Alarm Girl by Hannah Vincent

colour he would be if he lived in England not in South Africa. It would be the line to cut along if someone was chopping his head off.
     
    WIND RATTLED THE WINDOW frames and whistled through the thin walls of the rented cottage. Karen could feel its draught as she stood at the main bedroom window watching trees bend. In the moments when it paused she could hear Ian talking with the children in the room next door.
    ‘When adults get fed up or tired they don’t cry like kids cry, do they?’ he was saying.
    ‘Why not?’ Robin asked.
    She heard Ian hesitate and the wind, too, held its breath, like a child crying, gathering energy for the next wail. ‘Because they’re grown-up, I suppose,’ he said. ‘It’s the kids’ job to cry, but the grown-ups have to soldier on.’
    ‘Soldier?’ Indy’s voice now. It cut Karen to the core.
    ‘Sometimes Mum feels like being quiet, doesn’t she?’ Ian explained. ‘Sometimes we all do. And we just have to leave her be.’
    She moved quickly away from the bedroom window and went downstairs. There was a sensation of being followed and she knew what the feeling was. She knew not to look back over her shoulder.
    Rain spattered on the coals. It was ridiculous to light a fire in summer but the cottage was freezing. This holiday was a disaster. Several times they had bundled the children into waterproofs hoping to walk to a nearby beach, but each time the weather had turned them back. Today they had spent the day indoors trying to play board games, but at four years old Indigo was too young for most of them, so Ian had made her a shop underneath the table where her merchandise, comprised of their own belongings and random items from around the cottage, remained on display. They had put the kids to bed early – it was still light – and now the evening stretched out ahead of them.
    ‘Robin wants you to go up,’ he said, coming into the room. There was a glass of wine in his hand but he hadn’t poured one for her. She was afraid he was reaching the limits of his tolerance. He had been earnest and patient in his bid to understand why it was that she could become rigid – petrified, almost – but soon he would demand that she account for her behaviour. She had a vision of him with an enormous ledger in which he would list his complaints and ask her to explain herself.
    There were no answers she could provide. The sums wouldn’t tally.
    ‘It’s not helping,’ he said. ‘The way you’re being.’
    Rain whipped the windows. Time slowed. When he spoke, his voice sounded unnaturally loud, and yet she knew he was speaking normally.
    ‘The kids are feeling it and so am I,’ he said. ‘What’s going on?’
    With his question came the rushing sensation she had been dreading. With his words it gathered momentum, like an urgent beast that had collapsed in pursuit of her, and now staggered to its feet. It thundered towards her with frightening speed. Its weight was immense, this bull in the china shop of her mind. If she didn’t talk about it or address it by name she could keep it at bay, but if she made eye contact she would be done for. If she acknowledged it, it would come for her, like an animal from the wild that, once allowed into the home, would ingratiate itself perhaps, and appear tame, butnonetheless retain an awesome and frightening power that it could unleash without warning.
    She held Ian’s gaze, willing him to sense the energy in the room.
    ‘Robin wants you to go up,’ he said once more, and a great gust buffeted the house. Something fell from the roof and clattered to the ground outside the back door. Ian sighed and turned away from her.
    She climbed the narrow staircase and found her children motionless in their beds.
    ‘I don’t like this house,’ Robin said.
    His limbs were in outline under old-fashioned sheets and blankets. The room smelt of mildew and a dream-catcher hung limply from the lampshade, its tendrils thick with dust. She and Ian had visited so