boy ran towards his brother, pale and shaking with the fear of the unknown. The boys clung to each other, watching their father as they would have watched a wild animal prowling through the house, afraid to move a muscle in case they attracted its attention.
Leach fingered the barrels of the shotgun, feeling the certainty and solidity of the heavy steel. His hand itched to grip the stock. He reached out to it like a man greeting an old friend. Then he drew back, and looked at the boys as if he had just remembered they were there. He had made careful plans, but he had nearly forgotten them. That was what his brain was like now. Soft as sponge. As rotten and stinking as the stuff he scraped out of the hoof of a cow with foot-rot.
‘Will…’ ‘Yes, Dad.’
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‘You know where your Auntie Maureen lives, don’t you?’
‘Yes, Dad.’
‘You catch the bus into Edendale and walk to the bus station. Get a Hulley’s number 26. It stops at the corner of Bank Street, near the old library. You know your way from there. There’s enough money for the fare for you and Dougie in an envelope on the table.’ Will said nothing. ‘Can you remember that?’
‘Yes.’ ‘There’s a letter for your auntie in there, too. Don’t open it, Will. It’s for Auntie Maureen to read. And there’s two chocolate bars I saved for you. One each. They’re the ones you said you liked. Crisp and crunchy.’ Leach tried a smile, but swallowed it as his throat constricted in a spasm. ‘And Will … make sure young Dougie is all right, won’t you? Promise?’ said Leach. ‘Promise,’ said Will.
‘That’s a good boy.’
Leach found his eyes drifting towards the shotgun again. Not much time now. Not much left to say.
‘All the things I did, I did because I was trying to save the farm for you. For your future? Do you understand?’ he said.
The boys nodded, because it was what he expected of them. But Leach could see from their faces that they understood nothing. Probably they never would. By the time they were old enough, their mother would have talked a different story into their heads, one where their father was a weak fool, a drunkard, a bully, a criminal. But that wasn’t right. All he was, really, was a man
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who had failed. But probably the boys would never understand that, either. If they were lucky.
‘Dad?’ said Will. ‘Yes?’
‘When have we got to go?’
‘Best go now, son,’ said Leach. ‘Before it goes dark.’ He stared at the boys, wondering what else he should do. There were things which Yvonne had always done, which he had no idea of. He was vaguely aware that Will had taken charge of some of these things himself - somehow young Dougie always seemed to be washed and his hair was clean. But there ought to be something that a father did to look after his sons, some little thing that showed he cared. Especially when he was saying goodbye.
He saw that Dougie’s jacket collar had been turned over by the strap of his rucksack, exposing the lining underneath. It looked untidy. He reached out a dirtstained hand to straighten the collar, his fingers passing close to Dougie’s cheek, so that he felt the warmth from the boy’s skin. Dougie was trembling, and his eyes looked puzzled and afraid.
Leach turned to Will, but the older boy flinched away, and Leach let his hand fall back to his side. He felt a small flicker of anger and hurt, but it died as quickly as it had come, leaving him cold. Cold, and ready. ‘Off you go, then.’
He watched them walk across the yard and down the lane without looking back. He glanced at the cows, whose heads showed over the wall of the barn. They were unsettled because they had been brought inside
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when there was still grass to be eaten in the fields. But they would be all right.
Leach went back into the kitchen and stared out of the window. The rain had left dirty streaks on the panes, and the world outside looked blurred and distant. The moor had retreated into low cloud. He could just make out the car parked in the trees at the top of the track, but even that held no meaning any more.
In contrast, the objects immediately around him seemed alive and weighted with unbearable significance. The colours of the boys’ clothes draped over the rail of the cold Aga were bright and painful, and the smell of the wet earth from his boots on the tiles bit so hard into the back of his nose that it made his eyes water. The clutter that pressed around him seemed to be composed of living things, like an army of rodents gathering to gnaw at his body. If he left it any longer, the vermin would start to eat him alive. But he wouldn’t give them the chance.
The number 26 to Edendale was late. It had been held up by roadworks and temporary traffic lights in Bakewell, and by an old lady who had slipped on the platform as she fumbled for her bus pass. The driver spent several minutes fussing over her to make sure that she was all right. It wasn’t because he was worried about a claim against his employers for negligence. It was because the old woman’s daughter knew his wife, and because all the other people on the bus were watching him, and a lot of them knew him, too.
Will and Dougie Leach were standing at the bus
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stop, carrying the rucksacks they took to school in the mornings. They had their clothes in them for tomorrow, their pajamas and toothbrushes. The driver wasn’t surprised to see the boys on their own. He had done the school run at one time, and he remembered them. When the Leach boys had first started getting on the bus, they had been accompanied to the stop by their mother, or sometimes by their bad-tempered father, who never seemed to have a good word to say to anybody. The driver thought Will was bit of a moody child, and expected he would probably turn out just like his dad in a few years’ time. He felt sorry for Dougie, though. He always looked unhappy; even more so today.
The driver took the boys’ money and watched them for a moment while they found seats. Then he released the brake and let in the clutch, and forgot about them as he accelerated towards the bend and the descent from the moor towards the A515.
Will’s face was frozen. But he saw the tears start in Dougie’s eyes. Just as the bus turned the bend, Will grabbed his brother roughly by the shoulder and pushed his own chocolate bar into Dougie’s hands.
‘Here, have mine,’ he said. ‘I don’t really like them anyway.’
The bus was only a few yards away from the stop when they heard the shotgun blast. The boys looked back towards the farm. Above the juddering of the diesel engine and the grinding of the bus’s gears as it approached the hill, they could hear the rooks that roosted in the beech trees behind the farmhouse erupt
