The Insect Rosary by Sarah Armstrong Page A

up.’
    â€˜Good. An early night perhaps?’
    Bernadette’s eyes weren’t even on her when she asked questions. She was signalling something to her older girl, some keep quiet or sit still order to two children who looked incapable of making noise or moving independently. She decided to wait to see if Bernadette repeated her question.
    She didn’t. It had been forgotten in her little silent exchange.
    â€˜Sorry, what were we saying?’
    Nancy smiled, ‘I can’t remember either. I think I’m going to get Hurley up to bed.’
    She stroked his shoulder. He handed her his juice, which she left on the tray, and he followed her out of the room.
    â€˜Night, Hurley,’ said Elian, not leaving his new talking partner.
    Nancy tried to help him up the stairs but he leaned on the banister more.
    â€˜I’ll make up the bed in our room. Will you be all right?’
    He nodded.
    â€˜Don’t forget to brush your teeth.’
    He nodded.
    â€˜I’m so sorry about what happened, Hurley. I should have done something, made Donn tie the dog up.’
    He shrugged.
    â€˜Go and collect your things. I’ll see you in the morning.’ She went into the bathroom, just for a bit of space and listened to the girls coming upstairs, complaining about sharing the room, crying about sharing the small bed. She cleaned her face and brushed her hair.
    Hurley was waiting on the stairs outside the bathroom.
    â€˜My bed’s not ready,’ he said.
    â€˜No. I’ll do that now.’ She carried his bag to the room and put it on her bed.
    Nancy struggled with the rusty clasps and hinges, but finally got the bed unfolded for when he came in. He slowly sat down on it and they both cringed at the screaming metal.
    â€˜Just try not to move around too much,’ said Nancy.
    â€˜I can feel the metal.’
    â€˜We’ll see how we get on. After tonight.’
    She hoped Elian would offer to swap, if anyone needed to.
    Downstairs the front room was empty. She found them all in the parlour, Bernadette at the head of the table, Elian and Adrian flanking her, and an almost empty bottle of white wine in between them.
    â€˜Open another, would you, Nancy? This one’s all gone. We couldn’t wait all night.’
    Nancy found the bottle in the fridge, among many other bottles, and unscrewed the previous cork from the corkscrew. She looked around at the many boxes of provisions, the multipacks of crisps and the family packs of Twix and Mars bars sticking out of them. How was she going to hide this from Hurley?
    She scraped off the foil and reapplied the corkscrew but the cork would not budge. She refused to ask anyone in the room to help her, but strained against it until Elian came to see what the hold-up was.
    â€˜Here you go,’ he said, as it popped. ‘What do we do about all this junk food? Didn’t you say anything to them about what Hurley can eat?’
    â€˜It’s their food, not ours. I didn’t even know they were coming until we got here. What could I say?’
    He took the bottle back in and left her to find her own glass. When she sat down at the table and was pouring her wine they heard the gunshot.
    â€˜Poor Donn,’ said Bernadette. ‘He always said that would be his last dog.’
    Elian kept his head down and waited for the conversation to resume on a different subject. He couldn’t hide that he was glad and Nancy hated that. She forced her attention away from him, back to Bernadette.
    She seemed so much the same, bright blue eyes which smiled when her mouth did, but distant, like she wasn’t really there. The weird thing was that Nancy felt the same. Nancy had never felt guilty for leaving home. She was sick of making excuses for Bernadette. It was too embarrassing to be around those hospitals and other locked places. Nancy had wondered about this inevitable reunion for so long but hadn’t expected Bernadette to be so