The girl’s howl tore at his heart. He stayed where he was, watching her thin body sob and her tears fall on to his hands. For five, maybe ten minutes she wept, and he held her hands until he felt her pulling away from him. He didn’t have tissues but somewhere in the vestry there was kitchen roll. He walked quickly back to the vestry, found it beside the sink and, returning, handed it over. She wiped her face and tried to smile up at him. Her eyes, washed by tears, were almost silver. Dr Oliver’s eyes had been blue. A deep, violet blue.
In the pocket of his shorts, his mobile started to ring. He should ignore it, let it go to the answer service, get back to whoever it was later. Except he knew who it was.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, getting up. ‘I’ll be back in a sec.’
He walked a few paces down the aisle and pressed Answer.
‘Harry Laycock.’
‘Berengaria speaking.’
‘Did you make it back safely, Dr Oliver?’
‘Now that’s … a bit spooky. How’d you do that?’
Harry glanced back up the aisle to where Gillian was staring at the floor. She was too close, she’d hear everything he said. ‘Like my boss, I work in mysterious ways,’ he answered.
There was a second’s pause.
‘Right, well, thanks for your help,’ came Dr Oliver’s voice. ‘But Duchess and I are both back where we belong and none the worse for our adventure.’
‘Delighted to hear it.’ Gillian was looking at him now. She wouldn’t like the interruption. The bereaved could be selfish. Not great timing, Princess. ‘You take care now,’ he said. ‘And say hello to Duchess for me.’
‘I’ll do that.’ The voice on the phone had fallen flat. ‘Goodbye.’
She was gone. And he had to get back to Gillian. Who was no longer sitting calmly on the front choir stall but was on her feet, staring round in what could only be described as horror. It was as though something had pulled the skin on her face tighter, made it mask-like. She was striding towards him. ‘Did you hear that?’ she demanded. ‘Did you hear it?’
‘I? What?’ He’d been on the phone. What was he supposed to have heard?
‘That voice, calling “Mummy,” did you hear it?’
Harry looked all around, astonished and a little alarmed by the change in Gillian. ‘I heard something, I think, but I was saying goodbye.’ He held up the phone.
‘What?’ she demanded. ‘What did you hear?’
‘Well, a child, I thought. A child outside.’
She clutched his arm, her fingers tight on his bare skin. ‘No, it was inside. It was coming from inside the church.’
‘There’s no one else here,’ he said slowly. ‘These old buildings can be deceptive. Sound echoes in funny ways.’
Gillian had spun away from him, was half running back up the aisle. She reached the choir stalls and started searching them, peering down the length of first one then the other.
What on earth?
She was crossing the church, dragging out the organ stool, back again behind the altar, pulling up the cloth. He’d almost reached her when she seemed to give up. She sobbed once and almost fell to the tiled floor. Then she drew herself up and opened her mouth.
‘Hayley!’ she screamed.
Harry stopped. He’d heard voices in this church too. And the sound of people he couldn’t see moving around. Why did he have this overwhelming urge to look behind him?
He turned. There wasn’t a soul in the church but Gillian and himself.
‘Let’s get you home,’ he said. ‘You probably need to rest.’ If she gave him the name of her GP he could phone him, explain what was happening, see if he could get her immediate help. He could try and call in on her himself tomorrow after morning services were done. As he reached her she clutched at him.
‘You heard her, you heard Hayley.’ She was almost begging him, pleading with him to tell her she wasn’t losing her grip on reality.
‘I certainly heard a child,’ he said, although in all honesty, he wasn’t that sure. He’d been listening to a change in inflexion in a woman’s voice on the phone and wondering what it might mean. ‘It’s possible I heard the child saying “Mummy,” but, you know, the Fletcher children have been playing around the church for most of the afternoon. It could easily have been Millie that we heard.’
Gillian was staring at him.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s get some fresh air, I’ll walk you home.’
