The Insect Rosary by Sarah Armstrong Read Free Book Online

each other, brushing it off our own clothes where we could see it. We went through the gate and walked slowly past an old tractor and the carts which weren’t used any more. I started to imagine someone leaping from one of the barns and tried to run.
    â€˜You can’t run in wellies!’ shouted Nancy.
    I could try. I stopped, went back to her and dug into my pocket.
    â€˜Sister Agatha gave me this for you.’ I held out the beads.
    â€˜Wow.’ Nancy pulled hers from the bag and dangled them from one finger. ‘Thanks. Hide yours so she doesn’t make us do any praying.’

6
    Now
    It was a much longer walk to the village than Nancy remembered. Even Elian, who often walked to work on a Friday instead of paying for the gym, was tired.
    â€˜Are you sure it’s only two and a half miles?’ he said, twice. He frequently took his phone from his pocket to check for reception, even though Nancy had told him it was unlikely. They kept to the wet grass of the roadside although there were few cars, as when they came there was little time to jump out of the way. Their shoes were still damp from the day before anyway. The roads curved around, almost back on themselves, and Hurley was the only one of them who seemed to accept it as a walk. Both Elian and Nancy wanted more from it, both scanning the landscape for interesting things to point out. They found little to say.
    They crossed the river Bann over the narrow stone bridge and arrived in the village. Nancy headed for the nearest shop, a convenience store, she wanted to call it.
    â€˜Is this it?’ asked Elian. ‘Isn’t this the outskirts?’
    â€˜This is it. Just don’t chat to anyone about anything other than the weather.’
    â€˜I got it last night. No religion, no politics. Agatha brought up religion, not me.’
    â€˜She asked if you were planning on going to mass, not what you thought about the different denominations and their role in the world.’
    Elian sighed and looked around. A couple of roads of black and grey buildings, the police station which still, even now, looked like a well-defended fort in which secret and terrible things happened – this was it.
    â€˜I’ll just go for a wander,’ said Elian.
    Nancy felt like saying, don’t bother. The word village isn’t a promise that it will look like some pretty and abandoned town of yokels in Somerset, or poets in the Lake District. Sometimes a village is small because no-one else wants to move there.
    She nodded and took Hurley inside. She remembered this shop being the most exciting place in the world. They would test run sweets and fizzy drinks in Northern Ireland before deciding to roll them out in England. She liked being part of this early wave of people who got to decide things. Now, at home, she got all of these American products before they were introduced here, but that wasn’t really the same. She looked around, but she didn’t really know now what sweets were new and what were already sold in every newsagent in the UK. There was little that Hurley recognised but she’d long told him that English chocolate was much better than American. Sweeter and paler and easier to eat more of in one go, but she didn’t say the last bit.
    â€˜Choose something,’ she said, ‘just remember it won’t be exactly the same as at home.’
    She looked around for food to add a little variety to what Agatha fed them at the strict mealtimes. She had a feeling that Agatha would disapprove of any eating outside of these times, but she was also sure that life would be easier if Elian and Hurley could be occasionally lifted by a change. A change back to what they recognised as normal, in a way. Not that their kitchen was full of chocolate or crisps. It wasn’t very processed, very American at all. The doctors had all agreed on the importance of Hurley’s diet being simple and lacking in colours and other