4 September (nine weeks earlier)
THE FLETCHER FAMILY BUILT THEIR BIG, SHINY NEW HOUSE on the crest of the moor, in a town that time seemed to have left to mind its own business. They built on a modest-sized plot that the diocese, desperate for cash, needed to get rid of. They built so close to the two churches – one old, the other very old – that they could almost lean out from the bedroom windows and touch the shell of the ancient tower. And on three sides of their garden they had the quietest neighbours they could hope for, which was ten-year-old Tom Fletcher’s favourite joke in those days; because the Fletchers built their new house in the midst of a graveyard. They should have known better, really.
But Tom and his younger brother Joe were so excited in the beginning. Inside their new home they had huge great bedrooms, still smelling of fresh paint. Outside they had the bramble-snared, crumble-stone church grounds, where story-book adventures seemed to be just waiting for them. Inside they had a living room that gleamed with endless shades of yellow, depending on where the sun was in the sky. Outside they had ancient archways that soared to the heavens, dens within ivy that was old and stiff enough to stand up by itself, and grass so long six-year-old Joe seemed drowned by it. Indoors, the house began to absorb the characters of the boys’ parents, as fresh colours, wall-paintings and carved animals appeared in every room. Outdoors, Tom and Joe made the churchyard their own.
On the last day of the summer holidays, Tom was lying on the grave of Jackson Reynolds (1875-1945), soaking up the warmth of the old stone. The sky was the colour of his mother’s favourite cornflower-blue paint and the sun had been out doing its stuff since early morning. It was a shiny day, as Joe liked to say.
Tom wouldn’t have been able to say what changed. How he went from perfectly fine, warm and happy, thinking about how old you had to be to try out for Blackburn Rovers to… well… to not fine. But suddenly, in a second, football didn’t seem quite so important. There was nothing wrong, exactly, he just wanted to sit up. See what was nearby. If anyone…
Stupid. But he was sitting up all the same, looking round, wondering how Joe had managed to disappear again. Further down the hill, the graveyard stretched the length of a football field, getting steeper as it dropped lower. Below it were a few rows of terraced houses and then more fields. Beyond them, at the bottom of the valley, was the neighbouring town of Goodshaw Bridge where he and Joe were due to resume school on Monday morning. Across the valley and behind, on just about every side, were the moors. Lots and lots of moors.
Tom’s dad was fond of saying how much he loved the moors, the wildness, grandeur and sheer unpredictability of the north of England. Tom agreed with his dad, of course he did, he was only ten, but privately he sometimes wondered if countryside that was predictable (he’d looked the word up, he knew what it meant) wouldn’t be a bad thing. It seemed to Tom sometimes, though he never liked to say it, that the moors around his new home were a little bit too unpredictable.
He was an idiot, of course, it went without saying.
But somehow, Tom always seemed to be spotting a new lump of rock, a tiny valley that hadn’t been there before, a bank of heather or copse of trees that appeared overnight. Sometimes, when clouds were moving fast in the sky and their shadows were racing across the ground, it seemed to Tom that the moors were rippling, the way water does when there’s something beneath the surface; or stirring, like a sleeping monster about to wake up. And just occasionally, when the sun went down across the valley and the darkness was coming, Tom couldn’t help thinking that the moors around them had moved closer.
‘Tom!’ yelled Joe from the other side of the graveyard, and for once Tom really wasn’t sorry to hear from him. The stone beneath him had grown cold and there were more clouds overhead.
‘Tom!’ called Joe again, right in Tom’s ear. Jeez, Joe, that was fast. Tom jumped up and turned round. Joe wasn’t there.
Around the edge of the churchyard, trees started to shudder. The wind was getting up again and when the wind on the moor really meant business, it could get everywhere, even the sheltered places. In the bushes closest to Tom something moved.
‘Joe,’ he said, more quietly than he meant to, because he really didn’t like the idea that someone, even Joe, was hiding in those bushes, watching him. He sat, staring at the big, shiny-green leaves, waiting for them to move again. They were laurels, tall, old and thick. The wind was definitely getting up, he could hear it now in the tree-tops. The laurels in front of him were still.
It had probably just been a strange echo that had made him think Joe was close. But Tom had that feeling, the ticklish feeling he’d get when someone spotted him doing something he shouldn’t. And besides, hadn’t he just felt Joe’s breath on the back of his neck?
‘Joe?’ he tried again.
‘Joe?’ came his own voice back at him. Tom took two steps back, coming up sharp against a headstone. Glancing all round, double-checking no one was close, he crouched to the ground.
At this level, the foliage on the laurel bushes was thinner. Tom could see several bare branches of the shrub amongst nettles. He could see something else as well, a shape he could barely make out, expect he knew it wasn’t vegetation. It looked a little like – if it moved he might get a better look – a large and very dirty human foot.
‘Tom, Tom, come and look at this!’ called his brother, this time sounding as if he was miles away. Tom didn’t wait to be called again, he jumped to his feet and ran in the direction of his brother’s voice.
Joe was crouched near the foot of the wall that separated the churchyard from the family’s garden. He was looking at a grave that seemed newer than many of those surrounding it. At its foot, facing the headstone, was a stone statue.
‘Look, Tom,’ Joe was saying, even before his older brother had stopped running. ‘It’s a little girl. With a dolly.’
Tom bent down. The statue was about a foot high and was of a tiny, chubby girl with curly hair, wearing a party dress. Tom reached out and scratched away some of the moss that was growing over it. The sculptor had given her perfectly carved shoes and, cradled in her arms, a small doll.
‘Little girls,’ said Joe. ‘It’s a grave for little girls.
Tom looked up to find that Joe was right – almost. A single word was carved on the headstone. Lucy. There could have been more, but any carving below it had been covered in ivy. ‘Just one little girl,’ he said. ‘Lucy.’
Tom reached up and pulled away the ivy that grew over the headstone until he could see dates. Lucy had died ten years ago. She’d been just two years old. Beloved child of Jennifer and Michael Pickup, the inscription said. There was nothing else.
‘Just Lucy,’ Tom repeated. ‘Come on, let’s go.’
Tom set off back, making his way carefully through long grass, avoiding nettles, pushing aside brambles. Behind him, he could hear the rustling of grass being disturbed and knew Joe was following. As he climbed the hill, the walls of the abbey ruin came into view.
‘Tom,’ said Joe, in a voice that just didn’t sound right.
Tom stopped walking. He could hear grass moving directly behind him but he didn’t turn round. He just stayed there, staring at the ruined church tower but not really seeing it, wondering instead why he was suddenly so scared of turning round to face his brother.
He turned. He was surrounded by tall stones. Nothing else. Tom discovered his fists were clenched tight. This really wasn’t funny. Then the bushes a few yards away started moving again and there was Joe, jogging through the grass, red in the face and panting, as if he’d been struggling to keep up. He came closer, reached his brother and stopped.
‘What?’ Joe said.
‘I think someone’s following us,’ whispered Tom.
Joe didn’t ask who, or where, or how Tom knew, he just stared back at him. Tom reached out and took his brother’s arm. They were going home and they were doing it now.
Except, no, perhaps they weren’t. On the wall that separated the older part of the church grounds from the graveyard that stretched down the hill, six boys were standing in a line like skittles, watching. Tom could feel his heartbeat starting to speed up. Six boys on the wall; and possibly another one very close by.
The biggest boy was holding a thick, forked twig. Tom didn’t see the missile that came hurtling towards him but he felt the air whistle past his face. Another boy, wearing a distinctive claret and blue football shirt, was taking aim. With quicker reflexes than his older brother, Joe threw himself behind a large headstone. Tom followed just as the second shot went wide.
‘Who are they?’ whispered Joe as another stone went flying overhead.
‘They’re boys from school,’ Tom replied. ‘Two of them are in my class.’
‘What do they want?’ Joe’s pale face had gone whiter than normal.
‘I don’t know,’ said Tom, although he did. One of them wanted to get his own back. The others were just helping out. A rock hit the edge of the headstone and Tom saw dust fly off it. ‘The one in the Burnley shirt is Jake Knowles,’ he admitted.
‘The one you had that fight with?’ said Joe. ‘When you got sent to the headmaster’s office? The one whose dad wanted to get you kicked out of school?’
Tom crouched and leaned forward, hoping the long grass would hide his head as he looked out. Another boy from Tom’s class, Billy Aspin, was pointing at a clump of brambles near the little girl’s grave that Joe had just found. Tom turned back to Joe. ‘They’re not looking,’ he said. ‘We have to move quick. Follow me.’
Joe was right behind as Tom shot forward, heading for a great, upright tomb, one of the largest on the hill. They made it. Stones came whistling through the air but Tom and Joe were safe behind the huge stone structure, which had iron railings around the outside. There was an iron gate too and, beyond it, a wooden door that led inside. A family mausoleum, their father had said, probably quite large inside, tunnelled into the hillside, with lots of ledges for generations of coffins to be placed on.
‘They’ve split up,’ came a shout from the wall. ‘You two, come with me!’
Tom and Joe looked at each other. If they’d split up, why were they still close enough for Tom to feel Joe’s breath on his face?
‘They’re knob-heads,’ said Joe.
Tom leaned out from behind the crypt. Three of the boys were walking along the wall towards Lucy Pickup’s grave. The other three were still staring in their direction.
‘What’s that noise?’ said Joe.
‘Wind?’ suggested Tom, without bothering to listen. It was a pretty safe guess.
‘It’s not wind. It’s music.’
Joe was right. Definitely music, low, with a steady rhythm, a man’s deep voice singing. The knob-heads had heard it too. One of them jumped down and ran towards the road. Then the rest followed. The music was getting louder and Tom could hear a car engine.
It was John Lee Hooker. His dad had several of his CDs and played them – very loud – when their mother was out. Someone was driving up the hill, playing John Lee Hooker on his car stereo, and this was the time to move. Tom stepped sideways, away from the shelter of the mausoleum.
Only Jake Knowles was still in sight. He looked round and saw Tom, who didn’t hide this time. Both boys knew the game was up. Except…
‘He’s got your baseball bat,’ said Joe, who’d followed Tom into the open. ‘What’s he doing?’
Jake had got Tom’s bat and his ball too, a large, very heavy red ball that Tom had been warned on pain of a prolonged and tortuous death (which was how his mum talked when she was serious) not to play with anywhere near buildings, especially buildings with windows and was she making herself clear? Tom and Joe had been practising catches earlier by the church. They’d left both bat and ball near the wall and now Knowles had them.
‘He’s nicking them,’ said Joe. ‘We can call the police.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Tom, as Jake turned away and faced the church. Tom watched Jake toss the ball gently into the air. Then he swung the bat hard. The ball sailed into the air and through the huge stained-glass window at the side of the church. A blue pane shattered as the car engine switched off, the music died and Jake fled after his friends.
‘Why did he do that?’ said Joe. ‘He broke a window. He’ll get murdered.’
‘No, he won’t,’ said Tom. ‘We will.’
Joe stared at his brother for a second, then he got it. He may have been only six and annoying as hell, but he was no knob-head.
‘That’s not fair.’ Joe’s little face had screwed up in outrage. ‘We’ll tell.’
‘They won’t believe us,’ said Tom. Six weeks in his new school: three detentions, two trips to the headmaster’s office, any number of serious bollockings from his class teacher and no one ever believed him. Why would they, when Jake Knowles had half the class on his side, jumping up and down in their seats they were so eager to back him up. Even the ones who didn’t seem to be Jake’s mates were too scared of him and his gang to say anything. Six weeks of getting the blame for everything Jake Knowles started. Maybe he was the knob-head.
He took hold of Joe’s hand and the boys ran as fast as they could through the long grass. Tom climbed the wall, looked all round the churchyard, and then bent down to pull up Joe. Jake and the other boys were nowhere in sight but there were a hundred hiding places around the ruins of the old church.
An old sports car was parked just by the church gate, pale blue with lots of silver trim. The soft roof had been folded back over the boot. A man was leaning across the passenger seat and fumbling in the glove compartment. He found what he was looking for and straightened up. He looked about Tom’s dad’s age, around thirty-four or thirty-five, taller than Tom’s dad, but thinner.
Beckoning Joe to follow, Tom picked up the baseball bat (no point leaving evidence in plain sight) and ran until they could scramble into their favourite hiding place. They’d discovered it shortly after moving in: a huge rectangular stone table of a grave, supported on four stone pillars. The grass around it grew long, and once the boys had crawled underneath they were completely hidden from view.
The sports-car driver opened the car door and climbed out. As he turned towards the church, the boys could see that his hair was the same colour as their mother’s (strawberry blonde, not ginger), and curly like their mum’s, but his was cut short. He was wearing kneelength shorts, a white T-shirt and red Crocs. He walked across the road and into the churchyard. Once inside, he stopped on the path and looked behind him, then span slowly on the spot, taking in the cobbled streets, the terraced houses, both churches, the moors behind and beyond.
‘He’s not been here before,’ whispered Joe.
Tom nodded. The stranger walked past the boys and reached the main door of the church. He took a key from his pocket. A second later the door swung open and he walked inside. Just as Jake Knowles appeared at the entrance to the churchyard. Tom stood up and looked round. Billy Aspin was behind them. As they watched, the other members of the gang appeared from behind gravestones, clambering over the wall. The brothers were surrounded.
‘IT HAD BEEN BURNING FOR THREE HOURS BEFORE THEY managed to put it out. And they said the temperatures inside, at the point of – I can’t remember what they said…’
‘Origin?’ suggested Evi.
The girl sitting opposite nodded. ‘Yes, that’s it,’ she said. ‘The point of origin. They said it would have been like a furnace. And her bedroom was right above it. They couldn’t get anywhere near the house, let alone upstairs, and then the ceiling collapsed. By the time they managed to get it cooled down enough, they couldn’t find her.’
‘No trace at all?’
Gillian shook her head. ‘No, nothing,’ she said. ‘She was so tiny, you see. Such tiny soft bones.’
Gillian’s breathing was speeding up again. ‘I read somewhere that it’s unusual, but not unheard of,’ she went on, ‘for people to… to disappear completely. The fire just burns them up.’ The girl was beginning to gulp at the air around her.
Evi pushed herself upright in her chair and the pain in her left leg responded immediately. ‘Gillian, it’s OK,’ she said. ‘Get your breath back. Just take it steady.’
Gillian put her hands on her knees and dropped her head as Evi concentrated on getting her own breathing under control, on focusing on something other than the pain in her leg. The wall clock told her they were fifteen minutes into the consultation.
Her new patient, Gillian Royle, was unemployed, divorced and alcoholic. She was just twenty-six. The GP’s referral letter had talked about ‘prolonged and abnormal grief’ following the death, three years earlier, of her twenty-seven-month-old daughter in a house fire. According to the GP, Gillian had severe depression, suicidal thoughts and a history of self-harm. He’d have referred her sooner, he’d explained, but had only just been made aware of her case by a local social worker. This was her first appointment with Evi.
Gillian’s hair trailed almost to the floor. It had been highlighted once, but now, above the old blond streaks, it was an unwashed mouse-brown. Gradually, the rise and fall of the girl’s shoulders began to slow down. After a moment she reached up to push her hair back. Her face reappeared. ‘I’m sorry,’ she began, like a child who’d been caught misbehaving.
Evi shook her head. ‘You mustn’t be,’ she said. ‘What you’re feeling is very normal. Do you often have difficulty breathing?’
Gillian nodded.
‘It’s completely normal,’ Evi repeated. ‘People who are suffering immense grief often experience breathlessness. They suddenly start to feel anxious, even afraid, for no apparent reason and then they struggle to get their breath. Does that sound familiar at all?’
Gillian nodded again. She was still panting, as if she’d just run a race and had narrowly lost.
‘Do you have any mementoes of your daughter?’ asked Evi.
Gillian reached to the small table at her side and pulled another tissue from the box. She hadn’t cried yet but had been continually pressing them against her face and twisting them round in her scrawny fingers. Tiny twists of thin paper littered the carpet.
‘The firemen found a toy,’ she said. ‘A pink rabbit. It should have been in her cot but it had fallen down behind the sofa. I suppose I should be glad it did, but I can’t help thinking that she had to go through all that and she didn’t even have Pink Rabbit wi-’ Gillian’s head fell forward again and her body started to shudder. Both hands, still clasping flimsy peach-coloured paper, were pressed hard against her mouth.
‘Did it make it harder for you?’ asked Evi. ‘That they didn’t find Hayley’s body?’