Muttering a silent prayer that the Fletcher children, including the youngest, would be outside, Harry led Gillian out of the door and into the sunshine. They were halfway down the path when a toy arrow whizzed past them, making Gillian jump. Harry turned to the Fletchers’ garden on his right and found himself staring into the blue eyes of Joe Fletcher. A few yards away Tom was kicking a football against the wall of the house. Their sister sat on bare earth, digging in the soil.
‘Missed,’ said Harry, grinning at Joe.
Joe’s head shot round to see if his mother had noticed. She was hanging out washing and didn’t turn round.
‘Sorry,’ he mouthed. Harry winked.
‘Mouse,’ said Millie, her gaze fixed on something just a foot or two away. Her eyes gleamed and she reached out a chubby arm.
‘Millie, no, that’s a rat,’ called Harry. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Alice spin round and drop what she was holding.
Tom stopped kicking as Harry jumped over the wall and landed in the soft earth of the Fletchers’ garden.
‘Gone,’ said Joe. The rat was scurrying towards the wall. Its fat, grey tail hovered for a second in the gap between two stones and then disappeared. Harry looked back at the churchyard. Gillian had disappeared too.
12
21 September
FIRST THE WHISPERS WERE IN A DREAM. AND THEN THEY weren’t. Tom had no idea when it changed, when he went from dream to real, but one minute he was fast asleep and then he was awake and the dream was slipping away. He thought perhaps there were trees, and something in the trees that was watching him. Maybe there was the church, but definitely whispering. He was totally sure about that. Because he could still hear it.
He sat up. The luminous numbers on the desk alarm clock told him it was 02.53. His parents were never up at this time. They’d be fast asleep, the house closed up for the night.
So who was whispering?
Hanging upside-down, he stuck his head into the space above Joe’s bunk. His brother had his own room, right next door. He kept all his toys in it and played in it a lot, but he never slept there. Every night he climbed into the bunk below Tom’s.
‘Joe, are you awake?’
Even as he opened his mouth he could see that the bottom bunk was empty. The quilt was pushed back and there was a dent in the pillow where Joe’s head had been.
Tom swung his feet round and dropped to the carpet. All seemed still on the dark landing. Three doors were slightly open – the doors to the bathroom, to Millie’s room and to his parents’ bedroom – but behind each door there was just darkness. As he stepped closer to the top of the stairs, a cool breeze swept through the house; the front door was wide open.
Had someone come in? Or gone out?
The top step gave a very loud creak. Half hoping his parents would wake up and hear him, Tom took another step and then another.
Who had been whispering? Where was Joe?
As he reached the bottom step a wind swept past him into the house. Tiny hairs on his arms stood up to make goose bumps. Then the wind was gone and the air was soft and almost warm again. No need to shiver, really, except he couldn’t stop.
He knew he should wake his mum and dad. Joe’s leaving the house in the middle of the night was too serious for him to deal with alone. Except when he and Joe were involved in a scrape, the blame was never shared 50:50. A good 90 per cent of it invariably came in Tom’s direction and the facts of the case were rarely allowed to get in the way. If he woke his parents up now, he knew exactly who would find themselves in the
you-know-what the minute Joe was found and returned home.
Tom was going to kill him this time, he really was.
He stepped outside and, for a moment, forgot that he was angry, forgot that he was getting very close to being scared. So this was what it was like then – the night-time – soft and scented and strangely warm, a place where all the colours had gone, leaving black and silver and moonbeams in their place. He took another step away from the house.
Then that feeling began to creep over him again, the one he seemed to get every time he left the house these days. Even inside the house sometimes, especially when it was getting dark outside, it could steal up on him. Some days, it seemed to Tom, the curtains just couldn’t be closed quickly enough in the evening.
Someone was watching him now, he knew it, someone very close. He could almost hear breathing, he just had to hope it was his brother. Tom turned his head slowly towards the corner of the house.
Two large eyes in a pale, flabby face looked back at him. Then they were gone.
Tom ran for the house. In the relative safety of the doorway, he stopped and turned back.
