A Half Forgotten Song

CHAPTER TEN

Three days after Ilir had fought with Ed Lynch in the pub, Zach began to pack up all his things. A catalog slipped from his fingers onto the floor, the spine cracked by the number of times he had looked at it so that it fell open at a picture of Dennis, the young man who’d brought him to Blacknowle in the first place. Dennis, and Delphine: the daughter who disappeared. He pictured her face, hanging on the gallery wall; all the hours he had spent studying it and coveting it. He’d been so sure, for a while, that he would find out what had happened to her. That Dimity Hatcher would know, and would tell him once he had fetched hearts for her, and charmed her with portraits of herself she had never seen before. Now he had to choose between Charles Aubrey and Hannah Brock, since Hannah was somehow involved in cheating the man to whom Zach felt a fierce, if nebulous, loyalty. Hannah who had shut him out, and lied to him, and possibly felt nothing for him. Soon, he would have to drive out of Blacknowle with a destination in mind. Soon, but not quite yet. He breathed a small sigh of relief as he gave himself this stay of execution.

The Watch was silent and lifeless, the windows blank, betraying not even a flicker of movement from within. Zach stood beneath the small window in the north-end wall and stared up at it. This was the room from which the sounds of movement had always come. The glass pane was broken in one corner, a small hole at the center of a starburst of cracks, as though somebody had thrown a pebble through it at some point. He could see pale curtains hanging inside, half open, half closed. One of them shifted slightly in the breeze, and the sudden movement made Zach jump, made him duck for cover nearer the wall, before he realized what it was. Was there something in that room that Dimity Hatcher wanted to hide? Something, or someone? Just then he heard the quiet, dry sound of paper sliding against paper, coming from the window. The turning of a page; the discarding of one piece from a pile. Zach’s scalp crawled peculiarly, and he hurried away from the window.

He knocked several times on the door, but there was no answer. He couldn’t think where else Dimity could be, except inside. He pictured the way her gaze drifted into the distance, the way she seemed to vanish into her thoughts. He thought of her oddness, her charms and spells. He thought of a kitchen knife in her hand and the way her light sometimes stayed on late into the night, as though she never slept. He thought of blood beneath her fingernails, staining her disheveled mittens. Shivering slightly, he knocked again, more softly; suddenly almost afraid to rouse her. This time, he heard movement from within.

There was a pitch-black thing, crowding the room; swelling like a huge and deadly wave, waiting to break. Dimity cowered from it. It did no good to shut her eyes. When she shut her eyes, she saw rats. Rats twisted up with their eyes bulging and their bodies twitching and jerking into death. Rats that had eaten Valentina’s hemlock bait. She went from room to room, murmuring all the charms she knew, but the threatening darkness kept after her. What happened to Celeste? she heard Zach ask, and she spun around, wondering how he’d got inside, how long he’d been there, listening. But no, just another echo, the echo of a question he’d asked before. Recently, or a long time ago? She couldn’t remember now. Time was behaving oddly; day and night had blurred. She could no longer sleep at night, only in fitful snatches during the safety of the daylight hours. Too many visitors, too many voices. Élodie doing handstands against the living room wall; Valentina laughing, mocking, waving her finger; Delphine’s sad, sad eyes. And now this dreadful black thing, too, which had no name, which refused to identify itself. But in the writhing rats, scrabbling in the corners of the room, Dimity understood what it was, and she feared it more than anything. It was the thing that she did. The awful thing.

She wanted to go upstairs to the closed room, she wanted to throw open the door and lie down and be comforted, but something stopped her. When she surrendered to that yearning, it would be for the last time. It would be an unrepeatable thing, the one final time, and after that she would be truly alone. It was instinct that told her this; intuition rather than rational thought. She could not face it; would not do it, not yet. She got halfway up the stairs at one point, to escape the black thing, but she made herself stop and go no farther. Valentina was up in her room now, asleep, keeping out of it, leaving Dimity to face the thing alone. Earlier she had cocked an eyebrow at her daughter, just like she had in the summer of 1939. That was a stroke of luck then, wasn’t it? she’d said savagely. Now, as then, Dimity had no words to answer her. Valentina was never moved by tears; never once, not even when Dimity was tiny. Not even the time when she was five years old and she tripped over her feet and fell into a hollow packed with furze and nettles and bees, to emerge stung and scratched and howling. Life’s going to throw worse at you than that, my girl, so stop that racket. And life had thrown worse at her. Valentina had been right about that.

There was a knocking at the door, loud and insistent, and Dimity stared at it in shock. It was almost dark outside. She waited until she was no longer sure she’d heard anything at all, and then the knocking came again, for longer this time. She thought it could be a trick; it could be anyone, anything, waiting to be let in. Her heart fluttered like a moth. She crossed to the door and hesitantly laid her ear to it. All the voices of The Watch sounded louder that way, coming through the walls and the wood like the sea whispering through the caverns of a shell. Mutterings, accusations, laughter; the rough voices of Valentina’s many, many visitors.

“Dimity? Are you there?” A voice so loud it made her yell and scuttle back from the door.

“Who is that?” she said, and found her eyes full of frightened tears.

“It’s Zach. I’ve just come down to say hello.”

“Zach?” Dimity echoed, thinking hard.

“Zach Gilchrist-you know me. Are you all right?” She did know him, of course. The one with all the pictures, whose voice had now joined all the others in The Watch, asking his incessant questions. Her first thought was to not let him in. She couldn’t remember why she didn’t want to, and only knew that she didn’t; but he could be no worse than the black thing already inside with her, she decided. Perhaps he might make it subside for a while, might make it bide its time. Tentatively, Dimity opened the door.

Zach watched Dimity with consternation as she moved around the kitchen, ostensibly making them tea. She twitched and dithered, her eyes darting around the room as if searching for something. Her attention flitted like a mayfly, never quite alighting. She moved the mugs from one countertop to the next, poured the water from the kettle down the sink before it had boiled, and refilled it. At one point, as Zach was telling her about the fight at the pub, she whirled around with a cry and put her hand to her mouth. He thought for a moment that he had shocked her with the violence of the story, but then he saw that she was staring straight past him, at the kitchen window. He turned to look but there was nothing there, nothing outside, just the green hill, rolling down to the sea.

“What is it, Dimity? What’s the matter?” he said. She flicked her eyes at him and shook her head, and Zach saw how quick and shallow her breathing had become. He stood up, took her hands, and drew her towards a chair. “Come and sit down, please. Something’s upset you.”

“They won’t leave me alone!” the old woman cried as she sank into one of the rickety kitchen chairs.

“Who won’t, Dimity?”

“All of them…” She passed her hand in front of her eyes again, and took a deep breath. “Ghosts. Just ghosts, that’s all. Just an old woman’s fancy.” She looked up and tried to smile, but it was a tremulous, unconvincing thing.

“You… see them, do you?” Zach asked cautiously.

“I… I don’t know. I think… sometimes… that I do. They want answers from me, just like you do.” She gazed at him, steady and desperate, and Zach sensed some vast sorrow inside her.

“Well… I won’t ask you for any more answers. Not if you don’t want to give them,” he said.

Dimity shook her head, and tears dropped into her lap. “I saw them together. I didn’t tell you… but perhaps you’ve a right to know.”

“Saw who, Dimity?”

“My Charles, and your… grandma. I saw them kiss.” There was a note of despair in her voice, and Zach had an odd feeling, like something falling into place. Or perhaps out of place.

“So, you think he could have been-”

“I don’t know!” Dimity cried abruptly. “I don’t know! But I saw them together, and I never told. I never told… Charles. Never told Celeste.”

“Jesus.” Zach leaned back in his chair, absorbing her words. Somehow he had always thought, deep down, that the rumor was just that-a rumor. He’d been quite prepared to believe Dimity before, when she’d denied any affair between them. Now, it seemed, he wasn’t quite prepared to be told that there had been one. “So he… he betrayed you?” he said softly. Dimity broke into sobs and Zach took hold of her hands. “I’m sorry, Dimity. I really am.”

For a while, Dimity allowed herself to be comforted, but then she gripped his hands fiercely.

“Why are you here? Are you one of them? Have I dreamed you?” she said.

“No, Dimity.” Zach swallowed uneasily. “You haven’t dreamed me. I’m real.”

“Why are you here?” she said again.

“I came… well, I suppose I came to say good-bye.” He hadn’t realized it until he said it. He took a deep breath, and looked hard into Dimity’s eyes. “Is there anything else… anything else, you can tell me about that summer? About Dennis, or why Charles went off to war? About what happened to Delphine and Celeste?” For a hung moment, neither of them breathed. Their eyes stayed locked together, and the moment seemed to spread out, to pause unnaturally. It was so still that Zach couldn’t hear his watch ticking, or the kettle coming to the boil; he couldn’t hear Dimity’s labored breathing, or the background song of the sea. For a second, he thought he heard a fretful wind, blowing through the dank little kitchen. A hot, dry wind, carrying strange perfumes. For a second he thought he heard the sound of hands clapping, and the voices of children, chanting along in time. He thought he heard the scratch of a pencil on paper and a man’s chuckle, deep and energetic; captivating, infectious. Then he blinked, and it was all gone.

