of Eddie’s torn sweater, raised towards his cup-handle ears.
    â€˜Listen.’ Terry’s voice reached out like a groping hand. ‘I made almost three bucks last week. You can have it all, if you – ’
    Eddie’s thin brown fingers moved busily, mixing the powders. Terry’s head exploded into black despair. He gave a gasp and stumbled up the stairs, dodged one of Eddie’s younger brothers and ran out of the back door and through the gap in the hedge that led towards his own street, blindly sobbing.
    It was mid-term vacation, so he didn’t have to see Eddie at school. Not yet anyway. Terry hung around with some other boys, because if he