Gillian raised her head and Evi could see a darker gleam in her eyes, a harder edge around the lines of her face. There was a lot of anger in there as well, struggling with grief to get the upper hand. ‘Pete said it was a good thing,’ she said, ‘that they couldn’t find her.’
‘What do you think?’ asked Evi.
‘I think it would have been better to have found her,’ Gillian shot back. ‘Because then I’d have known for sure. I would have had to accept it.’
‘Accept that it was real?’ asked Evi.
‘Yes,’ agreed Gillian. ‘Because I couldn’t. I just couldn’t take it in, couldn’t believe she was really dead. Do you know what I did?’
Evi allowed her head to shake gently from side to side. ‘No,’ she said, ‘tell me what you did.’
‘I went out looking for her, on the moors,’ replied Gillian. ‘I thought, because they hadn’t found her, that there must be some mistake. That she’d got out somehow. I thought maybe Barry, the babysitter, had managed to get her out and put her in the garden before the smoke got too much for him, and that she’d just wandered off.’
Gillian’s eyes were pleading with Evi, begging her to agree, to say yes, that was quite likely, perhaps she’s still out there, wandering around, living off berries, Gillian just had to keep looking.
‘She would have been terrified of the fire,’ Gillian was saying, ‘so she’d have tried to get away. She could have got out of the gate somehow and wandered up the lane. So we went out looking, Pete and me, and a couple of others too. We spent the night walking the moors, calling out to her. I was so sure, you see, that she couldn’t really be dead.’
‘That’s completely normal too,’ said Evi. ‘It’s called denial. When people suffer a great loss, they often can’t take it in at first. Some doctors believe it’s the body’s way of protecting us from too much pain. Even though people know, in their head, that their loved one is gone, their heart is telling them something different. It’s not uncommon for bereaved people to even see the one they’ve lost, to hear their voice.’
She paused for a second. Gillian had pushed herself upright in the chair again. ‘People do that?’ she asked, leaning towards Evi. ‘They see and hear the dead person?’
‘Yes,’ said Evi, ‘it’s very common. Has it happened to you? Did you – do you see Hayley?’
Slowly Gillian shook her head. ‘I never see her,’ she said. For a second she stared back at Evi. And then her face deflated, collapsing in on itself like the air slowly trickling out of a balloon. ‘I never see her,’ she repeated. She reached for the tissues again. The box fell to the floor but she’d managed to keep hold of a handful. She pressed them to her face. Still no tears. Maybe they were all used up.
‘Take your time,’ said Evi. ‘You need to cry. Take as much time as you like.’
Gillian didn’t cry, not really, but she held the handful of tissues to her face and allowed her dried-up body to sob. Evi watched the second hand make its way round the clock three times.
‘Gillian,’ she said, when she judged she’d given the girl enough time. ‘Dr Warrington tells me you still spend several hours a day walking the moors. Are you still looking for Hayley?’
Gillian shook her head without looking up. ‘I don’t know why I do it,’ she mumbled into the tissues. ‘I just get this feeling in my head and then I can’t stay indoors. I have to go out. I have to look.’ Gillian raised her head and her pale-grey eyes stared back at Evi. ‘Can you help me?’ she asked, suddenly looking so much younger than her twenty-six years.
‘Yes, of course,’ said Evi quickly. ‘I’m going to prescribe some medication for you. Some anti-depressants to make you feel better, and also something to help you sleep at night. These are a temporary measure, to help you break the cycle of feeling so bad. Do you understand?’
Gillian was staring back at her, like a child relieved that a grownup had finally taken charge.
‘You see, the pain you’ve been feeling has made your body sick,’ continued Evi. ‘For three years you’ve not been sleeping or eating properly. You’re drinking too much and you’re wearing yourself out on these long walks over the moors.’
Gillian blinked twice. Her eyes looked red and sore.
‘When you’re feeling a little better in the daytime and you’re sleeping properly at night, then you’ll be able to do something about the drinking,’ continued Evi. ‘I can refer you to a support group. They’ll help you get through the first few weeks. Does that sound like a good idea?’
Gillian was nodding.
‘I’m going to see you every week for as long as it takes,’ said Evi. ‘When you’re starting to feel better in yourself, when you feel you have the pain under control, then we have to work on helping you adjust to your life as it is now.’
Gillian’s eyes had dulled. She raised her eyebrows.
‘Before all this happened,’ explained Evi, ‘you were a wife and mother. Now your situation is very different. I know that sounds harsh, but it’s a reality we have to face together. Hayley will always be a part of your life. But at the moment she – the loss of her – is your whole life. You need to rebuild your life and, at the same time, find a place for her.’
Silence. The tissues had fallen to the floor and Gillian’s arms were crossed tightly in front of her. It wasn’t quite the reaction Evi had been hoping for.
‘Gillian?’
‘You’re going to hate me for saying this,’ said Gillian, who was starting to shake her head. ‘But sometimes, I wish…’
‘What do you wish?’ asked Evi, realizing that for the first time since she’d met Gillian, she really didn’t know what the girl’s answer was going to be.
‘That she’d just leave me in peace.’
T HE SLEEPING CHILD HAD SOFT PALE HAIR, THE COLOUR OF spun sugar. She lay in her buggy, fast asleep in the sunshine. A fine-mesh net was stretched tight across the buggy, from top to bottom, protecting her from insects and from anything else that might be scurrying about the garden. A damp curl clung to her plump cheek. Her fist was pressed against her mouth, the thumb sticking out at right angles, as though she’d fallen asleep sucking her thumb before a thought in a dream made her spit it out. Her tummy rose and fell, rose and fell.
Somewhere around two years old. Legs still plump enough to toddle, lips just beginning to form words. Her eyes, when open, would have the trusting innocence of the freshly made person. She hadn’t learned yet that people could hurt.
A bubble of saliva formed in the gap between her tiny pink lips. It disappeared then formed itself again. The child sighed and the bubble broke on the air. And the sound seemed to travel through the still September morning.
Ah, da da da,’ muttered the girl, in her sleep.
She was just beautiful. Exactly like the others.
JOE JUMPED UP AND RAN. WITHOUT THINKING, TOM FOLLOWED and the two boys sped up the steps and through the open church door. Tom caught a glimpse of the fair-haired man ahead, getting closer to the altar, and then Joe dived behind the back pew. Tom did the same.
The flags on the floor were dusty. Beneath the pews Tom could see cobwebs, some complete and perfect, others torn up and festooned with the corpses of long-dead flies. The tapestry prayer-cushions were hanging neatly from hooks.
‘He’s saying his prayers,’ whispered Joe, who was peering over the top of the pew. Tom pushed himself up. The man in shorts was kneeling at the altar steps, his elbows resting on the rail, looking up at the large stained-glass window on the front wall of the church. He did look like he was praying.
A sudden noise outside made Tom look round. The church door was open and he caught a glimpse of a figure running past outside. Jake and his gang were still out there, waiting. A sudden tug pulled him down below the rim of the pew.
‘He’s heard something,’ whispered Joe.
The boys hadn’t made any noise that Tom had been aware of, but he felt a stab of alarm. If the man found them, he might order them outside, where Jake and the others were waiting. Joe had risked raising his head again. Tom did the same. Shorts Man hadn’t moved but he wasn’t praying any more, that much was clear. His head was upright and his body had stiffened. He was listening. Then he stood up and turned round. Joe and Tom ducked so quickly they banged their heads together. Now they were for it. They were in church without permission and, to all intents and purposes, they’d broken a window.
‘Who’s there?’ called the man, sounding puzzled but not cross. ‘Hello,’ he called. His voice carried easily to the back of the church.
Tom tried to stand up. ‘No!’ hissed his brother, clinging to him. ‘He doesn’t mean us.’
‘Of course he means us,’ Tom hissed back. ‘There’s no one else here.’
Joe didn’t answer, just gingerly lifted his head, like a soldier peering out over a parapet. He glanced down and nodded at Tom to do the same. Shorts Man was walking slowly towards a door to the right of the altar. He reached for the handle and pulled it open. Then he stood in the doorway, looking into the room.
‘I know you’re in there,’ he called, like a parent playing hide and seek. He was northern, but not from Lancashire, or Yorkshire just over the border. Further north, Tom guessed, maybe Newcastle.
Tom raised his hands and did his ‘What?’ face at Joe. There were three people in this church and they were two of them.
‘Are you going to come out and say hello?’ said the man, in a voice that Tom knew was supposed to sound as though he didn’t care one way or another but didn’t quite manage it. He was nervous. ‘I’m going to have to lock up in a minute,’ he went on, ‘and I really can’t do that while you’re hiding.’ Then he spun round on his heels to face the other side of the building. ‘Getting beyond a joke now, folks,’ he muttered, as he walked quickly to the other side of the church and disappeared behind the organ. This was the boys’ chance. Tom tugged on Joe’s arm. They stepped into the aisle just as Billy Aspin appeared at the main doorway, grinning at them. Tom grabbed Joe and dragged him back behind the pew again.
‘Hello,’ said a Geordie voice above their heads. Shorts Man was in the pew in front, looking down at them.
‘Hi,’ replied Joe. ‘Did you find her?’
Shorts Man frowned. ‘How did you two get from the vestry, to behind the organ, to back here without me seeing you?’ he asked.
‘We’ve been here all the time,’ said Tom.
‘We saw you saying your prayers,’ added Joe, in the sort of voice he might use if he’d seen someone having a wee behind the altar.
‘Did you now?’ asked Shorts Man. ‘Where do you two live?’
Tom wondered for a second whether there was any chance they’d get away with not telling him. The man was standing between the boys and the door, but if Tom dodged one way-
‘Next door,’ said Joe. ‘The new house,’ he went on, as if he hadn’t already made it clear.
The man was nodding. ‘I have to lock this building up,’ he said, stepping into the aisle. ‘Come on.’
‘How come you have a key?’ asked Joe, who’d moved too far away for Tom to prod him. ‘Only the vicar’s allowed to have a key. Did he give it to you?’
‘The archdeacon gave it to me. Right, before I lock up, are there any more of you in here?’
‘There can’t be,’ said Tom. ‘We came straight in behind you. We were, er, playing hide and seek with some boys outside. No one followed us in.’
Shorts Man nodded. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Out we go.’
He waved his hand towards the door, meaning that Tom and Joe should go first. Tom set off. So far, so good. Jake and the others wouldn’t dare try anything if he and Joe appeared with an adult. And the man hadn’t noticed the broken-
‘Tom, your ball,’ called Joe as he darted off to one side. Tom closed his eyes and had his own private conversation with God about whether little brothers were strictly necessary.
When he opened his eyes again, Joe had retrieved the ball from among the broken glass and Shorts Man’s eyebrows had disappeared into his hair. He held out his hand for the ball. Tom opened his mouth and shut it again. What was the point?
‘Who’s the boy with the shaved head?’ asked Shorts Man. ‘The one who was standing on the wall as I drove up?’
‘Jake Knowles,’ said Joe. ‘He’s in Tom’s class. He keeps getting him into trouble. They were throwing stones at us with cater-bolts and then he nicked Tom’s bat.’
‘Did he now?’
‘They’re waiting for us outside.’
‘Oh aye?’
‘They’re going to duff us up when we go out. They’re knob-heads.’
‘What’s your name?’ asked Shorts Man, and Tom didn’t even bother trying to signal to Joe that it really wasn’t a good-
‘Joe Fletcher,’ said Joe. ‘And he’s Tom. I’m six and he’s ten, and Millie’s two and my dad’s thirty-six and my mum’s-’
‘Steady on, pal.’ Shorts Man looked as though he found Joe highly amusing. He should try living with him. ‘Come on, let’s get locked up.’
EVI STOOD AT THE WINDOW OF HER ROOM, BREATHING deeply, waiting for the combination of paracetamol and ibuprofen to kick in. Her consulting room was three floors up and looked directly out over the hospital’s accident and emergency department. As she watched, an ambulance pulled up into the parking bay and a paramedic jumped out, followed by the ambulance driver. They opened the rear doors and began moving the wheelchair lifting gear into position.
Breathe in and out. The medication would work, it always did. It just seemed to take a little longer some days. Across the road from the hospital was a retail park. The supermarket car park was already busy. Friday morning. People were stocking up for the weekend. Evi closed her eyes for a second and then raised her head, looking out over rooftops, office blocks, away into the distance. The large northern town where she worked most days had been built along a wide valley. Moors stretched up on either side. A bird taking off from her window ledge could fly directly to the nearest peak, some four or five miles away. From there, it could look down on the moor, where Gillian Royle still spent the greater part of her days. Evi turned back to her desk. She had fifteen minutes before her next patient.
She’d already written up notes on the consultation with Gillian before taking the painkillers. Every day, she tried to stretch the time in between taking them by another five minutes. Back at her desk, she Googled the website of the Lancashire Telegraph. It didn’t take long to find the article she was looking for.
The town of Heptonclough is in shock following the fire three nights ago at a cottage in Wite Lane. Local man Stanley Hargreaves said he’d never seen a fire burn as fiercely. ‘None of us could get near it,’ he told Telegraph reporters. ‘We’d have saved the young lass if we could have.’
The story explained that the attending fire-and-rescue team were still reviewing evidence but believed the blaze could have been caused by a ring left burning on the gas hob. Bottles of oil around the cooker would have acted as accelerants. The stone cottage, one of the older buildings in Heptonclough, was some distance from the main part of the community and no one had spotted the blaze until it was far too late to contain the fire. The Telegraph article concluded:
Barry Robinson, fourteen, who was babysitting for the family, is currently recovering in Burnley General Hospital after being found unconscious in the garden by firefighters. Although suffering from the effects of smoke-inhalation, doctors expect him to make a full recovery. His parents tell us he has no recollection of discovering the fire or leaving the house.
Evi’s phone was ringing. Her next patient had arrived.
‘WHERE HAVE YOU TWO BEEN? MILLIE AND I HAVE been shouting for you for ten minutes now.’
The woman on the doorstep wasn’t much taller than her eldest son and, even in a loose shirt and jeans, looked as though she didn’t weigh much more either. She had strawberry-blonde hair that curled to her shoulders, and large turquoise eyes. As the eyes travelled up from her sons to Harry, they opened a bit wider in surprise.
‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Lo,’ said the chubby little girl who was sitting on her mother’s hip, rubbing her eyes as though she’d not long woken from a nap. Her hair was the exact warm blonde shade as her mother’s, whereas the older boy, Tom, had very fair hair and his brother’s was a dark, glossy red. All four of them, though, had the same pale-skinned, freckled faces.
‘Hi,’ said Harry, giving the toddler a wink before turning back to the mother. ‘Good morning,’ he went on. ‘Sorry to bother you, but I found these two hiding in the church. They seem to have been having some trouble with a group of older boys. I thought I’d better see them safely home.’
The woman was frowning now, looking from one boy to the other. Are you both OK?’ she asked.
‘They were throwing stones at us with cater-bolts and then they ran away when they heard Harry. This is Harry,’ said Joe. ‘He was saying his prayers in the church. We saw him.’
‘Well, that’s what it’s for, I suppose,’ said the woman. ‘Pleased to meet you, Harry, and thank you. I’m Alice Fletcher, by the way. Would you… like a cup of coffee? I take it you’re not a psychopath? Because if you are, I should probably make you drink your coffee on the doorstep.’
‘I’m a vicar,’ said Harry, who could feel his face glowing, the way it usually did when faced with a pretty woman. ‘We tend not to be psychopaths,’ he added. ‘The archbishop doesn’t really encourage it.’
‘A vicar?’ said Alice. ‘Our vicar, you mean? The new one?’
‘That’s me.’
‘You can’t be a vicar,’ said Joe.
‘Why not?’
‘Vicars don’t wear shorts,’ Joe told him. ‘And they’re really old. Like grandads.’
Harry grinned. ‘Well, the shorts I can probably work on,’ he said. ‘The rest I’ll have to leave to time. Do vicars have to drink their coffee on the doorstep?’
Alice too had been staring at Harry, as though she couldn’t quite believe it either, but was a bit more polite than her younger son. Then she stepped back so Harry and the boys could come inside. She closed the door behind them as Joe and Tom led the way along the hallway, kicking off trainers as they went.
‘What’s a psychopath?’ Harry heard Joe whisper as the boys pushed open the door at the end of the hall.
‘Jake Knowles when he’s grown up,’ replied Tom, lifting his brother into the air.