“No,” said Dimity, and for a second Zach could not remember what he’d asked. “No. There is nothing more I can tell you.” Her voice was desolate.

“I want to ask you one more thing.”

“What?”

“May I draw you?”

To draw the same subject that Aubrey had once drawn-it was yet another pilgrimage, of a kind. Zach had no doubt that his would be poor work in comparison, but the fascination remained and he was no longer afraid to try. He had still never sketched Hannah. He wondered if he’d missed his chance now, and whether he’d have been able to draw everything that was wonderful and infuriating about her; from her toothy, wolfish smile to her hardheadedness; from her unabashed sensuality to the barriers she put up between herself and the world. Between herself and Zach. He wondered if he’d have been able to capture that nagging familiarity he sometimes saw, when she turned her head just so. Thoughts of her brought a cocktail of lust, anger, tenderness, and frustration, so he tried determinedly to dispel them. He focused on his sitter instead, wearing a frown of concentration, and began.

He didn’t work fast. They took breaks, and drank tea, and put the lights on when it got dark outside. But Dimity didn’t seem in the least impatient. On the contrary, she grew still and serene under his scrutiny, as though waiting to be drawn came as naturally to her as breathing. He tried to capture the wisps of beauty hidden in her disheveled face; tried to imply with subtle shading the way her irises, though surrounded by whites gone grayish-yellow, remained a warm hazel color, perfectly halfway between green and brown. When he finally finished, there was a cramp blazing in his pen hand, and his neck was aching. But when he looked at his drawing, it was Dimity Hatcher. Quite unmistakably. It was the best work he’d done in years.

“Will you show me?” Dimity asked with a dreamy half smile. At once, Zach’s quiet satisfaction dissolved into anxiety. But he took a breath and handed the picture to her. Her face fell into lines of dismay, and her hand rose halfway to her mouth before fluttering back into her lap. “Oh,” she said.

“Look, it’s not very good. I’m sorry-nothing like being drawn by Aubrey, I’m sure…”

“No,” she murmured softly. “But it is good… it’s good. But I thought… silly, really… I thought I might see myself as I was. As I was in all these other pictures you brought me. I might be beautiful again.”

“You are, though. Far more beautiful than I’ve managed to draw you… Blame the artist, not the sitter, Dimity,” said Zach.

“But it is me. It’s a good likeness. You’re very talented,” she said, nodding slowly. Zach smiled, heartened by this verdict. “Will you take a meal in payment for this picture?”

“You want to keep it?” said Zach.

“Yes, if I can. It’ll be the last one, after all. Who else will draw me, before the end?” She smiled sadly, but Zach was pleased to see how much calmer she seemed now than when he’d arrived. As though being drawn had soothed her troubled spirit.

“All right, then. What’s for dinner?”

It was late when he finally took his leave of Dimity, thanking her for dinner, which had been bacon, eggs, and greens, and giving no answer when she asked when he would be back. It was dark outside, a greenish dark that he found he could see quite well in, after a while, even though he had no flashlight. In the field behind Southern Farmhouse, the Portland ewes dotted the hillside with their lambs keeping close to their heels. From time to time he heard them call to one another, throaty and plaintive. He felt something like affection for them, something almost like pride. As though in helping with the lambing, in sleeping with their mistress, he had taken on some responsibility for them. They’re not your sheep and she’s not your woman. That is not your life, he told himself firmly. It was time to banish the pleasant daydream he’d been having, of Elise sitting at Hannah’s kitchen table with a mug of hot chocolate in her hands. It was clearly never going to happen. In the dream, the farm kitchen was clean, tidy, warm. No longer a wreck of a place, a shrine to Hannah’s loss and grief. He excised the images from his mind as carefully as he could, but the process still cut him. The breeze slipped damp fingers down his collar, and he was hit by a sudden rush of loneliness. A tawny owl came to hunt the field in front of him, crisscrossing the pasture on silent wings. He envied its sense of purpose.

On a whim, he walked down towards the cliffs. Saying good-bye again, he realized. He stood and listened to the invisible sea. There was a brisk wind blowing, and the waves against the rocks sounded hurried, impatient. By straining his eyes, he could just about see their white crests as they frothed ashore, and then another light sparkled, like a jewel against the black. Zach blinked, and thought he’d imagined it. But then it came again, from beyond the beach, out on the water. No, not on the water, he realized. On the stone jetty. A flashlight beam, lancing out to sea. Zach’s breath caught in his chest. He couldn’t see the light’s source, couldn’t see a hand or an arm, only the glitter of the beam on the water, stretching out into the blackness. But he knew, he knew, it was Hannah. The sky was overcast with cloud, no stars to light the scene, no moon to make it glow. A cold, hard dark, perfect for keeping secrets. It was Tuesday night.

A minute passed, then another. The wind blew Zach’s coat open and parted around him coldly. He was riveted to the spot, his heart bumping uncomfortably. And then, another light appeared out on the water. Coming along the coast from the west; the single larger beam of a boat’s spotlight. It maneuvered in a wide arc opposite the bay, then came in straight towards the flashlight beam, slow and steady, slightly to the left of the stone jetty. In the tiny spot of light from Hannah’s light, Zach saw a man’s large form, swathed in waterproofs; the white side of the boat, the orange flash of a life buoy. Then, as the boat reached the side of the jetty and stopped, both lights went out, and there was nothing more to see. Zach remained, listening hard. During a slight lull in the wind a minute later, he heard the boat’s engine gunning as it reversed, pulling away again; then he heard nothing more.

Zach’s thoughts were rushing, tumbling along, and he was paralyzed by the need to do something, to react in some way. But in what way, he had no idea. They had smuggled something in from the sea. Something paid for in secret, that needed the cover of night and as little light as possible. James Horne and his boat, and Hannah to know the way, to guide him in. Whatever they had brought was obviously illegal. More pictures of Dennis, he thought, or was that only one line of trade? Did they deal in worse things as well? He stood with the silent bulk of The Watch behind him and the invisible drop down to the ocean in front of him, and felt as though the whole of Blacknowle had shut him out. It had seemed for a while as though he might settle, as though he might be included there. He’d thought that Dimity Hatcher was his friend; that Hannah was his girlfriend. That he would be the one to put Blacknowle on the map with a wholly different book about Charles Aubrey. But now he saw that it had all been a misconstruction on his part. He’d been played along with to a point, and then brushed aside. Zach felt the pain of this rejection beneath a rising swell of anger. Below him, the sea hissed in the dark.

He strode back towards the village at a rapid pace, so that he was out of breath by the time he got to the top of the track. He moved as though he had a purpose, when in truth he had no idea where his walk would terminate, and what he would do when it did. His anger was directionless, purposeless, just like his impatient speed. But in the next moment, both were abruptly curtailed for him. When he saw what was up ahead, at the top of the lane to Southern Farm, Zach’s pace dwindled to nothing. He stood and stared. Three police cars were parked nose-to-tail, tucked into the hedge at the top of the lane. One had its lights on, its engine running softly. Uniformed officers either sat in their vehicles or waited in the road beside them; three stood in a tight knot nearest the running car, their dark clothing the perfect camouflage on such a dark night. They looked tense, alert. One looked over at Zach where he stood, stock-still, in the middle of the road. The shock of that sudden scrutiny pushed Zach into motion again, and he carried on towards them with a prickle of misplaced guilt. He walked right past them, trying not to seem curious, and as he did there was a blast of static from a radio, and the officer who’d noticed him dipped his head towards the microphone.

“Copy that. We’re in position, ready to go,” he said. Zach kept walking until he was sure the darkness had swallowed him, then he ducked left towards the hedge, vaulted over the gate into the field, and started running.

He didn’t look back as he ran haphazardly down the hill, stumbling over rabbit holes and slipping in patches of sheep shit. It was frightening, electrifying; running so fast when he could not see the ground, could not see his feet. Thistles and long grasses whipped at his shins, and he saw pale shapes in the corners of his eye as startled sheep hurried away from him. The lane was to his left, and at any moment he expected to see blue lights pouring down it, passing him, getting to her first. He ran faster than he’d run since childhood; his lungs ached with the sudden rush of cold air. The night parted in front of him and closed behind him; he left no wake. There were two more gates between him and the yard, and he scaled them clumsily, landing badly after the last and turning his ankle. Swearing at the tearing pain, he staggered around to the front of the farmhouse where a light was on in the kitchen, blazing out into the night through the curtainless window. It seemed wantonly dangerous, such a gaudy display. His mouth had gone completely dry and his heart was hammering, and he thumped loudly on the farmhouse door with both fists.

Hannah opened it cautiously, her eyes wide with anxiety. When she saw him, relief flooded her face and Zach felt a rush of panic wash through him.

“Zach! What the hell are you doing here?” she said, holding the door ajar, not letting him in or letting him see past her.

“The police are coming-they could be here any moment. I saw them,” he gasped, fighting for breath. “I saw them at the top of the lane. I wanted to warn you, to give you a chance to…” He trailed off, watching fear grip her as she digested this. Behind her he heard Ilir say something.

“The police? Here? Jesus… how did they know?” she said.

“I don’t know. You don’t have much time, so if there’s something you’d rather they didn’t find, you’d better get it out of sight now. Right now!” Hannah hesitated, then turned her head and spoke rapidly, quietly over her shoulder. There was a startled sound from Ilir and then sounds of movement, scuffling.

