“Well, I’d better be off. You enjoy your butterflies. Look – there’s one now.”

A cabbage white fluttered up from the long grass.

“Goodbye, Maggie.”

“Bye, Mr Wetheral.”

I ran behind the tree and slid down beside it until my heart stopped galloping.

“Hey!” That loud whisper. Una.

“Is he gone?” She climbed out from the hawthorn. She had a proper grin on her face this evening. Gappy and huge and … purple.

Blackberries.

“I’m sorry it’s got so late, Una. I couldn’t get away. Had to do the—”

“Never mind! Never mind! You’ll never guess what! This is the best day ever. It’s my dad – those antibiotics are making him better already. After only one day! You saved his life, Maggie. You saved his life!” She grabbed me with purple-stained fingers and swung me round. The bag of food flew round with us.

“Shh!” I laughed. “Shhh! People’ll hear us!”

“And guess what else I found?” she said.

“A blackberry bush?”

She stopped swinging. “How did you know?”

I grabbed her purple hands and turned them palms up. “You’re covered in them.”

Una’s laugh was the funniest laugh ever. Snorty and honky, both at the same time. It made me laugh too, just hearing it.

“Oh, Maggie, you’ve got to come and meet my dad, come and see for yourself. He’s talking and making sense and everything. He’s going to be all right and it’s all down to you. Come with me and see him.”

She pulled me over towards the hawthorn.

I pulled back.

“I can’t,” I said.

“It won’t take long; we’re not so far away—”

“No, it’s not that. It’s the boundary. I can’t go beyond the boundary.”

“The boundary?”

“The hedge.”

We both looked at the hawthorn.

“You mean you’re not meant to go past it?” she said.

“Course I’m not. No one is.”

“I haven’t been to a town with a boundary before. Boun-dreee.” She said the word slowly. Like it was a new one she’d just learned. “There’s no one around, though, is there? Who’s to know?”

I’d know.

Even if no one saw me, even if I didn’t get caught, it’d be there in my head and it’d never go away. It was bad enough stealing the antibiotics. Going past a boundary was way worse.

“And so what if anyone does know?” she said. “S’not exactly murder, is it? Come on.”

She pulled at my arm.

I pulled back. “Frederick Parris got locked up for going outside the Leap Cross boundary.”

“Locked up?”

“That’s what Lindi said. He got caught and locked up for years and years and years and when he came out he never spoke again. Not a word. He just reads his books now. And helps out at the dairy sometimes. Never says a word.”