The Burning Air by Erin Kelly Read Free Book Online Page B

countryside.
    “Did you have a look in the mudroom?” Kerry only nodded. It was as though, thought Sophie, she was only permitted a certain number of words per hour, and had used up her quota until the clock struck one.
    “OK, let’s see what we can find for you,” said Sophie, leading the way to Rowan’s room. “What size shoe do you take?”
    Kerry held up five fingers and a thumb.
    Inches from Sophie’s nose there was a single Hunter boot in racing green, the number six stamped into its sole, but its partner was nowhere to be found.
    “They said if there weren’t any I could stay and help you make the Guys for the boys.”
    “I’ll be quicker by myself,” said Sophie, and then, realizing how harsh that sounded: “I mean, why don’t you just keep me company instead? I won’t be long.” She continued to sift through the jumble and then let out a gasp as her fingertips brushed against something soft and scratchy and shockingly familiar. The next moment she was holding up a sweater of Lydia’s that she hadn’t seen since she was a teenager. Instinctively she put it to her nose and inhaled. To the objective eye it was a horrible home-knitted ’80s creation in marbling pastel wool, ice white and lilac with tiny flecks of silver in it. The rush back through time, to their house in Cathedral Terrace, was so swift that Sophie half expected to feel her hair flying. “This is older than you are,” she told Kerry. “My mother knitted this when she was pregnant with Tara. Oh . . . it’s like hugging her. Or being hugged by her. Strange how something so ugly could have such sentimental value.”
    “It’s not ugly,” said Kerry. “I tried on something like that in Topshop last week.”
    “Really?” said Sophie, folding it and placing it in the “keepers” pile. “That makes me feel ancient . . . things I think are horrible are so old they’ve come back into fashion again. Anyway. I’ll hold on to it forever.” She slid the pile of clothes into a drawer at the bottom of one of the wardrobes. “There. They should be pretty safe in there.”
    Kerry watched so closely that Sophie felt self-conscious.
    “I haven’t got anything that belonged to my mother,” she said. This is more like it, Sophie thought, seizing on the potential for intimacy. She thought hard about how to broach the subject of Kerry’s ears in a way that would establish her as a sympathetic listener rather than an interfering big sister.
    Her concentration was shattered when something hit the dormer window with a gunshot crack then ricocheted away again. Sophie’s scream was a reflex action, so loud that the silence it left was somehow purer than the one that had preceded it. Kerry had her hand on her breastbone as if to still a hammering heart.
    “I’m so sorry, it was only a firework,” said Sophie, nodding at the telltale carbon smut on the pane. Embarrassed by her loss of control, ashamed at how near to the surface her tension was, she started to gabble. “Kids get overexcited and throw them—they can travel for miles. Where is everyone? If I’d screamed like that in the city we’d have sirens, lights, the lot. Look. Listen.” She spread her hands out wide to indicate the lack of response, laughed to show that she was joking. “Nothing. You can do anything when fireworks are kicking off. Scream, fire a gun . . . mind you, out here you can do anything you like anyway. There isn’t a soul for miles around.”
    Kerry was looking at Sophie’s hands, which were, she now saw, shaking furiously. A few doors away, Edie started to cry.
    “Let me get her up for you,” said Kerry, almost falling over her feet in her haste to leave.
    •   •   •
    If the women had reverted to type by cooking, then the men had done the same by taking seriously the task of building the fire over the ashy remnants of the one Rowan had made the day before. The boys had made fire sticks by rolling up year-old newspapers, and they