Long Lies the Shadow Read Online Free PDF Page B

to Gin and a wide-eyed Gabe, was to fool the
tokoloshe
, as he was short. Shorter than them, even, she said. This way he could not reach Evelyn to play his evil tricks on her. They, of course, he could reach, and easily, and Evelyn never ceased to threaten them with the dreaded
tokoloshe
if in any way Gin or Gabriel irked her.
    “That’s a lovely edition,” says the voice again. The stallholder is peering at her, much as Doctor Oldman had.
    Gin pulls out the pale blue Barrie, pays for it, continues up the slope. She does not know why she bought the book; on a whim, for her child, but she had always hated Pan, its story sad to her and silly. But Gabe had loved it, had always wanted to play Peter with his swashbuckling adventures, swinging from tree to tree outside the house, outside Dad’s surgery, the one their father shared with his partner Jacob.
    Gabe, always the leader. And she and their friends, Michael and Hannah, had to join in. Hannah, Jacob’s daughter. Michael, from down the road. And Gabe would make Hannah play Wendy while Gin and Michael would be lost boys. How apt, thinks Gin. As if Gabe knew. Knew he would never grow old. Knew Hannah, all grown-up, would marry, have children. Knew she and Michael would be lost, still lost.
    Hannah, Michael, Gin, and Gabe.
    So long a time they’d been together. Class photos from an Eastern Cape childhood showed them squinting in their poppy-red blazers, absurdly hot under an African sun. Aged nine, ten, class after class, tracing shy smiles to adolescent sulkiness and lank teenage haircuts. Living within streets of each other, they knew the same life. No secrets. There was a sense of belonging to each other, common knowledge, the ability to all laugh uproariously at some jointly-remembered incident, like Sandra de Jongh falling face down in the freshly-delivered horse manure. Or the fearsome hill that challenged their eleven-year-old egos and their bikes. Down Beach Road. Down Southampton Drive. Through the ditch if they could make it, the scars if they couldn’t.
    A dusty town, a small town, an African town.
    The sky has started to spit, and Gin hastens. She is at the top of the hill, the market behind her, where the street turns into Pembridge Road, and soon she will be home. Home, her new house, into which she has yet to move properly. With her father’s death, she has inherited the building on Ladbroke Road. It has stood empty for a month now. Her father’s estate had been soon settled, his affairs as expected in impeccable order. But Gin has yet to haul her belongings from her rented flat above the music store on Lancaster Road. It is not far, and she has few possessions, but it is the flat she had shared with Michael, and somehow she is loath to leave it.
    She misses Michael suddenly, misses his humour and his warmth. It must be thirteen years since he left London for Denmark. Michael, part of her life, always there. Michael to whom she had run when all fell apart, when Africa became intolerable those sixteen years back.
    After Simon, Jonnie had saved her. But after Jonnie, it was Michael who had been her refuge. Michael the reason she is in London. London, the natural place to run.
    Gin opens the door to the house. It opens into a tiled hall thatfeels chilly at the afternoon’s end. Straight through from here is the huge kitchen with its original Butler sink, its new Aga. To the right is the lounge. She likes this room; it is cosy and has an open fireplace, a rarity in London now. To her left, the stairs mount immediately to the three bedrooms and two bathrooms set over the upper two floors. Below the kitchen is a big, empty basement. A house too large for one, thinks Gin. And then remembers.
    Twelve weeks.
    Simon’s child.
    As once before.
    She had not told the doctor.
    Twelve weeks.
    Gin feels a tightness clamp her head, her throat. Oh, God, she had not told the doctor. She moves fretfully from room to room, opening doors, switching on lights, pulling covers