Hunger Read Free Page B

start.’
    The glass of the cafetiere cracked as she banged it down. Yvonne firmed her lips together.
    Adrian did not get home until after nine that night. The train line was unreliable; they had been held up by another signalling failure. There were bruise-coloured smears beneath his eyes.
    ‘Signalling failure. Engine failure. Driver failure – failure to turn up.’
    He fell onto the sofa so hard the springs bounced.
    ‘We had a burglary,’ Yvonne said.
    Adrian sat up.
    Paula wanted to slap her. ‘Well, hardly.’
    ‘What else do you call it? They were stealing. They came into this house while we were out and stole things. I call that a burglary.’
    ‘They only took food.’
    ‘Oh, so taking food isn’t burglary?’
    ‘They’re children. They are less than ten years old.’
    ‘A child can be held morally responsible from the age of seven.’
    Her voice was oily with satisfaction.
    ‘You mean you caught them at it?’
    ‘Only I wasn’t allowed to phone the police.’
    Adrian lay back again and closed his eyes.
    ‘Paula?’ He sounded infinitely weary.
    ‘They’re children. You saw them in the wood that day. You know the ones. You said it was wonderful.’
    ‘What was wonderful?’
    ‘That they could be roaming about freely, enjoying nature.’
    ‘Roaming about freely thieving from other people,’ Yvonne said. ‘Where do they live, these children? You’ll need to tell their parents.’
    ‘We’ll see.’
    Paula took the empty mugs into the kitchen, dumped them in the sink and went outside. It had rained again. The air smelled of wet leaves, wet grass, damp earth. A blackbird sang.
    She went to the bottom of the garden and stood very still, wondering what she ought to do about the children. Not the police, of course, and she had no idea where they came from. She could follow them, the next time, but they appeared and disappeared like wraiths.
    She had no thought of accosting their parents, but she wanted to know what their home was like and why they did what they did. Why they were not at school.
    A light went on in the front bedroom, but she knew Yvonne would still be downstairs, waiting. When she had married Adrian her sister Elaine had said, ‘You do know it’s normal for mothers of only sons to hate the women they marry, don’t you? She’ll give you grief.’
    Elaine’s own marriage had lasted barely two years, but as Ted’s mother was dead before they met, Paula had not understood how Elaine knew all the things about which she preached with such apparent authority. She had not thought a great deal about Yvonne in advance, but then she sometimes thought that she had not thought a great deal about Adrian, either. He had pursued her – wooed her, Elaine said sarcastically – with such ferocity and determination, such eagerness and puppy-like ardour that she had been unable to put up any resistance, unable to see him clearly, unable to imagine what their future might be like. It had been easy to let herself be swept along. She was by nature quite lazy and a sort of inertia had stifled her, blurring her usually sharp critical sense. She had been very fond of Adrian. Who could not be? He hadn’t a bone of malice in his body, never complained, always enthused, was optimistic to a fault, all of which was refreshing to someone who was inclined to occasional melancholy. Yvonne had existed, vaguely, but lived miles away from them. That her doing so meant she would come to stay for a week or more at a time was another thing Paula had not bargained for.
    Over the past nine years she had learned how to deal with Yvonne’s visits simply by carrying on as usual and letting Yvonne follow or not, accompany her or stay at home. It had worked quite well. Sometimes Yvonne came with her – to the art supplier, the shops, the park or a garden centre, to have coffee or even lunch out. Sometimes she did not, but put her feet up on the sofa and read crime novels. And waited – counting the minutes, Paula