The House of Hidden Mothers Read Online Free Page B

a long piece of material? – clung to her generous bust and revealed a waist and hips he knew by touch rather than sight; the jewels at her neck and on her wrists imitated the raindrops caught like tiny prisms in her hair. She looked so … foreign, like one of the busty beauties pouting out of the painted mural in his local Indian restaurant. What used to be his local – in fact, the only one within a twenty-mile radius of the Suffolk village he used to call home. Eating an occasional chicken tikka masala was the nearest he had ever come to Indian culture. And now her. Doe-eyed, firm-jawed, angle-browed, soft-curved, older than him, dark to his blond, pugilist to his pacifist – too many contradictions to work. Then he caught a glimmer of something in her eyes. Those eyes; he wasn’t a poetic man but they made him think of chocolate, fresh earth and twisted sheets. Beyond the brown was something he recognized from years of tending to unwanted animals, a kind of fear or maybe a resigned acceptance that however much you barked and spat, in the end someone was going to kick you where it hurt. He realized she didn’t want to fight. She wanted to get in first before he disappointed her. I never want to disappoint you, was his first thought, and his second caught him by surprise. That he loved her already.
    â€˜Shall we?’ He smiled, offering her his arm with a self-consciously gallant swoop.
    She raised one eyebrow, Bollywood style. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you, sweetie.’
    â€˜There! In the corner! Nah, behind you! Behind you!’
    Feeling like an unwelcome pantomime dame, Toby peered into the far corner, where sunlight couldn’t penetrate the overhanging tin canopy, and saw the outline of a motionless prone piglet. He scooped it up in one fluid movement, shielding it from the little darlings now baying for blood.
    â€˜Is it dead then? Can we see?’
    The piglet was barely breathing; each tiny inhalation seemed a mighty effort.
    â€˜Fighting for life’ made sense to anyone who had held the runt of any litter, battling its early and inevitable demise. He’d seen so many of them and still didn’t understand why Nature bothered creating them in the first place. What was the point, throwing together a weaker, smaller version of a species just so its mother could reject it, its siblings bully it and some other passing predator get a free and easy meal? Maybe it was the Darwinian equivalent of the naughty step, a way of warning your kids to behave, of reminding them how hard life could be and how lucky they were. Maybe Priscilla had lined up all her piggy kids this morning before opening hours and pointed a quivering trotter at their unfortunate brother, coughing in the corner.
    â€˜If you don’t listen to Mummy and eat all your swill, that’s where you’ll end up. All eighteen of you. Take a good look. That could have been you.’
    The piglet gave a little quiver as if he was reading Toby’s thoughts. He wouldn’t last the night, not unless they chucked money, time and resources they didn’t have at him. In any case, not intervening was policy at Broadside City Farm.
    â€˜We want the children to have as authentic an experience as we can give them,’ Jenny Palmer, the farm manager, had told him on his first day. Jenny was an earnest, friendly sort and had tried very hard to look as if she lived on the premises and was up at sparrow’s fart to milk the herd. But Toby had already clocked the designer wellies and the line where the fake tan ended and her neck began. What did he care? He was grateful to have a job, even a temporary one such as this.
    â€˜You have to remember,’ Jenny continued, ‘that many of these children have never even seen a real cow or a pig or a horse. They have no idea that vegetables come from the ground. Many of them don’t even have gardens …’ She shook her head sadly.
    Toby