The Barn Door Stayed Closed - Prologue

Let me introduce Alex......Twelve-years-old......Trauma has just come and found him

Grandad never let the barn door stay shut. Not even the time when the snow was that bad Dad said to close everything up tight. “A closed barn is no use to man nor beast,” Grandad said, doing that thing with his hands when he learns me important farming stuff.

This morning the door is closed. Proper closed. Padlocked closed.

My wellies make sucking noises in the mud. They’re my new ones, but I’m not bothered about keeping them clean now. My breath’s all steamy like the cows’ should be, only the cows aren’t steamy this morning cause nobody’s fed them yet. They’re making angry noises in their winter shed. Wrong noises. Everything’s making wrong noises.

Mum grabbed the phone. She never grabs at stuff, tells me off when I do it. And Dad’s boots on the stairs in the dark - not his normal clomping down to do feeding, but running boots. Scary boots.

The yard’s gone funny. No tractor coughing awake by the grain store. No Grandad’s whistle that always comes before you see him, like he’s letting the farm know he’s coming. My heart’s going too fast and there’s this siren getting closer and closer.

Dad squeezed my shoulders proper tight. “Don’t open the barn door, Alex. Promise me.” His hands were all shaky. Dad’s hands never shake. Not even that time the big bull bust out last summer.

The police car’s lights are making everything go blue then normal then blue again. It’s bouncing over the tractor ruts in our track - the deep ones me and Grandad measured once, proper old ones he said they were. Another vehicle’s coming, big and white—an ambulance.” Like the one that came when Mr Peterson died and made his wife go all screamy.

I can hear Mum crying in the kitchen. Window’s open like always cause the steam from cooking needs to get out, she says. But it’s not her normal crying. Not like when the feed lorry got Lucy our sheep dog, or when the bank man came and made everyone go all quiet. This crying sounds like everything’s broke.

Yesterday, me and Grandad were checking the winter wheat. He showed me how to find the little green shoots under all them leaves. “Life always finds a way, lad,” he told me, all serious like proper farmers get. “Been that way on this farm since before your great-Grandad was even thought of. Will be long after I’m gone.”

The padlock looks wrong on the barn door. All shiny and new like them pound coins Grandad does his tricks with.

The siren’s stopped now. People are talking in them voices grown-ups use when they don’t want kids hearing but we do anyway. Words I know but don’t: “inheritance,” “tax,” “pressure,” “couldn’t see another way.”

In the covered yard, the bullocks are going proper mad now, smashing at their feed barrier. Clang-clang-clang like angry bells. That noise always gets Grandad running with his bucket. Always-always-always.

But his feed bucket’s still hanging on its nail.

And the barn door stays closed.

That's where this excerpt ends — the rest is in the book.

All profits from this book go to RABI (The Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution), supporting UK farming families facing the pressures at the heart of this story.

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