Cold Boy's Wood by Carol Birch (if you liked this book TXT) 📗

is really sad. She said, “In a way I wish it was him, because at least then I wouldn’t always have to wonder why he went away. At least then I’d know.” Can you imagine that? How awful that must be?’

Harriet came out into the hall.

‘I suppose we ought to get going,’ Madeleine said brightly.

This is stupid, he thought, this is ridiculous, as they all trooped off through the trees with him in the lead. Last of the Mohicans, he thought. Pathfinders to Mars. How did I get into this? Nobody spoke. He went the wrong way and had to backtrack. At last he folded back the thick growth and revealed the canvas bedecked with strands of beads. He called out, then went in headfirst. She wasn’t there.

‘She’s not there,’ he said, backing out.

‘Let me see.’ Harriet bent down, lifted the flap and went in. Madeleine got down on her hands and knees and crawled in after. He could hear them mumbling together.

‘I know,’ he heard Madeleine say, ‘I’m not sure that that’s safe.’

Dan stood with rain dripping down from his eyebrows into his eyes. He thought he might be coming down with a cold.

‘Awful,’ said Madeleine, coming out with a rueful smile. Her padded coat shone with rain. She pulled the cords on its hood sharply so that it tightened round her face and made her look suddenly old and plain without her hair.

‘Awful,’ echoed Harriet, crawling clumsily out and jerking to her feet. ‘I don’t know, just do not know, how anyone can live like that.’

‘She’s vulnerable,’ said Madeleine. ‘I’m not quite sure what to do next.’

Get rid of them, he thought, and said, ‘Look. She’s survived in these woods all this time, she’ll stick it out a bit longer.’ Can’t argue with that.

There was nothing for it but to tramp back.

‘It’s really quite disgusting,’ Harriet said as they walked along. ‘I’ve kind of had enough of this. I mean, what is she becoming now? A horrible old vagrant. Did you see the bottles? And the sleeping bag?’

The rain eased up as they reached his house.

They shook the rain out of their coats. He put the kettle on, that’s what he was supposed to do. Soon, he was thinking, they will be gone and it will all be over. A new cat, one he’d never seen before, eyed him from the windowsill outside. White sunken cat face, arched brown eyebrows. Why that urgency in the eyes? Where do they all come from? Madeleine and Harriet came into the kitchen after him, he hadn’t wanted them to. They sat down at his kitchen table and started talking away as if they were in a café waiting to be served.

‘I’m sorry about all this bother you’ve had,’ Harriet said with a kind of defeated resilience, turning in her chair and watching as he rinsed a mug. ‘It must have been awful.’

‘Well no,’ said Dan, ‘she hasn’t actually been that much bother.’

‘How long has she had mental health problems for?’ asked Madeleine.

Harriet thought for a moment. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I only became aware of it after my sister died. My half-sister. She went a bit funny then, but of course it was a very bad time, and my dad went as well.’

He put sugar on the table, milk.

‘He went,’ she said, ‘he just went. Gone like that.’

She opened her bag.

‘I remember my dad,’ she said. ‘I loved my dad. I always knew him really well, even without words or anything. My dad. I’ve got pictures, look.’ She pulled a couple of small snapshots out of her bag. ‘Look how handsome he was when he was young. Look at his hair. My dad. And I suppose it was all understandable, I mean that she should lose track a bit, a lot had happened, but really, she was never the same as far as I was concerned. She used to have jobs one time. You know, she did this and that, she had a waitress job and a thing in a print room and some other things, and the jewellery thing. But she just got worse. You know? And then it all sort of fell apart. After the crash. After my dad went. It was all bad news.’

‘Tea,’ he said.

‘Actually, Dan.’ Madeleine smiled. ‘Do you mind if I make a coffee?’

‘I’ll do it.’

‘It’s ages ago,’ Harriet said.

He put the kettle on again. The cat on the windowsill stared in with a look of outrage. You and me, cat, he thought.

‘What I want to know is’ – Harriet picked up her tea – ‘what I don’t think people realise is that I actually left home when I was seventeen. So I don’t really know a lot about what went on after that, you know. We were never that close. It wasn’t just me, it was her too, she was weird. She wouldn’t ring you up like other mothers. She wouldn’t be normal. She really just wasn’t very good, you know, as a mother. She just wasn’t. She had no fucking idea, if you’ll excuse the language. Even with my sister. Much too soft with her. Ridiculous. Now, that’s not good.’

‘No,’ said Madeleine.

‘It’s very difficult.’

‘Yes.’

‘So all those years when she doesn’t get in touch and we just don’t have anything in common, it’s just like, I feel like, you know, as if we’re just completely separate people. You know? They say you can’t choose your family. Well, you can’t.’

‘Of course you can’t.’

‘And it’s like there’s this stranger out there who I don’t really know, could be anyone, and then whenever something awful happens like this, it’s me they get in touch with, and what am I supposed to do? I’ve brought her the meds. What can I do? What do they think? Am I expected to take her into my house? I have a partner. What am I supposed to do?’

‘I do understand, of course,’ Madeleine said, ‘but we do at least have to keep you informed. No one’s going to make you