Cold Boy's Wood by Carol Birch (best books to read for students txt) 📕

thinking about things like that. It’ll drive you mad.’

‘Me?’ she said. ‘Mad?’

Both laughed.

She drank more. She demanded it, my God, she was worse than him. He even went out and got another bottle from the village. The pub was open and Mary gave him a bottle and said he could pay her tomorrow because she knew he was good for it. ‘Go on, Dan,’ she said and winked at him and smiled. She was quite fond of him, Mary was. For a moment he stood and looked at her with his big moist blue eyes, and she looked back and smiled and he thought about telling her about this woman and how she was bloody mad and it was beyond him, he didn’t know what to do. A bottle of Talisker. Good stuff. He just paid and went, and walked back down the lane.

She was singing when he got back. He heard her from the yard. She sang liltingly and vaguely out of tune but just about OK, something he didn’t recognise.

‘Here.’ He put the bottle down.

‘Oh lovely!’ she said with a big smile.

Oh fuck it, just fuck it, he thought, and poured himself a good shot and downed it and poured again.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘that woman who was looking for you? Madeleine? She’s OK. Why don’t you at least talk to her?’

She looked away and her eyes glassed over.

‘She’s OK. She means no harm.’

Poor bugger, he thought.

‘Oh, people never do mean harm, do they? Everyone thinks they’re doing the right thing but they’re all doing harm anyway, aren’t they?’

‘She’s a good person,’ he found himself saying, suddenly loyal to Madeleine. ‘She’d help anyone, she would, and not think about herself. She’s just like that.’

The woman was looking into the unlit fire as if it was ablaze.

She smiled. ‘What if it was me?’

‘What are you talking about?’ he said.

‘What if it was me and I lost my memory.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

She laughed and lit a cigarette. ‘I feel so much better now. I don’t know if it’s the paracetamol or this.’ Picking up the bottle and sloshing it about. Then she said, ‘What if I was a murderer? What if I’m a serial killer and you don’t know?’

He shot her a disgusted look.

‘I used to put my victims down the old mines.’

‘If you’re going to start talking weird, you can go,’ he said.

He got down on his knees and flicked a thumb across the lighter and held a flame to an edge of paper. Whoosh it went, the yellow fire running, and the whole thing went up beautifully. He’d always been good at lighting fires. Some real skill there, even in that stupid moment he recognised that and felt proud.

‘Did your mother die in this house?’ she asked.

The wood was catching, the kindle crackling away, heat pushing out at his face.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘hanged herself,’ sitting back and watching for her reaction. It was strange. She was looking into the fire and letting it burn her eyes till they watered.

‘Not in the actual house,’ he said, already wishing he hadn’t told her and wondering why he had. ‘It was round the back where the hives are.’

‘It’s awful when things go mad,’ she said and looked up at him.

He went out just to get away from her, stood in the kitchen pointlessly, not knowing what to do. He didn’t want to go back in but soon he realised if he didn’t go back it would only make things worse. Must tell her to go.

‘By the way,’ she said, when he went back in, ‘what happened about the body?’

He felt tired when he looked at her.

‘The one that came down.’

‘Nothing,’ he said.

‘Nothing at all?’

‘Buried, I believe.’

‘No one claimed him then?’

‘No.’

She looked at the fire again. ‘To think of that!’

Then she was off crying and it was awful.

‘Come on now,’ he said, but she went on. Fuck sake, on and on. She was having a full-blown nervous breakdown in his house and he couldn’t handle it.

‘You shouldn’t be in there in the wood in this state,’ he barked.

‘I’m not in any state.’ Her voice was steady.

‘Of course you are.’

She pulled herself together visibly.

Thank God for that, he thought, but she had to go and ruin it by saying ‘My head hurts.’ She stood up and held her head as if trying to keep it on.

‘You’ve drunk too much,’ he said. ‘Stop now.’

She sat down again. ‘It’s like waves inside my head.’

‘Are you going to be sick?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I think what I’m going to do is this – I think I’m going to ring Madeleine – I think I’m going to ask her what I should do.’

‘No!’

She jumped up and ran out all woozy as she was, leaving the back door open. He pulled a face: oh what now, get up, close it, don’t let her in again. It was going dark. He was glad she’d gone, so fucking glad, she was no responsibility of his, but what if she fell over in the dark and died, would that make him guilty? Was it too late to call Madeleine? He closed the door, sat down, turned on the telly then lowered the volume right down and went out after her just to make sure she actually got back. She hadn’t gone that far, and she was making a racket, crashing about. She moved ahead, always just in sight through the trees, never getting the way wrong or having to retrace her footsteps. Walking fine, seemed OK. She came to a thick green overhang of ivy and ducked under.

If he followed she’d hear, so he got as close as he could and listened, and after a while lifted up a strand of foliage – a little more, a little more – and a little more. There was a trail inside, a burrow, the kind an animal would make.

So now he knew exactly where she lived.

Somewhere deep inside a light glowed through the leaves. She’s a tough bugger anyway,