“God,” Hannah said bleakly. “Maybe Ed Lynch did say something to them. James said he thought he was being watched. And the last time I spoke to him on the phone there was a lot of interference… Fuck! I’m such an idiot!”

“I’m… sorry, Hannah.” Now that he had warned her, he didn’t know what else to do. At that moment, Ilir appeared beside her in the doorway.

“You are sorry? You tell the police to come?” he said, yanking the door wide open and striding out, right up to Zach, with anger disfiguring his face. Zach took an uneasy step backwards.

“What? No! I just-”

“You are spying on us tonight?” Ilir jabbed a rigid finger into Zach’s chest.

“Yes-well, no, not spying-I was on the cliffs, and I saw… the boat. And then I saw the police-” Ilir grasped Zach by the front of his coat, spun him around, and shoved him hard against the wall of the house. His mouth twisted into a snarl, eyes alight with anger and something else besides. Something like fear, holding every one of the man’s muscles tighter than steel.

“It is your fault they come!” he spat.

“No, I just wanted to warn you!” said Zach.

“You will be sorry.” Ilir drew back his right arm and slammed his fist into Zach’s jaw. Pain and bright light bloomed behind Zach’s eyes, and his head was flung back, hitting the wall hard.

“Ilir! No! Stop it!” Hannah was there behind Ilir, the wind whipping her hair into her eyes as she tugged at his arm, holding it on its second backswing, preventing the blow from landing. “Ilir! We don’t have time! Stop it! It wasn’t Zach’s fault! Go inside-go inside and get ready!” Abruptly, Ilir dropped Zach, seeming to lose all interest in him. And now Zach could really see how frightened he was. The anger dissolved, and this fear was all that was left. He clasped his hands over his head and his eyes filled with tears.

“What will we do, Hannah?” he said desperately. “What can I do?”

“I’ll think of something! Go inside, now,” she said, and once he had stumbled away towards the door, she turned to Zach, who was rubbing his jaw and waiting for his head to clear. “You came down to warn us, right?” she said. Zach nodded gingerly. “So you want to be on our side, right? Right?”

“I… yes. I am on your side.”

“Then help us.” She stood in front of him with her arms hanging ready at her sides and the wind pushing at her; dark eyes harder than granite and every inch of her now calm and resolute. Zach realized that he would do anything for her.

“What do you want me to do?” he said.

“You saw me guide the boat in. You saw us bringing something ashore. Now I need you to take it somewhere else for me. If the police are coming, they can’t find out what was on that boat. Do you hear?” Zach swallowed. She was making him part of it, he saw. Making him complicit; partly to have his help, no doubt, but also to have his silence from then on. He nodded uneasily.

“Okay. But look, if it’s drugs…” He shook his head. A disgusted expression creased Hannah’s face.

“Drugs? You seriously think it’s drugs?”

“I honestly have no idea.”

“You think I would risk everything to deal drugs? For fuck’s sake, Zach! You want to know what I would risk everything for? Do you? Then come and take a look.” She grabbed him by the sleeve, towed him to the farmhouse door, up the steps, and into the kitchen. She gave him a second to absorb the scene, and the sudden light hurt his eyes. “Now do you get it?” she said. Zach stared in amazement.

“Jesus,” he murmured.

Dimity slept more deeply than she ever had before, for the rest of the day after Celeste had turned her away again. A dreamless sleep, like oblivion. She awoke just before sunset with a vague, heavy feeling of unease. She could not sit still, or settle to any household chore, so the stove sputtered out after she lit it, and the water in the kettle stayed cold, and the chickens kept their eggs a while longer, tucked into their warm and greasy feathers. She stole a glance through her mother’s bedroom door. Valentina was sprawled across the mattress, her yellow hair matted and wiry, her face scrunched into the pillow. She was snoring softly, dead to the world; thinking back, Dimity remembered the bang of the door, sometime after she returned. A visitor leaving; ducking out into anonymity. A faint, fishy smell pervaded the airless room. She shut the door again softly, and wondered at the sudden urge she felt to creep into bed beside her mother, to feel the warmth of her fusty, sleeping body. A yearning for safety and protection that she’d long ago learned not to seek from Valentina.

Then, for just a minute or two, all her dreams came true. The sun was below the horizon; a velvety twilight lingered that made the sea seem to glow. She was looking out of her bedroom window as the blue car came down the track towards The Watch, traveling fast, kicking up dust and stones from its wheels. It slithered to a halt right outside, and Charles got out. Charles on his own, running his hands through his hair to tidy it, or so she thought; coming up to the door and pounding on it, urgently, carelessly. He had come to fetch her away, she thought, as she made her way downstairs, smiling dreamily. Fear had plagued her since she woke, though she couldn’t trace the cause of it; all she knew was that she never wanted to go to Littlecombe again. But now he had come for her at last, and that fear melted away. She looked around the house as she went to the door, thinking that she might not see it again. That this would be the last time she would come down those stairs, cross those worn flagstones, pull the handle of the heavy oak door. Her smile widened when she saw him, and she let the love shine on her face; no more hiding, no more waiting.

“Mitzy-you must come right away. Right now! Please,” he said. She didn’t notice that there was sweat on his forehead, misting his top lip; that his face was ashen, his hands shaking as he pushed them through his hair again.

“Of course, Charles. I’ve been waiting for you. I haven’t packed my bag yet-is there time for me to do that? Just some clothes, and a few things?”

“What? No-there’s no time! Please come at once!” He grabbed her wrist and began to pull her towards the car. “Wait-is Valentina at home? Call her, too-and fetch your medicines, any medicines you have. Bring them all!”

“Valentina… but why should you want to bring my mother? We do not need to-”

“Is she here?”

“She’s sleeping.”

“Well, wake her, God damn it! Right now!” His sudden shout was so loud that she recoiled; so violent that a fleck of his spit landed on her cheek.

“I don’t understand!” Dimity cried, and Charles glared at her, half mad with impatience. “She won’t be woken; she was occupied this afternoon-”

“Then you’ll have to come alone. Celeste and Élodie… they’re very ill. You have to help them.”

“But I-” All protest was cut off as Charles pulled her towards the car. She scrambled in obediently, but a sudden and dreadful terror was tying knots in her chest, and she found herself gasping for air.

Sure enough, Charles drove her to Littlecombe, the last place she wanted to go. Drove with reckless speed, almost hitting the baker’s van as they burst out of the top of the track and onto the village street. Dimity shut her eyes and did not move when the car pulled up outside the house. Charles had to drag her out by her arm, his fingers digging into her, his teeth gritted.

“I’ve called two different doctors, but both of them are out seeing other patients… they won’t be here for at least an hour, their secretaries said. People in the village told me to keep giving them water to drink, but… but they can’t keep it down. They can hardly even drink it! You have to help them, Dimity. There must be something you can give them. Some herb…” he said. She had to run to stay on her feet as he towed her to the front door. On the threshold, she braced her hand against the door frame and wrenched her arm free of him, making him pause. “What are you doing? Come on!” he cried.

“I’m frightened!” she said. True enough, but she had no way to express how huge and ugly and confused that fear was. Suddenly the doorway to the house was like a hole into hell, or the den of some dangerous wild animal. Charles stared at her with eyes full of tears.

“Please, Dimity,” he said, in a desperate voice. “Please help them.” She had no choice but to try.

They were in the big bedroom, both of them; on the bed. Celeste was sitting half propped up against the wall, with vomit all down her blouse and some of it caught in a bowl. A long, thick string of saliva was hanging from her chin, constantly renewing itself, never breaking off. Every few seconds she twitched, a sharp jolt like an electric shock passing through her. The stink in the room was horrible. Delphine was holding her mother’s hand, crouching beside the bed with a look of profound anguish on her face. On the other side of the bed lay Élodie, her small body twisted and still.

“Élodie is worse. Go to her first,” said Charles, propelling Dimity towards her and rushing over to Celeste and Delphine.

“Oh! Please do something, Mitzy! You must know what to give them… you must know a cure! Please!” Delphine begged her, the words slurred with weeping.

“I… I don’t know… What’s wrong with them?” Dimity faltered.

“I don’t know! Something they ate-it must be! Something I picked… I went picking on my own and I left some things for Mummy for her lunch, and she made a soup and Élodie had some, too, when we got home, but I didn’t have any and neither did Daddy… I must have picked the wrong thing, Mitzy! I was sure I hadn’t… I was sure I knew what I’d found, but I must have been wrong, mustn’t I? I must have been!” She sobbed into her hand for a second, but stopped to grasp her mother’s fingers as Celeste vomited again, a mouthful of yellow fluid that slid down her chin, and then she convulsed, her head flying back to crack against the wall, her arms straining, straight against the mattress. From the other side of the bed Dimity caught sight of her eyes. Black as night; black as a lie; black as murder. The pupils so vastly dilated that almost nothing of the blue irises was visible. Her eyes looked like open doors, wide enough for her soul to escape. Suddenly her mouth opened and she spoke in rapid French, an unintelligible stream of noise more like the sound an animal would make, rather than a person. Delphine whimpered and tried to hold her mother’s hands, but Celeste wrenched them away, staring around her with those wide black eyes as though she could see unimaginable monsters.

