The Crow Trap

Chapter One.

Rachael turned off the metal led road, then stopped with a jerk. There was a new tubular steel gate and she’d almost driven into it. One of the Holme Park tenants trying to impress. A ewe with a tatty coat and mucky behind nuzzled up to her as she got out of the car to open the gate. The ewe was fat. They didn’t lamb up here until the end of April. The steel of the latch was so cold that it seemed to freeze to her fingers.

The track was worse than she remembered, pitted by frost. She drove slower than walking pace with two wheels on the verge. Still the exhaust bumped against a rock.

A mile on she realized she had taken the wrong track through the forest. She should have come out from the trees into open countryside, should by now have reached the ford. Instead she was on a sandy path, not so uneven but very narrow. On either side conifers blocked out the evening light. She drove on, hoping for a place to turn but the track divided into a footpath, the trees meeting over her head.

She had to reverse back to where the track forked. Branches scraped against the paintwork with the noise of chalk on a wet blackboard. The bumper hit a stone bank hidden by undergrowth. She pushed the gear into first and moved forward with a jerk before reversing again. When she reached the main track it was almost dark and she was shaking.

At the ford she stopped the car and got out to test its depth. Five years ago a student on his way back to Baikie’s after a night in the pub had drowned, his car turned over by the force of the flash flood.

The car headlights reflected from the surface, making it impossible to gauge the depth. It had been a dry spring so she decided to risk it.

The water steamed and hissed as it hit the hot engine but she pulled out easily enough on the other side.

The track was blocked again by a gate, this time of wood. It was too dark to read but she knew there was a sign. Access to Black Law Farm and Baikie’s Cottage only. She left the engine running while she opened the gate. The car was parked on a slope so the headlights shone up at an angle onto the open hillside. A movement must have caught her attention because she looked up and saw, caught in the beam, the silhouette of a figure, dressed for walking in a Gortex jacket and hood. There was a flash of reflected light and she guessed he was carrying binoculars or a camera. She was certain it was a man though the figure was too far away to tell. He turned and disappeared into the gloom.

She had the unpleasant sense that she had been watched for some time.

As she drove the last half mile to the cottage she wondered who could be foolish enough to be out on the hill with so little light left.

Rachael decided not to call at the farm. It upset Dougie to be disturbed without warning. Bella would hear the car and come down to the cottage when Dougie was asleep if she got the chance. There was a light in the farmhouse kitchen but the curtains were drawn. The dogs barked loudly and chased from a barn into the yard. The noise seemed to echo round the hills and Rachael thought: that’s good. She’ll not miss that wherever she is. Then she saw the light upstairs and thought Bella was probably settling him down for the night.

She drove on through the yard which was scraped and clean. Baikie’s Cottage was at the end of the track with a view of the valley, surrounded by trees which had been planted over the years to give some shelter from the wind.

The key was where it always was, under an ornamental chimney pot near the back door. Inside she groped for the light switch. The house smelled damp but she knew it was clean. She had come in November, after the last of the students, to scrub out. Bella had arrived with a couple of bottles of homemade wine and they’d made a day of it. They’d ended up in the farmhouse drinking Dougie’s whisky. She slept in the guest room Neville’s room as Bella called it, though as far as she knew Neville hadn’t been there for years and had woken with the worst hangover of her life. It was the only time she’d ever slept in the farmhouse.

Rachael switched on the Calor Gas cylinder outside then went into the kitchen to put on the kettle for coffee. The kitchen was tiny a modern extension so narrow that she could touch both walls at once. She plugged in the rusty fridge, shut the door and was relieved when it began to hum. The gas flame spluttered but the kettle wasn’t even warm. While she waited for it to boil she walked through to the living room and shut the curtains to keep out the draught. Once they had been grey velvet but the sun had faded them in strips and now the pile was quite smooth. There was a sofa covered with an Indian bedspread which Rachael had brought the year before from home, a couple of armchairs which needed something to hide the stains, books spotted with mildew and in one corner a fox in a glass case. The surroundings were so familiar that Rachael took no notice of them. She thought only about getting warm. Even inside it was so cold now that her breath came in clouds.

The grate was laid with paper and kindling but there were no logs in the basket on the hearth. There were matches on the mantelpiece but they were damp. After several attempts to strike one Rachael twisted newspaper into a spill and lit it from the gas flame in the kitchen.

She nurtured the fire, remembering old tricks from the last time. The kettle squealed and she made instant coffee from an emergency jar she had brought in her bag. She drank it crouched over the fire, tending it until she was certain it would not go out.

She emptied the car then put a pan of water on the stove. She’d have pasta for supper, and a glass of the wine she planned to have with Bella later. She took out the basket to fetch some logs. They were stacked at the back of a high, open-fronted shed, which also housed a rusting tractor and some piled bales of straw. The lights from the house didn’t reach that far and she carried a torch. Outside it was clear and icily cold. The stars in the wide sky, unpolluted by street lamps, seemed brighter than at home.

Bella had arranged her suicide as efficiently as she had done everything else in her life. In the torchlight she swung, hanging from a noose made of strong, nylon rope. Her face was white. She had prepared for the occasion by putting on lipstick and the silk top Rachael had bought her as a thank-you present after last season. Her black shoes shone so the torchlight reflected from them. She’d pulled two bales away from the wall and climbed onto them to tie the rope round a beam. Then, when she was ready, she had kicked one away.

Of course there was a note. She had thought of that too. It was addressed to Rachael and apologized that she had to be the one to find the body: I couldn’t put Dougie through that and I knew you’d cope. It went on to remind Rachael that the kitchen door of the farmhouse was open so she’d be able to get to the phone without disturbing anyone meaning Dougie again. But there was no real explanation for the suicide. She just said that she couldn’t take any more. She had known that Rachael would find her before the end of the evening because she had left the log bucket empty. Rachael had always realized that Bella was a clever woman.

When Rachael saw Bella, swinging, recognizable by the silk top, the smartly per med hair, the lipstick, but not really Bella, because Bella had never been that still in her life, she was furious. She was out of her mind with anger. She wanted to use the body as a punch bag, to thump it in the stomach. She wanted to climb onto a bale and slap the white, lifeless face. Because Bella had been a friend. So what right did she have to do this without discussing it with Rachael first? And because, since she heard that the project would go ahead, Rachael had been looking forward to this evening.

She’d imagined sitting in Baikie’s Cottage with Bella and sharing a bottle of wine and a bucketful of gossip.

But she didn’t hit the body. Instead she turned and punched the bale of straw, over an dover again until her knuckles were scratched and bleeding.

Later she realized how long she must have been in the tractor shed.

When she went back to the cottage the pan of water was boiling and it had taken half an hour for that lousy gas flame even to get the kettle warm.

Chapter Two.

The cottage, which had come to be known as Baikie’s, was bought from the farm soon after the war by Constance Baikie. She had been a naturalist and illustrator, a spinster. Once she had walked the hills in search of inspiration but obesity soon restricted her ramblings. She had taken to sitting in an armchair and only drawing the birds, plants and insects she could see from her window. This was her most prolific period. The original plates from her books sold for surprisingly large sums. A London gallery took her up and organized an annual exhibition.

No one knew exactly what she did with all her money, she lived very frugally. For diversion she wrote spitefully funny letters to learned magazines ridiculing the research of her colleagues.

Dougie, still fit and active then, brought all her supplies from Kimmerston once a week in his Land Rover. She never offered to pay him for this service but each year at Christmas she gave him a sketch of the farm or the surrounding hills. Later Bella found them stacked in a pile in the drawer of his desk and had them framed. Miss. Baikie wasn’t lonely. She received visitors graciously but expected them to bring gifts cream cakes, biscuits and bottles of whisky.

In 1980 Miss. Baikie died suddenly. Dougie, calling one morning with the milk, found her sitting by the window. She had been there all night. In her will she launched a charitable trust to encourage environmental education and research, and donated the cottage to that.

She stipulated that the trust should not benefit anyone under eighteen.

She had always disliked children. Undergraduates used Baikie’s as a base for their fieldwork. Rachael had spent the previous spring there to complete her MSc. When the committee decided they needed new blood she was elected a trustee.

The cottage was much as Constance had left it. The furniture had all been hers. Fanciful students imagined that they saw her ghost, late at night.

“Not if it was moving,” said a lecturer who’d known her. “If it moved it couldn’t have been Connie. So far as I remember she never did. Not while I knew her.”

Rachael didn’t believe in ghosts.

That’s what she told Anne and Grace the next day when they fussed over her. Rachael had planned to start work immediately on the mapping but she was made to go over it all again. It was her first time as team leader and in one sense she resented the distraction. As it was she was nervous about taking charge. They were at Baikie’s for the survey and not to chat, but when Anne and Grace turned up to start work she had to tell them what had happened to Bella.

Anne was a local woman and Rachael had worked with her before. She was older than Rachael, very confident, and Rachael wasn’t sure how she’d take to being told what to do. Grace had come highly recommended, but Rachael had never met her before. She’d had no say in the zoologist’s appointment, which still rankled.

Grace was pale and thin and news of the suicide seemed to drain her of the little colour she had. It seemed an overreaction. Bella, after all, had been a stranger.

Anne wanted to know all the details, however.

“How dreadful!” she said, when the tale of the discovery of the body had been told. “What did you do then?”

“I went back to Black Law and used the phone.” She’d gone in quietly, not wanting to scare Dougie, though realizing he’d probably expect Bella to be banging around. She’d been unnerved to hear voices coming from upstairs and wondered for a moment if she’d imagined the whole thing. She’d crept up the stairs thinking: God, I’ll look a real fool if Bella comes out and catches me. Then there’d been a loud blast of music and she’d realized that the voices were coming from the television in Dougie’s room.

“I don’t think I’d know who to call in the event of a suicide.” Anne’s voice was sympathetic but slightly amused which annoyed Rachael.

Christ, she thought, I hope we’re not going to get on each other’s nerves already.

“I dialled 999. I didn’t know what else to do. The operator put me through to the police and they arranged for a doctor to come. I should have thought Dougie would need one anyway.”

The doctor’s name was Wilson. She’d worried that he would get lost on the way but he’d visited Dougie before and anyway he knew the area. He was driving a Range Rover and wore walking boots and breeches, and looked like a vet.

“He said Bella’d been dead for at least two hours,” she said, ‘ a policeman turned up. They arranged for an undertaker to come out from Kimmerston.”

She’d offered to drive out to the fork in the track to show the undertaker the way. Mr. Drummond had been very sweet considering the dreadful drive and the time of night. He had a round cherubic face and specs and said that suicides were always very upsetting. Then the doctor had to send for an ambulance to take Dougie away. He couldn’t stay in Black Law with no one to look after him. Perhaps the doctor was waiting for her to volunteer but she couldn’t face that, even for a day. She thought it would almost have been nicer for Dougie to go out with Mr. Drummond and Bella, but she could hardly suggest it.

“How was Mr. Furness?” Anne asked. “Did you have to tell him?”

Rachael thought Anne was enjoying the drama. She’d always been a bit of a drama queen.

“Of course,” she said. That was what Bella had wanted.

“Did he understand?”

“Oh yes.”

“How did he take it?”

“He cried.”

“Did you tell him that she’d killed herself?”

“No. Just that she was dead.”

She and the doctor had stood outside the farmhouse in the freshly scraped yard, watching the ambulance drivers lift Dougie out on the trolley. The doctor was shivering though she had stopped feeling cold.

“I suppose it was the strain,” Wilson had said. “Living all the way out here. Keeping the farm going and caring for Mr. Furness. It’s not as if she was born to it. I suppose something just snapped.” “No,” she’d said firmly. “Really. It couldn’t have been like that.

Bella loved Black Law. She enjoyed every minute of her time here.”

Then he gave her a pitying look, because he thought she couldn’t face up to the reality of the situation. For the first time she wondered what Bella had meant by not being able to take any more.

When the ambulance, the doctor and the undertaker had driven away in convoy she was left with the young policeman. He watched the tail lights of the other vehicles disappear into the darkness with a sort of wistfumess, as if he were being abandoned, then he said:

“Do you know if there’s any booze in the house?” She could tell he was eager to get inside, but that didn’t seem very professional even when he added: “I expect you could do with a drink.”

She found a bottle of whisky in the cupboard in the living room. They sat in the kitchen where it was warmer. He poured himself a drink without waiting to be asked and passed the bottle to her.

