Absolute Hush Read Online Free PDF

recognised the flaw in her, and she thought that, if she had been a Hindu widow, she might have thrown herself on the funeral pyre of her husband, just to prove to everyone, including herself, that she did really have proper feelings like other people. But the agony! She was sure she would not be able to bear the agony. Eating a hundred aspirins would not hurt as much as burning to death, thought Elizabeth, though it would not have the same impact either.
    Now, looking out on to the burning cottage, for a moment it seemed as though God had taken up her challenge and set the house on fire to see if she would dare to immolate herself.
    â€˜Her husband and her lover died fighting for their country, burned to death in their planes, and it broke her heart,’ the people of the village would say later. She had not cried when Tim or Teddy died but now she wept wildly at the sight of the cottage burning.
    There came a yell from the people in the street as the roof caved in suddenly with a great release of burning straw. The cottage seemed to expand and swell, glowing, into the sky. Then it shrank into a single-storey building.
    â€˜Come on!’ said George. He grabbed his sister by the hand and they went into the garden, and out on to the road.
    The fire engines had arrived, wildly ringing, and the onlookers were screaming and shouting instructions.
    â€˜Jump! We’ve got a mattress here! You’ll be all right!’
    â€˜My baby! She’s upstairs in her cot.’
    Somewhere, under the sound of fire and bells and shouting, Sissy thought she could hear the sound of screaming. ‘The baby might die, George,’ she said.
    â€˜Grown-ups kill lots of babies in air raids,’ replied George. He spoke almost casually, then gave a little shiver. Sissy did not know if he shivered from horror or excitement.
    â€˜How did you do it?’ whispered Sissy.
    â€˜I didn’t! I didn’t! I told you I didn’t!’ George whispered back and looked wildly round to see if anyone had heard.
    â€˜I won’t take the blame this time,’ said Sissy.
    For weeks after the fire the village smelled of smoulder, and Sissy watched George with suspicion mingled with awe. George had caused a house to rise shining into the sky before it collapsed. Because of George the villagers had screamed and thrown themselves from upstairs windows. George had brought fire engines roaring up the High Street.
    After the fuel from Teddy’s lighter had run out, George keptthe gadget as a symbol of his pyromania and lit his fires with matches. He would steal two or three at a time, usually from Mrs Lovage, never so many that their absence would be noticed. These, not Teddy’s lighter, were what had set alight the pile of hay bales in the field beyond the garden and were responsible for destroying his mother’s magazines stored in the cellar.
    â€˜A spark must have got on them when I raked out the boiler,’ she had mourned. ‘I wish I were dead, I am so unlucky.’
    George would ceremoniously lay Teddy’s lighter beside the object to be burned then, making a gesture of deference to the mascot, strike. He was superstitious about the matches. They had to be perfect. He would spend furtive ages going through his mother’s match-box finding just the right ones, with a head neither twinned nor bumpy, and an even, unsplit stick. The painstaking search had nearly led to him being discovered.
    â€˜What are you doing with those?’ his mother had cried. ‘I hope you’re not starting your fire-lighting habits again?’
    â€˜I’m making a little car out of conkers,’ George wailed. ‘I need matchsticks for the axles.’
    His mother found this delightful, and hugged him and ruffled his hair in a burst of affection. He was so relieved at having escaped suspicion that he did not even wriggle.
    â€˜But let’s make them safe,’ said Elizabeth. ‘We don’t want