Merrily moved into the dark kitchen, carrying the poker.
The Aga chuntered smugly in its insulated world. She laid a palm flat on one of its hotplate covers, held it there until it felt uncomfortably warm.
What else could she do? Pinch herself? Did that really work? In the event, as she pulled away, she tripped on the edge of the rug and
… ‘Oh shit?’ dropped the poker, bumped her knee violently on a hard corner of the Aga, sending a bullet of pain spinning to the top of her head.
She staggered to the switches, slammed on all the lights, bent down, rubbing hard at her knee. Apart from severe pain, what other proof could you give yourself that you were, in fact, fully awake, not dreaming?
No, it was all real. It was quiet up there now, but the noise she’d heard from the drawing room had been real. And it wasn’t a mouse, it wasn’t a squirrel, it wasn’t a bird in the eaves, it wasn’t
…
Real. What was real? Was a minister of the Church obliged to consult a psychiatrist these days to find out?
Another small bump.
Slowly, holding back her breath, Merrily picked up the poker.
Closer, this time. Certainly not at the top of the house. She looked at the scullery door, which was never opened. The so-called scullery was a narrow room, probably something connected with the dairy in centuries past. They’d found no use for it as yet, never went in.
She lifted the metal latch and went through, wrinkling her nose as her hair mingled with greasy cobwebs. At the far end, another door opened on to a small, square hall. She found a switch and a dangling economy bulb sputtered on, curled-up white tubes like some frozen bodily organ sending shadows up walls already going black with damp. The absence of oak beams in here suggested it was a Victorian addition. Opposite her was the second back door, still boarded up.
Except it wasn’t. The boards had been prised away; they were leaning against a wall, rusty nails sticking out of them. This was recent. Very recent. Jane. The separate door to the Apartment, soon to have an illuminated bell and a dinky little nameplate: Ms Jane Watkins. The door leading up, via the disused back stairs that you would forget were even here.
The stairs came out at a black, wooden door. Her fingers found a hole to lift the latch. Of course, she knew where the stairs came out, but it seemed strange seeing it from this angle, the dim, first-floor passage with all the doors, all of them locked now, since the Sean dream, and the keys taken out and thrown into an ashtray in the kitchen.
Padding past the locked doors, she arrived at the top of the main stairs, the oak-balustraded landing with its window full of pale, night sky. She stood at the foot of the second stairway to Jane’s apartment. Why was she doing this? Despite the unsealing of the second back door, she knew there was nobody up there. Nobody real. Why was she putting herself through this?
Because I’m a priest, and priests are not supposed to be scared because they know that the strength and certainty of their faith protects them from the evil that walks by night… don’t they just?
Oh really… Jane came up here all the time, for heaven’s sake. Jane skipped up here, never a thought, with books and boxes and cans of variously coloured paint and brushes and CDs, to be locked away in her secret study.
It’s me. It only happens to me.
I’m a sick woman.
She thought.
Before registering that one of the doors on the landing was already half-open and a shadow-figure was watching her from the threshold.
Jane knew it was going wrong when she saw Mark and this unknown older guy in the unlit doorway of the computer shop, Marches Media.
Or maybe wrong was the way it was supposed to go. A party ain’t a party without tension.
Maybe this party was going exactly the way Colette had planned… the plan hardening up when she learned she was being double-crossed by her parents. Actually, Jane didn’t see what was so wrong with having a sixteenth birthday cake. And if the Cassidys wanted to share the moment – well, they had paid for everything. And let her use their precious restaurant.
Maybe Colette was going just a bit over the top.
Jane watched from the cobbles, leaning against one of the oaken uprights of the market cross. With a low-burning excitement, because it was obvious what was going on down there in the shadowed doorway of Marches Media: the mousy Mark and the older guy were busy dealing drugs.
And no shortage of customers. The nice boys from good families. Going in one after another, schoolkids at the tuck-shop. Not all the guests, but enough of them to put the market square well into orbit. This would be a good, safe pitch – rich kids at a posh party in a select restaurant in a picture-postcard village encircled by hills and woodland and with no resident police. Profitable, too. Most of these guys would have no idea of current street prices.
