A Ghost in the Machine

26

Just over a month had passed since the man arrested on suspicion of the murder of Dennis Brinkley had been formally charged and remanded in custody to await trial at Aylesbury Assizes. Forbes Abbot’s outrage at the doing to death of one of its own having been suitably assuaged, the village, briefly glamorous and in all the papers, once more subsided into its usual comfortable, unthreatening routine.

Autumn was almost upon them. Bonfires were crackling and huff was being taken about the smoke and the breaking of “not until dusk” by-laws. The Horse and Hounds darts team were setting up match schedules with neighbouring villages. A quiz in aid of multiple sclerosis took place at the village hall and the last cricket match of the season was being played out on the green. Preparations for the Christmas Fayre were already being mooted. The competition at the September meeting of the WI was Your Best Ever Mincemeat Recipe. And rumour had it that Mrs. Lattice of Mon Repos had already secretly weighed out in readiness for the making of her notorious puddings.

Mists and mellow fruitfulness were the order of the day and fruit came no more mellow than the beautiful apples now being carefully graded and packed in the orchard of Appleby House. Over the last couple of weeks fewer and fewer pickers had been needed and now the final handful were being paid off.

David and Helen Morrison of Pippins Direct were helping to load the last boxes into the back of an open lorry to be driven to the market at Seven Dials. Mallory watched, hovering awkwardly. He had got to know the Morrisons slightly over the last few weeks but inevitably, given the convulsive events in his own life and the extreme business of theirs, it had been very slightly. Feeling he should be there to see them off he stuck it out, smiling and waving until the lorry finally pulled away. They would return once the leaves had fallen, David had explained, to start pruning.

Alone now, Mallory drifted back into the deserted orchard, grateful for the space and silence. Grateful even for the sensation of rotten, wasp-infested fruit squelching beneath his sandalled feet. Ambling vaguely about in the weak light of the setting sun he yearned for consolation while simultaneously despising himself for weakness and self-pity. During these evening wanderings he struggled to concentrate on the smallest thing, however ordinary, which lay directly under his nose. He knew, of course, that the intensity of this endeavour was prompted by a need to hold at bay bitter memories of what he still saw as his daughter’s deception and betrayal. He knew Kate thought he’d be better talking about it but he just couldn’t and she was sensitive enough to let things be.

She had spoken with Polly. Just over a week ago she had been saying “goodbye” on the telephone when he came into the room. He heard “…of course I will, darling,” before she hung up. Then she had turned to him smiling and said: “Polly sends her love.”

Mallory couldn’t speak. He had hurried away across the terrace and into the shrubbery where he began pulling out fistfuls of tall weeds, violently, without discrimination. At one point he had gripped a long bramble and wrapped it round and round his wrist, tugging and ripping until the roots came out. Tearing with it the skin from his hand.

Mallory was choosing to spend the larger part of every day outside now, weather permitting. There was never any shortage of things to do and he had to learn as he went along. Occasionally he would ask Benny’s advice but mainly he’d look things up or muddle through. He remembered Kate telling him once, when all else fails we must cultivate our gardens. She’d said it was a famous quote; he thought it was bloody silly. He’d thought a man would have to be desperate to engage in such an incredibly pointless and boring activity. Now he was not so sure. Sometimes, gently lifting and separating papery tulip bulbs or collecting lupin seeds in a small envelope Mallory became aware of a momentary lightening of the heart. A fleeting sensation, even, of peacefulness.

Polly had fallen comfortably on her feet, landing in a top-floor flat off Eaton Square. The owner, an elderly, extremely wealthy Brazilian with a wife as young and lovely as Polly herself, had homes in Paris and the Costa Esmeralda as well as a ranch in Kentucky, Virginia, where he bred horses. They were hardly in London at all.

Polly got the job through an agency. When told her wages would be four hundred pounds a month she gaped at the interviewer in astonishment and got up to leave. Then sat down again. There must be extensive perks going with such a derisory salary and this indeed proved to be the case. The job was light, to put it mildly. She was to forward any post and telephone messages to an office in the Boulevard Haussman in Paris. The apartment was to be kept clean and tidy. All bills would be paid and if any problems of a domestic nature arose she was to inform and liaise with the porter. She was not expected to house sit. Once these simple tasks were performed her time was her own. Naturally references were required. Polly obtained one from her tutor at the LSE and forged the other on House of Commons notepaper stolen from Amanda Fforbes-Snaithe’s briefcase. She was always sure this was the one that swung it.

She was not sorry to leave Dalston. Though ultimately grateful for Deborah Hartogensis’ earlier intervention, Polly felt uncomfortable in the girl’s presence. No one likes to have been seen grovelling and incapable. Deborah seemed to understand this and mainly kept out of Polly’s way, smiling tentatively when their paths happened to cross. But she did forward a small package of mail, which included a splendid view of the French Alps. Ashley wrote to say he was getting better every day. Better and stronger. He was looking forward very much to seeing her again. He sent his love. Polly found it almost impossible now to even remember what he looked like. She threw the card away.

Her room in the new flat was quite small, windowless and plainly furnished. The other seven were stuffed with antiques and ancient statuary rather in the manner of William Randolph Hearst’s castle at San Simeon but minus the packing cases. The bathrooms and kitchen were magnificent.

Once settled Polly looked around for a way to earn some money. She took the first job available that was within walking distance, thus saving on fares. This was at Calypso’s, a wine bar on the King’s Road. Meant as a stopgap, the place proved so congenial and the owner so accommodating as to hours that Polly decided to stay on working as and when, after the new term began. The wages were rubbish but the tips outstanding. Some days it seemed every other man at the counter wanted to buy her a drink; one week she took home nearly three hundred pounds. A meal was included in every shift, which was another bonus.

Being busy helped her through the first few weeks back in the Smoke. She sent her new address to Appleby House and had talked to her mother a couple of times on the telephone. Soon Kate was hoping to come to London. So far there had been no word from Mallory. Polly totally understood this and was even relieved at the enforced separation. Though she missed him she now saw clearly that his constant and uncritical support – emotional, psychological and financial – for whatever she chose to say or do had been seriously damaging. It was not his fault. He loved her and wanted to see her happy. But what makes you happy, as Polly had bitterly discovered, does not necessarily make you wise.

She had already obtained a loan for her final year and was stubbornly set on not taking a single penny from her parents. The wrong she had done them was still fresh and raw. And with the City in the state it was, her vow to repay now seemed just so much empty rhetoric. But she could at least get a good degree. No more slacking, no more drugs, no more speculation.

Speculation especially was off the agenda. Though as determined and ambitious as she had ever been, Polly had changed in one important respect. Excessive greed had left her, taking with it the will to chicane. Cheating and lying now seemed abhorrent. Also fractured beyond repair was that of which she had been most proud—her precious edge.

But, hearing herself so described, Polly would have made one thing very clear. There had been no Damascene conversion. She still did not have an altruistic bone in her body and probably never would have. Polly would not be seen putting her intelligence and training to the service of the poor on some unspeakable housing estate. She knew only too well what that sort of thing could lead to.

Billy Slaughter was always in her thoughts. She struggled to remain free of him, to draw his sting but found it impossible. Constantly she imagined him walking into the wine bar, even though Calypso’s was nowhere near the City. The fact that she had no idea where he lived only added to Polly’s anxiety. What if it were Knightsbridge or Sloane Square? Or, worse, one of the supremely grand, monstrously priced wedding-cake villas directly off the King’s Road.

At night, before a full-length mirror in the master bedroom, she sometimes practised how she would behave when they met. Polite, withdrawn, uninvolved. One time, raising and lowering eyebrows in aloof enquiry, she laughed at herself. Something she could not remember doing her whole life long.

But all these rehearsals were in vain. Billy Slaughter did not come to the wine bar nor did she see or even hear about him during her final year at the LSE. Even when she started work in Gracechurch Street, in the hub of the City, his name was never mentioned. And when Polly became confident enough to bring it up herself no one recollected him at all. Eventually, her fancy running riot, she began to wonder if he had been some demon spirit fired into life by an unknown benevolence then dropped squarely in her path, forcing her to change direction. And in the cold light of day this notion still appealed. For Polly saw quite clearly now what sort of person she would eventually have become had they never met.

If you’d asked Roy Priest where he lived at the moment he’d have had his work cut out to tell you. He was cool with this, mind. No worries. Mrs. Crudge had worked out a system and he was happily mucking in. Her plan covered every eventuality. If Roy was on nights Karen slept at Dunroamin’ and he’d go there straight from work (Doris and Ernest didn’t like the idea of him going back to an empty house). Other days, he would see Karen safely on the school bus and one or the other of the Crudges would see her safely off at teatime. Weekends, Roy and Karen floated. Sunday lunch at the bungalow for sure. The rest of the time, fifty-fifty.

