Read Guardian for Free Online

you?”
    Accompanying her declaration, a picture of that event floated into my mind. The two of us together at the end of the track that led from home, revelling in the solitude, the silence, holding hands, watching a pair of buzzards wheel and dip in the turquoise sky as they rode the long thermals, feathers glinting in unison as soaring, synchronised flight took them through lazy arcs past the flaring sun. I had managed the short walk with just a stick, crutches firmly put aside and, with the exercise my spirits had lifted and she had no doubt sensed the black cloud shredding away in the warmth of our mutual attraction. Animated conversation and slow, affectionate laughter had punctuated each precious minute, but now all that had been changed by my sudden outburst, which still clutched her in bewildered disbelief. The abyss of rejection yawned wide and cruel, so coldly insensitive in the strength of its finality. Yet she had stood her ground for what seemed an age, hearing only the slow ticking of the old grandfather clock in the passageway behind her. Dazed.
    A sudden draught flirted with the edge of her skirt, emphasising the space that separated us. A space so easily crossed with a single stride, one lovingly extended hand, yet as far as I was concerned, an impossible divide. I could no longer acknowledge that such things had passed between us. Roz’s cheeks flamed and her shoulders slumped as dismissal whispered its callous message of indifference in an ear made suddenly vulnerable to every treacherous insinuation. And pride, that old snake, followed up with its familiar, devastating reaction to attack, a desire to hurt right back, to strike at the one who is the object of love, to have the last word. And even as she achieved that aim, she had despised herself but couldn’t stop. And she certainly had every right. Tears of deep distress streaming down her pretty face, Roz spat out words of hate she didn’t feel, a language of reprisal she didn’t mean. And with the full recognition of what was happening came the great wracking sobs that tore her so recently restored world into the painful shreds of a broken heart. The last thing I heard was the sound of her racing footsteps and every one reverberated like a hammer nailing down my coffin lid.

Chapter 8

    Mother knew but said nothing. Anxious as ever, she had been standing not far from where my last conversation had taken place and her heart had gone out to the vulnerable young girl racing blindly past her shadowed niche, fists clenched and eyes screwed half shut in the pain of her hasty, bewildered retreat. For several long minutes Mum had waited, heart in mouth, half expecting an outburst of anguish from me, but one that never came. Eventually, she had seen me straighten and, with weariness brought on by yet another betrayal, reach for my crutches before stumping off to the back of the house, heading for the only retreat I could call my own. My bedroom. Our paths hadn’t crossed for the rest of the day, both of us preferring to let things lie and both afraid that anything said would only spark more distress.
    I confess that since the night Matt died, I had effectively withdrawn from her, my lone advocate. For the first time in my life, I had ducked every question, avoided every gesture of intimacy and manoeuvred to ensure we were seldom alone together. And my father wasn’t helping either. She dreaded his homecoming even more in those days. Especially Fridays. Friday nights were bad because, whether he had work or not, Friday for Dad was the day to hit town, to chug down innumerable draughts of beer and get paralysed with his mates. Men like himself who could never quite face up to life’s demands, who found it easier to avoid the spectre of disappointment by obliterating everything in cheap local booze. The only difference between most of them being the presence or absence of a cowed woman at home, someone to terrorise in their drunken