“What are you doing all the way out here?”

“Working.”

“You work for the Furnesses?”

“No, for an environmental agency. Peter Kemp Associates. We’re doing an Environmental Impact Assessment. We’ve been given permission to use the cottage down the track as a base.”

He looked blank.

“You’ve heard about the proposed quarry in the National Park?”

“Yes.” But his voice was uncertain. He sounded like a boy, optimistically trying to bluff his way through an unlearned lesson, so she told him. About the quarry, the planning application, the legal requirement for a survey to assess damage.

“We’ve been hired to do the survey and the report.”

“You stay all the way out here on your own?”

“Only tonight. My colleagues arrive tomorrow.” She looked out of the window at the lightening sky. “Today.”

“That’ll be Peter Kemp.”

“No. Peter doesn’t do much casework now. Anne Preece is a botanist.

Grace Fullweli’s a mammal expert.”

“Three lasses?”

“Three women.” “Oh aye.” He paused. “And you have to go out in the hills. Counting things?”

“Something like that. There’s a recognized methodology.”

“Isn’t it dangerous?”

“For women you mean?”

“Well, for anyone.”

“We leave a record of our route and the time we expect to be back at base. If there’s a problem the others can organize a search.”

“I’d not want to be out there without a radio.” He shuddered as if he felt suddenly cold. “I’d not want to be out there at all.”

She saw that he was prolonging the conversation so he didn’t have to set off up the track alone in the dark.

“You’re not a country boy,” she said.

“Does it show?” He grinned. “No. Newcastle born and bred. But Jan, the wife, thought the country would be a better place to bring up the bairn so I put in for transfer. Best thing I ever did.”

Though now, here in the wilds, he didn’t seem so sure. She’d guessed he was married. It wasn’t only the ring. He had a well cared for, pampered look.

“Shouldn’t you be getting back to them?” she said. “They’ll be wondering where you are.”

“No, Jan’s taken the bairn to visit his grandma. They’ll not be back until after the weekend.”

She felt jealous of this woman she’d never met. He so obviously missed her. And it wasn’t only the freshly ironed shirts and the meals. It was the empty bed and no one to chat to when he got home after work.

“You don’t mind answering some questions about Mrs. Furness? Now, I mean. It must have been a shock but I’ll need a statement sometime.” “No,” she said. “I’d rather get it over, then I can get some sleep before the others get here. What do you want to know?”

“Everything you can tell me about her.” I wonder if you’d say that, she thought, if your wife was at home. But she talked to him anyway, because she wanted to tell someone about Bella and what good friends they were. It was like a fairy story, she said. Bella coming out to the farm to look after Dougie’s mother and falling in love with it all, with Dougie and Black Law and the hills.

They’d married and they really had lived happily ever after, even after Dougie’s stroke.

“Why’d she kill herself then?”

She hadn’t been sure he’d been listening. It was the question which had been lying at the back of her mind all evening. “I don’t know.”

“But the note was her writing?”

“Oh yes. And not just the handwriting. The way the words were put together. It was like Bella talking.”

“When did you last see her?”

“November last year.”

“Well, that’s it then. Anything can happen in four months.”

“I suppose it can.” Though she had not thought Bella would ever change. And Bella would realize that she’d not be able to leave it at that. She’d know Rachael would have questions, that she’d not be able to settle until she found out what lay behind it. So why hadn’t she left her more to go on?

“I don’t like to leave you on your own. Is there anyone you can go and stay with?”

So I can keep you company, she thought, on the drive to the road.

“I’ll wait until the others arrive, then I might go to my mother’s, in Kimmerston.” She said it to get rid of him so he would realize she had family.

Someone to look after her. Afterwards she thought she might go home for a few hours. She’d sort out Anne and Grace in the cottage then she’d go to see Edie. Not for comfort though. Edie wasn’t that sort of mother.

Chapter Three.

Instead of using her key at the ground floor door she went down the steps and banged on the kitchen window. She didn’t want to appear suddenly in the kitchen from inside the house like a ghost or burglar.

Edie wouldn’t be expecting her back.

The door was opened, not by Edie, but by a middle-aged woman with dramatically dyed black hair, cut straight across her forehead in a Cleopatra style. She wore chunky gold earrings and a knitted tubular dress which reached almost to her ankles. The dress was scarlet, the same shade as her lipstick. There was also a child, a girl, denim-clad, bored and sulky. Rachael felt a stab of fellow feeling.

The room was filled with cigarette smoke. It was very hot. The couple must have been invited to an early supper because the table showed the remains of a typically Edie meal. There were pasta bowls brought back from a holiday in Tuscany, scraps of French bread, an empty bottle of extremely cheap Romanian red. Edie was making coffee in a blue tin jug. She looked up casually. People were always banging on the kitchen window.

“Darling,” she said. “Come in. And shut the door. It’s blowing a gale.”

Rachael shut the door but remained standing. “I have to talk to you.”

“Coffee?” Edie turned absent-mindedly. The kettle was still in her hand.

“Mother!” It was the only way she could think of to claim Edie’s attention. She never called Edie that.

Edie looked at her, frowned. “Is it urgent?”

“Yes. Actually, yes it is.”

With a competence, politeness and speed which astonished Rachael, Cleopatra and the daughter were dispatched. The coffee was never drunk.

“So sorry you had to go,” Rachael heard Edie say at the main front door as if their departure had been entirely their own idea.

When Edie returned to the kitchen Rachael had found another bottle of wine and was opening it. “I wish you wouldn’t let people smoke in here.”

“I know, dear, but she was desperate. Her husband’s just run off with one of his students.”

“And you discussed that here. In front of the daughter.”

“Not directly.” She grasped for a word: “Only elipt-ically. He used to teach with me in the college. I appointed him. I feel a certain responsibility.” “Of course.” This was said with an irony which Edie perfectly recognized.

She sat opposite Rachael at the scrubbed pine table and calmly accepted another glass of wine. Edie had recently retired but she had not let herself go. Despite the radical leanings which had so embarrassed Rachael in childhood she had always thought appearances mattered. Her short hair was well cut, her skin clear. She dressed well in an ageing hippy sort of way in long skirts, ethnic padded jackets. Rachael wondered if her mother had a lover at the moment. There had always been men when she was growing up but Edie had acted with discretion which bordered on the obsessive. Those men had never been welcome in the chaotic, crowded kitchen. It had been made quite plain to them that they would never encroach on Edie’s domestic life.

Edie looked up at Rachael over her glass.

“I hope,” she said carefully, ”re not here to go over old ground.”

Meaning her father.

“No.” “Then tell me,” Edie said very gently, ‘ you think I can help.”

Rachael drank her wine in silence.

“Is it boyfriend trouble?”

“Don’t be stupid. I’m not fourteen. Anyway, do you think I’d talk to you about something like that?”

“Well, yes. I hope you might.” Edie sounded regretful which made Rachael feel churlish, stupidly childish.

“Bella died,” she said. “Last night. She committed suicide by hanging. I found her.”

“Why didn’t you come back home before? Or phone? I’d have come out to you.” “I thought I could handle it.”

“That’s not the point. I’m sure you can.”

Rachael took a long time to answer.

“No,” she said. “Not on my own. Not this time.”

“Ah.” Edie drained her wine. It left a stain on her lips and the wide front teeth which Rachael had inherited. “Do you know, I always felt jealous of Bella. A bit. It doesn’t mean I’m not sorry now. Of course not. But I resented the way you were so close, the two of you.”

“You never met her, did you?”

“That made it worse. I imagined… it was the way you talked about her. I thought… “

“That I wished she was my mum?”

“Something like that.” “No,” Rachael said. “But we were friends. Real, close friends.”

“If you want to talk about her I can listen all night.”

“God no.” Wasn’t it typical of Edie and her friends that talking was seen as all that was needed? Throughout her childhood this house had been full of talk. She’d thought it was like a soup of words, drowning her. Perhaps that was why she liked numbers best, counting things.

Numbers were precise, unambiguous.

“What then?”

“I need to know why she did it.”

“We are certain that she meant it? It couldn’t have been an accident?

Murder even?”

Rachael shook her head. “The police came. And there was a note. It was her writing. And I explained to the policeman the words were put together as though she was speaking. Do you know what I mean?”

Edie nodded.

Of course, Rachael thought, you know all about words.

“She knew I was coming that night. If she had a problem she could have talked to me about it. Perhaps she thought I wouldn’t help.” “No, she wouldn’t have thought that.”

“I should have kept in touch over the winter. Then I’d have known. Do you realize I didn’t even phone her?”

“Did she phone you?”

“No.”

“You do know, don’t you, that guilt’s a common feature of bereavement?”

“Edie!”

Edie had taught English and Theatre Studies at the sixth form college, but had also been responsible for pastoral care. She’d attended courses on counselling. The regurgitated nuggets of psychology always irritated Rachael.

“I know,” Edie said unabashed. “Psycho babble. But it doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”

“Really. I don’t need all that.”

“I’m not entirely sure what it is you do need.”

“Practical help. I need to find out what drove Bella to suicide. While I’m out at Black Law I can’t do that. Besides, it’s what you’re good at. Talking. Listening. Gossip even. Someone must have some idea why she felt she had to kill herself.”

“Would she want you to do that? It seems… an invasion of privacy.”

“She arranged for me to find her. She knew me. She knew I’d ask questions.”

“Well then, where do we start?” Edie had used the same question when, occasionally, they had taken the bus together for the long trek into Newcastle. They had stood at the Haymarket looking down Northumberland Street at the heaving shops. Rachael had always preferred open spaces and felt overwhelmed, panicky, but Edie’s approach to shopping had been methodical.

“Well then, where do we start?” And she had taken out her list and organized the day: Farnons for school uniform, Bainbridge’s for curtain material, lunch in the studenty cafe opposite the Theatre Royal, M & S for knickers and socks and back to the Haymarket for the three o’clock bus.

Again Rachael was reassured. “I thought the funeral.”

“Who’s arranging that?”

“Neville, Dougie’s son. I had to let them know what had happened, though it didn’t occur to me at first. I never thought of him having any connection with Bella. She didn’t talk about him much. But of course he had to know about Dougie, and there’s the farm to see to.

They’re just coming up to lambing… “

“And he took responsibility for the funeral.” “Yes, he said he’d like to. I asked if he’d mind if I put a notice in the Gazette. She was well thought of by the other hill farmers. Some of her friends or family might see it and turn up.” She turned to Edie. All that time and I really knew nothing about her. I don’t know if her parents are still alive, if she has brothers or sisters, even where she was born. We talked and talked about me, but about her it was only Dougie and the farm. Neville asked if there were relatives he should notify and I couldn’t tell him.”

“Couldn’t Dougie help?”

“I never knew about Dougie. Bella chatted to him in exactly the same way as before the stroke, but I sometimes thought she was deluding herself that he understood it all. He certainly responded to simple questions. “Do you want a drink?”

“Shall I open a window?” But beyond that?” She shrugged. And perhaps she never told him much about her past either. He loved her so much he wouldn’t have cared.”

“Where’s Dougie living now?”

“A nursing home. Rosemount. Do you know it?”

“Mm. I know the night sister. I taught her son. There were problems.

I was able to help a bit. So… “

“She owes you a favour?”

“She might be able to help a bit too?”

“I suppose you think I’m crazy,” Rachael said. They were almost at the bottom of the bottle. “You probably think I should accept she’s dead and get on with things. Why dredge up the past, right?”

“Could you do that? Just turn your back on it?”

“No.”

“Then what’s the point in asking the question?”

Rachael was on her way to bed when Edie asked: “It couldn’t have anything to do with the quarry?”

“What do you mean?” “You said she loved the hills. Could she bear a great scar cut across them, explosives, lorries. I know it’s not on her land but she’d see it, wouldn’t she? Every day.”

“She’d hate it but she wouldn’t just give up. She’d fight it. Lie down in front of the bulldozers if she had to.”

“But if she knew, in the end, none of that would do any good?”

“How could she know that? We haven’t started work yet. Until we’ve finished our work, until the public inquiry, no decision can be made.

And it wouldn’t have mattered as much as being with Dougie. In the end that was all she cared about.”

Chapter Four.

Rachael worked from a large scale map. She had already chosen her survey areas using the natural boundaries shown on the map. Neither sample was on Black Law land. One, a patch close to the burn and the disused lead mine, was heavily grazed. It was farmed by one of the Holme Park tenants, almost denuded of heather. It would be easy for walking but not, she suspected, very interesting for birds. The other was a piece of heather moorland, managed for grouse. It had been leased by the Holme Park Estate to a syndicate of Italian businessmen.