Rainbow Lodge, now Roy had finished painting and decorating, was a picture. On his day off some part of the time was always spent cleaning it and sorting out the back. Ernest was a great help in this respect. His own garden being pretty much taken up with a wooden shed, a small but pretty summerhouse and the aviary, he welcomed the chance to, as he put it, “get a bit o’ dirt under me fingernails.” He brought his Reader’s Digest Year Book round and he and Roy pored over it, checking out what could be planted now and what should wait until the spring. They might order a few raspberry canes, suggested Ernest. And some daffy down dillies. After they’d dug and cleared a section they’d clean up and walk over to the Horse and Hounds to wet their whistles.

Roy felt awkward the first few times. He’d stand, clutching his half, on the fringe, as it were, speaking only when spoken to. Then, gradually, he began to join in. Wary of even the mildest confrontation he would agree first with this person, then that. When the football was on he did let rip a bit but so did everyone else so that was all right. Last Wednesday he’d thrown a few darts.

He continued to pay the rent on Rainbow Lodge, in cash, at Causton Council Offices, reckoning that if someone in the Crescent was going to shop him they’d have done it by now. And the longer he lived there, never in arrears, keeping the place smart, the better chance he’d have of staying should the penny eventually drop. If it did and they made him go, well – that would be pretty bad but not, as he had believed only a little while ago, the end of the world.

Because Roy had a family now. He told himself that every time he lay down to rest in what was now unrecognisable as Ava’s room. “I’ve got a family,” he would murmur, over and over again, and sometimes even in his sleep. More and more he was believing it until gradually, over the years, he came to know that it was true.

In the fullness of time Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother departed this earth. Esmeralda Footscray, informed simultaneously of the event by her spirit guide gave a great cry: “A million beams of light attend Your Majesty!” jumped on to a passing beam herself and hurtled after.

George, lowering a crenellated macramé fort into a bath of glue, a special order for a child’s birthday, heard the cry but paid it little mind. She was always calling out for something or other. A cinnamon stick to burn, brandy to pour on aching gums, sausages to roast over the electric fire. All activities primed for disaster. Only the other day she had set alight a bowl of feathers and he’d had to clean up the mess.

To tell the truth, George was discovering a certain steeliness within himself and the discovery was not unpleasant. He didn’t run quite so fast to her every beckoning and calling. In fact, he no longer ran at all. Occasionally he sauntered. More often he affected not to hear.

It wasn’t difficult to recall the first apprehension of this harsher version of his previous self. It had surfaced during the memorial meeting for Ava Garret. Recalling her cruel and insulting dismissal barely a week earlier he could hardly get through the address without spitting. But by the end of the service malice had been transformed to satisfaction at the dark immediacy of her comeuppance. George, finding it hard to keep a straight face, had had to hide in the gents’, where he muffled joyful yelps of laughter by stuffing a handkerchief into his mouth.

Now both of the women who had contrived, one way or the other, to make his life a misery, had gone. Untethered, George felt very strange. So that he would not float away entirely he continued to structure his days in the usual manner, looking after the house, himself and the Church of the Near at Hand. This last proved to be a mixed blessing.

Sympathy there was in abundance, which was no more than he expected. What he wasn’t prepared for were stiflingly genteel romantic overtures. These took many forms. Gifts of food, invariably described as being more than enough for two would arrive, often with an offer to pop round and heat everything up for him. Secretarial help was also proposed, and here George was briefly tempted. After his mother’s death was reported in the Psychic News he had received an escalation of cards and letters. They contained mostly straightforward expressions of sympathy but a fair proportion also included messages or more often instructions purporting to come from Esmeralda herself. George began to get a feel for these missives. They were longer, for a start, and one or two correspondents did him the favour of delivering the extraterrestrial stuff in differently coloured ink. He binned them all, unread. Other members of the Near at Hand kept asking how he was coping with the shopping, as if he hadn’t already spent half his adult life hurtling round the aisles of Asda.

Ladies – George always thought of women as ladies – who did not want to do something for him wanted him to do something for them. Dripping taps, sagging shelves, sticking doors, blocked pipes. What, George couldn’t help wondering, had they done all the years up until now? He was also asked if he could mow a lawn, run someone to the chiropodist and take a pensioner’s elderly dog, Elaine, on a final visit to the vet. The reason for this last, explained the distressed owner, was that if she herself did the deed the spaniel might feel betrayed. George, feeling that calling a male animal Elaine was more than enough betrayal already, did agree, on this one occasion, to oblige.

There had also been several offers to help sort through his mother’s things. These came mainly from the Buckinghamshire section of the Worshipful Bowes Lyon Society, (hermaj/bolyon@co.uk). Esmeralda was not a member, though when the news of her collection got out the secretary had written urging her to join. It was, the missive seemed to imply, no more than her duty. When she declined, invitations to view the treasure were angled for and once even demanded, but also without success. So it was not entirely a surprise to George when, a few days after the funeral, a fierce rapping at the front door introduced the chairman of the group, Fabian Endgoose.

Surprisingly young, with cropped fair hair, Mr. Endgoose wore Himmler glasses and a floor-length black leather coat. A silk scarf showing the QM’s racing colours was twisted tightly round his neck. He had hardly opened his mouth before George attempted to close the door. Mr. Endgoose wedged a heavily studded boot in the gap. George threatened to call the police. It had all been most unpleasant.

Later, sitting in his mother’s armchair beside the now extinguished milky globe, he struggled to decide how best to handle matters. First, to ease the immediate pressure, he wrote to the society fibbing that his mother’s collection would be shortly going in its entirety to Sotheby’s. However, after posting the letter, it struck him that an auction might actually be quite a good idea and he spent the next few days writing to all the main houses to suggest this. Awaiting their response he locked the door of her room and was immediately overcome by such feelings of relief and happiness that he didn’t open it again until the day the archives were finally handed over.

He used the dining area to sit in, throwing out the ugly fumed-oak table and straight-backed chairs, then treating himself to a lovely striped sofa with a pouffe to rest his feet on, plus a large television set and matching video. These improvements made the faded wallpaper look so shabby that George decided to have first the room, then the whole house redecorated. To prepare for this he made a bonfire of all the old furniture including the butler, whose wings were the last to burn.

Sorting through Esmeralda’s personal belongings had an unexpected outcome. Having thrown most of her stuff straight into the bin, George was then left with assorted clothes and shoes. These were in beautiful condition, largely because his mother had lived for the last two decades wrapped in just a nightdress and a fluffy blanket. Unsure what to do next, he rang Help the Aged, who handled the house insurance. They suggested their charity shop in Uxbridge.

Carefully folding the mothballed dresses, George was especially attracted to what his mother would have called a tea gown. Grey georgette with a frilled hem and covered with splashy, peach-coloured flowers, it suddenly seemed to him quite irresistible. He took off his suit and shirt, unlaced his black Oxfords, removed his socks and put the dress on. It slid easily down his body as he was very thin. Unfortunately he was also very tall and it only came to…well, George blushed to look. He found a floor-length one, which was more respectable, and walked around in it for a while. It was amazingly comfortable. He couldn’t recall when he was so relaxed. In fact it was beginning to dawn on him that he had never before understood what the word really meant.

After he had delivered the rest of the clothes to Help the Aged he reconnoitred the other charity shops and department stores. Inventing a housebound sister (“very tall, about my height, size twelve”) he found all sorts of nice things, though shoes proved impossible. Eventually he bought a man’s pair in soft cream leather, pointed and elegant with little gold tassels. Unisex, really.

From then on George spent every evening in what he quickly came to think of as his real clothes. He grew his hair, throwing away the brilliantine, using instead fragrant shampoo, conditioner and an excellent hot oil treatment. He upgraded his dental fixative so his teeth stopped clicking and bathed every day in scented water. A CD player revealed the delights of light music, which quite eclipsed his previous passion for macramé. Sometimes George would dance, romancing the night away to Cole Porter. Other times he would favour a haunting, bitter lament from the pavement cafés of the Argentine. As the anguished violin began to sob he’d tango across the carpet with long, loping strides, snatching his head round sharply at the skirting board before loping back. All performances were usually rounded off with a glass or two of champagne.

Finally, tentatively embracing the twenty-first century, he ordered an answerphone. This turned out to be the solution to all his problems. It certainly settled the hash of the Church of the Near at Hand. People rang and left a message. He didn’t respond. They rang again, he didn’t respond. They rang again, then gave up. Bliss.

Doris was not really sorry when her hours at Appleby House were cut right back. To tell the truth, so much had happened in such a short while she was glad of a breather. She had four people to look after now instead of two and it was amazing how much extra work they made. Not that she minded. Doris had taken to her mother hen role with calm assurance. It was as if, she suggested to Benny during one of their now less frequent get-togethers, she had been in training for it all her life.

