Unhallowed Ground Read Free Page A

Hopelessly. Tiredly. Fearfully.
    And back then, as she leaned forward from her sunken chair that even in late summer smelled of damp, wringing her hands and sharing her feelings with her friends, aware of her secret resentment, she would have liked to have screamed, And I am grateful for your continued friendship, can you sense that, dear God? Because that meant that their friendship, once on equal terms, once as honest as friendships could be, was flawed, even though they would have received this as an affront and answered, ‘That is absurd.’ Yes, that resentment, that bitterness, it was there now and nothing could alter it. And what would they have thought if Georgie had screamed across their cosy pink drunkenness, as she longed to do, This outrageous, diabolical thing did not happen to either of you, but my God how I wish that it HAD . I wish it was me sitting where you are giving advice and sympathizing. I wish I was you and that either of you were over here in my position.
    Yes, she was giving them too little and they were giving her too much.
    She re-embarked on her train of thought. She said, ‘I wish I’d been able to go to court and stand trial. It would have been fairer, and they were trying me anyway.’
    Wretched. Despairing. And guilty.
    ‘No, they were not. The inquiry never expected to find you guilty, Georgie. Nothing is that simplistic. You did all that was humanly possible. You are not a fortune teller. The inquiry found you blameless.’
    ‘Blameless? Jesus Christ! A child is murdered and how can any of us be blameless? And I could have done more. It is always possible to have done more.’
    Isla removed her dramatically circular spectacles and rubbed the lenses on the arm of the sofa, as if to polish them and study Georgie simultaneously. ‘You can’t stop dwelling on all this, can you? Punishing yourself over and over? I can see you doing it. One minute we’re talking normally and the next you sink into yourself, clam up, your expression changes, you go miles away.’
    During this terse exchange Georgie attempted a stoic smile, her teeth must have looked like false ones, clenched so rigidly, in a jar. She tightened her hands in her lap. ‘How the hell can I get this out of my mind? Five minutes is the longest time I’ve been free of it so far, and at night I have such nightmares about it.’ She might as well admit it. Yes, yes, punishing herself over the smallest details, all those ifs and buts and if onlys, any device to add to the torture.
    ‘What on earth is that rank smell?’ Thank goodness the subject was changed.
    ‘There must be a dead rat in the wall.’
    ‘Last night, in bed, I thought I heard scratching. Maybe one of your more experienced neighbours could put some poison down.’
    So you see how uncomfortable Georgie felt with her visitors, some of them colleagues from work, some old friends who went back to Toby, others picked up, like most friends are, while thumbing their way along the hard shoulder of life. They came in a steady stream, like memories, so that, incredibly, there had been no complete week from June through to September when she had been alone for longer than forty-eight hours. They kept her busy. They entertained her. But at the end of the day it did not matter how hard they worked with her on the cottage, it made no difference what fun they shared as they laboured in the sunshine repairing the fences, patching the thatch, turning over the rock-hard soil or unblocking the stream. It mattered not what picnics they shared or how many bottles of wine they drank, she could not overcome that grim stumbling block however hard she tried. They were the blessed, she the damned. They brought car-loads of supplies, they worked with a will, paying their way, but they overdid the kindness bit. Their visits were of condolence, of support in her hour of need, just as hers would have been if the boot was on the other foot. They pitied her and her sad predicament. They thanked