Read Online The Shell House by Linda Newbery - Free Book Online

he accelerated his pace, swinging to their left. The woman’s imperious voice carried across the grass: ‘No, he’s taking photographs today.’ His role seemed to have become semi-official. Walking slowly through the wet grass of the orchard, he picked up a windfall apple and took a bite, then winced at its sourness and chucked it away. He was making his way to the lake, along to where Faith’s log path made its secret descent through the shrubby thickets, when he saw her by the edge of the wood, her back to him. She was picking blackberries, dropping them into a blue plastic carrier bag; she wore jeans and a bright yellow T-shirt. While he wondered whether to speak to her or cut down to the lake on his own, she turned and saw him.
    ‘Hello!’ She didn’t seem at all surprised. ‘I hoped you’d come.’
    ‘Oh, did you?’ He walked slowly towards her. ‘What, after last week? Handing me over to your dad, then clearing off?’
    She laughed. She had white, even teeth and an infectious laugh; annoyed with her though he was, he couldn’t help smiling.
    ‘Dad kept going on about you all week—how good to have young people involved, how hard you’d worked, all that sort of thing.’ She stooped to wipe juice-stained hands on the grass; the silver cross swung forward on its chain as she crouched.
    ‘Why did you go along with him when he thought you knew me?’
    Faith smiled. ‘Easier than saying you were some trespasser who crept up on me down by the lake.’
    ‘I didn’t creep! And how come you don’t get roped in to the slave labour? I don’t see you sweating and straining.’
    ‘I am helping, though!’ Faith looked affronted. ‘Mum makes blackberry pies and jam to sell at the open day. It all helps make money. Look! There’s hundreds here—great big juicy ones. You can help if you like.’
    ‘Well, OK.’ He came closer to the mound of brambles, seeing the thorny stems heavy with clusters of blackberries, plump and glossy, and the drapery of spider-webs spangled with dew.
    ‘We can get loads.’ Faith pulled another plastic bag from her jeans pocket. ‘Look out for maggots. I’ve seen one or two.’
    ‘Does your mum work here as well, then?’
    ‘Mm, every week—she’s tidying up in the Coach House.’
    The berries were asking to be picked, coming away easily from their stems; it was satisfying, dropping the warm fruit into his bag, feeling it gradually sag with their weight. He ate while he picked, feeling the sharp sweetness on his tongue and the fibrous pippiness.
    ‘Breakfast,’ he explained to Faith.
    ‘Were you mad at me last week?’ she asked.
    ‘What do you think? Getting rid of me like that!’
    ‘Oh no, it wasn’t that. I was in the middle of something, that’s all.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘At the grotto, where you found me—I go down there to be by myself. To meditate and pray.’ She looked at him defiantly. ‘No-one disturbs me down there.’
    ‘Pray?’ Greg echoed, not sure she was serious.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘What, all day long?’
    She shook her head. ‘No, I think and read and walk about as well, and just look at the water and the trees. I suppose I think of it as my own special Sunday place. That’s why I didn’t like you being there at first.’
    Greg looked at her sidelong. ‘So you don’t—you know—go to church; you go there instead?’
    ‘Church on Sunday evenings. And to Bible Study class on Wednesdays.’
    ‘Oh.’ He was taken aback. The cross round her neck wasn’t a mere piece of jewellery, then. St Ursula’s girl. Right. Religion probably came as part of the package. But it was more than a formality for her, if she spent time praying by herself.
    ‘What do you pray about?’ he ventured.
    ‘Oh, things. There’s always something. I mean big things, not just things for myself.’
    ‘You’ve got the right name then. Faith.’
    She laughed. ‘That’s no coincidence. My parents are both Christians, you see.’
    ‘What if you hadn’t wanted to be