stay, now that she had put off Barbara Mason. She would have loved to see Barbara again, jolly optimistic Barbara and her ancient capacious shoulder-bag that she refused to part with. She must call her parents later. If for any reason they weren't coming, perhaps she could still invite Barbara.
Suddenly she craned across the desk. The garden had been out of sight while she was on the phone and Anna had been alone downstairs. The garden looked half-drowned, the sky blackened everything. She shoved herself back from the window and hurried downstairs.
Anna was still writing. Nothing else moved on the ground floor except faint blurred shadows of rain, and even those vanished once Liz switched on the lights in the long room. All at once she was irritated by her fears; would even a maniac who disembowelled animals venture out on a day like this? Yet the curtains hiding the patio doors made her feel irrationally afraid. Keeping them closed in the daytime shrank the room. She strode forward and opened them wide with a tug on the cord.
Then she stumbled backward, choking on a cry. A crimson face was pressed against the glass, peering in at her.
The next moment she saw what it really was: the glistening movements in the empty sockets were of rain, not eyes – but that only made it worse. She ran up to Alan's room, almost falling, and dragged him down to look. She would have screamed for him, except that screaming would have brought Anna as well. By the time she got him downstairs, she was sobbing as much with frustration as with fear, because the face had gone; the rain had scoured it away. But she knew what she had seen: the imprint of a face that had been pressed against the window, trying to peer through the crack between the curtains – a face that must have been covered with blood.
Nine
When Anna heard mummy and daddy arguing, she felt shaky inside. It must be something very serious, because mummy had closed the playroom door and the door of the long room as well, so that she wouldn't hear. It must have something to do with the long room, because she'd heard mummy cry out in there and then bring daddy downstairs. She wished she could hear what they were saying. That might tell her why she no longer liked to go in there.
Rain staggered down the window in waves that kept washing away the roads and the fields. Teddy-bears sat forlornly in corners of her playroom, and she felt as they looked. The sounds of mummy and daddy arguing made her feel helpless, trapped in her room. Their muffled sounds were like the first rumbles of a storm.
She tiptoed across her playroom and pressed her ear against the door. Daddy was keeping his voice down, mummy's voice was rising. It sounded as if he was trying to convince her she was wrong about something. His voice seemed monotonous and overbearing; it made Anna's tummy tighten just to hear'it. She still couldn't make out a word, but she could hear that mummy had lost her temper. All at once, with a violence that made her jump back, the door of the long room slammed open and she heard mummy hurrying upstairs.
Mummy had gone to her workroom to phone – Anna realized that when she heard the downstairs extension ringing as mummy replaced the receiver. Who had mummy called? She wished she could ask her, but she didn't want to go out of her playroom in case mummy and daddy hadn't made up. Being near them when they weren't speaking to each other, or barely speaking, always made her feel uncomfortable and useless.
She tried to play, so as not to think. She got out her Little Red Riding Hood jigsaw and emptied the pieces onto her table. Separating the edges from the rest occupied her mind for a while, but in the end she just stared at them, defeated. There were too many edge pieces for her even to count, and she couldn't see two that looked as if they fitted together. Besides, she didn't like the picture on the box, the grinning wolf dressed up in an old woman's bonnet, his bright red tongue lolling. She didn't want to make that picture. She swept the pieces into the box.
She was replacing the box in her cupboard full of toys, when a car drew up outside. She peered through the rain, but the car was a humpy blur. The driver was almost at the house before she saw that it was a policeman, the red-faced policeman who had been to the house already.
She went and sat down, feeling dizzy and sick. Mummy must have called him. Soon she heard the three of them talking in the long room. Daddy's voice was loudest and angriest, but still she couldn't make out a word. What had happened now? She remembered the poor goat lying in the grass like an old torn doll, a doll whose insides were sticky and wet. Things had been crawling over its insides and over its eye. She used to stroke the goat and talk to it, but nothing could have made her touch it then.
Mummy was talking now, her voice was shrill and desperate. Suddenly Anna couldn't stand not knowing. She pulled open the doors and ran through. 'Mummy, what's wrong?' she cried.
The three of them stared at her as if she ought not to be there. 'Not just now, Anna,' daddy said sharply.
They must be talking about something so horrible that they didn't want her to know. She began to cry. 'The poor goats,' she sobbed.
Mummy squatted down beside her. 'Don't fret, darling. It was only-' She was hugging her tight, but Anna knew it was only to give herself time to think of a story; when she spoke she didn't sound very convincing. 'It was just that I thought I saw someone hanging about near the house.'
Daddy was nodding his head, looking smug. The red-faced policeman spoke while he had a chance. 'I was just saying, Mrs Knight, we did have a man keeping an eye on things. He says the only one he saw getting soaked around here this afternoon was himself.'
Mummy looked as if she wanted to be reassured but couldn't quite believe it. Daddy showed the policeman out and came back smiling. 'Pompous old bugger. Good riddance. Still, that's a relief, isn't it?' he said.
Mummy was nodding, rather dubiously. Anna felt as if they'd forgotten about her, and about the poor goat. She couldn't help it, she began to cry again. This time daddy put his arm around her. 'What's the matter now?'
'I was thinking about the poor goat,' she said, between sobs. 'He never hurt anyone. Why did someone want to hurt him? I loved playing with him. He was my friend.'
Daddy hugged her and swallowed and seemed to find it hard to speak.
'Sometimes people do very bad things,' mummy said. 'Not all people, just a few. Even in a place like this.'
'But why?'
'Maybe they don't know themselves,' daddy said. 'Something makes them do it. Maybe they can't stop themselves.'
Anna knew that mummy and daddy were doing their best to explain to her, as they always did when she asked questions. It made her feel happier to know they were anxious to comfort her, that she was no longer excluded, but even so their answers weren't very comforting. If nobody knew who had killed the goat or why, how could anyone stop him from hurting the others?
For the rest of the day she could think of nothing else; she couldn't play, she had to keep peering out through the rain to make sure the goats were still there. That night, she dreamed that someone was creeping up on the goats, out of the pillbox on the cliff: at first she thought it was the
Cowardly Lion, or the wolf in the old lady's bonnet, but then she knew she was too afraid to see his face.
When she woke next day, the room was blinding, even with the curtains drawn. Out on the cliff the grass was sparkling beneath a cloudless sky. The goats stood placidly, cropping the grass. She'd be able to keep an eye on them all day – but then she remembered it was Sunday, when daddy always took her and mummy for outings. She thought of asking to stay at home, but her parents seemed anxious to get her out of the house.
Today daddy took them to Cromer. Butterflies flickered like flames full of colours above the fields as they followed the coast road, jets swooped overhead with a sound like tearing. In Cromer, daddy inched the car through the clutter of tourists, shielding his eyes against the glare of white buildings while he looked for somewhere to park. Some of the maze of narrow streets led nowhere at all.
'We all need a ride on your favourite bus,' he said, and they caught the bus to Sheringham. It was an open-