Dimity crouched down beside Élodie and took the girl’s wrist, feeling for a pulse. It was there, weak and irregular. The child’s whole body was arched backwards and rigid, every muscle as tight as a violin string. Her face was immobile, eyes fixed; every bit as wide and black as her mother’s. A steady trickle of drool soaked into the mattress beneath her. She looked like a demon, she looked possessed. Dimity’s skin crawled as she put her ear close to the girl’s open mouth and felt the slightest touch of air, moving in and out in minute amounts. Dimity’s own head was as empty as their eyes. More than anything, she wanted to flee the room; wanted to be gone from this deathbed, since deathbed it was. They’d eaten the roots, that much was clear. Treacherously sweet, full of flavor. If they could be saved, it would not be by anything Dimity could give them. The doctor was their only chance, but even that depended on how long they would have to wait.

“When did it start?” she asked woodenly. She felt sleepy, all of a sudden. She wanted to lie down and shut her eyes and dream.

“A… about two hours ago. Celeste had a stomachache when we got back from town, and by the time she began to vomit, Élodie had eaten the soup, too, and was also sick… What can you give them? What can we do?” Charles stood with his arms hanging loose by his sides, chewing his lip as he stared at her, keen as a hawk. She saw that he expected her to make them well, expected her to save them, and she swallowed the sudden, mad urge to laugh. She shook her head instead, and saw his face crumple. It was too late. After two hours, the poison would be deep within their bodies, too deep to fetch it back out.

“There’s nothing I can give them. The poison is too strong. I have… seen it before.” Rats, rats in the corners of the room, twisting and twirling in death’s dance. She started up to her feet, looking around at them in horror.

“So you know what it is? You know what they ate?” he said. Dimity could hardly keep the air in her lungs long enough to answer him. She nodded her head, felt Celeste’s empty, ink-spot eyes watching her. A flood of tingling horror washed down her back, and she swayed.

“Cowbane,” she said at last. “Water hemlock.” Hemlock. They knew the name. Charles went paler still; Delphine gaped at her, her jaw hanging slackly open.

There was a long pause, filled only by the sound of Celeste’s labored breathing and the strange gurgling noise she made in her throat when another seizure gripped her. From Élodie, there was no sound.

“You mean…” Charles cleared his throat, dragged his hands over his face. “You mean they could die of this? They might die?” He sounded utterly incredulous, and ignored Delphine as she began to sob once more. Dimity met Charles’s gaze and managed not to flinch. The room was crowded with shadows and devils; with contorted rats and black, black eyes; awash with a revolting sea of spittle and bile. Dimity felt as though her mind was going to fly apart.

“Yes,” she said. Charles stared at her, paralyzed by the word. “Take them to the hospital. Straightaway. They cannot wait for a doctor, or an ambulance-take them now. Dorchester. Tell the doctor there what they’ve eaten…”

“But you’ll come with us-you’ll come and help. Take Élodie. Delphine! Open the doors for us!” Charles wrestled Celeste’s jerking body into his arms and carried her towards the door, and Delphine rushed ahead to clear the way, and Dimity was left to lift Élodie. She did it slowly, almost tenderly. The thin little body was like a peculiar wood, hard and unyielding and yet warm at the same time. No flicker of movement over her face, no change of expression at all as Dimity lifted her. And as she carried her down to the blue car, Dimity did not think she could feel the movement of air from her open mouth anymore. There was nothing behind the black disks of her eyes. Dimity’s skin crawled away from Élodie as she climbed into the car, and there she remained, trapped beneath her with no way to escape.

Zach stared in amazement at Hannah’s cluttered kitchen table; or rather, at the figures seated around it. Ilir was standing foursquare to the door, defensively, his face still racked with fear and anger, and he was holding the hand of a tall, thin woman, who, in turn, had her arm wrapped tightly around a little boy of about seven or eight years of age. Zach stared at them, and they stared back at him. Their faces were pale with fatigue. The woman’s hair was dark brown, long and straight, parted in the middle and tied back in a simple ponytail. Her forehead was lined with worry.

“Zach, let me introduce you to Rozafa Sabri, Ilir’s wife, and their son, Bekim,” said Hannah, standing beside him, her body still tense with emotion.

“Hello,” said Zach woodenly. Ilir said something impatient in a language Zach couldn’t understand, and Rozafa looked up at him anxiously.

“In English, Ilir?” said Hannah.

“They cannot stay here. Not even for one night.”

“I know. I’m sorry, Rozafa… there’s been a slight hitch.” Zach felt all eyes turn to him, as if he were to blame. He was sweating beneath his jumper and coat, an uncomfortable prickle that made him fidget. “Zach’s going to take you somewhere safe. It seems that… that the police might be coming here shortly-”

“Policija?” said Rozafa, her eyes widening. The child beneath her arm did not react. He gazed distantly at Zach as if only half awake. When his mother stood up and pulled him up with her, he moved slowly, clumsily. Rozafa stooped, gathered him into her arms, and looked from Hannah to her husband. Ready to run, Zach saw. However tired she might be, she was ready to take her child and run. They were plainly exhausted, badly in need of rest. With a guilty flush, he reminded himself how convinced he’d been that Hannah was smuggling art, or drugs, when it had been something far more precious, far more fragile.

“Now do you see? Why I couldn’t tell you? Why this needed to be kept a secret?” Hannah asked him intently.

“You could have trusted me. I would have understood.”

“I didn’t know that. Not for certain. But I’m trusting you now. Take them somewhere else. Right now, before the police show up. Okay?”

“Where… how should I take them? Should I take the jeep?”

“No-they’ll see you go up the lane, and you can’t drive off into the fields without headlights-you’ll get killed. Go on foot-somewhere safe. Anywhere.”

“The Watch. I’ll take them to The Watch,” he said. Hannah hesitated, frowning, and then nodded.

“Good. Keep out of sight. We’ll just have to hope they don’t think to look there.”

“Why would they?”

“Because… No, never mind. I’m sure it’ll be fine. Go on-hurry!”

Glancing up the lane, which was sunk in darkness, Zach ran across the yard with Ilir and Rozafa close on his heels. This is unreal, he thought, in a quiet hindquarter of his brain that was staying well out of it and watching to see what would happen. At the gate that led into the fields spreading up to The Watch, Ilir stopped. He spoke rapidly to his wife in what could have been Serbian, or Albanian, or Roma, and Rozafa replied, her voice high with alarm, as Ilir turned to go. She put out her hand and grasped his sleeve.

“Isn’t he coming with us? Aren’t you coming with us, Ilir?” said Zach.

“Hannah might need me here, when they come. I will stay with her.”

“But they might ask to see your passport…”

“If I leave, they will wonder where I am. Maybe they come looking,” said Ilir resolutely. “Now go-take them somewhere safe. Please.” He stared at Zach for a second, and Zach read the dread of their discovery in his face, and he nodded.

“Keep your mobile switched on,” Hannah shouted as they hurried away.

They ran as quickly as they could up the dark hillside, which was steeper on that side of the valley. Tussocky grass tripped them, and it was almost easier to lean forwards and use hands, to scramble on all fours. When they’d gone two hundred meters or so, they reached a fence and paused. Zach turned to look over his shoulder. The three police cars were pulling into the farmyard below them; no sirens, but their blue lights impossibly bright in the darkness.

“Down! Get down,” he said. Rozafa stared at him in incomprehension, and he realized that her English was not as good as her husband’s. He pulled at her as he sank low to the chilly, wet hillside, and she copied him, crumpling herself over the little boy. He could hear her whispering gently to him, a stream of soft words that might have been a song, or a nursery rhyme. Zach could smell fear on their unwashed skin, and he swallowed, feeling the vastness of this responsibility settle onto him. Rozafa had no choice but to trust him, not only with her own fate but with that of her child. He turned to look up the hill, but could see nothing but darkness. Shreds of sheep wool surrounded them, hanging from the wire fence like garlands and dancing in the wind. The smell of them was greasy and rich. Below them six police officers, one leading a bounding Alsatian, climbed out of the cars and ran over to the house. Three peeled off and jogged around to the back, cutting off the exits. There was nothing in there for Hannah to hide, but Zach suddenly felt frantic at the thought of her trapped inside, under attack.

“God, I hope that dog only sniffs out drugs, not people,” he muttered. Rozafa’s head came up at once when he spoke, eyes bright with adrenaline. “Come on,” he said.

They hurried on up the hill, and after a short distance Zach turned and took the little boy from his mother, hoisting him up to ride piggyback, and hurrying on again. The child weighed almost nothing. A piece of driftwood, fresh in off the sea. Zach suddenly realized how dangerous it must be to cross the Channel in a small fishing boat at night; how long and uncomfortable and dark that journey must have been. Human jetsam, exhausted and on the brink; on the edge of disaster. He could not imagine risking what they had risked, could not imagine how frightened they must be. He tightened his grip on Bekim.

