Thieving Fear Read Online Free

relished inventing, the one where you had to say an even longer sentence than the previous player, and the game of adding words to a sentence spoken backwards, and the conversations made up of words in reverse, when Betty had vacillated between tears of frustration and of helpless mirth . . . 'Rebmemer, rebmemer,' Charlotte had finished, prompting mostly puzzled looks and a few guarded smiles from her uncle's friends and token laughter from her cousins. The all-purpose priest had brought the proceedings to an end with a Cherokee homily, and as curtains closed off the exhibition of the coffin while speakers emitted one of Albert's favourite Beatles ditties, the congregation had vacated the unadorned chapel to accommodate the next shift of mourners. Charlotte and her cousins had to represent the family outside the crematorium, since their various parents were either abroad or estranged from Albert since he'd closed into himself after his wife's death. Charlotte had felt uncomfortably presumptuous, especially since the rest of the occasion was so lacking in ritual. 'We all came, that's what matters,' she belatedly said.
    'It's like we've never been away,' Hugh said. 'Nothing's changed along here except us.'
    'What are you using for eyes?' Rory was amused to ask. 'Everything has. Not a single grain of sand's the same.'
    'I shouldn't reckon even you can see them all.'
    'I'm saying there's not a solitary bloody thing that hasn't moved or grown or died or come or gone.'
    Charlotte had a sudden notion that neither of the brothers was entirely right. 'Depends on . . .' she almost began and wondered why the phrase should feel unwelcome. She gazed along the miles of cliff that stretched to the mouth of the river. Spiky tufts of grass turned towards her in a breeze as if sensing her interest, while the cliff face that sprouted them appeared to stir, acknowledging her concentration. A flood of shadow lent a darker substance to the cliff, and she was trying to decide why its presence had grown oppressive when Rory said 'Have we walked enough of us off yet?'
    'Up to Ellen,' said Hugh.
    As she responded with a gentle frown Rory said 'I've had tramping through sand, that's all. Bungs my senses up.'
    Charlotte didn't notice the path, a series of zigzags lying low in the grass on the cliff face, until he turned towards it, and then she remembered falling onto it out of her teenage dream. 'Beat you to it,' she declared and strode upwards.
    The cliff crowded into one side of her vision and then the other as the path, which was only inches wider than her waist, changed direction. Tufts of grass caught her feet or emitted whispers of restless sand. The cliff top would be safer, and only the low wadded sky made her feel as if she were under a lid. She remembered lying in the tent that night, unable to stay asleep for the thought of closing a trapdoor on herself and utter darkness. She tried to leave the memory behind as she climbed onto the open common.
    A gorse bush scraped its thorns together as a wind dissipated through the grass. The clump of about a dozen bushes was the only vegetation other than the green expanse that stretched more than a quarter of a mile to a hedge, and Charlotte was wondering why the view should contain even the hint of a threat when Hugh stepped up behind her. 'This reminds me of the last time we camped out,' he said.
    'It should. It's where we were.'
    He tramped past her and gazed about before rubbing his scalp as if that might electrify his brain. 'I don't think I know where I am.'
    Rory joined them and shook his head at his brother. 'How could you get lost up here?'
    'Charlotte did last time.' Less defensively Hugh asked her 'Have you sleptwalked since?'
    'Has she what again, Hugh?' Ellen clambered onto the common and tucked her dishevelled blouse into her jeans. 'Don't all look at me,' she begged.
    'Sleptwalked, sleepwalked, I don't know. Does it matter that much?'
    'Not enough to have an argument about,' Charlotte