Free The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel by Neil Gaiman Page B

her meeting, to raise money so that people in Africa who needed water could drill wells, in the village hall of the next village down the road. She had posters that she would put up, diagrams of wells, and photographs of smiling people. At the dinner table were my sister, my father, Ursula Monkton, and me.
    “It’s good, it’s good for you, and it’s tasty,” said my father. “And we do not waste food in this house.”
    “I said I wasn’t hungry.”
    I had lied. I was so hungry it hurt.
    “Then just try a little nibble,” he said. “It’s your favorite. Meatloaf and mashed potatoes and gravy. You love them.”
    There was a children’s table in the kitchen, where we ate when my parents had friends over, or would be eating late. But that night we were at the adult table. I preferred the children’s table. I felt invisible there. Nobody watched me eat.
    Ursula Monkton sat next to my father and stared at me, with a tiny smile at the corner of her lips.
    I knew I should shut up, be silent, be sullen. But I couldn’t help myself. I had to tell my father why I did not want to eat.
    “I won’t eat anything she made,” I told him. “I don’t like her.”
    “You will eat your food,” said my father. “You will at least try it. And apologize to Miss Monkton.”
    “I won’t.”
    “He doesn’t have to,” said Ursula Monkton sympathetically, and she looked at me, and she smiled. I do not think that either of the other two people at the table noticed that she was smiling with amusement, or that there was nothing sympathetic in her expression, or her smile, or her rotting-cloth eyes.
    “I’m afraid he does,” said my father. His voice was just a little louder, and his face was just a little redder. “I won’t have him cheeking you like that.” Then, to me, “Give me one good reason, just one, why you won’t apologize and why you won’t eat the lovely food that Ursula prepared for us.”
    I did not lie well. I told him.
    “Because she’s not human,” I said. “She’s a monster. She’s a…” What had the Hempstocks called her kind of thing? “She’s a flea .”
    My father’s cheeks were burning red, now, and his lips were thin. He said, “Outside. Into the hall. This minute.”
    My heart sank inside me. I climbed down from my stool and followed him out into the corridor. It was dark in the hallway: the only light came from the kitchen, a sheet of clear glass above the door. He looked down at me. “You will go back into the kitchen. You will apologize to Miss Monkton. You will finish your plate of food, then, quietly and politely, you will go straight upstairs to bed.”
    “No,” I told him. “I won’t.”
    I bolted, ran down the hallway, round the corner, and I pounded up the stairs. My father, I had no doubt, would come after me. He was twice my size, and fast, but I did not have to keep going for long. There was only one room in that house that I could lock, and it was there that I was headed, left at the top of the stairs and along the hall to the end. I reached the bathroom ahead of my father. I slammed the door, and I pushed the little silver bolt closed.
    He had not chased me. Perhaps he thought it was beneath his dignity, chasing a child. But in a few moments I heard his fist slam, and then his voice saying, “Open this door.”
    I didn’t say anything. I sat on the plush toilet seat cover and I hated him almost as much as I hated Ursula Monkton.
    The door banged again, harder this time. “If you don’t open this door,” he said, loud enough to make sure I heard it through the door, “I’m breaking it down.”
    Could he do that? I didn’t know. The door was locked. Locked doors stopped people coming in. A locked door meant that you were in there, and when people wanted to come into the bathroom they would jiggle the door, and it wouldn’t open, and they would say “Sorry!” or shout “Are you going to be long?” and—
    The door exploded inward. The little silver bolt