The real surprise had been the way Ernest had adapted to this new domestic situation. From the beginning he’d supported her a hundred per cent but he was a man in his sixties who liked a set routine and a bit of peace and quiet. As Karen began to spend more and more time at Dunroamin’ with Roy not far behind, Doris had pictured Ernest escaping from the house rather more often than was usual. Disappearing into the back yard to converse with his birds. Pottering in his shed.

Not a bit of it. He was completely involved from day one. He’d get Karen’s tea if Doris was tied up. Sit with her to watch television, try to comment on the pop stars and aliens, even though he was often unsure which was which. He even tried to help with her homework. She seemed to have an awful lot, and soon he and Doris became sharply conscious of the absence of books about the place. Ernest had a few about birds; Doris, some light romances plus cookery and knitting magazines. That was about it. They attempted to remedy the situation. Ernest found an encyclopedia in the church jumble; Doris joined the mobile library. They had a lovely range. Also she discovered that you could order any book you liked and they’d get it, though that service wasn’t free.

There were hiccups, of course. And strangenesses. School was one area which proved surprisingly complicated. In her ignorance Doris had thought children went in the morning and came home in the afternoon, that being the end of it. Not so. She soon discovered there were also projects and special trips, after-school activities, pre-school activities. Sports days, end-of-term plays and concerts. Raffles, charity drives and something called the PTA. Karen, aware and ashamed that her real mother had never once shown her face, was proudly dragging Doris into any and every extracurricular activity.

Doris did her best. So far she had collected stamps for Blue Peter and made cakes for the guide dogs. She had agreed to help produce costumes for the choir’s October concert and collected branches from six different trees or shrubs for the nature table. Only the fact that she couldn’t drive and Ernest no longer risked it after dark kept them off the filing rota for the school and village archives.

Even then, Ernest did not escape entirely, having been persuaded – bullied he called it – into painting a gold and silver turreted fort for the end-of-term entertainment. This was eventually described in the programme as King Wenceslas’ last look-out. So far the play was called Holly and Ivy’s Big Adventure but Karen said that could easily change as they were writing it as they went along. Only once had Doris felt compelled to refuse a request, drawing the line at three lizards coming to stay over the Christmas break.

Money was a little bit tight at the moment, but would be easier when Karen’s allowance was properly sorted. The social services, who were considering an application to foster “very positively,” explained that this would be backdated. And Roy had given Doris over four hundred pounds, which he had found in Ava’s room. She and Ernest had decided to put half of this in a Post Office account for Karen and use the rest to give her and Roy really nice Christmas presents. Food wasn’t much of a problem. Doris did all her own cooking, not holding with what Ernest called “cobbled-up factory junk,” and it didn’t cost all that much more to double upon the amounts. Plus Roy was always bringing contributions from Tesco. Chops or fruit and suchlike; yesterday a lovely box of dates; last weekend, a beautiful ready-stuffed chicken.

Sadly the expected dividend from Doris’s small amount of shares in Brinkley and Latham had come to nothing. The firm collapsed shortly after the death of Mrs. Latham. No one had explained the ins and outs to Doris and she didn’t want to know. What she did know, and told anyone who would listen, was that it would have broken poor Mr. Brinkley’s heart.

However, in spite of this and other small disappointments, Doris had never been so happy. But happiness, as any parent could have told her, always comes at a price. In her case this was a continual anxiety over Karen’s health. Mainly pushed to the back of her mind during the day by sheer busyness, in rare periods of rest the worry would gather into a dark ball and roll around usually settling in the pit of her stomach. Sometimes she would even dream about the child and the dreams always ended sadly.

Karen’s headaches had not gone away. Gently talking around the idea of a visit to the doctor had not worked. After the terrible threat the child’s mother had made in this direction Doris was not surprised. She then tried bribery, which had always done the trick with her nephews and nieces, but that didn’t work either.

Not that Karen ever admitted to feeling bad. The fear equals doctor equation was too firmly established. But Doris noticed her screwing up her eyes sometimes and only last week she had her hands clamped over her ears and was trying not to cry. Overcome with worry, Doris had talked to her sister, who was convinced it was a brain tumour and that every minute counted.

Doris became desperate. She could not bear to put at risk the new and extremely precious relationship between herself and Karen. Imagine the damage, the breaking of all trust, if she attempted to trick the little girl into a surgery. And what if it was then decided that she needed an X-ray? Doris pictured the child somehow being forced “for her own good” to go through this distressing experience, surrounded by strange machinery and getting more and more panic-stricken.

Then, just a few days ago, Karen caught a cold. A late summer wheezing cough and cold. Something had to be done. Doris booked herself an appointment with Dr. Dickenson, now in his last couple of weeks with the practice. She said it was an emergency and was fitted in at the end of morning surgery. She told him everything from the very beginning, struggling to remain calm, not always succeeding.

The doctor said there were almost as many reasons for persistent headaches as there were headaches. He said that brain tumours were extremely rare in adults and even more so in children but that, of course, Karen must be seen by someone. He suggested Doris registered her with the practice as soon as possible and that he would call at Dunroamin’ on his rounds that afternoon. He had an idea, which Doris would perhaps consider, on how the visit might be handled.

So around four o’clock Dr. Dickenson arrived, leaving his bag in the hall. Ernest, primed, made some tea, took the tray in, with instructions to Karen to pour, then made himself scarce. As Karen gave the pot a stir, wondering if it was strong enough Doris rolled up her sleeve and had her wrist gently palpated.

“Why is he squeezing your arm, Aunty Doris?” asked Karen.

“Don’t say ‘he,’ Karen. It’s rude.”

“I’m your aunt’s doctor,” said Dr. Dickenson. “I’m afraid she’s got a bit of a sprain.”

“Oh! Does it hurt?”

“Could be worse,” said Doris, truthfully. Then, getting carried away. “Shall I have to wear a bandage?”

“Rest is the thing, Mrs. Crudge. And I can see you won’t be short of a helping hand.”

“She’s a good girl.” Doris smiled as Karen poured milk into rosebud-patterned cups. “I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

Passing a plate of ginger parkin round, Karen started to cough, covering her mouth with her hand as Doris had shown her.

“You want some Buttercup Syrup for that,” said Dr. Dickenson.

“There’s no such thing.” Karen was uncertain, not sure if she was being teased. Whether it was all right to laugh. “Is there?”

“Get it at the Co-op.”

“Made from buttercups?”

“I had that years ago,” said Doris. “My mum used to swear by it.”

They ate and drank comfortably for a little while, Dr. Dickenson sitting back, smiling and munching, as if he had all the time in the world. Doris watching Karen without watching. Suddenly Karen sprang up.

“Uncle Ernest hasn’t had any tea.”

“I’ll get it.” Doris heaved herself out of the armchair. “Do me good to move about.”

“What about your arm?”

“I can manage a tray.” Doris brought a mug in from the kitchen, filled it then cut a large square of cake. “You look after Dr. Dickenson, Karen.”

“Actually, I have to be going in a minute.” But he didn’t get up. Instead he asked Karen if she watched a lot of television. Then, when she said, “No,” asked if she wore glasses and when she asked, “Why?” said she seemed to be screwing up her eyes a lot and he wondered if it could be eye strain.

“Um…I get headaches sometimes,” said Karen. Then, quickly: “That is, I used to.”

“My grandson – he’s about your age – gets terrible headaches.”

“Can’t you make him better?”

“I did, actually. Took some time – he had to have all sorts of tests.”

“Did they hurt?”

“Heavens, no. But it was bad news.”

Karen gaped and her eyes grew round.

“Turns out he’s allergic to chocolate.”

Doris, moving about in the kitchen, doing nothing special, listened to the low voices. Once Karen laughed and Doris sighed with relief. Surely that meant it was going to be all right? They talked for quite a bit longer, then she heard Dr. Dickenson heaving and puffing his way out of the sofa and went back into the lounge.

“Karen’s going to come and see me about her cough.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Doris.

“Can I have some more parkin?” asked Karen.

“You’ll eat me out of house and home.” Doris showed the doctor into the hall and opened the front door. “Not that she can’t do with putting a bit of weight on.”

On the step he turned towards her and Doris saw his face clearly in the harsh sunlight. It was grave and sad. Her hand flew to her heart. Gasping, she cried out.

“What is it? Tell me.”

“I don’t know—”

“Tell me.”

“Please. She’ll hear you.” He backed away into the front garden. Doris stumbled after and, when they reached the gate, stood against it blocking the way.

“I’m her mother. I have a right to know.”

“I’d like someone else to see her. A specialist.”

“Is it a brain tumour?” Doris seized his jacket, her eyes dark with fear. “Will she have to have an operation?”

“No. I’m pretty sure it’s nothing…” He hesitated. “Nothing like that.”

