The Woman in Black Read Online Free

and their homes. The journey was unsettling them, making them more wary about their final destination. It had stopped being an adventure.
    Eve wasn’t surprised. The train that they had eventually boarded was considerably more old-fashioned and primitive than the one they had taken out of King’s Cross. It had wooden benches in place of upholstered seats, the windows were stained with smoke and oil, it clanked and creaked, and it was decidedly draughty. And to make mattersworse, blackout regulations meant the train had to travel in complete darkness.
    Eve looked round the carriage. In the moonlight, everyone’s faces seemed pale and ghostlike. Edward was next to her, huddled into her body. He hadn’t left her side since he had wandered off on the platform. The RAF captain, Harry Burstow, was in front of them. Eve caught sight of someone on the opposite side of the carriage.
    A nurse.
    Her breath caught as the nurse slowly turned her head and looked at her. The nurse’s eyes and cheeks were shadowed holes, her skin so bleached out it looked like bone. Eve felt panic rise within her, sudden, sharp, and her hand went to her throat, holding on tightly to the cherub pendant she wore.
    Eve’s heart quickened, her breath shortened as she closed her eyes and saw ghosts from her past coming back to life. Unspooling before her eyes like an old monochrome newsreel. And she was back there in black and white. And red. So much red.
    And pain. So many different kinds of pain …
    No … no …
    She closed her eyes tighter. Willed the memory away.
    When she felt she could open them again, the nurse was looking out of the window. Eve took herfingers away from her throat, let the pendant fall back into place.
    ‘Are you all right?’ Harry leaned forward, concern on his face. ‘You seemed to have a … turn.’
    ‘I’m fine. Thank you.’ She took a deep breath. Another. He was still looking at her.
    ‘Can you stop that, please?’ she said, feeling warm despite the cold in the carriage.
    He frowned. ‘Stop what?’
    Eve swallowed hard. ‘Looking at me.’
    He gave a small laugh, looked around as if appealing to the moonlight. ‘I can hardly see you.’
    ‘Well …’ Eve searched for something to say. ‘Stop trying.’ She found her smile, fixed it in place.
    ‘I’m only wondering …’ He had raised his eyebrow once more.
    ‘Wondering what?’
    ‘What you’re hiding with that smile.’
    Eve flinched, the memory of a few seconds earlier flitting through her mind. ‘This is my face for work,’ she said, trying to make her voice match her smile.
    Harry looked slightly put out. ‘So you’re not really smiling at me?’
    Eve opened her mouth to answer, but couldn’t think what to say without insulting him further. The truth was she liked him, liked the way his eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled. The wayhe smoothed down his wavy blond hair when he thought she wasn’t watching him. But she didn’t like the way he focused on her, or the fact that he had seen such pain and fear on her face. And she knew she must never let him see it again.
    He lit a cigarette and, in her peripheral vision Eve noticed Jean roll her eyes, shake her head.
    Ignoring them both, she looked down at Edward. From her seat on the other side of the aisle, Flora had been smiling at him, and when he didn’t return it she had then waved at him. But Edward didn’t return the smile or the wave. He just stared at her. Expressionless.
    It seemed like the skeleton of a station, picked clean and left to rot. The buildings were soot-blackened brick, the roof tiles were loose and missing, the windows broken, the wood rotten. A chill wind whistled through them, high-pitched flute-like. Discordant notes playing an unwelcome tune.
    As the steam from the departing train melted into the mist of the night, Eve, Harry, Jean and the children huddled together for warmth on the platform as a limping figure, his outline weakly illuminated by the flicker