Читать книгу Perfect - Cecelia Ahern, Cecelia Ahern - Страница 11

Granddad jumps up from the table so fast his chair falls backwards to the stone floor. Nobody picks it up. We’re not ready for this visit. Just yesterday the Whistleblowers searched the farm from top to bottom; we thought we’d be safe at least for today. Where is the siren that usually calls out in warning? The sound that freezes every soul in every home until the vehicles have passed by, leaving the lucky ones drenched with relief.

There is no discussion. The three of us hurry from the house. We instinctively know we have run out of luck with hiding me inside. We turn right, away from the drive lined with cherry blossom trees. I don’t know where we’re going, but it’s away, as far from the entrance as possible.

Dahy talks as we run. “Arlene saw them from the tower. She called me. No sirens. Element of surprise.”

There’s a ruined Norman tower on the land, which serves Granddad well as a lookout tower for Whistleblowers. Ever since I’ve arrived he’s had somebody on duty day and night, each of the farmworkers taking shifts.

“And they’re definitely coming here?” Granddad asks, looking around fast, thinking hard. Plotting, planning. And I regret to admit I detect panic in his movements. I’ve never seen it in Granddad before.

Dahy nods.

I increase my pace to keep up with them. “Where are we going?”

They’re silent. Granddad is still looking around as he strides through his land. Dahy watches Granddad, trying to read him. Their expressions make me panic. I feel it in the pit of my stomach, the alarming rate of my heartbeat. We’re moving at top speed to the farthest point of Granddad’s land, not because he has a plan but because he doesn’t. He needs time to think of one.

We rush through the fields, through the strawberry beds that we were working in only hours ago.

We hear the Whistleblowers approach. For previous searches there has been only one vehicle, but now I think I hear more. Louder engines than usual, perhaps vans instead of cars. There are usually two Whistleblowers to a car, four to a van. Do I hear three vans? Twelve possible Whistleblowers.

I start to tremble: this is a full-scale search. They’ve found me; I’m caught. I breathe in the fresh air, feeling my freedom slipping away from me. I don’t know what they will do to me, but under their care last month I received painful brands on my skin, the red letter F seared on six parts of my body. I don’t want to stick around to discover what else they’re capable of.

Dahy looks at Granddad. “The barn.”

“They’re on to that.”

They look far out to the land as if the soil will provide an answer. The soil.

“The pit,” I say suddenly.

Dahy looks uncertain. “I don’t think that’s a—”

“It’ll do,” Granddad says with an air of finality and charges off in the direction of the pit.

It was my idea, but the thought of it makes me want to cry. I feel dizzy at the prospect of hiding there. Dahy holds out his arm to allow me to walk ahead of him, and I see sympathy and sadness in his eyes.

I also see ‘Goodbye.’

We follow Granddad to the clearing near the black forest that meets his land. He and Dahy spent this morning digging a hole in the ground, while I lay on the soil beside them, lazily twirling a dandelion clock between my fingers and watching it slowly dismantle in the breeze.

“You’re like gravediggers,” I’d said sarcastically.

Little did I know how true my words would become.