Read Online The Child Garden by Catriona McPherson - Free Book Online Page A

foot with no torch. It was lit up, but there was no one to see me as I slipped inside and fumbled the buttons with my gloved fingers. I had never dialled 999 before and my pulse started racing as I waited for the call to go through.
    â€œWhat service?” asked a bored voice.
    â€œPolice,” I said, trying to make my voice sound gruff.
    â€œAre you in a safe place, madam?” asked the exchange. Obviously I sounded like exactly what I was: a scared woman.
    â€œPolice,” I said again. “There’s been a death.”
    When I got through to them, I didn’t chance the gruff voice again. I whispered.
    â€œThere’s a body,” I said.
    Then I froze. I felt a sick swirling in my head and my vision blurred. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it until that moment, couldn’t believe I had got that close to blurting out the words that would wreck everything. I crashed the receiver down, burst out of the phone box, ran to my car, and drove away.
    He didn’t come to meet me at the door and I wondered if he was sleeping. It was hard to imagine that sleep would have come to him, but then shock does strange things to you. When the doctors told us about Nicky—finally told us straight, laid it all out, stopped spinning fairy tales—I slept for thirty-six hours. I’ve never been so ashamed of anything in my life. Just when he needed his mother most of all, when he was trying to deal with such bad news, I abandoned him and slept. I even remember what I dreamt of. A childhood summer, a room with floating white curtains and a shining wooden floor and me sitting up in bed with a nightcap on, eating soup from a cup and playing with tiny little wooden soldiers that turned into chessmen and then marbles and rolled away. I’ve never been in a room like that in my life. More’s the pity.
    I turned off the kitchen lamps, rubbed Walter’s head, and said a prayer to keep the Rayburn lit until morning, then slipped out into the hallway. That was when I heard him snoring. I put the light on and looked down at him, sitting at the bottom of the stairs with his head against the banisters, his mouth open and his hands hanging down between his knees. A scrap of paper had dropped from his grasp and lay on the floor.
    I bent and lifted it, seeing that it was a clipping from a newspaper. A tiny thing; it hardly took a moment to read it.
    McAllister, 1 May 1995 . It said . By his own hand, Nathan McAllister. Private funeral. No flowers.
    I hadn’t had any dinner, beyond the bit of gingerbread and chocolate biscuit they’d brought me at the home with my cup of tea. They’re good to me there since I’m in every day. So I was lightheaded by this time. Never mind the whisky that I’m not used to. And the newspaper clipping was one thing too much. By his own hand .
    The words danced on the page and all I could see was April’s hands, curled round the handle of the knife with the dark blood in the creases of her fingers. And then Nicky’s hands, curled round the rolled flannels they give him to stop them spasming up so tight I can’t wash them. I wash them every night. Well, boys his age get mucky. I wash them and rub lotion into them and once a week I trim his nails and take off his friendship bracelets, rub his wrists underneath in case they’re itchy. April wore no jewelry. Her sleeves were pushed back up her arms as far as they would go and there was nothing.
    â€œIt was in the bottom of her bag,” said Stig. I hadn’t noticed him waking. “It’s Nod, from our class. If that’s real, and it looks real, he’s dead.”
    â€œSince 1995.”
    â€œFirst of May, 1995. The tenth anniversary of the night Moped died. Gloria, what the fuck’s going on?”
    I took a deep breath to answer, but I had no idea what to say.
    â€œLet me sleep on it,” I went for in the end. “It might look different in the