SEVEN DEADLY THINGS
A Henry & Sparrow Novel
A D FOX
SPARTILLUS
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
About the Author
Also by A D FOX
Acknowledgments
A D FOX
A D Fox © 2021
SEVEN DEADLY THINGS
Published worldwide by Spartillus.
This edition published in 2021.
Copyright © 2021 A D Fox
The right of A D Fox to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted with accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in book review.
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Prologue
‘Say sorry.’
‘What?’ He looked genuinely confused. Like he really had no clue. Like he’d forgotten. And that was just it, really. How little it meant. So very little, it hadn’t even lodged in his memory.
‘Say sorry for what you did. Write it. Write it down.’
The guy screwed up his handsome face, trying to understand. It was going to be necessary to explain.
Afterwards, he looked even more baffled. ‘But… that was seven years ago! I mean… we weren’t much more than kids…’
‘So… you’re not sorry?’
‘Yes… yes, of course I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.’
Well, he would be, wouldn’t he?
He blinked at the curved edges, wrote his apology in red ballpoint on the soft, pristine white, and then he seemed to think that was it. All sorted. Like writing sorry was going to make it all right. He realised that sorry wasn’t enough as soon as he saw the gun. That was the most satisfying moment - the dawning realisation.
Even so, he tried to talk his way out of it, as they walked towards the steamy spot beneath the palm trees. He talked and talked and talked, right up to the point when the blade cut through his voice box and he literally couldn’t talk any more.
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‘ALLIGATORS!' screamed Ellie.
There was instant squealing and shouting. Ellie took a deep breath. Nearly thirty kids were running towards her, arms flailing wildly through the air, eyes wide, hair streaming.
It was going to be carnage.
‘ALLIGATORS — MARCH!’ she yelled. ‘ALLIGATORS — SNAP! ALLIGATORS LIFT YOUR HANDS AND CLAP!’
The kids got into an unruly line as she marched them around the ballroom floor, snapping and clapping for a couple of minutes until all the stragglers had caught up and joined on the end. Settling back with their drinks and watching with indulgent smiles, the grown-ups started to clap along to the ‘Time For Bed Song’ in the happy knowledge that soon all the little rugrats would have buggered off to go by-byes, and they’d finally be allowed to say the F-word without fear of censure.
‘EACH AND EVERY ALLIGATOR — EVERYONE SAYS SEEYA LATER!’ sang out Ellie — along with a good number of cheerfully pissed adults — as the house band took up the tune on the stage behind her. Nettie, her fellow Buntin’s Children’s Aunty, skipped down to bring up the rear of the alligator line, singing heartily along with the kids now as they replied: ‘WE HAVE HAD A LOVELY DAY, NOW IT’S TIME TO HIT THE HAY!’
The lyrics were somewhat confusing. Alligators didn’t tend to hit the hay, thought Ellie, not for the first time. Crash in the swamp, yes… but that didn’t really rhyme, and she guessed it wasn’t Sir Tim Rice who’d been hired to write the Buntin’s Alligator Club ‘Time For Bed Song’.
‘SNAP! SNAP! SNAP-SNAP-SNAP! ALLIGATORS MARCH! ALLIGATORS SING! ALLIGATORS SNAP AT EVERYTHING!’ Ellie warbled on. Jesus. It was probably the twenty-fifth time she’d sung the bedtime song and it was still just as crap as it had been on the day she’d learned it. Happily, the kids didn’t seem to care. The more ADHD ones were trying to snap the heads off the kids in front of them, encouraged by this nightly exhortation to pretend their arms were crocodilian jaws.
‘AUNTY ALLIGATOR SAID,’ Ellie and Nettie sang out, with feeling. ‘ALLIGATORS OFF TO BED!’
A roar of approval, accompanied by cheers and applause, followed the kids through the Embassy Ballroom doors — held open by a couple of fellow Bluecoats — and out into the carpeted foyer. The children never seemed offended by their rapturous nine o’clock send-off. Once in the foyer, the mums (and occasionally the dads) would come out too, waiting for the last loop of the Alligator March. This last loop went once around the flower beds and then through the top end of Buntin’s Jungle Water World — in one door, past the pool, and out through the other door, while everyone waved goodnight to Martin, the Bluecoat lifeguard.
Jungle Water World was emptied of kids at seven and closed to all punters by eight-thirty. So by nine, with its Rapid River now just rippling gently beneath the fake palm trees, and the main pool azure and mirror-still, it was all rather calm and serene. Ellie and Nettie had discovered that this atmosphere settled their troupe of overtired under-tens down quite nicely as they marched through it. By the time the line came to a final halt, back in the foyer, their charges were usually yawning and resigned to being taken off to their chalets for the night.
As they stomped through the outer doors and headed for the pool complex, Ellie wished she could hit the hay herself. She would love to go back to the chalet and crawl into bed. She was absolutely knackered. But her shift ran from ten in the morning to ten at night. Her last hour, after the children had gone, was to be spent trying to chat to holidaymakers at their tables. ‘Mix and Mingle’
