After the Storm Read Online Free PDF Page B

sailed in on his indrawn breath of pain and surprise. That’ll teach you, she thought, you canny little squid.
    Inside there was no wind and it seemed much warmer and very quiet but for a loud tick and there was a strange sharp smell mingling with polish but no scent of cooking or arms outstretched. She stood quite still, her heartbeat loud in her ears, not wanting to move unless it was to touch something definite, to lean against something solid. She felt no friendlinessabout her, just thick space which could hold endless horrors. She longed for the noise of trains clattering beyond their eyes but not their ears at Wassingham Terrace and the pigeons scattering in their loft as the cats screamed.
    Here, in the dark, the ache was swelling. Closing her eyes, Annie tried to remember whether she had missed any black dogs on her way here. There was only the brown one she was sure but still she had held her collar until she had counted a hundred. She had not trodden on any cracks either so surely her wish would be granted. She’d also prayed to God each night, twice, but he had seemed to be deaf for quite some time. Nonetheless her father might just change his mind or even drop dead so that Sophie could walk over and take her back.
    It would have been just bearable if Sophie and Eric had stayed in the town just half a mile from this shop but to pack up and go to the other side of the world seemed like the end. There would be no more stories from Eric, no more hugs and tickles from Aunt Sophie, no more drawing on the kitchen floor while Sophie and Eric held hands and talked at the kitchen table.
    Sophie had said that she and Eric were young enough to start a new life in a new country and must go straight away. She’d said how she was 29 and Eric was 30 and if they didn’t go now, this minute, perhaps Australia would be too much for them. Annie had never thought of them in terms of years before and 29 seemed very old. It’s the same age as Sarah Beeston, Sophie had said, but Annie was not interested in other people, only in Sophie.
    ‘Come on in Annie,’ her father’s voice called and as she turned she remembered the feel of Don’s foot beneath her heel and her hands went still and her fingers filled with splintered ice. Oh no, she’d broken her good luck, just when she’d done nothing wrong but everything painfully right since that day in Sophie’s kitchen.
    Her lip stung between biting teeth and she wanted to drop to the ground and beat it with her hands because now there was no way back to the old life. She wanted to screech to Don, to pummel him with her fists and hurt him as she was hurting. Why did you get at me and make me do it? Why didn’t you leave me be, she wanted to shout, and the hate spilled out from her eyes and Don was shocked and she was glad that someone else was feeling pain. Then in turn she was shocked andfrightened because she did not want the hate to remain. He was all she had if Sophie could not come for her and she didn’t want to be alone with just this dark angry hole left where people had once been.
    ‘Elisabeth, Elisabeth,’ her father called into the darkness but there was no reply. ‘That’s strange,’ he murmured almost to himself and the children stayed still. ‘I think we should go down to the kitchen and see how dinner is coming along. Get your bearings first though.’
    He had already lit the gas lamp and now blew out the match; then shook his arms out of his coat, helping Annie with hers when he had finished. The elastic, which ran from one glove through her sleeves to the other, caught on her cuff and she had to scramble to free herself. She looked up at him. What big nostrils he had and why did he call tea dinner and dinner lunch she wondered. She sighed. And he had not called them bairns since that first day; it made him seem very far away. But now that the smell of the gas lamp was nudging at her it seemed, together with the light, to bring the house to life and that was a