After ten minutes that felt like an eternity, Zach saw the white shape of The Watch looming faintly in the darkness up ahead. Gasping for breath, he led them to the front door of the cottage, passing the boy back to Rozafa as he knocked. He turned to look down the hill again, desperate to know what was happening at Southern Farm. There was nothing to see. The police cars still sat on the yard, one set of blue lights flashing. Zach knocked again, and thought about how confused and afraid Dimity had seemed when he’d turned up earlier in the day.

“Dimity, it’s only me, Zach. I’m… back again. Please, can we come in? It’s very important… Dimity?”

“Zach?” Her voice came through the door, faint and croaky.

“Yes, it’s me. Please let us in, Dimity. We need a place to hide.” The door cracked open, and the darkness within was even deeper than the night outside. The police lights flared on the old woman’s pale skin, and in her wide eyes.

“Police?” she said, sounding bewildered.

“They’re looking for these two. This is Ilir’s wife and son. You know Ilir-Hannah’s help on the farm? Can we come in?” Zach turned to look at Bekim, in Rozafa’s arms, and saw that the child was fast asleep. His face was drawn and his mouth had dropped open, and his gums looked almost grayish. Zach had the sudden clear impression that the boy was not at all well. “We need to hide here. Just for a little while. They’re… very tired. They’ve been traveling for a long time.”

“Traveling?” Dimity said vaguely, and she stared at Rozafa in incomprehension. Rozafa accepted her scrutiny without blinking. Zach took a deep breath to quell his rising panic.

“Yes, traveling. They’ve just arrived from-”

“Ilir’s people? The Romany?” Dimity interrupted him suddenly. The old woman blinked, and her expression seemed to pull into focus, as if some essence of her had returned from elsewhere. The gaze she turned on Zach grew sharper.

“Yes, that’s right…”

“Come, come, come!” she said briskly, holding the door wider and ushering them in. “His people are my people, after all. My mother was a Gypsy, did I ever tell you that? Come in, come in, shut the door. This is a good place to hide…”

Zach was the last one in, and as he closed the door, he saw headlights, up on the village lane. They lanced towards the cottage, and he caught his breath. He could think of no reason why they should come to The Watch, and yet Hannah had hesitated when he suggested it, as if not entirely sure it was safe. Perhaps they had been seen, after all, fleeing across the fields. He grasped Dimity’s arm gently to get her attention.

“I think… I think someone’s coming down to the house… coming here,” he whispered anxiously. “We need to hide them. Where can we go? No-don’t!” he said, as Dimity reached for a light switch. “It’s late, better to pretend to be in bed.” The old woman clasped her hands tightly in front of her, an attitude almost like prayer. Their eyes were nothing more than faintly gleaming points in the dark. Dimity seemed caught in the grip of some impossible indecision. The police lights were still visible, sending eerie gray shadows careering around the walls. “Dimity?” Zach pressed. “They can’t be found. Please-they’ll be taken away if they’re found.”

“Taken away? No, no. Upstairs is the only place. If they come here I’ll turn them back. Go on upstairs, to the room on the left. The room on the left, you understand? The open door. On the left.” Just then, there was the sound of an engine outside the cottage, and headlights glared through the naked window.

“Make them put their ID cards through the letterbox before you open the door, Dimity! Go, go!” Zach hissed, propelling Rozafa towards the stairs. The Roma woman hurried up them on light feet, with Zach close behind. They shut themselves in a bedroom and crouched against the door, fighting to breathe silently, ears straining for any noise.

There was a knock at the door, and a long pause before Dimity answered. Muffled voices came up through the floor, but Zach couldn’t make out what was said. Beside him, Rozafa’s breathing grew steady and deep, and he wondered if she’d gone to sleep-surrendered all control of her situation and succumbed to exhaustion. Before long, there was another smooth growl of engine noise from outside, and then everything went silent. The air in the room was laden with peculiar scents: scents of mold and green plant life, paper, unwashed clothing; stale food of some kind; water, salt, soot, ammonia; another strong, chemical smell that Zach recognized at once. He could not imagine how that smell came to be in Dimity’s cottage. However impatient he felt, he knew they shouldn’t emerge until Dimity came to fetch them, just in case. He took out his phone and saw that he had a single bar of signal, now that he was upstairs. There was no missed call or text from Hannah, and he resisted the urge to call her until he knew the coast was clear. The silence stretched. Zach waited, and as he did so, he became aware of the touch of cold night air against his cheek. Puzzled, he turned to look for the source of the draft. Through the little window, the faint light of the sky was a patch of paler black, and he could see the broken pane of glass which was letting in the wind. It was the window he had stood beneath, and seen the curtains shifting within. The room to the left, Dimity had said. But Rozafa had led the way, and she wouldn’t have understood the instruction. Zach went peculiarly cold all over. They were in the room on the right. The room from which quiet, unidentified sounds had often come, during his visits to Dimity.

Without moving, Zach strained his eyes to see into the corners of the room. They were lost in shadow. He could just about make out dark, crowding shapes against the unlit walls. He could not shape them into furniture, could not work out what they were. He struggled to keep his breathing steady, as if some sleeping thing in the room might wake at the sound. He felt watched; he felt as though there was some awareness in that room with him, other than the huddled forms of Rozafa and her son. He thought he heard the sound of something breathing; a slow, moist exhalation. Against all common sense, he felt a rising panic, a need for light, for clarity; a need to flee from that room with its secrets and its cold, creeping air. His phone beeped and he jumped. A text from Hannah, glowing into his eyes and ruining what night vision he’d had. They’ve gone. On our way up to you. Rozafa said something he didn’t understand, her voice thin and tight with tension.

“It’s okay,” he whispered. “They’re coming up here to get you.” He could tell, in the woman’s silence, that she could not understand him. In the dim light from his phone her eyes shone above raw cheekbones. She stared at him in frustration for a moment, and then burst into French. “Vous parlez français?” Her accent was strange, but to Zach’s surprise he understood her, and he dug about in his distant schoolboy French for the words to reply.

“Hannah et Ilir… sont ici bientôt. Tout est bien.” All is well. The words had a visible effect on Rozafa. She slumped back against the wall, clasping one hand around his forearm and shutting her eyes.

“Merci,” she said, so quietly he hardly heard her. Zach nodded, and wished he had the language to ask if Bekim was all right, if there was anything he could do for the limp, gray little boy.

Stiffly, he got to his feet, glad that Rozafa could not see his deep unease. With gritted teeth, he put out a blind hand, fingers splayed, and felt along the wall for the light switch. The plaster was soft, slightly damp. It came off on his fingers as a fine powder. He couldn’t find the switch, and to his shame, he hardly dared take a step away from Rozafa to search farther afield. Then something brushed against his neck and he yelped out loud. Rozafa was on her feet in an instant with an answering cry of alarm, as Zach scrabbled to find what had touched him. It was the light switch-a wooden toggle at the end of a string. He tugged at it savagely, and light came on overhead, a single bulb so bright that they were temporarily blinded. Through watering eyes, Zach squinted around the little room. Slowly, things swam into focus, and he realized what all the many dark shapes were. His mouth hung open in shock, in utter disbelief; he was so stunned that thought abandoned him.

Still cradling Élodie in arms that felt boneless, not like her own, Dimity struggled out of the car when it pulled up at Dorchester hospital. It was a towering, crenellated building of redbrick walls and towers, built early in the previous century and taller even than the church spire in Blacknowle. Dimity felt it looming above her as she rushed along behind Charles. She felt the countless windows watching, recognizing the thing in her arms for what it was. The thing she had done. Dimity stumbled. Her knees crumpled and for a moment she thought she would fall. The strength had gone out of her; bones turned to sand and washed away. The thing she had done. Delphine was at her side, lifting her, helping her up.

“Hurry, Mitzy! Come on!” In Delphine’s frantic tone Dimity heard the remnants of a dangerous hope. But there was no hope, and she wanted to scream it, wanted to shout it out loud so that she could put down the thing she was carrying. The little dead thing. Their footsteps echoed in the hallway of the hospital, and the light of many bulbs blinded them. Charles’s voice echoed around, calling for help. Then strong arms in white sleeves took Élodie from Dimity, and she sank to her knees in relief.

She was left alone, and she waited. For a while she knelt in the hallway, in the sudden quiet after the Aubreys, both well and sick, had been herded away by a knot of grim-faced people. She could have followed them, but felt too weak to move. Slowly she stood up, and she waited, and she tried not to think. There was a ringing sound inside her head, like the hum after a bell has sounded; deafening, deadening. The weight of something was pushing down on her inexorably. The weight of something undeniable, which, once done, could not be undone. In due course she let herself be led to a long, empty corridor where there were wooden pews against one wall. The person who led her was anonymous, faceless; a different species from her altogether, and wholly incomprehensible. A cup of tea was put next to her, but Dimity had no idea what she should do with it. She sat down and stared at the wall in front of her. Days passed, weeks, months; or just the space between one labored heartbeat and the next-she could no longer tell the difference. It was night outside, and the light in the corridor was weak. Dimity heard echoes from time to time. Footsteps, soft snores, wordless shouts from a long way away. Disembodied sounds that drifted along the corridor like ghosts. There was sandy mud all over her shoes; dried and crumbling away. Sandy mud from the ditch where the cowbane grew. Dimity wished she didn’t exist at all; she wished that she was just one more ghost who could wander the corridor, lost and all alone.

