A Little Death by Laura Wilson

backwards and all the flies flew up and hit her face and her mouth, which was open, and she screamed and let go and ran away. Then Jenny fell down in a fit behind us. There was blood on her mouth and she was grunting like a pig and rolling about on the ground. We were watching her when I heard people coming up behind us and then Mrs. Mattie’s voice: ‘Quickly—get the children inside. What are you staring at! Hurry!’
    A man took hold of my arm and pulled me towards the house. I tried to fight him off, but someone else grabbed me round the waist and lifted me into the air. Then I remember being pushed along the corridor to the kitchen and vomiting on the flagstones, and I recollect feeling ashamed because it was in front of the servants. We were all put into chairs around the wooden kitchen table. Louisa was crying and there was some food on the table, plates of bread with jam. I said, ‘It’s too big,’ because the slices were great big slabs and I didn’t want to eat it because it wasn’t thin bread like the nursery tea.
    Freddie’s life must have ended while we were sitting around the table. I don’t know if the others knew, but some of the servants must have because they kept coming in and out, and whispering to each other. They were waiting for him to die. I was worried about the flies on his head, that they were eating him, or rather drinking him. I thought that they would drink up all his blood and kill him. We all ran away from him, not just the children, but all of us, the servants as well. They could have covered him up with a blanket if they didn’t wantto look at him, but they shouldn’t have just run inside and shut the door. Someone, just one, should have stayed with him while he died to keep him company. They were all afraid to go near him and he was only a little boy.

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    It was so hard to believe what had happened. Master Freddie was always running round the house and I used to go about my work thinking any minute now I’ll hear him running down the corridor, or he’ll come rushing round the corner, or he’ll be laughing… a few times I thought I heard his laugh, but then I’d remember. Even when we saw the little white coffin going out—the weather was all wrong for it. Scorching hot and the sky was the brightest blue you ever saw, not a cloud anywhere. I don’t remember if I cried. Ellen and the others were in floods, but once the coffin was gone we all had to get back to our work.
    Everyone wanted to know what happened, but all we got from Mrs. Mattie was that Master Freddie was killed in an accident. That night every one of us girls was too upset for talking, but the next night me and Ellen sat up in our room with another girl called Mary and tried to make sense of what happened, but we couldn’t. Ellen knew the most, because she was quite shameless about gossip and listening to other people’s conversations. ‘William told me that Jenny was out there with Master Freddie, she had a funny turn and had to be locked in her room, that was how come she wasn’t there when you asked, Mary.’
    ‘What was
she
doing out there? She can’t have beenthe one who found the poor little mite or she’d have told Mrs. Mattie.’
    I said, ‘That was Miss Louisa’s governess found Master Freddie, must have been.’
    Ellen said, ‘What, that Miss Childers? She didn’t half go barmy. I got ever such a fright when her hand come up through the window like that.’
    ‘Well, what do you expect? I heard that Jenny found him first and showed Miss Childers, and then she fell down in a fit.’
    ‘Where was he?’
    ‘Only out by the privy. We saw them going behind the hedge, didn’t we, Ellen?’
    ‘What was he doing there?’
    Ellen said, ‘I don’t know. It was that nurse’s fault. She was to watch those children, not let them go wandering off getting killed.’
    ‘Well, I’ve heard that she was in her room at the very time Master Freddie was killed, saying her prayers. Didn’t do Master