Nothing is Forever by Grace Thompson Read Free Book Online

forgotten?
    She ran across, locked it, withdrew the key and threw the bolt, then panic set in even stronger. If someone was in the house she had locked herself in with him.
    She put on all the lights then looked in all the downstairs rooms before slowly, fearfully, beginning to climb the stairs. She looked first into Aunty Blod’s room without disturbing her, then the rest of the house. Nothing seemed disturbed until she opened the final door. What she found in the room that had once been Tommy’s made her cry out in fright. The contents of the dressing-table had been emptied onto the floor, the drawers left on top of the bed.
    No one could have got in. Not though a door bolted on the inside! It must be me, she thought. I must be doing this. There is no one else here. Sleep-walking maybe. She remembered her mother telling she had done so for a while when she was young.
    Dawn was breaking and the increasing light gave her confidence. It must be her. She looked at her feet wondering if they showed signs of walking around outside. There was no other way she could find out about night-time wanderings; her dreams and presumably sleepwalking too, were rarely remembered. The soles of her feet showed no sign of tramping around. Yet it must be the explanation. There was no other.
    Without stopping even for a cup of tea, she found a torch and went to the shed and from the tool box that had been her father’s, took out a rusty old bolt and some screws. Tonight she would make sure no one could get in then, if anything was moved, she would know that she was sleep walking as she had when she was a child.
    It took a long time, and the screws resisted her puny strength so she hit them in with a hammer to start them off and eventually there was a second bolt on the back door. She determined not to leave it open again, not even when she went to the clothes line, or to put rubbish in the ash bin.
    She was too wide awake to consider going back to bed so she made tea, and it was then that she noticed that the silver tea-set had gone. She tried to remember when she had last noticed it and decided sadly that Henry must have taken it away again. She hadn’t been very gracious when he had offered it.

    Tommy and Bryn were setting off for work and, as they drove past their old home noticed that lights were on. ‘Ruth is up early, Bryn. Should we call and see that she’s all right?’ Tommy slowed but Bryn shook his head and he drove on.
    ‘I don’t think she’s happy living there on her own. Perhaps she’ll move on and sell the house,’ Bryn said.
    ‘Handy if she would, we’d be glad of the extra cash.’
    They were heading to a local farm where they were to clear out an old barn and repair the wooden walls. They passed Henry’s shop and then saw Mali running down the road, pulling on her coat as she went.
    Mali and her sister Megan shared the work in a café and when they were on the early shift, they were always in a rush to get there by 7.30. Megan had a little boy, called Mickie and the sisters shared the happy task of taking care of him, sharing the job in the café, alternating between the café and looking after Mickie.
    ‘Hi, Mali,’ Tommy called. ‘Why didn’t you and Megan come to our wedding party?’
    ‘Mam went out instead of looking after Mickie as she promised in a weak moment and which she immediately regretted.’
    ‘Should have brought him. Loved it he would.’
    ‘Tell Mam. Never does a thing to help us with Dylan. Always complaining about him, poor little love.’
    ‘She’s the loser. Lovely kid he is.’
    Mali ran on. She and her sister Megan knew they had to do something to get them away from their difficult mother. She was unhelpful and always complaining, making their lives miserable and two-year-old Mickie deserved better and so did she and Megan. If only they could afford to rent a house, it didn’t have to be something grand, they’d all be happier in a hovel rather than the place they no longer