Pine by Francine Toon

Author:Francine Toon [Toon, Francine]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Mystery, Horror, Contemporary, Thriller, Adult
ISBN: 9780857526700
Google: drMwxQEACAAJ
Amazon: 0857526707
Goodreads: 45298337
Publisher: Doubleday
Published: 2020-01-23T00:00:00+00:00

When Lauren gets off the bus the light is dim and there is a sharp bite in the air. Billy has been away for three days. It is Bonfire Night and as she walks alongside the mossy drystone wall on the road to her house, she smells dry branches and leaves burning somewhere. Vairi passes her on the road, walking her two tiny dogs. Lauren greets them, nervous of their yaps.

‘That’s you from school then?’ says Vairi.

‘Yes,’ says Lauren. The wind rises and she begins to feel her eyes sting in the cold.

When Vairi coughs, Lauren remembers she might die soon.

‘Back in my day, of course, there was no school bus,’ says Vairi, pointing down the road, a gnarled finger sticking out of her long twill coat sleeve. ‘I had to cycle in, past that forest, down the big hill, rain or shine. Aye. You kids are lucky now.’

Lauren says, ‘Is that right?’

‘That’s right. That bus started ’bout thirty year back, aye. This is too cold for November. I think we’ll have snow soon. Mind how you go.’ She begins to totter off down the road in her lace-up brogues.

‘Vairi?’

She turns. The dogs stand stock-still.

‘I just wanted to ask. Ann-Marie’s back now.’

‘Yes, I’ve seen her come and go.’ She frowns as though the wind is too strong and starts to turn away.

‘She says you knew my mum. You were her friend.’ She has to raise her voice against the rustling of the trees and bushes.

Vairi looks at her and smiles like a pumpkin. ‘I knew your mammy, aye. I still know her.’

‘What?’

‘Someone like her. She was a special lassie.’ She licks her wrinkled lips. ‘I don’t know what your daddy’s told you, but someone like that never really leaves, ken. I thought you’d realize that.’ The wind sets the leaves in an orange papery swirl around their feet.

The back of Lauren’s neck feels itchy against her scarf.

‘Look, look at that bird over there – that buzzard.’ Vairi points over the road. The bird perches like a lost glove on a fence post, its sharp yellow talons almost invisible. ‘She is watching you.’ Vairi’s voice croaks. ‘And your mammy will be watching you too. Just like that birdie. They’re very territorial. And your mammy is wise, like these ones. They may not look it, but they are. And that one over there knows how to help folk too.’

‘Buzzards help people? How is she your friend?’

‘They appear as a warning sign, of sorts. To watch out for what’s ahead. And the truth is’ – now that there is a story to tell, Vairi has resigned herself to the pavement in the silver November light – ‘your mother and I didn’t get on at first. I thought she was wild. And she was. Wild. She didn’t have any family near by, they were from somewhere else, further north, on the west coast.’

‘I know,’ says Lauren.

‘But I could see that she understood some things. Eventually, I saw that.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘Oh, traditions and the like.

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