It was light outside when Charles appeared through a door, walking out into the corridor with his shoulders slumped and his head down. He moved like a sleepwalker, dull and unaware; when he saw Dimity, he came to stand in front of her, and did not speak.

“Charles?” she said. He blinked and raised his eyes to her, then sat down beside her. His skin was gray, purple shadows under his eyes. He tried to speak but his throat was closed; he had to cough and try again.

“Celeste,” he said. The word sounded like an accusation, like a plea. “Celeste will pull through, they think. They have given her something… Luminol, to stop the spasms. They are giving her drugs through a tube into her veins. I never saw such a thing before. But Élodie… my little Élodie.” The word collapsed into a sob. “They have taken her away. She was not strong enough. There was nothing they could do.” The words were not his own, Dimity realized. They were words he had been told, and parroted now in place of words of his own, of which there were none.

“I knew she was dead,” Dimity said breathlessly. Something was squeezing her chest, tightening painfully. “I knew she was dead when I carried her. I knew it. I knew!” she gasped. Charles turned his head to look at her, and the look was one of incomprehension. He couldn’t even see her, she realized. I am a ghost, an echo. Let it be so. She wanted to touch him, but to do so she would have to become flesh again. It would all have to be real. They sat in silence for a while; then Charles got up and went back through the door, and Dimity, drawn along by the shackle around her heart, followed him.

There was another corridor, shorter this time, with tall white doors opening off it. The stink of disinfectant was everywhere, sharper than cat’s piss but not quite masking the smell of sickness, of death. There was no sign of Élodie. Gone already; gone as if she never was. Dimity shook her head at the impossibility of it. Celeste was lying back against a single pillow, her jaw slack and her hair smeared out around her, tarry and slick. There was a spidery contraption hanging over her, a needle and a cord attached to her arm; a bruise spreading down her forearm. Her lips were white, her eyes shut. She looked quite dead, and Dimity wondered that nobody had noticed, until she saw the shallow rise and fall of her rib cage. She stared and stared at the woman. Stared hard enough to see the flicker of a pulse through the thin skin of her neck.

“There will be consequences,” said Charles, and the words hit Dimity like an electric shock. She jerked her eyes to him, but he was staring at Celeste. His voice was quite broken. “The doctor says… she may never be the same again. Hemlock has side effects. She will have… some memory loss, of the days leading up to today. She will be confused. There will still be tremors. It will take time for these effects to fade, and she may never…” He paused, swallowing. “She may never be her old self again. She may never be as she was before. My Celeste.”

On the other side of the bed sat a pitiful figure. A figure curled in on itself, as if trying not to be. It was doing such a good job that Dimity only gradually became aware of it. Delphine. She was crying without pause, even though she was near mute and her eyes were dry and dull, as if they’d run out of tears. Still she shook and quivered almost as much as her mother had done, before they’d come to the hospital, and the sounds she made were terrible, like the repeated keening of a rabbit in a snare, but quietly-so quietly. Trying not to be. Dimity stared at her, and gradually Delphine looked up and met her gaze with eyes all red and bloody, and so swollen they had almost shut. But there was something in those eyes, besides grief, that took Dimity’s breath away. It was unbearable to see, and she turned away, drifting a few paces to slump against the wall. She sank slowly to the floor. Nobody seemed to notice, or think it amiss. She put her fingertips in her mouth, and bit down on them till they bled, feeling nothing. Delphine’s eyes were full of guilt. Utter, consuming, poisonous guilt.

A while later, Dimity was back on the pew in the corridor. She didn’t know how she’d got there. Voices roused her-men’s voices, arguing in hushed tones by the doorway to the rooms. She rubbed at her eyes, and struggled to focus. Charles Aubrey and another man, tall and thin, with steel-gray hair. She recognized him as Dr. Marsh, one of the doctors who made regular visits to Blacknowle to treat those too ill for any of Valentina’s potions.

“It must be recorded, Mr. Aubrey. Such things cannot be avoided,” the doctor said.

“You can write part of the truth without writing the whole truth. And you must. My daughter… my daughter is tearing her own heart out. If you record the death as a poisoning, there will have to be an inquest, am I correct?”

“Yes.”

“Then for pity’s sake, do not record it as such! She will carry this with her the rest of her days. If it is made public… if the whole world knows what she did, however accidentally… it will ruin her. Do you see? It will ruin her!”

“Mr. Aubrey, I understand your concerns, but-”

“No! No buts! Doctor, I beg you-it will cost you nothing to record the cause of death as a gastric disturbance… but it will cost Delphine dearly if you do not. Please.” Charles gripped the doctor’s arm, stared into his eyes. His desperation was written all over his face. The doctor hesitated. “Please. We have suffered enough already. And we will suffer a great deal more as it is.”

“Very well.” The doctor shook his head, and sighed.

“Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Marsh.” Charles released the man’s arm and put his hand up to shield his eyes.

“But you should know… I was in Blacknowle last night. My last call was to see Mrs. Crawford with her ulcer. I drank a glass in the pub afterwards, and there were those that were asking after you…”

“What did they say?” Charles asked anxiously.

“They said you’d been in earlier frantically trying to find a doctor, saying that your wife and child had eaten something they shouldn’t have. Perhaps some plant, eaten by mistake. I will do as you ask, but you ought to be prepared for… rumors, in the village.”

“Rumors we can ignore. And we will leave Blacknowle, as soon as Celeste is well enough to travel. Then they can keep their rumors, and bother us no more.”

“It’s probably for the best.” The doctor nodded. “I am most terribly sorry for your loss,” he said, shaking Charles’s hand and turning to walk away. As if reminded by these words, Charles rocked on his heels, seemed about to fall. Dimity rushed over to him, instinct seizing control of her body. As she reached him, Charles’s legs buckled and he toppled, his arms flailing as though he was falling from a great height. Gladly, Dimity let him drag her down with him. She knelt and put her arms around him, and crooned to him gently as he sobbed and sobbed. She stroked his hair and felt his tears wetting her, and she let love light her up like the dawn breaking, strong enough, she hoped, to save her.

When she was asked, as asked she would be, she was to say gastric flu. Charles reminded her of this, two days later, when his tears had given way to a kind of dreadful, stony calm that was more like a state of wakeful catatonia; as though he’d been hypnotized. He moved as though he was half stunned, and Dimity felt unsafe in the car as he drove her to the top of the track to The Watch, and left her there. Dimity nodded and did as she was instructed, though the only person who asked her was Valentina, who then studied her daughter, looked her deeply in the eye, and knew that a lie was being told. She extracted the true cause of death from her, by the sheer weight of her will and the subservience that she’d bred into her daughter; then she put her head to one side, considering.

“No cowbane within three miles of the village by my reckoning-not when the summer’s this dry, and the farmers cut and burn it wherever they can. I wonder how the girl came by it? Hmm? I wonder if you might know how she came by it?” She gave an ugly cackle, and Dimity cowered away from her, shaking her head, saying nothing more. But she didn’t need to. Her mother could read her mind sometimes, and her spiteful smile, her grudging respect, were bitter as bile to Dimity.

On the third day, Dimity saw the blue car creeping cautiously down the driveway to Littlecombe, as if carrying something precious and desperately fragile. She followed it down, a short and unhappy procession. Celeste was escorted into the house by Charles, who kept one hand around her waist and one hand in the air before them, as though to ward off any obstacle that might arise. In the September sunshine, Celeste’s face was transformed. Her complexion was gray, her cheeks drawn and hollow. Her eyes had a distant, haunted expression, and her hands shook constantly-sometimes just a tiny tremble, like a shiver, sometimes jerking convulsively, like Wilf Coulson’s grandma, who had the St. Vitus dance. Dimity hung back as they went past her into the house. Delphine followed them, and did not look up. She was pale and looked older somehow; and as though she would never smile again. Dimity saw this, and could not believe that this was how things would be, from then on. Things could not be fixed, or changed. Things could not go back to the way they’d been. The thought turned her guts to water, and for a moment she feared she might mess herself. Something inside her was fighting to get out, but she felt that if she let it, it would kill her. So she fought with it as she followed them into the house and stood, and waited, and watched.

Nobody spoke to her. Nobody spoke at all. Nobody seemed to notice her until she put a cup of tea down next to Celeste, drawing her flat and lifeless blue gaze.

“I know you,” Celeste said, frowning slightly. “You are a cuckoo… a cuckoo child…” She brushed her hand down Dimity’s cheek, but though her words froze Dimity’s blood, suddenly Celeste smiled, just a tiny bit, just for a second. Then her eyes slid away to roam the room, as if she couldn’t remember where she was, or why. Her arms twitched, shoulders hunching. Dimity swallowed, and looked around to see Charles standing behind her. He drew her to one side.

“I’ve told her about Élodie, but I don’t know…” He paused, his face creasing into lines of anguish. “I don’t know if she realizes what I’ve told her. I think I will have to say it again.” His dread at the prospect was audible. Behind him, Delphine’s eyes were the only bright thing in the room; glazed and shining like polished stone.

Charles crouched down to tell Celeste, clasping one of her limp hands in both of his. It was a gesture that betrayed his own need for comfort; Dimity saw it and she longed to hold him. In the pause before he spoke, Dimity and Delphine stood so still they might have been statues.

