The Chinese Egg Read Online Free

hoped no one had heard above the noise of the traffic. He said, “What do you mean?”
    She didn’t answer. She had taken a handkerchief out of her pocket and was wiping her forehead on it. She put her hand into her pocket again and took out something else. She held it out to the pretty girl and said, “There was a shape like that round what I saw.” She held the thing up and looked past it at Stephen. He saw, incredulously, an angled piece of wood with a polished surface at either end. He said, “Where did you find it?”
    â€œIn the road.”
    He said, “It’s mine!”
    â€œWhat d’you mean, it’s yours?”
    In order to keep the egg in its perilous, incomplete shape, Stephen had wrapped it in a plastic bag. He took it out of his pocket now, extracted it from the bag and laid it on the table.
    â€œYou see? It’s a piece out of this.”
    â€œHow’d it get into the road, then?”
    â€œI dropped it. I couldn’t find all the pieces when I looked for them.”
    â€œI only found it yesterday,” Vicky said.
    â€œThat’s when I lost it.”
    â€œIt is his. You ought to give it back to him,” Chris said.
    Vicky didn’t either offer Stephen the piece or put it back in her pocket. Looking at him hard, she said, “You did call out just now. You said, ‘Look out!’ Why?”
    â€œI heard too,” Chris said, not liking it.
    â€œI suppose I thought. . . I thought there was someone on the crossing.”
    â€œThat’s what Vicky said. Some old lady, she said. I couldn’t see anyone.”
    â€œThe blue van was right by us,” Vicky said.
    â€œNo, it wasn’t. It was a bus, when you said that.”
    â€œIt was a blue van. Like that one,” Vicky said, pointing through the window at a van standing stationary farther down the street. As she spoke, it pulled out and came towards them. It slowed as it approached the crossing. This time the picture wasn’t nearly so bright, the sky was grey and there was beginning to be a thin drizzle, but again Stephen had cried, “Look out!” and the brakes screamed again, and Vicky’s eyes shut in a convulsive effort not to know. But this time when she opened them all the traffic had come to a standstill, people were running, there was already a crowd round something lying in the middle of the road.
    â€œCome on. Let’s get out of here,” Chris said, as white and shaking as the other two.
    Stephen said, “I’d better see you back.” They left their coffees half drunk and made for the open door. The ambulance had come ringing its urgent warning before they had left the busy street.

Four
    â€œI don’t like it,” Chris said, back at home. They were sitting in the kitchen after a dinner they’d neither of them been able to touch.
    â€œYou don’t think I do?”
    â€œDid you really see the blue van that first time?”
    â€œYes, I did. And it was a car just like the one that—that did it, the first time too.”
    â€œA Jag.”
    â€œI don’t know. You know I’m no good at cars.”
    â€œAnd you saw an old lady. It was an old lady that got knocked down. I heard them say so.”
    â€œDo you know how bad she was?” Vicky asked.
    â€œThey must’ve taken her away in the ambulance.”
    â€œPerhaps she was just stunned.”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    They sat and looked at each other.
    â€œD’you think that boy saw it too?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œHe didn’t want to say why he’d said ‘Look out’, did he?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Vicky said again.
    â€œYou never did give him that bit of the thing he said he’d lost and you found in the road.”
    Vicky took it out of her pocket and put it on the table.
    â€œWhat did you mean when you said there was a shape like it round what you saw?” Chris