Infinite Sky by Cj Flood Read Free Book Online Page B

day.
    ‘
Iris!
’ he shouted, out of nowhere. ‘That
bloody
foot . . .’
    I stood up and stared at him. My eyes prickled as if there were little stags behind them, charging. I wasn’t upset, I was angry, and I wanted him to notice me for once, but he was focused
on the phone, like that would solve all his problems.
    I stamped upstairs, dragging my finger through the dust on the banister. He hadn’t even tried to keep things nice. I sank into the armchair in his room, not caring that he was in and might
catch me. I wanted to see what Trick’s mum and his little sisters were doing in the paddock.
    I didn’t expect to see Trick. He must have decided to come out from the cornfield straight away, because he was slumped by the fire with his mum and little sisters, eating something. They
looked just like a family on a camping holiday.
    I was angry because stuff got nicked all the time. Just because it hadn’t happened to us before didn’t mean it was never going to. It could’ve been anyone. But Dad would make
out I was stupid if I even suggested something like that. He thought I was so gullible.
    Trick’s mum was handing some drinks out. She moved like Trick, swift and precise. He was nothing like his dad at all. The way he hunched over to lace his boots, ignoring everybody, his
thick neck sloping to meet his shoulders. My stomach dropped when I thought of him. Trick smiled at something his mum said and I just knew it, I felt it.
He wouldn’t steal from us
.
    Beyond the travellers, on the Ashbourne Estate, the maize flowers rippled prettily. I pictured the corn den, empty, and wished we were back there, just the two of us, without all this.
    Trick’s mum chucked him an apple and he bit into it, looking tense as he waited for his dad to get home. I wanted to warn him about what was happening. I wanted him to be prepared.
    ‘Eye?’
    Dad’s voice made me jump, and I pretended to be rooting through the washing pile on the armchair. He held out a cup of tea, and I took it without saying thanks.
    ‘Look at all that rubbish,’ he tutted, coming to stand beside me.
    Black sacks and some tied-up carrier bags were piled at the back of each caravan, and one of the dogs, or a fox, had ripped out the insides. Food cartons and nappies were strewn about the
paddock. There were piles of old tyres and sheets of corrugated iron and an empty gas canister by the fire.
    ‘You didn’t answer me before,’ he said.
    Neither of us looked at the other, and I listened for clues in his voice about whether or not I was in trouble.
    ‘Where were you? When I shouted.’
    I blew on my tea, making the surface move: Ashbourne Lake in the breeze.
    ‘Iris?’
    ‘Pig farmer’s field,’ I lied.
    ‘Then why didn’t you hear me?’
    ‘Must’ve fallen asleep.’
    He looked worried, which meant he’d decided to talk to me about something, and I crossed my fingers so hard my knuckle joints hurt that it wasn’t anything that would stop me from
seeing Trick.
    He shifted his weight from left to right hip then tidied up the towers of five pences he was collecting on the windowsill.
    ‘Look. I know I’ve been letting you run wild lately, but it’s only because I trust you. I don’t worry about you like I do your brother. I know you’re
sensible.’
    I picked a cat hair from my tea.
    ‘Leave that alone a sec, I want to talk to you. About the gypsies . . .’
    Irish travellers
, I corrected secretly.
    I braced myself for him to say he knew about my friendship with Trick, and that I wasn’t allowed out by myself any more because I couldn’t be trusted, because I was as bad as my
blasted brother, and worse than my mum, but he only said, ‘I know what you’re like, Eye, you see the best in people, and it’s a lovely thing, but . . .’ He turned away from
me, nodded towards the paddock. ‘I’ve been in the world a long time, and those people down there, you can’t trust them. And I know you think I’m being unfair,