Free Ralph’s Children by Hilary Norman Page A

because Miller’s torch and the half-moon lit up the children’s monstrous war paint
and the cleaner’s face, and her terror in those first moments were a part of what made Ralph nauseous.
    She
had done this.
    She clapped a hand over her mouth, afraid she might vomit.
    And right away, saw it begin to go wrong.
    ‘You bastards!’
    Miller’s fear seemed to fill her, transformed swiftly into a fury, endowing her with a strength none of them had bargained on.
    ‘You
shits
!’ she screamed when Jack seized hold of her thick arms, fought back, kicking and striking out with her gloved hands, while Billy whined piteously into the night
air.
    Do something.
    If she didn’t intervene now, Ralph realized, something worse would happen.
    Her mind shot through one scenario even as she moved. If she was quick, then Miller might believe she’d come to help her, and the group could get away while . . .
    But Rose Miller saw her coming out of the dark, and felt, in the heat of her battle, that Ralph was another threat.
    ‘
No!
’ she cried out.
    ‘Let me—’
    The cleaner tucked down her head and butted Ralph hard in the chest, and Ralph stumbled on the grassy slope, began to slip and then to slide. And what began as a fall from which she might easily
have got up, became something else entirely, something
dreadful
, as she crashed into the trunk of a beech tree.
    And knew no more.

Kate
    F or as long as they were still checking to see that Kate had not been injured, the people who had emerged, a few at a time, out of the darkness –
police, farm workers, paramedics and other drivers – were quite kind to her, but as soon as they saw that she could walk unaided, it seemed to her that everyone began to shout at her.
    ‘Stupid, bloody women drivers.’
    ‘Shouldn’t be allowed on the road.’
    ‘Can’t control their cars.’
    Kate ignored them, appalled enough already by the chaos that her burst tyre had created, seeing the long line of headlights snaking back along miles of curving road as the police began ordering
the onlookers away and organizing traffic controls around the cars still blocking the two-way road. More than anything, she was profoundly grateful that no one seemed to have been badly hurt,
though she had seen in the lights of an ambulance that the driver of one car was bleeding from a gash in his head.
    ‘Can I go wherever he’s taken to make sure he’s OK?’ she asked a paramedic at the roadside. ‘I mean, I know it wasn’t really my fault, but it was my tyre that
caused all this, so—’
    ‘Not going anywhere –’ another policeman came from behind her – ‘until we’re finished here.’
    Which turned into a string of questions, a checking of her licence and insurance, and a long blow into the gizmo that declared Kate sober – and she thanked her lucky stars that she
hadn’t drunk so much as a sip of wine while packing her bag earlier, then promptly had to thank them again as her spare tyre was declared sound – more luck than judgement, since she
didn’t think she’d ever checked it since buying the Mini.
    It was almost an hour before she was ready to drive on – except that the injured man had been taken to the Royal Berkshire, which meant driving all the way back to
Reading. But since she hadn’t learned his name, unless she did go there and make certain he was all right, Kate knew she might not be able to properly relax when she did finally make it to
Caisleán.
    No fractures, no concussion, just a few stitches, as it turned out – none of which good fortune stopped the man from haranguing Kate.
    ‘They should make you take your test again,’ he told her. ‘You obviously feel guilty, or you wouldn’t be here.’ And after a breath: ‘There are courses for
people like you.’
    Kate sat politely, aware he was probably shocked, waiting for him to finish.
    ‘There really was nothing I could do about it,’ she said finally, mildly, wondering why she seldom managed to react