Half-Sick of Shadows Read Free Page A

without enough sense to get back under the blankets. ‘What are you looking at out there? There’s nothing to see. You’ve nothing on your feet. Honestly!’
    She pulled back the blankets on Sophia’s bed and inserted a hot water bottle. Sophia got in. Mother folded the blankets over her like sealing an envelope. I got into my bed, and my hot water bottle joined me seconds later. ‘Go straight to sleep, and no talking.’ She blew out our candles and closed our bedroom door tight, leaving us alone with the Dark, the Cold and the Night Noises.
    ‘Why did she whisper?’ whispered Sophia.
    My shrug was lost on my twin without candlelight, unless, with bigger earholes than me, she heard a shrug in the rusty bedsprings or frozen sheets.
    ‘Are you awake?’ I pretended to be asleep. ‘Edward! Edward, wake up. Are you asleep?’
    ‘Not yet.’
    ‘Why did Mother whisper?’
    ‘It’s been a whispery day.’
    ‘Why’s it been a whispery day?’
    ‘Some days just are.’
    My answer satisfied her. It satisfied me too.
    Some days were whispery the way some days were sad. Some days were noisy the way some days were happy. Whispery sad days and noisy happy days went together in a satisfying way, the way toast and jam go together although toast is hard and jam is runny.
    I had a hot water bottle, which satisfied me too, because it meant my feet would soon defrost. In the absence of knitted bed hats, we pulled our blankets up to our eyes. We were snug although our exposed foreheads were chilly. Cold that ruled the day gone by, at night turned our faces straight like icicles.
    Sophia and I had agreed, long before candles-out, and without need for words, that we should be quiet and sad too, although we felt happy – which was probably a sin. We were quiet and happy, but happy in a sad way because of Father’s sadness at Granny Hazel’s illness, which we thought we should share. We needed no one to tell us. We did not need to tell each other. Sophia and I just knew, the way we knew how to fly: tomorrow would be different.
    Tomorrow, we would begin to forget how to fly.
    ‘Edward,’ said Sophia.
    ‘I’m asleep.’
    ‘I saw the White Lady with the fuzzy face. Did you see her too?’
    ‘Yes.’
    The White Lady with the fuzzy face was our ghost. When someone saw her, it meant somebody was going to die. I hadn’t really seen her; I told Sophia a lie because I didn’t want my twin to be all alone and afraid when she saw the White Lady with the fuzzy face.
    Later … we should have been asleep, and maybe we were until the stairs creaked and the stairs creaked and the stairs creaked again. The landing floorboards at the top of the stairs creaked. The handle of our door grated and the door groaned open. We were four wide eyes, watching. A candle. A hand. An arm. Mother. Mother returned to our bedroom with the candle making her face look like the sun in night-time.
    Sophia rose on her elbows in her bed and I rose on mine in mine.
    ‘Granny Hazel has passed on,’ said Mother, with neither sorrow nor a smile. I felt odd in a tingly way down my spine. ‘I just thought I’d let you know. There’s nothing you need to do. There’s nothing anyone can do. Go to sleep now, it’s late. Be brave.’
    She and her candle left the room, closed the door tight again, and left us inside on our elbows with the Dark and the Cold. We had each other , and Mother had been brave. Sophia and I borrowed some of her bravery, although we didn’t know for sure what to do with it.
    Granny Hazel took ill a week before Farmer Barry brought Father, his bicycle and the coffin home in his lorry. We saw her taking ill as it happened, Sophia and me, and Mother and Gregory and Edgar too. All of us children were born in the Manse and had lived there all our short lives. Granny Hazel was born in the Manse too, and had lived there all her very long life.
    On the day she took ill, Father worked late on the farm. The Manse’s kitchen was hot and thick with the