Finding Home by Annie Seaton

Author:Annie Seaton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ASA

Chapter 15

Branton

Branton looked down at the pale white hand resting in his. Alice’s fingers were cold, and he put his other hand over hers to warm them.

‘Please don’t be afraid to tell me. I will not judge you.’

Her eyes were sad as she looked at him. ‘I am not afraid of being judged. I am afraid you will think I am crazy.’ She shook her head. ‘But you probably have never heard that word, I would guess.’

‘No, it is not familiar to me.’

‘Deranged? Mad? Insane?’

He shook his head.

‘I know! Village idiot?’

‘No, Alice, it is as though you are speaking another language to me.’ As she had yesterday with her talk of unknown things, he thought.

She closed her eyes and Branton let his eyes linger on her face. Her skin was fair, her eyes tipped up at the corners, but brushed beneath with faint purple shadows. Her nose was fine and straight, and her lips red and full. A long strand of dark hair had fallen from beneath her headpiece, and without thinking he lifted it up and twirled it around his finger.

Her eyes flew open and held his. ‘I know! A lunatic. Do you know what a lunatic is?’

‘I know the Latin word lunaticus. It describes a person whose actions have been touched by the moon.’

‘Good, that is close enough to the meaning I am trying to get across to you. When I tell you my story, I don’t want you to think that I also have been “touched by the moon”.’ She leaned forward and her breath, sweet from the apple, warmed his lips. ‘I want you to believe me. You must believe me. And not to believe that I am trying to bewitch you.’

He let go of her hand as she moved away, her cheeks pink with colour.

‘I promise I will listen to you,’ he said.

‘When I was a little girl, I hid in our cellar one day and I heard my mother talking about her fears. At the time it meant nothing to me. The story of two children going missing from the village near our cottage. We lived here near Glastonbury in our cottage, and I was so young, I don’t even know what the village was called. I believe it was because of Mother’s fear that we moved to London.’ Alice’s eyes welled with tears as she continued. ‘We lived there as I grew up, and then the war came. My father and then my mother were killed in the war’—she lifted her hand as he raised his eyebrows— ‘I will tell you about the war when I finish. I travelled back down to our cottage as I wanted to get away from London. I had no home there anymore. It was bomb—destroyed—in the war. I was only in the cottage for one night and I set out for the village to get some food, and that is when you found me.’

Her voice broke, but Branton did not touch her even though he wanted to.

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