In the Moors

by Nina Milton

  “So,” said Rey, keeping his voice all laid-back, “are drugs involved?”

  I grinned. “Not by me. In some places maybe. South America, for instance, or in ancient times, but I like to keep my head crystal-ball clear.”

  “Strange way to earn a crust.”

  “That’s what it generally is—a crust! But I get by. Lucky I’ve got a garden full of vegetables.”

  “And hens,” Rey reminded me.

  “I fancy getting a goat, but I’m not sure I’ve got room.”

  To my surprise, our conversation took off, flapping here and there as conversations do, and finally perching on a fence as we argued the ultimate question.

  “Boy bands are sad,” said Rey. “They’re all adolescents, hoping never to grow up and do proper jobs.” There was tomato ketchup on his chin and I weighed up telling him about it or simply leaning over to wipe it off with the flimsy paper napkin.

  “Girl bands can’t even sing, let alone compose their own tracks,” I argued back. “They’re fine if all you plan to do is fantasize as you watch them.”

  “So what do girls do with boy bands, then? No sneaky little fantasies about getting hitched?”

  I tried not to look down at my Will Smith DVD. “No, we go and watch them. Gives you a real buzz. I’ve still got the pics from the Live Earth concert on my laptop to prove it.”

  “Laptop!” said Rey, wiping his mouth and screwing the last bits of sausage bun into his napkin. “What happened to scrape-a-carrot-from-the-soil?”

  “I’ve got a very generous family. It was my going-to-university gift.”

  “They do degrees in shamanism?”

  “Not exactly. You need to study with a master; it’s a practical subject. A skill. A gift, I suppose.”

  We might have gone on all day, but the booters were packing up around us.

  “You ever thought about selling things here?” Rey asked as we walked towards the entrance.

  “Come early May, I’ll be behind a pasting table, offloading my surplus seedlings.”

  Rey put the flat of his hand on my arm. “I knew I’d seen you somewhere before.”

  “What, are you saying you’ve purchased my Pelargonium cuttings?”

  “I might, if I knew what they were.”

  We’d stopped walking. Frankly, my legs were in no state to carry me along the pavement while Rey’s hand laid on my arm. It was strong, with straight-cut nails that had no dirt under them. For some reason it seemed to have a built-in device that weakened the person it touched, body and mind. Useful if you’re arresting someone, I supposed. I looked into Rey’s face and saw the change in the curve of his mouth, the softness there suddenly. I was sure that any second, he would dip his head to my level and kiss me. Then someone jogged against my shoulder as they passed us. I turned to give an automatic apology and when I turned back, he was walking on, the moment broken. Maybe I imagined it altogether.

  “Did he turn up, then, yesterday?”

  I knew Rey had been choking on that question from the moment he’d spotted me. But he’d managed to keep it nailed down, and I felt he deserved a little reward.

  “He did. We had a good session.”

  “Go away all cured and happy, did he?”

  “He had a wretched time when he was a boy—”

  “If you ask me, some people just can’t cope with life.” Rey snorted. “My dad walked out on us, you know, left me to ‘be the man’, but I didn’t see that as something that would affect my life badly. Not then, and not now. Actually, I think it was the making of me.”

  “You’re right.” Just for a second, I was tempted to trade “tough times,” but I was not in the mood. “Some people can cope with things others can’t. We’re all different. I have to accept that my client’s anguish is how he tells me it is. Otherwise it would be like a surgeon telling a patient he can’t possibly be in that much pain from his op, wouldn’t it?”

  “I’ll give you that.” Rey fished out his car keys and zapped them at a natty-looking Nissan with sporty wheels. It winked back at us. “I just wondered about your gut reaction about Cliff Houghton.”

  By the time I was ready to answer the question, we’d reached the car.

  “I don’t know,” I said, and it was the perfect truth. “Not yet.”

  “Not yet?” Rey repeated, in an optimistic tone.

  “You think these are copycat killings, don’t you?”

  “Whatever that is.”

  “Don’t dismiss my questions,” I said, riled, “and expect me to answer yours.”

