Catching Falling Stars by Karen McCombie Read Free Book Online

peacefully…” Rich repeats the words Miss Saunders used about her mother’s death. “That’s nice. It sounds like a nice room.”
    I think I know my brother, and then he goes and surprises me. How can he like the idea of cuddling under the blankets in a bed where a dead lady lay? It gives me the creeps.
    “Actually, Mother’s room is nice, Richard,” Miss Saunders replies. “It has a lovely view of the garden. The apple tree is right outside and the blossom is very beautiful in May.”
    “I’ll like seeing that!” Richard smiles up at her.
    I don’t know who’s more surprised and unnerved by what Rich has just said: me or Miss Saunders. Blossom time is another eight months away. Surely we won’t be here by then?
    “Ooh, look! There’s that girl; hello! Hello!” Rich calls out, spotting the cheeky girl from the pub, dangling from a branch of the oak tree by her arms. In reply to my brother, she just grins and then sticks out her tongue.
    “Who is she?” I find myself asking. I must be pulling a face, because I feel a tug on the tight skin of my scar.
    “I don’t know her name,” Miss Saunders says, sounding uninterested. She’s quickening her pace now we’re in sight of the cottage door.
    At least Miss Saunders and I have something in common: neither of us thinks much of the girl from The Swan.
    “She’s just some evacuee,” Miss Saunders adds dismissively.
    And just like that we don’t have anything in common.
    This tall, straight-backed, unsmiling woman is simply doing her civic duty, like Harry Wills the farmer’s son said she should. And she’s only doing it because my mum charmed her, and very possibly begged her to take us in.
    The truth is, me and Rich, we’re about as welcome in Miss Saunders’ spare room as an invasion of cockroaches…

 
    Tick … tock … tick … tock … tick … tock …
    The sound of the clock on the mantle is as loud as pebbles on a tin roof.
    Rich doesn’t notice. He was so bone-tired that I took him up here after tea and he was practically snoring before I buttoned him into his stripy flannel pyjamas.
    But I’ve been curled here by his side for at least two hours or more, with dark, unhappy thoughts swirling in my head which have made sleep about as far away as home right now.
    Wide awake, I finally give up and get up.
    I don’t want to wake Rich, so I inch out of the big bed, trying not to set the springs squeaking.
    Once I’m out from under the heavy covers, the chill hits me, and I feel around in the dark for the armchair and the cardie I left on there when we got changed into our nightclothes.
    Shrugging it on, I tiptoe over the wool rug and the cold wooden floor to the far wall. Feeling around, my hands land on what I was searching for: a small, cane-seated chair beside the dressing table. I lift it and place it by the window, then pull aside one of the thick chintz curtains, securing it with its matching tie-back.
    And then I sit.
    Sit and stare out into the black of the countryside night.
    Of course, there’s a blackout here, same as in London, with not a peep of a lamp or light allowed to show, in case it brings enemy planes screeching out of the sky with bombs as their unwelcome gift.
    But I’m surprised by how much I can see in the moonlight. There’s the long, fruit-tree-filled garden, with the big square that’s the henhouse and distant rectangles in the ground where Miss Saunders’ carrots and potatoes grow in the damp earth. Then there’s the uneven dense outline of a low stone wall, and beyond that, fields roll endlessly into the distance like different shades of bottle-green and inky black velvet.
    Even the bedroom looks better in the dark. I hadn’t liked it when we saw it in the daytime, overstuffed with ornaments and doilies, banks of powders and potions, and too many mirrors to catch sight of my stupid scar in. It was like a museum to old Mrs Saunders, who’d lived and died in here. But seen in shadows, the clutter vanishes