Boundaries (Love in Norfolk #1)

Prologue

The Past

"Mason, what the hell ? Have you got the ball or what?" Seth McKenna’s annoying, whiny voice grated in my ears. I snorted from my hiding place. At the end of the day, out of all the McKenna boys, he was the least of my problems.

To be honest, I had them all figured out. Simply put, Seth was the irritating one, Boyd was the laziest and stupidest, Nixon was the scariest, and Mason was the meanest.

I had been hiding under their house for the last thirty minutes, watching them attempt to play football and eavesdropping. And now it appeared I was busted.

“Dude, you’re taking forever .”

“Shush, I’m listening," the latter McKenna replied gruffly. My daddy said Mason was at that in-between stage when a boy’s voice started to crack into a man’s. I thought he sounded stupid.

I shuffled further back into the darkness of my hiding place. This was the spot I came to when I was in spy mode. I was on a mission and determined to earn wages to buy sweets. My brother Mattie would give me money for any dirt I could dig up on the McKenna boys. He also liked me to take pictures of them when they were up to no good.

I’d brought my camera a couple of times, but the photographs were always too dark and using the flash would have been stupid. I may as well have told them I was there.

My orders now were to listen to their boring as heck conversations and report anything interesting back to my brother.

The McKenna’s land bordered my parent’s farm, and our families hated each other.

That was the way it had always been. For years, the Taylor-Joys and the McKenna family had been at each other’s throats, and all due to one dull as dishwater argument about boundaries: confusion as to where our land ended and theirs began.

The section of land that could not be officially claimed, as Daddy put it, was a stretch of meadow that had a river running part way through it. The bend in the river opened into a pool area, which was perfect for wild swimming. The bank was also sloped to allow easy access to the water. Which is the main reason everyone fought over it. Although I still didn’t understand why, it was bloody freezing in there most of the year. My sister Jenna liked it there, though; she found it calming. I did join her sometimes, but mainly to sneak off and watch the lambs being bottle fed; they were so cute during lambing season. The McKenna farm had animals— loads of them. We grew crops for the supermarkets. Not as much fun.

I found all the bickering about the land really boring; it wasn’t as if there was gold buried there. Yes, it had a pool, but who cared? If you wanted to swim, there was the Lakeside Swimming Pool in Swaffham, a large, uninfected pool where you could be free from the worry of something swimming up your suit. And as for the meadow, both our families owned loads of acres already, but Daddy had a bee in his bonnet. He said that Mr and Mrs McKenna were greedy and that it was all about principle, whatever that meant.

In my opinion, we were like the Montagues and the Capulets, two families I was reading about in a book we were studying at school.

That second pair of feet appeared next to those belonging to Mason.

“Listening for what?” Seth blasted back, lowering his voice to a whisper.

“We have a rodent problem.”

The snort left my mouth before I could stop it. Did Mason McKenna just call me a rat?

“Really?”

"Yes, dipshit, really," Mason said, losing patience. It didn’t take long for him to snap; Mason McKenna had a smoking-hot temper. I had witnessed it last year when Mattie stole Mason’s girlfriend, Mia. Talk about a boy tantrum. I thought his head was going to explode.

"As in a rat?"

It seemed to take Seth a while for his brother’s words to sink in. I squinted, my eyes scanning his body. It was, in fact, Boyd McKenna who stood there, the dumb one, not Seth. Oops. Silly me.

"Well?" Boyd prompted his brother .

"Almost, more like a B-rat. If you can call it that."

I was nine, but I wasn’t stupid; I knew he was talking about me. How I wanted to kick him in the shin, but let’s face it. From my position in the nook under their house, there was little chance of that!

"Who is it?"

Mason cleared his throat. "One of the Taylor-Joy kids."

Drat! After three weeks of special ops surveillance, my hidey-hole was toast.

“Come out now; we know you’re in there,” the ‘too-big-for-his-own-boots’ McKenna snarled. Yeah, like I was coming out anytime soon, I’d rather stick a fork in my eye.

“Get lost penis breath,” I called out, keeping my voice deep, attempting to disguise it.

“Don’t make us drag you out,” Boyd cut in. Like the little shit would have any chance of doing that. I’d smash my fist into his melon-shaped head first.

My spot was dark and snug, and I was well tucked in. The only way they could get to me was if they came in after me. And I knew Boyd was terrified of spiders. He was a proper big girl’s blouse. I’d seen one under here the other day, and it was almost the size of my fist. Boyd McKenna would crap his pants, and oh, how I would laugh.

"You touch me, you die, McKenna," I warned, directing the sound towards the feet of the bigger, older boy.

Talking of fists, what Mason said next made the fingers of one hand tighten. I was skinny, but I threw a good punch.

"Whatever. You’re a girl and a short arse. You’re not big enough to take me on, Brat ." Dang it, he knew it was me. My cover really was blown.

"I’d punch you in your fat face, but I don’t hurt animals," I snickered. I always compared Mason to a stray dog, like the ones who visited the bins at the back of Crawley’s Butchers. He was big, hairy, and just as wild. He was probably hairy on the inside, too. I told all my friends that I suspected Mason was part Yeti.

He didn’t reply to my animal comment. Not that he would have been able to come up with something better. I was the master of name-calling. I even bested Mattie when he thought he was on a roll .

The silence stretched on, and I wondered if they’d left.

