The Lost Child Read Online Free PDF Page A

Elaine was wiping the last streak of liquid butter from her chin, Brodie surprised her with a question.
    ‘Elaine, do you believe in ghosts?’
    She had to consider it for a moment, both because it had come out of the blue and because she didn’t have a concrete answer.
    Eventually, with a pensive frown, she said, ‘If you mean the kind that go bump in the night and waft about in the form of “orbs” throwing things at gullible people on dodgy satellite TV channels, then no, I don’t. But if you mean the kind of ghosts that sit on the edge of your reality like something unrequited, the kind that you will never see and will never hear. The kind that suck at your life like greedy tadpoles, getting fat at your expense, then yes, I believe in those.’
    Brodie nodded sagely, ‘Yeah, those kind. Do you think they’re dead people, the tadpoles?’
    Elaine fought a smile as she thought of Jean as an embryonic frog, ‘Sometimes, maybe. Not always. I think living people can be ghosts too.’
    Brodie pulled a face, ‘Yeah, I reckon Esther’s one of those. She sits there like that witch in the gingerbread house, picking and poking at her chair with her witchy fingers like she wants to eat the lot of us,’ she accompanied her words with a shudder. ‘She creeps me out.’
    Elaine laughed, ‘Yeah, old ladies can do that. Is that why you asked, because of Esther?’ Elaine hadn’t met Esther, but she had formed a mental picture from Brodie’s description that didn’t incline her to want to.
    Brodie looked down at her plate and prodded at a congealing lump of scrambled egg with the tines of her fork, ‘No, because of Mandy.’
    If Elaine hadn’t consciously decided to be the grown-up in this conversation she would have sworn that a cold chill had swept over her at Brodie’s words. As it was she explained to herself that the creeping sensation was a reaction to sitting around in her nightwear in a north facing kitchen. Certainly not because anything sinister had just happened. ‘Who’s Mandy?’
    ‘My dead sister.’ Brodie said baldly. ‘She disappeared when she was three, and they never found her body, but they did find some clothes with blood on them so they think she died. My mum never got over it, it’s why she’s ill and keeps taking overdoses.’
    Elaine really didn’t know what to say.
    ‘Don’t get me wrong, it’s really sad and that, like she was really little and it was really awful, but it was thirty years ago. Don’t you think people should get over it by then?’
    ‘Probably, but maybe things got stuck because she was never found. Is that why it feels like she’s a ghost?’
    Brodie shook her head, ‘No, she is a ghost. She’s there all the time, everywhere. Mum has pictures of her all over the house. You can’t even have a wee in our house without Mandy watching you. She sits on top of the telly, on every windowsill – even if you open a drawer she’s there, lurking next to Mum’s hand cream and the paracetamol. I know I shouldn’t but sometimes I hate her. I hate her cute face and her pigtails and her bloody pink cardigan!’ She said it so vehemently that the force of it brought tears to her eyes. She swept them away with the sleeve of her black hoodie.
    Elaine wanted to stretch out her hand, to touch Brodie and soothe her, to take her under her wing and wrap her in feathers that would keep out all ills. She even started to reach out but thought better of it as her fingers sensed the ethereal spines of misery that had sprung out to shroud the unhappy girl. ‘Perhaps…’ she faltered, ‘perhaps being here will help, give you a break from it. Step back a bit.’ she said, knowing that it sounded trite and insipid.
    ‘Yeah, wouldn’t that be nice.’ Brodie scoffed. ‘Let’s send Brodie for a break, I know let’s send her to the exact place where Mandy went missing, that’ll help!’ She spat the words out as if they tasted of angostura bitters.
    The words smacked into Elaine like