Read Online The Dark Light by Julia Bell - Free Book Online Page A

isn’t what usually happens here. I talk to him softly. It’s OK, calm down, everything’s going to be OK .
    When Jonathan first came to the island he was still withdrawing from drugs. He would cry in the prayer services, big heavy sobs, and when he gave his testimony he could hardly speak he got so upset. He said he left home at fourteen because he was being abused, and never knew a real family until he came to live with us. He said he was so grateful to be accepted at last, that he had never felt a love so strong and true. He struggles every day and has to get extra prayers from the elders to help him with his bad thoughts. Thoughts which he says come straight from the devil, that tell him to do bad things to himself.
    As the fire rises I shovel on more and more coal and he stands awkwardly in front of it, his clothes steaming in the sudden heat.
    As the shaking subsides, he notices Alex.
    ‘Who’s that?’ he says in a loud whisper to me as if Alex can’t hear.
    I put my hand on his arm and he nearly jumps clean out of his skin. ‘It’s OK,’ I say. ‘She’s come here to live with us for a while. We’ve been away, remember?’
    ‘You’re her!’ he says, backing away from Alex. ‘You’re the reason we’ve been praying all week! Mr Bevins said that a visitor would come from the mainland. It’s happening . . . just like he said!’
    Alex stands up, holding Paul on her hip, and backs away from him. ‘You’re nuts,’ she says.
    ‘Where are the others, Jonathan? Where’s Mary? Why were the twins locked in the cellar?’ I talk to him slowly. ‘What’s happened?’ But I can tell he isn’t taking anything in. He kneels in front of the fire, his hands pressed together, muttering prayers.
    ‘What the hell’s wrong with him?’ she hisses, sounding scared.
    ‘It’s OK,’ I whisper. ‘He’s just a bit intense.’ We back away from the fire and settle back at the kitchen table, while he ignores us. I look at the pot on the table suspiciously and sniff it. It smells bitter, of mud and of something else, something chemical that I don’t recognize.
    Then there is the suck of the door opening and the fire draws, logs sending out sparks. Father and Mary Protheroe come in.
    Mary is tall, with a strong, serious face and red rosacea on her cheeks. This makes her look as if she’s just been scrubbed, especially when it flares, which it always seems to in the summer. Her hands are gnarly from all the work she does and the beginning of arthritis. She was already quite old when she gave birth to the twins, I don’t know how old she is exactly, but Mother told me once that she was over forty, and that was a few years before she got pregnant.
    ‘Where have you been?!’ I ask. ‘The twins were locked in the cellar!’
    She raises her eyebrows at me as if I’m making a fuss. ‘They needed to be safe while we were gone,’ she says with a shrug, as if it doesn’t matter.
    ‘But . . .’
    She gives me the kind of look that makes it clear that she doesn’t want to talk about it. ‘Welcome back,’ she says tightly, as if she doesn’t really mean it. Her hair is wet and her face is raw.
    ‘But why were they in the cellar?’ I want her to explain this to Alex as much as to me.
    She tuts and shakes her head, she looks at Peter, lifting his eyelids and checking his pulse. ‘They’re fine! Take them upstairs,’ she says, and then, pointing at Alex, ‘and her too. She can share your room till we sort something out.’
    ‘But where were you?’ I ask. ‘No one was here. We thought . . .’ but I don’t tell her, because now she’s here it sounds presumptuous.
    ‘Praying,’ she says curtly. ‘In fact, the others are still up there.’
    ‘But the chapel lights were off. And Jonathan . . .’ He’s still kneeling by the fire.
    ‘We were outside, up at the rock.’ She says this like a rebuke, as if she’s angry with me. Something’s been going on while we’ve been away that I don’t