Alice and Harry followed the boys into the kitchen and Millie started wriggling to be free. Once on her feet, she tottered over to the boys. Joe, in Tom’s arms, had his hands around a large biscuit tin.
‘Bic bic,’ said Millie, looking surprisingly sly for one so young.
Alice gestured to Harry that he should sit down at the table, before crossing to the kettle, giving it a little bounce to see if there was any water inside and switching it on. The table still carried the remains of breakfast whilst a stack of plates and cutlery was piled up beside the sink.
‘You’re not from these parts,’ she said, as she spooned coffee grains into the filter.
‘Look who’s talking,’ replied Harry. Her accent was making him think of mint juleps and fragrant air, of heat so intense it seemed solid. ‘Let me guess. Texas?’
Movement behind made him glance back at the children. Millie was chewing a ginger nut and eyeing up a chocolate finger in Joe’s hand.
‘You’re a few states out. I’m from Memphis, Tennessee,’ said Alice, gesturing at the sugar bowl. Harry shook his head. On his right, Joe had put one end of the chocolate finger between his lips before bending down and offering the rest of it to Millie. She fastened her teeth on it and started munching just as Joe did the same. They ended up kissing each other and bursting into giggles.
‘That’s enough now, you three. It’s not long till lunch,’ said Alice, without turning round. Harry saw the two boys exchange a glance before Joe stuffed three chocolate fingers and a ginger nut into his pocket and made a hasty retreat from the room. Millie, entrusted with a custard cream, stuffed it down the neck of her dress and toddled out as her eldest brother watched with a smile of pride on his face. Tom pushed a handful of biscuits into his own pockets, then realized Harry had been watching. His face turned a shade pinker as he looked from the visitor to his mother.
‘We’re just going into the lounge,’ he announced.
‘OK, but I’ll have those biscuits back first,’ said Alice, holding out one hand. Tom gave one last glance at Harry – who shrugged in sympathy – before handing over the booty and slinking out.
For a second all was quiet. The room seemed too empty without the children. Alice put mugs, sugar bowl, spoons and a milk bottle on the table.
‘Have you lived here long?’ Harry asked, knowing they couldn’t have. The house was unmistakably new.
‘Three months,’ said Alice. She turned from Harry and started putting dirty plates and bowls into the dishwasher.
‘Settling in well?’ Harry asked.
The dishwasher loaded, Alice bent to a cupboard under the sink and took out a cloth and some spray disinfectant. She rinsed the cloth under the tap and began wiping down the counter top. Harry wondered if his presence might be unwelcome, in spite of the offered coffee.
‘These things take time, I suppose,’ replied Alice after a moment, bringing the coffee to the table and sitting down. ‘Will you be living here in town?’
Harry shook his head. ‘No, the vicarage is a few miles down the hill. In Goodshaw Bridge,’ he said. ‘I have three parishes to take care of. This one is the smallest. And probably the most challenging, given that there’s been no organized worship here for several years. What do you think, will the natives be friendly?’
Another pause. Definitely awkward this time. Alice poured the coffee and pushed the milk in Harry’s direction.
‘So the church is opening up again,’ she said, when he had helped himself. ‘That’ll be good for the town, I guess. We’re not great churchgoers, but I guess we should make the effort, what with living so close. When are you open for business?’
‘Couple of weeks yet,’ replied Harry. ‘I’m being officially installed into the benefice next Thursday down at St Mary’s in Goodshaw Bridge. It would be great to see you and the family.’
Alice nodded her head vaguely and then silence fell again. Harry was starting to feel decidedly uncomfortable when Alice seemed to make a decision. ‘There was a lot of local opposition to our moving here,’ she said, leaning away from the table. ‘This house was the first new building in the town in over twenty years. Most of the land and a lot of the houses are owned by the Renshaw family and they seem to control who moves in and who doesn’t.’
From elsewhere in the house came the sound of raised voices and a high-pitched squeal from Millie.
‘My churchwarden here is a man called Renshaw,’ said Harry. ‘He was on my interview panel.’
Alice nodded. ‘That will be Sinclair,’ she said. ‘He lives in the big house on the other side of the church grounds with his oldest daughter and his father. Old Mr Tobias came round the other day and stayed for coffee. Seemed quite taken with the children. Jenny, the younger daughter, introduced herself in the post office a couple of weeks ago and said she’d call round. As I said, these things take time.’
More giggling from the other room.
‘Is that your husband?’ asked Harry, indicating a photograph on the window ledge behind her. It showed a good-looking man in his thirties, cowboy hat pushed back over dark hair. He wore a blue polo shirt the same colour as his eyes.
She nodded. ‘This has been his dream for years,’ she said. ‘Building our own house in a place like this, keeping chickens, having a vegetable plot. Of course, he’s not here most of the-’
She was interrupted by a sharp knocking on the front door. Muttering an apology, she left the room. Harry looked at his watch. He heard the pad pad pad of tiny footsteps and, a second later, Millie reappeared in the kitchen, pulling a shiny red duck on a stick. She began to circle the table as he heard Alice open the front door. He took a last glug of coffee and stood up. He really had to go.
‘ Alice, hi. I’ve been meaning to call for ages. Is this a good time?’ The woman’s voice was light and clear, with no trace of accent. He knew she’d be young, privately educated and probably rather beautiful, maybe just a tiny bit horsy, even before he reached the door of the kitchen and could see down the hall. She was standing just inside the front door. Right on all counts.
‘Are you and Gareth free next Friday, by any chance?’ she was asking Alice. ‘We’re having some people round for dinner.’
Her blonde hair had too many tones and lights in it to be anything other than natural. It fell to her shoulders and was held back by expensive sunglasses. She had the face of an alabaster statue, and she made the tiny, pretty Alice look like a doll.
‘It’d be great if you could join us,’ she said, putting a pleading expression on her face, but it was obvious she didn’t expect a negative response.
As Harry walked down the hallway, ready to make his excuses and leave, the boys appeared from a room to one side.
The newcomer was wearing jeans and a cream linen shirt. She managed to look casual and expensive at the same time. Before Alice could respond, she spotted Harry and her mouth twisted in amusement. ‘Hi,’ she said, as Harry felt his face colour.
‘Jenny, this is Harry. Our new vicar,’ said Alice. ‘Joe has already had a word with him about the expected clerical dress-code in these parts. Harry, this is Jenny Pickup. She and her husband have a farm a couple of miles out of town.’
‘Reverend Laycock?’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘How great. We’d just about given you up. Dad’s been waiting in for you for the past hour.’
Harry took her hand. ‘Dad?’ he repeated.
‘Sinclair Renshaw,’ she replied, letting go of his hand and tucking her own into her pockets. ‘Your churchwarden. We knew you were arriving this morning. We thought you’d come to the house.’
Harry glanced at his watch. Had he had a firm arrangement with his churchwarden? He didn’t think so. He’d just left a message that he’d be arriving late morning and would visit the church.
‘Whoa, speak of the devil,’ she went on, looking out of the open front door. ‘Here he is, Dad. I’ve found him.’
Harry, six feet and a fraction himself, had to look up to meet the other man’s eyes as he stepped over the threshold. Sinclair Renshaw was in his late sixties. His thick white hair fell over his forehead, almost covering very dark eyebrows. He had brown eyes behind elegant spectacles and was dressed like a country gentleman in a magazine, in various shades of green, brown and beige. He inclined his head at Harry and then turned to Alice, who seemed almost dwarfed by the tall father and daughter.
‘I’m afraid there’s been some serious vandalism at the church,’ he said, speaking to Alice but glancing at Harry. ‘One of the older windows has been broken. I understand your sons were seen there this morning, Mrs Fletcher. That they were playing with a cricket bat and ball.’
‘Baseball,’ said Joe helpfully.
Alice ’s face stiffened as she turned to look at Tom. ‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘I saw the window being broken,’ said Harry. ‘And the boy who did it. It was someone called Jack, John…?’ He glanced down at Tom for help.
‘Jake,’ said Joe. ‘Jake Knowles.’
‘He was standing on the wall when I drove up,’ Harry went on. ‘I saw him swing the bat and hit the ball straight through the window. I’ll be speaking to his parents.’
Renshaw looked at Harry for a second. He’d completely ignored the boys. ‘Please don’t bother,’ he said eventually. ‘I’ll deal with it. Sorry to disturb, Mrs Fletcher.’ He nodded once at Alice then turned to Harry. ‘I’m sorry I missed you this morning, Vicar,’ he went on. ‘But welcome, we’ll have lunch soon.’ Then he walked down the drive and turned to go up the hill.
After extracting a promise from Alice that she and her husband would come to dinner the following week, Jenny climbed into her Range Rover and drove away. The children disappeared again.
‘I really have to go,’ said Harry. ‘I’m meeting someone at the vicarage in fifteen minutes. It was good to meet you all.’
Alice smiled. ‘You too, Harry. We’ll see you next Thursday.’
11 September
EVI WINCED.SOMEONE HAD BORROWED HER CHAIR AND altered the height. It forced her to lean forward across her desk at an odd angle and put extra pressure on her damaged nerve. She looked at her watch. She had to be in court in thirty minutes. She’d fix the chair when she was next in.
She opened up the story she’d saved the previous week from the Telegraph’s website, wondering if there was something she’d missed. Gillian Royle had just left, following her second session. On the surface, progress seemed to have been made. Gillian was taking her medication, had noticed a difference already in her ability to sleep, and had arranged her first AA meeting. She even claimed to be trying to eat. Plenty of boxes to tick. Something, though, didn’t feel quite right.
Since qualifying as a psychiatrist, Evi had worked with many patients who had been struggling to come to terms with loss. She’d treated several parents who had lost children. Gillian Royle, though, was something new. There was more going on in Gillian’s head than grief for her daughter. After two sessions Evi was sure of it. Her pain was too fresh, too intense, like a fire that was being continually stoked. A horrible image in the circumstances; still, something was getting in the way of Gillian’s recovery, preventing her from moving on.
Evi had been lied to many times; she knew when a patient wasn’t telling her the truth; she also knew when someone wasn’t telling her everything.
She re-read the newspaper story. The town of Heptonclough is in shock… She’d read that bit several times, nothing new there… blaze could have been caused by a gas ring left burning… if Gillian had left the cooker switched on, the fire would, technically, be her fault. Was she torturing herself with guilt?
During the previous hour with Gillian, following normal procedures, Evi had steered the girl towards talking about her early years. It hadn’t gone well. She’d sensed tension in Gillian’s relationship with her mother and wondered if a lack of parental support had contributed to Gillian’s breakdown following Hayley’s death. Gillian had talked briefly about a dead father whom she could barely remember, and had gone on to mention a stepfather arriving on the scene several years later. Evi was still scanning the story on her screen. This latest tragedy comes barely three years after the loss of Heptonclough child Megan… The story moved on to a different incident and Evi closed the page down.
The more she’d probed Gillian about her childhood, the more agitated the girl had become, until she’d flatly refused to talk about it any more. Which was interesting in itself. Conditions as acute as Gillian’s rarely had a single cause, in Evi’s view. What was often seen as the primary cause – in this case the loss of a child – was all too often just the trigger; the final straw in a chain of events and circumstances. There was a lot more about Gillian to learn.
‘JOE!’
It was Friday afternoon and the boys hadn’t long been home from school. All things considered, it hadn’t been too bad a week. Thanks to Harry, the new vicar, Jake Knowles had had a serious telling-off about the church window and, for the time being at least, he was leaving Tom alone.
Tom was wandering around the downstairs rooms, wondering where Joe was and whether he could persuade him to go in goal while he practised striking. Hearing voices through the open back door, Tom pushed himself up on to the worktop and saw his brother sitting on the wall that ran between their garden and the churchyard. He seemed to be chatting to someone on the other side. Tom picked up the ball and went out.
‘Heads up, Joe!’ he called from the doorway and drop-kicked the ball towards him. Joe looked up, startled, as the ball sailed over his head, disappearing into the churchyard beyond.
Tom ran at the wall and sprang up. Although the wall was high, it was old and the earth behind it made the lower part bulge out into the Fletchers’ garden. Some of the stones were missing, offering plenty of hand- and footholds. All the same, Tom had never seen Joe climb it by himself before.
When he made the top, he realized he and his brother were directly above Lucy Pickup’s grave, the one that had interested Joe so much last week.
‘Who were you talking to?’ he asked.
Joe opened his eyes wide and looked down into the churchyard. He looked left, he looked right, and then back at Tom again. ‘No one there,’ he said, giving his shoulders a little shrug.
‘I heard you,’ Tom insisted. He pointed to the kitchen window. ‘I saw you from in there. You looked like you were talking to someone.’
Joe turned to the churchyard once again. ‘Can’t see anyone,’ he said.
Tom gave up. If his brother wanted an imaginary friend, who was he to worry. ‘Want to play goalies and strikers?’ he asked.
Joe nodded. ‘OK,’ he said. Then his lips curled in a sly little smile. ‘Where’s the ball?’ he asked.
It was a good question. The ball had disappeared.
‘Crap,’ muttered Tom, partly because he knew they didn’t have another one, and partly because he realized this would be the first time they’d gone into the graveyard since they’d been menaced by Jake Knowles and his gang. ‘Come on,’ he said reluctantly. ‘We’ll have to go and look.’
Tom jumped down. The ball couldn’t have gone far.
Well, clearly he didn’t know his own kicking power because the ball was nowhere to be seen. Tom led the way and Joe followed behind, singing quietly to himself.
‘Tom, Joe! Teatime!’
‘Crap,’ said Tom again, picking up his pace. They had less than five minutes now before their mother got steamed. ‘Didn’t you see where it went?’ he asked Joe.
‘Tom, Joe!’
Tom stopped walking. He turned to look back at the wall they’d just climbed over. It was twenty yards away. Their mother would be at the back door. So why was her voice coming from a small thicket of laurel bushes in the opposite direction?
Tom stared at the bushes. They didn’t seem to be moving.
‘Tom! Where are you?’
That was definitely Mum, her voice coming from the right direction, sounding 100 per cent normal and getting quite mad now.
‘Tom.’ A softer voice, lower in pitch, still sounding an awful lot like his mum though.
‘Did you hear that?’ Tom turned to his brother. Joe was watching the laurel bushes. ‘Joe, is someone in those bushes? Someone pretending to be Mum?’
‘Tom, Joe, get back here!’
‘We’re coming,’ yelled Tom. Without stopping to think, he grabbed Joe’s hand and half dragged him back to the wall. He leaped up and twisted round, ready to cry out, because he just knew something horrible had followed them, was ready to spring.
The graveyard was empty. Without looking down, Tom held his hand out to Joe and pulled him up.
‘Oh, good of you to show up. Now come and wash your hands.’
Tom risked a quick glance in the direction of the house. Yep, that was Mum, Millie clinging to her knees. She shook her head at them in exasperation and turned back into the house. Tom realized his breathing was slowing down. It had been echoes, that was all. The old headstones had a way of making echoes sound odd.
As Tom helped Joe to the ground on the garden side, he saw his brother smiling again. Tom turned. There was the ball. Right in the middle of the garden.
‘How?’
Joe wasn’t looking at him but directly at the kitchen window. Tom looked too, expecting to see Millie waving from the counter.
Jesus, that wasn’t Millie’s face. Who the hell was in the kitchen? It looked a bit like a child with long hair, except there was something very wrong with that face. Then Tom realized he was looking at a reflection, that the child – the girl – he could see was right behind them, peering at him and Joe over the wall. He spun round. Nothing there. Back again to the kitchen window. The reflection was gone.
Tom crossed the garden and picked up the ball. He no longer had any desire to play goalies and strikers. He wanted to get inside and shut the back door. He did exactly that, even taking the key from its hook and turning it. He stayed in the cloakroom for a second, just to get his breath back, thinking about what had just happened.
That was quite an imaginary friend his brother had, seeing as how Tom could see her too.
18 September
‘CAN I ASK YOU SOMETHING?’ GILLIAN WAS SAYING.
‘Of course,’ replied Evi.
‘I’ve met this woman, she’s new to the town, but I’ve been talking to her quite a bit and she was surprised that I’d never had a funeral for Hayley. She said funerals – or, if there’s no body, a memorial service – give people a chance to grieve, to say goodbye properly.’
‘Well, she’s right,’ said Evi cautiously. ‘Normally the funeral is an important part of the grieving process.’
‘But I never had that,’ said Gillian, leaning forward in her chair. ‘And that might be why I haven’t been able to move on, why I still… so this woman, Alice, she said I should think about a memorial service for Hayley. She said I should discuss it with the new vicar. What do you think?’