She suspected they would not find the shooting so enjoyable with the industrial noise of the quarry in the background, but she presumed that Slateburn Quarries had offered the estate such a tempting deal that income from the shooting rights would hardly be missed.

The lowland square was easy to plot. The Skirl formed one boundary.

The other two were fences put up to keep in the sheep, which met at a right angle. The fourth was the remains of a track which led on past Baikie’s, crossed the burn by a simple bridge and continued to the mine. On the map she drew lines, parallel with the burn, which crossed the survey square. On the ground these transects would be 200

metres apart. She would walk them, counting all the birds she heard or saw. This was the system known as the Kemp Methodology.

The moorland patch was less easy to define. The map showed drainage ditches, a dry stone wall, but even in good visibility she knew it would be hard to keep to the transect lines in such a featureless landscape. Some surveyors were sloppy. They seemed to think a slight variation from the map was hardly significant. Rachael was obsessive about accuracy. She despised estimated counts and counts which were hurried. She refused to work if the weather conditions would affect the outcome of the count. She would accept drizzle but never wind.

Wind kept the birds low and drowned the call of the waders.

The morning of her return from Edie’s she arrived too late to take a count, which had to start at dawn and be completed in three hours. It was such a still day, clear, more like June than April, that she regretted for a moment having stayed away. She had expected Anne and Grace to be out already, taking advantage of the weather to begin their own work, but they were still at Baikie’s. There was the smell of bacon and coffee. Grace was in the living room working on a map stretched over the floor but Anne was sitting on a white wrought iron bench outside the kitchen door, her face turned to the sun. She waved her mug at Rachael.

“Help yourself to coffee. There should be some in the pot and it’s still warm. I brought my own. Can’t stand instant.” She threw a piece of bacon rind from her plate onto the grass.

“You shouldn’t feed birds at this time of year,” Rachael said. “It’s not good for the young.”

“Sorry, Miss.” She grinned. Rachael felt herself blushing and turned into the kitchen. The place was a mess. The plates of the previous night’s meal had not been washed. She tried to ignore it.

“I’m going up to check my moorland square,” she called to Anne outside.

“I’m not sure yet that all the boundary features are visible. Are you planning to go out?”

“I’m just working up to it.”

“You will clear this up first.” She regretted the words as soon as they were spoken. They made her sound like a girl guide leader. Anne must have heard them but she didn’t answer. When Rachael walked past her on her way to the hill she was still sitting in the sun, her eyes closed but she didn’t say goodbye.

On the wall by the side of the track there were three wheat ears flicking their tails to show white rumps. Each year Bella had pointed out the first wheatears. “Black and white,” she’d said once to Rachael. “Winter colours. It seems wrong they should come in the spring. It’s the same with ring ouzel. Still, I suppose it’s never far from winter up here.”

Rachael had suggested once that Bella might like to go on holiday.

Somewhere hot with strong bright colours. Social services would organize respite care for Dougie. But Bella had been horrified by the suggestion. “I couldn’t leave him,” she’d said. “I’d miss him too much. How could I enjoy myself, wondering what they were doing to him?”

“Wouldn’t Neville come for a while?”

“He might. But he’s not used to Dougie. It wouldn’t do.”

The track crossed the stream and came to the old lead mine. The estate had talked once of doing it up, turning it into a living museum, but nothing had come of it. Soon there would be little left to preserve.

There was still a chimney but it was crumbling from the top, eaten into by the weather, so the brickwork seemed to unravel like a piece of knitting. There had been a row of cottages to house the workers but only one still had a roof. There was the smell of stale water and decay. By the door of the old engine house she saw a posy of flowers lily of the valley and pale narcissi. She thought a child had been raiding Baikie’s garden while being dragged out for a walk, then remembered she had seen flowers there on other occasions.

If Godfrey Waugh had his way this site would be the nerve centre of the new quarry. It proved, he said, that the hills had always had an industrial use too. They weren’t just there for tourists to gawp at.

The houses would be demolished and replaced by a structure more in keeping with the nature of the operation, a building with clean lines, made of glass and local stone. Rachael had seen an artist’s impression of the proposed block. It appeared low and inconspicuous, built into the hill. Through the large windows you could see sketches of women sitting at computer terminals. There were landscaped surroundings, a belt of newly planted trees. No pictures had been shown of the quarry itself, of the blasting and the lorries and the machines with claws and diggers. There were, though, details of the plan to renovate the mine chimney. According to the PR men, it would be a symbol of continuity.

Already it appeared on the company logo.

From the mine Rachael broke away from the track and took the direct climb to the top of Hope Crag.

From there she could lock onto her moorland survey square. The land sloped gently in a series of plateaux to the horizon, which was softened by woodland around Holme Park House and the village of Langholme. The keeper had been burning heather in rotation to provide a supply of new green buds for the red grouse. There were strips and patches in different stages of growth. It was the habitat she most enjoyed working. She lay on her stomach looking down on it. There was a soft westerly breeze blowing into her face and all around her was the song of meadow pipit, skylark and curlew.

She saw at once that it would be as difficult to define the survey area as she had anticipated but now she considered that only a challenge.

There was a straight drainage ditch which would mark one boundary and a wall, collapsed in places, which would do as another. The rest she would have to manage with map and compass. Not many surveyors could achieve satisfactory accuracy by this method but she would.

The knowledge gave her confidence. She got up quickly and began to walk down the crag, leaning back into the slope and kicking her heels into the heather to make better progress, towards a block of conifers.

There was a path through the Forestry Commission plantation which would take her almost into the Black Law farmyard. It was possible that Anne Preece was still at Baikie’s working on the maps and Rachael wanted to set things straight between them. It wouldn’t do to let resentment simmer. Edie, of course, would have known exactly what to say. She always made too much of these differences, or not enough, but still she was the project leader and it was her responsibility to sort it out.

She came down the slope at such a pace that at the bottom she had to stop for a moment to catch her breath before setting off across the damp area of junco us and cotton grass towards the trees. She crouched and stretched to ease the muscles in her legs, then turned back for a last look at the crag.

Someone was there, standing just where Rachael had been lying on her stomach minutes before. It hardly seemed possible that she had not seen them approaching. She had been looking out over the fell so they must have followed her up the path from the lead mine, but quietly, not making their presence known. Rachael was looking into strong sunlight so the figure appeared only as a silhouette next to the outcrop, almost as another finger of rock. It stood very still, apparently staring directly down at Rachael. She was reminded suddenly of the man who had been on the hill on the evening of Bella’s suicide. The disturbing sensation of being watched returned.

But she had the impression that this was a woman. The shape, blocked against the sun, was of a woman with short hair, or hair pulled away from her face, wearing a full skirt over boots. For one fanciful moment Rachael thought of Bella, who’d always preferred skirts to trousers and often wore them with Wellingtons around the farm. Rachael had slung her binoculars over her shoulder for the yomp down the hill.

Now, after freezing for a moment, surprised by the figure, she twisted her arm out of the strap and raised them to her eyes, but in that moment of focusing the woman must have moved behind the pile of rocks.

There was nothing but the crag, with a wheatear in the shadow, hopping on one of the boulders.

It must have been a walker, she thought, or Anne come to make her peace with me. Though Anne, like Grace, had been wearing jeans.

She was unsettled again when she came to the crow trap. It was built on a piece of dryer ground close to the forestry plantation, close enough for her to smell the spruce. She knew keepers hated crows even Bella had wanted rid of them but she thought this was a particularly horrid form of control, not for the birds which were killed but for the one which played decoy.

The trap was a large wire mesh cage with a funnel in the top. Inside a live, tame crow fluttered provocatively, inviting in another to defend its territory. Once in through the funnel there was no way out.

Presumably they had to find some form of coexistence until the keeper came along to put the intruder out of its misery.

The keeper moved the trap at regular intervals. Crows were territorial creatures and wouldn’t fly far, even for a fight. The last time she had seen the cage it had been on the edge of the moor near the lead mine. She had been with Peter and he had made one of his outrageous gallant jokes. Then, in her naivety, she had been flattered by them.

They had seen two birds in the trap and he had said: “Look, they’re just like us. You’ve caught me and now there’s no escape.”

She had smiled, but even then, even though she had wanted to believe him, she had known it was the other way round.

Chapter Five.

Rachael was a postgraduate student at Durham University when she first met Peter Kemp. She took her first degree in Cambridge, almost as far away from Edie as she could manage, then she moved back to the north, not to be close to her mother but because the uplands had become her passion. She started by studying black grouse then transferred her interest to upland wading birds like curlew and snipe. When she met Peter she was devising a system for counting them accurately. She used Baikie’s Cottage as her base. Bella had already become a friend.

It was a windy day in April. She had come into Kimmerston at the request of Bob Hewlett, English Nature Conservation Officer, who saw her project as a way of obtaining useful data on the cheap. She had come across Bob before and didn’t like him much. He was a middle-aged man who dressed in tweeds. He drove a Land Rover with a couple of black Labradors in the back, looking very much the country landowner.

Rachael thought he was too close to local farmers, too desperate to be accepted by them, to do his job properly. He lived in Langholme and she’d seen him, drinking in the pub, all back-slapping chums together.

However, she knew better than to offend him she might want to work for the government’s conservation agency one day and when he invited her to lunch at the White Hart to discuss her project she accepted graciously.

“I’ve invited Peter Kemp to join us later,” Bob said suddenly as the food arrived. “He’s doing the same sort of stuff as you for the Wildlife Trust. You might be able to help each other out.”

It was the first time she’d heard Peter’s name though Bob assumed she knew who he was talking about.

The White Hart was a solid, stone-built hotel on Kimmerston’s wide main street. Once it had been the only place to eat in the town. Now there was a tandoori restaurant, a pizzeria and a Chinese take away and the White Hart had grown shabby. On Friday nights the public bar was a haunt for underage drinkers. Often it became rowdy, with petty skirmishes and visits by the police. During the rest of the week there was an air of genteel decay. The elderly waitresses, in their black and white uniforms, had few people to serve, even on market day, when for once the restaurant was full. The food was proudly traditional, in that the vegetables were overcooked and a brown glutinous gravy was offered with everything. When Rachael admitted to being a vegetarian there was something of a crisis. At last a leathery cheese omelette appeared.

As he mentioned Peter Kemp, Bob beamed at her across the table. His tone was that of a bucolic uncle, rather too familiar for her taste.

Despite the Land Rover parked outside he had a couple of Scotches while they were waiting to order, and since then a pint to wash down the meal. Rachael decided that Peter Kemp must be new to the Wildlife Trust. She knew most of the team. She was certain that she would dislike him; she needed no help with her project. Edie would have dealt sharply with Bob’s patronizing attitude the insinuating smile, the shepherding hand on the small of her back but Rachael always found it hard to be assertive without being rude.

She first saw Peter hovering in the doorway of the dining room. He was half hidden by a dark oak dresser which held smudged glass cruet sets and portion-controlled sachets of tartare sauce. She saw an arthritic waitress approach him to tell him that he was too late for lunch. He shook his head and gave her a lovely smile before pointing in their direction. Rachael could tell that the old lady would remember the smile for the rest of the day. He looked very young a sixth former let out from school for the afternoon, let out, almost certainly, from a good public school. As he walked towards them he smiled with the charming diffidence which was his hallmark, but she could sense the confidence which comes with an expensive education.

He was physically fit. She could sense that too. Even crossing the floral carpet of the dining room he had a long loping stride. He arrived at the table and reached out a hand to greet Bob formally. They exchanged a few words and then he turned to her. She had to half rise in her seat to take his hand and felt awkward, at a disadvantage.

“Of course I know your name from the Bird Report,” he said. “And from colleagues. You know, of course, that you’ve an impressive reputation.”

His voice was earnest, the schoolboy again, trying to please. She knew she was being worked on, but since the smile to the waitress, she’d found it impossible to resist him.

Even as she submitted to the flattery she realized that Peter wanted something from her. He said he’d like to visit her study area and compare the methods she’d devised for her survey with his own. By the time Bob Hewlett had drunk his second pint and she and Peter had shared a pot of coffee she had invited him to Baikie’s for a couple of days to watch her work. When she left the hotel she felt she was more unsteady on her feet than Bob, who was certainly not quite sober and drove off waving with the Labradors barking madly in the back.