After around five minutes, I started getting pins and needles in my toes and was forced to shuffle forward. My T-shirt and jeans were proper grubby and I longed to pull some denim out of my bottom, I had a monster of a wedgy, but I needed both arms to stop myself from face-planting.

I always got to my hidey-hole by lifting a loose plank, which allowed me to enter the crawlspace there. Mr and Mrs McKenna’s massive , ugly house was on stilts, and the foundations were covered with pieces of wood. They were painted on the outside to match the house, although it still looked like a bugger (my mother’s words, not mine).

They seemed to use the space mainly for storing old bits of machinery. Although one time, I found a bag full of magazines with girls’ boobies in them. Weird.

It was dark and dirty under there, but I was fine. I wasn’t scared of anything . Not even Mr McKenna himself. A bull of a man, with fly-away eyebrows and a mean-looking jaw. His hands were the size of dinner plates and he enjoyed using his fists occasionally.

He was strange looking too. I was sure he and his wife were the same person; they looked so alike, and you hardly ever saw them in the same room. I’d made a bet with my best friend Betty about that.

Mr McKenna had an odd relationship with his kids, especially Mason. They fought, a lot . I remember seeing some right humdingers in the past, but as Mason had gotten older and taller, Mitchell McKenna had become less physical. I suppose if you keep kicking the puppy, eventually, he bites.

I’d heard someone in the village say that Mr McKenna had been poorly recently, but I wasn’t sure what was wrong with him. I remember he’d once given Mason a black eye and how I’d felt sorry for him, but it didn’t last long. Mason was a tough nut and didn’t accept anyone’s pity.

I thought Mr McKenna’s behaviour odd. My Daddy had never hit us which only proved that our family was so much better than theirs.

I was on my tummy, lying flat on the dirt, and I used my elbows to scuffle across the ground, an army tactic my brother had taught me from Call of Duty, a video game we played together. The ‘leopard crawl, he called it .

There was a noise to the left of me, and before I knew what was happening, someone grabbed my leg and started dragging me backwards. My yell was choked out as I sailed past some shrubbery. Grass, leaves, and nettles, smacked me in the face. Feet first, I was roughly yanked out from under the house, my chest trailing through the dried mud. Luckily, I escaped getting stung by the nettles, not as if my attacker would care. I knew it was Mason who held me. Mattie said he was a nasty piece of work.

"Let go, dog face!" I screamed as I managed to flip over onto my back, kicking out at the offending hand that was wrapped around my ankle.

“Nope. Not going to happen. You need to stop sneaking onto our property and trying to take pictures of us, you nosey little bint.” Whatever, I didn’t even have my camera with me.

His hold tightened. Bum, I was done for.

The sky was bright, and my eyes had to adjust after being in semi-darkness for the last half an hour.

Pain shot up my ankle, “Ouch. That hurts.” I hated feeling weak.

My foot was then released and I blinked, looking directly up into the darkest, meanest eyes on the planet. Those belonging to Mason McKenna.

My friend Betty said he was handsome. She was my age and he was fifteen, so that was totally gross; boys were smelly, and I didn’t fancy him at all; I thought he was a proper hog.

"Amy Taylor-Joy, as I expected," Mason sneered. "Now say that to my face, you little witch," he growled down at me. He stood there with his brother by his side, towering into the sky with his arms folded, and my goodness, he was cross. His eyes were doing that bulging thing. I’d joked with Betty that there was a chance he wasn’t from our planet.

"Who let you out of your cage, dog boy?" I shot up at him, now resting back on my elbows.

"Shut up you little shit."

"You just asked me to say it to your face," I pointed out with a snigger.

Mason didn’t like that I’d sassed him, and he unfolded his body, bent over, and hauled me up by my arms .

"Get your grubby paws off me before I thump you!"

"I don’t think so, you little cow." He paused to moodily clear his throat. "Take it back, now!" he boomed. He didn’t like to lose face in front of his younger brother. I stuck my tongue out, and his eyes narrowed, following the movement.

My training from Daddy kicked in, and I attempted to knee him in his thingy, but he blocked me with his leg.

After another frantic wiggle, I managed to stamp on his toe, and he grunted, hauling me closer to his lanky bulk, his hands tightening on my arms. Tears shot into my eyes, and I struggled against him.

He was so much taller than me, that my neck touched my back; it had flipped over so far. The tangled mess that was my hair fell over my shoulders as he shook me, hard , once. The movement caused my teeth to rattle, and I almost bit my tongue. Again, this encouraged further moisture from my eyes. The looming blubs started to creep forward, and there was nothing I could do to stop them.

"Don’t start snivelling; you cry baby, you were fine a minute ago," Mason snarled.

"Let’s chuck her off our property, Mase!" Boyd huffed, egging his brother on.

I suddenly felt properly ganged up on, and a full-on wail fell from my throat. I was scared, and I cursed myself for that weakness.

"Please, just let go," I snivelled. "I won’t tell my dad or anything."

Surely, they wouldn’t rough me up? I was a girl! Boys weren’t allowed to hit girls; doing that turned them into sissies!

Mason watched me in silence for several seconds, his gaze searching my face. I peered helplessly up at him, and his grip loosened on my arms, the balls of my feet sinking into the ground. A dart of relief jetted into me.

As he stared down into my eyes, I saw his expression soften, and I took my chances, catching him off guard. My second wind hit me like a hurricane.

And that was the first time I kicked Mason McKenna directly in the balls.