‘I think it could be a very good idea,’ said Evi. ‘But I also think it’s important to get the timing right. It would be a very emotional experience for you. You’ve only taken the very first steps towards recovery. We need to be careful not to do anything that would set you back.’
Gillian nodded slowly, but her face showed her disappointment that Evi hadn’t immediately fallen in with her plans.
‘It’s still very early days,’ Evi continued quickly. ‘I think a memorial service would be a good thing to think about, but maybe not rush into. We could talk about it again next week.’
Gillian sighed and shrugged her thin shoulders. ‘OK,’ she agreed, but she looked deflated.
‘And you’ve made a new friend?’ asked Evi. ‘ Alice, did you say?’
Gillian nodded, brightening a little. ‘She and her family built a new house just by the old church,’ she said. ‘I don’t think people really wanted them to do it, but she seems nice. She wants to paint me. She says I have a remarkable face.’
Evi nodded her head. ‘You do,’ she said, smiling. Since their first appointment, Gillian’s skin had cleared a little, and without the distraction of the spots, it was easier to notice the high cheekbones, clean jaw-line and tiny nose. She would have been a striking girl, before grief turned her inside-out. ‘Are you going to sit for her?’ she asked.
Gillian’s face seemed to cloud over. ‘She has three children,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind the two boys, but there’s a little girl. She’s almost exactly the age Hayley was.’
‘That must be very hard.’
‘She has blonde curls,’ said Gillian, staring down at her hands. ‘Sometimes, if I see her from behind, or if I hear her in another room, it feels like Hayley has come back. It’s like there’s a voice in my head saying, ‘She’s yours, get her, get her now.’ I have to stop myself from grabbing her and running out of the house.’
Evi realized she was sitting very still. She reached out and picked up a pen. ‘Do you think you would do something like that?’ she asked.
‘Like what? Take Millie?’
‘You say you have to stop yourself,’ said Evi quietly. ‘How hard is it to stop yourself?’
Gillian shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t do that,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t do that to Alice. I know what it’s like, not to know where your child is. Even if it’s only for a few minutes, a part of you just dies. It’s just that sometimes, seeing Millie, it’s like…’
‘Like what?’ asked Evi.
‘It’s like Hayley’s come back again.’
19 September
THE COTTAGE WAS LITTLE MORE THAN A FEW PILES OF blackened stone. It lay at the end of a short cobbled lane and was the first house Evi came to as she approached Heptonclough. Taking a detour from her usual route, she’d followed a little-used bridle path directly west across Tonsworth moor. Duchess, a sixteen-year-old grey cob had carried her safely along tracks strewn with fallen stones, through dense copses and across moorland streams. They’d even managed to negotiate a five-barred gate with a swing handle.
The cottage had a low, dry-stone wall and a simple iron gate. It wasn’t too hard to imagine a terrified toddler pushing it open and wandering away in the dark. Looking at the house, seeing how close it was to open countryside, Gillian’s actions in the weeks following the fire made some sense. Evi eased back on the reins to bring Duchess to a halt.
Lord, it was hot. Duchess was damp with sweat and so was Evi. She dropped the reins and tugged off her sweatshirt, fastening it around her waist. The cottage in which Gillian Royle and her husband had spent their married life had been rented from one of the older families in the village. After the fire the couple had been offered a one-bedroom flat above the general store. Peter Royle had since moved on, was living several miles away with a new, now pregnant girlfriend. Gillian was still in the flat.
Duchess, ever the opportunist, set off towards a patch of grass growing beneath a gate opposite. Evi gathered up the reins. There was nothing here to see, no insights to be had into her new patient. Just black stones, a few pieces of charred wood and a tangle of brambles. She lifted Duchess’s head and gently flicked her whip on the horse’s left flank.
They passed two more cottages, each with small gardens packed with root vegetables, fruit bushes and canes of runner beans; then the houses on either side of the lane became more uniform, stonebuilt, with slate roofs.
closer to the town centre, the cobbles were smoother. On both sides of the street, three-storey stone buildings towered up. Evi turned Duchess and headed up the hill, drawing closer to Heptonclough’s most famous landmarks: the two churches.
The remains of the medieval building stood alongside its Victorian replacement like an echo, or a memory that refused to fade away. Even seated on Duchess, the great stone arches of the ruin towered above her. Some of the old walls soared towards the sky, others lay crumbled on the ground. carved pillars like standing stones stood proudly, thumbing their noses at gravity and the passage of time. Flagstones, smooth and shiny with age, covered the ground, and everywhere she looked, the moor was bursting through, pushing up corners and stealing into gaps, as it tried, after hundreds of years, to reclaim the land.
The newer building was less grand than its predecessor would have been, built on a smaller scale and without the large, central bell tower. Instead, four smaller, apex-roofed turrets sat at the roof corners. About three feet high, each was constructed from four stone pillars. On the other side of the narrow street stood tall darkstone houses.
There was no one in sight. Evi and Duchess could almost have been alone in this strange town at the top of the moors.
The large house closest to the churches was new, judging by its pale stonework and the untouched small garden at the front. On the doorstep, like the only signs of life in a ghost town, stood a tiny pair of pink wellington boots.
A high-pitched squealing broke through the silence and something brightly coloured shot past Evi’s left shoulder. Duchess, normally unflappable, gave a little jump and slipped on the cobbles.
‘Steady, steady now.’ Evi was tightening the reins, sitting straight and still in the saddle. What the hell had that been?
There it was again. Twenty yards away, flying along, pennants flapping. Evi urged Duchess up the hill, away from the churchyard. With any luck she’d be able to turn higher up and get back on to the moor.
It was coming back, heading straight for them. Duchess skittered backwards into the wall of a house. Evi had been thrown off balance but she grabbed a chunk of mane and pushed herself upright. ‘Don’t come near us,’ she yelled. ‘You’re scaring the horse.’
She made eye contact for a fraction of a second and knew she had a serious problem on her hands. The boy on the bike knew perfectly well that he was scaring the horse.
Evi pulled hard, turning Duchess to face the hill. If the horse was going to bolt, they had to go upwards.
There was another one, travelling in the opposite direction. Two teenage boys, on high-performance bikes, riding round the high wall that circled the two churches. It was utter suicide, they were going to collide, to fall six feet on to hard, flint cobbles. The boys got within two feet of each other and then one disappeared, his bike finding some ridge that took him down into the churchyard. The remaining rider shot past Evi as she fought to get Duchess under control.
There were more of them. Four young stunt-riders, travelling at impossible speeds around the old walls, pennants flying from their handlebars, brakes screaming as they spun around corners.
‘Get lost, you stupid buggers!’ she managed to shout. Horses hated bikes at the best of times, the combination of silence and speed completely unnerved them. And these four were buzzing around her like mosquitoes. They kept coming back, disappearing behind the wall and then reappearing somewhere else. Here was a fifth, sneaking up behind her, cutting in front. Duchess threw up her head, spun on the spot and set off at a fast canter down the hill.
Urgent shouting. Hooves skidding. A short smack of something that might have been pain but at the time felt more like outrage.
And then silence.
Evi was lying on the ground, staring at a piece of litter that had caught between two cobbles and wondering if she was still alive. A second later she got her answer. A drop of blood landed on the stone and she watched it tremble in the breath from her mouth.
She knew there was pain waiting for her, but the part of her brain that normally took charge was spinning away, leaving her behind. She was lost amidst cold, white softness, but feeling hot – so very hot – and watching a tiny stream trickle away from her, wondering why a mountain stream should be crimson and knowing, even in that first moment, that her old life was over.
‘Hold on, I’ll be there in a sec!’
Someone had called to her, that last time, in a language she couldn’t understand. Someone had yelled instructions at her in a Germanic tongue and she’d stared upwards, at the bluest sky she’d ever seen, and known that movement was beyond her. Might be beyond her for the rest of-
‘Don’t move. I’m almost done. Alice! Tom! Can you hear me?’
And then she’d been surrounded by tall, fair-haired men who’d smelled of beer and sun-cream and they’d sent words down to her, meant to comfort, to keep her calm, while they trussed her up and pinned her tight and sent her spinning away again, down the mountain…
‘It’s OK, don’t try and get up. I’ve caught your horse, he’s perfectly safe.’ A man was kneeling beside her, one hand gently on her shoulder, speaking to her in a strange accent. ‘I’m going to call for an ambulance but I’ve left my phone in the church. I can’t leave you in the road… Alice! Tom!’
Evi raised her head and moved it slowly from right to left, up and down. There was a pounding in her forehead but her neck felt fine. She flexed her right foot inside her boot and then her left. Both did what they were supposed to. She put both palms on the cobbles and pushed. There was a sharp pain in her ribs but she knew, instinctively, that it wasn’t serious.
‘No, don’t move.’ The voice was close to her ear again. ‘The Fletchers were here a minute ago. They can’t have gone far. No, I really don’t think you should…’
Evi was sitting up. The man kneeling beside her, though tall, looked too slightly built to be German or Austrian. And these hills all around her weren’t mountains. They were moors, just turning the soft, deep purple of a fresh bruise.
‘Are you OK?’ asked the fair-haired man, who was dressed in shorts and a running vest. Boys on bikes. Duchess panicking. She’d been rescued by a passing jogger. ‘Where does it hurt?’ he was saying.
‘Everywhere,’ grumbled Evi, discovering she could speak. ‘Nothing serious. Where’s Duchess?’
The jogger turned to look down the hill and Evi did the same. Duchess was tied to an old iron ring at the corner of the church wall. Her head was down and her huge yellow teeth were making short work of a nettle patch.
‘Thank God you caught her,’ said Evi. ‘Those stupid bastards. She had a nasty bruise on her foot a few days ago. Did she seem OK?’
‘Well, obviously starving to death, but otherwise fine. Not that I’m much of an authority on horseflesh, I’m afraid.’
Duchess was standing squarely on all four legs. Would she be eating if she were in pain? Quite possibly, knowing Duchess.
‘Are you sure you’re not hurt?’ asked the man, who, she noticed now, was wearing deck shoes. And the shorts weren’t running shorts. They were blue and white striped cotton, almost to his knees, and the hair on the back of his calves was blond and thick.
‘Quite sure,’ she said, taking her eyes away from his legs. ‘I’m a doctor, I’d know,’ she added when he looked uncertain. ‘Do you think you could help me get out of the road?’
‘Of course, sorry.’ The fair-haired man leaped to his feet and bent down, holding out his right hand for Evi, as if offering to help her up from a picnic rug.
She shook her head. ‘That won’t work, I’m afraid. I can’t stand by myself. If you don’t mind, can you take me under the arms and lift? I’m not that heavy.’
He was shaking his head, looking worried. ‘You said you weren’t hurt,’ he said. ‘If you can’t get up by yourself I don’t think I should be lifting you. I think we should call for help.’
Did he need it spelling out?
Evi took a deep breath. ‘I’m not hurt now, but three years ago I had a bad accident and seriously damaged the sciatic nerve in my left leg,’ she said. ‘I can’t walk unaided and my leg is certainly not strong enough to support my weight while I get up from these cobbles. Which are not very comfortable, by the way.’
The man stared at her for a second, then she watched his eyes fall to her left leg, unnaturally thin and ugly inside the crimson jodhpurs.
‘Does this road get much traffic?’ asked Evi, looking up the hill.
‘It doesn’t. But you’re quite right. Sorry.’ He knelt again and put his right arm under her shoulders. His left hand slid under her thighs and even though she’d been expecting it, had been quite prepared to be touched, she felt a shock running through her that had nothing to do with pain. Then she was upright, leaning against him, and he smelled of skin and dust and fresh male sweat.
‘OK, ten yards up the hill there is a bench for weary shepherds to stop and take succour on. I don’t imagine they’ll mind if we borrow it. can you make it that far?’
‘Of course,’ she snapped, although it was easier said than done. She had no choice but to wrap her arm round his waist. He was hot. Of course he was hot, it was a hot day and she was hot too and she probably smelled of horses. Evi moved her right leg, and her left screamed at her to stop this stupid moving business right now.
‘Bugger it,’ she muttered, trying without success to bring her weaker leg forward. Come on, you useless, bloody…
She stumbled and almost fell again, but her companion tightened his grip around her waist, bent lower and lifted both legs clean off the ground. Instinctively, she reached her free arm up to clasp him around the neck. His face had turned pink.
‘Sorry, didn’t want you going down again,’ he said. ‘Can I carry you to the bench?’
She nodded and a second later he was putting her gently down on a wooden bench close to the church wall. She leaned back gratefully and closed her eyes. How could she have been so stupid? Bringing Duchess all this way. She could have seriously injured them both. Why the hell did life have to be so bloody difficult? She waited, eyes closed, until the tears had slipped back where they came from.
When she opened her eyes again she was alone. He’d just left her? Christ, she hadn’t exactly been Miss Congeniality but even so…
Pushing herself forward, Evi looked all around. Across the street the windows were dark and empty. A heavy stillness seemed to have settled over the moors. The bike riders had disappeared – hardly surprising given the trouble they’d caused – but where was everyone else? So many houses, so many windows and not a soul in sight. It was Saturday afternoon, for heaven’s sake. Why was no one looking out to see what was going on?
Except, maybe they were. Behind one of those dark windows someone was watching her, she was sure of it. Without appearing to look, she let her eyes scan left and right. Not the faintest hint of movement that she could see, but there was someone there all the same. She turned slowly.
There it was. Movement. Way up high. Evi raised her hand to her eyes to shut out the sun. No, it was impossible. What she thought she’d seen was a shape scurrying along the top of the church. No one could be up there. She’d seen a bird. A squirrel maybe. Or a cat.
She unfastened the chin-strap and removed her hat. The pressure in her head eased immediately. She lifted her hair with her fingers, letting the air get to her scalp and soothe it.
She could hear footsteps. Her ginger-haired knight in shining stripy shorts was back, half jogging along the church path towards her, carrying a glass of water.
‘Hi,’ he said as he drew closer. ‘I can do tea as well but that takes a bit longer. How’re you doing?’
How was she doing? She’d been harassed by feral teenagers who could move at warp speed, she’d fallen off a fifteen-hands horse, had to lie in the road like a beached whale, and then, just on the off chance that she had a shred of dignity remaining, she’d been hoisted off her feet by a ginger-haired twit who smelled like… like a man.
‘Better, I think,’ she said. ‘It’s always a shock, coming off a horse. Especially when you don’t land on soft ground.’
He joined her on the bench. ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to sound rude, but should you really be out on your own, with a weak leg and all?’
Evi opened her mouth and then closed it tight. He meant well. She looked at her watch, giving herself a second. ‘Well, it’s not likely to be happening again any time soon,’ she said. ‘The yard I ride from are very strict. I’ll be doing supervised trots round the manège for the next six months.’
‘Well maybe…’ He caught a look at her face and stopped. ‘How far have you ridden?’ he asked.
‘From Bracken Farm livery yard,’ she said. ‘It’s about four miles across the moor.’
‘Shall I phone them for you? I’m not sure if they can get a horsebox all the way up here, but I can walk-’
‘No.’ It came out louder and firmer than she’d meant it to because she had a feeling there was a battle imminent and, bruised and shaking though she might be, it was one she had to win. ‘Thank you,’ she went on, forcing a smile. ‘I’ll be riding back in a minute.’ Feeling far from ready to remount, she finished the water and put her hat back on, determined to make I’m going now signals, because she knew exactly what was coming.
He was shaking his head. Well, of course he was shaking his head. He was tall and strong, with full use of his limbs, and that made him the boss. ‘I’m not putting you back on that horse,’ he said.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Sorry, pet, but you’re disabled, you’ve taken a nasty fall and you’ve probably got concussion. You can’t ride four miles across open moorland.’
Sorry, pet! She looked down at the road so she wouldn’t be able to glare at him, because the disabled aren’t allowed to be angry. If she’d learned one thing over the past three years it was that. Normal people who get angry are just pissed off and that happens to us all; when you’re disabled, any sign of temper means you’re disturbed, you need help, you’re not capable of…
‘Thank you for your concern,’ said Evi, ‘but, disabled or not, I am still responsible for my own actions and I don’t actually need any help to remount. Please don’t let me keep you.’
She handed back the glass and eased herself sideways on the bench. It would be better by far if he were to leave her alone now.
‘How?’ He hadn’t moved.
‘Excuse me?’ she repeated.
