Unhallowed Ground Read Online Free PDF Page B

‘blameless’, she would be welcomed back into the fold. But it wouldn’t be exactly as if she had never been away now, would it? There’d be a stain. No smoke without fire. The waters would be muddied and would never clear completely.
    ‘Wasn’t there something, some years ago, some tragedy, I seem to remember…’
    She needn’t return if she didn’t want to. Survival would be difficult but at a pinch Georgie could manage on Toby’s insurance if she pulled in her horns, left London, stopped spending on theatres, holidays and clothes, stopped ordering crates of wine and eating out when she felt like it. Huh. That makes it sound as though her life was nothing but one long holiday and that she was rolling in dosh. But no, she was what they call comfortably off because there was only herself to support and she worked long hours. She had worked very hard for her creature comforts, most weekends and quite frequently ten- or twelve-hour days.
    When you whittled it down those creature comforts amounted to a half-paid-for flat—a square box in a column of boxes, a three-year-old Vauxhall Astra, an Apple Mac, a fax machine and an old dog named Lola.
    And that flat, that place she’d considered her sanctuary, that place where she went at the end of the day to escape from the world, that flat which was her private den in the centre of the whirlwind of life, that precious refuge was violated now by hate mail and vicious telephone calls. But that was not all. Almost worse than this invasion by strangers were the polite summonses to talks and discussions, the letters of consolation, all the paraphernalia of death, and the devious newspapers pushed through her door.
    There was confusion over her future. Confusion over her past.
    There was anger, terrible anger. She raged at herself and the system, at the self-righteous public and the way that men like Ray Hopkins found women like Gail to marry, have kids and refuse to accept another man’s child. There was the fury, the childish resentment, at being singled out and hauled to the front to take the blame for the rest of the class. Oh yes, it could have been anyone, but why is it always me?
    And why is it always Angela Hopkins? The child who clings and won’t shake off?
    ‘ It’s absolutely disgusting allowing women with no kids of their own to supervise other people’s, surely that’s a mistake! Surely only a mother can truly recognize the signs. ’
    Oh yes, Georgie listened to the radio discussions, such sensible voices in a vacuum, talking as if words couldn’t kill. People on Woman’s Hour , complacent experts she’d often heard and admired, with opinions she had respected, imagining that because they were on the radio or wrote columns in newspapers they were wise, they knew best. Appalled by her own naivety, she cursed the simplistic way her views had been formed in the past. They chatted on to fill the time, to fill the space, to fill the hour, and collected their cheques at the door with their macs.
    Whispering.
    Talking against her.
    While she kept silent. Closed. Not permitted to speak. Defending herself. Controlling her grief.
    And the PM listeners on Radio Four muscled in on their phones and faxes, castigating the uncaring world in which toddlers could be lured to their deaths in brightly lit shopping centres, women could scream and blow their alarms, and children could sob through the night and nobody would raise an eyebrow.
    Community was dead.
    It was dog eat dog.
    Women ought to stay at home and unmarried mothers be punished.
    Somebody must be punished.
    Somebody must be made to suffer.
    Where was God? Normally one could rely on him. For a scourge. For a famine.
    Trial by rocking chair.
    In contrast there was Helen Mace’s incredible insight and kindness. ‘We need you to babysit for us, Georgie. I’ve tried all round and there’s nobody else, and Roger and I really should go. I feel bad having to ask in the middle of all this shit, but we could have