Third Solstice CALIBRE with cover Read Online Free PDF Page A

don’t know. I haven’t heard from her in months.”
    “Then—why did you say this was about her?”
    “I didn’t!” Zeke swallowed audibly and turned a deeper shade of crimson. “You said it was about Eleanor, and I—”
    “Your Eleanor? No.”
    “Yes, you did.”
    Gideon drew a deep breath. He had unsuspected reservoirs of fear and hate within him for Elowen Tyack, and he was about to unleash the flood on his brother. It wasn’t right or fair, but his nerves were stripped to buzzing copper wire. “Ezekiel—”
    Lee set the teapot down on the surface with a bang. “Gideon Tyack-Frayne,” he declared. “I love you more than life, but if you say did not , I’m divorcing you.”
    “I wasn’t. I—”
    “Yeah, you were. And then Zeke was gonna say did too , and we were all about to find out what it would’ve been like in your nursery class if you’d been kids at the same time.” He grabbed a couple of mugs out of a cupboard. “Whatever it is, the pair of you put a sock in it until I can pour this tea and get out of your hair. Okay?”
    A vibrant silence descended. Tamsyn, briefly ignored, gave a mewling cry and began to wave her hands in the air.
    She loved Ezekiel. Part of her delight in him was his solemnity, which she strove on all occasions to crack, pinging the lid on her jack-in-the-box to make him jump, rolling her spring-loaded walker at him from unexpected doorways. Despite this, or maybe because of it, he adored her in his turn. His arrival usually meant playtime, a walk on the moors or a visit to the village park. Instead Lee had carried her away from her friend and imprisoned her. If Gideon had been paying proper attention, he’d have recognised the shift in her gesticulations, the new focus. He’d have listened to the throb in the base of his skull.
    Her pompom ball, a fantastical creation knitted for her by Ma Frayne, rose into the air. It had been missing for a couple of days. Isolde must have taken a fancy to it and carried it off to her basket. Gideon opened his mouth in warning—of what, he had no idea—but it was too late. Tamsyn raised her hand like Andy Murray about to fire a good one over the net.
    The ball hit Zeke square on the back of the skull. “Oh—Jesus,” Gideon said helplessly, and clapped his hands to his mouth. “Tamsyn!”
    It wasn’t funny. The situation was horrendous, and Gideon had almost lost track of which of the two women—Elowen or Eleanor—his brother was talking about. Either way, something difficult, painful and sensitive was going down. He couldn’t possibly laugh.
    But Lee’s face was such a picture. His eyes were wide in consternation. And he was about to hurl himself under the bus for his child. “Zeke!” he gasped. “I am... so, so sorry. I meant to throw that for Isolde. I can’t think how I missed.”
    Zeke turned round. He looked more puzzled than anything else. The ball had impacted softly, and he was used to a certain amount of chaos in his brother-in-law’s home. “That’s quite all right,” he said. “By the way, Lee, I didn’t mean to imply that you would ever deliberately overhear anything I said, or—or thought. I just...”
    He fell silent. On the floor, the pompom ball was twitching like a live thing. Tamsyn’s brow rucked as she strove to get a grip on it, showing it what it was meant to do with small upward jerks of her palm. Slowly, gracefully, the ball rose into the air.
    This time she delivered it without fuss. Zeke sat open-mouthed as it floated across the room towards him. Any hope that he might not know who was doing this died as his attention fixed on Tamsyn. The ball came to a hovering halt above his lap, and he scrambled out from under it, knocking over his chair. “No. No.”
    “Zeke, take it easy.”
    “Your child is doing this. Keep it away from me.”
    Did he mean the ball or the child? Gideon’s sickening doubt immediately transferred itself to Tamsyn. She let the ball drop with a splash into