by Sarah Till
The Little Death
Sarah Till's STRONG WOMEN Series, Volume 1
Sarah Till
Published by Novelesque, 2020.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
THE LITTLE DEATH
First edition. March 31, 2020.
Copyright © 2020 Sarah Till.
Written by Sarah Till.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
La Petite Mort
PATTI | The Aetiology of the Moor
Chapter One
The Heath
Chapter Two
The Moorland Wildlife Community
Chapter Three
The Moorland Predators and Tricksters
Chapter Four
Jimmy Jones and Me
Hearts and Flowers
If I Knew You Were Coming I’d Have Baked a Cake
PATTI | The Birds
Chapter Five
The Bee
Chapter Six
The Lizard
Chapter Seven
Long Days and Longer Nights
Making Enquiries
My Love Lies Bleeding
PATTI | The Fox
Chapter Eight
The Symbiosis of Nature
Chapter Nine
The Pollination of the Heath
Chapter Ten
The Invisible World of Moorland
Chapter Eleven
The Moorland Attacks and Defences
Chapter Twelve
Hope Springs Eternal
Betrayal
These Foolish Thing Remind Me of You
PATTI | Identification of Moorland Impostors
Chapter Thirteen
The Moorland Fires
Chapter Fourteen
Thank You and Goodnight
PATTI | The end of summer – the hibernation of the heath
Chapter Fifteen
READ AN EXCLUSIVE CHAPTER OF SARAH TILLS NEXT BOOK - Chapter One of The Tintagel Secret
Acknowledgements
Biography
For A.
La Petite Mort
‘The term "la petite mort" or "the small death" does not always apply to sexual experiences. It can also be used when some undesired thing has happened to a person and has affected them so much that "a part of them dies inside”’ – Anon
PATTI
The Aetiology of the Moor
Moorland, or heath, is the natural occurrence of native open spaces where a symbiosis of the archeology, botany and entomology, ornithology and mammalogy native to the area provide a thriving ecosystem. However, in recent years, the heath has declined, and, to understand the causation, we must seek not to measure the numbers of plant life, birds, foxes, voles, bees, soil types or weather (although this data is a useful component); we must understand the living moor and how its components work together, what interferes with this process, and how this can be remedied. This is necessary not for the annals of scientific study, but essential for the continuation of human life; the production of chemicals and gases essential for human survival are produced by moorland plant life, and the birds, bees and small animals that populate the heath assist in pollination and reseeding of crops that feed over two thirds of mankind.
When undamaged land is ploughed, commercially planted with softwoods or otherwise modified for modern use, its natural and historical qualities are at least endangered and very often lost. It is a testimony to the importance of modern moorland management that nowhere else can you find landscape wildlife and historical conservation on such a scale and in such direct harmony with the economic uses to which the land is put.
Aetiology
Definitions of aetiology
n. - The science, doctrine, or demonstration of causes; esp., the investigation of the causes of any disease; the science of the origin and development of things.
n. - The assignment of a cause
Chapter One
I lie in bed, my breath shallow so he doesn’t hear me. Our warm arms touch as I turn over and, for a second, I have a memory of a feeling that I had once loved him. I lie there for a moment, mourning that freedom. Where had it gone?
As I tiptoe through the bedroom, down the stairs and towards the utility room, I know that it’s tied up and held hostage in a straitjacket of hurt and suspicion. The very act of creeping through my own home in the middle of the night confirms this. As I reach the sticky door, my discussion with myself ends and I focus on my mission. I had mapped the whole house in terms of creaking floorboards, creaky doors, and those that slam shut on their own due to a slight imbalance. I snigger at the word ‘imbalance’, as everything about what I am doing at this moment seems disjointed and pointless.
I push the handle down slowly. I oiled it yesterday when he was at work so that it wouldn’t click and groan as the metal rubs on itself, but there is a loud grating sound now. I reach for a tea towel and hold it over the door handle, pushing again quickly. It opens, and I finally breathe out. I pad silently across the carpeted floor and scramble for his jacket, my hand slipping into the pocket and finding his phone. Even as I look at the screen, an old photograph of me smiling staring out at me, another text arrives. I know the combination of buttons to press by heart to see the texts and emails. I know the phone number and email address, I have it etched on the inside of my mind and it’s my default setting when my thoughts are wandering.
I quickly scan the messages and it’s the same mixture of ‘miss you’, ‘can’t wait for the next time’ and ‘I want to fuck you.’ I feel the usual release of tension when I have read them; I know this is becoming an addiction, this secret reading. It’s like reading a never-ending story of how the man I love – have loved, did love – is lying to me.
