An English Ghost Story Read Online Free PDF Page B

the car phone before realising it was a joke.
    ‘HH,’ she said, exaggeratedly. Standing for ‘ha-ha’, it was a Timism the whole family had picked up on.
    ‘Is Dad a casualty?’ Tim asked.
    Jordan and Mum looked where Tim was pointing, between the garage and the house. Dad was lying flat on the ground in the orchard, limbs stretched out in an X. Hearing the car, he sat up sharply, flyaway hair sticking out, displaying a goofy grin.
    ‘Definitely a casualty,’ Mum confirmed.
    * * *
    I t was a day of firsts and rituals. That was important. They linked arms and octopus-stepped over the threshold, cramming themselves into the foyer. Then they laughed as Steven searched his pockets for the keys which he had only just put away, refusing to let his arms free until they were properly inside. He had forgotten the inner foyer doors, which led into what Tim called ‘the secret passage’. All the doors and windows were newly fitted with locks. The keys were still shiny and hard to tell apart, but he instinctively slid the right one into the lock and it turned easily.
    Kirsty and Jordan set out to make a ceremonial pot of tea. There were cups a-plenty in the kitchen, though they had to be rinsed of months’ dust. Kirsty had brought tea-bags and milk from the village shop. While the womenfolk saw to their chores, Steven and Tim went out to fetch apples.
    ‘The golden ones are sweet and for eating, while the green ones are tart and for cooking,’ said Kirsty.
    ‘You should get the gold ones,’ added Jordan.
    ‘HH,’ said Steven and Tim, together.
    In the orchard, Steven put on an ironic caveman voice and told his son, ‘Men hunt, women cook.’
    ‘Women can hunt,’ said Tim.
    ‘Absolutely, Timmy.’
    Steven hefted Tim, who was getting to be quite a weight at ten up onto his shoulders and hoisted him towards an apple-bearing branch.
    ‘I can’t reach, PP.’
    PP. Paternal Parent.
    ‘I can’t heft you any higher.’
    ‘It’s all right.’
    Apples fell past Steven and thumped on the grass. Four exactly.
    ‘The branch bent. I couldn’t reach it, but it could reach me.’
    ‘If that isn’t a welcome, I don’t know what is.’
    He crouched and let Tim vault off his shoulders. Straightening up, he saw the branch still swaying, having given up its gifts. Tim snapped off a salute to the tree, which Steven solemnly echoed.
    Tim pulled the front of his T-shirt out into an apron-pocket and piled in the apples. His white tummy and arms undermined his junior commando look, made him less Tim o’ the Green.
    This could work, Steven thought. No, he must be more positive. This
would
work.
    The past two months had been eerily quiet. At first, he felt he was walking through a landscape dotted with unexploded bombs, some sticking obviously out of the dirt, others buried just below the surface. An explosion would almost have been a relief. At least, a big bang would mean things getting back to what passed for normal. Then it dawned on him. A tiny green shoot of an idea, poking up through the blasted landscape. Could this be hope? Had everything really changed?
    The family had made an unspoken pact. Their mission, as Tim would have put it, was to get back to the Hollow, to occupy the position and to hold off all-comers. With that end in view, sacrifices Steven had expected to be forced after screaming matches were made with quiet dignity. It was not just about Dad being a crackpot.
    Before they saw the Hollow, the mooted move had been an act of desperation, a last chance. It had been this or call in the lawyers, the therapists and – God help him but it might have come to it – the hit men. Since their first sight of this place, he had begun to feel they were not escaping from anything but escaping to something.
    Now they were here, safe.
    * * *
    W hile the removal men carried family belongings into the house, Tim executed a complete reconnoitre of the territory. With two cups of tea in him, he piddled in all four of the