The Faerie Tree Read Online Free PDF Page B

elbow. I got compassionate leave from work and she kept me busy sorting through Mum’s things and cleaning the house. Then came the second blow; the post mortem showed that Mum had died from an overdose of painkillers – whether deliberate or accidental, they couldn’t say.
    The police came to question me. When had I left the house? When did I come back? Had Mum been depressed? Where were the tablets kept? Had I found a note? I struggled to fathom what they were getting at, but Auntie Jean was sharper. She told them that she – and a number of other neighbours – had seen me leave, and seen me come back. And that Mum had spent most of the afternoon with her anyway. But she had been in pain, terrible pain – it must have been a mistake – she’d just taken too many tablets.
    As soon as the police had gone I confessed to Auntie Jean that Mum had never told me about the pain.
    I heard the slams of their car door as she turned away from the window to face me. “Me neither.”
    â€œThen why… why did you tell them she had?”
    She sat down on the sofa and held my hand. “Robin, love, they’d never have left you alone. And even if they had then they’d have tried to slur her memory with suicide.”
    â€œIs that what you really think she did?”
    â€œI think… she was in pain. She just never told us. Why else would she have had those tablets in the first place? But she’d never have chosen to leave you, Robin – that’s one thing I do know.”
    The inquest recorded an open verdict.
    I may have sleepwalked through those days but I wasn’t actually sleeping. Every time I went into the hall I heard Mum saying that she didn’t want to ruin my life as well. I couldn’t avoid that hall; even if I used the back door I still had to go up the stairs to bed. I couldn’t stand the kitchen, either. Slowly I realised that being in that house would bring me no peace; everywhere I turned were reminders of my guilt.
    Leaving was harder. I wandered about, looking at the pictures on the walls, turning Mum’s ornaments around and around on the mantelpiece, and finally going upstairs to her room. I opened the wardrobe – it was empty, but somehow the musky scent of Opium clung on. I sat on her bed and cried for ages, and then I must have fallen asleep, and rested, because I woke up with enough resolve to see out my plan.
    I went up to the attic and found my rucksack, my tent and the rest of my camping gear. Then I went into my bedroom and stuffed the rucksack full of clothes. Well, not quite full; I left enough space for the photograph of Mum and me she had kept in a frame on her bedside table. I burrowed it in with my T-shirts then collected my driving licence, my Post Office passbook and my bank card. I didn’t think I’d need anything else.
    When I knocked on Auntie Jean’s door there was no reply so I wrote her a note saying I needed a break before I could handle all this and I’d see her soon. I don’t know whether I was telling her the truth or not.
    I got the bus into town and a train to Bournemouth. I bought myself a burger and chewed through it sitting on the beach, watching the lights on the pier twinkle in the dusk. The resort was buzzing behind me like an angry wasp so I picked up my rucksack and walked along the sand until all I could hear was the sea.

Chapter Nine
    I woke with the draw of the waves on the shingle in my ears. I sat in my quilted cocoon, hugging my knees as I watched the sky lighten over the sea. Nothing moved on that great expanse of water. Nothing moved inside me either. But I could cope with that.
    I could also manage stiff, cold and dirty. Once the sun was up I packed my sleeping bag away and found a tap near the beach huts where I gave my face a cursory wash, damped down my hair and drank handfuls of the icy water. Then I set out along the beach underneath Canford Cliffs and across the