“Celeste, my darling.” He lifted up her hand and pressed it to his mouth, as if to stop the words. “Do you remember what I told you, last night?”

“Last night?” Celeste murmured. The faintest touch of a smile gave an apology, and she shook her head. “You told me… I would be well soon.”

“Yes. And I told you… I told you something about Élodie. Do you remember?” His voice shook, and Celeste’s smile vanished. Her eyes darted around the room.

“Élodie? No, I… where is she? Where is Élodie?” she said.

“We lost her, my darling.” After he spoke, Celeste stared at him, and her eyes filled with fear.

“What are you talking about? Òu est ma petite fille? Élodie!” she called suddenly, shouting the word over Charles’s head. He gripped Celeste’s hand ever tighter; his knuckles were white. Dimity thought he might crack her bones.

“We lost her, Celeste. You and Élodie… you ate something that poisoned you. Both of you. We lost Élodie, my love. She is dead,” Charles said, and tears rolled down his face. When she saw them, Celeste paused. She stopped looking around for Élodie, stopped shaking her head in denial. She watched Charles weep and realization spread across her face; the shadow of a loss so huge that it could not be contained.

“No,” she whispered. Beside Dimity, Delphine let out a whimper. She was watching her mother with a gaze so raw and tender it was like her heart had been torn wide open for all to see.

“We lost her,” Charles said again, lowering his head as if in submission, as if to accept whatever punishment she would give.

“No, no, no!” Celeste cried, the word rising to a howl that turned the air to ice. With a sob, Delphine ran across to her, and threw herself down beside her mother, wrapping her arms around her. But Celeste fought her, disengaged her arms, and scrabbled to push her away. “Get off me! Let me go!” Celeste told her.

“Mummy,” Delphine moaned, pleading with her. “I didn’t mean to.” But with a final effort Celeste shoved her back, so hard that Delphine fell from the couch to the floor. Celeste sat up as if she would rise, but did not have the strength.

“Élodie! Élodie!” She called the name over and over. It was a plea, a command, a wish. And on the floor beside her, Delphine could only huddle, a picture of abject misery, hugging her own knees for comfort. Charles neither moved nor spoke; he had nothing left. Inside, Dimity was falling. She was falling too fast for thought, for words, and at her feet a spatter of urine was spreading across the floor.

Delphine was sent away to school at the end of the week, the day after her sister’s funeral. She went mutely, quietly, as though she had surrendered all right to an opinion, all right to free will. Dimity stood to one side as Charles hefted her trunk into the back of the car. Celeste emerged from Littlecombe, moving with the careful, small-stepping walk she had adopted since the poisoning; as though she no longer trusted her feet. She was draped in a loose robe, one of her lightweight caftans, but it hung from her now. She was thinner, the sensual curves of her body carved away. She took no trouble to tie a sash around her waist, or arrange her hair, or put on jewelry. Her skin had not regained its glow; her eyes were always red-rimmed. This creature seemed like the ghost of Celeste, as though she had died along with Élodie. She stood motionless when Delphine kissed her cheek and put careful arms around her, and did not return these signs of affection. Charles watched this awful exchange with a distraught expression.

“Good-bye, Mitzy,” Delphine said to Dimity, pressing her marble cheek to Dimity’s. “I’m glad… I’m glad you’re here. To look after them. I wish…” But she did not say what she wished. She swallowed, and then an eager light kindled in her eyes. “Will you come and visit me? At school? I don’t think I could bear it if nobody did.” Her voice was high, manic with need. “Will you? I could send you the train fare.” Her fingers gripped Dimity’s arm tightly.

“I… I’ll try to,” said Dimity. She found it hard to talk to Delphine, hard to look at her. It was near impossible to keep mind and body together when she did.

“Oh, thank you! Thank you,” Delphine whispered, hugging her tightly. She got into the car then, keeping her eyes down, her shoulders slumped. Celeste can’t forgive Delphine for what happened, Charles told Dimity later, once Celeste was asleep. Even though she knows it wasn’t deliberate, she can’t forgive her. Élodie was the littlest, you understand, still her baby, in some ways. And so like her. So like her. My little Élodie. Dimity made him a pie for his dinner, and he didn’t seem to notice that she was always there, where she did not belong.

In the night, Dimity dreamed dark dreams, and every morning she sat up in bed, quite still, and waited for them to subside. But what remained, what was real, was worse than her nightmares, and inescapable. She was careful to empty her mind of thought before she rose, because without an empty head she could not breathe, let alone walk or talk or cook or take care of Charles. Her dreams were of vast black eyes and the stink of vomit. Her dreams were of hearts cut out and left on the floor, with blood seeping from them to stain the boards. Her dreams were of Élodie coming back, coming to The Watch, pointing her finger and shouting you you you! Her dreams were of their broken faces and of Delphine’s quiet implosion; and of the way a part of each of them had gone. A part of Charles, even. It had gone wrong. She’d almost shouted it out the day before, having watched him for a full half hour, thumbing through sketches of his daughters with a broken look on his face. It had all gone wrong. She had meant to free him-free him to love her and be with her and take her away-but instead Charles was more trapped than ever. It was only by keeping her head carefully empty that Dimity did not shout out things like this. Truths like this. It was only by keeping an empty head that she did not hit the bottom of the abyss she was falling through and break apart like glass.

The autumn rolled on in gentle warmth, with dry breezes to shake and scatter the tiny black seeds from the poppy heads amid the golden crops and parched lawns. Outside the shop and the pub there were mutterings of war, rumors of dark clouds looming in the east; of Poland; of trouble coming; but Dimity paid no attention. Nothing like that mattered, not in Blacknowle. Nothing penetrated this far from the rest of the world; that wide, distant world Charles had promised to show her. She had only to wait, she told herself. She had only to wait a little longer and real life would begin-this limbo state would end. She found Celeste in the garden in a deck chair one day, her legs splayed inelegantly as though she’d been casually discarded there and hadn’t bothered to correct her pose. The sun had no power to warm her, to light her. Her hair was clean and combed, but still she looked half dead. The tendons running down her neck made ridges beneath the skin; she looked raw, denuded. It was easy to think that she was unaware, that she could be ignored. Dimity made a sweep of the house and found Charles not at home, and was about to leave again when Celeste caught her hand with surprising strength.

“You. Mitzy Hatcher. You think I have lost my memory, and it is true, some things are lost to me. But not all things. When I see you there is a feeling in my gut, like a warning. Like looking down from a high place and feeling myself slipping. Danger, that is what I feel when I see you. I feel I am in danger.” She kept hold of Dimity’s hand, kept her eyes fixed upon her. Dimity tried to twist her arm free but couldn’t. Celeste’s touch was like iron, cool and hard. “It was you, wasn’t it?” she said, and Dimity went cold all over; a sudden, electrifying clench of fear.

“What? No, I-”

“Yes! You are to blame! I saw you, watching Delphine bear it all, while you stayed silent. I saw you, letting her take all of the blame. But without you, she would never have gone picking wild things. Without you, she would never have thought to do so. And without your betrayal of my girls, your pursuit of their father, she would never have had to go alone, and pick the wrong thing. As much as she made this mistake, it was you who caused her to make it. Do not think you can carry on your life without sharing that burden with her. You must share it with her!” She threw Dimity’s hand back at her and Dimity felt tears sliding down her face. They were tears of relief, but Celeste misread them and looked oddly satisfied. “There. That is better. I have not yet seen you weep for Élodie, but at least now I see you weep, even if it is for yourself.”

“I never meant to hurt Élodie,” said Dimity. “I never meant for it to happen!”

“But it did happen. My baby is dead. My little Élodie is never coming back…” Her voice failed her, and for a while the only sound was her ragged breathing, and the distant hiss of the sea. “How I wish…” she said softly, some minutes later. “How I wish we had never come here, to this place. How I wish it. Help me up.”

Dimity did as she was told, and took Celeste’s arm as she rose from the deck chair; she walked with her out of the garden and across the grassy fields towards the sea. “Take me right to the edge. I want to look at the ocean,” said Celeste, and Dimity obeyed her. She walked with a steady step now, and the tremors in her body were far fewer, far gentler. Dimity soon realized that Celeste needed no help to walk, but she kept a firm hold on Dimity’s arm nonetheless, her fingers gripping tightly, her gaze straight ahead, determined. Suddenly Dimity was uneasy, though she could not say exactly why. Danger, just as Celeste had said. Some instinct made the hairs at the back of her neck stand on end. They walked towards the cliff edge, to a point in the path where the beach was some sixty feet below them. Dimity stopped on the path, but Celeste snapped at her. “No! Closer. I want to look down.” Closer they went, until their toes were inches from the blowy air of the edge. Dimity’s throat was so tight she could no longer swallow.

Side by side they stood, and looked down at the beach below, where a handful of holidaymakers were swimming and lounging, their children playing. Celeste pointed to a dark-haired little girl who was digging in the sand near the water’s edge. “There! Look! Oh, couldn’t that be her? Couldn’t that be my Élodie, safe and alive and playing in the sand?” She took a long, shuddering breath and then gave a low moan. “If only it was. If only. Oh, wouldn’t it be easier to just step off, Mitzy?” she said. “Wouldn’t it be easier not to live at all?” Dimity tried to step back, but Celeste wouldn’t move.

