Free The Macbeth Prophecy by Anthea Fraser Page A

last few weeks of term passed as always in a welter of exams and sports days. I did not keep my promise of contacting Sue again. Inevitably we came across each other during the course of the school day, but her unhappy face reminded me of the embarrassment she’d caused me in the staff-room and I told myself it was better to leave well alone rather than open old wounds. A pity: she’d been an agreeable and acquiescent companion before her unexpected outburst.
    All in all, I was relieved when the final day of term arrived. The school duly presented me with a leather brief-case and, amid expressions of goodwill from my colleagues, I was at last free to put Swindon behind me and begin my new life with Philip at Crowthorpe.

Five
    That summer was one of the happiest times I can remember. Philip had arranged to leave High Wycombe on the same day that school finished and, side-stepping our parents’ invitation, we set off immediately for Cumbria. His appointment was due to take effect from the end of August, which gave us a month in which to relax and settle into our new surroundings.
    I remember, those first weeks, spending a lot of time standing at the picture window in the sitting-room staring out from our vantage point at the magnificent panorama before me. Immediately below was the garden, with gnarled old trees, outcrops of rockery and masses of every coloured rose imaginable. Over at the far end of it stood a little bungalow that I hadn’t noticed on our first brief visit. It was built of stone like most of the houses in the village and a low picket fence surrounded it to ensure its privacy; a garden within a garden. I wondered idly who lived there.
    Beyond the high wall stretched the gardens of other houses further down Fell Lane, and beyond them again the main road. On the far side of it I could just see the roof of the Lakeside Hotel and to the left the jetty from where boats plied continually across the lake. It was an outlook which never failed to fascinate me.
    â€œBack at the lookout post?” Philip enquired laughingly, coming in one day to find me in my usual position.
    â€œI still can’t believe our good luck.”
    He joined me at the window. “Will we ever get blasé about being able to see mountains, lakes and woods without moving from our own sitting-room?”
    â€œI doubt it,” I said.
    There was a table under one of the windows and we formed the habit of eating our evening meal there, watching the ever-changing parade of holiday-makers strolling down Lake Road or making their way to the Pavilion for the nightly dancing. And over coffee we’d watch the lights come on all down the hill and feel the still, dark closeness of the surrounding hills.
    Once or twice we hired a boat and drifted lazily in the water for hours at a time, putting in at various little bays and rocky beaches on the eastern shore, where the mountain came down to meet the lake. I showed Philip the path I’d discovered alongside Minnowbeck, the stream that flowed along the valley, and by chance we discovered the site of the village’s third hotel, whose owners I’d met at the Greystones. And finally, the week before Philip was due to join Dr Sampson, he said one morning, “I want to go up to the camp and check on the twins.”
    I had been awaiting this decision ever since we arrived but felt it to be his rather than mine. He had twice saved the twins’ short lives and regarded them, I knew, as his protégés.
    Nell Smith was draping tattered nappies on the nearby bushes when we arrived. She was a small, pale woman with straggling nondescript hair and she wore down-trodden bedroom slippers and a greasy apron. Over by the caravan stood a battered old pram without wheels and from its depths I could see a small fist waving. Nell saw us, hesitated, then, wiping her hands on her apron, came towards us warily.
    â€œGood morning, Nell. We’ve come to enquire after the