Turning slowly, I saw a figure approach the gate that led from the coppice. The racket of my heart told me it was you, returning, shovel in hand and head bent low. My skin twitched over my bones. I wanted to creep backwards but my legs were trunks rooted at the heels.
The sun glowed far off over the coppice. A pheasant strolled past, trailing its skirts in the golden waning light. Night had already reached the elms and spread like spilt water across the lawn.
White pebbles glimmered in the shadowed grass. I held my breath, trying to hold every cell still. I was chilled through and through with the knowledge of what you had done.
My breath escaped in a rush, making such a whoosh that the pheasant clattered skywards in fright.
Greed shone across your face. I thought of Granny's armoury of rings and bracelets, and of the price you'd get for them down the market. I thought of her fox furs and bird-wing hats, and I trembled with the idea of unleashing them from the old kitchen cage.
I thought of her cut glass dishes and antique cutlery, and I felt my own hunger stir.
She'd been our guardian since we were six and nine. Her burgeoning dementia only curdled the sourness that had compounded our grief at the loss of our parents. Your back was still striped with her lashes; my hair scorched where she'd put cigarettes to its tips.
The privet hedge seemed to shake with her fury as the wind took up its coat and rattled its claws.
"It's done," you said, and I nodded.
"We're free."
Tomorrow we would tell the police she'd wandered off in the night. We'd toast her health with the claret she never let us drink, and we'd clatter like pheasants towards a future we could choose for ourselves.
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