‘How, exactly, given that you couldn’t get out of the road by yourself and needed to be carried to this seat, do you intend to walk fifteen yards down the hill and remount a large horse?’
‘Watch and learn.’
She pushed herself upright. The wall was only two feet away, it would support her weight as she walked downhill.
‘Hold on a second. Let’s do a deal.’
He was standing right in front of her. Getting to the wall by herself was possible; negotiating her way around him first probably wasn’t.
‘What?’
‘If you agree to rest for another ten minutes and then phone me the instant you get back to the yard, I’ll help you mount and walk you back to the bridle path.’
So now she was bargaining for the most basic of freedoms with a man she’d just met. And if I don’t agree?’
He produced a mobile phone from his pocket. ‘I’ll phone Bracken Farm livery yard to tell them exactly what’s happened. I imagine they’ll be on their way over before you reach the end of the wall.’
‘Asshole.’ It slipped out before she could bite her tongue.
He held up the phone.
‘Get out of my way.’
He pressed a series of digits. ‘Hi,’ he said, after a second. ‘I’d like the number of a livery yard…’
Evi raised her hands in surrender and sat back down again. The man apologized to the operator and replaced the phone in his pocket. He sat beside her as Evi pointedly looked at her watch, knowing she was being childish and not giving a toss.
‘Cup of tea?’ he offered.
‘No, thank you.’
‘Another glass of water?’
‘Only if it takes you a long time to get it.’
The man gave a low, embarrassed chuckle. ‘Crikey,’ he said, ‘I haven’t had this much success with a woman since I got drunk at my cousin’s wedding and threw up over the maid of honour.’
‘Yes, well, I’m feeling about as thrilled to be in your company as she must have been.’
‘We went out for eighteen months.’
Silence. Evi looked at her watch again.
‘So what do you think of Heptonclough?’ he asked.
Evi was staring straight ahead, determined to look at nothing but the small flight of steps and the tiny street, hardly wider than the span of a man’s arms, that lay opposite. She had a sudden urge to remove her hat again.
‘Very nice,’ she said.
‘First visit?’
‘First and last.’
An iron railing had been fixed into the wall to allow older, less agile people to navigate the steps. Even using it, Evi would struggle to climb steps so steep. Four steps. They might as well be a hundred.
‘Are you sure you’re not concussed? People aren’t usually this rude when they first meet me. Later, quite often, but not right away. How many fingers am I holding up?’
Evi’s head shot round, already opening her mouth to tell him… he was holding up both fists, no fingers in sight. He made a mock start backwards. She raised her right arm to punch him right in the face and to hell with the consequences and…
‘You’re much prettier when you smile.’
… realized it was the very last thing in the world she wanted to do.
‘You’re very pretty when you don’t smile, don’t get me wrong, I just happen to prefer women when they’re smiling. It’s a thing I have.’
She didn’t want to hit him at all. She wanted to do something quite different. Even here, in the street, where the whole world could see…
‘Shut up,’ she managed.
He drew two clasped fingers across his mouth in a zipping motion, a silly, childlike gesture. His mouth was still stretched wide. She looked away before her own smile could become too… too much like his.
Silence again. Across the road a cat appeared. It sat on the top step and began cleaning itself.
‘I’ve always wished I could do that,’ he said.
‘Aah!’ She raised one finger.
‘Sorry.’
Silence. The cat raised one leg and began licking its genitals. The bench they were sitting on began to shake. It was hopeless. She’d be giggling like a teenager in seconds. She turned to him, because at least then she wouldn’t have to watch the cat.
‘Do you live here?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘No, I just work here. I live a few miles down the hill.’
He had light-brown eyes and dark eyelashes, which were really quite striking with that fair hair. Was it ginger? Given time to think about it, ginger seemed too harsh a word for a colour that in this soft September light seemed more like… like… honey?
Glancing down, Evi caught sight of her watch. The ten minutes were up. She twisted her arm around so the watch faced downwards and she couldn’t see it any more. ‘What’s with the two churches?’ she asked.
‘They’re great, aren’t they? Like before and after. OK, brace yourself for the history lesson. Back in the days when the great abbeys ruled England, Heptonclough had one of its own. Building work started in 1193. The church behind us was built first and then the living quarters and farm buildings later.’
He spun round on the bench, so that he was facing the ruined building behind them. Evi did the same, although her left leg had started to hurt quite badly. ‘The abbot’s residence is still standing,’ he went on. ‘It’s a beautiful old medieval building. You can’t quite see it from here, it’s on the other side of the new church. A family called Renshaw live in it now.’
Evi was thinking back to school history lessons. ‘So was Henry VIII responsible for the abbey falling into ruins?’ she asked.
The man nodded. ‘Well, he certainly didn’t help,’ he agreed. ‘The last abbot of Heptonclough, Richard Paston, was involved in the rebellion against Henry’s ecclesiastical policies and was tried on a charge of treason.’
‘Executed?’ asked Evi.
‘Not far from this spot. And most of his monks. But the town continued to thrive. In the sixteenth century it was the centre of the South Pennine woollen trade. It had a Cloth Hall, a couple of banks, inns, shops, a grammar school and eventually a new church, built to one side of the old one, because the townsfolk had decided the ruins were rather picturesque.’
‘They still are,’ admitted Evi.
‘Then, some time in the late eighteenth century, Halifax emerged as the new superpower in the wool trade and Heptonclough lost its place at the top of the tree. All the old buildings are still here, but they’re mainly private houses now. Most of them owned by the same family.’
‘The new church doesn’t have a tower,’ Evi pointed out. ‘In every other respect it’s like a miniature copy of the old building, but with just those four little towers instead.’
‘The town council ran out of money before the new church could be finished,’ her companion replied. ‘So they built one small tower to house a solitary bell and then, because that looked a bit daft, they built the other three to even up the balance. They’re purely decorative though, you can’t even access them. I think the plan was always to knock them down and build a big one when the money was available, but…’ He shrugged. The money to build a tower had clearly never materialized.
It was no good. Every minute she stayed increased the trouble waiting for her back at the yard. ‘I’m fine now, really,’ she said. ‘And I have to get back. Do you think you could…’
‘Of course.’ He stood up, rather quickly, as though he had, after all, only been being polite. Evi pushed herself up. Once on her feet, her eyes were on the same level as the fair hair peeking out over the neck of his vest.
‘How do you want to do this?’ he asked.
She tilted her head back to look at him properly and thought that she really wouldn’t mind being carried back down the hill again. A stab of pain ran down the back of her thigh. ‘May I take your arm?’ she said.
He held out his right elbow and, like a courting couple from the old days, they walked down the hill. Even with streams of fire running down her left leg they reached Duchess far too quickly.
‘Hi Harry,’ said a small voice. ‘Whose horse is this?’
‘This noble steed belongs to the beautiful Princess Berengaria who is riding back now to her castle on the hill,’ said the man who answered to the name of Harry, and who seemed to be looking at someone on the other side of the wall. ‘Do you want a leg up, Princess?’ he asked, turning back to Evi.
‘Could you just hold her head still?’
‘Spurned again,’ Harry muttered as he loosened the reins and passed them back over Duchess’s head. Then he held the nose band as Evi lifted her left foot and placed it in the stirrup. Three little bounces and she was up. She could see the small boy, about five or six years old, with dark-red hair. In his right hand he was holding a plastic light-sabre, in his left was something she recognized.
‘Hello,’ she said. He stared back at her, no doubt thinking that she really didn’t look much like a princess, certainly not a beautiful one. Being a small boy, he was probably opening his mouth right now to say exactly that.
‘Is this yours?’ he said instead, holding up the whip Evi had dropped and then forgotten about. ‘I found it in the road.’
Evi smiled and thanked him, as he clambered up on to the wall and held it out. Harry was still holding Duchess’s nose band. He led her down the short, steep hill until they reached Wite Lane. As they turned into the lane she saw the cat was following them, stepping lightly along an old wooden fence. Glancing back, Evi saw the small boy was watching them too.
Harry seemed to have run out of things to say as the cobbles became unkempt and the houses less uniform. They came to the gate at the end of the lane and Harry opened it for her, finally letting go of the nose band.
‘How long will it take you to get back?’ he asked. Behind his head, berries shimmered like rubies in the hedge.
‘Twenty minutes if I trot most of the way and canter the last hundred yards.’
He made a stern face, like a headmaster addressing an unruly class. ‘How long if you walk sedately?’ The heather at his feet was the colour of mulberries. She’d forgotten how beautiful September could be.
She wouldn’t let herself smile. ‘Thirty-five, forty minutes.’
He looked at his watch, then fished in his pocket and pulled out a card. ‘Phone me by four o’clock,’ he said, passing it to her. ‘If I don’t hear from you, I’ll be calling out the emergency services, the armed forces, the coastguard, every livery yard in a ten-mile radius and the National Farmers Union. It will be embarrassing, for both of us.’
‘And very expensive for you,’ said Evi, tucking the card into the pocket of her shirt.
‘So call.’
‘I’ll call.’
‘Nice meeting you, Princess.’
She squeezed with her right leg, flicked the whip and Duchess, instinctively knowing she was heading for home, set off at an active walk. Evi didn’t look back. Only when she was far enough away to be sure he wouldn’t see her did she sneak the card out of her shirt pocket.
A man she’d just met had insisted she call him. How long since that had happened? He’d held her in his arms. Called her beautiful. She’d wanted to snog him in a public street. She looked at the card. Reverend Harry Laycock, B.A. Dip.Th., it said. Vicar of the United Benefice of Goodshaw Bridge, Loveclough and Heptonclough. There were contact details at the bottom. Duchess walked on and Evi put the card back in her pocket.
He was a vicar.
There simply weren’t words.
HARRY LEANED AGAINST THE WALL FOR TEN MINUTES watching the woman ride away. Only when she and the grey horse disappeared into a copse did he turn and walk slowly back to the church. As he passed the new house he could see Alice Fletcher in her sitting-room window, talking on the telephone and watching Joe in the garden. She saw Harry and waved.
He walked through the old gateway and found someone waiting.
It was a young woman, with the grey, prematurely lined face of a heavy smoker or drinker. She wore jeans and a faded long-sleeved T-shirt and her hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail. Above the restraining band it was a greasy mouse-brown, below it stuck out at angles like straw that had been left too long in the sun.
‘That was Dr Oliver, wasn’t it?’ she said. ‘Was she talking about me?’
Harry looked back at the girl. No make-up. Clothes that weren’t too clean. So, had he missed the first few seconds of this conversation? The bit where she’d said who she was and that it was nice to meet the new vicar?
‘Well, she didn’t mention her name,’ he said after a moment. ‘But now you come to mention it, she did say she was a doctor. Hi, I’m Harry Laycock.’ He held out his hand, but the girl made no move to take it.
‘What did she say about me?’ she demanded to know.
There was something going on here that he wasn’t keeping up with. The woman on the horse had said it was her first visit to the town, hadn’t she? First and last.
‘Why are you smiling? What did she tell you?’
He needed to focus for a second. This girl had an issue. It was as plain as the nose on her very unhealthy-looking face.
‘She didn’t talk about anyone,’ he said. ‘She’d fallen off her horse and she was in shock. But if she’s a doctor…’
‘She’s a psychiatrist.’
‘A what?’ Impossible to keep the surprise from his voice. That grumpy, edgy woman was a… blimey.
‘Well, she didn’t mention that,’ he said, ‘but if she is a psychiatrist, she wouldn’t be allowed to talk about her patients with anyone, it would be -’
‘I’m not a patient. I just see her sometimes.’
‘Right.’ Harry found himself nodding, as though he understood completely. Which he didn’t.
‘Are you the new vicar?’
At last, familiar territory. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m Harry. Reverend Laycock if you want to be formal, which very few people ever are. I think it must be the shorts. And you are…?’
‘Did Alice tell you about me?’
‘ Alice?’ Was it him? Had his brain just decided to take the day off?
‘Alice Fletcher. From the new house.’
Light dawning. Are you Gillian?’ he asked.
The girl nodded.
‘She did mention you. I’m so sorry about your loss.’
The girl’s face contracted, grew smaller, her thin lips almost disappeared. ‘Thank you,’ she said, as her eyes left his face and drifted somewhere over his left shoulder.
‘How are you coping?’ asked Harry.
Gillian took a deep breath and her eyes opened wider, momentarily losing their focus. Stupid question. She wasn’t coping. And she was going to ask him why God had taken her child. Out of all the children in the world, why hers? Any second now.
‘I was about to make tea,’ he said quickly. ‘I’ve got a kettle in the vestry. Will you join me?’ Gillian stared at him for a second, as though tea was something out of her normal experience, then she nodded. He led her through the ruins of the abbey church and up the flagstones towards St Barnabas’s, trying to remember what Alice had told him.
Gillian – Rogers, Roberts, he couldn’t quite remember – had lost her daughter in a house fire three years previously. She spent her days walking the moors and wandering round the town’s old streets, almost like a living ghost. Alice had met her in the abbey ruins and invited her home for coffee. It was the sort of kind, impulsive and not terribly wise thing that Alice would do. Gillian had accepted and had stayed most of the morning, half-heartedly answering Alice ’s attempts at conversation but mainly just watching the children playing.
The church felt chill and damp after the autumn sunshine. ‘You’re cleaning this church by yourself?’ asked Gillian as she and Harry walked up the side aisle.
‘Thankfully, no,’ replied Harry. ‘The diocese arranged a team of industrial cleaners. They’ve just finished. I’m just sorting out cupboards, finding out where everything’s been stored, putting the building back to rights. Alice and the children have been helping me.’
Harry pushed open the door to the vestry and allowed Gillian to precede him inside. He would have to get some chairs in here, maybe a small table. The kettle was still warm, he’d just switched it on when he’d heard the doctor yelling at her horse. By the time he’d found teabags and mugs it had boiled. He poured on hot water, conscious of Gillian hovering just behind him, and added milk and sugar without asking whether she took either. She clearly needed both. Alice had brought over a jumbo packet of chocolate digestives earlier that day. Bless her.
He held a cup out to Gillian. She reached to take it but her small, white hand was shaking violently. The skin above her wrists was crisscrossed with scars. She saw him notice and her face flushed. He withdrew his hand and passed her the biscuits instead.
‘Let’s go and sit down,’ he suggested, before leading the way back into the nave. He sat down on the front bench of the choir stalls. She joined him and at last he felt confident to hand over the hot drink. He sipped his own gratefully. It was thirsty work: cleaning churches, rescuing foul-mouthed psychiatrists and consoling grief-stricken parishioners. If the day continued along the same lines, he’d be breaking open the communion wine before sun-down.
‘I haven’t had a drink for eight days,’ said Gillian, and for a second, he wasn’t quite… Of course, Alice had mentioned Gillian had been to her GP, that she’d been referred to an alcoholics’ support group, to a psychiatrist specializing in family issues. Who must, of course, be the lady he’d just met. Dr Oliver.
‘Well done,’ said Harry.
‘I feel better,’ said Gillian. ‘I really do. Dr Oliver gave me some pills to help me sleep. It’s been so long since I’ve been able to sleep.’
‘I’m glad to hear that,’ said Harry. He sat, his best patient-and-interested look on his face, waiting for what she was going to say next.
‘Do you have faith, Gillian?’ he asked, when he realized she wasn’t going to talk again. Sometimes it was best to get right to the point.
She stared at him as though she didn’t quite…’ You mean, do I believe in God?’ she asked.
He nodded. ‘Yes, that’s what I mean,’ he said. ‘Losing someone we love is very difficult. Even the strongest faith will be tested.’
Her hand was shaking again. The tea would scald her. He reached out, took the mug from her and placed it on the floor.
‘Someone came to see me, after it happened,’ she said. ‘A priest. He said Hayley was with her father in heaven and she was happy and that should comfort me, but how can she be happy without me? She’ll be on her own. She’s two years old and she’s on her own. That’s what I can’t get my head around. She’ll be so lonely.’
‘Have you lost any family members before, Gillian?’ he asked. Are your parents alive?’
She looked puzzled. ‘My dad died when I was small,’ she said. ‘In a car accident. And I had a younger sister who died a long time ago.’
‘I’m sorry. What about grandparents? Do you have any?’
‘No, they all died. What…’
He was leaning forward, had taken hold of both her hands. ‘Gillian, there’s a reading that’s given often at funeral services, you may have heard it. It was written by a bishop about a hundred years ago and it compares the death of a loved one to standing on the seashore, watching a beautiful ship sail out of sight on the horizon. Can you picture that for a second, imagine blue sea, a beautiful carved wooden boat, white sails?’
