Chapter 27
Nicolas the Betrayer
In a small bookcase in a corner of Nicolas’ attic bedroom, among a dozen or so tattered books which Nicolas always pretended were the equivalent of his father’s downstairs study, rests a slim hardback with a dark blue spine and a cover picture of a ghostly white man atop a horse with a young girl in a red raincoat slumped in front of him. Its title is simply, “Storm,” and when he was younger, Nicolas loved to say the author’s last name, “Crossley-Holland.”
On a late Sunday afternoon, hardly a year before, Nicolas’ father, Mr. Bennett, had been sitting in his study, reading a wrinkled copy of The Daily Telegraph, while Nicolas was spread out on the floor, thumbing through a comic book. “Right-o!” Mr. Bennett suddenly exclaimed, loudly thumping the newspape