  “I asked you for a gut reaction. Hardly the Inquisition.”

  “I told you, I can’t talk about clients.”

  “Same thing applies to a case—can’t say a word.”

  “Apart from giving me the third degree.”

  “You’d know if you were having that.”

  We stood, inches away from each other, seething.

  Rey opened the passenger door of his car. “Can I drop you anywhere?”

  “I’ll walk. I need the exercise.” I strode off, heading towards home.

  “See ya!” Rey called after me.

  I put my hand in the air but didn’t look back.

  I suppose you could say that my fascination with the spirit world can be traced back nine years, to the day my foster mum, Gloria, persuaded me to go to university. I wasn’t keen, although I had been trying to sort my future out. I was nineteen, living in the smallest bedroom in her house and running two jobs—bar assistant at Badass and care assistant at a local residential home for the elderly. Neither of my jobs paid above the minimum wage, although I did enjoy them—especially the evening one, which I’d had since the day I’d hit eighteen. I spent most of my evenings leaning against the Badass bar, and I did backflips at the idea that they’d pay me to spend time behind it.

  I had left school in a great hurry, fed up with the way they kept putting me on suspension for trumped-up mini-crimes they’d got their knickers in a mess over. I’d hated school, especially its petty rules and the way imaginative thinking was stifled (well, my imaginative thinking, anyway). I’d told Gloria I didn’t need stupid exam certificates; I could earn my own living and pay her back for the years I’d been eating out of her fridge.

  “I don’t want nothing,” she’d said, “except to see you happy, girl.”

  “I am happy,” I’d said, my eyes smarting with hot brine.

  “Bein’ angry is not the same as bein’ happy,” said Gloria, one of her many maxims.

  Nevertheless, she had helped me find the job at the residential home. I soon had money in my pocket for most of each week, despite the fact I was the only person I knew who paid rent to live at home. After all, it was the only place I’d ever called home and the cooking was great—except on Sundays, when my foster dad, Philip, made us trail the countryside byways around Bristol with sandwiches in our backpacks. He’s still a believer in fresh air and exercise, is Philip, even though he’s gone sixty-six and retired.

  One evening, as I had been getting ready for my shift at the pub (which always meant a good deal of makeup and hair arrangement), Gloria had slammed a brochure down in front of me.

  “Bristol City College?” I’d read. “Oh no, Gloria. You’ve got me wrong. I have no intention of going back to school.”

  “You’d better have,” she’d growled. “I’ve just enrolled you in three evening courses. My treat for your nineteenth birthday.”

  “Ta,” I said with heavy sarcasm. “What are they? Flower arranging? Yoga?”

  “A levels,” said Gloria. “All your favourites: psychology, sociology, and biology.”

  “Ologies?” I’d exploded. “How d’you expect me to do all this?”

  “Because you’re clever,” said Gloria. “You just don’t know it. And because you’re always banging on about thes
e subjects.”

  “Yeah, right,” I muttered, turning the pages of the prospectus. “Like I actually know anything about any of them.”

  “You’ll surprise yourself,” said Gloria.

  But the greatest surprise was the one still hiding up Gloria’s sleeve. Because to my amazement, my exam results after the evening courses gained me a place at Bangor University, up in North Wales. While I’d been trying to work out if I could afford to study there, Gloria had presented me with a cheque for all the rent I’d paid her over the last three years. She had me weeping all over her soft, warm, loving shoulder.

  I had thought it might be nice to stay in a bedroom like the one at Gloria’s, so I’d phoned a few landladies, eventually speaking to Rhiannon Howell. “It is just me and Bren here now.” The slow richness of her North Welsh accent had powered down the phone line. “Both our girls have babies of their own, and we miss all the mess and loud music, we do.”

  “Honestly?”

  I heard her give a throaty chuckle down the phone and immediately warmed to her. “I hope you like countryside, Sabrina. We’re out of the town. Out in the wild, like.”

