Unspoken Read Online Free PDF Page B

better.
    When Brenna and Gradin arrived, I knew we were in for trouble.
    I’ve just found out that thirty pounds has gone missing from the tin on the dresser. Our treats fund.
    ‘Where’s Brenna?’ I ask Gradin, sucking on my finger. It’s been throbbing a while now. I can see he wants to say the right thing but he is completely unable to tell the truth. Instead, he shrugs. I can smell his unwashed body.
    ‘Did you shower this morning?’ I squint at my finger.
    He shrugs again.
    ‘Did you take the money?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Did Brenna?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘That was for the weekend. You could have seen a film and had a meal out. Pizza, perhaps.’ He’s already told me it’s his favourite food.
    Gradin sneers and whistles. I thought he was going to confess but he doesn’t. That would have been too soon. ‘Baby,’ he croons and turns to his sister as she comes into the kitchen. He grins at her, and even though at sixteen he is two years her senior, it could be the other way round. ‘Baby, she says we took her money.’ Gradin’s voice is rounded and childlike; his consonants without edge and his vowels wrapped in a blanket.
    ‘Course we didn’t. We’ve not taken it.’ Brenna, on the other hand, is as bright as a button and slips her arms on to her brother’s shoulders. ‘You probably spent it already.’ Her eyes whip a keen defence at me. I am almost knocked off balance.
    ‘I think not.’ I stay perfectly calm, watching them, studying every muscle twitch, every blink and breath, the way Brenna’s fingers lie flat on Gradin’s shoulders before she needles her nails between his muscle fibres. Lying is an art form.
    ‘Ow!’ he squeals. ‘What you do that for?’
    Brenna shrugs and I make a mental note of that, too. ‘It were probably that coal delivery man who nicked it. When he came in to use the loo.’
    She’s holding her own, I think. Staying cool and her actions are congruent with her words. Gradin, on the other hand, is squirming in his chair as if he’s about to be accused of all the world’s crimes. ‘That’s probably it,’ I say and turn to prepare their lunch.
    ‘I never nicked it!’ Gradin suddenly yells and explodes at the kitchen table, upturning it and sending cheese and bread and knives and glasses on to the floor. I jump back to avoid the knife from stabbing my foot but I don’t shout at Gradin. He’s had enough of that in his life.
    Believing him is important. It doesn’t do to live a life stacked on lies. ‘If you say you didn’t take the money, then I believe you, Gradin. Will you help me clear up?’
    And just like that I have them calibrated – their baseline reaction to accusation when they know they haven’t done anything wrong. There wasn’t any money in the tin in the first place.
     
    By late afternoon, my finger is so sore that I can’t do anything with it. After Gradin’s emotional outburst, I really don’t want to leave the youngsters alone while I visit the GP, but I have no choice. I have an infection, and as much as I dislike doctors, I now need to see one. It all started last week with a splinter from the chicken house. I thought it would go away if I ignored it, but it hasn’t.
    Witherly is a twenty-minute bus ride from Ely. They’re not for me any more, towns and cities – too much happening, too much going on, too many people getting on with their lives, with what they always planned to do. I might be clever walking a tightrope, but it’s never taken me anywhere.
    The bus will drop me directly at the surgery on the city’s periphery. This I can manage. But keeping within the boundaries of my farm is what I strive for, and infected fingers are the kind of nuisance that throw me off course, make me wobble on my rope. For a moment, I understand completely why Gradin upturned the table.
    As the bus plunders the patchwork of desolate fields, I recall the last time I saw my GP – Dr Dale, a fairly pleasant man in his sixties. It was a chest infection,