Free Black Rabbit Hall by Eve Chase

awkward, her mother usually jumping up to dust a skirting board or wipe down a clean surface, dispersing questions with mushroom clouds of Pledge. Then in May the conversation had ended for good.
    The unfairness of it still taunts her. It turned out the council were due to mend the broken paving outside the Co-op the following day. Mum shouldn’t have tripped, surrounded by her marked-down fruit and vegetables – she never tripped – or banged her head in a freakishly bad place to bang it. She wasn’t meant to die at sixty-five:perfectly healthy, she was part of that lithe post-war generation brought up on sluggy allotment cabbage and modest portions of home-cooked food, who walked to the shops rather than drove. Most unfair of all, Lorna thinks, pressing her nails into the palm of her clenched hand, is that when her life support was switched off it stole away any loving deathbed reckoning, made so much of her own past irretrievable. She blinks back a rush of tears.
    ‘Oh, you’re here!’
    Lorna turns to see Dill standing in the doorway, dog in her arms, licking her mouth.
    ‘Ready to see the bridal suite?’
    ‘Dad.’ She smiles at Dill, tries to collect herself. ‘I’ve got to go.’
    She hears a telling rustle and a sniff as he rearranges his feelings too. ‘Well, try not to get lost in that big house alone, okay?’
    ‘Don’t be a doughnut. Love you.’
    But when Lorna starts ascending the steep shaft of the tower’s stairwell – dark, tightly enclosed, its exits unclear – she realizes that her father might be on to something. It really would be quite easy to get lost in Black Rabbit Hall. To think you were going in one direction but were heading entirely in another.



Five
    Amber
    Boris leaps out of the undergrowth. He noses Momma’s face and whines. Daddy pushes him off and wraps Momma in his coat to keep her warm. ‘Find Barney,’ he shouts over his shoulder and charges out of the woods, Boris following, Momma in his arms, head lolling at a strange angle.
    I don’t know how long I stand there numbly, heart hammering, the image of Momma’s head – the swinging red hair, the angle of her neck – everywhere I look, like the imprint of a light-bulb after it’s been switched off. What do I do? What do I do now?
    Then I remember. Find Barney, Daddy said. Find Barney.
    The storm clouds are parting. A bone-white moon jumps from behind one tree to another. Full moon. High tides. The lower part of the creek often bursts its banks in an early-evening high tide, especially after a storm. The water will wash through the wood beside the den. I haven’t got long.
    I start running, praying over and over that it’s going to be all right. Safe, happy place. Safe, happy place. Black Rabbit Hall is our safe, happy place.
    Barney is not in the den, or by the soggy char of thebonfire. My feet start to squish beneath me. The water is coming.
    ‘Barney!’ I shout. ‘Barney, it’s me! Are you there? Barney, don’t be an idiot! Where are you?’
    I wait, listening, heart pounding in my ears. There is movement in the undergrowth. Two yellow eyes. A hare? A fox?
    I scramble deeper into the woods, calling his name, and it occurs to me he could be running away from me deliberately, hiding, playing a game – he loves to be chased – unaware of what has happened to Momma. ‘Barney!’ I shout louder, more desperate. Nothing. I stop, overcome by hopelessness. Unable to be brave any longer, I start to cry, the sobs rising out of me in blocked-drain snorts. And that’s when Boris appears, tail wagging. Never have I been so pleased to see him. I sink my face into his smelly fur, gripping the fat around his haunches. ‘Barney. Help me find Barney. Please.’
    Boris cocks his head slightly to one side, as if he understands, hesitates for a moment, then dashes off into the woods. I follow him until he brakes beneath a giant beech, his paws sending a mash of wet leaves flying.
    And there he is. Curled high in a tree.