The Girl by the River Read Online Free PDF

hunched shoulders, knocking him sideways, her wine-red shawl flying.
    ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled, and she gave him another clout, this time on his ear.
    ‘Sorry what?’ she demanded.
    ‘Sorry – sir.’
    Freddie stayed silent, standing guard in front of his lorry. He tried to see the eyes of the young man who had dared to steal it, but they were downcast.
    ‘He’s only a lad. Fourteen he is, and just lost his father.’ The gypsy woman’s eyes glittered with a feeling Freddie knew only too well. Grief. How it felt to lose your
father at fourteen, as he had done. ‘And his mother,’ she went on. ‘Died giving birth in the pea fields when he was only eight. But ’tis no excuse.’ She raised her
bony hand and the boy cringed. ‘You get back down the farm, get on with the hedge-laying – that’s what you’re supposed to be doing. Not stealing lorries.’
    Freddie’s silent appraisal seemed to spook her. She hobbled up to him, a curious fire in her eyes as they searched his face for understanding. He gazed back, reminded of his granny. Words
floated through his consciousness, but none of them would do so he maintained the silence. He thought it might coax the truth out of the boy and his feisty granny. But he was unprepared for what
happened next.
    A change came over the gypsy woman. The deep frown disappeared, eclipsed by a beguiling look of genuine surprise. ‘Don’t you worry – your lorry’s safe now, and
there’s no harm done,’ she said, and she took one of Freddie’s large roughened hands between hers.
    Startled, he let her unfold his palm, her touch like hazel twigs, a bright glow in the air between them. She studied his palm as if it were a map.
    ‘I’ve got nothing to give you, sir, only a box of clothes pegs,’ she said, pointing to a basket piled high with freshly made pegs whittled from the insides of sticks.
‘But I’ll tell your future for you – for free – as compensation.’ She looked directly into his eyes, seeing him hesitate. ‘And believe me, sir, you need to hear
it. No one else will ever tell you what I can see. I’m a Romany Gypsy, sir, and proud of it, and my gift has been handed down through five generations. Seers, that’s what we are.’
She leaned closer, her voice husky. ‘And I’m telling you now, sir, whether you’re listening or not – you’re one of us. You’ve got the gift of prophecy and you
don’t use it. You know you’ve got it – and it’s been beaten out of you. You need to use it, because you’ve got trouble in your life, and today is only the
beginning.’
    Freddie felt a ripple of shock through his whole body. He stared at the gypsy woman’s face and saw she was deadly serious. Immediately, the eyes of baby Tessa bobbed into his
consciousness, not young eyes, but old eyes that harboured a sinister darkness under the bright gaze of a newborn. He felt himself crumpling inside, all his defences crashing as he meekly followed
the gypsy woman into the painted caravan, eyeing the garish red and yellow promises splashed over its flaking surface: ‘Madame Eltura, the one and only true fortune-teller’.
    He still hadn’t spoken, and the multiple shocks of the day were gathering in his bones, making him tremble.
    ‘Sit down there.’ She drew him inside and he manoeuvred himself onto a tiny, rickety chair, his long legs hunched awkwardly. Threadbare purple curtains festooned the cubicle, with
gold and silver stars stitched into them in tarnished sequins. A cloth of heavy black velvet hung over a round table, and in the middle was a crystal ball.
    What am I doing here
? Freddie thought, alarmed, and his father’s angry words came bounding back at him like long ago dogs barking through the halls of his life. ‘I don’t
want no fortune-telling or mumbo jumbo in this family!’ Levi had thundered.
    ‘Don’t touch that!’
    Freddie’s finger sprang back from the crystal ball. He’d wanted to touch the cold gleam of its mirrored