No Place Like Home Jane Renshaw (best books to read for beginners TXT) 📖

she was tasting at the back of her throat, was the savoury aroma of a summer barbeque.

She couldn’t do this.

She just couldn’t.

She had to get away from the smoke so she ran, she ran down the shadowed path between the woodshed and the hedge, feet pounding on the damp, moss-slick packed earth –

And straight into the person standing there, quite still, in the gloom.

The person standing there, silent and wide-eyed.

CHAPTER 1

Oliver Oliver Oliver.

Her feet seemed to beat out his name on the road as a sort of invocation, a prayer, an entreaty to whatever gods there may be, whatever forces for good there may be that had the power to keep him safe.

Oliver Oliver Oliver as she ran through the dark, through the funnels of light under the streetlamps that illuminated, briefly, the rain that stung her face and hands, as she ran through the foaming sea that crashed onto the road, flung against her by a wind so strong it was like a solid thing, a thing she had to push through, breathe against, somehow.

Let him be safe.

Let him be there.

Let him be safe as she ran past all the empty blank windows of the empty cottages to the one she needed, the one where he must be.

Oh please.

Oliver.

It was so narrow, the pend between the fisherfolk’s cottages, that she could almost have reached out and touched the wall of Evie’s house and the wall of the house opposite at the same time. In the shelter of the buildings, in this shelter from the storm – please let this be his shelter from the storm – it was possible, finally, to breathe.

She filled her lungs and she shouted:

‘Evie!’

She tried to put her finger on the doorbell but her hand was shaking so much it slipped off the little plastic nub and she had to hold that hand with the other one, she had to focus focus on pressing that white plastic nub and she was still shouting and why was it so dark in there? And please please Oliver.

Why weren’t there any lights in the windows?

She banged on the door and she kept shouting her sister’s name.

‘Evieeeee!’

Where was Evie?

Why would she have taken Oliver? Without even telling her?

A widening triangle of yellow light shone on the rain as a door opened but not Evie’s, it was the door of the next cottage and it wasn’t her own face looking back at her, it wasn’t her own twin’s face, it was an old woman, it was Margaret who lived next door and

‘Where’s Evie?’ Sarah shouted into her saggy face and Margaret just stared at her, she stared and then she shook her head and said something but Sarah didn’t know what she was saying, there was too much noise from the wind and the crashing sea and Margaret was standing back inside her house and

‘Oliver!’ she shouted and ‘Oliver’s missing!’ and

‘Who?’ said Margaret with a funny pursed-up face and

‘Oliver!’ and

‘Who’s Oliver?’ said Margaret and

Oh God and ‘My son, my son!’ and please let Margaret not have dementia, surely Evie would have said if she had, but Sarah hadn’t seen Margaret for months – no, years – so this was possible, this could be, because sometimes Evie didn’t tell her things she thought might upset her but

The stupid old bitch!

It wasn’t her fault, she knew it wasn’t poor Margaret’s fault, with her staring eyes, her frightened eyes but

‘My son!’ She pushed the words out. ‘You know – my son – you know – Oliver! He’s missing! I just – checked. His cot. He’s gone – someone’s taken –’ She dived at the closing door but she was too late, the old woman had slammed it and when Sarah tried the door handle and pushed she met the resistance of a lock, the bitch, didn’t she care, didn’t she care that a little boy was missing? That Oliver was gone? He was out here somewhere –

And suddenly she couldn’t move, she couldn’t do anything but stare at the locked door. There was a tightness in her chest, as if her lungs were shrinking and shrinking and every time she breathed out they shrank a little bit more. Soon she could only get sips of air, tiny sips, before her tiny shrunken lungs pushed it back out again.

Oliver.

She shut her eyes and made herself not breathe. Made her lungs be still, as Evie had taught her.

Oliver loved being outside.

He wasn’t afraid.

It wouldn’t even occur to him to be afraid.

She heaved in a breath.

The sun is coming out to play...

When he was born, when Evie had seen him for the first time, she’d whispered, ‘Rah-Bee!’ – the twins’ childhood codename for Sarah, Sarah Booth, Sarah B., Rah-Bee – ‘Rah-Bee, he looks exactly like the sun in Teletubbies! You know, the sun with the baby’s face in it!’ Evie had started watching children’s TV, even before Oliver was born, to select the programmes she thought would be suitable for a child prodigy, which of course he was going to be. Oliver’s red little newborn scrunched-up face didn’t really look like that Teletubbies baby, or, indeed, any kind of prodigy, but that was where it had started, with Evie saying that.

‘The sun is coming out to play,’ Sarah would warble at him whenever they were going outside to the garden. ‘Hello Mr Sun, how are you today!’ And she’d pop a sunhat on Ollie’s head or, in cold weather, bundle him up in lots of cosy layers and a woolly hat and a hood until he looked like an adorable little maggot.

And as he’d got bigger, as soon as she started to hum it, Oliver would stop whatever he was doing and start squirming in time, his head rocking comically from side to side, his arms held out with his little palms turned upwards as if he was holding a giant invisible ball. Sometimes he would smile like the Teletubby baby, but mostly it was a serious business, his sun dance. Lately he’d begun trying to