S. J. Bolton

by Blood Harvest

  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.’

  7

  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 r
elationship 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.

  8

  ‘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.

  9

  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 h
er 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.’

  10

  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.