A Dark Dividing by Sarah Rayne Read Free Book Online

said Joe. (Two pretty little accessories who would look good on newspaper photographs of Councillor Anderson attending civic events and local charitable functions…? That was a dreadful way to think!)
    Mel wondered how Joe could think the babies would be pretty, when she was very far from pretty herself, and Joe was no oil-painting either. It did not, in fact, matter if the twins were pretty or not: Mel would rather they had character and kindness, and happy and interesting lives.
    The truth was that she should never have married Joe in the first place. Isobel, who had known Mel longer than anyone, had been right when she said Mel was out of her tree to do so. The trouble was that Mel had been fed up with being on her own and being broke and being in a dead-end job, and she had been fed up with being nearly thirty and never having had a proper long-term relationship—It was a lot of fed-ups, and they had added up to her falling into the trap of any marriage being better than no marriage, which very likely went to show that she was not really living in the twentieth century either.
    Mel was trying not to acknowledge how much she had come to dislike Joe, because dislike should not have any place in marriage. She was trying even harder not to acknowledge that the dislike was sliding into something even more worrying.
    Fear. It was a bad thing to discover you disliked your husband, but it was much worse to discover that you were frightened of him.

    For a lot of the time now, Simone was quite frightened of the little girl.
    The problem was that she was hating, more and more, the glimpses she got of the little girl’s world—the world with the black stone house. Simone did not like that place, she did not like the feeling that the little girl was trying to pull her deeper and deeper into the world where the house was. Or did she? A tiny, rather horrid voice, whispered that wouldn’t it be exciting to know more about that world?—that not-quite-real place where the little girl lived…? To even step into it, just for a little while, like people in books stepped into other worlds…?
    The little girl said that one day they would be able to share all their secrets; she was looking forward to that because it would be an extra-specially good thing to do. But Simone did not think it would be extra-specially good at all, and she did not have many secrets anyway. She thought she would try not to listen to the little girl’s secrets, although this might be difficult because the little girl seemed to be getting stronger all the time. Once or twice Simone had had the feeling that she was being made to look down into the little girl’s mind, which seemed rude, like snooping on somebody’s conversation. Simone always saw thoughts and feelings in pictures, and seeing down into the little girl’s mind was like peering over the rim of a deep old well that did not smell very nice, and glimpsing the memories and the secrets lying at the bottom. It might be better not to look too closely at some of those secrets.

    Shortly after Simone was ten Mother began to get the anxious look in her eyes, and after a little while she said they would be moving again.
    ‘You mentioned the Welsh Marches just recently, didn’t you?’ she said. ‘You did a project on it at school, and you seemed quite keen. Would you like us to live there?’
    This was unexpected. Simone had not thought that she might be able to choose something so important as where they lived, and she was a bit worried by the thought of being so near to the little girl. ‘Is it a place where we could live?’
    ‘We can live anywhere we like,’ said Mother, and Simone heard that although her voice was bright, underneath she was anxious. ‘We’re secretly gypsies, didn’t you know that? We probably had a great-great-grandmother or something who danced to a tambourine and lived in a painted wagon.’
    ‘Not really?’
    ‘No, but I’d sometimes like to know how you can be so