In A Dry Season

SIXTEEN

It was about eleven o’clock on Saturday morning when Banks and Annie arrived back at Vivian Elmsley’s building. Before Banks could even press the buzzer, the door opened and Vivian almost bumped into them.

“Going somewhere, Ms. Elmsley?” asked Banks.

“You?” She put her hand to her heart. “I didn’t think… so soon… I was just… you’d better come in.”

They followed her upstairs to the flat. She was carrying a large buff envelope, which she dropped on the hall table as she entered the room. Banks glanced at it, saw his name and the Eastvale station address on it.

She turned to face them as they entered her living room. “I suppose I should thank you for coming back,” she said. “You’ve saved me the postage.”

“What were you sending me?” Banks asked. “A confession?”

“Of sorts. Yes. I suppose you could call it that.”

“So you were lying yesterday?”

“Fiction’s my trade. Sometimes I can’t help it.”

“You should know the difference.”

“Between what?”

“Fiction and reality.”

“I’ve learned to leave that to the most arrogant among us. They’re the only ones who seem to think they know everything.” She turned, walked back to the hall and picked up the envelope. “Anyway,” she went on, handing it to Banks, “I’m sorry for being flippant. I’ve found this whole thing extremely difficult. I tend to hide behind language when I’m frightened. I’d like you to grant me the favor of taking this away with you and reading it. I had a copy made this morning. If you’re worried about my fleeing from justice, please don’t. I’m not going to run anywhere, I promise you.”

“Why the change of heart?”

“Conscience, would you believe? I thought I could live with it, but I can’t. The telephone calls didn’t help, either. In the early hours of the morning, I arrived at the end of a long struggle, and I decided to tell the truth. What you do with it once you know is up to you. I’d just rather do things this way than answer a lot of questions at the moment. I think it will help you understand. Of course, you’ll have questions eventually. I have to be in Leeds next week to do some book-signings, so you’ll soon have the opportunity. Will you allow me this much, at least?”

It was an unusual request, and if Banks were to go by the book, he wouldn’t let a murder suspect hand him a written “confession,” then go away and leave her to her own devices. But it was time for a judgment call. This had been an unusual case right from the start, and he believed that Vivian Elmsley wasn’t going anywhere. She was in the public eye, and he didn’t think she had anywhere to run, even if she wanted to. The other possibility was suicide. It was a risk, to be certain, but he decided to take it. If Vivian Elmsley wanted to kill herself rather than suffer through a criminal trial that cost the taxpayers thousands and drew the media like blood draws leeches, who was Banks to judge her? If Jimmy Riddle found out about it, of course, Banks’s career wouldn’t be worth a toss, but since when had he let thoughts of Jimmy Riddle get in his way?

“You mentioned telephone calls,” he said. “What do you mean?”

“Anonymous calls. Sometimes he says things, others he just hangs up.”

“What kind of things does he say?”

“Nothing, really. He just sounds vaguely threatening. And he calls me Gwen Shackleton.”

“Have you any idea who it might be?”

“No. It wouldn’t be too difficult for anyone to find out my real name, and my number’s in the directory. But why?”

“What about the accent? Is it American?”

“No. But it’s hard to say exactly what it is. The voice sounds muffled, as if he’s speaking through a handkerchief or something.”

Banks thought for a moment. “We can’t really do anything about it. I wouldn’t worry too much, though. In most cases people who make threatening phone calls don’t confront their victims. That’s why they use the phone in the first place. They’re afraid of personal contact.”

Vivian shook her head. “I don’t know. He didn’t sound like one of those heavy breathers or nutcases. It seemed more… personal.”

“Perhaps your line of work attracts one or two crackpot fans?” Banks suggested. “Someone who thinks he’s giving you an idea for a story, or helping you know what it’s like to experience fear. I honestly wouldn’t worry too much, but you should get in touch with your local police station as soon as possible. They’ll be able to help. Do you have any contacts there?”

“Yes. There’s Detective Superintendent Davidson. He helps me with my research.”

“Even better. Talk to him.” Banks held up the envelope. “We’ll do as you ask,” he said, “but how do we know this is the truth and not just more fiction?”

“You don’t. Actually, it’s a bit of both, but the parts you’ll be interested in are true. You’ll just have to take my word for it, won’t you?”

