Gone to Ground Read Online Free PDF Page B

hormonal, exhausted, shorn of her friends and the easy access to their support, had been bereft; stranded amidst cabbages and clanking farm machinery and people from the village who looked down on her if they bothered to look at her at all.
    "You're the one who dragged us out here," Lorraine had said. Yet another evening when Will came home moaning, almost an hour later than he'd promised, the dinner solidifying in the bottom of the oven.
    "Don't talk such bloody nonsense," Will had retorted, kicking off his shoes. "You were the one who wanted to move, more than me."
    "Out of the city, yes. Somewhere nice. Not a godforsaken dump like this."
    "Well, this godforsaken dump, as you call it, was all we could afford."
    "Then maybe we should have stayed put where we were."
    "Like it so much, why don't you move back?"
    "And what'd you do? Stay here?"
    "Maybe I would."
    Lorraine let out a loud, humourless laugh. "And Jake? What about Jake?"
    Will pushed past her and pulled open the fridge door, looking for a beer.
    "Well?" she persisted. "What about Jake in this grand master plan of yours? He's not exactly going to stay here with you."
    "Lorraine, for Christ's sake, leave it be."
    "No, come on, tell me."
    Will slammed the fridge door shut. "You just won't let it alone, will you?"
    "What?"
    "Anything. Any bloody little thing. On and on. You never know when to fucking stop."
    "And you do?"
    Snapping the top from the can, he brushed past her on his way to the door.
    "You do, Will?"
    Turning, he slammed the beer down on the side. "Yes, I fucking do!"
    A moment later he was on the stairs, taking them two or three steps at a time. When Lorraine, following him, pulled open the bedroom door, he was pushing things into a bag, shirts, trousers, socks, anything.
    "What are you doing?"
    "What does it look as if I'm doing?"
    "Putting on a show?"
    "Yeah?" Grabbing hold of a shirt, he thrust it toward her face. "Does this look like a fucking show?"
    "You wouldn't dare."
    "No?"
    "Leaving us both, you wouldn't have the guts."
    "Watch me." Seizing the bag, he started for the door.
    "Will..."
    His feet were fast and heavy on the stairs.
    "Will..."
    He was throwing the bag into the backseat of the car, ducking behind the wheel.
    "Will, don't you dare."
    The car door slammed; the engine lurched into life.
    He could just hear her shout, her face up close against the glass, inches from his face. "You do this and I never want to see your face again. Not ever."
    The wheels spun for a moment on the gravel, then caught. Trapped in the porch light, she was there for a few seconds in his mirror, then gone.
    By the time Will reached the main road, he realized he was driving too fast, steadied and slowed. Turning off onto a side road, a farm track and little more, he stopped the car just past a low, dark barn and sat, shaking, one hand still fixed to the wheel. A ring of yellow light clung, narrow, to the horizon, all but blocked out by the dark. Everything he had: everything he had ever wanted. His son. He sat there until the cold slid deep into his bones.
    When he let himself back into the house, hours later, everything was quiet, no lights on, up or down. He fully expected Lorraine to be in bed, but she was in the living room, just sitting, legs drawn up.
    Will switched on the light.
    There was no colour in her face, her hair scraped back.
    "Turn it out."
    He turned it out.
    After a moment, she swung her legs down and came slowly toward him.
    "I'm sorry," he said.
    She slapped him hard across the face.
    "Really sorry."
    She slapped him again, once, twice.
    Blood trickled from his upper lip and he could taste it in his mouth.
    "Lorraine..."
    He reached for her hand, but she pulled it away, and they stood there, the silence folding around them, not speaking, not touching, until finally they went upstairs to bed.

Chapter 4
    WHEN WILL WOKE AND WENT DOWNSTAIRS, IT WAS closer to three than four. Outside, in the light from the porch, he watched as flakes of snow hazed