Читать книгу Round the Bend онлайн

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They told me that they thought that in a general sort of way she'd been looking forward to me coming home, although she didn't tell them much. When my letter came, however, saying that I'd be home in a week, they said she seemed to go all to pieces. First she wanted to go away and not meet me, and then there wasn't anywhere convenient for her to go to, and then she said she'd have to meet me some time so she'd better get it over. They said she didn't know what to do. She wasn't sleeping much, they thought. She'd come down to breakfast one day and say she'd made up her mind to go away, and then by dinner time, they said, she seemed to have forgotten about that and was wondering if the butcher would put by a sheep's heart for them, because she said I was always partial to heart for dinner if it was on the menu at the canteen.

They said that she was much calmer on the last day, sort of quiet-like, and they went to bed quite happy about her. They never heard anything in the night. The baby slept in her room, of course, and at about six in the morning they heard it crying, which was normal, but as she didn't get up and attend to it her ma got up after a bit and went in, and she wasn't in her room, and she hadn't been to bed. Her ma called her dad and went downstairs, and when they opened the door the kitchen was full of gas. Her dad held his breath and dashed in and turned it off at the oven, and opened the back door and got out into the garden, and then they had to wait a quarter of an hour before they could get in to her. Her dad went down the road to the call box and telephoned the police.