Of course, I’ve asked him what is going on. The weekend discussions about fidelity, always approached sideways on and then with full frontal accusations, ending in his denials and my wondering if I am actually insane. Obviously, I haven’t told him about how I look through his texts or emails, or how I smell his clothes, or how I once found condom wrappers in his pocket, a small trophy of my righteousness. Well, actually, I had mentioned the condom wrapper, making some flip comment about his pockets and the washing machine – I’d even run it under the tap before I accused him so I wouldn’t look like a bunny boiler. He told me that he’d picked it up in the school where he worked and had stuffed it in his pocket to save the girls blushes. It all sounded so reasonable. Maybe that part was true? But what about the texts and the emails? I’d phoned the number and emailed the addresses, at which point both had changed.
I cringed at an awkward answer phone moment where I’d breathed heavily into my mobile and wondered what to say to the woman David was sleeping with. The woman whose sex life, all the positions they had done it in, how she had pleasured him in the cinema, on a train, in a phone box was detailed in texts and emails. What did you say to someone who has stolen your intimacy?
The trouble is, we still live the day-to-day stuff as normal. As normal as I can with this time bomb and what our life has become, anyway. I do his washing, iron his shirts, go to social events with him. I’m an aetiologist, someone who studies cause. I’m just the kind of person who needs an explanation, evidence, a cause to explain an effect. I work from home, caring for the heath moorland. Researching the birds and the bees and making jars of heather honey. I wave David goodbye at eight thirty each day. Then I go and read his emails and rummage through his yesterday clothes for receipts and clues. I’ve got a big collection now, but the difficult part is producing them and telling him about nightly visits to his phone. It would make me look like the ba
d person, the stalker. And, as time has gone accompanied by more and more arguments, based on my cause and effect theory his reaction wouldn’t be good.
I sit down in the utility room. It’s three sides glass and I can see the canopy of stars. We live on the Moor in a converted barn, and, because there is no light pollution up here, I can see the Milky Way clearly on most cloudless nights. In the back of my mind I know that if David ever caught me in here he wouldn’t suspect the pocket rummaging. He’d simply think that I was being artistic, looking at the universe and becoming inspired. Staring at the waxing moon, which tonight is a sliver in the sky, leaning backwards and giving me a hook to hang all my problems on. Not that I have so many problems, not material difficulties, anyway. I was in the unfortunate position of being left a reasonable amount when my parents died, both when I was twenty-five. I miss them every minute and would give the money back to see their faces one more time, but as it’s tied up in my dream home, our dream home, I try to enjoy it.
So I study the aetiology of the moor. I work for myself, studying birdlife, bees, all the creatures that live on the moor, having finished a physics degree. Then a master’s degree in the Philosophy of Science and Conservation. I’m researching heather and how to prevent its extinction. I’ve set up hives and aviaries at the back of our house, and we’re conveniently close to a natural food sources – moor heather and the tiny creatures that live with it. It’s ground-breaking research because I’m not measuring the bees, or the hives, or the birds, or the creatures. I’m watching them collect the pollen and nectar from the moorland heather and make honey.
I’m watching the bird’s nest and the insects’ gestation periods. And the soil. But most of all the heather and its cycle. So I’m measuring the interaction, the symbiosis of life on the heath. The behaviour of the moor. More like us than we care to realise.
So far, everyday life seems to interrupt anything I start, but David is the official breadwinner, working as a teacher. He’s a musician, he teaches music to young people. It’s the old cliché of opposites attracting, I’m the scientist and he’s the artist, forever pleading with the other for understanding. When we got the money we both decided that we would live the lives we wanted to, and not be forced into a job that bored or stifled us. I could never have known then what my life would become.
As I stare out into the pin-cushioned darkness, I see a faint light on the horizon and know that it’s nearly dawn. In another half an hour it will be light and I’ll still be sitting here, wondering what to do next. A square patch of light in the distance blinks to break the nothingness, and I know Sarah is up and about.
Sarah Edwards was the first person I met after we had bought the house. She had knocked on the door with a spider plant and a bottle of wine, and I’d seen her almost every day since then. It was she who had filled me in about why such a wonderful house had been on the market for so long.
‘It’s the sightseers. The people who come here just because of... you know.’
I didn’t know, and neither did David. I had begun to get an idea that perhaps the estate agent hadn’t told us everything about the house when, on the first weekend after we moved in, a coach parked outside and people embarked and took photographs. Of what, neither of us was quite sure. A few weeks later, several men in Landrovers parked on the roadside opposite and carried equipment onto the moorland, sombre in black anoraks and boots. I’d watched from a distance and cringed as they trampled the heather, then gone out in my housecoat and asked them what they were doing. One of them had smiled and told me that they were continuing to dig. It was three weeks before I raised the subject with Sarah again. She’d looked up from her coffee cup and stared at me.
‘So you don’t know? Really? Did no one tell you? I am surprised. Oh. I thought you were here for the same reason I am.’
It’s strange when you don’t know someone very well, and they have made assumptions about you. I didn’t know whether to ask her what she meant or not. In the end she volunteered.
‘Look. Just over there, down on the other side of the wall, over the road, is Crop Moor.’ She pointed out of the window and my eyes followed her finger into the greyness that had already begun to smother my life. ‘Where the plane crashed. Those poor people who died down there, and who knows how many more are still there? They found most of the bodies, but not everyone. It was ages ago, but part of the plane’s still up there. And the families are back here regularly.’