The day it happened began like any ordinary day; if any day could be deemed ordinary in those extraordinary times. I opened the shop, took in the ration coupons, apologized for shortages, made lunch and tea for Mother and settled down to an evening’s reading and the wireless. The Americans were having a farewell party up at the base that night, as they had heard they would be moving out in a matter of days. We had been invited, but neither Gloria nor I had felt like going. Somehow, that part of our lives seemed over. Charlie was dead and Gloria had made it clear to Brad, after their last fling on VE-Day, that she was sticking with Matthew and it would be best if they didn’t see each other anymore.

I’d like to say I felt some sort of premonition of disaster, some sense of foreboding, but I didn’t. I was distracted and found it hard to concentrate on Trollope’s The Last Chronicle of Barset, but I had a lot on my mind: Charlie’s death, Matthew’s illness, Gloria’s problems, Mother.

I wouldn’t normally have gone to Bridge Cottage so late in the evening except that Cynthia Garmen had dropped off some parachute silk on her way to Harkside. I hadn’t seen Gloria for two or three days and I thought she might appreciate a small gift; she had been very drawn and depressed since VE-Day and hadn’t been taking care of herself at all. I can’t say that I heard any small voice telling me to go; nor can I recollect any great feeling of apprehension, any involuntary shudder or burning of the ears. I couldn’t concentrate on my book, and Gloria was on my mind; it was as simple as that.

This is where my diary stops, but however much I have tried over the years to expunge the events from my memory, I haven’t been able to succeed.

It was just after ten o’clock and Mother had gone to bed. Distracted, I put my book aside and fingered the silky material. I thought the prospect of a new dress to make might cheer Gloria up. I was also feeling guilty over stealing the gun, I suppose, and I wanted to know whether she had noticed it missing yet. If she had, she certainly hadn’t said anything.

I assumed Matthew would still be at the Shoulder of Mutton, so I thought I would call in there first and persuade him to walk home with me. Even though he didn’t communicate, I believed that he knew who I was and knew that I loved him. I also think he felt comfortable being with me. As it turned out, he had been asked to leave a little earlier because he had had one of his little tantrums and broken a glass.

I walked down the dark, deserted High Street to Bridge Cottage. Over the river I could hear music and laughter from the Duke of Wellington, where, it seemed, the VE-Day celebrations were still going on over a week after the day itself. Moonlight silvered the flowing water and made it look like some sort of sleek, slinking animal.

There was light showing between the curtains in Bridge Cottage. New curtains, I noticed, now we didn’t have to worry about the blackout, or even the dim-out, anymore. I knocked at the door but no one answered. I knocked again.

I didn’t think Gloria would be out; she rarely went out in the evenings except to the pictures with me. She certainly wouldn’t go out and leave the lights on. Besides, Matthew should be there. Where else would he have gone after being ejected from the Shoulder of Mutton?

I knocked again.

Still nothing.

I put my key in the lock, turned it and entered, calling out Gloria’s name.

There was no one in the living room but I noticed a strong smell of whiskey. I called out Gloria’s name again, then thought I heard a movement in the kitchen. Puzzled, I walked over and when I got to the doorway I saw her.

Gloria lay on the flagstone floor, legs and arms splayed at awkward angles like a rag doll a sulking child has tossed aside. One of her little fists was curled tight, as if she were about to hit someone, except for the little finger, which stuck out.

There wasn’t a lot of blood; I remember being surprised at how little blood there was. She was wearing her royal-blue dress with the white lace collar, and the stains on the material looked like rust. They were all over the place: breast, stomach, ribs, loins. Everywhere the royal blue dress was stained with blood, yet very little of it had flowed to the floor.

Not far from her body lay a broken whiskey bottle, the source of the smell I had noticed earlier. Bourbon. An unopened carton of Lucky Strikes sat on the countertop. Above it, the cupboard was open and tea and cocoa had spilled all over the counter and the floor nearby, along with knives and forks from the cutlery drawer.

Beside her, holding a bloody kitchen knife, Matthew knelt in a small pool of blood. I went over to him, took the knife gently out of his hand and led him through to his armchair. He accompanied me as meekly as a weary, defeated soldier goes with his captors and flopped back in the chair like a man who hasn’t slept for months.

“Matthew, what happened?” I asked him. “What have you done? You’ve got to tell me. Why did you do it?”