Gillian shut her eyes. She nodded her head.
‘The boat’s getting smaller and smaller and then it disappears over the horizon and someone standing by your side says, "She’s gone.
Tears were forming in the corners of Gillian’s closed eyes.
‘But even though you can’t see her any more, the ship is still there, still strong and beautiful. And just as she disappears from your sight, she’s appearing on other shores. Other people can see her.’
Gillian opened her eyes.
‘Hayley is like that ship,’ said Harry. ‘She may be gone from your sight but she still exists, and in the place where she is now there are people who are thrilled to see her: your dad, your sister, your grandparents. They will take care of her and they will love her, unconditionally, until you can join her again.’
The girl’s howl tore at his heart. He stayed where he was, watching her thin body sob and her tears fall on to his hands. For five, maybe ten minutes she wept, and he held her hands until he felt her pulling away from him. He didn’t have tissues but somewhere in the vestry there was kitchen roll. He walked quickly back to the vestry, found it beside the sink and, returning, handed it over. She wiped her face and tried to smile up at him. Her eyes, washed by tears, were almost silver. Dr Oliver’s eyes had been blue. A deep, violet blue.
In the pocket of his shorts, his mobile started to ring. He should ignore it, let it go to the answer service, get back to whoever it was later. Except he knew who it was.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, getting up. ‘I’ll be back in a sec.’
He walked a few paces down the aisle and pressed Answer.
‘Harry Laycock.’
‘Berengaria speaking.’
‘Did you make it back safely, Dr Oliver?’
‘Now that’s… a bit spooky. How’d you do that?’
Harry glanced back up the aisle to where Gillian was staring at the floor. She was too close, she’d hear everything he said. ‘Like my boss, I work in mysterious ways,’ he answered.
There was a second’s pause.
‘Right, well, thanks for your help,’ came Dr Oliver’s voice. ‘But Duchess and I are both back where we belong and none the worse for our adventure.’
‘Delighted to hear it.’ Gillian was looking at him now. She wouldn’t like the interruption. The bereaved could be selfish. Not great timing, Princess. ‘You take care now,’ he said. ‘And say hello to Duchess for me.’
‘I’ll do that.’ The voice on the phone had fallen flat. ‘Goodbye.’
She was gone. And he had to get back to Gillian. Who was no longer sitting calmly on the front choir stall but was on her feet, staring round in what could only be described as horror. It was as though something had pulled the skin on her face tighter, made it mask-like. She was striding towards him. ‘Did you hear that?’ she demanded. ‘Did you hear it?’
‘I? What?’ He’d been on the phone. What was he supposed to have heard?
‘That voice, calling “Mummy,” did you hear it?’
Harry looked all around, astonished and a little alarmed by the change in Gillian. ‘I heard something, I think, but I was saying goodbye.’ He held up the phone.
‘What?’ she demanded. ‘What did you hear?’
‘Well, a child, I thought. A child outside.’
She clutched his arm, her fingers tight on his bare skin. ‘No, it was inside. It was coming from inside the church.’
‘There’s no one else here,’ he said slowly. ‘These old buildings can be deceptive. Sound echoes in funny ways.’
Gillian had spun away from him, was half running back up the aisle. She reached the choir stalls and started searching them, peering down the length of first one then the other.
What on earth?
She was crossing the church, dragging out the organ stool, back again behind the altar, pulling up the cloth. He’d almost reached her when she seemed to give up. She sobbed once and almost fell to the tiled floor. Then she drew herself up and opened her mouth.
‘Hayley!’ she screamed.
Harry stopped. He’d heard voices in this church too. And the sound of people he couldn’t see moving around. Why did he have this overwhelming urge to look behind him?
He turned. There wasn’t a soul in the church but Gillian and himself.
‘Let’s get you home,’ he said. ‘You probably need to rest.’ If she gave him the name of her GP he could phone him, explain what was happening, see if he could get her immediate help. He could try and call in on her himself tomorrow after morning services were done. As he reached her she clutched at him.
‘You heard her, you heard Hayley.’ She was almost begging him, pleading with him to tell her she wasn’t losing her grip on reality.
‘I certainly heard a child,’ he said, although in all honesty, he wasn’t that sure. He’d been listening to a change in inflexion in a woman’s voice on the phone and wondering what it might mean. ‘It’s possible I heard the child saying “Mummy,” but, you know, the Fletcher children have been playing around the church for most of the afternoon. It could easily have been Millie that we heard.’
Gillian was staring at him.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s get some fresh air, I’ll walk you home.’
Muttering a silent prayer that the Fletcher children, including the youngest, would be outside, Harry led Gillian out of the door and into the sunshine. They were halfway down the path when a toy arrow whizzed past them, making Gillian jump. Harry turned to the Fletchers’ garden on his right and found himself staring into the blue eyes of Joe Fletcher. A few yards away Tom was kicking a football against the wall of the house. Their sister sat on bare earth, digging in the soil.
‘Missed,’ said Harry, grinning at Joe.
Joe’s head shot round to see if his mother had noticed. She was hanging out washing and didn’t turn round.
‘Sorry,’ he mouthed. Harry winked.
‘Mouse,’ said Millie, her gaze fixed on something just a foot or two away. Her eyes gleamed and she reached out a chubby arm.
‘Millie, no, that’s a rat,’ called Harry. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Alice spin round and drop what she was holding.
Tom stopped kicking as Harry jumped over the wall and landed in the soft earth of the Fletchers’ garden.
‘Gone,’ said Joe. The rat was scurrying towards the wall. Its fat, grey tail hovered for a second in the gap between two stones and then disappeared. Harry looked back at the churchyard. Gillian had disappeared too.
21 September
FIRST THE WHISPERS WERE IN A DREAM. AND THEN THEY weren’t. Tom had no idea when it changed, when he went from dream to real, but one minute he was fast asleep and then he was awake and the dream was slipping away. He thought perhaps there were trees, and something in the trees that was watching him. Maybe there was the church, but definitely whispering. He was totally sure about that. Because he could still hear it.
He sat up. The luminous numbers on the desk alarm clock told him it was 02.53. His parents were never up at this time. They’d be fast asleep, the house closed up for the night.
So who was whispering?
Hanging upside-down, he stuck his head into the space above Joe’s bunk. His brother had his own room, right next door. He kept all his toys in it and played in it a lot, but he never slept there. Every night he climbed into the bunk below Tom’s.
‘Joe, are you awake?’
Even as he opened his mouth he could see that the bottom bunk was empty. The quilt was pushed back and there was a dent in the pillow where Joe’s head had been.
Tom swung his feet round and dropped to the carpet. All seemed still on the dark landing. Three doors were slightly open – the doors to the bathroom, to Millie’s room and to his parents’ bedroom – but behind each door there was just darkness. As he stepped closer to the top of the stairs, a cool breeze swept through the house; the front door was wide open.
Had someone come in? Or gone out?
The top step gave a very loud creak. Half hoping his parents would wake up and hear him, Tom took another step and then another.
Who had been whispering? Where was Joe?
As he reached the bottom step a wind swept past him into the house. Tiny hairs on his arms stood up to make goose bumps. Then the wind was gone and the air was soft and almost warm again. No need to shiver, really, except he couldn’t stop.
He knew he should wake his mum and dad. Joe’s leaving the house in the middle of the night was too serious for him to deal with alone. Except when he and Joe were involved in a scrape, the blame was never shared 50:50. A good 90 per cent of it invariably came in Tom’s direction and the facts of the case were rarely allowed to get in the way. If he woke his parents up now, he knew exactly who would find themselves in the you-know-what the minute Joe was found and returned home.
Tom was going to kill him this time, he really was.
He stepped outside and, for a moment, forgot that he was angry, forgot that he was getting very close to being scared. So this was what it was like then – the night-time – soft and scented and strangely warm, a place where all the colours had gone, leaving black and silver and moonbeams in their place. He took another step away from the house.
Then that feeling began to creep over him again, the one he seemed to get every time he left the house these days. Even inside the house sometimes, especially when it was getting dark outside, it could steal up on him. Some days, it seemed to Tom, the curtains just couldn’t be closed quickly enough in the evening.
Someone was watching him now, he knew it, someone very close. He could almost hear breathing, he just had to hope it was his brother. Tom turned his head slowly towards the corner of the house.
Two large eyes in a pale, flabby face looked back at him. Then they were gone.
Tom ran for the house. In the relative safety of the doorway, he stopped and turned back.
A girl, about his own age if size was anything to go by, was shinning up the wall that separated the Fletchers’ garden from the church land. She climbed quickly, as if she’d done it many times before, long hair trailing behind her and loose clothes fluttering in the breeze. Like Tom, she was barefoot, but her feet were nothing like his. Even at this distance they looked enormous compared to the rest of her. So did her hands.
Then Tom caught sight of something else at the corner of the house, at the exact spot from which the girl had appeared. He was ready to dive indoors when he realized it was Joe, in his red and blue Spiderman dressing gown.
‘What are you doing?’ he hissed as Joe came trotting towards him. ‘Come back inside now or I’m getting Dad.’ Glancing back up towards the church wall, he saw the girl had gone. Really gone, or just hiding? Because that’s what she did. She hid and she watched.
‘We’re not supposed to be here, Tom,’ muttered Joe.
‘I know we’re not,’ shot back Tom. ‘So let’s get back inside before Mum and Dad wake up.’
Joe lifted his head. His eyes looked huge in his pale face. ‘No,’ he said, letting his eyes drift away from Tom to the wall. ‘We’re not supposed to be here,’ he repeated. ‘It’s not safe.’
22 September
M ILLIE, THE LITTLE GIRL WITH HAIR THE COLOUR OF SPUN sugar, was in the garden. She was wearing hand-me-down clothes from one of her brothers, dark-blue jogging trousers and a blue and white football sweatshirt. Mud clung to her as she sat on the bare earth. The nappy, peeking out over the top of her joggers, made her bottom look enormous.
‘Millie.’ Her mother’s voice, from inside the house. She appeared in the doorway, plastic bowl in one hand, the other on her hip in exasperation.
‘Will you look at you?’ she called. Millie beamed back. She tried to stand, made it halfway and then fell back on her bottom.
‘Stay there for a minute, poppet,’ called Millie’s mother. ‘I’ll get you some clothes. Then we’ll get the boys. Bye!’ She disappeared inside the house again and the child opened her mouth to wail. Then her head shot round to face the other direction. She’d heard something.
Millie got up and set off along the rough ground, almost to the wall that bordered the property. She stopped when she was only a few inches away and looked up. A yew tree, possibly several hundred years old, grew in the churchyard so close to the wall as to be almost part ofit. Millie looked up.
‘Lo,’ she said. Lo Ebba.’
24 September
SHE WAS TALLER THAN HE REMEMBERED, BUT EVERY BIT AS slender. She had a bridle and reins slung round her shoulders as she appeared from the horse-box. She slid her right arm under the saddle that hung waiting on a large hook and then set off down the yard. Her left arm gripped a heavy-duty steel-and-plastic walking stick as she made her slow, ungainly way across the concrete.
Harry remained still, half hidden by the low branches of a huge walnut tree, watching her limp towards the tack room. She pushed the door with her shoulder and, rather awkwardly, disappeared inside.
Was this really a good idea? It was months since he’d asked a woman out. And why on earth had he picked one he knew absolutely nothing about?
Except he did know one or two things, didn’t he? Like the fact that the sciatic nerve was the longest and widest single nerve in the body, starting in the lower back and running down through the buttock and the leg. He knew that it fed the skin of the leg and also the muscles of the back of the thigh, lower leg and foot. The day he’d met Dr Oliver – Evi, he now knew she was called – he’d sat at his computer after dinner and started searching. Ten minutes later, he’d felt like he was prying.
The door to the tack room was opening and she was coming out. No longer loaded down with tack, she walked more easily, but still with a pronounced, rolling limp.
She saw him before he had a chance to move and stopped walking. Was that good or bad? Then she reached up to unfasten and remove her hat. Good? She carried on towards him and that twitch on her face could be a smile or it could be a grimace of embarrassment. Difficult to be sure and no time to make up his mind because she was feet away and he really had to say-
‘Hello.’ She’d got there first. Hello was OK, wasn’t it? Better than What the hell are you doing here?
‘Hi. Good ride?’ Good ride! Was that really the best he could do?
‘Bracing, thanks. What are you doing here?’
He pulled his right hand out of his pocket. Ten seconds into the conversation and he was already employing Plan B.
‘Is this yours?’ he asked, as the tiny silver bracelet with blue stones caught the light. She didn’t move to take it.
‘Nope,’ she said, shaking her head. The hair around her temples was damp with sweat, flattened against her head by the pressure of the riding hat. She put a hand up to it and then brought it back down again. Her face was pink; five days ago it had been pale with shock.
‘Did you find it on the road?’ she asked.
‘No. I bought it on Rawtenstall market a couple of days ago,’ he confessed. Well, that was a bit high risk but it might just have paid off. The twitch around her mouth had widened, might even be verging on a smile.
‘That was a bit rash,’ she said. ‘I don’t think it’s your colour.’
‘You’re right, I’m more of a soft-lemony man, but I needed an excuse.’
Yes, definitely a smile. ‘What for?’ she said.
‘I was worried about Duchess.’
‘Duchess?’ Lips pulled straight again. Eyebrows raised. Eyes still smiling.
‘Yes, how is she?’ He turned to the box where the grey cob stood watching them and took a few paces towards her. ‘This is her, right?’
She was following him. He could hear the clatter of the stick on the concrete. ‘This is Duchess,’ she confirmed. ‘None the worse for her adventure at the weekend. Which I haven’t mentioned to anyone here, by the way.’
‘My lips are sealed. How does she feel about Polo mints?’
She was standing at his side now, inches away. ‘She’ll bite your hand off,’ she said.
Harry felt in his pocket again and brought out the thin green tube that he’d also bought at the market. In her box, Duchess whickered at him. Two boxes further down a horse began kicking against its door.
‘You’ve done it now,’ said Evi. ‘Horses can smell Polo mints through the wrapper. And they recognize the paper.’
‘At least someone’s pleased to see me,’ said Harry, unwrapping the tube and holding out the flat of his hand to Duchess. A split-second later the mint had been replaced by a good dollop of horse slobber. Now what, exactly, was he supposed to do with that? Wiping it down his jeans was not going to look good.
‘I should sit down,’ said Evi. ‘Is that OK?’
‘Of course,’ said Harry, wiggling his fingers to dry them off. ‘Do you need any help?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I just can’t stand up for any length of time.’ She moved the stick and set off across the yard, back to the walnut tree, under which a few plastic chairs were scattered. Harry followed close behind and held a chair-back steady while she lowered herself. He pulled up a second chair and sat beside her. Duchess’s drool was starting to dry on his hand.
In the manège in front of them a rider was schooling a young horse, the same colour as Duchess but altogether finer of build. The school was surrounded by a beech hedge and the leaves were already starting to turn the soft golden-brown of newly minted coins.
‘Beautiful evening,’ said Harry, watching the setting sun bounce off the beech hedge and throw gold reflections on to the horse’s coat. It looked like it was wearing chain-mail.
‘How did you know I was here?’ asked Evi.
‘I’ve been coming every night on the off-chance,’ replied Harry. The horse almost seemed to be trotting on the spot, its head tucked down so that its nose was pointing at the ground. Foam was gathering around its mouth. ‘Is that horse a thoroughbred?’ he asked.
‘He’s from Ireland,’ said Evi. ‘Quite beautiful, but far too young and skittish for me to be allowed anywhere near. And seriously?’
She was looking at him now, not at the beautiful young horse. Her eyes were as blue as he remembered. ‘Seriously,’ he said, ‘I phoned the yard on Monday and asked to speak to Dr Oliver. I insisted Monday was the night you came. I mentioned Duchess and asked how she was recovering from her bruised foot and said it was really important I talk to you and were they sure you weren’t there because I was certain you’d said Monday. After a few minutes of this, they looked you up in the book and told me that Dr Oliver, also known as Evi, rides on Thursdays, Saturdays and sometimes Sundays.’
Evi turned back to the manège. She had the most perfect profile. Forehead just the right length, small, straight nose, full lips, plump chin. ‘That’s very devious behavior for a man of God,’ she said at last.
Harry laughed. ‘You’ve obviously never heard of the Jesuits. Would it be inappropriate to ask you out for a drink?’