That spring Peter spent more than a couple of days at Baikie’s. In the end he was there more often than he was in the office, and he stayed most nights. His excuse was that the Wildlife Trust intended to buy an upland reserve. It probably wouldn’t be in this part of the county but he needed to establish a baseline of moorland species in order to select a good area to target. She knew this was an excuse he could use her data once the project was over and she was delighted.

Her excuse for being taken in by him was her inexperience. When she was at university she had an affair with an older man, a lecturer of material science. It was doomed to failure. Even Rachael, despising as she did Edie’s psychobabble, could tell that it was not a lover for which she was searching but a father, and Euan had been unsatisfactory on both counts. She had never before had a relationship with a man of her own age, had never even gone in much for friends of either sex, so the passion for Peter had the intensity of an adolescent crush.

Edie of course saw through him at once. Rachael made the mistake of taking him to meet her one Sunday. It was May, a humid sultry day and they had lunch in the garden. It should have been a relaxed affair but Edie took against Peter from the start. She glared into her wine glass as they made conversation across her. The more hostile she appeared the more Peter tried to charm her. Even Rachael could tell that he was coming over as flash and insincere. Later she expected a lecture about her choice in men but Edie was uncharacteristically restrained.

“A bit showy for my taste,” she said in a stage whisper as she followed Rachael into the kitchen with a tray of dirty plates. “Never trust the showy ones.”

But it was the show which captivated Rachael and which would be her downfall. She loved the way Peter disappeared from Baikie’s with talk of a meeting at Trust Headquarters, only to return at dusk with flowers and champagne. She loved dancing with him on the lawn to the music from Constance’s old wind-up gramophone. No one had ever made such a fuss of her before.

She couldn’t discuss this extravagance with Edie, who would disapprove of these gestures of chauvinism, even if she hadn’t taken such a dislike to him. So when she needed to share her happiness Rachael went to Black Law farm for a gossip with Bella. Bella encouraged her belief in love at first sight hadn’t it happened to her and Dougie? and followed their romance with sympathy and interest.

“What are your plans then?” she would ask. “You will see him once the contract’s over?”

“We don’t talk about it much,” Rachael answered. “We, you know, live for the minute.”

She didn’t go into precise details about what living for the minute involved, though Bella would have understood. It seemed in poor taste to talk about skinny-dipping in the tarn by moonlight, making love in the heather, when Dougie couldn’t walk without help. And she did have plans, secret plans which she wouldn’t admit to anyone, not even Bella.

These might not have included a wedding with a white frock, though suspect images of that sort did float occasionally round the edge of her subconscious, but they were about her and Peter setting up home together and having children. Edie would be horrified of course, but what Rachael really wanted was to be a proper mother in a proper family.

The first betrayal, the worst one, came two months after Peter had left the Wildlife Trust to set up his own consultancy. Rachael had been in on the scheme from the start and having completed her MSc she started working for him. She had her own desk and computer terminal in the small office which was all he could afford. She acted as receptionist, secretary and main scientist.

Now, there were no bottles of champagne and few nights of passion. She still dreamed. She understood that money was tight and that he had been under considerable stress. It couldn’t have been easy to give up a steady job to go it alone. It was enough that she could be there in the crowded, chaotic office to support, that occasionally he would brush his lips over her hair and say, “You do know, don’t you, that I wouldn’t be able to manage all this without you?”

Then she saw an article by him in New Scientist. It described a new methodology for counting upland birds. It was the methodology which she had devised, and indeed she was acknowledged in very small print at the end of the paper, along with half a dozen others, including Anne Preece. But he took the credit for it. He claimed it as his own. In a comment, welcoming the new system, the magazine’s editor wrote: “It is clear that the Kemp methodology, with its accuracy, clarity and simplicity, will become a benchmark for Upland surveys. In the future it should be the recommended system for all such work.”

Because of the article Peter was suddenly very much in demand. Now work flooded into the office and he was asked to organize seminars for other agencies. Often he asked Rachael to prepare his notes and the diagrams for the overhead projector. She did as he asked without making a fuss, though she could no longer bear for him to touch her.

She often wondered why she didn’t confront him with this betrayal. Why, indeed, did she continue to work for him, supporting the business through its expansion to a new, smart office? Of course there was a practical reason. It would be hard to find such a suitable job, paying a living wage, in the north of England. But she knew that wasn’t really important. It was a matter of pride. If she resigned from Kemp Associates she would have to admit to others and to herself that Peter had made a fool of her. She would have to accept the possibility that his only reason for making love to her was to steal her ideas, to concede that Edie had been right. It was better to let the world think that Peter had devised the method for counting upland birds. She was sure that by now he believed it himself.

The second betrayal came in the form of a large square envelope, which she found one morning propped on her desk. It contained an invitation to Peter’s wedding. There seemed to be no spiteful intent in informing her of his marriage in this way. He presumed that she accepted the affair at Baikie’s as a pleasant thing, a piece of fun. After all there had been no intimacy between them for months. She learnt from colleagues that the francee was called Amelia. It was Anne Preece, flitting into the office one day in the search for work, who provided more detail.

“Amelia?” she said. “Oh, she’s quite debby in a rather down-market way. Not aristocratic, not really interesting. A potential extra, you know, in the crowd scenes in Hello! magazine. She’d have been quite pretty if her parents had made her wear a brace.” No one at work thought Rachael had more than a passing interest in her boss’s engagement, so at last, when she felt the need to confide her misery, she made an excuse to spend a night at Baikie’s. She invited Bella to supper and snuffled her way through a box of tissues and two bottles of wine. She woke with a hangover and the belief that she was free of the influence of Peter Kemp.

It was only the crow, hopping pathetically in the trap, which brought him back to mind.

Chapter Six.

Rachael had planned in detail what she would say to Anne when she got back to Baikie’s after her walk on the moor. “Look, I’m sorry for being such a bossy cow. You must understand. It’s my first time as project leader and I’m nervous about it. I don’t want any cock-ups.”

But when she arrived at the cottage it was empty. The kitchen was tidy. The plates had been washed and dried. Grace and Anne had left details of where they would be on their hill and their estimated time of return, which was more than Rachael had done. In her irritation at finding the house in a state she’d stormed off without leaving her route information, though it was a rule which she had insisted none of them should ever break. The white sheets of paper, covered with scribbled grid references and times set squarely side by side on the table in the living room, seemed like an accusation.

Anne returned at precisely the time she’d stated. When Rachael tried to apologize for her earlier irritation Anne brushed it aside.

“Don’t be daft; she said. “There’s no need to apologize. We should be able to take it. We’re adults, aren’t we? Not a bunch of kids.”

This remark, which Rachael at first took as a gesture of conciliation, in the end seemed another criticism. Didn’t it imply that Rachael had done just that? Treated them like children.

Her inability to find the right tone in her dealings with Anne and Grace, the feeling that she either took too much control or lost control altogether, dominated her thoughts in the next few days. It was impossible to take a consistent line. The women were so different.

Anne was confident, lippy, almost reckless. Grace seemed unnaturally withdrawn. It was Grace who most worried Rachael. She seemed to have grown paler, less substantial even in the days since she arrived. She volunteered little information, except about her work. Speech had to be prised from her. She hardly ate. She picked at her food, pushing it around her plate with a fork. Rachael wondered about anorexia.

Once, in desperation, when it seemed Grace had consumed nothing all day, she said, “You must eat, you know. Especially if you’re doing a lot of walking.” Then, tentatively, “You don’t have a problem, do you, about food?”

It was hard for Rachael to ask. She had been the subject of Edie’s prying sympathy. Throughout her childhood and adolescence Edie had been on the lookout for signs of trauma. She had imagined bullying, drug abuse, even pregnancy. Discreet, or not so discreet, questions were asked. Occasionally leaflets about contraception appeared on Rachael’s bed. So Rachael knew the value of privacy.

To her relief Grace smiled. Perhaps, after all, she was just shy.

“I’ve never been much of an eater. Picky I’m afraid. I’ve brought a supply of chocolate. You musn’t worry about me. I’m fit as a lop.”

This was an expression Rachael hadn’t heard since childhood, and then only used by old people.

And Grace did seem fit. She covered miles of river-bank every day and arrived back at the cottage at dusk showing no signs of exertion.

Sometimes Rachael watched her approaching over the flat land from the Skirl burn, her pace so even that she seemed to be floating, pale in the gloom like one of the short-eared owls that hunted over the low fields near the farm.

The day before Bella’s funeral Peter Kemp turned up at Baikie’s Cottage. Rachael had been up at four, out on the hill at five and was back, eating breakfast, getting warm. Overnight there’dbeen a fresh scattering of snow on the tops. Now it was sunny, but a gusty wind had blown up on the last transect. If it had been like that when she started she wouldn’t have bothered. Grace was walking a river on the Holme Park Estate. Anne was in the kitchen, filling a flask, almost ready to go out. She heard the car first, went to see who it was and called to Rachael.

“Christ Almighty! Come and look at this!” The last thing Rachael wanted was to get out of the chair, leave the fire and her toast, but Anne wasn’t always so good-humoured. It would have been churlish to ignore the request. She took her coffee and stood in her stockinged feet at the kitchen door. It was Peter, driving a brand new Range Rover with a discreet Peter Kemp Associates logo stuck to the passengers’ door. Rachael hadn’t seen the car before, hadn’t known even that its purchase was planned, but made no comment. Anne wasn’t so restrained.

“So that’s why you pay your contract staff peanuts,” she said, teasing him but also making a serious point. She always felt undervalued. “We sacrifice a living wage so the boss can swan around in a Range Rover.”

He was unoffended, grinned wolfishly. Rachael turned back into the house.

“It’s all about giving the punters confidence,” she heard him say.

“You’re a bright lady. You’ll understand that.”

His tone was flirtatious. Rachael, who knew of Anne’s reputation for wildness, promiscuity, wondered if they’d ever had an affair, if, despite Amelia, they were having one now.

“Well, as I’m just a wage slave,” Anne said, “I’d better get on with some work. I’d hate to get the sack.”

“No chance of that, sweetie,” he replied easily. “You’re the best botanist in the county.”

If there was an answer Rachael didn’t hear it. Peter came into the living room, stood with his back to the fire, blocking out the heat.

“You’re not going into the field?” he said.

“I’ve already been. There’s no point counting this late in the day.

You should know that. You wrote the manual.”

He looked at her as if he didn’t understand what point she was making.

There were times when he could make her believe that she’d dreamt her part in the Kemp Methodology, that she was going mad. He took the other chair. “I heard about Bella,” he said. “I’m so sorry. That’s why I came. To see how you were.”

“I’m fine.”

“No, really. I know how close you two were.”

“Really. It was a shock, but I’m fine.”

“You’ve no idea why she did it?”

“None.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve heard what’ll happen to the farm?”

“Dougie certainly can’t manage it. Unless Neville takes it on I suppose it’ll be sold. Dougie’s moved into a nursing home. That’ll have to be paid for.”

“What’s happening over there now? They must be lambing.”

“Geoff Beck from Langholme’s looking after it. I suppose Neville made the arrangements.”

It was more of an interrogation than she had been subjected to by the young policeman.

“Neville Furness. Has he been over?”

“No, I had to speak to him on the phone. He’s sorting out the funeral.”

“You know he works for Slateburn Quarries?”

“I had heard.”

He turned boyish, gave her a smile. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a coffee.”

She made him coffee but didn’t offer any food. It was a trek into Kimmerston to stock up on supplies and she didn’t see why they should share their rations with him. In the old days, when they were living together at Baikie’s and he was still working for the trust, he’d have brought treats fresh crusty bread from the bakery at Slateburn, pate and Brie from the delicatessen at Kimmerston, Spanish strawberries from the supermarket, though they both knew the Costa Donana had been drained to produce them and if they had any conscience they’d leave them alone. Today he was empty-handed and despite herself she felt cheated.

“And the project?” he asked. “Is that going well?”

“So far. Very well.”

“Anne’s a trooper of course, but Grace is settling in, is she? I’ve heard great things of her.”

“She certainly seems to know her subject.”

Rachael had no intention of discussing Grace’s health or her state of mind with Peter. It had become a habit to reveal as little as possible. Besides, to discuss the women’s problems would have seemed like telling tales.

“So we’re on schedule?”

