Free The Silent Hours by Cesca Major Page A

looking out at me over the top half of the stable door. I am not sure how long he has been standing there. His face is grim, his normally ruddy skin washed out. As my eyes meet his my mouth goes dry. He doesn’t need to say it, I see it in his hand.
    A square of paper.
    He announces it anyway, holding the telegram up. ‘Something’s arrived.’
    I have the same pit of dread in my stomach sitting in the sunshine on this bench, the nuns quietly working around me, as if I am back there living it all over again.
    But now I also know what came after.
    The hope drains away, my voice is lost to my past and no amount of doctor’s prodding will be able to find it for me.

TRISTAN
    I arrive at the house to find Maman and Papa talking in the hall; their bodies form a semi-circle as they mutter to each other in low voices. ‘No, no chance at all, all five of them, apparently.’ Maman jumps as I appear and looks at me as if I’m no more important than the coat rack I’m standing next to. Her fingers are playing with the cross she wears around her neck.
    She comes forward and greets me in a loud voice, patting the top of my head. I run through to the kitchen to see if Madame Villiers has cooked anything, looking back at them briefly before I turn the corner. They are both staring at me, still. They look so serious. I skid to a halt, the rubber soles of my shoes squeaking as I stop.
    Have they been talking about me? Have I done something wrong? I rack my brains to think of something I might have done that could get me into trouble. Was it from a couple of days ago when I pinched Eléonore for taking the last of the clafoutis ? She squealed and ran off at the time but, knowing her, she probably ran weeping to Maman with more stories of how I’d done her harm.
    I forget I’m hungry at all when Maman says, ‘Darling, your father wants to see you.’
    I gulp.
    Papa calls me into the study and sits me down in the leather chair Monsieur Villiers told us was for guests, so I know he wants to talk to me about something important. My hands get hot at the thought of all the things I might have done wrong and I note a cane right up on the top shelf. A plan forms. I will open my eyes wide and say that I would never do anything of the sort. I am going to remain brave as last time I cried and it only made him angrier.
    But Papa isn’t looking angry and I am not absolutely sure I have done anything wrong. He is talking to me in a different sort of voice, the sort of voice Maman sometimes uses when she’s trying to make us go to sleep or make us swallow medicine. Normally, when he’s angry his voice gets low; Eléonore always claims this is enough to make her start weeping. He is taking his time getting to the point. I remain silent, eyes on him, everything else forgotten.
    He smoothes down his thin moustache with a finger. ‘Tristan, do you believe in heaven?’
    I don’t understand.
    ‘Of course,’ I answer, because it is true – of course I believe in heaven. It is where I will go if I am good and say my prayers every night and clean my teeth and look after my brothers and sister. I feel a little bit guilty about the last one and vow to be a little nicer to Eléonore; it would be most annoying not to get into heaven just because I have been horrid to her in the past.
    ‘I am glad,’ Papa replies. ‘And do you know when you go to heaven?’
    I nod, confident he doesn’t want to hear about cleaning my teeth and saying my prayers. ‘When you die.’
    ‘Exactly, when you die,’ he agrees. ‘Now, Tristan,’ he says, leaning forward a little to look me in the eye. ‘I’m afraid that I have some bad news.’ His eyes don’t leave my face as he takes a deep breath, mouth half-open. ‘Clarisse has been ill and died last week.’
    ‘Clarisse,’ I repeat.
    ‘I’m afraid so.’
    Clarisse is dead .
    I don’t know anyone who has died. Marcus at school told me he saw a dead man, a man in the park near where he lived who died on a