Welcome to sleep stories with Steph your go-to podcast.
That offers you a calm and relaxing transition.
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 7 We,
The Mountford gang,
Had all been on tenderhooks since we'd effectively locked Bradley out in the clubhouse.
Not because he threatened to tell,
Because he didn't.
But now we had to admit him into the club and no one really wanted to do that long term.
He was alright to pass the time of day to,
But as one of us.
.
.
In all our secrets and privy to all our concerns he be.
We knew it would never work.
We knew that the minute he asked what happened at the big house.
I had to lie then,
And to give them their dues,
Everyone else went along with it as well.
I reckon they were just relieved that someone was doing something.
It's very hard to make excuses and sound convincing when you're just a kid,
Even if you're only talking to other kids.
But I knew anything I said would go straight back to Bradley's parents,
Much to the disgust of his brother Elliot.
So I was very careful with how I put it.
I said.
There's a little boy who lives in that house.
He's having an adoption arranged for him as I speak.
His parents died.
I told the truth about that bit.
And an old relative's looking after him,
But a kind family's offered to adopt him.
This was all lies.
But I figured this would keep any interfering parents out of the picture until we as a gang could work out.
What to do about it.
We wanted to speak to Mrs Bantry again and we knew we would need her help.
I could still hear Mr Ocey's voice ringing in my ears now.
The boy,
William,
Should have a proper home,
He said.
That made me feel really bad because.
.
.
In spite of always having our aunt at mine and Jack's.
.
.
In spite of Elliot not being the favourite in his house.
In spite of Sam's parents getting divorced and Cathy's mum always making her do loads of extra homework and ballet and such.
We all knew where we belonged.
We belonged in Mountford Lane together.
And looking back I realise now there's a lot to be said for that.
William James Alderton.
Well,
He didn't know where he belonged,
Did he?
Miss Rosie said there was money coming to him,
But money can't buy you the stability of a stable home now,
Can it?
We went to Mrs Bantry's that afternoon,
But we made sure to do it without Bradley knowing.
He had to go to the dentist about his new brace,
He said,
Which was a blessing.
Elliot said he was going round to Sam so he was covered pretty much belt and braces.
We wanted to make some kind of plan about fundraising we decided,
Or getting money,
So we could help.
But we needed a genuine reason for it.
And obviously that was where Mrs Bantry could come in.
She was a goldmine,
That woman.
The trouble with helping someone in secret,
We decided,
Was it took an enormous amount of.
.
.
Very public effort.
Kids doing things just for the sake of doing things.
Well,
People would assume we were just making money for ourselves.
We can't just knock on the vicar's door and ask for cash,
" said Sam.
And he was right.
And we knew if we didn't have Mrs Bantry to sort of verify what we were doing.
We never be able to do it.
We were sitting in the clubhouse at the bottom of Mountford Lane.
It was a lovely sunny day and if we were honest we wanted to be out playing rounders or something but we had a job to do.
I'd already started a list.
Lemonade stand outside the cricket ground on Saturday,
Our pork.
Dad says the away team always buys us out.
Jumble sale Mum's got a bag of all our old clothes she could flob.
We grew out of them so quickly and they weren't really that old.
And what about doing old jobs?
" suggested Kathy.
And what about going round door to door,
Said Elliot,
With a wheelbarrow,
For anything that people don't want?
Weeding,
Said Jack.
There's mountains of weed in round here.
Yeah,
It's all for a good cause,
" said Sam.
He took these causes very seriously and I felt proud of him for saying that.
Even though I talked them all into doing all this in the first place.
And so it was,
We started work.
The way children do on a summer holiday.
Dedication and lemonade and a few sweets thrown in.
That was my job.
I managed to make some lemonade through mum's recipe and we still had some sweets left over from when auntie was feeling very generous.
So I made sure to ply everyone with plenty of those so they'd keep going.
Meanwhile,
Mrs Bantry spread the word that we were raising money for her cat sanctuary.
This,
She said,
Had been a project of hers for quite a long while and,
Being the fantastic carpenter she was,
She'd already built loads of outhouses and said she needed some more wood to do such important work.
Well,
Everyone loves cats,
Don't they?
So of course that was a great cover story.
We were very thankful for that.
And while we were doing the fundraising,
She said she'd go round and take more food for Mr Ocean William.
So all in all,
We were feeling very positive about the whole thing.
Anyway,
Back to the fundraising.
The weeding made £2.
40.
We were quite pleased with that.
We managed to knock on a few doors local to us and no one likes weeding so that was quite a money spinner.