A girl, about his own age if size was anything to go by, was shinning up the wall that separated the Fletchers’ garden from the church land. She climbed quickly, as if she’d done it many times before, long hair trailing behind her and loose clothes fluttering in the breeze. Like Tom, she was barefoot, but her feet were nothing like his. Even at this distance they looked enormous compared to the rest of her. So did her hands.
Then Tom caught sight of something else at the corner of the house, at the exact spot from which the girl had appeared. He was ready to dive indoors when he realized it was Joe, in his red and blue Spiderman dressing gown.
‘What are you doing?’ he hissed as Joe came trotting towards him. ‘Come back inside now or I’m getting Dad.’ Glancing back up towards the church wall, he saw the girl had gone. Really gone, or just hiding? Because that’s what she did. She hid and she watched.
‘We’re not supposed to be here, Tom,’ muttered Joe.
‘I know we’re not,’ shot back Tom. ‘So let’s get back inside before Mum and Dad wake up.’
Joe lifted his head. His eyes looked huge in his pale face. ‘No,’ he said, letting his eyes drift away from Tom to the wall. ‘We’re not supposed to be here,’ he repeated. ‘It’s not safe.’
13
22 September
MILLIE, THE LITTLE GIRL WITH HAIR THE COLOUR OF SPUN sugar, was in the garden. She was wearing hand-me-down clothes from one of her brothers, dark-blue jogging trousers and a blue and white football sweatshirt. Mud clung to her as she sat on the bare earth. The nappy, peeking out over the top of her joggers, made her bottom look enormous.
‘Millie.’ Her mother’s voice, from inside the house. She appeared in the doorway, plastic bowl in one hand, the other on her hip in exasperation.
‘Will you look at you?’ she called. Millie beamed back. She tried to stand, made it halfway and then fell back on her bottom.
‘Stay there for a minute, poppet,’ called Millie’s mother. ‘I’ll get you some clothes. Then we’ll get the boys. Bye!’ She disappeared inside the house again and the child opened her mouth to wail. Then her head shot round to face the other direction. She’d heard something.
Millie got up and set off along the rough ground, almost to the wall that bordered the property. She stopped when she was only a few inches away and looked up. A yew tree, possibly several hundred years old, grew in the churchyard so close to the wall as to be almost part ofit. Millie looked up.
‘Lo,’ she said. Lo Ebba.’
14
24 September
SHE WAS TALLER THAN HE REMEMBERED, BUT EVERY BIT AS slender. She had a bridle and reins slung round her shoulders as she appeared from the horse-box. She slid her right arm under the saddle that hung waiting on a large hook and then set off down the yard. Her left arm gripped a heavy-duty steel-and-plastic walking stick as she made her slow, ungainly way across the concrete.
Harry remained still, half hidden by the low branches of a huge walnut tree, watching her limp towards the tack room. She pushed the door with her shoulder and, rather awkwardly, disappeared inside.
Was this really a good idea? It was months since he’d asked a woman out. And why on earth had he picked one he knew absolutely nothing about?
Except he did know one or two things, didn’t he? Like the fact that the sciatic nerve was the longest and widest single nerve in the body, starting in the lower back and running down through the buttock and the leg. He knew that it fed the skin of the leg and also the muscles of the back of the thigh, lower leg and foot. The day he’d met Dr Oliver – Evi, he now knew she was called – he’d sat at his computer after dinner and started searching. Ten minutes later, he’d felt like he was prying.
The door to the tack room was opening and she was coming out. No longer loaded down with tack, she walked more easily, but still with a pronounced, rolling limp.
She saw him before he had a chance to move and stopped walking. Was that good or bad? Then she reached up to unfasten and remove her hat. Good? She carried on towards him and that twitch on her face could be a smile or it could be a grimace of embarrassment. Difficult to be sure and no time to make up his mind because she was feet away and he really had to say—
‘Hello.’ She’d got there first. Hello was OK, wasn’t it? Better than What the hell are you doing here?