I gave him pencil and paper, but he just drew in on himself and I could tell I would get nothing out of him. I put my hands on his shoulders and shook him lightly, but he seemed to shrink away, blood-stained thumb in his mouth. I noticed more blood on the cuffs of his white shirt.

I don’t know how long I tried to get him to communicate something, but in the end I gave up and went back to the kitchen. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I suppose if I assumed anything at all, it was that someone must have told him there was nasty gossip going around about what his wife got up to while he was out. I already knew that he had had a tantrum in the Shoulder of Mutton and I guessed that one way or the other, it had set off the explosion that had been building in him the way pressure builds in a boiler; now Gloria was dead and Matthew was empty of his rage.

As I stared down at poor Gloria’s body, still half unable to believe what had happened, I knew I had to do something. If anyone found out about this, Matthew might be hanged, or, more likely, found insane and put in the lunatic asylum for the rest of his days. However difficult his life was right now, I knew he wouldn’t be able to bear that; it would be purgatory for him. Or worse. I would have to care for him from now on.

As for Gloria, my heart wept for her; I had come to love her almost as much as I loved Matthew. But she was dead. There was nothing I could do for her. She had no other family; I was the only one who knew her story; it didn’t matter now what happened to her. Or so I told myself.

I still had some vestiges of religion in me back then, though most of it had disappeared during the war, especially after Matthew’s death and resurrection, which seemed to me a very cruel parody of Easter, but I didn’t particularly give any thoughts to Gloria’s immortal soul, a proper burial or things like that. The church didn’t come into it. I didn’t think of what I was doing in terms of right or wrong; nor did I really consider that I would be breaking the law. All I could think about was what to do to protect Matthew from all the prying policemen and doctors who would torment him if word of this got out.

Did I think of Matthew as a murderer? I don’t think I did, though there was undoubted evidence of this at my feet. In a strange way, I also saw Gloria as my partner in wanting to protect Matthew from further cruelty and suffering. She wouldn’t want him to go to jail, I told myself; she wouldn’t want him put away in a lunatic asylum. She had sacrificed so much to protect him. His comfort and ease were all she had lived for after his return; he was her penance, after all, and that was why she would never leave him; that was why she was dead. Gloria wanted me to do this.

I offer no more excuses. The blackout cloth was still rolled up below the windows in the living room, where it had been left after I helped Gloria take it down a couple of months ago. I carried it into the kitchen and gently rolled Gloria onto it, then I wrapped it around her tightly as a shroud. Before I had finished I bent over, kissed her gently on the forehead and said, “Good-bye, sweet Gloria. Good-bye, my love.” She was still warm.

Where could I hide her? The only place I could think of was the old outbuilding they never used. In the light of a small oil lamp I started to dig the hole. I wanted to make it deeper, but I couldn’t manage more than about three or four feet before exhaustion overcame me. I went back to the house, where Matthew hadn’t moved, and managed to find the energy to drag out the roll of blackout cloth and drop it in the hole. There was no one around. The cottage next door was empty and there was neither a light nor a sound out back. Only the black night sky with its uncaring stars.

With tears running down my cheeks, I shoveled back the earth. Some heavy stone slabs stood propped against the wall and I levered them down on top of the makeshift grave. It was the best I could do.

That left only the inside of the house. First, I swept up the broken glass, the spilled tea leaves and cocoa powder, and put the tins back in the cupboard. As I said, there was very little blood and I managed to scrub that off the floor easily enough. There might have been minute traces left but nobody would be able to tell what they were. If things went according to plan, nobody would even look.

I say “plan” now, but it was just something I had come up with while burying Gloria. I had to explain where she had gone.

After I had managed to lead Matthew upstairs and wash and undress him, I put him to bed. I packed his bloody shirt and trousers in a small suitcase and added as many of Gloria’s favorite clothes as I could fit in. Then I went and picked up her personal odds and ends and put them in the suitcase too.

After checking the kitchen carefully to make sure that I had collected everything of importance and cleaned up to the best of my ability, I wrote a note on the same paper I had got out for Matthew earlier. Gloria’s childlike handwriting and style were easy to imitate. After that, carrying the suitcase, I took the back way to the shop. I didn’t want to leave Matthew, God knows, but what else could I do? Things had to appear more or less normal. He didn’t seem aware of what was happening and I had no idea how he would face the next day, whether he would remember what he had done, feel remorse or guilt. Would he even notice she was gone?