  “I’ll be okay, I’ve got my Honda bike.” I had imagined that I’d be spending most of my time in the campus pubs. “Oh, and I’m Sabbie.”

  I hated my full name back then. It reminded me of the mother who’d chosen to die rather than look after me. Plus I thought it was a stupid name to give a baby. I used to imagine that she’d looked down into the cot and called me the first thing that had come into her drug-fuzzed brain. I wanted to forget my earliest years, and I dealt with that by never answering to the name Sabrina.

  The plan was that Philip would drive all my things up in the car, and I’d follow closely behind on my Honda. I’d been whizzing around Bristol for a couple of years and felt confident of the trip north. But we’d only just crossed the border into Wales when the rain started to bucket down in sheets.

  Bloody typical, I thought, and then I saw the brake lights on the lorry in front of me, and that thought was my last for a long while.

  My first memory of recovery was a song in my head.

  Later, Gloria had told me I’d been rushed straight to the operating theatre to relieve the haematoma that had caused pressure on my brain. The surgeons did everything they could but were cagey about the outcome. They wouldn’t promise when I’d come round, or even if I would. My family sat round waiting. My first response was a lifted hand, as if I was reaching for something. The following morning, I opened my eyes and began a slow recovery.

  That was the outside world’s version of events. My internal story was quite different. I swam in a dream world. I had no knowledge of time or space. I heard a woman’s voice. She sang, sweet and light, of waves and tides, although I never could remember the words or tune. Her song was accompanied by the rush and babble of water. I was floating in that water, high banks on either side, drifting along as if I was a piece of riverweed. No other thoughts were in my head at that time. I couldn’t remember my past life and never once imagined any sort of future. I was in limbo, buoyed up by the woman’s sweet humming.

  Just once, I saw a face: a man’s features, an older man, with salt-and-pepper hair that drifted down to his shoulders and a beard that drifted down to his chest. I still remember how his speedwell eyes caught my attention. When he smiled, I saw his teeth had a wide gap at the front and a gleam of gold at the back. Finally he spoke:

  “You return to us, Sabrina. Make the effort, love. We’re all waiting for you. It’s going to be a good life, Sabrina, you’ll see. You’ll see.”

  He went on whispering and smiling, and I know I tried to reach him, hang on to him because he was the only thing in my universe at that moment and I didn’t want to lose him. I didn’t even care that he called me Sabrina. I’d forgotten my name, and the word seemed enchanting on his tongue. When his image began to fade, I opened my eyes because I was so sick to lose the sight of him.

  I had not known right then, but this was the strongest spirit world experience I’d had up until that point. I’d only begun to suspect anything at all, when, the following October, Philip once again drove me up to Bangor. The Howells had sent me a get-well card, promising to keep my room open until I made it. It was Bren who opened the door to my knock when we arrived.

  “Sabbie!” he exclaimed and gave me a beaming smile—big gap between his front teeth and a gleam of gold at the back.

  FIVE

  Harold Street is a narrow road filled with ex–local authority houses, built almost sixty years back in pairs. I’m the corner house, so I’ve got the biggest plot. There’s actually room for a garage—somewhere I could put Mini Ha Ha, my dependable little car, instead of leaving her out on the road at night where she’s all exposed and vulnerable. But no chance of that—my landlord’s understanding of property improvement is a splash of cheap white paint each time someone new moves in.

  Three years ago, this garden was nothing but a mass of unkempt grass, and the only things that grew out of it were rusting motorcycle parts. I’ve spent hours getting it how I want it. My front door is on the side wall, so that’s where I laid enough flagstones to call a patio and put my patio table and chairs. There’s a spinster’s hanky lawn behind it and flower borders on each side of the path leading to the front gate. When I sit on my patio, I can see everyone walking up and down the street … and they can see me clearly over my low brick wall. So many neighbours gatecrashed last summer’s parties that I thought about offering games and rides for ticket sales.

  The things I’d bought at the boot sale were pulling at my arm sockets by the time I’d finished my mile walk home. I dug into my jacket pocket for keys as I sauntered down the side path. I was deep in thought, trying to work out just what impression I’d left on Rey. A brainless smile was hovering over my lips as I became aware of someone leaning on the side of my porch, and I returned to the real world with a bang.