“Ahead of schedule. We’ve been lucky with the weather.”

“Good. That’s good.”

Still he seemed reluctant to go. He sat in the tatty chair which would have looked disreputable in a student bed sit which would certainly have no place in the flat he shared with Amelia, and clutched his empty coffee cup. She realized that he wanted to talk to her. He was building up to a confession or confidence, even to an apology. She didn’t want to hear what he had to say. Not about his wife or his work or his affairs.

“Will you come to the funeral?” she asked abruptly.

“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought.”

“I think you should. Bella was a great help to Peter Kemp Associates.”

“Perhaps I will then.”

And if you have queries about the farm you can ask Neville.”

“Yes.” But still he sounded uncertain.

“Look,” she said. “I’m knackered. I could do with a couple of hours’ sleep before I go out again this evening.” Though she could tell already that the wind would be too strong.

“Of course. I should go anyway. A meeting with English Nature. The possibility of more work. Good news, huh?”

Her only response was to stand up to show she expected him to leave immediately. He had left his jacket in the kitchen. It had been flung on the bench as he came in. His boots were on the doorstep. He laced them, then put on the jacket, turning up the collar. Rachael didn’t bother putting on her outdoor clothes, but stood in the doorway to see him off. At the Range Rover he turned to face her and gave a sad little wave of farewell.

The car pulled away slowly and suddenly she ran after it, shouting, banging the door panel where the logo had been stuck. Even wearing the thick oiled socks the yard felt very cold under her feet. Peter braked and looked eagerly out of the window. Perhaps he thought after all he would be given the opportunity to confide in her.

“There’s something I have to ask.”

Anything, of course.”

“Did you come to see Bella, the afternoon she died?”

For a moment he was stunned. He seemed unable to speak but perhaps that was only because he had been expecting a different question.

“No,” he said at last. “Why would I? It was your project.”

“You weren’t out on the hill?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

She shook her head and stood back from the Range Rover. He hesitated and then he drove away.

She was convinced he had lied. The memory had been triggered as he stood by the car and turned to wave goodbye. It was something about his posture and the shape of the jacket with the collar pulled up. It had been Peter she had seen caught in her headlights as she crossed Black Law ford on the night of Bella’s suicide. And he had lied.

Chapter Seven.

Bella’s remains were disposed of at the large crematorium at Kimmerston. For some reason Rachael had imagined her buried at Langholme churchyard, which was, in effect, another piece of in-bye land, with sheep grazing just on the other side of a low stone wall and Fairburn Crag in the distance. If she’d been buried, at least Rachael would have had a grave to visit. But Neville and Dougie if Dougie had any say in the matter which she doubted had decided on the cremation.

There was piped Vivaldi and a vicar who seemed to know nothing about Bella to lead the dreary service.

The day of the funeral Grace stayed at Baikie’s, though Rachael had offered her a lift into town.

“I don’t mean that you should come to the crematorium. Why should you?

You’d never even met Bella. But you’re due some time off. Treat yourself to lunch or a browse in the book shops We could meet up later for a meal

… “

But Grace had declined the offer. “I know it’s not allowed to go onto the hill without someone there to check me back in, but I’ve got loads to do. I mean it’ll be a really good chance to look at the material I’ve got so far.” She’d paused, coloured. “Besides, a friend might visit. Perhaps stay the night. You wouldn’t mind, would you?”

“Oh no!” Rachael was pleased that there was someone else, that she wasn’t entirely responsible for Grace’s welfare. “If you’ve got company we won’t have to rush back.”

Though she didn’t like to admit it, she hadn’t been looking forward to the drive into Kimmerston with Grace, whose distracted silences deadened the conversation around her. Anne Preece could be irritating and opinionated but she was at least normal. At this thought Rachael felt a stab of guilt. She heard Edie’s voice in her head: What right have you to judge? And what’s normal anyway?

They arrived at the crematorium early Rachael was incapable of being late and they waited outside for a moment, unsure of the proper procedure. There was still a gusty wind which blew clouds across the sun and flattened the dying daffodils which had been planted along the outside wall. Rachael had visited the crematorium once before in autumn. A rare bird, a Bonelli’s warbler, had turned up in the Garden of Rest. Birdwatchers from all over the country had arrived with their telescopes and tripods, mingling with bereaved relatives and irate funeral directors. Later she had described the scene to Bella, who had laughed. She remembered Bella, standing in Black Law kitchen, holding the teapot with the tannin-stained cosy, chuckling so that tea spilt over the table, and for the first time that day she felt close to tears.

Inside the chapel she chose a seat close to the aisle so she could watch the mourners. The building was almost empty. Edie arrived and squeezed in beside her, touched her hand. Rachael felt the sympathy physically. It was like someone jostling her in a queue, thrusting a face too close to hers, demanding a response. She wanted to push her mother away. She thought, I should never have gone to see her, never asked for her help.

There were a few people whom Anne recognized from Langholme. She identified them in a whisper: the post mistress and her husband, the young couple who farmed Wandylaw, tenants of the estate. Peter sat with Amelia close to the back, very smart in the expensive suit he wore for impressing potential clients. If there had been more people in the chapel Rachael would have resented Amelia’s presence. Surely she had never met Bella and she seemed to be there on sufferance, though she too had dressed up. She sat at some distance from Peter and stared with an engrossed concentration at her immaculately shaped nails. As it was, Rachael was glad that there was one more person to mark Bella’s passing.

“Good God!” The exclamation came involuntarily from Anne as a middle-aged couple came in. The woman had her hand on the man’s arm.

They seemed pleasant, ordinary. Rachael hoped that at last these were relatives of Bella’s or friends from her past.

“Who is it?”

“Only Godfrey Waugh and his wife. What the hell are they doing here?

He’s got a nerve.”

Godfrey Waugh was a director of Slateburn Quarries, the moving force behind the development at Black Law, the reason for Anne, Grace and Rachael being in Baikie’s. For their counting on the hills. He seemed mild and inoffensive to have caused such disruption.

Rachael was disappointed, felt oddly that she had to stand up for him.

“They live at Slateburn, don’t they? I suppose in a way they were neighbours.”

But Anne was still fuming. “Well, I think it’s a bloody cheek.”

Rachael thought she would express her feelings more forcefully, but she had to shut up because the proceedings were starting.

Dougie was in a wheelchair pushed by Neville. Rachael thought he was not as smartly turned out as Bella would have liked. He was wearing his best suit but his shirt collar was crumpled. Whoever had shaved him had missed a patch on his cheek. His shoes could have done with a polish. Neville, in contrast, was impeccably dressed. He was a short, muscular man with hair which was the blue-black of crow’s feathers and a full black beard. His shirt looked startlingly white against his dark skin and his shoes gleamed.

The vicar had already started speaking when the door banged open again.

Rachael was reminded of an old, bad British movie, though whether it was a thriller or a comedy she couldn’t quite say. The vicar paused in mid-sentence and they all turned to stare. Even Dougie tried to move his head in that direction.

It was a woman in her fifties. The first impression was of a bag lady, who’d wandered in from the street. She had a large leather satchel slung across her shoulder and a supermarket carrier bag in one hand.

Her face was grey and blotched. She wore a knee-length skirt and a long cardigan weighed down at the front by the pockets. Her legs were bare. Yet she carried off the situation with such confidence and aplomb that they all believed that she had a right to be there. She took a seat, bowed her head as if in private prayer, then looked directly at the vicar as if giving him permission to continue.

Neville had booked a room in the White Hart Hotel and afterwards invited them all back to lunch. Anne gave her apologies, then when no one could overhear she gave Rachael a sly grin.

“You don’t mind, do you? Only I do actually have better things to do with a free afternoon than stand around in the White Hart nibbling egg sandwiches, trying to avoid talking about the fact that Bella committed suicide. I mean she chose to do it, didn’t she? I find it hard to feel sorry for her. I know you were mates, but there it is.”

Rachael guessed that she’d arranged to meet a man. Anne’s sexual appetite was legendary, and she was wearing a little black dress and jacket which would do just as well for a discreet dinner as for the draughty crematorium. Rachael could tell she was itching to get away as soon as they were outside.

“Where shall I meet you?” she asked.

Anne hesitated. “Look, I’m not sure what’s happening. I quite fancy a night in my own bed. I’ll get Jeremy to drop me off at Baikie’s first thing tomorrow.”

It took Rachael a while to remember that Jeremy was Anne’s long-suffering husband.

Guests at the White Hart were even thinner on the ground than at the crematorium. Godfrey Waugh stayed briefly. He had a short, intense conversation with Neville which had more, Rachael thought, to do with business than with Bella. His wife had not appeared at all.

A buffet lunch had been laid on a table against one wall. There were thick slices of cooked ham and beef, bowls of lettuce, slices of hard-boiled egg, metal ice cream bowls of a thin salad dressing which looked partly curdled. Bella’s farming friends ate with relish. The hotel had provided thimble-sized glasses of sherry and whisky, but the men disappeared to the bar and returned with pints. Neville had gone to school with their sons and daughters, but they didn’t treat him with the familiarity which Rachael would have expected. In contrast Edie moved easily among them, listening to the conversation, chatting, asking about children who’d been through her class at the sixth form college.

Peter and Amelia turned up eventually. There was a frostiness between them which made Rachael think they’d had a row in the car. Amelia made a show of ignoring the food, then disappeared into the ladies’.

“You see,” Peter said. “I came. You know I always take your advice.” Christ, Rachael thought, was I really taken in by that sort of thing?

His eyes wandered over her shoulder and she realized he was checking that they could not be overheard. “What made you think I was at Bella’s the afternoon she died?”

“Nothing. It was a silly mistake.” He her but she wouldn’t say any more. At last he seemed satisfied.

Of the ugly woman with the bags there was no sign. Rachael stayed longer than she otherwise would have done, expecting the stranger to make a dramatic late entrance as she had at the crematorium. She asked around, but no one seemed to know who the woman was. Then she realized that Dougie too was missing and thought perhaps the woman was a relative of his, that they were spending some time together.

She was just about to gather up Edie to go when she was startled by a touch on the shoulder. She turned sharply to find Neville so close to her that she could see a stray white hair in his beard, smell the soap he had used.

“I’m glad you were able to come,” he said. “You are Rachael? I wasn’t sure you’d be able to face it. Not after… “

She interrupted him quickly, not because he seemed in the slightest embarrassed but because there was a real point to be made. “I couldn’t have missed it. We were real friends, Bella and I.”

“She used to talk about you.”

“Did she?” Rachael was surprised. She hadn’t realized there’d been that much contact between Neville and Bella.

“Oh yes.” Because he was short for a man she looked almost straight into his eyes. “Had you been in touch lately?”

“No.” “Ah, I thought you might have some idea why… “

“No.”

“I was fond of her, you know. I was very young when Mum died. I was glad when Dad found someone else. I was pleased for them.”

“Of course.” Bella had never mentioned him much at all, but that hardly seemed an appropriate thing to say. “How is your father?”

For the first time he seemed embarrassed. “How can anyone know?”

“Bella always seemed to.”

“Did she? I thought that was self-delusion. Her way of facing it. I can’t, you know. Face it. Not really. That’s why I’ve been so bad about visiting lately.”

“Is someone from the nursing home giving him a lift?”

She hoped he might put a name to the woman with the bags but Neville said sharply: “He’s not coming here. He’s gone straight back to Rosemount. They say he’s better keeping to a routine.”

“I see.” Rachael hoped that Neville had at least asked Dougie if he wanted to be ferried straight back to the home. Dougie always enjoyed a party, even after his illness. They’d had a do at Baikie’s at the end of her project. Peter had been there, and all the other students.

One of the boys had brought a violin. Bella had wrapped Dougie up and wheeled him down the track to the cottage. Rachael could picture him, watching the dancing, his eyes gleaming, beating time with his good hand to the fiddle music.

Chapter Eight.

Rachael and Edie stood outside the White Hart Hotel. Rachael’s attention was distracted for a moment by a black car which drove past them up the street. She thought she recognized Anne Preece sitting in the passenger seat but didn’t see the driver.

“Come home for something proper to eat,” Edie said. “I’ve made soup. I thought it would be comforting.”

“Very mumsy.”

“I can do it,” Edie said grandly, ‘ I want to.”

They ate the soup in the kitchen at Riverside Terrace.

