The Thief of Broken Toys Read Online Free PDF Page A

prepared for there to be a multitude of
discoveries yet to make. His sense of wonder
had been alive and on fire, and Ray’s . . .
perhaps that had dwindled and died with the
withering effects of age. He’d often watch
his son stop to root through undergrowth or
examine a caterpillar beneath a magnifying
glass, and grow sad at the idea that wonder
was such a difficult commodity to retain.
More often than not he would have simply
walked on.
    Elizabeth used to complain when the two
of them embarked on their expeditions during
bad weather.
But Mummy
, Toby would wail,
some of the animals only come out of their houses
when they know there’s no one there
. It was an
incredibly mature observation for someone so
young — he was acknowledging that the world
existed without him, as well as with him —
and Elizabeth had never complained again.
    With Toby, he had never been scared. But
now he felt the wild inside him, not just all
around. The cliff path at night was an alien
place to Ray, one where his son no longer
existed, shadows throbbed with malice, and
memories flitted through the darkness like
teasing ghosts.
    He paused and turned around, looking back
the way he had come. He could still see a few of
Skentipple’s more remote buildings, but most
of the village was hidden from view behind
the shoulder of the land. It was built in an
inlet in the coast, a natural harbour protected
from the sea by the high cliffs on either side,
and from here he could see little more than
its glow. Rain falling over Skentipple was set
aflame by the lights, and it seemed that huge
fires danced in the air.
    Elizabeth was down there somewhere.
Still in the Flag and Fisherman perhaps,
several drinks in and relaxing more in Jason’s
company. His hand might be higher up her
thigh now, little finger nestling against the
place only Ray had seen and touched and
tasted for the last ten years. He wondered
what she thought of as she drank and laughed
at the big fisherman’s jokes, whether she
sometimes saw Toby watching her through the
dusty windows, or heard him asking her what
she was doing. Ray had never actually seen or
heard his dead son, but he felt his presence
everywhere.
It’s your memories where he’s still
alive
, someone had told him shortly after
his little boy’s cremation. He couldn’t even
recall who she had been. An aunty, perhaps,
or one of Elizabeth’s friends. Ray had been
experiencing a moment of sheer panic at what
they had done, destroying what little was left
of Toby, and he had tortured himself for not
burying the boy and allowing him the chance
to fade.
That wasn’t really him
, the woman had
said, and she had touched Ray’s forehead,
thumb reaching down to smudge his tears.
This is the place where he still lives
.
    Not in Heaven
, Ray had said, but it had not
been a question. Then, and ever since, he had
coveted the comfort that faith gave some
people, but it had never been a part of him.
It’s
just a story, son
, he’d told Toby.
Made up
.
    Sometimes he thought about Toby’s last
moments, and what he had been dreaming
when he died.
    He turned away from the village and
continued walking. He wanted to go far
enough to leave its glow behind, to a place
where the only light was the occasional
glimpse of the half-moon through storm
clouds, speckling the wet ground in a million
places and glancing from the wild waves. The
ground was wet, and slippery in places where
the bare path had turned muddy. This route
was used extensively during tourist season,
but now that the year’s end loomed, it was only
the occasional hardy local who came this way,
walking their dog or their lover or themselves.
To his right lay the cliff’s edge, farther down
the slope and shielded from him by growths
of low hawthorn bushes, brambles, and the
remnants of the summer’s ferns. He knew if
he worked his way down lesser-trodden paths,
he would draw much closer to the cliff, but