Clearly it would, because she wasn’t smiling any more. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘If you have a husband or long-term boyfriend or you just can’t stand men with ginger hair then obviously I’m completely out of order and I’ll – well, maybe Duchess is free on Friday night. I’ll go and see.’
He half stood. He’d misjudged the entire situation and now he had to make as dignified an exit as possible.
She put a hand on his arm. ‘I’m on very strong painkillers,’ she said. ‘All the time. I’m not supposed to drink alcohol.’
Somehow, that didn’t feel like an out-and-out no. ‘Well, that’s fine because I’m a man of the cloth,’ he said, sitting down again. ‘We’re not allowed to get wasted every night, so you’d be good for me. They’re running a season of Christopher Lee movies in Rawtenstall. Do you like horror films?’
‘Not really.’ The hand fell away from his arm, but that smile was definitely back.
He shook his head. ‘Me neither. Too easily scared. How do you feel about romantic comedies?’
‘I’m starting to think I might be in one. Aren’t vicars supposed to be celibate?’
‘That’s Catholic priests,’ he said, managing to keep a straight face. ‘Sex is definitely allowed in the Anglican church,’ he went on, as she turned from him and he could see the skin of her neck start to glow. ‘The guidelines say we should usually take a woman out a couple of times first. You know, for a movie, or a pizza, but I suppose I could be flexible.’
She was bright pink now and staring straight ahead as though the grey horse in the school was about to do something spectacular. ‘Do shut up,’ she snapped.
‘Well, I would, but you haven’t said yes yet and it’s difficult to do this in sign language.’
She was facing him again, trying to be serious, not quite managing it. ‘I called you an asshole the other day,’ she said.
‘Very perceptive. I like that in a woman.’
She dropped her head and looked at him sideways. It was a surprisingly childlike gesture for a woman who must be in her early thirties. ‘I’m sorry I was a bitch,’ she said. ‘But I was on my backside in the middle of the road with limbs all over the place and…’
‘It was a good look for you – sorry, didn’t quite mean that the way it sounded – I’ll shut up. Maybe I should ask Duchess out.’
‘I think they’ll excommunicate you for that.’
‘No, that’s allowed too. It’s more common than you might think.’
She started to laugh, a soft, almost soundless mirth that shook her shoulders and made her breasts bounce inside her shirt. He was staring again. He leaned back in his chair and looked up. A small flock of starlings was moving across the sky. As one, the birds changed direction and, for a split-second, formed what could almost be a heart-shape in the air before switching again and heading away from them.
‘I’m not a churchgoer,’ she said after a moment.
Harry shrugged. ‘Nobody’s perfect.’
‘I’m serious.’ She was too. She’d stopped smiling. ‘I really don’t believe in God,’ she went on. ‘Won’t that be a problem? While we’re watching this romantic comedy or eating pizza or whatever?’
‘I’ll do you a deal, Evi,’ he said, knowing that, in truth, the deal was all but done and all he had to do was close it.
‘Another one?’ she asked.
‘The first one worked out OK. I got you back on the horse and you were still speaking to me. So the new deal is, I won’t try and convert you. You don’t try and analyse me.’
‘How did you know?’ she asked. ‘How did you know what my name is and what I do?’
Harry pointed at the sky. The starlings were still there, hovering overhead, as though they knew what was happening on the ground and were hanging around to see the outcome. ‘All-knowing-one on speed-dial,’ he said. ‘How about Friday?’
She didn’t even pretend to think about it. ‘OK, that would be bugger, I mean, sorry – I have to work. I’m seeing a family in Oldham at their house. I won’t be back till late.’
‘Well, Saturday then – oh no, sorry, I mean bugger – I have this church thing. Heptonclough – where we met, you’ll remember – are having their annual harvest shindig. You know the sort of thing, ceremonial cutting of the last wheat, dancing around naked as the sun goes down and then the harvest feast in one of the big houses.’
‘Sounds a riot.’
‘Well, quite. They’ve asked me to read a traditional prayer over the crop and say grace at the dinner. I’m invited to bring a guest, but maybe…’ Harry stopped. Taking a date to his first official function? Was that really a good idea?
‘I think it could be fun,’ said Evi. ‘And I’d get to see you in action.’
Harry realized he really didn’t want his first date with Evi to go wrong. He gestured at his clothes. ‘I’d be wearing the, you know, the regalia – dog collar, ceremonial robes. At least till after the formal stuff.’
‘Can’t wait.’ The starlings were starting to move off, twisting back in their direction every couple of seconds, as if to check it was all still going well. And it was going well. Except he might just have messed it up.
‘Now you’re starting to sound kinky,’ he said.
‘Says the man who wants to date my horse.’
‘Saturday then. Can I walk you to your car?’
She pushed herself upright. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘It’s next to that flashy blue thing with the soft top and all the chrome.’
25 September
‘YOU LOOK MUCH BETTER, GILLIAN,’ SAID EVI.‘I’D HARDLY have known you.’
‘Thank you. I do feel better.’
Gillian’s hair was freshly washed, her clothes seemed cleaner. There was even a touch of make-up around those strange, silver-grey eyes. It was possible to see, this morning, the attractive girl she’d been before her life had fallen apart.
‘And you’re still getting on all right with the medication?’ Evi asked.
Gillian nodded. ‘It’s amazing, the difference it makes,’ she said. Then her face darkened. ‘I spoke to my mum about what you’d given me and she said I’d become addicted. That I’d have to take pills for the rest of my life.’
Well-meaning relatives with fixed views didn’t always help.
‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Evi, shaking her head. ‘Addiction is always a risk but it’s one we’re very careful to guard against. The medicines I’ve given you are a temporary measure. I’ll be aiming to wean you off them gradually, once we both think you can cope without them. How are you finding the AA meetings?’
Another nod. ‘They’re nice. Nice people. I haven’t had a drink in fourteen days.’
‘That’s brilliant, Gillian, well done.’
Astonishing, the difference in the girl. Four weeks ago, Gillian had barely been able to string a sentence together.
‘Can we talk about what you’ve been doing over the week,’ suggested Evi. ‘Have you been eating?’
‘I’m trying, but… it’s funny, Pete used to tease me about putting weight on. Now, I’m a size zero and his new girlfriend’s getting fatter by the week.’
Getting conscious about her body size again. Using a modelling term – size zero – and secretly proud of it.
‘Are you still in touch with Pete?’ asked Evi. The subject of Gillian’s ex-husband had come up briefly in two of their previous appointments. Both times, Gillian had been reluctant to discuss him and Evi hadn’t been able to help thinking there was a lot of suppressed anger getting in the way of her recovery. Now, just at the mention of the man’s name, Gillian’s lips had all but disappeared and a small muscle beneath her left eye was twitching.
‘Are you angry with him?’ asked Evi, when Gillian showed no sign of responding. ‘For leaving when you were grieving?’
Gillian’s eyes narrowed. ‘He was having an affair,’ she said, looking over Evi’s shoulder to the window. ‘Before the fire. He was already seeing her, the woman he’s with now.’
She’d thought there was something. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know,’ said Evi. ‘How did you find out?’
Gillian looked down at the carpet. ‘Someone told me,’ she said. ‘A friend of mine. She’d seen them in the pub together. But I knew anyway. You always know, don’t you?’
‘But you were out together, the night of the fire. Maybe it wasn’t too serious, this thing with…’
‘We weren’t out together,’ interrupted Gillian. ‘He was with her. He’d left me on my own with Hayley. Again. So I phoned Barry Robinson and asked him to babysit. Then I caught the bus into town. I was spying on my cheating husband when my baby was burning to death.’
That certainly explained a lot. No wonder the girl felt guilty. Even less wonder her husband had left. The two of them would barely have been able to look at each other without feeling overwhelmed with guilt.
‘Do you still have feelings for Pete?’ asked Evi.
‘He’s a cheating bastard,’ said Gillian. ‘My stepdad was the same. Most of them are. Out for what they can get and they don’t care who with.’
Alarm bells were ringing in Evi’s head. ‘You didn’t get on with your stepfather?’ she asked. Gillian’s stepfather had cheated? With whom?
Gillian was still looking at the floor. Her lips had tightened. She had the look of a teenager in trouble for staying out too late.
‘Do you blame Pete for Hayley’s death?’ Evi tried again, when she realized Gillian wasn’t going to talk about her stepfather. No answer. ‘Are you angry with him for maybe not grieving as much as you?’
At last Gillian looked up. ‘Hayley’s death destroyed Pete,’ she said. ‘He adored her. Afterwards, he couldn’t bring himself to look at me because I reminded him of her.’
‘Grief often breaks up marriages,’ said Evi. ‘Sometimes the pain is so intense that the only way people can move on is by making a clean break.’
‘Do you think I’ll ever meet anyone else?’ Gillian asked after a moment.
‘Do you mean a man?’ inquired Evi, surprised. ‘A boyfriend?’
‘Yes. Is it possible, do you think, to find someone that I have feelings for? Who might, you know, look after me.’
Had she met someone already? It might account for the clean hair and clothes, for the interest in the future. Someone at the AA meetings?
‘I think it’s quite likely you will,’ said Evi. ‘You’re still young and you’re very pretty. But relationships take a lot of emotional energy. We need to concentrate on getting you strong again.’
‘I’d look for someone different to Pete, next time,’ said Gillian. ‘Maybe someone older. I wouldn’t worry so much about how he looked. Just so long as he was nice.’
This girl wasn’t looking; she thought she’d already found him.
‘Nice is a good quality in a man,’ said Evi. ‘How are you finding the other people at the AA meetings?’
‘They’re OK. Is it too soon, do you think, for me to have met someone?’
‘Have you met someone?’ asked Evi.
The girl was actually blushing. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Maybe. You’d think I was mad if I told you.’
‘Why would I think you mad?’
‘Well, it’s like, he’s so not my type. He was just really nice. And then, the next day, he came to see me. He stayed for nearly two hours, just chatting. There was, like, a chemistry, do you know what I’m saying?’
Evi was starting to smile too, in spite of her reservations. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I know about chemistry.’
All the textbooks would say the girl wasn’t ready for a new relationship but, hey, sometimes you just had to go with the flow. And she knew something herself about the difference a chance meeting could make to a life. How suddenly the darkness that was a woman’s future could let in a beam of sunlight.
‘But Christ, I mean, a vicar. It’s just so not me.’
‘A what?’
‘He’s a vicar. Can you believe it? I’d have to stop swearing, for one thing. And church every week. I’m not sure I could hack it.’
Evi’s smile was starting to hurt. She allowed the muscles around her mouth to relax and concentrated on keeping her expression interested and friendly. ‘You’ve met a vicar?’ she asked.
‘I know, I know. But there was just something about him. And he’s young and he wears normal clothes and, actually, I think you might know him, I saw you…’
Gillian was gabbling on and Evi was no longer listening. Oh yes, there was something about him all right.
‘We’re going to have to stop now, Gillian,’ she said, although there were still four minutes to go on the clock. ‘I’m delighted to see how well you’re doing.’
Gillian left the room smiling. A few weeks ago her life had been in tatters. Now she was smiling. Evi picked up the phone. Was there any possible way? None that she could see. She dialled a number and thanked the God she didn’t believe in when she got Harry’s answer machine.
26 September
A AAH-LAY-OH!
The cry came echoing up the street. A man’s voice, loud and strong. A second later lots of voices answered him.
Aah-lay-oh, aah-lay-oh, aah-lay-oh!
Silence. Joe looked at his brother, his eyes round as saucers. Tom gave a little shrug and tried to look as if he’d heard it all before.
Aaah-lay-oh! One voice again, coming from somewhere down the hill. Two beats of silence and then the cry struck up again. Aaaylay-oh, aah-lay-oh, getting louder and faster like a drumbeat. It sounded as though a hundred men were just around the corner.
And then, just when Tom thought they couldn’t possibly get any louder, it all stopped. There was a second of peace and then an almighty crash of metal against stone. Then another and another. Crash! Crash! Footsteps coming up the hill. Tom moved a little closer to his dad, just a small step, too tiny for anyone to notice.
The Fletchers were standing in the driveway and it was seven o’clock in the evening. It was Joe and Millie’s bedtime, not far off Tom’s, but tonight was the Cutting of the Neck. A very old ritual, Mr Renshaw had explained when he’d come round to invite the Fletchers, one that dated back hundreds of years. The Cutting of the Neck. At the time it had sounded cool, and Tom could tell his mum was pleased to be asked. But listening to those footsteps and that horrible scraping of sharp metal against rock, like knives being sharpened, he couldn’t help but think: whose neck?
He shivered and took another step closer to his dad. At his side, Joe did the same. The sun had gone now and so had the lovely golden light that had covered the countryside an hour earlier. The sky was a cool silvery pink and, on the ground, the shadows were getting longer.
Further up the hill in the middle of the lane Tom could see Mr Renshaw in a tweed jacket and flat cap. By his side was old Mr Tobias, who’d been to visit a few times and who loved to talk to Mum about painting. Mr Tobias looked exactly like his son, just much older. Actually, they were a bit like the two churches: one tall, strong and proud, the other just the same but so very old. Then there was a woman who was also tall and smartly dressed and who looked like the two men. She wasn’t so old, though, and there was something about her face that seemed to Tom sort of empty.
Next to her was Harry, looking just like a vicar, in white robes embroidered with gold and holding a large red prayer-book. Behind them stood a whole crowd, all well dressed, mainly women and girls. He hadn’t known so many people lived in Heptonclough. They stood in doorways, at the entrances to alleys, leaned against the church wall or out of open windows. Tom realized he was scanning faces, looking for one that was pale, with large dark eyes, framed by long, dirty hair.
By this time, the sound of dozens of boots thudding against cobbles could be heard. And that horrible scraping noise. Over and over again, like fingernails drawn down a blackboard, like violins tuning up in a bad school orchestra, like…
Scythes!
The men were coming now, round the corner, heading up the hill towards them, and each was carrying a scythe: a horribly sharp, curved blade like a pirate’s scimitar on the end of a long pole. As they walked, they scraped the blades against the cobbles and the stone walls.
‘Oh my,’ said Alice. ‘Stand back, everyone.’
Tom knew she was joking, but he stood back all the same, right on to his dad’s foot. Gareth Fletcher groaned and nudged his son forwards again. The leaders reached Mr Renshaw and the others at the church gate and the procession stopped. One man at the front, who Tom thought was Dick Grimes, the butcher, gave a loud cry and every man in the crowd lifted his scythe high on to his shoulders. Then total silence. Mr Renshaw gave Harry a small nod.
‘Let us pray,’ announced Harry and everyone bowed their heads. Joe leaned closer to his brother. ‘Do you think he’s got shorts on under that dress?’ he whispered.
‘O God, who dost shower upon us the abundance of thy mercy,’ read Harry, ‘and who dost cast upon the seed in the ground both the heat of the sun and the moisture of the rain…’
‘What’s he saying?’ whispered Joe in Tom’s ear.
‘He’s thanking God for making the crops grow,’ Tom hissed back.
As Harry was talking, Tom caught sight of Gillian, the woman his mother felt sorry for, standing a little way down the street at the entrance to Wite Lane. Tom couldn’t help it, but Gillian always made him feel uncomfortable. She was too sad. And she had a way of looking at him, Joe and Millie that made him squirm. Especially Millie. For some reason, Gillian seemed fascinated by Millie. She wasn’t looking at her now, though, she was watching Harry.
‘We thank thee for these great blessings,’ he was saying. ‘Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.’
‘Amen,’ shouted the men with scythes and their families who’d followed them.
‘Amen,’ said Joe, a second after everyone else.
‘Men,’ said Millie from high up on her father’s shoulders.
Sinclair Renshaw nodded his thanks to the vicar and then set off down the hill. The men followed him and then everyone turned into Wite Lane, heading for the fields at the bottom. Harry fell into line and, almost at the back, so did the Fletchers.
They walked along the lane and Tom had time to notice that the blackberries were getting ripe, that rosehips and hawthorn berries were glistening and that the sky ahead of them was the colour of ripe barley.
‘All right Gareth?’ said a man who had caught up with Tom’s father. It was Mike Pickup, who lived with his wife Jenny at Morrell Farm, right up on the top of the moor. ‘Nice evening for it.’
‘Evening, Mike,’ Gareth replied.
Mike Pickup looked a little older than Tom’s dad and quite a bit fatter. The hair on his head was thinning and his cheeks were bright red. He was dressed in tweeds like the two Mr Renshaws.
