Arthur and Little Lottie Rattus-Renshaw


 Arthur and his sister Little Lottie grew up under the care of the Sisters of Mercy in Broken Arm, Alabama where they had been left by their mother who was otherwise occupied in Widow’s Peak Women's Detention Centre.

Arthur and Lottie's mum was not a bad woman, or a bad mother, she was just someone who had fallen on bad times and who had signed a few bad cheques to try to make things right. Arthur and Lottie missed their dear mother immensely and despite the firm but fair care of the nuns they couldn't get over the misery of being separated from her with no possible end in sight. So they hatched a somewhat convoluted plan to abscond from the children's home in the dead of night, sneak into the Peak, liberate their imprisoned mother, hot-wire a car and head for the border, the Canadian border and freedom from their injustice. Freedom to start their life together again and live happily ever after.

And so it transpired that Arthur and clever Little Lottie did slip into the night. A night with no stars, light rain and a dull moon and did manage to free their surprised mother, hot wired the first unlocked car they found and made a mad dash northward across many state lines until they were in sight of the Oroville/Osooyos border. A tiny speck of a place that separated fear from freedom. Yes, they had made it.

Except, not two hundred yards from the crossing a thousand lights exploded around them, it was the US Highway Patrol lurking in the bushes. Twenty officers from six different states who'd been 'looking for a Cadillac with Tennessee plates'.