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There was the tang of manure in the air and the smell of the musty grass and the cow parsley got inside Joa
'Bad luck,' her mother said, 'you're the one that got my allergies.' Their mother's dark hair and pale skin went to her 'beautiful boy' Joseph, her green eyes and her 'painter's hands' went to Jessica. Joa
Their mother was wearing Joa
Joa
Invisible on the other side of the hedge, a cow made a bellowing noise that made her jump. 'It's just a cow,' her mother said.
'Red Devons,' Jessica said, even though she couldn't see them. How did she know? She knew the names of everything, seen and unseen. Joa
After you had walked along the lane for a while you came to a wooden gate with a stile. They couldn't get the buggy through the stile so they had to open the gate. Jessica let the dog off the lead and he scrambled up and over the gate in the way that Jessica had taught him. The sign on the gate said 'Please Close The Gate Behind You'. Jessica always ran ahead and undid the clasp and then they both pushed at the gate and swung on it as it opened. Their mother had to heave and shove at the buggy because all the winter mud had dried into deep awkward ruts that the wheels got stuck in. They swung on the gate to close it as well. Jessica checked the clasp. Sometimes they hung upside down on the gate and their hair reached the ground like brooms sweeping the dust and their mother said, 'Don't do that.'
The track bordered a field. 'Wheat,' Jessica said. The wheat was very high although not as high as the hedges in the lane. 'They'll be harvesting soon,' their mother said. 'Cutting it down,' she added, for Joa
The dog ran into the field and disappeared. A moment later he sprang out of the wheat again. Last week Joa
They stopped half Way along and sat down on the grass at the side of the track, under the shady trees. Their mother took the plastic carrier bags off the buggy handles and from one of the bags brought out some little cartons of orange juice and a box of chocolate finger biscuits. The orange juice was warm and the chocolate biscuits had melted together. They gave some of the biscuits to the dog. Their mother laughed with her down-turned mouth and said, 'God, what a mess,' and looked in the baby-bag and found wipes for their chocolate-covered hands and mouths. When they lived in London they used to have proper picnics, loading up the boot of the car with a big wicker basket that had belonged to their mother's mother who was rich but dead (which was just as well apparently because it meant she didn't have to see her only daughter married to a selfish, fornicating waster). If their grandmother was rich why didn't they have any money? 'I eloped,' their mother said. 'I ran away to marry your father. It was very romantic. At the time. We had nothing.'
'You had the picnic basket,' Jessica said and their mother laughed and said, 'You can be very fu
Joseph woke up and their mother undid the front of her strawberry-covered dress and fed him. He fell asleep again while he was sucking. 'Poor lamb,' their mother said. 'He can't shake off this cold.' She put him back in the buggy and said, 'Right. Let's get home, we can get out the garden hose and you can cool off.'
He seemed to come out of nowhere. They noticed him because the dog growled, making an odd, bubbling noise in his throat that Joa
He walked very fast towards them, growing bigger all the time. He was making a fu
Now the man was walking in the same direction as they were, on the other side of their mother. Their mother was moving very fast, saying, 'Come on, quickly, keep up,' to them. She sounded breathless. Then the dog ran in front of the man and started barking and jumping up as if it was trying to block the man's path. Without any warning he kicked the dog so hard that it sailed into the air and landed in the wheat. They couldn't see it but they could hear the terrible squealing noise that it was making. Jessica stood in front of the man and screamed something at him, jabbing her finger at him and taking great gulps of air as if she couldn't breathe and then she ran into the field after the dog. Everything was bad. There was no question about it.
Joa
Their mother was cut down where she stood, the great silver knife carving through her heart as if it was slicing butcher's meat. She was thirty-six years old.
He must have stabbed Jessica too before she ran off because there was a trail of blood, a path that led them to her, although not at first because the field of wheat had closed around her, like a golden blanket. She was lying with her arms around the body of the dog and their blood had mingled and soaked into the dry earth, feeding the grain, like a sacrifice to the harvest. Joseph died where he was, strapped into the pushchair. Joa