Not that Jane did. It was just cool to watch from the shadows and speculate about these things.
She was on her own now. The craven Quentin had made a swift escape, car keys in hand, a couple of other vehicles also puttering pusillanimously away from the square. She saw Dean Wall and Danny Gittoes watching Colette, keeping a respectful distance. A heavy chick.
She and Dr Samedi were at the back of his Transit van, one rear door open. Dr Samedi backing out, arms full of something black, the size and shape of a child’s coffin. ‘Oh yes!’ Colette cried. ‘Yes, yes yes!’
Dr Samedi was still unhappy and wouldn’t let go of whatever it was. But tonight you didn’t argue with Colette; she wrapped her arms around the black thing, wrestling with poor Jeff, until they both sprang back and the black box was in Colette’s arms now.
Lloyd Powell was watching from the foot of the Black Swan steps. Mr Responsible, Jane thought. He might seem cool now, with that rangy Paul Weller look and his white pick-up truck, but Lloyd would turn, as the years went by, into his father, get elected on to the council. By which time Rod would have shrunken into Edgar, half-baked and not to be trusted with a shotgun. It was the depressing side of country life; they all seemed to know their place in the Pattern and the Pattern didn’t change.
People like Colette fascinated them because they were part of a different pattern, Jane thought. But there was no meaningful overlap. She was thinking what a really profound philosophical concept this was, when it all began.
‘All right!’
A voice crackling into the night. Dr Samedi had materialized under swathes of bunting put up for tomorrow’s festival launch. He held an old-fashioned trumpet loud hailer. His top hat was back on.
‘How you doin’? Sweatin’? Yeah!’
A few cheers. Dean Wall’s familiar whoop.
‘All right!’ Dr Samedi raised the white loud hailer up over his head. A signal, obviously. Because, at that moment, the perfectly preserved medieval market square of rural Ledwardine just… well, just erupted.
The black thing, like a small coffin, had proclaimed itself, in the way it knew best, as a huge ghetto-blaster with about eight speakers. It was sitting on the roof of the van now, pumping tumultuous drum and bass into the square at this unbelievable volume, and Colette Cassidy was bouncing up and down beside the van and screaming, ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!’
A circle of people rapidly formed around her, everybody moving in a way it was hard not to when the big, black beat was everywhere and loud enough to pop up all the cobbles on the square. Oh my God, Jane thought, they’ll hear this in the centre of Hereford.
‘Welcome, ma friends…’
Dr Samedi’s phoney West Indian drawl had been processed by the primitive megaphone into a deep and eerie croak.
‘Wel-come… to… de… carn-i-valf
The ceiling light was blurred and swirling.
She was waking up. She’d been asleep. Dreamed it all. Again. Oh my God.
It was not possible. Hadn’t she heated her hands on the Aga, gripped the poker until it hurt, bashed her knee so hard the pain had given her a headache? Proving beyond all doubt that she was awake?
The light above her was in a warm, orange shade. Jane’s shade. Taken with her from Birmingham to Liverpool to Ledwardine…
To the third floor.
She was in Jane’s bedroom, in the Apartment. Lying on Jane’s bed. She didn’t remember coming here. Why would she come in here, lie down on Jane’s bed? Fear streaked through her and she struggled to sit up and looked into a blank, grey, oval face with dark slits for eyes.
Merrily screamed and squirmed away. Hurled herself back against the headboard, slamming it into the wall behind.
‘It’s OK!’
The grey face was printed on a jumper, a sweatshirt. Over it was a real face behind glasses. The real face looked scared.
‘No… look… hey…’ he said. ‘I’m harmless.’
She looked down, registering that she was fully dressed, the bed unrumpled.
‘Mrs Watkins… I’m really, really sorry.’
‘Christ.’
‘I thought you might need a cup of tea…’
One of her cups coming at her, on one of her saucers. She didn’t move.