“No, Celeste.”

“Don’t you think so? Do you feel no guilt, then, for what has happened? You are quite happy to live on, with her gone? I think it would be easier to step off, to fall and to go with her. Far easier.” She gazed at the distant little girl with an awful intensity, her mouth open, an unhealthy sheen on her skin.

“Come away, Celeste! You still have another daughter! What about Delphine?”

“Delphine?” Celeste blinked, looking across at Dimity. “She is my daughter still, but how can I love her as I loved her before? How can I? She meant no harm, but she has done harm. Great harm. And she never needed me, not like Élodie did. She always loved Charles better.”

“She loves you,” said Dimity, and then gasped because something speared into her empty head, as it always did when she thought of Delphine. Something so painful that she swayed, tipping precariously towards the open air in front of them. Celeste saw this change in her, and for a second it seemed as though she might smile.

“You do see, don’t you? How much easier it would be.” Just then, Dimity did see. All the long years of her life stretched out in front of her, and this emptiness would have to be her constant companion, because the pain would never go. Things could not be undone. Her dreams would always be dark; the wide world would always be a distant, imagined thing. She would have Valentina’s scorn for company, and nobody else. Charles was not free, and perhaps he never would be. But it was the thought of him that saved her. Rushing through her blood like a drug, like magic.

“No! Let me go!” She used all of her weight to pull free from Celeste, staggering back a few paces to sit down on the turf with a bump. There she sat, and watched. Celeste was still right at the edge. The violence with which Dimity had pulled away made her teeter, and fight for balance. She put out her arms, like fragile, fledgling wings. Wings that could never save her, if she fell. She wobbled, her toes tipping over the edge, breaking the lip of the cliff, and as she turned to look at Dimity the wind caught her hair, and lifted it around her face; a dark veil, a veil of grief. Go, then, if you want to, thought Dimity. She stayed still, she watched; she felt the reassuring solidity of the ground beneath her, curled her fingers into the grass, hung on. The wind circled Celeste, and tempted her with the promise of flight. But then her wide eyes settled on Dimity, and they hardened, and she stepped back. Dimity realized she’d been holding her breath, and this time Celeste did smile; a thin smile with no amusement in it, no pleasure.

“You are right, Mitzy. I have another daughter. And I have Charles. And my life is not over, though part of me might wish it was. Yet I remain. I will remain.” Her words were a slamming door, and Dimity’s crowding thoughts, her chaotic feelings, made her stupid and slow. “Perhaps you would prefer me dead, and that is the warning I feel when I look at you. But soon it will be all the same. I will not stay here. This place is like an open grave.” She stood over Dimity but did not seem to see her. She cupped her hands, raised them to her face, and inhaled; an odd, alien gesture. “Je veux l’air de désert, où le soleil peut allumer n’importe quelle ombre,” she said, so softly that the words were almost lost on the breeze, and only one was clearly heard. Desert. Dimity did not rise for a long time, and when she did, Celeste was already halfway back to the house, a thin, upright, lonely figure, walking onwards without her help.

Celeste was as good as her word. Two days later, Dimity was walking through the village when Charles came bursting from the shop and ran right into her. He gripped her by her upper arms and shook her before he’d even spoken.

“Have you seen her?”

“What? Who?”

“Celeste, of course, you foolish girl!” He gave her another little shake and she could not understand his expression, or his tone. Anger, fear, frustration, scorn. He was muddled, overcrowded.

“No, not since Monday! I swear it!” she cried. Abruptly, he dropped her and pushed his hands through his hair. It was a gesture he made frequently now, when she’d never seen it before that summer. “Has she gone away?” she said.

“I don’t know… I don’t know where she’s gone. She was so strange on Monday… when I got back from town she was so strange. She said she had to leave right away. I said we had to wait for a few days, until she’s a bit stronger… she said she couldn’t wait. I said… I said she had to. And now she’s gone and I don’t know where and I can’t find her anywhere! Did she say anything to you? Anything about where she wanted to go?” Dimity thought about Celeste at the edge of the cliff, arms outstretched, hair swirling around her; ready to take flight, ready to fall. She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak. This place is an open grave. “Mitzy! Are you listening to me?”

“This place is an open grave.” It was true. Blacknowle was a place to die. Her home was a place in which to die.

“What?”

“That’s what she said. She said… ‘This place is an open grave.’ ” Charles went still.

“But… but she can’t go back to London on her own! Where will she stay? How would she even get to the station? She’s too weak… anything could happen to her… She’s not well enough yet.” His lips were dry and cracked; shreds of skin clung to them and Dimity wanted to brush them off with her fingers, and gently kiss his questions away. She pictured Celeste walking away from the cliff without her, slow but resolute. She was strong enough to travel alone. Celeste was strong enough for anything. “And you’re sure she didn’t say anything else? No clue as to where she would go-did she mention any names, friends in London, anybody?” Dimity shook her head again. There was the one word she had understood. Charles would think of it, eventually. But she would not prompt him. She would give Celeste a head start, a chance to disappear. Desert. A quiet word, full of longing. Desert. Let her go; she sent the thought silently to Charles. Let her go.

Charles was quiet for a long time, as they walked slowly back to Littlecombe. “She’s right, isn’t she?” he said at last. “This place is full of death. I can’t… I can’t…” He trailed off as a sob clenched his throat. “This place… it’s so different now,” he muttered, almost to himself. “Can’t you feel it? It’s like everything good and right went with her, and only the bad, the corrupt, was left behind. Such a heavy, lonely feeling. Do you feel it, too?”

“Every time you leave,” she said, but Charles didn’t seem to hear.

“I think… I will never come back here, after today. I think there are too many terrible memories…”

“Then we’ll go away! Anywhere you want to… I’ll go wherever you want to go, and we can start our new life. A fresh life, with no ghosts, no death…” Dimity stepped closer to him, took his hand, and placed it on her heart; she gazed up at him intently, but Charles snatched his hand away. His eyes went wide and stormy.

“What are you talking about?” He laughed suddenly, an ugly, barking sound. “Don’t be ridiculous. Don’t you see? Everything is ruined! I am ruined. I can’t draw; I can’t sleep or think since… since Élodie died. Only dark, horrible thoughts.” He shook his head abruptly, and his face collapsed into itself. “I miss her. I miss her so much. And now I’ve lost Celeste as well. My Celeste.”

“But… you love me! In Fez you… you saved me. You kissed me. I know you love me, as I love you! I know you do!” Dimity cried.

“Enough! I do not love you, Mitzy! Perhaps as a friend, almost as a daughter, at one time… but that was then, and this is now. And I should never have kissed you. I am sorry for that, but you have to forget about it now. Do you hear me?”

When Dimity spoke, her voice was little more than a whisper, because the sting of his words, the cruelty of them, took her breath away.

“What are you saying?” She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

“For pity’s sake, girl, have you quite lost your mind? Don’t keep on with this nonsense! Can you think of nobody but yourself, Mitzy?”

“I only think of you,” she said numbly. There was only him in the world, she realized. He was the only solid thing, and behind and around him the world dissolved into shadow. “Just you.” She grasped the front of his shirt in her fists. She had to keep hold of him, in case she became nothing but shadow, too.

“I won’t stay here another second. I have to find Celeste. The world’s rotten, Mitzy. Rotten and foul. I can’t bear it! If you see Celeste… if she comes here after I’ve gone, be kind to her, please. Tell her I love her and… tell her to wait here until I come for her. She can always telephone me, or send a letter… please. Will you do that for me, Mitzy? Promise to look after her, if she comes here?”

“Please, don’t go. Please don’t leave me,” Dimity begged.

“Don’t leave you? What are you talking about? None of this has anything to do with you.”

“But… I love you.”

Charles looked at her strangely then, with an expression Dimity had never seen before. It looked like anger, like disgust. But it could not be, so she did not recognize it. He turned away from her and strode over to the car. She followed him, kept close behind him. Had hold of the handle of the passenger-side door when the car lurched forwards with a violent jerk that bent her fingers back, and broke all the nails. Blood seeped out from under them. When the car vanished from sight, she looked down at her body, checking it here and there, wondering if she were bleeding, because it felt as though the life was draining out of her and into the stony ground.

A week after Charles went up to London in search of Celeste, war was declared and travel curtailed. Word of it swept over the country, even to Blacknowle, like the first cold wind of winter. But that wind died down; nothing much seemed to happen. If anything was happening, people said, then it was happening a long way away. Domed concrete lookouts appeared along the coast; strange, bristling ships passed up and down the Channel. Some of the farming lads answered the call of duty; went to Dorchester and signed their lives away. Dimity was scarcely aware of any of it. She had room in her head only for thoughts of Charles, and of how, when he came back, she would heal all his sorrows with her love for him; fill him up with it, and make him see that it was better that Celeste had gone. She was a constant reminder of terrible things. He would love her back and finally, finally, the nightmare would be over and they would be united. Together, as man and wife, with no more whispers about her, or about them. No more rumors or scandal; they would be wed and there was nothing to stop it now. Élodie, Delphine, Celeste; all had gone. The autumn was cold and this thought alone kept her warm. He would come back and be with her. He would come back.