Early the next day I went to Bridge Cottage, found Matthew still in bed, “found” the note and proceeded to tell everyone we knew, including Mother, that Gloria had run away during the night because she couldn’t bear her life with Matthew anymore. She said she loved him, and she always would, but she couldn’t be responsible for her actions if she stayed. Then I showed them the note, which said exactly that. She ended by saying that we shouldn’t go looking for her because we would never be able to find her.

There was no reason to call in the police. Everyone believed the note without question. Hadn’t Gloria already told me she had heard people predicting that she would run off with a Yank at the first opportunity? Of course, she hadn’t gone off with a Yank, and Brad, for one, would know that, but I would cross that bridge when I came to it.

I gave up Bridge Cottage, sold the contents, including the radiogram and the records Gloria loved so much, and brought Matthew back to live with us above the shop.

One evening when Mother was at Joyce Maddingley’s, I took Matthew’s blood-stained clothes and Gloria’s dresses and burned them in the grate. I cried as I watched all those beautiful dresses catch fire. The black-red-and-white-checked Dorville dress she had bought in London; the black velvet V-neck dress with the puff sleeves, wide, padded shoulders and red felt rose that she had worn to our first dance with the Americans at Rowan Woods; her fine underwear. I watched it all flare and twist, then collapse into ashes. I disposed of her trinkets in Leeds the next time I went there on shop business. I just stood on Leeds Bridge at the bottom of Briggate and dropped them one by one into the river Aire.

As I had expected, it was Brad who gave me the most trouble. On his last day at Rowan Woods, he came to the shop and pestered me with questions. He just couldn’t believe that Gloria had simply left. If she wanted to go, he argued, then why didn’t she go with him? He had asked her often enough. I told him I thought she wanted to escape from everyone; she needed a completely new start. He said she could have had that in California. Again, I argued that living with him in Los Angeles would always have felt tainted to her because of the circumstances in which it came about. No matter what, she would still have been Matthew’s wife.

It hurt him deeply, which I hated to do, but he had to accept what I said in the end. After all, she had told him she didn’t want to see him anymore after VE-Day. Absolutely no one suspected anything like the truth. The 448th Bomber Group moved out of Rowan Woods and I heard nothing more from Brad. It was all over.

Michael Stanhope expressed sorrow that such a beautiful spirit had left the community. He said something about Hobb’s End having glimmered briefly, then turned dark again. He was free to sell the nude now, not that I ever saw or heard anything of it again. Perhaps it wasn’t as good as he thought it was.

As for Matthew, he never really showed any sign that anything was different. He was a little more withdrawn, perhaps, but he went on with the same drinking and staring into space as before. I had to stop the visits to Dr. Jennings, of course. Who knew what narcosynthesis might draw out of Matthew, should it work? Though the doctor protested, I think he was quite relieved. Doctors don’t like failures and Dr. Jennings had been getting nowhere with Matthew.

Soon, we were hearing rumors that the village was to be sold as a reservoir site, and when I looked around, it didn’t surprise me.

Hobb’s End had turned into a ghost village.

I hadn’t noticed it happening because of other matters, but hardly anyone lived there anymore. Those who had come back from the war had a taste of more interesting locales or had been trained for jobs they could only get in the cities. Even the women, who had perhaps gained the most in terms of employment, were heading off for factory jobs in Leeds and Bradford. The mill closed. Buildings fell into disrepair. Old people died. Finally, there was nobody left.

A strange incident occurred before we left for Leeds, though Gloria had, in a way, predicted it. One day, a man in a brown demob suit came into the shop with a little boy of about eight or nine and asked to see Gloria. I knew immediately who they were, though I didn’t want to admit it to them.

“Are you a relative?” I asked him.

“No,” he said. “Nothing like that. Just an old friend, that’s all. I was passing this way, so I thought I’d look her up.” He sounded rather sad, and I noticed he had a Cockney accent, just as Gloria did when she let her guard slip. And, of course, nobody just passes Hobb’s End way.

I asked him more questions, to show interest and politeness, but I could get nothing more out of him. Most of all, I wanted him to be satisfied by my explanation of Gloria’s disappearance; I certainly didn’t want him to come back and pester Matthew and me.

I needn’t have worried. When he left, he just said, “If you do see her again, tell her George called, will you?” He looked down at the boy. “Tell her George and little Frankie dropped by and send their love.”

