S. J. Bolton

by Blood Harvest

  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 wer
e 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.

  2

  ‘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 happe
ned 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?’