What could he say? He was not capable of accurately diagnosing mental illness, though, God knew, he had seen enough seriously disturbed children in his time. He knew it could be linked to poverty, abuse or inadequate parenting. That last could certainly be a factor in this case. It could be genetic. It could spring up with devastating and frightful results in a formerly sunny-tempered child with a loving home. There was no accounting for terrible things.

“So – what sort of specialist?” Doris was saying.

“There’s someone at Princes Risborough. A woman doctor, specialising in child care. She’s young, very sympathetic and I’m sure Karen will ‘open up’ to her, as they say.”

“Open up?”

“Talk to her.”

“What about?”

It was a perfectly reasonable question that Dr. Dickenson found extremely difficult to answer. What he would have liked to do was reply, “Her headaches,” and walk away. Plainly that wasn’t on. Yet if he was honest as to the true nature of Karen’s anxiety he would be laying a heavy burden on this poor woman. He paused, thinking around and about the matter. Seeking perhaps an alternative. Wondering if he had perhaps been too hasty in his conclusions. Wishing and hoping that might be true. Noticing how much worse bad things seemed when you put a name to them.

He began to backtrack, telling himself he had been too hasty; attempted to look at what he had been told from a different point of view. A layperson’s, for example. Unburdened by any medical knowledge, what would they think of Karen’s strange ramblings? The answer came quickly enough. They would think she was making it up. What an imagination, they would say. And if it all went a stage further? Would they see this as genuine derangement, as he had done? Probably not. They would say she’d been watching too much telly. Or eating cheese before bedtime.

Hot in his tweed jacket, and becoming unreasonably annoyed in the face of Doris’s panic, Dr. Dickenson eased his way through the gate, pausing only to suggest that it would be unwise to put pressure of any kind on the child.

“To do what?”

“Um…discuss things.”

“As if I would.”

Doris was indignant. More bewildered now than before he came she was still glad to see the back of him. Her only regret was that they didn’t have the name of this specialist. At least then they could maybe get some idea of what they were looking at. As things stood, now all they could do was wait.

In the library at Appleby House Kate was editing The Sidewinder Café. Yesterday the author had come down to Forbes Abbot for lunch. It had been an exhilarating experience for them both. The writer, joyful and excited at the thought of publication, had drunk nearly a whole bottle of Rosemount Chardonnay, whereupon Kate, quite overcome with pleasure that a simple action of hers could bring about such happiness, opened another. They’d ended the afternoon toasting the recollection that it was a small (if not exactly unknown) publisher that had scooped Harry Potter when all the big boys turned it down. And that an even smaller one had published last year’s winner of the Booker Prize.

Presently calm and sober, Kate still felt great. She had lots of energy these days and wondered if it was because she was so happy. It seemed an oversimplistic equation. Anyway, whatever the reason, it was just as well as there was an awful lot to do.

Regarding the Celandine Press, Mallory was of little help. He came to all the meetings, listened carefully to what was said and took his turn in reading the handful of manuscripts that were still dribbling in. But mentally he was permanently somewhere else and Kate accepted this. The business was, after all, her baby, her dream and she just buckled down and got on with it.

There was still no reply from E. M. Walker, though she had now written twice to the accommodation address in Slough. This left Kate in something of a dilemma. Plainly the man – she was sure it was a man – wanted his novel published, otherwise why submit it? But could she just go ahead and do this without a properly signed contract? She decided to ring her old employers and talk to someone in the legal department about it.

The unexpected element in the new enterprise was Benny’s input. Kate was now discovering what Dennis had always known. Given room to breathe, freedom from pressure and the confidence of someone she respected, Benny proved surprisingly capable. Alarmed at first by the presence of computers, she was persuaded to attend a basic Word Processing weekend at Causton Tech. Quickly recognising the advantages over her old typewriter, she threw out the Imperial and was soon producing standard letters on her AppleMac to enclose with any rejected typescripts.

She kept a book with details of all submissions and dates of their return, and also an account of all expenses. Kate had had a new business line installed. The number had not yet been given out but she could hear Benny’s soft little flute of a voice rehearsing (“The Celandine Press. Benny Frayle speaking. How can I help?”) when Benny thought no one was listening.

There had only been one really awkward situation that Kate had found difficult to handle. Unfortunately it involved that most raw and painful of subjects, money, which meant she could not talk it over with Mallory.

A short while ago Benny had approached Kate, anxious to discuss her own position in the company. It seemed, Benny explained, that the few simple tasks she was hoping to carry out when the business was up and running were disproportionate to her owning a third share in it. Kinders had already been valued for a quite breathtaking sum and when it was sold Benny wished to invest half of the proceeds in the Celandine Press. To become, as she put it, “a sort of semi-sleeping partner.”

Kate was overwhelmed. She knew the offer was not made in any knowledge of the financial disaster that had so recently overtaken herself and Mallory. Benny, though she must have noticed the coming and going of the police and Polly’s rapid departure, had never referred to these things. Good manners and kindness of heart would not allow it. Kate had expected nothing else but was still grateful. And now this.

She thanked Benny saying, truthfully, that she was overwhelmed by such a generous offer, adding that it might be a good idea to postpone a decision until after the first publication, when they would be able to see more clearly exactly how they stood. Benny was happy with this and hugged Kate, not at all tentatively.

Kinders was on both women’s minds at the moment. Benny vowed she would never enter the place again. Indeed, went to great pains to avoid even walking past it. Kate absolutely understood this. On the other hand, Dennis had willed not just the house but its entire contents to Benny and things had to be sorted.

Surprisingly the machines had been the least of their worries. Kate had had them professionally photographed and faxed the results to the Royal Armouries Museum, which had been astonished and delighted at the opportunity of owning such a collection. Neither London nor Manchester, they admitted, presently had the space to display but the machines would be disassembled and stored until a proper exhibition could be mounted.

That still left a flat full of furniture and books and paintings. Kate had already packed up towels, bedding and Dennis’s clothes and taken them to Oxfam. She decided to do an inventory, which Benny could then check and decide if there was anything on the list she wished to keep. The kitchen and bedroom had already been covered. Benny had chosen the blue Le Creuset casserole that Dennis had used to cook their lovely turbot supper, but when it arrived she became very distressed and urged Kate to take it back. Kate didn’t. She hid it in one of the cavernous kitchen cupboards at Appleby House, feeling sure that at some point in the future, even if it was a long way away, Benny would regret having nothing to remember her friend by.

This coming afternoon Kate would be tackling the sitting room and then the job was done. She drove round to Kinders with lots of newspaper and boxes in the Golf to fill with books and other small things.

Just before she left Benny had said she wouldn’t be wanting any furniture. She had the wing chair in which Dennis always sat and that was enough. Gilbert Ormerod, Dennis’s solicitor and executor, had already removed any personal papers, which he had had instructions to burn.

So, thought Kate, now wandering shoeless over the glowing Chinese rugs, it’s largely books and paintings. The latter were all illustrations of scenes of conflict. Soldiers in the great war leaping back from the recoil of a massive gun. Spitfires spiralling through the air, trailing smoke and flames. Hand-to-hand fighting by men in helmets and skirts, with halberds dripping blood. A blow-up of a still from the original film of Henry V: the great front line of cavalry, poised to charge. Violence in waiting, banners and armour shimmering in the heat. A print of Turner’s The Fighting Téméraire. An ornately framed oil showing the Field of the Cloth of Gold.

Kate could not imagine Benny wanting any of these. She took them down, turning their faces to the wall. The books were nearly all in the same vein. War stories, soldiers’ memoirs. The Iliad and Penguin Classics by warriors long gone to dust. Sieges Through the Ages. Biographies of Churchill and Montgomery, Nelson, Alexander, Napoleon. A few volumes on cricket.

Kate began to take them down, quickly filling all her boxes. She began to list the few small ornaments. There were also some beautiful enamelled bowls which, only the other day, she had cleared of dead hyacinths and freesia. About to throw the bulbs away, Kate suddenly decided to take them home. She had planted them in the shrubbery in a place apart from the massed daffodils and bluebells, marked by special bronze tags.

The inventory was quickly completed. All Benny had to do now was check it through and Kate could ring the antique dealer from Amersham to get the place cleared. There were some beautiful pieces, which should fetch beautiful prices. And one or two oddities that were harder to classify. A soldier’s trunk, for instance, lacquered a rich burgundy, bound by webbing and displaying a raised regimental coat of arms. Kate gripped one of the leather handles and lifted. The trunk seemed empty but it was sensible to check. Unbuckling all the webbing seemed to take ages and when she finally looked inside there was nothing but a few old newspapers.

They were quite yellow and foxed with brown markings. Kate took them out carefully. One or two were over a hundred years old. The headlines all spoke of war. The Boer War. The Crimean. The Great War. The Second World War. More stuff for the museum. Kate was going up to London the following week to see Polly. She felt, given the state of the paper, it might be best to deliver them personally. An artist’s folder would probably be best to carry them in.