“Well?” Edie said. “What did you make of that?” Rachael imagined her asking the same question of her Theatre Studies group after a trip to the Theatre Royal in Newcastle. They would regard her with the same awkward silence which was Rachael’s response now, unwilling to commit themselves, preferring something more specific.

“I’m not sure.”

“Think!” Edie could never, Rachael thought, have been anything other than a teacher. “I mean what does it tell us?”

“Nothing,” Rachael said in frustration. “Nothing at all.”

“Of course it does. Doesn’t it seem odd that there was no one there from her past? No old school friend, no cousin.”

“There was the woman with the bags.”

“I’m not sure about her. If she was a genuine mourner why didn’t she make herself known?”

“Perhaps Bella wasn’t local then. The Gazette only goes to Kimmerston and the surrounding villages.”

“That tells us something then, doesn’t it?”

“Not much.” “In all those conversations she must have told you something about what she’d done before she turned up at the farm to look after Dougie’s mum.”

“I’m not sure.” On reflection all their conversations had been one-sided. Rachael had talked about her childhood, what it had been like to be brought up by such a right-on mother as Edie, her resentment at not knowing anything about her father. Bella had listened, commented, but seldom brought her own experience into the conversation.

“Doesn’t that strike you as odd?” Edie said. “I mean, doesn’t it suggest that she might have something to hide?”

“Of course not,” Rachael retorted. “We don’t all feel the need to discuss our childhood traumas with the woman behind us in the supermarket queue.”

Edie ignored the insult. “But most of us give away some information about our family, where we went to school, work… “

“I think she might have gone to agricultural college,” Rachael said, ‘to study horticulture. Or perhaps her parents had a market garden.

She knew about gardening but she didn’t enjoy it. She said she’d been put off when she was young. That’s why she never bothered with a vegetable garden at Black Law. I thought it was the wind or the frost, but she said it was a luxury to buy her veg from the supermarket.”

“It’s not much to go on.”

“I’m sorry. She valued her privacy. Perhaps that’s not something you’d understand.”

“It’s something I understand very well.” Again, unspoken, Rachael’s father came between them. “Was she married before?”

“No.”

“Why are you so certain?”

“She called Dougie her one and only true love.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. People don’t always marry for love.”

“Bella would.”

“Yuck! What was her maiden name? I suppose you do know that.”

“Davison.”

“And Bella? Is that short for Isabella? Any second name? So I can look in the records.”

“She signed herself I.R. Furness. I don’t know what the R’s for.”

“But we don’t think she was local.”

“She had a local accent,” Rachael said uncertainly. “But I had the impression that she’d lived away for a time. Perhaps she’d lost touch with people then.”

“How did she get the job at Black Law? Through the Job Centre?” “No. Dougie put an advert in the Gazette. She told me about that.

About seeing it and ringing him up on impulse. She did say she was desperate for work or she’d never have had the nerve. He met her at the bus stop at Langholme and brought her to the farm. It was supposed to be an interview but they ended up chatting like friends. I asked her if she didn’t feel she was putting herself at risk, driving with a total stranger into the middle of nowhere. She said not once she’d seen him.” Rachael looked at her mother. “I know. Yuck. Very romantic. But that’s why I thought she’d not had any serious relationships before. She’d not had the chance to get cynical.”

“Wouldn’t Dougie have taken up references?” “I shouldn’t have thought so for a minute. If he’d liked her it wouldn’t have crossed his mind.”

“When was that?”

“Seven years ago. The old lady died two years later. They were married soon after. Quickly. Register Office. No fuss. That was Bella’s decision. I think Dougie would have liked more of a show.”

“Why wait for Dougie’s mother to die?”

“How should I know?” It came out as an ill-tempered shout. She’d had enough of talking. “Look, I should get back.” She thought she might fit in an evening count before dusk, imagined the hill in the last of the light, the skylarks calling.

“Bo you have to?”

“Why?”

“You’re right. You’re not the person to answer. We should speak to Dougie.”

“Grace has a friend staying. I suppose I could leave it until morning.” She could hear the reluctance in her voice. She would rather be on the hill.

“If you don’t want me there I can fix up for you to go to Rosemount on your own.”

“Mother!” Rachael slapped the table with the flat of her hand. “Stop being so bloody understanding.” Then, after a pause, “Don’t be stupid.

Of course I want you there.”

Dougie had been prepared for bed. He wore pyjamas, striped like an old-fashioned prison uniform, with Rosemount Private Nursing Home stamped in red on the collar, a thin to welling dressing gown, brown tartan slippers. The slippers had been put on the wrong feet. He had his own room, pleasant enough, looking over the garden, though it was nothing compared with the view at Black Law. It was very hot. Dougie was perspiring. Rachael had pulled off her sweater as soon as she came into the building.

Outside in the corridor there was constant noise -the clatter of a wheelchair, staff voices shouting about baths and commodes and what had happened to Mrs. Price’s tablets, patients, confused and distressed.

When they arrived Dougie was staring at a portable television which stood on a mock pine formica chest of drawers. The sound was so low that Rachael could hardly hear it. Dougie seemed mesmerized by the fuzzy flashing pictures.

They think he’s daft, Rachael thought, and wondered angrily what Neville had told them. Yet when they went in it was clear that Dougie recognized her. The sister, who showed them into the room, was taken aback by the quick, lop-sided smile, the good hand patting the arm of the chair to indicate that Rachael should come closer.

“You’ve got some visitors, Mr. Furness,” she said shouting, as if he had deliberately misheard her, and

Rachael thought it was the first time she had spoken directly to him.

The visit had been worth it just for that.

Rachael squatted beside him, put her hand on his. “Oh, Dougie,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

The sister looked at her watch, muttered something to Edie about being in her office if she was needed, and went out.

It was a strange conversation, as intensely focused as one of Edie’s therapy sessions. Dougie communicated by nods, grunts, squeezes of the hand, yet they understood each other. Occasionally they were distracted by the skittering sound in the corridor of soft shoes on polished lino, a high-pitched squeal, the noise, Rachael thought, of rats in a barn, but soon they returned to the business in hand. It came down to this: Bella had killed herself and they couldn’t understand why.

“I want to find out,” Rachael said. “Do you mind? Perhaps you would prefer she was left in peace.”

Dougie made it clear he would prefer nothing of the sort.

“I’d like to look in the house.”

He turned his head away from her and stared back at the television. At first Rachael thought she had offended him, but he clasped her fingers even tighter. It was Edie who followed his gaze, went to the chest of drawers and returned with a bunch of keys.

“Are these the Black Law keys, Dougie?”

But Rachael had already recognized them. They had hung on a cup hook in the kitchen between Dougie’s Newcastle United mug and the giant yellow and green teacup from which Bella drank her coffee.

“I should tell Neville, shouldn’t I, that I’ll be going into the house?”

She looked at him, waiting for an answer but his concentration had gone. In the corridor there was another minor disturbance. A woman screamed in a high, thin voice: “Go away, don’t touch me. Your hands are wet. Your hands are wet!” There were running footsteps, soothing voices but Dougie seemed not to hear.

Rachael, still crouched on the floor, turned so she was speaking almost into his ear, a child whispering secrets, forcing him to pay attention.

“Tell me, Dougie, do you remember the day Bella died?” He continued to stare at the flickering images on the television but she thought he was remembering. What did he see? Bella in the house at Black Law bending over his bed? Bella dressing up to die?

“Did anyone come to Black Law that day? I expect you heard me. I drove through the yard just as it was getting dark. All the dogs started barking. But did anyone come before that?” He seemed lost in thought.

“Was anyone there before me, Dougie?”

She was aware of an effort of memory. He nodded.

“Inside the house?”

He nodded again.

“Did you see them? Do you know who it was? Or hear a voice you could recognize?”

Painfully he shook his head.

Chapter Nine.

Overnight the wind had dropped. There was frost in the valley bottoms and beneath the dry stone walls. The smoke from Baikie’s chimney rose straight into the sky.

Grace was in the kitchen making toast. She held the tiny grill pan close to the gas flame. Otherwise you could wait for hours. She was alone.

“Did your friend come?” Rachael asked. The smell of the toasting bread made her feel hungry. She’d left home deliberately, before Edie was up.

“Yesterday afternoon.”

“Stay the night?”

Grace shook her head, not just an answer to the question but a way of making it clear that no other information would be forthcoming. “How was the funeral?” she asked. She put the toast on a plate, spread it thinly with margarine, cut it in half and offered a piece to Rachael.

Rachael took it and added marmalade.

“Oh, you know.”

“I can’t remember ever having been to a funeral,” Grace said. Rachael thought it was an odd way to put it. It wasn’t a thing you’d forget.

Then the door opened and Anne came in looking very pink and healthy like a child bursting into the house demanding tea after playing out in the street with friends.

“I didn’t hear the car,” Rachael said.

“No, I got Jem to drop me at the end of the track. I thought it looked a nice morning for a walk.”

“I’ve not long arrived. I must have just missed you.”

Anne grinned and Rachael thought it wasn’t Jeremy who’d dropped her at the end of the track but whichever lover she’d spent the night with.

“Have you had breakfast?” Grace asked. She cut another slice from the loaf and put it under the grill. Rachael had never before seen her prepare food without prompting.

“No,” Anne said. “I didn’t seem to have time.” Anyone that smug, Rachael thought, deserved to be gossiped about. She waited until Anne and Grace were on the hill before going into the farmhouse. She didn’t want to explain what she was up to. They might have thought her morbid.

There were two doors into the house. The one Rachael had always used led straight from the yard into the kitchen. It was modern, hardwood and double-glazed with a double lock as standard. Dougie had bought the door when he had the kitchen renovated for Bella. It had been a surprise, a sort of wedding present, a new start anyway. In the old lady’s day the kitchen had been small, dark and draughty, leading into a leaking scullery with a twin tub washing machine and a wringer. Bella had grumbled mildly about the twin tub. It had been before Rachael’s time but she’d heard the story: “By then there were sheets to wash most days. Ivy couldn’t help herself. I had muscles like a weightlifter lugging them, soaking, into the spinner. Poor lamb. It’s not the way I’d want to end up.”

After the wedding Bella had gone away for a few days Rachael wondered now where she could have gone and came back to find the new kitchen.

Apparently she’d pointed out a photo in a magazine to Dougie, said what a picture it was and he’d copied it exactly. His mother had left him some shares and he’d blown the lot on it.

It was the washing machine which pleased Bella most though, as she said wryly to Rachael, it would have been more handy when the old lady was alive and she had bedding to do every day.

The kitchen was tidier than Rachael had ever seen it. Bella had obviously cleaned the floor just before she died. On the window sill there were plants which needed watering but she’d never bothered much about those. In the drawers and cupboards there was nothing to give a clue to her past.

Rachael moved on to the small parlour where Mrs. Furness had sat in the evenings before taking to her bed. Nothing much could have changed since then. There was an upright piano, small dark wood tables with crocheted runners, framed embroidered samplers, a standard lamp with a fringed shade. The photos were of Dougie with his first wife, Neville as a small boy. In her day Ivy Furness must have been a fit and active woman. Dougie’s first wife had died, quite suddenly, of a brain haemorrhage when the boy was two and Ivy had taken the family on. It occurred to Rachael that Neville must have regarded her almost as his mother. Perhaps he’d been closer to her than to

Dougie. It would be interesting to find out if he’d been more assiduous about visiting her than his father.

Dougie’s first wife had been a beauty; from her Neville had inherited the black hair, the brown skin, the intense eyes. Bella had spoken of her occasionally, without jealousy.

“She was only a girl when they met, a bit wild by all accounts. Look at her picture. You can see why he fell for her.”

She was a southerner, still at art school, visiting relatives in the area. He’d bumped into her on the hill. She’d been sketching the lead mine. The completed picture still hung in the living room given pride of place over the mantelpiece.

“Don’t you mind?” Rachael had once asked.

“Of course not. We both came with a history.” But her history was never discussed, and Ivy Furness’s parlour revealed none of its secrets, nor did the living room with its view of the hills, and the enormous painting of the mine, a constant reminder of Dougie’s first love.

There had been talk of turning Ivy’s parlour into a bedroom for Dougie when he first came back from the hospital, but, as Bella said, the bathroom was upstairs and she was hardly going to wash him at the kitchen sink. In the end social services had provided a st airlift so they could keep the bedroom they’d shared since they were married, probably even before that. Bella had never been a great one for convention.