Then we had the jumbo sail at the village hall.
We'd already seen there was one advertised and we asked if we could have our stuff on a table in there.
So we set it up and we made £5.
50 from that.
It was mostly Jack's old stuff.
He was the one who grew out of stuff a lot faster than me.
There was trainers and tops.
There was school bags.
It all came in handy for people who couldn't really afford their own stuff brand new.
After that,
Mr.
Hobbs at the baker's let us put a collecting tin by the till without asking a single question.
He could see how hard we were working and then Mrs Pargeter at the newsagents She had a few chocolate bars that were out of date and she couldn't really do very much with.
We managed to sell those to kids we knew down the road for 10p each.
I suppose all this doesn't seem like a lot these days,
But back in those days,
It felt like it was a fortune.
And we knew we could get a lot from Mr.
Ocean William with it.
Every penny counts,
My mum always used to say.
And she was never so right.
Mrs Bantry,
Meanwhile,
Had appointed herself to a rather different kind of operation.
She was spending rather a lot of time in the library researching how to go about claiming some kind of support for a child who had lost his family.
If I'm honest,
I didn't really have too much of a clue as to what was going on.
But suffice to say,
When we all came together at her house at the end of that week.
And showed her all the money we made.
She told us she had a surprise as well.
It was something none of us were expecting.
We sat round our table,
Feeling very proud of ourselves.
Me and Jack sat one end,
Then there was Elliot sitting next to Sam and Kathy sat opposite while Mrs Bantry sat at the head of the table.
There was tea and seed cake set out.
It was lovely.
And we all sat patiently waiting for her news.
I've been to see a Mr Renfrew,
" she announced before anyone had so much picked up a fork.
I'll say thank you to sit down and listen and you can nibble if you like but I've got a good deal to say and I shan't be saying it twice.
Mr Renfrew,
She told us,
Was a solicitor in the next town.
He had spectacles and he was very serious looking,
She said.
But he dotted every eye twice just to be sure,
And she was certain he was the man for the job.
What job?
I asked impatiently,
But Mrs Bantry gave me a hard stare and I realised she wasn't in the mood for questions.
So she told me that he told her there's no family,
Not a cousin or an aunt twice removed,
Not one soul who's come forward in all this time.
He contacted their original solicitor,
William's parents that is,
And he found out the grim truth.
So now it was all out in the open.
William was on his own.
The world knew.
I felt very nervous at that point because I thought,
Now she's let the cat out of the bag,
They're going to come and get him.
They'll send the authorities round and they'll come and take him to Barnardo's or something,
A children's home.
That was the last thing we wanted.
But I should have known better.
Mrs Bantry was a little bit more savvy than that.
She then found out that it's an estate,
And a proper one.
One that would keep William in more than beans on toast,
If you know what I mean.
And his parents had made a will.
They said if anything was ever to happen to them,
Because they had no living relatives,
That he was to go and live in a boarding school,
The likes of which they had both been in all their childhood.
And Mrs Bantry said it sounded like a very safe and secure one,
Somewhere that was like a home from home,
That he'd be well looked after in.
And on the holidays,
It was to come back to Mr.
O.
C.
,
Who,
Meanwhile,
Would be funded to carry on working for the family.
Now of course the only family that was left was William.
But Mr.
Ocey will be in the house,
The house will be done out,
Everything will be brought back to the standard of which he was accustomed to.
That meant we as the Mountford Gang could spend time with him.
Every summer.
Every Easter,
Every Christmas.
It was going to be fantastic.
But with one proviso.
This we all sat on the edges of our seat to hear.
Mrs.
Bantry said.
.
.
She'd always wanted children and she would adopt him.
Obviously she was too old to really look after him like a mother could.
But she wanted to be responsible.
Not in a financial way.
Everything was tied up in his estate and none of that would be going to her of course,
But she would be responsible emotionally for his well-being.
She and Mr.
O.
C.
Had made a pact.
That they would both back him,
Support him whenever he needed someone to talk to.
Well,
We as the Mountford gang felt like our job was done.
Now all that was left for us to do was to go round and tell them the good news.
Mrs Bantry said she wanted us to come as well,
Because if it wasn't for us,
She wouldn't have known about it in the first place.
We all sat there feeling really pleased with ourselves.
But then suddenly we heard a pot crash outside.
The window was open in the kitchen.
And looking out to the garden beyond,
We saw Bradley Button running away.
We knew he'd be on his way to impart the good news,
As though somehow it was all his doing.
And at that moment we realised as the Mountford gang We'd never ever.
Be rid of him.