Underneath the final copy was a large unsealed envelope. It was quite heavy. Kate turned it upside down and a stack of A4 paper, punched at the side and threaded with pink legal tape, fell out. The pages, over four hundred, were handwritten in black ink. The letters, beautifully shaped, were inscribed in such an orderly and balanced manner as to gradually cause feelings of harmony to steal into the heart of the fortunate observer. Intrigued and bewildered in equal measure, Kate settled down in an armchair and began to read.

In his wonderfully comfortable private room on the top floor of the Clinique pour les Maladies Tropicales, Ashley Parnell was getting his confidence back. And with it his looks. He knew this without checking in the mirror. It showed in the gradual change in his nurse’s attitude. She touched his body now in a slightly different way. And after taking his pulse, her hand would remain for a moment, the fingers supporting his wrist, the thumb pressing lightly into his palm. Most days she combed his hair though they both knew he could do it quite well himself. Then his scalp would tingle and not only from the gentle friction of the comb. None of this was in the least blatant. She rarely looked directly at him and her smile was coolly professional.

Yesterday, at his request, she had brought in some postcards, the usual exaggerated panorama to dazzle the folks at home. A sky impossibly blue, mountain peaks perfectly iced, clean goats nibbling on velvety grass and wild flowers. Now written on and signed by himself and Judith, the little pile lay on his bedside table. The nurse offered to post them. Ashley thanked her, removed another card from inside a book he had been reading and passed it over.

Nothing was said but her face changed. She smiled and he could see she thought this secret card was to his mistress. When asked if there was anything else before she left, Ashley said he would like some fresh water. As she moved towards the bathroom he noticed her walk was different too: looser, more indolent.

A full-length mirror was fastened on to the back of the bathroom door and he could see her reflection. She put the freshly filled carafe aside and studied herself in the glass, stroking her hair smoothly away from her forehead. Then she slowly undid the first two buttons on her uniform and loosened the collar, easing the neckline.

As he watched the tawny sun-marked skin transform to creamy white Ashley became aware that she was also watching him. At that moment his passivity fell clean away. Aware for some time of vague, unfocused feelings of sexuality, he now felt overwhelmingly hot and needful. When she came back into the room and leaned over the bed to smooth his pillows Ashley slipped an arm around her shoulders, drawing her down beside him. Kissing, undoing the rest of the buttons, pushing aside silk and lace to encounter warm, yielding flesh…It was all quite a shock to a system that had almost forgotten just how marvellous sex could be.

Some small distance away, on the third level of a beautiful terraced garden, Judith Parnell sat sipping fresh orange and pomegranate juice. The drink had been beautifully served: the glass in a pitcher of crushed ice itself enfolded by a linen napkin, whiter than snow. Powdery sugar was in a silver bowl. Pale yellow rosebuds finished off the presentation.

And yet, Judith was not satisfied. She was discovering that when you had money you were easily displeased. Things that cost a lot should be perfect. More than perfect, in fact. The orange juice was not quite as sweet as it could have been. No doubt that was what the sugar was for but naturally sweet fruit could surely be found?

The Hotel Mimosa had been chosen purely for reasons of proximity to the hospital. It took barely fifteen minutes to walk there and, if that didn’t appeal, cabs were always available. Judith visited Ashley two or three times a day. Three-quarters of the other guests were also alone and she assumed they were staying at the hotel for the same reason. The management asked each visitor on checking in if they would care to share a table at dinner. Judith had refused and was glad of it. She did not wish to partake in the hopes and fears of strangers, being already in thrall to more than enough of her own.

As Ashley got better and better, Judith struggled to come to terms with her reaction to this wonderful development. The very speed with which it seemed to be happening caused her to fear it might be temporary. Then she wondered how she would feel if this rapidity did mean an early regression.

The answer should be clear enough but, to Judith’s acute distress, this didn’t seem to be the case. Emotion clouded her head at the very suggestion. She tried to isolate and clarify her thoughts, one at a time, by rigorous self-examination. Wasn’t this extraordinary recovery just what she had been working and praying for for months? She remembered very clearly when it all started. That terrible morning when Ash, after struggling with acute lethargy and dizzy spells for weeks, had woken up too exhausted even to get out of bed.

But it had been wonderful having him at home, even with all the money worries. As neither was involved in village affairs, hardly anyone came to the house. She had him to love and look after all by herself. Now there were other people. Judith either resented or disliked them all, even the specialist, an elderly and compassionate man, infinitely approachable and friendly.

If asked to single out the person she disliked the most Judith would not have hesitated. Of all the nurses in and out of Ashley’s room – and they were in and out even when she herself was visiting – Christiane Blonde was the one she feared. The acknowledgement brought her up short. What was she thinking? Did she really mean “feared”?

Judith sensed an intimacy between the nurse and her husband that she kept telling herself was merely her imagination. It was true she had nothing solid to base this assumption on. Well, almost nothing. There had been one incident not long after Ashley was admitted. Visiting in the early evening Judith had come across them both walking towards her down a long corridor, the nurse holding his arm. The late sunshine poured through the huge windows and Ashley paused to lift his face towards the sky. He smiled, then, preparing to walk again, stumbled. She put an arm around him and he leaned briefly against her before righting himself. That was all. If it had been anyone else…

What was it about Frenchwomen? She wasn’t young, especially. She was probably Ashley’s own age but there was something about her. Nothing artificial. Though her complexion was flawless she appeared to wear no make-up. She was just one of those rare people, Judith concluded unhappily, that could suggest beauty by a turn of the head. Or the resting of a hand against the cheek.

As Ashley recovered the bleakness vanished from his gaze and his sluggish skin began to glow. His eyes were once again warm and lively and when Judith held his hand his own grip was strong.

Loving him constrainedly for so long she now fell in love all over again and couldn’t help wondering how soon it would be before they slept together. Every night she would sit on the balcony of her room, picturing how it would happen. What they would do. What they would say. How passionate his caresses and kisses would be.

There were some boutiques in the atrium of the Mimosa, full of horrifically priced merchandise, and she had bought a semi-transparent nightdress of smoky grey lace and chiffon, loosely tied with satin ribbons. Unable to resist showing it off she had taken the box along on her next visit to the hospital. Folding back layer upon layer of silvery tissue with trembling fingers Judith had drawn out the lovely thing and held it against her heart, the gossamer folds tumbling to the floor. She couldn’t quite make out Ashley’s reaction. For a fraction of a second, (blink and you’d miss it) she could have sworn he looked alarmed. Then there was a certain awkwardness, which Judith was quick to reason away. It had been a long time; he had been very ill. She should have been more patient. Then he said something nice, though the feeling of uncomfortableness still came through. She had forgotten the exact words.

But eventually it would all come right. It must or she would have cheated and lied and turned her whole life over to the bad for nothing. White-collar crime, they called it, as if this made it somehow cleaner than the other sort. As if stealing money by tapping a keyboard wasn’t as serious as grabbing some old woman’s handbag and frightening her half to death. Frightening people by remote control must inevitably be less traumatic.

Anyway, it was half expected these days, the way things were. Every day, workers with pension funds woke up to find they had halved in value, if not worse. Insurance companies actually trained staff in how to avoid paying out. Honest investors lost thousands through companies still paying their directors obscene bonuses. If that wasn’t theft, what was?

And surely the reasons behind a crime should be taken into account? In her case they were admirable ones. She had stolen for love. It had seemed to her a matter of life and death.

Not so her partner. She had regarded his involvement as purely a matter of greed. He denied this. For him the robbery had been a question of freedom. “Call me a freedom fighter!” he had shouted, laughing and half drunk, not long after their first meeting in the Peacock Hotel.

He had delivered her from a terrible assault. On the pretence of setting up a business meeting a repulsive man had lured her there; wedged her into a tight corner and urged her to have sex with him. When she’d refused he’d almost climbed into her lap, all the while pouring depraved and filthy suggestions into her ears.

Shaking and on the verge of tears, she’d caught the eye of someone about to buy a drink, who saw the man off. That was when it all started. Overwhelmed by gratitude she was surprised to find her rescuer knew who she was. He had seen her, apparently, at Carey Lawson’s funeral, though they had not been introduced. Somehow this seemed to make it all right to talk to him. A couple of brandies later and Judith had told him everything. She had described Ashley fading away before her eyes; clients disappearing, her desperate need for money. How she had sold nearly everything they owned that was sellable and now there was only the house and that was mortgaged.

He too had a tale of woe. Married to a gorgon of a woman who doled out pocket money for services rendered and if he couldn’t she didn’t. Humiliated by being forced to sit in an office all day, pretending to be of use when everyone knew it was only because his wife owned half the business he was there at all. The other half – well, he assumed Judith knew Dennis Brinkley? Could there be some way she and himself could help each other? Why not start by sharing their strengths and weaknesses?