‘Hi. Good ride?’ Good ride! Was that really the best he could do?
‘Bracing, thanks. What are you doing here?’
He pulled his right hand out of his pocket. Ten seconds into the conversation and he was already employing Plan B.
‘Is this yours?’ he asked, as the tiny silver bracelet with blue stones caught the light. She didn’t move to take it.
‘Nope,’ she said, shaking her head. The hair around her temples was damp with sweat, flattened against her head by the pressure of the riding hat. She put a hand up to it and then brought it back down again. Her face was pink; five days ago it had been pale with shock.
‘Did you find it on the road?’ she asked.
‘No. I bought it on Rawtenstall market a couple of days ago,’ he confessed. Well, that was a bit high risk but it might just have paid off. The twitch around her mouth had widened, might even be verging on a smile.
‘That was a bit rash,’ she said. ‘I don’t think it’s your colour.’
‘You’re right, I’m more of a soft-lemony man, but I needed an excuse.’
Yes, definitely a smile. ‘What for?’ she said.
‘I was worried about Duchess.’
‘Duchess?’ Lips pulled straight again. Eyebrows raised. Eyes still smiling.
‘Yes, how is she?’ He turned to the box where the grey cob stood watching them and took a few paces towards her. ‘This is her, right?’
She was following him. He could hear the clatter of the stick on the concrete. ‘This is Duchess,’ she confirmed. ‘None the worse for her adventure at the weekend. Which I haven’t mentioned to anyone here, by the way.’
‘My lips are sealed. How does she feel about Polo mints?’
She was standing at his side now, inches away. ‘She’ll bite your hand off,’ she said.
Harry felt in his pocket again and brought out the thin green tube that he’d also bought at the market. In her box, Duchess whickered at him. Two boxes further down a horse began kicking against its door.
‘You’ve done it now,’ said Evi. ‘Horses can smell Polo mints through the wrapper. And they recognize the paper.’
‘At least someone’s pleased to see me,’ said Harry, unwrapping the tube and holding out the flat of his hand to Duchess. A split-second later the mint had been replaced by a good dollop of horse slobber. Now what, exactly, was he supposed to do with that? Wiping it down his jeans was not going to look good.
‘I should sit down,’ said Evi. ‘Is that OK?’
‘Of course,’ said Harry, wi
ggling his fingers to dry them off. ‘Do you need any help?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I just can’t stand up for any length of time.’ She moved the stick and set off across the yard, back to the walnut tree, under which a few plastic chairs were scattered. Harry followed close behind and held a chair-back steady while she lowered herself. He pulled up a second chair and sat beside her. Duchess’s drool was starting to dry on his hand.
In the manège in front of them a rider was schooling a young horse, the same colour as Duchess but altogether finer of build. The school was surrounded by a beech hedge and the leaves were already starting to turn the soft golden-brown of newly minted coins.
‘Beautiful evening,’ said Harry, watching the setting sun bounce off the beech hedge and throw gold reflections on to the horse’s coat. It looked like it was wearing chain-mail.
‘How did you know I was here?’ asked Evi.
‘I’ve been coming every night on the off-chance,’ replied Harry. The horse almost seemed to be trotting on the spot, its head tucked down so that its nose was pointing at the ground. Foam was gathering around its mouth. ‘Is that horse a thoroughbred?’ he asked.
‘He’s from Ireland,’ said Evi. ‘Quite beautiful, but far too young and skittish for me to be allowed anywhere near. And seriously?’
She was looking at him now, not at the beautiful young horse. Her eyes were as blue as he remembered. ‘Seriously,’ he said, ‘I phoned the yard on Monday and asked to speak to Dr Oliver. I insisted Monday was the night you came. I mentioned Duchess and asked how she was recovering from her bruised foot and said it was really important I talk to you and were they sure you weren’t there because I was certain you’d said Monday. After a few minutes of this, they looked you up in the book and told me that Dr Oliver, also known as Evi, rides on Thursdays, Saturdays and sometimes Sundays.’
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