The First Week Read Free

big male, alive and perfectly formed except for the bones of its skull. Its brain was hanging out the back of its head in a soft sac. The mother was nuzzling worriedly and Marian, pregnant herself, was horrified. Mac took the lamb in his arms and went behind the shed to shoot it.
    â€˜I’m sorry, Marian,’ he said when he came back, and he was gentle with the distressed ewe. But Marian had gone numb.
    She found herself now at the woodheap and swung the axe. The block of wood split sweetly, but the violence of the impact shocked her, and the sound of the blow.
    Too loud.
    The feeling was an old one. Don’t draw attention to yourself. A childhood hide-and-seek feeling. If you were hidden, then you couldn’t tell how close the finder was and you had to keep very still. It was the waiting she hated, knowing that something would soon be expected of her, that she would have to leave the safety of her hidey hole, make a break.
    Being the finder was worse though, being the only one in the open, knowing that you were watched, that unseen enemies were working to outwit you. Then the silence was terrible and she would get flustered, double back to places she’d already searched, turn away just as someone was sneaking home.
    The hiding places themselves, the secret places, she liked.
    The axe hung in her hand. She couldn’t bring herself to swing it again. Putting it neatly back in the drum she went to the kitchen and laid the two bits of wood end to end in the box.
    The draining board was piled high with the best china. Cups and saucers, hideous wedding-present vases, casserole dishes too big for one person. There were mice in the cupboard, droppings everywhere, and she’d hauled everything out the night before.
    Well it would give her something to do. She ran water into the sink and pushed four cups under the suds.
    On top of the pile was a cake dish covered in tiny blue forget-me-nots, one of her mother’s few treasures. Not for everyday.
    The rhythm of washing and drying was soothing. The pile of clean crockery on the table grew. She dried a vase and started on the wine glasses.
    Just an ordinary morning, like so many others. The boys, young again, playing outside …
    A thought swam up into her mind. An old dark thought, unused to the light, a thought about her unreadable baby. Charlie needs watching.
    She turned the radio on. Warehouse overload. All stock must go. An ad for carpets. Who needed carpets? But when she turned it off the silence weighed on her. The numbers flickered on the tiny screen as she twiddled to get music. The green green grass of home. Better.
    That girl, the one who’d rung, sounded very young. Probably she’d got confused and rung by mistake. It was some other Marian with a son called Charlie.
    The trilling of the phone cut across Tom Jones.
    Marian was gripped by a tight band around her chest, a sudden absence of breath. Her jaw trembled.
    It was the girl again.
    We think you should come … can you get here by tomorrow morning?
    So that was it. There was no mistake.
    Marian had the strange sensation, physical, of willing her brain to work, winding it up like an old clock.
    She bit at the torn quick of her thumbnail and the sudden pain made her wince. Think, damn it.
    What did she need to take?
    Someone was mumbling, a monotonous drone. A moment passed before she realised that the sound came from her own mouth. Go to the city. Drive to Perth. Charlie’s dead.
    No. There was something wrong about that.
    Her lungs squeezed shut.
    Not Charlie. Someone else.
    She should ring Brian. He’d be home for his lunch by now. With her hand poised over the number pad she stopped. Brian and Michelle. A number that she rang every day, more familiar than her own.
    Nine two seven …
    She jiggled the button and tried again.
    Nine two seven …
    No use. The rest was gone from her mind.
    That frightened her more than anything. Shaking, she fumbled the