Free The Pool of St. Branok by Philippa Carr Page B

everyone’s mind, I might not have been able to support our story.
    I had a cold which, during the next few days, developed into bronchitis and then pneumonia. I was very ill and there was a possibility that I might not recover. I lived through the days in hazy dreams. For a lot of the time I was floating in a strange world. I was not sure where I was. I would see my mother’s face watching me so tenderly that I felt I must get well. Then I would be back at the pool. I would see that face floating on the water and I would cry out “No, no.” Then I would hear my mother’s voice: “It’s all right, darling. I’m here. Everything is all right.”
    There was a great deal of activity in the room. Through the haze of unreality I saw Grace Gilmore. She seemed to be there often. Ben came to see me. I was aware of him as he was standing by my bed; and I thought we were at the pool together. I started up.
    I heard my mother say: “I don’t think she should have visitors … yet.”
    Then they were talking about the crisis. There were many people in the room … faces which swam vaguely before me … voices which came from a long way off. My mother was trying to smile, but I knew she was crying and I thought: I am dying.
    And then the fever had gone and everyone was smiling and my mother was bending over the bed and saying: “How are you feeling, darling? You are better. You will soon be well.”
    I was like a new person—not a child any more. I had grown up. The world in which I had complacently lived before that day at the pool had evaporated. It was a different place now—a world in which terrible things could happen. The fears of the past had been shadowy … something one only half believed; they were for other people; not for me. I had my parents, my secure home, and nothing could harm me. Ghosts and witches, cruelty and horror, pain and murder, that might happen to other people, but not to me and those around me. They were something to talk about, to frighten oneself about … but with the delicious fear of childhood … when you terrified yourself knowing that mother was close behind and you could run to hide yourself in her skirts and the bogey would go away.
    But I had left all that behind now. I had come face to face with horror. I knew a little of what that man would have done to me before he killed me. The awful realization had come to me. It could have happened to me!
    My mother would not let me look in the glass for some time, and when I did it was a stranger who looked back at me. Pale and thin, my eyes seeming bigger, but my hair … it was short like a boy’s.
    My mother touched it gently. “It will soon grow. And look, it is wavy. We had to cut it off because of your fever.”
    I could not stop looking at that face in the mirror. There were secrets there. Those were not the innocent eyes of childhood. They had looked on the fearful realities of life.
    I felt older. My illness had changed me. While I had lain there in limbo, I had grown up. I knew now that what we did was the only thing we could have done. Ben had been right. He had killed a man but it was something which had had to be done; the man was a murderer; he would have committed more murders. It was not like killing an ordinary person.
    But I had to stop going over it. I had to accept what was done. Ben had said I had to believe what we had said had happened and he was right.
    I was feeling better. I was sitting up now.
    My mother said: “Watson was down at the quay this morning and found this John Dory. He thought it would be just the thing to tempt you. Mrs. Penlock has done it in a special way. You’d better eat every scrap of it. You know what they are.”
    I smiled. I cherished every aspect of normality, of the return to the old days.
    I heard my mother whisper to my father: “Better not say anything about the accident. It seems to upset her.”
    I was glad of that. I didn’t want to have to talk of it. I did not want to have to lie