Free Like One of the Family by Nesta Tuomey Page A

after so long. But there’s not much use in me trying if you won’t.’
    â€˜We’ve been into all that,’ Jim said.
    â€˜I know but I just can’t believe you... you say one thing and then you go right on doing the other.’ Her mother sounded agitated, Claire thought.
    â€˜It means nothing,’ Jim said. ‘I’ve told you.’
    Annette banged the table with her fist. ‘You keep on saying that. But I can’t accept it. I mean it must mean something or you’d give her up.’
    This is awful, Claire thought. She turned the pages of her book but she hadn’t read a line. If only she had somewhere to go. She glanced towards the door but she didn’t want to go up and sit in her cold bedroom. She could go over to Sheena but
he
would be there, so she stayed with her head bent over her book.
    Their review went down very well on the night. After they had finished their act Claire and Sheena changed out of their costumes and slipped down to the back of the hall to sit with Hugh and Terry. The four of them sucked lemon drops and watched the rest of the programme. In the front row Jane sat with Annette as Eddie had a medical dinner which prevented him coming. Her own father had promised to be there. ‘You can book me a seat in the parterre,’ Jim had joked, but although, at the start of the night, she had peeped through the curtain and anxiously eyed the darkening rows, there had been no sign of him. Claire was not really surprised.
    Hugh thoroughly enjoyed the review. He thought that Claire was the best and funniest actress, but then he was prejudiced. Inspired by the stage show, he made a whole series of sketches, colouring the costumes in pastels and mounting the lot on cardboard. He hung them on the walls of his bedroom and when his father remarked on them, he flushed with pleasure. After that he began to take his drawing more seriously and spend more time at it.
    Hugh propped his one and only photograph of Claire against his transistor radio and made several pen and ink drawings of her holding the pup, but he wasn’t really satisfied with any of them. She was far nicer, he knew.
    Hugh was too shy to show the drawings to Claire. He kept them hidden in a box under his bed, knowing that if his brother ever found them he would never stop ragging him.
    Towards the end of January Eddie and Terry began planning a duck shoot, as they did every year at this time. For days their conversation was totally centred on the most ideal locations and conditions, the best guns and cartridges. Terry, like his father, was a natural with firearms, as he was with anything needing co-ordination and skill. Hugh had no interest in blood sports and invariably found his attention wandering at the first mention of guns, until one evening, when sprawled behind the couch reading a comic, he heard them mention his name and sat up and took notice. Eddie was saying: ‘How about taking Hugh along with us on the shoot this year?’
    â€˜Oh Dad! Do we have to?’ Up to this their sporting confraternity had been exclusively limited to his father and himself, and that was how Terry liked it.
    Eddie laughed. ‘We don’t have to bring him but he’s old enough I think.’ Eddie had noticed how low the boy’s spirits were since Hero’s death, and he was looking for some way of making it up to him.
    â€˜He’ll probably cry when we kill anything,’ Terry said in disgust. ‘He’s such a wimp.’
    Hugh reared up from behind the couch at that. ’No, I’m not,’ he protested.
    â€˜Of course not. Our Hugh’s no weakling,’ Eddie said staunchly, but with a sly grin at Terry, which seemed in Hugh’s hyper-sensitive state to imply there might just be some truth in it.
    The night before the shoot Eddie insisted on the boys watching him as he cleaned and oiled the guns. Then he loaded up, slipping the cartridges into the breeches and