This didn’t take long. It quickly became plain that Judith had all the strengths while Drew, as he had asked to be called, owned up to all the weaknesses. However, as the conversation developed, both terms proved inappropriate. Knowledge, it seemed, would be the counter with which to play the game.

There was little Judith didn’t know about offshore accounts, tax dodges, stock exchange fiddles and money scams generally. All accountants pick up such information along the way. Only the bent ones make use of it. And computers held no mystery for her. She had been working with them all her life.

Drew knew nothing of such matters. What he had to offer was access to lots and lots and lots of money via a key to the street door and main office of Brinkley and Latham, plus the combination to a safe that held the passwords for all the main office accounts. For good measure he also threw in cautionary tips on how to avoid detection. Mainly this seemed to involve keeping a sharp eye out for the nosy fishmonger opposite when entering or leaving the building. And speed, once inside, must be of the essence. Shift a lot of stuff in two or three visits max, casting the net wide. Smallish amounts from lots of accounts, suggested Drew, soon mounted up and were less likely to be detected. Judith explained that detection would take some time anyway, as false entries would have to be made to cover the debits, however small. Drew was impressed.

They talked and talked, getting more and more exhilarated. He bought a bottle of cheap sparkling wine. They saw it off and Judith ordered another. Later, though, getting out of her car and stumbling up Trevelyan’s garden path, the intoxication began to drain away. And by the time she had taken off her coat and drunk several glasses of water, she could not imagine what on earth had possessed her. God – she must have been mad.

Running a bath, pouring in lots of scented oil, she attempted to wash away the dirt from the infected early part of the evening and the insanely dangerous fantasy of the final two hours. Eventually she crawled into bed, falling into an uneasy sleep. Her last thought was, he must be feeling just like this. It was the drink talking. Tomorrow it will all seem like a crazy dream. But in the morning, when the phone rang and he asked if it was still on she said “yes” straightaway.

They met only twice after this although they spoke several times on the telephone. Everything worked smoothly. As Judith did not have access to Dennis Brinkley’s private office, his fatal accident hardly caused a blip on the screen of her activities. But as the police had been involved, albeit tangentially, she decided it would be safer to extricate a final amount to bring them near to their aimed sum for balance and quit.

Not reading the local paper, which she rightly described as illiterate rubbish, Judith had missed entirely the fact that a self-styled medium, boasting a knowledge of Dennis Brinkley’s death, had herself passed away in somewhat mysterious circumstances. This item hit the national press as she and Ashley were boarding Swissair at Stansted. And even if the news of what would soon be recognised as a double murder had been brought to her attention, she would never have linked it with the man she knew only as Drew. Judith had sized him up pretty thoroughly at their first meeting. Weak, desperate, good-looking in a faded, second-division soap star sort of way. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.

The new owners of Kinders considered the name rather an affectation and restyled the building the Old School House. He was a banker, she did graphic design, working from home. They had three children and a live-in nanny. Their architect had transformed the place. Four bedrooms, two bathrooms and living rooms, and a crescent-shaped kitchen that ran halfway round the ground floor. The arrow slits had been bricked in and replaced by huge windows. The interior was now flooded with light and there was a shiny new red front door.

Everyone said to Benny, “You wouldn’t know the place,” but of course she always would. Her last visit had been impressed, as with a branding iron, on to her conscious mind. She accepted that this was so and would always be so. She understood too that the agonising, sharp-edged pain to which her heart had, at last, been gently opened would blunt and soften in time. Even so, she remained glad that the larger half of life’s allotted span was now behind her.

After her cruel awakening to the self-protecting lie that had seemed to promise happy ever after, Benny forgot all about her talisman. The frantic craving for security that had obsessed her every waking moment simply vanished. Why yearn for something that didn’t and couldn’t exist?

Happily, love and friendship were still present in her life. Mallory had always been reciprocally dear but Benny was gradually becoming more and more fond of Kate, who was tremendously kind and supportive. She seemed to sense when Benny needed to talk – only recently ever the case – and when she wished just to be quiet. And both she and Mallory urged Benny to sleep at Appleby House if she was ever lonely.

Benny, on the deepest level of her being, was always lonely, though she derived great comfort from their kindness. But to her surprise it was the business, the Celandine Press, that helped her most through the first months after the court case and successful prosecution of the man who had caused Dennis’s death.

There was so much to do in the office, most of it quite alien to Benny’s previous experience. But Kate explained things clearly and was always on the spot if a problem arose. It was plain from the outset that both she and Mallory had complete confidence in Benny’s ability to cope. And so Benny coped, calmly and even with a certain élan. She was especially good at handling distressed authors, of whom there were many. It was not at all uncommon for Kate or Mallory to pick up the phone, only to have whoever was on the other end refuse to speak to anyone but Miss Frayle. After the hoped-for conversation, the writer, although nothing definite about the reception of his or her manuscript had actually been said, would hang up, feeling both consoled and valued. Mallory asked Benny once how she did it and Benny replied simply, “I know how they feel.”

Every day at five, when the office officially closed, she would go to the churchyard. Actually, this present afternoon she was a little late, easing open the lych-gate with some difficulty, balancing her folding stool, a small hand fork and a damp cloth.

Containing only his ashes, Dennis’s grave was barely half the size of the others. With permission from the vicar it had been edged with very old barley-sugar tiles from the garden at Appleby House. Benny had hoped to plant some rosemary too, for remembrance, but the Reverend Johnson had demurred, saying it was rather a strong grower for such a small space. So instead she usually included one or two sprigs with whatever other flowers she brought along.

The leaves had just started to fall. Tough, leathery ones, glowing ruby and bright amber, they covered the grave. Benny picked them off, loosened and removed a single weed, which had appeared overnight, opened her folding canvas stool and settled down.

It was a good time to come, the hinge of the day. There would rarely be anyone around, even in the summer. If there was she would talk to Dennis silently. She had already told him about the discovery of The King’s Armourer. About how Kate, dazed with disbelief, had brought it home from Kinders. The excitement it had raised: the happiness, the sorrow. Now Benny described briefly how the editing was going. Kate had said there was hardly anything to do, barely a cut to make. The book raced ahead of you, was how she described it. Vivid as a dream.

To ring the changes Benny would also talk about the non-business part of her day. Small domestic matters – ordering Madonna lilies from the new de Jaeger catalogue; Croydon’s injured paw, now coming along nicely after antibiotics from the vet. A pair of new linen curtains for the kitchen window patterned with forget-me-nots, blue as the sky.

Occasionally she would touch on village affairs – quarrelling in the church choir, yet another appeal to the Lottery Commission for a new village hall. Other times she would just sit, quietly crying out her grief, while the rooks wheeled and shrieked unnoticed above her head.

Quite often Dennis would be present. Not in any weird or mystical way – Benny had had no further truck with the Church of the Near at Hand – but just kind of solidly there. Asked to explain this she wouldn’t have known where to start. All in the mind people would have said, though Benny knew that wasn’t true. If it had been she could have conjured him up at any time. As it was, there was never any warning: just a sort of gathering of energy that slowly intensified. Her ears would hum a bit. The air changed, becoming warm and so close there was even a slight feeling of pressure. Then she was no longer alone.

Whenever this happened Benny would experience an overwhelming rush of gratitude. She always remembered to thank God in her prayers for such a gift of grace. To have had thirty years of true and loving companionship was blessing enough, but to still be aware of his dear presence…

Benny took several deep breaths and sat up straight. She could hear voices. An elderly couple were coming up the path with some chrysanthemums and a watering can. She folded up her stool, took out her cloth and carefully removed some specks of dirt from the stone on Dennis’s grave. It was of pale grey marble, veined with cream. The description, in plain gold letters, read simply:

DENNIS BRINKLEY

WRITER

1946–2001

Karen was now quite used to Dr. Dickenson. She had visited his surgery several times, once with her bad cough, now completely better, but also after falling from the parallel bars in the school gym and hurting her leg. Aunty Doris had gone with her to hospital where they’d taken a photograph of it and put the picture up on the wall for her to see. Another time they’d had a different sort of look at her head and that was called a scan.

The best part, the most important part, was that it had been absolutely true what the doctor had promised. She had told him the very thing that frightened her most, the thing she had promised Ava never ever to tell anyone, and it had been all right. Nobody had come to take her away. Or lock her in a cupboard and throw the key down a bottomless well like Ava told her they would. All the doctor said was he knew a special person who would be able to help Karen and that he’d arrange an appointment as soon as possible.

It seemed ages before they heard. Karen wasn’t worried; for her the worst was over. But Aunty Doris was. Karen noticed her all the time looking for the postman. When the letter finally came she nearly ripped the envelope to bits getting it out. When she’d read it she went very quiet and gave it to Ernest. Later, Karen found Doris crying. She climbed on to Doris’s knee and hugged her, saying that she mustn’t be sad because now everything would be getting better. “You’ll see” – Karen was solemn and assured – “soon all the hurting will go away.”