I swallowed hard.
‘You’re joking, right? I knew something had happened somewhere around here. But just over the wall?’
‘No, no. Over the moor. Higher up. There are plenty of books written about it. Lots of speculation. And every time something happens round here, any strangers or anything, reporters are up here speculating. You must have seen them digging the other week?’ She points in the direction of the valley and my gaze follows the horizon into the dark dip. ‘They come back every so often when they have new information or requests from relatives. It was years ago, but people are still curious. The woman who converted this house and her husband, they were obsessed with it. All this land used to be a farm, this was the barn and my place was the main house. They both gave up work in the end to search the moor for those poor people.’
‘What happened to them? Why did they sell the house?’
‘Well, John got pneumonia through staying out there all night and Susanne became very depressed. I think she was the cousin of one of the young men who were never found.’
‘Never found?’
‘Yes. Six of them. Bodies never found. Not even...’
‘OK. I get it. But why was the house on the market for so long? It’s so beautiful. I did wonder why they accepted our offer so quickly?’
Sarah nods slowly.
‘Yeah, years it was. The truth is, no one wanted to live so near. No one wanted to be near here. Reckon it’s haunted. Plus the visitors, of course. A couple of years ago a man was found dead up there. It was national news. He had no ID and they thought he was looking for his grandfather. One of the crash victims. There’s always folk around here.’
Sarah slipped into what I now know, four years later, is her witchy mode, where she pulls a face with an overbite and hunches her shoulders. I know that when she takes this stance some paranormal crap is about to bite me. I sip my tea slowly.
‘So is that why people were coming here and taking photographs? Death tourism?’ Sarah nodded. ‘That’s disgusting. Horrible.’
She shifted on her chair a slightly and I could see I had hit a nerve.
‘Not really. People come here for different reasons. Some come here to mourn and some come here to rubberneck, of course. Some people just come here to see what it feels like, to be near death. Or to find things out.’
‘Deep. Very deep. But why are you here, Sarah?’
She nodded slightly and sighed.
‘I’m psychic.’
I nearly choked on my tea.
‘A psychic? Like you can hear dead people? And you’re here to listen to the dead people on the moor?’
‘No. Well yes and no. There are still some people missing up here on the moor. I help the relatives find them.’
Although I desperately wanted to snatch the coffee mug out of Sarah’s cupped hands and usher her quickly out of the house, I also wanted to know more.
‘For, like, money?’
‘Yes. I charge them a fee and I help them to locate their loved ones. I go all around the country doing it.’ She donned a kind of proud expression. ‘I sometimes help the police as well.’
‘So you make your money out of other people’s misery?’
Sarah sighed and shook her head.
‘I’m helping them. They come to me and we go out together, to look for the loved ones. Or I give them a map.’
‘OK then. What’s your success rate?’
I was angry and arms-folded. My initial impression of Sarah as scatty and a little bit flaky was off mark. She was coming a
cross as a shrewd businesswoman, with a unique angle.
‘It’s not about the success rate. It’s about the being with people, counselling them, helping them through. Giving them hope.’
‘But don’t you have to be qualified to be a counsellor or something? Aren’t you just milking desperate people?’
She’d got up at this point and placed the coffee mug gently on the table.
‘I’m going to leave now, Patricia. You know where I am if you need me. Yeah?’
I’d snorted my goodbyes to her that day, but I soon found that I did need her. On my own all day, apart from my moorland creatures and the death tourists coming and going, up on the desolate moorland staring at the wreckage of the plane, I needed company. I also needed someone to talk to about my problems, and Sarah had one of those faces, one of those emotionless, nodding visages that you could tell anything to. Usually for eighty quid, but I got it for a cup of coffee and a cake.
I see her pass her kitchen window now and imagine her pulling on her boots. She greets the dawn every day, an old ritual, she told me, attuning her body to the universe. I’d tried to be very angry at her for making money out of the families of people who were probably dead, but I couldn’t be angry for long. One reason was that she was such good company and never complains at listening to my various long-winded strategies for catching David with his lover. Secondly, because she was such a bad fucking psychic. I had, in a dark moment, insisted that she consult the spirit world and tell me what was going on with David. She had gone through the motions of contacting the other side, there was plenty of pointing backwards over her shoulder and drama-laden breathing, and the end result was that he definitely wasn’t seeing a woman. Or a man. Definitely not. She also told me that my parents were happy living in France. I happened to know that she had seen a letter with a French postmark on my hallway table and had taken in a parcel for me marked ‘To Pat love from Mum and Dad’, again postmarked Paris. These were from David’s parents. They liked to be called Mum and Dad by all their children’s partners, and I was happy to oblige. I hadn’t the heart to tell Sarah that mine were dead, and I let her think I was a completely different person than I actually was in return for chat and cake.
