by S J Bolton
‘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 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.
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 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.’
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.
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 t
hrough 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.