Unhallowed Ground Read Free Page B

her for her hospitality, they thanked her for their holiday, but they were being kind and Georgie was grateful. And that put something unpleasant between them, something she found hard to deal with. Poor old Georgina, psychologically standing up while everyone else remained sitting down.
    Perhaps she was oversensitive, but she could suddenly easily understand why the troubled resent do-gooders so. And there’s only so much support you can get before you see yourself as a cripple.
    In some perverse way their well-meaning presences prevented her from healing herself. And yet, look at this, one week after their departure and already she wanted them back. She feared for the roots of her being. She thought she was going mad.
    The shaking first started…
    It was Roger Mace who broke the news that Angela Hopkins was dead. Over the phone for God’s sake, a most personal call. The ringing woke her in the morning—a mental alarm in her head—she heard the freezing-cold news in a hot crumpled bed. ‘Georgie. I’m so sorry. I wanted to tell you myself.’
    She had to know, shoulders hunched to guard breathless conversation. ‘How did she die?’
    ‘They’re not sure yet… a blow to the head…’
    ‘When?’ She hugged the duvet to her stomach. She could feel death’s proximity. Her ankles were white as bleached bones, thin as a child’s, thin as a skeleton’s.
    ‘Last night.’
    ‘And Patsy and Carmen?’ She spoke with deliberate, polite calm.
    ‘There’s a place of safety order, but no sign of abuse so far.’
    ‘What will happen?’
    ‘Well, I’m no expert, but the case will be given a high priority. There’ll be an enormous public impact.’
    Her hair fell forward to hide her face. ‘I’ll come straight to the office.’
    ‘No, Georgie, stay where you are. There’ll be time for all that later.’
    A warning kindly given. A glimpse of the scalpel of scrutiny. She hadn’t asked for an explanation. And then it was suddenly déjà vu , she’d always known this was going to happen and what would happen next. Oh God, let it not be true. She had always secretly known and yet done nothing about it. Guilty as that bastard, Ray Hopkins himself, the man with the bullet-shaped head and the earful of sleepers, who lived behind the yellow door and swore blind that his five-year-old daughter had fallen down the stairs.
    She sank on all fours, her lips trembling, her eyes welling. She pressed one hand to her mouth and squeezed her eyes closed. And she thought, At least it was quick, dear God, at least the end came quickly. She would not let herself think more of the child, no, not at that time. She blocked little Angela out, and that was another small betrayal.
    As if she had never known her.
    And that’s how the dreadful story began.

TWO
    S ILVERED WITH AN IMPOSSIBLE beauty, like viewfinder slides of Heidi , and scented by her vanilla car tree, that was Georgina’s first impression of Furze Pen Cottage. It was a chilling sort of beauty, sharp, more like a sound.
    It was February, a pearly, tear-stained month, and Angela Hopkins had died that December. Christmas did not happen for Georgie, and nor did new year. All the horror was busy going on so the fact that her brother, Stephen, had died of liver rot added to her total destruction in a way which was quite irrational. Why such a traumatic effect?
    Because she had never known him.
    A healthy liver was horrible enough, even when dipped in batter, and Georgie imagined his gone brown like those in a butcher’s window in summer. And to hear of such a tragic event in such an impersonal way, by solicitor’s letter, seemed to reflect to Georgie the terrible sterility of her life.
    Forty-two and what had she got to show for it? That was the way her thinking was going. It wasn’t as if Stephen had left her the cottage intentionally either, a kindness perhaps, a last act of remembrance. No. He had died intestate and, as Georgie was his only family, the cottage and contents