Black Rabbit Hall by Eve Chase

is, always looking for Momma, his eyes hungry when he first sees her, making me and Toby look away. We’ll hear the chink of glasses. Smell pine cones on their fire. Laughter.
    Bang!
A gunshot shakes the night.
    ‘Bang.’ Kitty smiles, raises Raggedy Doll to eye level. ‘Bang, bang, bang.’
    Peggy throws her knitting to the floor, rushes to the window. The red skein of wool catches on her heel, unspooling behind her. ‘Christ almighty.’



Six
    Peggy tried to scrub all traces of Knight away with the bristle brush. But there is still a dark red splatter on the stone, like an exploding poppy, a smell of horse sweat and blood. The bobble of Knight’s brains and the brown tufts of his mane were all over the side of the stable, too, but Toby nimbly scrabbled up and scraped them off. He laid the bits of brain on the wall to dry, like little red and white jewels, so he could preserve them, add them to his collection of things dug up from the gardens and fields, fossils, rabbit skulls, crockery shards, cartridge cases, and the shrivelled lambs’ tails that drop off in spring. I think he’d do the same with Momma if he could. And I think that would be preferable to this: Momma buried beneath the soil like a broken butter dish.
    That’s going to happen today. It’s the day of the funeral. Time has gone funny. Almost a week has vanished since Momma died, sucked into the hole that has opened up, black and deep and dangerous as a disused tin mine. It’s impossible to believe it’s Easter, that bluebells are budding in the woods. The sky is wintry, heavy and low, like something that’s going to keep falling until it crushes you flat. A brisk, eye-drying wind, smelling of rotting things, dementedly spins the weathercock on the steeple of St Mary’s, the church beside the old harbour. Its damp stone walls are pocked with yellow lichen, the stained-glass windowscrusted with salt. Like being stuck in the underside of an upturned boat, Momma always said, making us laugh during intolerable services that went on for centuries, far longer than any in London. Seagulls and pigeons line its gable roof, hungrily eyeing the tiny graveyard, Momma’s stomach-churning destination. The hole is already dug, the exposed worms kinking in the daylight. I hate the thought of her here. The graveyard is known to be a pickle of bones – bodies layered with more bodies, like thin blankets on a bed in winter – full of old dead Altons and mariners and drowned children who wandered out too far in the wrong tide or walked the mud flats of the creek for a dare or a sherbet fountain.
    We gather outside the church door, avoiding the eyes of the people we might normally see at weddings or christenings, flinching when they hug us, unable to be comforted. They all talk in those whispery voices that adults use in children’s bedrooms when they think the children are asleep. The women touch Daddy’s arm, cock their heads. The men, with their chubby baby faces, clap him on the shoulder. Daddy nods politely, not quite meeting their eyes. If he did they’d see that the light has gone out of them as surely as a snuffed candle. I feel their gaze skating over me too. I hear them muttering under their breath, ‘She looks so uncannily like her mother.’ I let my hair fall in front of my face and hide there until the smiles slide off their faces and, slightly embarrassed, they move on.
    ‘It’s time, my darling,’ Daddy says, hand on my back. He tries to smile but can’t. I think about him sobbing last night, every night since Momma died. I don’t think therecan be a worse sound in the world than your father crying. He takes a deep breath. ‘Ready?’
    I nod. I know what to expect. I’ve been to funerals here before. There is something about funerals that is all the same, like weddings in reverse. So I will pretend it’s someone else’s, not Momma’s. This is how we’ve decided to survive it.
    The heavy church door opens with a pig squeal. The vicar