Burley Cross Postbox Theft: A Novel by Nicola Barker Read Free Book Online Page A

your father’s plane went down?). She hadn’t been up there herself since the mid-eighties, when her thyroid first became an issue (and her weight ballooned), but she asked me to take a bouquet most weeks, and I was always happy to oblige her. It was never any trouble.
    I have continued to take the bouquets since her death. In fact Rhona has actually accompanied me on several occasions (straight after our morning swim, although she finds the last stages of the hike a little difficult because of the problem with her knee joints). I know your mother truly loved that place.
    We were standing up there only the other day, squinting over towards the power station (it was an especially beautiful, crisp, clear winter’s morning) and laughing together about our early experiences with Glenys after we first arrived at Threadbare. She was always a rather singular creature!
    We remembered her throwing that brick through our kitchen window – and we’d barely been ensconced a week – because we trimmed the ash hedge between the two properties without seeking her permission first (we honestly didn’t realize that the hedge was ‘hers’; it didn’t look like it had been trimmed in years!). She’d been perfectly charming up until that point – even brought us a basket of greengages from her garden on the day we arrived (although it later transpired that she’d stolen the fruit from our greengage bush the week before; they were a little soft. I always wondered why the crop was so thin that year!).
    We were quite distraught about it, as I recall (the brick, not the greengages! The windows were original – that marvellous, dimply, slightly imperfect old glass which Rhona’s so passionate about), and as I said at the time (you’ll probably remember – we’ve rabbited on about it enough, since!), ‘If only she’d just come outside and said something – shared what was on her mind – we’d have stopped what we were doing without so much as a squeak of protest.’
    But that wasn’t Glenys’s nature. She was never a big one for speaking out. She’d rather dwell on things, brood on things. She knew it was a fault in her. She even admitted as much, herself.
    I was convinced she and Rhona would never make it up. Rhona – as you’ve discovered, to your cost – has an impressively short fuse. Although I think Glenys is the only person I’ve ever known (and I include our own, dear Dad in this select little group) who could actually make Rhona quake.
    I think they probably recognized something in each other, something wild and uncontrollable, and realized – as lethal predators are wont to do – that some kind of compromise needed to be reached, quickly, as a matter of urgency; it had to be, or all hell would break loose. And so was.
    Rhona bit her tongue from that time onwards. She bit it, and she bit it (sometimes I feared she might almost sever it!). ‘It’sgood for my soul,’ she’d mutter, or else, ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’
    Over time the relationship with Glenys undoubtedly improved. She learned to trust us, and even (I like to think) to rely on us a little. But you still couldn’t take anything for granted. There was never any predicting when she might blow, or what might provoke her. It was like having a rumbling Vesuvius on your doorstep! You’d think everything was proceeding along equitably (no real clouds on the horizon), and then suddenly there’d be this tremendous outburst. A cataclysm!
    Her rage was all-consuming – like a dam wall collapsing. This terrible roar! Indiscriminate destruction! Everything engulfed and obliterated… Then afterwards, this amazing calm – a gentle sun, a washed-denim sky.
    Glenys rarely bore a grudge for long – except with you, Donovan.
    I remember that Easter – three years after your final, huge row – when you drove up from Derby (you were on your sabbatical), bringing her that exquisite, miniature Japanese maple as a peace offering, and she