I assured him I would. The little boy had said nothing at all, but I felt him staring at me the whole time, as if he were etching my features onto the tissue of his memory. On impulse, I gave him a quarter ounce of gumdrops, quite a rarity, as sweets were still rationed. He thanked me solemnly and then they left.

The following week, Matthew, Mother and I moved to Leeds and Hobb’s End ceased to exist. Our life in Leeds was not without incident, but that’s another story.

“If we go to the CPS with Vivian Elmsley’s story,” Banks said to Annie, “they’ll laugh us out of the office.”

It was Sunday morning, and they were both lounging about Banks’s cottage rereading Vivian Elmsley’s manuscript and drinking coffee. It had been against Annie’s better judgment to take up Banks’s suggestion of spending the weekend together. What she had meant to do after getting in her car at York was drive straight home and spend the rest of the weekend in blissful, idle solitude. But next Friday, she was taking two weeks holiday and was planning to go down to stay with her father at the colony. Best enjoy some time together now, she thought. She would have plenty of time for long, lonely coast walks when she got to St. Ives.

So, on Sunday morning, she was lying back in Banks’s front room, barefoot, wearing shorts, her feet dangling over the arm of the settee, reading about Gwen Shackleton’s war.

“Why would they laugh?” she said. “It’s a confession of sorts, isn’t it? She does admit to interfering with the body. That makes her an accessory.”

“I very much doubt that any judge would admit the manuscript as evidence. All she has to do is say it’s fiction. The Crown knows that. It’s a load of bollocks, Annie. Just as well the woman writes fiction and doesn’t have to solve real crimes.”

“But she uses real names.”

“Doesn’t matter. Any decent lawyer would make mincemeat of it as a confession to aiding and abetting. Look at what we’ve got. We’ve got a woman in her seventies who presented us with a manuscript she wrote nearly thirty years ago hinting that she covered up a murder she thinks her brother committed over twenty years before that in a village that no longer exists. Add to that she makes her living writing detective fiction.” He ran his hand across his head. “Believe me, the CPS have enough of a backlog already. They can’t even keep up with today’s crimes, let alone put staff on prosecuting yesterday’s on evidence so flimsy a puff of wind would blow it away.”

“So that’s it? We go no further? She goes scot-free?”

“Do you want to see her in prison?”

“Not particularly. I’m just playing Devil’s advocate. To be honest, it looks as if the poor woman’s suffered enough to me. What a blighted life.”

“I don’t know. She’s had a fair amount of success.”

“Sometimes that doesn’t mean as much as those who don’t have it seem to think it does.”

“Well,” Banks went on, “we always knew the case might end nowhere. Matthew Shackleton is dead. I think Vivian Elmsley wanted to get what she did off her chest. She wanted us to know. Not for our sake, so we could solve the mystery, but for hers, so she wouldn’t have to bear the burden alone anymore. The discovery of Gloria Shackleton’s skeleton was a tremendous catalyst for her. It pushed her toward some sort of catharsis, and when we found out who she was it was just a matter of time. I would imagine now it seems less important to her to protect Matthew’s memory than it did all those years ago. He’s in no position to hang or spend his days in a psychiatric institution.”

“She still committed a crime, though.”

“Yes, but she’s not the killer.”

“Unless she’s lying in the story.”

“I don’t think so. She did what she did to protect her brother, who had already suffered terribly in the war. And she kept the secret to protect herself and Matthew’s name. If she’d called the police at the time, it’s almost certain he would have been convicted of Gloria’s murder. Unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Unless he didn’t do it. There are a number of things in Gwen’s version that bother me. Look at the scenario. Gwen walks into the cottage and sees Matthew bent over Gloria’s body, a kitchen knife in his hand. So far so good?”

Annie nodded.

“She also notices that Gloria’s fist is clenched and the little finger appears to be broken. Right?”

“Right.”

“And Gloria’s body is still warm.”

“Yes.”

“Which means that the clenched fist wasn’t caused by rigor mortis; it was caused by a cadaveric spasm. What if the killer, the real killer, had been trying to take something out of Gloria’s hand when he was disturbed by Matthew coming home, chucked out of the pub early for causing a ruckus? Something that might have incriminated him.”

“The button?”

“It makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“It’s certainly possible.”