  “Ivan! What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for you,” said Ivan. He threw his half-smoked cigarette onto the path and twisted his left shoe over it several times. “Couldn’t work out where you’d gone this early on a Sunday.”

  “Car boot.” I lifted my bags as if pumping iron with them.

  Ivan stared for several seconds. “You do have some odd hobbies.”

  “Why didn’t you phone?”

  “Thought I’d surprise you.”

  “Congrats, you succeeded.”

  “You were daydreaming about something, that’s for sure. Hope it was me.”

  I dumped my boot sale booty in the porch but didn’t go so far as to open the door. “Actually, Ivan, I didn’t know where I stood with you when you left yesterday. I was wondering if I’d see you again.”

  He grinned. “Babe! You take life way too seriously.”

  “I do?”

  He slid his arms around my waist, catching his kiss on the corner of my mouth. I put my hands gently on the sides of his face, and closed my eyes. Ivan’s not the sort to drop a butterfly kiss. He starts out with full passion overdrive and moves up the scale. On Friday night that was a real turn-on, but something had gone missing. I shifted my mouth to his ear and whispered in it. “I’d love to do this, Ivan, but I can’t, not right now.”

  “’Course you can.”

  “I have to get ready for a client.”

  He began nuzzling at my neck. I could feel his teeth pretend to bite, sharp as a puppy’s. “Don’t you ever take a break?”

  “Not if I want to pay the rent.”

  “Ring them up and cancel, sweetheart. I’ll pay your rent.”

  I laughed. “Nice try. But I actually love my work, rent or not.”

  “When am I going to see you properly?”

  “How about Wednesday evening? Come round, I’ll cook something.”

  “Are you telling me you’re working every e
vening between now and then?”

  “Yes, Ivan. My clients mostly work too. I’m busiest at weekends and after four in the afternoon.”

  Ivan shrugged. He nestled his mobile in the palm of his hand. His fingers moved fast over the keys, like the fat legs of some intelligent insect, searching for his calendar. “Yeah, I can come straight from the office, if you like. Six-ish?”

  “Make it seven,” I said. “I’ll probably have to shop for food.”

  He leaned into me and we kissed again. I wanted to ask him to not turn up without warning another time, but I didn’t like to admit how uncomfortable I’d felt when I realized he’d been watching the stupid grin on my face.

  “Seen any more of that copper?”

  “No, of course not.” The denial was out of my mouth before I could stop to ask myself why I was lying.

  “What did he want, in the end?”

  “One of my clients got himself arrested. It’s okay, he’s not in any trouble. Mistaken identity, almost.”

  “That’s good. You got me worried. Thought my girlfriend was a known criminal, for a minute.”

  “Yep, that’s me. A price on my head in nine counties.”

  I watched him lope along the path and waved as the gate clanged behind him. I went into the kitchen and made myself a sandwich. Ivan’s parting quip was ringing in my ears—not the known criminal part but the my girlfriend part. I wasn’t ready to consider Ivan anything more than a casual date. We were as different as a ladybird is from a greenfly.

  I grinned. So long as I’m the ladybird, I thought, munching on a radish.

  “So pleased to see you, Sabbie,” exclaimed my four o’clock. “How are you doing today?”

  Marianne Meyer had the faultless English accent of the Dutch, and she was always rather formal in her politeness. She towered over me as I let her in. She bordered on six feet in height, favouring well-cut slacks that glided against the concave curve of her abdomen and floated in a boot-cut around her stiletto heels. Her hair was as silky blond as mine is crinkly black and almost as long. She favoured small, tight tops that enhanced her beautiful breasts. At first I wondered about boob jobs, but now I’m sure that everything she displayed was real. She’s just a lucky girl—and that extended to her life. She had a fit bloke who adored her, a big family back in the Netherlands that meant a lot to her, and until recently she’d been accelerating through the cut-throat world of public relations.