The Good People by Hannah Kent

Author:Hannah Kent
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia
Published: 2016-09-13T04:00:00+00:00

That night Nóra dreamt she was by the Flesk, washing Martin’s clothes with the heat of the sun on her back. It was summer. The banks of the river were thick with grass and the wide high stretch of fern. She dreamt she held the wooden beetle in her hand, bringing it down again and again in a rocky pool to pound the dirt from the sopping laundry. As she thumped the beetle for the last time, a bloodstain erupted in the cloth. Curious, she beat at the clothes again, and the blood circled wider, creeping through the weave.

Dread searched her.

Nóra put down the beetle. Something moved under the shirt. Skin prickling, she ripped the wet clothes away.

It was Micheál, his skull stoved in. Drowning in the pinking water of her laundry.

Nóra woke in sweat. First light crept under the cabin door. Uneasy, she padded out to the settle bed where Mary lay snoring. The boy was beside her, a blanket over his head.

Nóra felt her heart stumble over its beats. She reached out and pulled the blanket from the child’s face.

He was alive, blinking at her with gummed eyes.

Relieved, Nóra unwrapped the boy from his swaddling and examined his stained feet, the green crust in his ears.

‘Are you Johanna’s son?’ Nóra asked. ‘Are you Micheál Kelliher?’

The boy lifted his hands and clawed at her hair, and in mouth-thick gibber he made his answer.

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