Someone must have been into the room since the night Bella died to collect Dougie’s suit for the funeral. Perhaps Neville had come when they were out on the hill. Rachael hadn’t heard a car. But he had taken the clothes and gone. That was all. The room still smelled of disinfectant and of Bella’s perfume. Rachael searched it as meticulously as elsewhere, but without expectation of finding anything.

If Bella had wanted to keep secrets from Dougie this would be the last place she’d choose.

The room which they called Neville’s, the room where she’d slept off Dougie’s whisky, had been stripped of everything except a single bed and a wardrobe. Her place at Edie’s was still full of schoolgirl clutter. Even if she got round to buying a flat of her own she thought it would still be her room, with the curtains she’d chosen, her stencils covering the wall. This was impersonal. Nothing belonging to Neville had been left behind.

That left a third bedroom, which Rachael had never seen before. It was reached by two steps down from the landing, at the back of the house.

It was small, with a sloping roof and a big cupboard containing the hot water tank. There was a narrow divan, covered with a cream quilt, still slightly crumpled as if someone had been sitting on it. By the divan was a desk, of the kind you would once have found in a schoolroom with a lift-up lid and an inkwell. Even though the surface had been sanded and painted with red gloss the scratched indentations of graffiti were still visible.

Inside the desk was a wooden box, inlaid with marquetry and mother of pearl. Once perhaps Bella had hidden it more carefully, but after Dougie’s stroke there had been no need. The two steps from the landing meant he would never visit this room. Rachael took the box to the bed and opened the lid.

At first she was disappointed. It seemed to contain the details of quite a different person, Isabella Rose Noble. There was a birth certificate in that name, dated 16 September 1942 giving the place of birth as Kimmerston, Northumberland. Next came a certificate of education dated 1963. Isabella Rose Noble had attended a teacher training college in Newcastle and was qualified to teach primary children. Only when Rachael shook a faded newspaper cutting from a brown envelope did she connect Isabella Noble with Bella Furness. At first the cutting meant nothing to her. There was an article about a child swept away by a flooded river. The body was never found. But the article was cut off in mid-sentence so she turned the paper over and read the other side.

There was an obituary taken from a local paper, dated 1970. There were two columns of print and a photograph. The man looking out at her was dark and full-faced. His name was Alfred Noble. He had died at the age of seventy, so the photograph, of a florid middle-aged man, must have been taken many years before his death.

All these details Rachael took in later. What she thought first, when she looked at the cutting, was that it was a picture of Bella. The square face, the thick dark eyebrows were the same. If the hair had been longer and if Alfred Noble had been wearing the chunky gold earrings which Bella loved, the two would have been identical. Was Alfred Noble Bella’s father? If so, why had she said her maiden name was Davison?

Rachael went on to read the smaller print. Alfred Noble had died in tragic circumstances after a long illness. This was not a news report but an eulogy.

Councillor Noble had served the town of Kimmerston well for thirty years before giving up his duties. HI health had also dictated his retirement from his position as postmaster. The funeral had taken place at the Kimmerston Methodist Church where he had served as steward. He would be much missed. He was described in the obituary as a widower but there was no mention of surviving children. Surely there would have been if Bella was his daughter, but how else could she explain the coincidence of the birth certificate, with a date which tallied with Bella’s age, and the startling resemblance?

Proof was provided by another photograph, a glossy coloured one in a presentation cardboard frame. It showed twelve children aged between five and seven in a school playground. Some sat on a wooden bench, others stood behind them. There were prim girls in pigtails, tousle-haired boys with gappy grins. Th one side, quite dashing in her short skirt and crocheted top, stood Bella. Written on the back in sloping handwriting was: “Corbin County Primary School 1966. Miss. Noble with Class One.”

Attached to the photo by a rusty paper clip was a handwritten letter.

The address was Corbin County Primary School, Corbin, Nr Wooler, Northumberland. It was dated April 1967 and it acknowledged, with regret, Miss. Noble’s resignation: “I understand you feel that family circumstances make this necessary, but trust that it will be possible for you to return to the profession in the future.”

It was signed Alicia Davison.

When Bella first met Dougie her name had been Davison. Perhaps Edie was right and Bella had been previously married. To a relative of the headmistress’s for whom she was working? A son or brother? Now there was more to work on it should be possible to find out. Why had Bella kept the marriage secret?

All that was left in the box was a letter inviting Miss. Noble to attend the Corbin Primary School Christmas Concert on 15 December 1969 at 7.00 p.m. Mince pies and tea would be provided. At that time then, Bella was still unmarried. There was nothing to show whether or not she attended the concert, or what had become of her between her resignation in 1967 and her appearance at the bus stop in Langholme in 1989.

It took some time for Rachael to decide what to do with the information. She felt that the box and its contents belonged to Black Law. If Neville had been inclined to snoop he’d already had the chance when he came to collect Dougie’s clothes. But this was the only connection she had with Bella’s past. In the end she found a circular in a brown envelope in the kitchen. She slipped the papers and photos between its pages, and returned it to the envelope. She would keep it at Baikie’s until she had a chance to take it home.

She was just leaving the house when the telephone began to ring. For a while she left it, but it continued, insistent and nerve-shattering. At last she gave in and picked it up. It was a feed rep, used in these hard times to being persistent. She said Bella had left the farm without giving details. After replacing the receiver in the middle of his sales patter she phoned Edie. At first Edie pretended to be hurt, because she hadn’t been included in the search of the house. Then she was gleeful. It seemed she had been right about Bella’s previous marriage. And it shouldn’t be hard to trace Alicia Davison, who’d once been headmistress of Corbin Primary School. Not with her contacts in County Hall. If, of course, she was still alive.

Chapter Ten.

“You do realize,” Anne said, ‘ she’s barking.”

They were in the pub in Langholme. It had been Rachael’s idea. The three of them should get away from Baime’s, have a few drinks, relax.

She felt it was her responsibility that they weren’t getting on. Since the funeral there had been an undercurrent of tension, a tetchiness which expressed itself in trivial gripes, explosions of bad temper. Now it had come to a head. Anne was proposing moving into the box room at the back of the cottage. It was tiny, freezing, hardly room for the bed. Because the big room with its view of the burn and the crags beyond was so much more pleasant, it had been assumed at the start of the contract that Anne and Grace would share. Rachael had a small room to herself. There was nowhere else. In the pub Anne had waited until Grace went to the phone before making her announcement. For some reason the room was very crowded and noisy. Rachael picked up that there had been a family event a birth or an engagement. There was an air of hysterical celebration. She felt awkward conducting such a sensitive conversation in a yell.

“I thought she was getting on better. She seems happier. And at least she’s been eating.”

“She’s also awake for most of the night, prowling around.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. I’ll have a word.”

“Where did you get her from anyway?”

“She did a contract in Dumfries last year for a friend of Peter’s. He said she was brilliant. A real find.”

Anne gave a snort of contempt. Grace returned, stared into her empty glass, didn’t answer when Rachael spoke to her. They left the pub early.

Back in the cottage Anne went upstairs to move her things. They could hear her banging about. Grace went to the table in the living room which she used as a desk and began immediately to work. From the kitchen Rachael could hear her punch the buttons of a calculator. She went in. It had been a mild day and they’d not bothered to light the fire. A film of wood ash had settled on everything.

“Isn’t it a bit late to start now?” Rachael said.

Grace jumped round with a start. The calculator clattered to the floor. Rachael stooped to pick it up.

“The idea was that we should all take a break. There’s still a bottle of wine left from my trip into town. Shall we open it?”

“Why not?” The reply was unnaturally loud, artificially bright.

“I’ll just get it. Pack that away. It’ll wait until tomorrow.” My God, she thought, I sound just like Edie telling me to take it easy before A levels. There was something about Grace’s passion for her subject, her intense desire for privacy which Rachael recognized. She poured the wine into the tumblers which were the only glasses to have survived a season of student washing-up, then waited for Grace to move into an easy chair before handing one to her.

“How’s it going?”

“Very well.” Grace, drinking deeply, looked warily over her glass.

“The data much as you expected?”

“Pretty much.”

“I’ve been looking at the information you passed on last week. Was that typical?” Rachael, waiting for an answer, felt ridiculously anxious.

“I don’t know. Too small a sample yet.” Grace was casual, apparently unperturbed.

“I see.” Knowing how irritated she felt when pestered about ongoing work, Rachael let that go, though the anxiety remained. “Anne says you’re not sleeping very well.”

Carefully, Grace set down the glass by her chair. “I don’t think Anne has the best interests of the project at heart,” she said seriously.

“What do you mean?”

But Grace wouldn’t say.

“Are you sleeping?”

The wine which she’d drunk very quickly must have taken effect because she was almost truculent. “As much as I need to.”

“You do know you can take the weekend off. Why don’t you go home for a while? You’re the only one who hasn’t had a break from this place.”

“I don’t need a break. I take my work seriously.” Unlike Anne Preece, she implied. “Besides, I haven’t got much of a home to go back to.”

She stood up and went defiantly back to the table and her calculator.

The next day Rachael had to go into Kimmerston. A meeting had been arranged sometime before with Peter and a representative from Slateburn Quarries, to inform them of the progress of the project so far. She was reluctant to leave Anne and Grace together. They were like quarrelling children who needed an adult as peacemaker, to stop things from coming to blows.

Please be good, she wanted to say as she drove up the track.

She was surprised to find that Neville Furness was the Slateburn representative. Although she was early he was at the office before her. He and Peter were already deep in conversation. They both looked very smart, very professional in their suits. She had expected an informal meeting and was wearing her field clothes. Nothing of consequence was decided at the encounter but it seemed to drag on. She had the impression that Peter was prolonging the explanation of the methodology, making it more complicated than necessary in an attempt to impress. Afterwards he made her stay for tea. Again she felt he was building up to some confidence, and when he suggested going for a drink, she insisted on leaving. All afternoon she had been uneasy about the two women left behind in Baikie’s.

She drove back in the dusk. Now the track was so familiar she could take it more quickly. She knew the best line to take so the exhaust wouldn’t catch on the ruts and how to swing the car through the ford to stop the engine getting wet. On the dry stone wall by the wooden gate there was a ring ouzel, its collar crescent startlingly white against the gloom.

From the top of the bank she looked down on Black Law and Baikie’s. Black Law was still and empty. All the animals had gone, even the dogs. Without a function the buildings seemed ramshackle and pitiful. In the garden at Baikie’s there was a line of washing left out, though it looked as if it might rain. Although from this angle she couldn’t see the windows a square of orange light spilt onto the grass. It should have been reassuringly domestic but she realized she was driving more slowly, putting off the moment when she’d have to face the hostility between the women inside, remembering, as she always did approaching the barn, Bella’s body in the torchlight.

When she went into the house she was struck first by the smell of cooking. There was nothing usually organized about meals, no cosy gathering every evening to compare notes. Rachael had suggested a rota for washing up but even that was impractical. They ate at different times. Anne seemed to survive on scrambled egg and smoked salmon. It seemed she had a friend in the Craster smokery who kept her well supplied. And Belgian chocolates which appeared from nowhere. She was always generous about sharing them. Rachael occasionally indulged.

Grace seemed suspicious of the gesture.

Wandering through the living room Rachael saw that the table had been cleared of books and papers and was laid for dinner. For three. There was no sign of life. She called up the stairs, “Hello! I’m back,” trying to keep her voice normal, unworried.

Anne appeared. She was wearing black jeans and a sleeveless top. When the fire had been lit for a while the cottage could get very warm but the top, cream silk, ANN CLEEVES seemed a strange choice. It was too dressy. Rachael wondered if she’d been entertaining a guest.

“I cooked a casserole,” Anne said. “It’s all right. There’s veggie for you. There’s a bottle of white wine in the fridge.”

So either someone had been there, or Anne had been out for supplies.

She went on, “I thought, well, we’ve got to live here together, haven’t we? We might as well make an effort to be chums.”

“Where is Grace?”

Anne pulled a face. “Inconsiderate cow’s not back yet. I told her I’d be cooking.”

Rachael went to the window. It was almost dark. “She did leave her route and her ETA?”

“I suppose so. On the kitchen notice board Like a good girl.”

This was a dig at Rachael who had been forced to nag her again about not leaving the details of her count. And there was a note in Grace’s tiny, angular writing, giving the map reference of an area beyond the burn and her expected time of return at 8.30. It was about that time now.

Rachael relaxed a little. It was too early to panic. She went back to the window expecting to see Grace’s pale form emerge from the long bracken, like a swimmer from the sea.

