The Shadows in the Street Read Online Free PDF Page A

been automatic. But now I’m not sure how much longer I’ll want that – things just ticking on.’
    ‘Follow your feelings.’
    ‘Yes. My mother always said that.’
    Judith smiled. ‘By the way,’ she said, ‘Felix was sick.’
    Cat groaned.
    ‘And Hannah said she felt sick. I’m not entirely sure if she did.’
    ‘Hmm. Sam?’
    Judith frowned. ‘No,’ she said, ‘Sam wasn’t sick. And if he felt sick he didn’t say so.’
    Sam. More silent than ever. Closed within himself, oyster-like, private. Thin. Too thin.
    ‘I wish I knew what to do,’ Cat said. ‘I can’t make him talk – really talk. I can’t get through to him at all. He lives like a sort of shadow in this house, he’s here and yet somehow … he isn’t. What did he do tonight?’
    ‘Some homework. Maths. Watched Doctor Who . Then he went upstairs. I looked in after I’d sorted Felix out. He was lying on the bed with his book but I don’t think he was reading. I asked him if he was all right and he said, “Yes, thank you, Judith,” in that way he does – rather formal. I so wanted to go and give him a hug, Cat.’
    ‘But you couldn’t. I know. He prickles if you go too near.’
    ‘I think so long as he knows that it’s there when he wants it …’
    ‘The hugs.’
    ‘The hugs, the love. The listening. All of it. So long as he always knows.’ Judith stretched. ‘I’m going up. I put Felix’s bedding through the wash and it’s dry and folded. Hannah has a bowl by her just in case. I didn’t dare suggest a bowl to Sam.’
    ‘Thanks, Judith. I couldn’t function without you.’
    ‘As I said – don’t underestimate yourself. Goodnight, my dear.’
    Cat sat on, sipping her wine, stroking Mephisto. She felt peaceful. Wondered if any of her children would be sick in the night or if whatever bug Felix had brought home from nursery had run its course. Wondered if Cassie Porter would die tonight. Thought that soon she would change something, she would decide something.
    Move on. She would never say it, never even think it. She would not move on, because moving on was moving away, from Chris, from Chris’s dying and death, from their life together, their marriage, the past, and how could she bear to do that? How could she leave Chris behind?
    ‘No,’ she said aloud, ‘no. You’ll come with me. You will be as close as breath for the next ten or twenty or fifty years.’
    She realised suddenly that she could make changes and yet not move away, not leave him behind. The realisation made her smile.
    Sometimes, when she asked Chris a question, the answer would come at once. She talked to him about Sam almost every day, told him what troubled her, asked him what he thought she should do, and now, locking the door and switching off the lights, ‘putting the house to bed’ as Hannah called it, she talked to him about it again. Sam. What to do, what to say, how to help him. Sam.
    ‘He’s always talked to Simon,’ Chris said. She might as well have heard his voice, aloud in the quiet kitchen. He’s always talked to Simon .
    She stood still. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You’re right there.’
    Sam might talk to Simon again. If he did, she would stop worrying.
    If Simon were here.

Four
    The worst thing you can do is run. That warning floated in her head when she heard the footsteps behind her, crossing the canal bridge. ‘The worst thing you can do is run.’ Who said that and why and were they right? Why not run? Because in your high heels you could slip over and fall? Because if you run he’ll run too, only he might run faster?
    The other thing was: don’t look round. But when Abi got to the other side of the bridge, she did look round and then she groaned slightly, no longer from fear but because of who it was, the last person she needed. She wanted to get home. She’d got nearly £200 in her pocket. She didn’t need this.
    ‘Wait,’ he said.
    Beanie Man.
    She hesitated. £200 could be £250 but she hated him not having a