‘What are you doing? What are you doing in…’
Aware that, even in her fear, she couldn’t say, What are you doing in my house? It wasn’t. It was the vicarage. It was huge and alien and maybe this man lived here, too, in some derelict attic room, coming and going by the forgotten back stairs. Part of the mad, sporadic nightmare. Oh God, get me out of here.
‘I’m a kind of… friend of Jane’s.’ He was very untogether; big, unsteady eyes behind the glasses. Like a scared version of the alien on his sweater.
‘Where is she?’
‘She went to a party. See, what happened, we met in the street, I needed to take a look at my cat, and she just like brought me up here, you know? Jane says, you know, Bring her inside, we’ll have a look at her. Obviously I didn’t realize she meant… her room. Believe me, there is no way I’d’ve come up here.’
‘Cat,’ Merrily said.
‘Somebody gave her a kicking. We brought her up here and then she got away. We must’ve touched her in the wrong place. I’m sorry. I don’t do things like this.’
She accepted the tea with numb relief. ‘You’ve got an injured cat somewhere in the house? Wandering around, making bumping noises maybe.’
‘Probably.’
Merrily could hear heavy music coming through the trees from the square, insistent as a road drill. This wasn’t going to endear the Cassidys to their neighbours. ‘Let’s go downstairs,’ she said. ‘I need a cigarette.’
It wasn’t long before they started coming out of their homes, gathering in small groups. You could see pyjama bottoms sticking out of trouser turn-ups, one woman in an actual hairnet. Big torches, walking sticks.
‘Who’s in charge here?’ a man shouted. Not a local voice. A sort of retired colonel voice.
The music was turned up even higher. Maybe fifty people dancing. Someone grabbed hold of Jane’s arm, tried to pull her into the crush of quivering bodies.
It was Colette. ‘Aw, come on, Janey. Get your shit together. Stuff the Reverend Mumsy. Like she’s in any position to complain.’
‘You’re disturbing the peace!’ The man’s voice rose again. ‘This is noise pollution. If you don’t turn that racket off and go away now, at once, I’m going to call the police! Do you hear me?’
Jane let herself be dragged in, knowing they were all on borrowed time. If Barry hadn’t rung the police already, quite a few people were surely doing it right now; you looked up and you could see small, furious faces peering out of dark windows, could imagine outraged fingers stiffly prodding out 999. Anticipating it, Mark and his friend had already disappeared from the Marches Media doorway. But whatever they’d been selling was taking effect: all around her, open mouths and too-bright eyes.
‘We comin’ out,’ rapped Dr Samedi. ‘We comin’ back. We gonna turn, gonna turn de whole sky black.’ But he no longer sounded in control.
A boy pushed past Jane, having come out of the antique shop doorway, zipping up his jeans. ‘Did you see that?’ a woman yelped. ‘That yob’s just urinated in there!’
‘You hear me?’ the man shouted. ‘I’m calling the police!’
‘Oh, do fuck off, grandad!’ replied a girl with an equally posh voice, and there were wild peals of laughter and somebody turned the music up even higher, so that even Dr Samedi was drowned out.
But they were on borrowed time and Jane wasn’t unhappy about that because she needed to get back and find out about Lol. Lol who’d come over very weird when she’d taken him up the back stairs and he’d found himself in her room. Backing off, shaking his head, saying this was a mistake. His agitation picked up by Ethel, the cat, squirming out of his arms and disappearing into the bowels of the vicarage.
Lol was in trouble. He couldn’t go home because Karl was in there and Lol, for reasons Jane still couldn’t quite put together, was scared of Karl. And was also – for reasons even more obscure – scared other. He’d seemed relieved to pack her off to the party, to hide out there alone in the part of the house where Mum was banned. He wouldn’t be there when she got home, he said. He’d wait until Ethel reappeared and then he’d go. She’d left him her secret key to lock the small back door behind him; he’d leave it, he said, with Lucy.
But what if Karl was still in the cottage when he got back? Where would Lol go then?