Banks shook his head. “But they’d still probably have arrested Matthew, depending on the copper in charge. Remember, most of the bright young detectives were at war. The crazy husband would have looked the most obvious suspect, and the button, even if they had found it, could have been explained away. From Vivian’s point of view, if Matthew had even a scrap of sanity left before all hell broke loose, he wouldn’t have had any by the time it was over. So she committed a crime. And a serious one at that. But not only would the CPS throw it out; if it ever got as far as a jury, they would chuck it out too. Think of the sympathy angle. Any decent barrister – and I’ll bet you Vivian Elmsley can afford a more-than-decent barrister – would have the whole courtroom in tears.”

“So what do we do next?”

“We could hand the report to Jimmy Riddle and get on with our lives.”

“Or?”

“Or look into those one or two little inconsistencies I mentioned. For a start, I’m not convinced that-”

The doorbell rang.

Banks went to answer it. Curious, Annie let the manuscript drop on her lap. “Maybe it’s that hard-working DS Hatchley of yours?”

“On a Sunday morning? That’d be stretching credibility too far.”

Banks opened the door. Annie heard a woman’s voice, then Banks stepped back slowly and in she walked. Blond hair, black eyebrows, attractive, good figure, nicely dressed in a pastel skirt and a white blouse.

She noticed Annie out of the corner of her eye and turned. For a moment, she seemed speechless, a slight flush suffusing her pale complexion, then she moved forward and said, “Hello, I don’t think we’ve been introduced.”

Feeling foolish, Annie took the manuscript off her stomach and stood up. “Annie Cabbot,” she said. “DS Cabbot.” She felt acutely aware of her bare legs and feet.

“Sandra Banks,” said the other. “Pleased to meet you.”

Banks closed the door and stood behind them looking uncomfortable. “DS Cabbot and I were just discussing the Thornfield Reservoir case,” he said. “Maybe you’ve read about it?”

Sandra looked down at Annie’s bare feet, then gave Banks a withering glance. “Yes, of course,” she said. “And on a Sunday morning, too. Such devotion to duty.” She started moving back toward the door.

Annie felt herself blush to her roots.

“Anyway,” Banks gibbered on, “it’s really nice to see you. Would you like some coffee or something?”

Sandra shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. I just came up to Eastvale to see to some things at the community center. I’m staying with Harriet and David. While I was in the area, I thought I’d drop by to get some papers signed and talk to you about our son, but it’ll do some other time. No hurry. Don’t let me interrupt your brain-storming session.”

As she spoke she grasped the handle and opened the door. “Nice meeting you, DS Cabbot,” she said over her shoulder, and with that she was gone.

Annie stood facing Banks in silence for a few moments, aware only of her fast and loud heartbeat and burning skin. “I didn’t know what to say,” she said. “I felt foolish, embarrassed.”

“Why should you?” said Banks. “I’ve already told you, Sandra and I have been separated for almost a year.”

But you still love her, Annie thought. Where did that come from? She pushed the thought away. “Yes, I know. It was just a shock, meeting her like that.”

Banks gave a nervous laugh. “You can say that again. Look, let’s have some more coffee and go sit outside, okay? Put Vivian Elmsley and her problems on the back burner for a while. It’s a beautiful day, shame to waste it staying indoors. Maybe this afternoon we can go for a long walk? Fremington Edge?”

“Okay.” Annie followed him outside, still feeling dazed. She sat on a striped deck chair, feeling the warmth of the canvas against the backs of her bare thighs, the feeling that always reminded her of summers in St. Ives. Banks was reading the Sunday Times book section, trying to pretend everything was just fine, but she knew he was rattled, too. Perhaps even more than she was. After all, he had been married to the woman for more than twenty years.

Annie stared into the distance at a straggling line of ramblers walking up Witch Fell, whose massive shape, like a truncated witch’s hat, took up most of the western skyline. Crows wheeled over the heights.

“Are you okay?” Banks asked, looking up from his paper.

“Fine,” she said, mustering a smile. “Fine.”

But she wasn’t. She told herself she should have known how fleeting happiness was; how foolish it is to expect it at all, and what a mistake it is to allow oneself to get too close to anyone. Closeness like that stirs up all the old demons – the jealousy, the insecurity; all the things she thought she had mastered. The only possible outcome is pain. A shadow had blotted out her sun, just the way Witch Fell obscured the sky; a snake had crawled into her Eden. What, she wondered, would be the cost?