Читать книгу The Other Half of Augusta Hope - Joanna Glen - Страница 26

‘Will you come?’ I said to Wilfred. ‘This is the last time I’m going to ask you.’

Wilfred shook his head.

‘We’ll make a new home with hammocks in the garden.’

He shook his head again.

‘A hundred per cent?’ I said. ‘Because once we’ve gone, you won’t be able to change your mind. This is the day to decide.’

Wilfred pointed to the rope around his ankle.

‘You want to stay with Claude?’ I said.

Wilfred took me by the arm, leading me to the patch of earth where we’d buried Claude, and there, at the foot of a cypress tree, was a pile of stones, with a fresh red rose in a little clay pot. He’d scratched the name CLAUDE into the bark, and he’d drawn tally marks, four upright lines and one diagonal, in fives, for every day since he died – they went stretching up and around the trunk.

When I saw those tally marks, I put my arms around him. I was taller than him, and his face fell into my chest.

It made me cry to feel him crying.

To feel his feelings and not be able to change them.

Three years since Claude died – and what it must be to lose a twin.

I couldn’t bear to remember the sight of Claude in the corner of the burnt hut.

Three months since the girls disappeared, and no one had seen a sign of them since.