Welcome to sleep stories with Steph your go-to podcast.
That offers you a calm and relaxing transition to sleep.
Into a great night's sleep.
It is time to relax and fully let go.
There is nothing you need to be doing now.
And know where you need to go.
Close your eyes.
And feel yourself sink into the support beneath you.
And let all the worries of the day go.
Drift away.
This is your time.
And your space.
Take a deep breath in through your nose.
And let it out with a long sigh.
That's it!
There is nothing you need to be doing now.
And know where you need to go.
Happy listening.
Chapter 5 We all stayed at a little boy.
This was the one we'd seen at the window.
He was the reason we were in the big house in the first place,
Sitting opposite a big man,
Who in spite of the fact he seemed kind,
Was still a stranger.
And he was much bigger than any of us.
Me and Jack talk seats at the end of the table without any discussion.
And Jack's feet didn't even reach the floor.
He swung them anyway steady as a metronome and stared at the blackberry pie like it owed him money.
Jack did love a blackberry pie.
But of course,
This man and his little boy.
.
.
They needed it much more than us.
Behind us,
Cathy was humming something under her breath.
And Sam had a small object out on his knee,
A fiddly thing with wires he'd been carrying around for weeks,
And he was turning it over and over without even looking at it.
I think he was a bit scared.
Elliot stood in the corner.
I think he was trying to figure out some kind of a joke to lighten the mood.
He did like a joke,
Did Elliot.
And if I'm being honest,
I was well glad that Bradley was still down the end of the lane.
I didn't need him stressing at a time like this.
I still had a niggling feeling in the back of my mind he would tell all,
Given half the chance,
To his parents.
And that will put Elliot in a right spot.
Best keep him at arm's length,
" I said to Jack when we were at home one night.
I didn't want the others thinking I was being mean.
And better the devil you know than the devil you don't.
But that doesn't mean that I ever really trusted him.
I'd heard too many sad tales from his brother Elliot to ever do that.
Anyway,
It took a few minutes for us to get comfortable and arrange ourselves.
We collected all together of course,
Their strength in numbers.
But we were here for the little boy and we had to remember that in spite of what we felt.
He was clean.
His hair was brushed,
His jumper had a small darn patch on the elbow,
But it was very carefully done.
I could see with my detective intuition,
Someone had taken real care over that.
I looked closely at the little boy's face.
His eyes were the eyes of someone much older.
He didn't look shy and when he looked at you he looked straight at you without any childish flicker towards the window or the dog or whatever else might be happening.
He sat next to the man with his hands folded in his lap.
He was very contained almost,
Like there was something formal about him,
As if he decided that being good and quiet and being no trouble were things that he could still manage even when so much else had come undone.
I felt immediately sorry for him.
And that's where the blackberry pie came in handy.
Good old Mrs Bantry,
She knew what she was doing.
I pushed it across the table towards him and suddenly his face lit up.
That was something that really made my day.
I felt like we were actually helping.
He looked as if he had eaten.
He wasn't skinny,
Neither was the old man.
But he didn't look as if he'd had any treats in a long time.
And that was the point really.
That was a big lesson for us,
The Mountford gang,
To learn that day.
That you can get along pretty well much with anything.
But it doesn't mean just because you're coping that you're happy to cope.
I mean,
Look at Elliot.
He had his problem with his family,
His parents preferring Bradley.
And yet he was always messing around.
Just goes to show you,
Doesn't it?
Anyway,
Back to the story.
So the little boy's sitting next to the big man,
We're all sitting at the other end of the table looking on as the little boy's eating his blackberry pie.
The old man seemed genuinely pleased and we thought this was a very good sign.
It lightened the mood,
It eased everything and made us relax a little bit as much as you can in the presence of strangers.
So anyway,
The little boy,
He said.
Was called William.
William James Alderton and he'd been eight years old in March.
The man was called Mr.
Osi and he'd been the family butler for 31 years.
Well,
This made a lot of sense.
We could see the old man and the little boy were close,
But they didn't look like each other at all.
Mr OC watched us with enormous serious eyes.
And when the little boy handed him a piece of the pie.