One idea had occurred to Jane. Maybe she could get a few of the guys from the party – rugby-player types – to go over to Lol’s place and force that bastard out of there. But the state they were in now, how could you even explain to them what was needed? By the time they made it to Blackberry Lane they’d have forgotten why they were going.
Chaos. Nothing more unstable than well-brought-up kids on the loose in some place they and their parents weren’t known.
The music stopped.
The silence was deafening. Beyond the hollow roaring in her ears, Jane heard the sound of car engines.
‘OK.’ Colette’s voice over the loud hailer. ‘Listen up. It’s probably the filth, yeah? We’re moving on. Don’t worry, no cars required. Follow me… or Janey. Where’s Janey? She knows.’
It wasn’t the police. The car that turned on to the edge of the square was a Volvo like Mum’s, only about ten years younger. Both front doors opened at once.
The Cassidys.
‘Janey,’ Colette called out. ‘OK?’ And then the loud hailer was silent.
Jane didn’t move. What was Colette saying to her? She knows. What? She slipped back under the market cross as Terrence Cassidy appeared on the cobbles, panting. ‘Colette! Where are you? Please-’ and was almost pulled off his feet by the stampede from the square.
‘Colette!’
Mrs Cassidy was less circumspect. ‘The unutterable little bitch. I knew something like this would-’
‘Colette,’ Terrence implored. ‘Where are you. Why are you doing this to us?’
‘It’s ‘cause you’re such a wanker, mate,’ Dean Wall confided chattily over his shoulder and cackled and followed the others.
The music had resumed, from the top of Church Street, booming off into the churchyard. Jane’s shoulder brushed against a poster tacked to one of the pillars of the market cross, bold black and yellow lettering inside a big red apple, LEDWAR-DINE SUMMER FESTIVAL: OFFICIAL OPENING, SATURDAY, MAY 23. MARKET SQUARE 2.00 p.m. BE THERE!
‘Bloody hell!’
Jane found Dr Samedi next to her, the loud hailer dangling limply from his hand. Back in Midlands mode.
‘Can y’ believe it? She’s buggered off with my flamin’ box. Bloody rich kids. I hate bloody rich kids, I do. Gimme ghetto any day of the week.’
‘Sorry, Jeff. She’s hard to stop when she gets going.’
‘That don’t help me, does it?’
And suddenly, Jane knew where Colette was taking them.
‘Oh no.’ She looked around for help, but the Cassidys had rushed into their restaurant, presumably to assess the damage and take it out on Barry. Even the locals were melting away – wherever the mob was heading, it was at least out of their earshot, away from their backyards, so what did they care?
‘Thing is,’ Dr Samedi was moaning, ‘I don’t know if my insurance covers this.’
Jane saw a tall figure strolling towards the churchyard.
‘Lloyd!’
Lloyd Powell turned and waited for her under the fake gaslight, Jane found herself clutching at his sleeve.
‘You’ve got to stop them.’
‘I think we’ll wait for the police, don’t you, Miss Watkins?’
‘No!’ You could never tell with people like Lloyd whether they called you Miss out of politeness or because they were laughing at you. ‘They’re going to the orchard. You can stop them. It’s your land. You can go in there and turn them out.’
‘On my own?’
He was laughing at her. Everybody knew the Powells didn’t really care about their orchard.
But they should. They should.
‘Please. It’s not safe. It’s not respectful. You’ve got to get them out. Please, Lloyd.’
‘Hey.’ He put his big, rugged hands on her shoulders, peered at her from under his Paul Weller fringe. ‘Don’t get into a state about this. They’re just daft kids.’
‘Please.’ She was crying now.
‘All right,’ Lloyd said. ‘I’ll go and see what I can do.’ He smiled wryly, hunching his shoulders. ‘You wanner come?’
‘Oh no,’ Jane said. ‘I couldn’t.’
She stood on the edge of the cobbles, hopelessly confused, awfully apprehensive for reasons she couldn’t explain.