Free Turned by Clare Revell Page A

coming out of it.
    Amy laughed. “Nice one. So you just slept all day. Tell you what, tomorrow I go to school and sleep and you can stay here and cook, clean, and do piles of laundry and ironing.”
    Jodie grinned and then added netball posts and a maths equation. Then she drew a heart with Mum inside it and a gravestone with the initials JKP across it, flowers and long grass surrounding it.
    “I like that. How about we draw her pictures and tomorrow after school we’ll go and put them on her grave.”
    Both girls nodded.
    Amy smiled. “Cool. OK, Vicky, how was your day?”
    Vicky slowly drew a tree with a tiny figure standing under it, with huge square eyes. Next she drew a very tall person, with hands three times the size they should be reaching for the smaller figure.
    The doorbell rang, and Amy went to answer it. The man flashed a gas board ID and asked to read the meter. She unlocked the garage and showed him where it was. He looked at the numbers and wrote on his clipboard. His gaze followed the pipes across the garage to where they disappeared into the house, before he nodded to her and left. Amy locked up again, surprised when he got into a van and drove away. Maybe she was his last call of the day.
    By the time she returned to the girls, Vicky had finished. Over the whole top of the picture was a pair of red slanted eyes, with evil eyebrows. Lots of black lines surrounded it. Amy shuddered at the sheer evil that seemed to emanate from it.
    Amy pointed to the bigger of the two figures. “Is that you?”
    Vicky shook her head.
    “Someone from school, then?”
    She shrugged.
    Amy tried again, this time tapping the eyes looking down on the figures. “And this?”
    Vicky pushed the chair back and ran from the room. Footsteps pounded up the stairs, and her bedroom door slammed shut.
    Amy looked at Jodie. “Any ideas?”
    Jodie shrugged. “Maybe it’s the bogeyman.”
    “You know he isn’t real.”
    “He killed Mum.”
    Amy shook her head. “No. A bad man killed your mum and he’s now locked up, right?”
    “Dad says he won’t ever get out. He killed a lot of people. The Prime Minister, too. And he tried to kill Auntie Adeline. Uncle Nate and Dad saved her just in time.”
    “And that’s a good thing.”
    “But they couldn’t stop him from killing Mum. Was it something we did wrong? Is God punishing us by taking her away?”
    Amy shook her head. What on earth did she say in response to that? “No. I lost my mum when I was ten. She got very sick and went to hospital and never came home. Dad said that God needed her more in heaven than we needed her here. But that didn’t seem fair, because I needed her.”
    Jodie nodded. “Just like we do. What happened?”
    “Dad kept working. He was in the army. I got to go all over the world with him, except when he went away to war.”
    “Is he still in the army now?” Jodie asked.
    Amy shook her head. “He died fighting a war in the desert when I was nineteen.”
    “So you don’t have anyone?”
    “No. Maybe what my dad said works for your mum, and God had a job for her to do in heaven. But it is nothing you did, or said, or didn’t do. God loves you, and Vicky and your Dad. And He always will. We don’t understand why things happen sometimes, but have to trust He will work it out for good, just like it says in Romans chapter eight.”
    “Even the bad stuff?”
    “Especially the bad stuff. Because God doesn’t make the bad things happen, bad people do. God takes the results of those actions and works them into something good.”
    “OK.”
    Amy nodded. “And any time you want to talk more about this, we can.”
    Jodie nodded. “Dad still cries when he thinks we’re sleeping.”
    She nodded. “I do too sometimes, when I think of my parents and miss them. But I know they’re in heaven and I’ll see them again one day.”
    “Just wish I could make him feel better.”
    “A hug always helps. Even for grownups. Maybe try that the next time he looks