What You Left Behind Read Online Free PDF Page A

standing alone. He sighed. There was no way they’d be able to talk now.
    Stella glanced over her shoulder, beckoning Freddie on with her eyes.
    They reached the paddock fence, and Freddie leaned on the wooden crossbar of the gate. He stared out across the Manor’s acreage. The level field was dotted with five or six horses and ponies, most with heads bowed, munching the lush grass. Stella squinted at them, her hand shielding her eyes from the bright sun. Two of the horses looked up and began slowly to plod over to where they were standing.
    Freddie closed his eyes and finally dared to take his phone from his pocket. The messages were always similar. He wasn’t sure how much more of them he could take.
    Beside him, Stella was looking at the Manor looming behind them in a great shadow of red brick, twirling tall chimneys, and gingery stone windows. He knew it was very different from her house in Birmingham. Lana lived a privileged life.
    Freddie watched, pensively, as the bigger of the two horses—brown and white, with a stubbly beard and massive feet—approached, and Stella nervously stuck out her hand.
    “It smells,” she said, wrinkling her nose.
    A cluster of flies had followed the horse across the field, forcing the creature to swish its tail every few seconds and shake its head inannoyance. Stella suddenly retracted her outstretched fingers when it wrinkled its lips and threw back its head. It let out a fearsome noise.
    “Oh, Bruce,” Lana said, laughing. “Stop being a grump.”
    She removed the mints from her pocket again and levered several of them into her palm, which she held out flat for the horse to take. They were gone in a second. The horse head-butted the fence and scraped at the bare earth with his hoof.
    While they were both preoccupied, Freddie took a deep breath and read the message, feeling sick. Would it ever stop?
    “Are you OK, Freddie?” he vaguely heard Stella asking.
    He was aware of the flush on his cheeks, the tremor in his hands, as he put his phone away. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” he managed, catching sight of someone approaching.
    A couple of crows clapped out of a nearby tree.
    Stella and Lana turned.
    “Hello, Gil,” Lana said affectionately in the same voice she’d used to speak to the horse. “How are you today?”
    There was no reply.
    Freddie noticed how Stella stepped back, pressing against the gate. Gil had come right up close, but it was as if he hadn’t even seen them. He approached the fence, squeezing between Lana and Stella, where both horses were idly scratching the wood with their foreheads. He stared across the field.
    “He doesn’t always want to talk,” Lana explained to Stella. “Do you, Gil?”
    Stella nodded nervously. Freddie wanted to tell her it was OK, Gil was harmless, but the text had knocked the air from his lungs.
    Die, you useless fuck. Go kill yourself .
    “But when he does …” Lana trailed off with a giggle. “He’s hard to stop.”
    “Who are you?” Gil suddenly asked, staring at Stella. He sounded like a kid reading out loud to a teacher, even though he was an adult.
    Stella recoiled visibly and looked at Freddie.
    “She’s Freddie’s cousin, Gil,” Lana said, stepping in.
    “Will you be my friend?” he asked Stella, shifting from one foot to the other. “Good,” he continued, even though Stella hadn’t replied. He stared down at the ground. “You’re my friend now and I am glad to have you as a friend because I don’t have very many.”
    “Do you want to feed Bruce?” Lana asked him, going over to where the grass grew long just outside the reach of the horses’ mouths. She picked some, wincing as she bent down, and gave a handful to Gil.
    “Shall we go now?” Freddie heard Stella ask. But he was looking at his phone again, wondering whether to reply, see if he could make them back off.
    Gil fed the horse, then suddenly spun round and hurled himself at Stella. His arms went round her body, knocking her off balance