Free Ash Road by Ivan Southall Page A

suppose?’ he said.
    â€˜Yes,’ said Pippa blankly.
    â€˜Come on in then. We’re having our breakfast.’
    â€˜Breakfast,’ repeated Pippa, relieved; but somehow angrier than ever. It was unfair that her father had been right. It was all wrong that anyone who had cared so little should have been right.
    â€˜Would you like an egg?’ said Grandpa. ‘We’re having boiled eggs in egg-cups with flowers on them and toast and marmalade and milk with chocolate flavouring. Come on in. Don’t stand there. We’ll have a real party breakfast, the three of us, a going-away party.’
    â€˜No,’ said Pippa. ‘
No!
’
    Grandpa stared at her. ‘What is it, child? What’s wrong?’
    â€˜Julie’s a bad girl. She’s a wicked, bad girl. I’ve been half out of my mind. I thought she was lost in the bush, and she’s here! What’s she doing here?’
    â€˜Goodness me, Pippa,’ said Grandpa.
    â€˜Julie’s not going to have breakfast with you either. She’s got to come home. You should have sent her home. She’s been very naughty.’ Pippa had got to the stage of not knowing what she was saying. ‘I’ve been screaming all over the place for her. I’ve got into a row about her. It’s not fair and she’s been here all the time.’
    Suddenly Pippa ran away, crying, not because she was angry any more, but because she knew she was being rude and didn’t know how to stop.
    Peter and his grandparents sat down to breakfast. It was an enormous meal. It always was. Throughout their long lives the Fairhalls had lived well. Even in the bad years way back in the early thirties they had lived well, though everyone had thought they were hard up. The Fairhalls, years ago, had inherited from a distant relative an interest in a chain of shops. No one but the Income Tax Department knew of this inheritance.
    Gramps was an enormous and florid man, completely bald, slow and ponderous. He hadn’t always been that way; as soon as he had stopped working hard he had gone to fat. Beside him Peter looked so insignificant as scarcely to be real. A visitor arriving for the first time from another world might pardonably have mistaken them for members of two different species.
    Gran was a big woman with shiny pink cheeks and a passion for getting up at five-thirty. This was something of a rite. Immediately the clock struck she was out of bed. Wild horses, she said, would not get her up a minute sooner, nor would they delay her a minute longer; and just before six, every day, in all seasons, the Fairhalls sat down to breakfast, ready for the sound of the six o’clock time signal on the radio, and the voice of the announcer reading the first news broadcast of the day.
    In almost all things the Fairhalls were predictable, and any reasonably perceptive student of human nature could have foreseen their reactions to the vaguest threat of fire.
    â€˜We have experience of these things, boy,’ Gramps said. His voice, too, was enormous; even when he spoke quietly it had depth and breadth, like the ocean. ‘We have lived here for more than forty years. We know about fires, and if you have the least consideration for our feelings you will agree with the wisdom of our decision. It is our duty to send you home without delay. I am pained, boy, that you are allowing the thoughtless remarks of a stupid little thing like Stevie Buckingham to unsettle you.’
    Gramps was so positive, so overpowering.
    â€˜It’s got nothing to do with Stevie,’ said Peter miserably. He couldn’t look at Gramps. If he looked at him he knew he wouldn’t be able to say anything. And it was to do with Stevie, really. It certainly had nothing to do with anything else: at heart he didn’t care whether he went home or stayed, for Pippa would be gone, and without Pippa Ash Road would be dull and deadly. ‘But Stevie did say he