Killing a Unicorn by Marjorie Eccles

can after a late and restless night, and to her dismay and annoyance hadn’t wakened until nearly nine, cross, stiff and cramped in her chair.
    She dressed hurriedly, dismissing the idea of her usual workday gear of trousers and shirt, choosing instead a safari-style, sludgy-coloured cotton dress which she’d worn only once before and for some reason hadn’t thrown away. Never mind that it was a big mistake (the colour made her look like putty and the bunchy style like a box), she only had black otherwise, and that, she felt, would be crass in the circumstances. She had just reached the bottom of the stairs, deciding she must make up for a bad start by having a sensible breakfast to sustain her through whatever the day might bring, no matter that she felt not at all like eating, when Jilly whistled along the passage between the main body of the house and Chip’s self-contained part, and dashed in through the connecting door.
    Jilly? Rushing? Never had Alyssa seen her do other than tread softly about the place, as if afraid that the very sound of her footsteps might disturb others. She followed. As she neared Bibi’s kitchen door, she could hear a great commotion going on behind it. Why did people always gather in kitchens in times of stress? The telephone rang, voices talked over each other. She heard sobbing. Her heart turned over. It wasn’t Jasie’s childish sobs, however. It was Rene Brooker, who came in each day from the village to help out with the chores.
    â€˜What’s all this?’ Alyssa demanded, stepping through the door into a temporary silence, where Chip was listening on the end of the wall-mounted telephone. Everything in this bright kitchen matched, all yellows and creams and shining copper, unlike the original old kitchen she herself still used, whose inadequacies she never noticed, since she didn’t spend any more time there than she had to. But Bibi had loved to cook. Vegetarian meals, brown rice and beans
and something Alyssa preferred not to know about, apparently called tofu.
    â€˜Oh, oh, the poor lamb!’ Rene’s sobs, regardless of Chip’s impatient hand-shushings, were beginning all over again.
    â€˜Now, now, that’s going to help no one, least of all poor little Jasie,’ Alyssa asserted, assuming Rene had just been told about the tragedy and was bewailing the little boy’s loss. She spoke briskly, admonishingly, which she’d always found to be the best course with those who went to pieces in a crisis. She didn’t want to admit that she might start weeping in sympathy if she allowed herself to dwell on Jasie’s plight.
    Though the room was full of people, Jasie himself was not in evidence. Chip, his back to her, was now speaking into the telephone, and presently hung up. She couldn’t see why Jilly had been rushing: all she was doing now was staring out of the window at the rows of cabbages and peas in the kitchen garden, her hands twisted together behind her back. As Alyssa spoke, however, she turned and filled the kettle, began to slice bread. It was Jonathan who came to Alyssa and put his hands on her shoulders. ‘Mother, sit down and prepare yourself for a shock. We can’t find Jasie.’
    â€˜Why don’t you look in the tree house? He always rushes out there before breakfast to see if the squirrels have taken his conkers.’
    He was keeping a dozen of them, still wearing their prickly green overcoats, in the private hide-out Humphrey had constructed for him in the fork of an ancient oak, hoping his secret hoard would ripen and harden before the squirrels stripped all the horse chestnuts bare.
    â€˜No, he’s not in the tree house. He doesn’t seem to be anywhere.’
    She looked at the clock and realized it was nearly half-past nine. Jasie was always awake before seven, ravenous for his breakfast, making enough noise for three and cheerfully talking the hind legs off a donkey. She felt