Free Pureheart by Cassandra Golds

only appalled with grief – the poor, poor little rabbit, dead, his soft, pretty body riven in two like something hanging in a butcher’s shop. She began to wail immediately with sheer overwhelming misery. Gal ran back to her, astonished, saw what she saw, understood, even at five, what she did not, put his arms around her and tried to think.
    Danger
, he was thinking,
danger
! He glanced involuntarily up at the windows. He and Deirdre were probably observable from a dozen of them. It was like standing in front of a wall of eyes.
Danger.
But there was no escape. He had a wild impulse to run away, but he knew he couldn’t leave Deirdre and he knew she would never come with him. She would never disobey her grandmother and he could never make her understand. He didn’t even know where his father was, and it crossed his mind, not for the first time, that he wasn’t coming back.
    Gal hugged Deirdre more fiercely. What could they do? Then he remembered the cave.
    They had to hide, that was all he could think, they had to hide
now
. Standing out in the open was intolerable, with all the windows, and the very sky seeming to look down on them, accusing them, condemning them, innocent as they were. So he took Deirdre’s hand and pulled her away from the terrifying hutch, away from the many-eyed windows, around the corner of the building. Deirdre was still weeping, but she went trustingly where Gal led. Already, there was a bond she had with Gal – like instinct, but deeper; like faith, but deeper – which was too intense for even her beloved grandmother to undermine, although the conflict between Gal and Mrs Dark was beginning to tear her apart. They pushed open the low door – half-door, half-gate – entered the little artificial cave and huddled together in the warmth on a folded sheet of canvas, among the paint tins and tools and rolled-up leftover sections of linoleum and insulation mat­erial. And there, in the half-dark, the terrible panic that had seized Gal quietened down; and he thought, she’s not going to win, she’s not going to beat me, I’m not going to let her, no matter how much she scares me. And there, after a moment, Deirdre stopped crying, and briefly, unexpectedly, they fell asleep in each other’s arms.
    â€˜What are you two playing at? Come out at once.’
    The door was too low for her. She was too tall, also too old and stiff. They saw her standing, bent, on the other side of it, peering into the shadows.
    She was old. She was a grandmother. And yet her face, pale, piquant, fierce, was the face of the little girl in the photos.
    It wasn’t a pleasant awakening, but it was the one both of them had expected. They crawled out blinking into the sunlight, their faces grubby and tear-stained, their clothes rumpled.
    â€˜Just look at you both! Don’t let me ever catch you in that storeroom again. It’s not a playroom. It’s for the builders. Now. Deirdre. What did you do to that rabbit?’
    Deirdre was startled, but she did not immediately catch the implication. She began to cry again at the memory.
    â€˜The rabbit’s dead!’ she said miserably.
    â€˜I know the rabbit’s dead,’ said Deirdre’s grandmother. ‘What I want to know is why you killed it. And what you thought you were doing with my sharpest kitchen knife.’
    The strange thing was that she didn’t seem upset. Indeed her attitude was so odd, so incongruous, that Gal was even more frightened than he had been before. It was all he could do to stop himself from running, right there and then. It was as if Deirdre had forgotten to make her bed, or spilt jam on the tablecloth. Gal knew she was lying; he had known from the moment he had seen the rabbit that Mrs Dark had killed it and that it was both a warning and a punishment. But Deirdre was confused. It was terrifying to see how easily she was confused.
    â€˜I didn’t want it to die!’