.
.
Grabbing a blunt bread knife and cutting it for him,
He seemed very,
Very pleased.
Whether it was because the little boy was just keeping up with his manners or whether it was because he was genuinely in need of a treat himself.
We couldn't really tell.
And it was when they both finished eating,
The truth came out.
William's parents had died when they were abroad.
They'd been travelling and they'd had an accident.
William himself didn't want to be taken care of by anyone else.
He said he wanted to stay here in his house.
And he wanted to stay with Mr Ocey as he always did during the school holidays when the family went away.
Quite why parents would leave their kids at home while they went gallivanting round the world on holiday.
I've not quite any idea,
But I suppose that's another story for another day.
So there we sat opposite William James Alderton and Mr Ocey.
Two very good friends by the look of it.
And at home in this house.
More at home than anywhere else.
Mr.
Osi told us about when the news came.
He placed his hands on the table when he was speaking which kind of put us at ease as well because he had very big hands and we could see where they were.
When the news came,
He said,
William asked him one thing.
And William looked at him and he looked back at William and they both came to understand without needing to say anything more that they had to stick together.
He asked me not to leave,
Mr Ocey said,
And so I haven't.
But the man had no income now.
That was the problem.
He didn't say it was self-pity,
And he didn't say it with any drama,
He just stated the facts,
Which put us at ease,
Although I have to say I was making notes all the time.
I don't know whether this put them off any,
But we were detectives,
Weren't we?
We were the Mountford gang,
So I felt it was my responsibility to make some sense of it all,
In writing like.
Not that I'll be showing anyone any time soon,
But.
.
.
It was the right thing to do,
I suppose.
And I was 12,
Nearly a teenager,
So.
.
.
I thought I should be doing the right thing.
As Mr.
Ocey talked,
I wonder what happened when someone was to come and claim the house.
Surely William,
The auditants,
The family were in some way connected that they would come and ask for their house back.
It was in some kind of a legal process,
Mr.
Rossi said.
It was moving very slowly.
There was a solicitor in London who wrote him letters,
And Mr.
Rossi did have some savings.
They grew the vegetables sometimes and they managed,
Although he was getting older now and it was quite hard work to keep ahead of stuff.
And that's what got me to thinking.
There was five of us.
Maybe we could help out?
William had just finished his slice and was sitting very close to Jack now.
I think he liked Jack because he was not too much smaller,
But he approved of him because Jack was bigger and Jack was always a very likeable character.
Everyone liked my brother,
There was no mistake in that.
And so it was that we got to know Mr O.
C.
And William James Alderton.
I felt like we had to keep it a secret for a while until we worked out.
Or they'd worked out what to do.
They'd been discovered.
They understood that.
Things couldn't exactly stay the same way they were.
And I got the feeling they were probably pretty relieved about that.
You might want to take a look around,
" said Little William as he got up,
And him and Mr.
Ocey led the way into the front room.
It was quite nice.
They were inviting us into their world.
Although all the time I was making notes as to the state of the house and the things that didn't seem to be working.
We did feel welcome.
The living room was at the front of the house.
It was a large room with tall windows that ran almost floor to ceiling.
The curtains were so thick and heavy with dust that the whole room had a dim kind of quality of being somewhat unvisited.
The furniture was good though.
You could tell it was expensive and that everything had been done to the highest standard when William's parents were alive.
Under the sheets that have been put over most of it,
The shapes were curved but very grand.
And that's when I made the connection.
It was sad really.
This little boy had lost his parents.
He had no chance.
He didn't seem to speak of any uncles or aunts.
And he seemed to want to stay with this old man for as long as he could.
And who were we to stop that?
I didn't want to make him any more unhappy than he could be.
You seemed alright at the moment.
Now we had a real dilemma.
Should we tell people about the little boy and his old butler?
Or should we just leave them be?
And help them the best way we knew how.
One thing I decided was for sure.
We wouldn't be telling Bradley Button any time soon.
We'd have to think up a story and fast.
If he knew what was going on.
As sure as eggs is eggs,
The whole lane would know about it before nightfall.