Although the letter had been signed “Dr. Barbara Lester,” and the appointment was at a proper clinic, when the day finally came the room where Karen found herself was more like a nursery than a surgery. There were squashy armchairs, a sofa and a whole range of things to have fun with. Shelves full of soft toys and dolls and others holding tanks and planes and Action Men and Lego. Lots of coloured pens and paints and paper were on a low table and a computer stood on a desk by the open window next to a stack of boxed tapes. There was even a doll’s house.

“Where would you like to sit, Karen?”

Dr. Lester didn’t look much like a doctor either. It wasn’t just that she didn’t have a white coat or a thing round her neck for listening to your chest, she looked, well…a bit like Karen’s PE teacher. She’d got quite a short denim skirt on and one of those shirts that tied up in a knot round your waist. Her bare feet were in white sandals. She was already sitting down, on the puffy yellow sofa. Karen sat in the nearest armchair, which had a large box of tissues balanced on one of the arms.

“Can I put this on the floor?”

“Of course you can.”

“Only my cold’s better now.”

Karen watched intently as the doctor put some glasses on and took a folder from a briefcase resting on the carpet nearby. There didn’t seem to be much in the folder. She read it in what Ernest would call “the shake of a lamb’s tail.”

Dr. Lester was rather surprised at the picture the little girl presented. Having been a child psychiatrist for thirteen years she had come across every attitude in the book and quite a few others you wouldn’t believe but Karen’s was most unusual. In the first place, her expression was totally unworried. She appeared confident, happy even, sitting forwards eagerly on the edge of her seat, as if expecting some entertainment to begin.

“I’ve been waiting ever such a long while to see you.”

You and a hundred others, dear. And already the clock was ticking their time together away. The doctor’s notes told a familiar story. Physical neglect, psychological abuse, no love to speak of. And unfortunately no grandparents to buffer sorrow. But now the mother had died and the child was being fostered, very successfully, by all accounts. She suffered constantly from noises and chattering and pains in her head.

Dr. Lester was not surprised to note the GP’s suspicions of early schizophrenia. Even laypeople jumped to this conclusion, given such symptoms. However, there were other early signs and these were not present. One also had to make allowances for the imagination. Wretched and lonely children will struggle to conjure alternative worlds in an attempt to escape the horrors of the real one. Karen’s fantasies were incredibly inventive.

Dr. Lester smiled, offered some sweets from a glass bowl, suggested Karen called her Barbara. They talked for a few minutes about the successful present. How kind Aunty Doris was. Uncle Ernest’s birds. Roy’s beautiful new dog, Dancer.

“And I’m in a higher class at school. We’re going to talk French.”

“You like school?”

“It’s great. I was in the Christmas play.”

“I played Aladdin once – in a hospital pantomime. How did you get on?”

“I couldn’t really learn it very well.”

“Because of your headaches?”

“That’s right. It’s hard when everyone’s talking at once.”

“I believe they started just after your mother died?”

“That’s why they started. I explained to Dr. Dickenson.”

“Yes. But there can be other reasons for headaches, Karen. For instance, if we cry a lot—”

“And she didn’t just die. Someone gave her poison.”

“Really?”

“Like Snow White.”

“That’s a fairy story, isn’t it?” Dr. Lester paused, waited. “Do you like fairy stories?”

“No.” Karen remembered pricking her finger and waking up without a prince. “They’re all lies.”

“Do you find it difficult to tell the difference?” Karen looked puzzled. “Between what’s true and what we make up.”

Karen shook her head and the gossamer hair lifted and floated in slow motion, like thistledown.

“I’d like to talk about when you were little, if that’s all right?” Karen shrugged. “How far back do you remember?”

“For ever.”

“Tell me the first thing.”

“You mean when I was born?”

“A bit further on. Playgroup, say.”

“What’s a playgroup?”

“OK, when you went to primary school. Did you make friends there?”

“I’ve never had a friend.” This was delivered without a trace of self-pity. She could have been saying: I’ve never had a mobile. Or a bicycle.

“What about imaginary friends?”

Karen stared at Dr. Lester in amazement. She couldn’t help thinking that it wasn’t herself who didn’t know the difference between what was true and what people make up. Then she wondered if it was a trick question. Or perhaps a joke. It was certainly pretty funny. She said politely: “You can’t have imaginary friends, Doctor…um…Barbara.”

“Why not?”

“Because you couldn’t play with them or go for walks or round to their house or anything.”

“You can do all those things in your imagination.”

Karen frowned. She was beginning to look anxious. “I don’t understand.”

“The mind can fool us in all sorts of ways, Karen. And one of its tricks is the ability to make things that don’t exist seem totally real.”

Karen’s air of bright confidence was dimming by the minute.

“Look…” Dr. Lester glanced down at her notes. “How would it be if we—”

“I thought you were going to help me.”

“Before anyone can help you your illness has to be diagnosed. Seeing me is just the first step.”

“I’m not ill.”

Define illness. Not always easy on the physical level, mentally you were in a minefield. Take out the unmistakably mad and there still remained thousands of afflicted souls suffering from simple depression, if it ever was, through to torment so wild and strong that the sufferers had to be confined for their own safety and that of others.

Having read the report on Karen, Dr. Lester was pretty sure that the headaches were psychosomatic and directly linked to the extraordinary fantasy that the child had woven about herself. Not that these imaginings were in themselves harmful – far from it. If you don’t have a dream, as the song says, how you gonna have a dream come true? Dr. Lester had come across several adults admitting to a very freaky fantasy life, which hadn’t stopped them going successfully about their daily business and harming no one. Alas, Karen didn’t fall into this category.

At this early stage there was little point in challenging her story. The way forward was gradually to lead her to a place where she would be secure and confident enough to begin to dismantle the whole structure, eventually accepting that none of it was true. There were various techniques that could be used to bring such an understanding about. It was just unfortunate that the scenario was so grotesque and frightening. No wonder she had headaches. The miracle was she had so far avoided a breakdown.

Dr. Lester glanced at the Mickey Mouse clock over the door. Ten minutes to go. Suddenly she shivered. A breeze seemed to be flowing directly through the open window, cooling her neck and arms. She got up to close it and the metal latch was clammy to her touch. Fastening it securely she noticed a butterfly clinging to the curtains and stood on tiptoe to get a closer look. It was extraordinary. Totally black; not just the velvety wings but even its body and antennae. Surprised and delighted, Barbara studied it for several seconds, even agitating the fabric gently to see if it would fly. When she sat down again Karen regarded her with a mixture of apprehension and yearning.

“So, Karen – these people you told Dr. Dickenson about. What are they like?”

“Ordinary.”

“When did you first see them?”

“I’ve always seen them.”

“Where?”

“Everywhere. Well, not in the house. At the shops, on the bus, just walking about.”

“And have you always talked to them?”

“Only if they talk to me. It got me into trouble, though.”

“What sort of trouble?”

“I was outside and one of them, an old lady – she was ever so nice – asked me to take a message.”

“Who to?”

“Elsie next door. She was in the garden. They don’t ask unless the person’s present.”

Dr. Lester held back a smile. The detail, everything fitting, every impossible aspect so rationally described was impressive, to say the least.

“I’d never actually done it before. I thought I’d try but then Ava came rushing out. She got hold of my hair and dragged me inside. She was ever so angry. She said if the neighbours heard me talking to myself it’d be all round the village I was mental.”

“But you weren’t talking to yourself.”

At these words something happened to Karen. Her brow became smooth, her thin bony little fingers stopped plucking and pulling at her skirt and, interlacing, came to lie quietly in her lap. Her shoulders relaxed, which made her neck look longer. She held her head in a delicate, assured way. Her eyes, unclouded now, glistened with happiness. She smiled.

“I knew you’d understand.”

Dr. Lester experienced a moment of deep misgiving. Had the decision to appear to accept Karen’s story been a mistake? If so she was stuck with it, for there could be no backtracking. The important thing was that the child should grow to trust her.

“I tried really hard to explain,” continued Karen. “Ava wouldn’t listen. I didn’t know what to do. But then she met this man, George, at a club. And suddenly everything got better.”

“I see.” Nothing about him in the notes. “And what was George like?”

“Really nice. He gave me a little bag made out of funny string. And some Smarties.”

“So…” For now she gave this unknown sweet-giver the benefit of the doubt. “He was Ava’s friend?”

“Yes.”

“Did he ever stay at your house?”

“’Course not.” Karen laughed. “He lived with his mother.”

“So how did he ‘make things better’?”

“Well, she asked him round to Rainbow Lodge for tea. He was on the patio when this old man walked round the corner.”

