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thriller,
Suspense,
Mystery,
Mystery Fiction,
mystery novel,
catrina mcpherson,
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child garden
ten.â
âAnd the Scarlets,â said Stig. âScarlet McFarlane and Scarlet McInnes. We called them Scarlet McFarlet and Skinny McInnes. God, kids are cruel.â
âAnd April Cowan,â I said. âWhat did you call her?â
âWhat did we not?â said Stig. âApril Showers. And that turned into Golden Showers, but with any luck she didnât know what that meantâand I can tell that you donât either, so donât ask me. We called her Cowgirl. And Cowface sometimes. And Skinny McInnes called her a different name every month. September, October, November ⦠We thought that was the funniest thing out.â
âYou bullied her,â I said.
âEveryone ripped the piss out of everyone,â said Stig. âMiss Naismith called it bonding.â
âMiss Naismith sounds like an idiot,â I said.
âIf there was a bully,â said Stig, âit was Van. Van the Man. But then, after what happened, he probably never said a cross word to anyone ever again. He still lives round here.â
âAfter what happened,â I repeated.
âYeah.â He drained his whisky glass for the second time and set it down on the edge of the Rayburn top with a clunk, as if it was a gavel and he was calling himself to order. âSo we slept outside. Dead excited. And we stayed dead excited until about ten oâclock. By then weâd eaten our midnight feast hours early and we were freezing cold and getting sore from lying on bracken beds, so we thought when Miss Naismith came to check on us, like she said she was going to, weâd ask to go back inside.â
âWhy didnât you just go?â
âCouldnât see a thing. We hadnât taken torches, planning to look up at the stars. But it was cloudy. Pitch black once the fire burnt down. So we waited.â
âPitch black at ten oâclock in May?â I said.
âReally thick clouds,â said Stig. âWe waited. The girls were all huddled in together. Or at least the weathergirls and the Scarlets were. April ⦠I donât know where April was exactly. I was freezingâfeet numb, fingers numb, back killing meâand none of the boys would get zipped into sleeping bags together to stay warm. Nod and Ned McAllister were sort of spooned in, but the rest of us were nearly getting hypothermia.â
âNod and Ned?â
He had to think about it, finding it as hard to dredge up their real names as I would find it suddenly to call him Stephen. âNathan and either Edwin or Edmund, I think,â he said at last. âAnyway. We fell asleep in the end, at least I did, and slept until it was getting light. Must have been four-ish and the sky had cleared. It wasâjust for a minuteâit was what we had been after when we asked to stay out, you know? I opened my eyes and the sun was shining through the trees, but white and kind of ⦠milky. And there was dewdrops all over my blanket. I could see them, like every one was shining, balanced on the ends of the threads sticking up, see it clear as anything. Dewdrops all over the pine needles too, even on the cones lying on the ground. Everything was sparkling.
âThen I moved and, just like that, the dew was soaked into the wool and I was shivering. It was ⦠this sounds mad, Glo, I know it does. But it was a perfect moment. It was like pure peace. Have you ever had a moment like that?â
I couldnât answer. All I could do was stare at him.
âWell, anyway, maybe it only seems that way looking back because there hasnât been a moment of pure peace ever since. I moved, the dew soaked in, I was freezing cold and soaking wet.â
âThen what? Did you go back to sleep? Or was that when you realised something was wrong?â
âOh. No, I didnât go back to sleep. No, I never slept another wink until Van was shaking me, white as a ghost, saying Moped was missing.
âWe
Tim Lahaye, Jerry B. Jenkins