Free The Girls by Lisa Jewell Page B

nodded, resisting the urge to touch him, waiting to be invited.
    ‘Come on then.’ She brought the giant rabbit up on to her lap and moved over so that Pip could sit next to her. ‘There you are.’ She smiled.
    The rabbit didn’t look at Pip. It seemed to be on a permanent mission to observe its environment in minute detail. ‘You can take him for a walk if you like,’ she said.
    Pip beamed and nodded.
    ‘There you go.’ She passed Pip the leads to the harness.
    ‘Why is he so big?’ she asked.
    Rhea smiled, the fine white skin of her face folding into a lattice of Fortuny pleats. ‘He is a Giant Flemish Rabbit. They say they are bred from Labradors.’ She shook her head and laughed. ‘But I don’t believe that. I think they just kept breeding very big rabbits together until one day they produced one the size of a dog. And then they thought: Aha! Look how big this rabbit is! It must be related to a dog! But look at him. There’s no dog there. Look at his perfect little bunny bobtail!’
    The rabbit tugged at the lead and Rhea smiled and said, ‘Go!’
    Pip walked him into the Secret Garden. He lolloped and sniffed and twitched and jumped. He found some leaves that he liked the look of and began to nibble but Pip pulled him away, in case they were not the sort of leaves he should be eating. Then she walked him around the paths between the Secret Garden and the Rose Garden. A small boy watched her in disbelief and then ran to tell his mother that he’d just seen a really giant rabbit. She saw Fern sitting alone in the Rose Garden. She was reading a book, with earphones in, using her spare hand to pass the weird piece of silk back and forth across her top lip. She glanced up briefly at Pip with her big, damp eyes and then she looked away again. Pip paused, not sure if she should say hello or be friendly in some way. But then Fergus tugged again at the lead and she took him back to Rhea.
    ‘Did you enjoy that?’ she asked.
    ‘Yes. He tried to eat some leaves but I didn’t let him in case they were poisonous.’
    ‘Good girl,’ Rhea said. ‘How old are you?’
    ‘I’ll be twelve in a couple of weeks.’
    She nodded. ‘And have you been living here long?’
    ‘Since January. Six months.’
    ‘Have you made many friends?’
    ‘Sort of.’
    ‘The sisters?’
    ‘Yes. And someone else called Tyler. And a boy called Dylan.’
    ‘Beautiful Dylan.’ Rhea smiled. ‘Very popular boy.’
    ‘He’s kind.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Rhea. ‘He is a kind boy. He looks after his brother very well.’
    ‘Robbie?’
    ‘Yes. Robbie. Poor soul.’
    ‘What’s the matter with Robbie?’
    Rhea cupped her hand over Fergus’s head and left it there. The rabbit went completely still. ‘Ah, well, no one really knows. I don’t think his poor mother even knows. Just one of those things. Her husband was an old man – sixty, I think, when Robbie was born – and a very, very heavy drinker. Not that I would want to blame him for what went wrong. He was a perfectly nice man. But it does make you wonder …’
    Pip wasn’t sure what it made you wonder about but nodded anyway.
    ‘Anyway, Dylan’s mum, Fiona, she couldn’t cope after Robbie’s dad died, it was all too hard, so she put Robbie into a nice place just outside London when he was about ten. And then suddenly Fiona is pregnant at forty-five and nobody knows who the father is and then there is this beautiful, beautiful little boy and still nobody knows who the father is. Nobody asks and she tells no one.’
    ‘Where does Dylan live?’
    ‘Up there.’ The lady pointed at three tiny windows in the attic floor of the same house that the sisters lived in.
    ‘And where does Tyler live?’
    ‘She lives there.’ She pointed at the mansion block in the easternmost corner. ‘Her mother is a social worker so she gets the nice big flat for the good rent.’
    ‘And where do you live?’
    ‘I live just here.’ Rhea turned and pointed at the mansion block behind her.