“One of your…?”

“That’s right. He gave me some messages for George but I got frightened and ran inside. The old man came after me. I didn’t know what to do. So I told Ava. I went on and on and on to make her listen. I knew she wouldn’t hit me with somebody else there.”

This was incredible. The child was so convincing Dr. Lester actually found herself leaning forward.

“And then what happened?”

“She said she had high hopes of George and didn’t want him thinking she’d got a kid what was round the bloody twist. I promised I’d never, ever do it again if she’d just help me this one time.”

“And did she?”

“Yes. She made out she’d had this dream. All about an old tramp, trying to tell her things. But when she said what the things were George started shaking and crying. It was awful. She thought he was having a fit. Than he ran off shouting, ‘I have to tell Mummy. I have to tell Mummy.’”

Belatedly Dr. Lester realised this last scene was not in her notes and scribbled a couple of lines.

“Carry on, dear. Carry on.”

“Ava believed me after this. She said we had to have a serious talk because a gift like mine was from God and should be really worth something. Later on, George rang up and said he knew a lot about the…um…parasomething…”

“Paranormal?”

“Also, he belonged to this church and said for her to go along with him.”

“Where was it, the church?”

“In our village,” explained Karen, patiently. “It’s called the Near at Hand.”

That the place could really exist Dr. Lester knew. Occasionally fantasists create a dazzlingly unreal universe as a background for their imaginings but mostly they would use genuine places. Often these will be inhabited by famous people flitting in and out of the action. Well-known landmarks too can be casually relocated to accommodate the plot. Pointless to argue as to authenticity. Try showing a globe to a member of the Flat Earth Society.

“And did she go?”

“Yes, but she couldn’t do anything.”

“Because you weren’t there?”

“Yes!” Karen glowed the glow of the appreciated. More, of the totally understood. “Back at home she kept walking up and down. I went to sleep and when I woke up she was still doing it. She said she was racking her brains.”

This time Dr. Lester did smile. Couldn’t help it. The total wildness of the invention combined with Karen’s fervent sincerity should have been disturbing, yet, because she was so young, the anodyne phrase “make believe” was never far away.

“Then she got this amazing idea. I told the doctor.”

“Yes – it’s all down here.”

If the invention had been wild up till then it now spiralled totally off the wall. Ava apparently hit on a seemingly foolproof method of exploiting Karen’s “gift.” Concealing the child behind curtains she had set up a microphone through which messages from all these strange and invisible people could be relayed. Ava then received them via an earpiece and passed them on to the waiting congregation.

What Dr. Lester found somewhat unsettling about this extraordinary tale was the amount of common or garden detail mixed up in it. Karen described precisely the shop in Slough where they had bought the equipment. And how her mother paid cash so she wouldn’t have to give her real name. The assistants had laughed behind her back when she’d tried to swear them to secrecy if they were ever questioned.

“And you were happy with this arrangement?”

“It was brilliant. They came into my head, I passed the messages on and they went away.”

“I see.”

“But she’d only tell people happy things. There were terrible stories as well.”

“Thank you, Karen.” Dr. Lester smiled, slipping the notes back into her envelope file. “But we’ll have to leave those for another time.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m afraid our sessions only last half an hour.”

Karen stared at her. “You said you’d help me.”

“And I will—”

“You said you’d find someone to talk to them. Like Ava did.”

“I don’t think—”

“They’re coming all the time – going on at me. They never give up.”

“I can give you something to help your headaches.”

“They’re not headaches,” screamed Karen. Her arms shot out with such force they seemed to be jumping from their sockets. They flailed the air, beating and flapping as if fending off some great bird.

Dr. Lester, shocked at the suddenness of this explosion, hesitated. Her immediate impulse was to try and restrain the child but even as she started to get up Karen became calm again.

The change happened so quickly Dr. Lester was immediately suspicious. Yet she could have sworn Karen was not manipulative and had not been acting. A draining paleness had come upon her. The milk-white skin now appeared almost translucent. Her hair, that floss of dazzling light, stirred slightly, though there was not the slightest breeze. Her colourless lips drooped at the corners in disappointment.

Barbara was glad the session was at an end. Glad too it was the last of the day. It had been a difficult one and she was very tired. They had already overrun by nearly ten minutes.

She said carefully, “Are you all right now, Karen?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

Karen sat quite still, absorbing this new understanding that had so unkindly presented itself. Dr. Lester, in whom she had put all her faith, was not going to help. Karen had a moment of panic, of frail crying inside, then deliberately let all hope in that direction go.

But what to do now about the clamour in her head? She couldn’t go on like this – she just couldn’t. She’d go mad. If only she was older. If she was grown up they would all understand. Even now it would only take one person…

Dr. Lester picked up her briefcase and put the file inside, then pulled out a cardigan, throwing it casually over her shoulders. Almost immediately she shook it off and put it on properly. How cold her arms were. Almost goosepimply.

“Brrr…” said Dr. Lester.

Yet the sun was still out. She could tell because it was shining through the trees, throwing lovely reflections of pale grey leaves on to the office wall. The soft shifting and drifting of this shadowy mass was quite hypnotic. You could easily be drawn into a consoling reverie. Dr. Lester rested in this peaceful thought for all of a minute, then got to her feet saying firmly, “Time to go home.”

She set her answering machine, closed down the computer, locked her desk and checked the windows. The child hadn’t moved but stayed, still and quiet, staring at the floor.

“Now, Karen—”

Karen jumped up and ran across to the sofa, placing herself exactly where Dr. Lester had been sitting. The doctor hesitated. Doubtless the quickest and most sensible way out of such a situation was to bring in the woman who had accompanied Karen and ask her to take the child away. Psychologically, however, the idea was not feasible. This room, this space now belonged to herself and Karen. Over time it was where they would hopefully build a secure relationship. Introduce an outsider, even a friendly one, and any future feelings of closeness would be that much harder to establish and maintain.

“What’s worrying you, Karen? Are you afraid that if you go you might not be able to come back?”

“No.” Laying a hand on the cushion next to her, half patting, half stroking it.

“Good.” Dr. Lester sat down. “Because I’ve already got your next appointment in my book.”

Karen was regarding her closely and the doctor gave another friendly, if slightly strained, smile. What an odd little creature she was. Such strange eyes: the silvery rings encircling the pupil so bright. Indeed, as Dr. Lester watched, they seemed to glow with a stronger and stronger intensity, becoming almost luminous. She noticed the extraordinary quality of the silence that had stolen into the room. So deep she could have been at the bottom of the sea. So dense it was almost stifling.

Karen stared across at the wall with the trembling shadows, then looked back, encouraging Dr. Lester to follow her gaze. To the doctor’s annoyance – for her intention had been to ease Karen towards the door in a firm but kindly manner – she was drawn to do this. The wall looked the same. Almost. Perhaps the shades of grey were a little deeper. The leaves and branches dancing in a slightly more vigorous fashion. Then she noticed one tiny leaf, darker than the rest. Nearly black. It moved in an almost three-dimensional way, apparently lifting from the wall to transfer itself, branch to branch. She looked again and recognised the butterfly.

Two things happened next, it seemed simultaneously. A freezing current of air slid across the floor, curling around her ankles, coating her bare feet in icy sweat. And there was a muffled rustling: a harsh susurration as of rough silk on silk that appeared to be coming from all corners of the room.

A closer look at the wall saw it transformed. The delicate pattern had thickened into a more solid mass and, smokelike, was shifting and swirling about. Suddenly it seemed to gather itself, intensify and advance into the room, though leaving a rounded emptiness in the middle, like the mouth of a cave. Then, at the very centre of this hollow cell, half concealed by a gossamer web of drifting vapour, an insubstantial white form arose.

The cold was now so intense that Dr. Lester found herself unable to move. Her limbs were heavy as lead. She tried to breathe but nausea overcame her. Her heart seemed unnaturally still. Then a powerful smell pervaded the room, as of freshly turned earth. And with this another recognition. She had mistaken the rustling. It was, in fact, whispering.

A galvanic shock made her cry out. She stared down at her arm, fearing a cut or sudden burn. But it was just the child, laying fingers gently across her wrist. Now Karen’s face was kissing close, her breath further cooling Dr. Lester’s already frozen cheek.

“Don’t be frightened.”

“I’m…I can’t…”

“It’s all right, really.” The fingers tightened. Her voice had an open, yawning quality; the words unnaturally extended. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes.”

“I have a message for you. From Alice.”

“Aahhh…”

“Your sister is happy. She sends you and your mother her love. She asks about Henry.”

“He ran away. Alice…Oh! Alice…”

“She can’t hear you, I’m afraid.”

“But…she can hear you?”

“Oh, yes.” The uncanny lustre of her shining eyes deepened. Karen released her grip and sat back, satisfied. Confident. Vindicated. “She can hear me.”