Ponies at Owls' Wood Read Online Free Page B

before you go off doing whatever you do when you should be at school.’
    â€˜It’s the holidays Pete,’ said Jess, knowing that he knew this quite well.
    â€˜Well, holidays are too long.’ He stared at her. ‘And I’ve told you a thousand times to call me Uncle Pete. I’ll be working on the van today and I don’t want you bothering those ponies. Fill up their water if you must but if I catch you talking to any nosy parkers that think to come round here, you’ll have me to answer to. And don’t forget I want you to do the chickens.’ He paused at the door as he left and said, ‘Say hello to your gran for me.’
    Jess never knew whether Pete intended to sound sarcastic when he said things like this, or whether he really meant that she should pass his greetings on to her gran. He was a man whose temper changed from one moment to the next. It made her permanently uneasy. She refused to call him her uncle, because he wasn’t. And he never would be, no matter how long he stayed in their lives.
    After Jess’s mother Marilyn had died, Jess and her father had come to live with her grandmother, Grace, and Auntie Cyn at High Farm. At that time, Cyn had been out at work in a good job and was frequently away on business. Jess’s father had wanted the support his wife’s relations could offer Jess, but soon found himself bored and lonely living so far out in the country, with a distance to travel daily to work. Before long he’d met someone else and gone to live in Birmingham, pressing Jess, unsuccessfully, to join him there. He’d been disappointed when she hadn’t wanted to leave her gran.
    Then Pete had arrived. Jess remembered the first time Cyn had brought him to the farm to meet them. She’d just had her eighth birthday, and her mother had been gone nearly two years. It had been wintertime and the sitting room in the old farmhouse had looked cosy with a log fire blazing. Gran had been in the kitchen cooking dinner.
    â€˜Nice place you’ve got here,’ he’d said. ‘Must be worth a bit.’ He had wandered around the room picking up Gran’s china ornaments and bits of silver, turning some upside down and holding others up to the light, as if he was assessing their value. ‘Hallmarked eh? Very pretty.’ And later he’d let smoke from his cigarettes drift all over the dining room, even though Gran hadn’t finished eating, and he’d made sure Cyn lit up too, pushing her to keep him company.
    With a strong sense of foreboding, Jess had taken herself outside. She’d sensed that Gran too, had shared her alarm at the way Cyn appeared to hang on Pete’s every word. In no time at all Pete had moved in with them and things had been going downhill ever since, with Gran deciding to move out of the farmhouse and into a caravan in the yard.

    Now Jess got herself some tea and made one for her Auntie Cyn. She could tell what the cause of her aunt’s headache must have been as she moved the empty gin bottle from the corner of the kitchen unit and added it to the bag of bottles by the back door. She took the tea upstairs.
    Her aunt was propped up on her bed, gazing at her eyes in a make-up mirror.
    â€˜My bags are getting worse,’ she said as Jess came in, ‘I’ll have to get something to hide them. Hello Jess love, how are you today?’
    â€˜Fine,’ said Jess.
    Cyn flinched as she changed position on the bed. She still had her nightie on over a pair of jeans and her hair was badly in need of a sort out. She coughed and swore, then smiled warmly at her niece.
    â€˜I want you to do an errand for me Jess love. Can you get me a sliced loaf for Pete’s tea, and if I give you a note you might get me some ciggies?’
    â€˜I can’t. They won’t give me any even with a note. And they’ve shut the shop in Longthorpe. You must have forgotten. There’s only West Brook left