Thieving Fear Read Free Page A

with the further landscape of fields and distant houses as if earth had closed over her eyes. She had backed off the edge of the cliff.
    Its side rushed up past her like a mass of smoke, and then her feet struck ground, too soon. She was on a ledge close to the top, which meant she had a long way to fall. She staggered against the cliff to rest her face and hands against the clay while she tried to be sure of her balance. The ledge was dismayingly narrow as well as slippery with sand. 'Can someone come?' she cried before she had time to wonder who might respond. 'Can anyone hear?'
    She could – a muffled restless sound, and then a louder and more purposeful version. She wasn't sure it was made by the flap of a tent until Ellen called somewhat sleepily 'Was that you, Charlotte? Where are you?'
    'Here,' Charlotte shouted and turned her shaky head to see. It wasn't a ledge, it was a path that led straight to the top. As she scrambled upwards, a shape loomed above her. 'What on earth are you doing down there?' Ellen said. 'Were you sleepwalking?'
    Charlotte didn't answer until her cousin took her hand and helped her over the edge. The common stretched as blank as innocence to the tents. She murmured her thanks and stayed close to Ellen while they padded across the grass. She could see no sign of a hidden trapdoor in the area where she remembered it to have been, and how could none of her cousins have been disturbed by a voice as loud as the one she'd seemed to hear? 'I must have been,' she decided and instantly felt better.
    This appeared to be Hugh's cue to call 'Where are they? Which way did they go?'
    'Listen to it,' Ellen said with an affectionate laugh. 'It's a good job we didn't have to rely on the boys, isn't it, Charlotte?'
    'What's wrong?' Rory demanded. 'We were asleep. I was down the house.'
    'Charlotte's been walking in her sleep.' Ellen led her into the tent and waited while she wriggled into her sleeping bag. 'Let's get you snug so you can't wander off again,' she said, zipping the bag up tight. For a moment, until she controlled herself, Charlotte found the tent and the bag and Ellen's concern almost as oppressive as the notion of climbing down into the dark.

ONE
    'Shall we walk along the beach for some more exercise?' Ellen said.
    They were at the end of the road that led from Thurstaston to the cliff. Above the Welsh coast the sky was padded with white clouds that kept displaying and repacking the sun. As sunlight outdistanced a mass of shadow that raced across the common alongside the road, the grass seemed to breathe the light in. A child cried out beyond the thorny hedge that had just turned more luminously green, and it wasn't until a man shouted 'Shemp' that Charlotte realised the child had been startled by a dog. By then Hugh had told Ellen 'Good idea before we have to drive.'
    Ellen raised her almost invisible eyebrows and then narrowed her bluish eyes and pressed her full lips together as if searching for a way to render her round face less plump. 'You're supposed to say I don't need any exercise, Hugh.'
    His long face tried on an apologetic smile as he passed a hand over his cropped scalp before patting his prominent stomach. 'I meant I did. You need to keep fit in my job.'
    Rory shook his head, wagging his black ponytail. His face was even longer than his brother's and bonier as well, which emphasised his large sharp nose. His habitual wry but weary grin, so faint it was close to secretive, scarcely wavered as he said 'Say what you see or you'll never be a writer.'
    'I'm not one,' Hugh said as though he'd failed to grasp that Rory wasn't addressing him. 'You're the artistic lot. I'm Supermarket Man.'
    'That's art if you do it right,' Rory said. 'Everything is.'
    'You're just as important as the rest of us, Hugh.' Perhaps in a bid to heighten his tentative smile, Ellen added 'More than I can be just now.'
    'You've been crucial to people who needed it,' Charlotte assured her. 'So are we having our last