At the gate of Gillian’s old house Tom and his family had to step sideways to avoid horse droppings and then they carried on, through a stile and into a field. They crossed the field like a fat crocodile, heading uphill, only stopping when they reached the centre. Tom watched the men form a large circle, standing several feet apart. The others formed a larger circle around the outside. Still no sign of the odd little girl. If the whole town was here, where was she?
‘I think we’re going to dance,’ whispered Tom’s mum. His dad frowned at her to be quiet.
The Fletchers could just about see Sinclair Renshaw, standing alone in the centre of the circle. At his side, a tiny patch of the crop hadn’t yet been harvested. Dick Grimes walked forward and gave Sinclair a scythe.
‘Is that hay?’ asked Gareth, quietly.
‘Aye,’ replied Mike. ‘Animal feed. Only thing that’ll grow this high up. Rest of the field was cut two weeks ago. We harvest by the waning moon. Always have done.’
Tom glanced up and saw the pale moon just appearing on the horizon. ‘It’s full,’ he said.
Mike Pickup shook his head. ‘Full ten hours ago,’ he said. ‘On the wane now. Hush.’
They hushed. In the centre of the circle Mr Renshaw took hold of the last few handfuls of hay, twisted them round in his hand and pulled them tight. He raised the scythe high above his head.
‘I hav’n!’ he cried, in a voice so loud Tom thought they could probably hear it on the waning moon. ‘I hav’n!’ he repeated. ‘I hav’n!’ he called for a third time.
‘What havee?’ yelled the men in response.
‘A neck,’ called Sinclair. Then his scythe flashed down so fast Tom didn’t see it move, the last of the hay was cut and every man, woman and child in the field was cheering. Mum, Dad and even Millie were clapping politely. Tom and Joe looked at each other.
Then the women were scurrying around like field-mice, gathering up every last bit of hay that had been missed in the previous cutting. The men were crowding round Mr Renshaw, shaking him by the hand as if he’d done something amazing, and then turning to file out of the field. Tom watched Harry help Gillian over the stile and then the two of them walked back down Wite Lane. At the gate of her former house they stopped and stood talking together.
‘When does he cut the neck?’ said Joe at Tom’s side.
‘I think that was the neck,’ said Tom. ‘I think neck means last bit of the crop.’
For a second Joe looked disappointed. Then he shook his head and, when he spoke, his voice sounded older.
‘I think there’s more to it than that,’ he said.
HARRY FOLLOWED THE MEN AHEAD OF HIM THROUGH A high stone archway and down a narrow cobbled alley that ran along the lower end of the churchyard. To his left were the medieval buildings of the old abbot’s residence and the monks’ quarters, on his right the high iron railings that topped this part of the church wall. It was the first time he’d approached the Renshaw residence; his previous meetings with his churchwarden had been in St Barnabas’s vestry or the White Lion.
Unlike much of the rest of the town, the stone of the Abbot’s House had been kept clean and was the pale colour of powdered ginger. Giant urns filled with wheat, barley and wild flowers stood to either side of the front door. The door had been carved with leaves and roses and looked as old as the rest of the house. It wasn’t open and the men ahead walked past. They carried on, past candle-lanterns that would guide them home after dark.
High on the wall a black cat sat watching them go by and Harry had a moment to wonder if it was the same cat he and Evi had seen a week ago. The Abbot’s House was huge, stretching nearly a hundred feet along the alley. Just ahead, another door lay open and the men were turning into it. Harry followed them into a large hall with high narrow windows. Trestle tables, piled high with food, had been placed down the centre, and at the far end a pulpit-like structure of almost black wood stood against the wall.
‘I’ll need to see the soles of your feet, Vicar,’ said a well-spoken, elderly voice at his side. Harry turned to see Sinclair’s father, Tobias, the oldest man in the town and, if rumour were true, the cleverest.
‘Mr Renshaw,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘I’m Harry Laycock. Good to meet you.’
‘Likewise.’ They shook hands. The men who had entered the hall first were hanging their scythes around the wall. Everywhere Harry looked, hooks were fixed into the stonework. More men squeezed in behind him. Women and girls carrying loose ears of wheat were beginning to arrive.
‘And what was that about my feet?’ asked Harry.
‘A tradition.’ Tobias smiled.
‘Another one?’ There wasn’t really room for a conversation in the doorway. Harry had to stand very close to Tobias. He would have been as tall as his son when younger. Even now, he was almost Harry’s height.
‘Oh, we have plenty of traditions,’ replied the older man. ‘This is one of our least disturbing. I advise you to go along, save your resistance for when you really need it. You, being a newcomer to the town, give me your foot – this charming young lady will help you balance, I’m sure – and I scrape the sole of your shoe with the welcome stone. It’s a religious tradition, started by the monks in the twelfth century. Far be it from you to turn your back on history.’
‘Far be it indeed,’ said Harry. ‘And what were you saying about a charming young – oh, hello again, Gillian. Actually I think I’m OK so, how do I do this, facing you like a can-can girl or with my back turned like a horse being shod?’
‘What kinky jinxes are these?’ asked Alice, appearing in the doorway with Millie on her hip. The two boys followed behind. ‘Move along, Vicar,’ she said. ‘There’s a queue.’
‘The queue will have to wait, Alice,’ said Tobias. ‘You’re next. And then your beautiful daughter. Good evening, my dear.’ He reached out and ran long, brown fingers over Millie’s hair.
‘Just go with it, Vicar,’ said another female voice, as Harry turned to see Jenny Pickup squeezing past them into the hall. ‘The first time you come to the harvest feast you have your shoe scraped with a bit of old rock. My grandfather’s been doing this for sixty years, he’s not going to stop now.’
‘Fine by me,’ said Alice. With Millie still hanging on one hip, she lifted her right leg until it made a perfect right angle with her left. Her foot was directly in front of Tobias. He caught hold of her ankle in one hand and with the other rubbed a smooth stone the size of a mango across the sole of her foot.
‘Impressive,’ said Harry, as Alice put her foot down without so much as a wobble.
‘Fifteen years of ballet classes,’ said Alice. ‘Your turn.’
Harry shrugged at Tom and Joe, grasped Tom’s shoulder for balance and offered his foot to Tobias. A few seconds later, Tom, Joe, Millie and Gareth Fletcher had all been foot-scraped and the Fletchers and Harry moved into the hall.
‘It’s like an armoury,’ said Gareth, looking round as the weapons count on the walls increased with every new arrival. High above the scythes hung shotguns and rifles. Some of them looked antique, collectors’ items. Others didn’t.
‘Cool,’ said Joe. ‘Daddy, can I-’
‘No,’ said Alice.
‘This was the refectory where the monks used to eat in the old days,’ said Jenny, who’d stayed with them. She was wearing a longsleeved, tight-fitting black dress. Somehow, it didn’t suit her as much as the casual clothes she’d worn the day she and Harry had met. ‘When my dad was young it was the grammar school.’ She pointed to the carved pulpit. ‘That’s the old schoolmaster’s chair,’ she said, before turning to Harry. ‘These days we just use this room for parties. Good to see you with your clothes on, Vicar.’
Harry opened his mouth with no clear idea of what he was going to say.
‘What’s that lady doing?’ asked Tom.
At the far end of the hall the woman who’d been standing with Sinclair and Tobias earlier had climbed the steps to the old schoolmaster’s seat and was intent upon something on her lap. Around her, women were putting the stalks of straw they’d picked up from the field into large water-filled tubs.
‘That’s my sister, Christiana,’ replied Jenny. ‘Every year she’s the harvest queen. It’s her job to make the corn dolly.’
‘What’s a corn dolly?’ asked Joe.
‘It’s an old farming tradition,’ explained Jenny. ‘In the old days, before we all became Christians, people believed the spirit of the land lived in the crop and that, when it was harvested, the spirit became homeless. So with the last few ears of whatever crop it was, they made the corn dolly – a sort of temporary home for the spirit over the winter. In the spring, it got ploughed back into the land. I used to be jealous of Christiana when I was a kid and begged Dad to let me be queen just once. He always said if I could ever make a corn dolly like Christiana then I would be.’
‘So did you?’ asked Tom.
‘No, it’s bloody impossible – ’scuse me, Vicar. I don’t know how she does it. She’ll have finished it by the end of the evening. Now then, let’s have a drink.’
Harry found himself being steered, along with the adult Fletchers, towards the drinks table. Around them, the hall was filling up and people were starting to spill out through a pair of wooden doors into the large walled garden beyond. Harry could see the deep turquoise blue of the evening sky and fruit trees hung with lanterns. A four-piece fiddle-and-pipe band was getting ready to play.
Along one wall had been fastened museum-style glass cases and their contents had attracted the attention of the Fletcher boys and their father. Harry joined them. The cases showed archaeological artefacts that had been discovered on the moors and preserved by the Renshaw family in their own private museum. There were flint tools from the Neolithic period, Bronze Age weapons, Roman jewellery, even a human bone or two.
He wasn’t able to look for long before his attention was claimed. Over and over again, people introduced themselves to him, until he lost all hope of remembering names.
After an hour or so it seemed he’d met everyone. The hall was getting hot and he set off for the garden doors, only to pause when he saw the Fletcher boys and a few of the village children gathered around the harvest queen on her schoolmaster’s throne. Over their heads he watched the quick, skilled fingers of Sinclair’s eldest daughter.
She was a big woman, almost six feet tall and with a large frame. She’d be in her late thirties, he guessed, maybe early forties. Her hair was a thick dark brown and her skin was largely unlined. She would have been a good-looking woman, had there been some spark of intelligence behind those large brown eyes, had her mouth not hung open, as though she’d forgotten the norm was to keep it closed.
Maybe she had. Maybe every ounce of thought in her head was concentrated upon her hands. They were moving at an incredible speed. Binding, twisting, plaiting, over and over again her fingers twitched as the last of the hay, soaked and made supple now, was manipulated into shape. Her eyes were fixed straight ahead, not once did she look down at her work, but in the short time she’d been in her chair, a loop of about six inches long had been formed and she was now fastening long straws, twisting and weaving them into place.
‘It’s a Pennine spiral,’ said a voice. Harry and the boys turned at the same moment to see that Tobias Renshaw had joined them. ‘Corn dollies are traditional all over the UK,’ the older man went on, ‘but each region tends to have its own particular design. The spiral is considered one of the most difficult to craft. My granddaughter’s brains all went into her fingers.’
Harry looked quickly at Christiana; her face twisted for a second but her gaze didn’t falter. Neither did her hands.
‘She looks like she’s concentrating hard,’ said Harry. ‘Does she mind being watched?’
‘Christiana lives in her own world,’ said the old man. ‘I doubt she knows we’re here.’
Harry saw Christiana dart a quick look at her grandfather. He put his hands on the Fletcher boys’ shoulders. ‘Come on, you two,’ he said, ‘Let’s leave Miss Renshaw in peace. We can admire her work later.’
He turned, about to guide the boys out into the garden to find their parents. Tobias stopped him with a hand against his chest.
‘I think you must despise our traditions, Vicar,’ he said. The pressure of his hand felt surprisingly strong for so elderly a man and Harry fought a temptation to push it away.
‘Not at all,’ he replied. ‘Rituals are very important to people. The church is awash with them.’
‘Quite so,’ said Tobias, in his low, cultured voice, allowing his hand to fall. ‘Events like this one hold communities together. Very few of the men here tonight work on the land any more – they have jobs in the nearby towns, maybe they’re self-employed and work from home, some of them have no jobs. But the Cutting of the Neck is something they all take part in because their fathers and their grandfathers did. Through it, and other traditions like it, they feel a connection to the land. Can you understand that?’
‘I was brought up in the rough end of Newcastle,’ said Harry. ‘We didn’t see much of the land.’
‘Everything you will eat tonight was grown or bred within five miles of this spot,’ said Tobias. ‘All the game I shot myself, although my eyesight isn’t what it was. Ninety per cent of what I’ve eaten my entire life comes from this moor. Quite a number of people in town can say the same. The Renshaws have been self-sufficient for hundreds of years.’
‘You’re not fond of fish, then?’ said Harry.
Tobias’s eyebrows lifted. ‘On the contrary, we own a trout stream at the bottom of the valley.’ He gestured towards the buffet table. ‘I recommend the trout pâté.’
‘I look forward to it. Hi Gillian, did you need me?’
‘I’ll keep you just a moment longer, Vicar. Excuse us, my dear, won’t you?’ said Tobias. ‘Run along, boys, I need a private word with Reverend Laycock.’ Without waiting to be told twice, Tom and Joe scurried across the hall towards the weapons cases. Gillian moved away to the other side of the hall, but Harry could feel that she was still watching them.
‘There is another town tradition you should know about, Vicar,’ said Tobias. ‘Again, you’ll find variations all around England. A few weeks after the harvest, typically in the days leading up to Old Winter’s Day in mid October, we slaughter the livestock that won’t be needed next spring. Mainly surplus sheep and pigs, some chickens, occasionally a cow. In the old days the meat would be preserved to take us through the winter. These days we just fill our freezers.’
‘Sounds sensible enough. Do you want some prayers to send the animals on their way to the abattoir?’
‘You misunderstand, Vicar,’ said Tobias. ‘Your services won’t be required and the animals are sent nowhere. We slaughter them here.’
‘Here in town?’
‘Yes. Dick Grimes and my son hold all the necessary licences between them. Dick has the facilities at the back of his shop. I only mention it because the Fletcher family live just across the road and will hear something of what’s going on. A lot of the men are involved. The street outside gets – how shall I put this? – a little messy. We call it the Blood Harvest.’
‘The what?’
‘You heard me correctly. I’m happy to talk to the Fletchers myself, of course, but I just thought, as you seem to have something of a rapport with them, it might come better from you. If they were to visit relatives for the weekend, that might not be a bad thing.’
A few feet beyond the door to the party room, Millie sat on the floor. Oblivious to the feet and legs around her, she was stroking a cat. Her fat little hand ran down its fur, from head to tail-tip. The tail twitched. Millie caught it and squeezed. The cat jumped to its feet and stepped daintily away.
Millie looked round. One of her brothers, the one she called Doe, was very close by, looking at some weapons in a glass case. He didn’t turn around as Millie pushed herself to her feet and toddled after the cat. First the cat, then Millie, stepped out of the party room and into the alley outside. No one noticed them leave.
‘There you are, Harry. You seem quiet tonight. Is everything OK?’
Alice had found him at the bottom of the walled garden, on a wicker bench surrounded by old roses, nursing an empty glass.
‘I’m fine,’ he said, moving sideways on the bench to give her room to sit down. ‘Just recharging the batteries. People rarely just chat to the vicar, you know. They always expect something more. A bit of spiritual guidance over the sherry. Maybe a discussion on where the Church of England’s going. Get’s a bit tiring after a while.’
Alice settled herself down next to him. He could smell the perfume she always wore. Something very light and sweet, rather old-fashioned. ‘I could barely see you sitting here,’ she said. ‘What happened to the robes?’
Harry had taken off his robes and collar at the first chance he’d had. ‘Too hot,’ he said. ‘And far too distinctive. I needed to blend into the background for a while.’
Alice let her head fall on to one side. It felt like a very familiar gesture, although he didn’t think he’d seen her make it before. ‘Did someone upset you?’ she asked.
He looked at her properly, tempted to tell her about his chat with Tobias, then decided against it. Why ruin her evening too? She was looking happier tonight than he’d seen her since they’d met. He’d have a quiet word with Gareth later in the week.
‘I had a date tonight,’ he said, surprising himself. ‘She blew me out.’
Alice ’s small face lit up. ‘A date? How exciting.’
Harry held up both hands. ‘And yet not, as it turns out.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Alice touched his arm briefly. ‘Did she give you a reason?’
‘She just left a message on my answer machine. She said work was piling up. Hoped we could get together in a couple of weeks or so if things calmed down. Didn’t sound hopeful.’
‘Bad luck,’ said Alice after a second. ‘Want another drink?’
‘If I have another drink I’ll be spending the night in the vestry,’ said Harry. ‘But we should get back to the party. Come on.’
Harry and Alice stood up and walked back through the apple trees towards the house. When they were once again approaching the crowd of people Harry became aware of urgent movement, of someone pushing their way though the throng. A second later Gareth Fletcher appeared, holding Tom’s hand tightly.
‘We can’t find Joe and Millie,’ he said. ‘We’ve looked everywhere. They’ve vanished.’