“Oh well,” Anne said. “I suppose the food will keep. But I’m going to open the wine. Do you want one?”

“Not yet.” It seemed important to keep a clear head.

At nine o’clock she went out with a torch and followed the footpath as far as the burn. She crossed it by the footbridge and began to shout Grace’s name, cupping her hands, then pausing to listen. A breeze had come up. She heard the burn, and the rustling of cotton grass and of small mammals. A hare froze, dazzled by the beam of the torch. There was no human sound, no echoing flicker of torchlight. Thick clouds had covered the moon and if it hadn’t been for the water noise she would have lost her bearings completely. It would be impossible to search the area properly, even if Anne were prepared to help.

When she returned to Baikie’s Anne was on her second glass of wine.

She’d torn a chunk from a French loaf and was eating it hungrily to make a point. Her stockinged feet were stretched onto the hearth. “You realize she’s doing this on purpose,” she said. “To get at me, because I said I’d cook. Well, I’ll not wait much longer. I’m starving.”

“It’s pitch black out there now.” Rachael couldn’t keep still. She moved from the window to the kitchen door, listening, peering into the darkness.

“Don’t panic, for Christ’s sake. She’s not that late. I bet you wouldn’t worry about me. She’s not a kid, you know. She’s older than she looks. Nearly twenty-eight.”

For a moment Rachael was distracted. “How do you know?”

“She’d left her passport on the dressing table upstairs. So I looked.”

Anticipating Rachael’s disapproval she added, “Well, I was curious.

Aren’t you? We don’t know anything about her except she seems a bloody miracle worker when it comes to finding otters. If you accept her results.”

At ten o’clock Rachael went to Black Law to phone Peter Kemp.

“I didn’t know you had the keys,” Anne said.

“Dougie gave me a set after the funeral. In case of an emergency.”

She reached Peter on his mobile. He seemed to be in a busy restaurant.

There were shrill women’s voices, the clatter of plates. At least he took the call seriously. She had been afraid he would laugh at her concern.

“Just a minute,” he said. “I’ll phone you back from somewhere quieter.”

Five minutes later the phone rang, sounding very loud in the empty house. He was brisk, assertive. He had been in touch with the mountain rescue team though he didn’t think they’d do much before first light. It wasn’t as if Grace had been anywhere dangerous. Not like rock-climbing or pot-holing.

“She wasn’t a reckless type, was she?” “No,” Rachael said. “I wouldn’t have thought so.” He said it was a mild night and even if there’d been an accident she’d survive until morning, but anyway the team would soon be on its way. It was up to them to decide how to play it. A clue to his promptness came at the end of the conversation.

“The Health and Safety won’t be able to get us on this, will they? All the procedures were in order?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well then, we should be able to face it out. Whatever happens.”

What happened was that six burly men turned up in a Land Rover. They were good-looking in a rugged, muscle-bound way. Anne, who had eaten a plate of casserole, finished the wine and gone to bed, would be sorry to have missed them, Rachael thought. One of the team was the doctor who had pronounced Bella dead and taken Dougie away.

“You’re having a dramatic time of it,” he said, as if he envied her.

Perhaps that was what being a GP was about for him. It entitled him to star in his own action movie.

They went out onto the hill just before dawn. With such a detailed record of Grace’s movements they said they would easily find her. Even if she’d strayed away from her planned route there’d be no problem. The doctor carried a folded stretcher which poked out of the top of his rucksack.

Rachael watched them from her bedroom window. They didn’t invite her to go with them and she didn’t like to suggest it. The cloud was still thick and low, with a drizzle, so they soon disappeared. She must have dozed, although she was sitting upright in a chair, because she was suddenly aware of their return. She looked at her watch. They’d been gone for two hours. There were four of them, walking in single file.

The doctor still had the poles of the stretcher poking above his shoulder but she couldn’t see Grace.

She went into the kitchen and put on the kettle. Before going they had made jokes about having the tea ready on their return. The gas was so slow that she was still there when they came in. There was hardly room for them all to stand in the tiny kitchen. She could feel their heat after the walk, smell the wax on their boots.

“Did you find her?” Then this seemed a ridiculous question because Grace obviously wasn’t there. “I suppose the others are still searching.”

“We found her,” the doctor said.

“How is she?”

“She’s dead.”

It was, she thought, like Bella all over again. I know now, she thought, what it’s like to be mugged. You’re kicked. It hurts. You think it’s over, roll away, gather yourself to get up, then someone comes at you and kicks again. And all the time you know it’s your own fault.

“How?”

“We can’t say,” the doctor replied. “Not yet.” As he put his arms round Rachael to support her she wondered, bitterly, if this was excitement enough for him.

Anne

Chapter Eleven.

From the moment she saw Grace outside Kimmerston station Anne knew that they weren’t going to get on. Something about the skinny bitch got right up her nose. Something about the way she sat there, staring straight ahead of her as if nothing in the world deserved her interest, as if she was the only person who mattered. Anne shouldn’t have had to provide the taxi service in the first place. Peter had been going to do it but he’d phoned her at the last minute and turned on the charm which, according to gossip, had turned on the frigid Rachael, but which didn’t work on her.

“Well,” she’d said, ”s hardly on my way.” Because she lived in Langholme, the nearest village to the study site and Kimmerston was thirty miles away.

“Come on, Anne. You don’t really mind, do you?”

“I’ll be putting in a claim for the petrol.”

She hadn’t felt she could refuse. Not at the moment.

She’d cut it a bit fine and was ten minutes late arriving at the station. Grace was already waiting outside. It was midday and the station was deserted, unkempt. Last year’s hanging baskets were still full of brown moss and dry stalks and a couple of empty coke cans lay in the gutter. Anne thought viciously of what she’d like to do to kids who threw litter around. Grace must have realized that this was her lift but when the car pulled up she didn’t move from the wrought iron bench where she was sitting. She was lost, apparently, in a world of her own. Or perhaps she just couldn’t be bothered to shift her arse. Anne had to wind down the window and yell, “Are you waiting for Peter Kemp?”

Then Grace uncoiled her long legs and stood up. Not hurrying, though Anne was waiting with the engine revving. Anne got out and opened the boot and Grace dumped in her rucksack without a word, without even a smile.

Sod you then, Anne thought, but she wore politeness automatically, like the very expensive perfume her lover provided. She held out her hand across the gear stick.

“Anne Preece,” she said. “I’m the botanist.”

“Grace Fulwell, Mammals.”

“Not one of the Fulwells?” Anne said jokingly, because clearly Grace couldn’t be one of the Fulwells or she’d have heard of her. “Holme Park Hall? Lords of all they survey.”

Grace looked at Anne strangely.

Supercilious cow, Anne thought. She had come across people like Grace before. They got a couple of degrees then believed they were better than anyone else. It didn’t help that she was a good ten years younger than Anne and now she said, “Sorry. Why should you have heard of them if you’re not local? The Fulwells are a big family in this part of the county. They own most of the Uplands. Or that’s how it seems.”

“Do they?”

“Mm. They’re neighbours of mine. Sort of.”

Grace turned away with a pained expression. “Oh,” she said, “I see.”

“Have you come far?” “Just from Newcastle. Today.” Which really told Anne nothing.

On the way to Baikie’s Anne tried to make conversation but was answered in monosyllables, so she, too, lapsed into silence. They were driving through Langholme when Grace suddenly sat upright. It was as if she’d woken with a start from a deep sleep.

“Where is this place?” she demanded.

Anne told her.

“Langholme?” She sounded astonished, disbelieving.

“I should know, I’ve lived here for ten years.”

“It’s just that it’s not what I expected,” Grace muttered.

“What did you expect?”

“I don’t know, something smarter, I suppose. Something prettier.”

“God, where would you get that idea?”

There was nothing pretty about Langholme. The terraced houses were built along a ridge, exposed to the northerly wind. The pub’s paintwork had faded as if it had been sandblasted and at the garage the petrol pumps had rusted. The place had more in common with the Durham pit villages to the south than with pictures advertising the National Park in the Northum-bria Tourist brochure.

“Of course,” Anne went on, realizing at once how defensive she must sound, ‘ don’t actually live in the village.”

And as the road dipped past the church and a belt of woodland at last provided some shelter, Anne pointed out the Priory. The marital home.

The pale stone of the house was partly hidden by trees, but there was a perfect view of the garden. Anne slowed the car so Grace could admire it. Even so early in the season it was looking bloody good. It had taken ten years of hard labour but it had been worth the effort. Grace hardly looked up.

And Holme Park Hall?” she asked. “Where is that?”

Anne ignored her. She had to concentrate anyway on the OS map. She’d never driven to Black Law before. The other contracts she’d worked for Peter Kemp had been on the coast and she and Jeremy weren’t really on socializing terms with Bella and Dougie Furness. They didn’t mix in the same circles. If Bella and Dougie mixed at all. In the village they had something of the reputation of keeping themselves to themselves. Bella wasn’t in the WI and she never went to church.

Though thinking about that now, Anne remembered that she had seen Bella in church once.

She had a sudden picture of the woman hunched in a big coat on the back pew, her breath coming in clouds, tears streaming down her cheeks. It must have been last Christmas, the kids’ Nativity play, the usual thing out of tune Away in a Manger’, Mary and Joseph awe struck by stardom, the angels fidgeting with their glitter wings and tinsel haloes. It was always a tear-jerker. Even Anne occasionally wondered at Christmas if she’d missed out by not having kids.

Presumably that was what had got to Bella too. By the time she’d met Dougie she must have been a bit old to think about starting a family.

Though in Anne’s opinion that was hardly an excuse for making a show in public, and she’d been glad when Bella had rushed away straight after the service so she’d not be forced to speak to her.

When they got to Baikie’s Anne forgot all about Bella for a moment.

Rachael was waiting for them. She looked exhausted, as if she’d slept in her clothes. The fire hadn’t been lit so there was no hot water.

Anne looked at her with irritation.

“God,” she said. “You look dreadful!”

Rachael wiped her face with her sleeve like a snotty lad and announced to them both that Bella was dead, that she’d hanged herself in the barn. The image of the middle-aged woman in tears at the back of the church returned to Anne, and though she wasn’t usually superstitious she did think it was a bit spooky that she’d pictured her so clearly on the way to the farm and wondered if it was some sort of premonition.

She didn’t rush into the field the next day. She’d never been at her best in the morning and it wasn’t like birds. The plants weren’t going anywhere.

She’d looked at the large-scale maps and knew approximately where she wanted to site her hundred-metre squares. Peter had provided satellite landscape surveys, but they needed ground-truthing. She loved the idea of ground-truthing, the thought of bending close to the soil, of getting things right.

She walked through the farmyard quickly she wasn’t squeamish but she didn’t want to be reminded of Bella swinging from a rope in the barn and went up the track towards the ford. In the sheltered bank by the side of the track there were primroses in bud and violets and the sun felt warm on her back. From a rise in the land she had a view of the old lead mine and thought it would be interesting to survey a square close to there. Old lime spoil could encourage quite a different sort of vegetation. But today she wanted to find the area of peat bog which Peter had marked on the map as being worth surveying. She left the track and walked over the open hillside. She was out of sight of the road and the mine and the farmhouse. She couldn’t even see any electricity pylons.

There was a specific way of going about the survey. It wasn’t a matter of wandering over the hill with a trowel and a magnifying glass.

When she’d first got involved in this business she’d scorned the rules, thought they’d been put together by empire-building scientists who wanted to keep the amateurs out. Then Peter had sent her on a course about National Vegetation Classification and she’d started to see the point.

Each survey area was a hundred-metre square, and within that five wooden frames, each two metres square, known as quad rats were randomly placed. You ensured a random distribution by standing in the middle of the large square and throwing the first quadrat, going to where it landed and throwing the next until all five were on the ground. The five frames provided the area for study.

Today she wouldn’t have time to do more than mark out the hundred-metre square with the poles she was carrying in her rucksack but that was what she liked best, the detailed investigation, identifying the plants within the frames, recording their abundance. She loved teasing through the sphagnum moss for plants like cranberry, bog rosemary, bog asphodel, squatting so close to the ground so she could smell the peat, feel the insects on her fingers. And always hoping for something unusual, something perhaps which she’d have difficulty in identifying.

Something which would put the bloody scientists in their places.

Not that there was much chance of that on this contract, she thought, pushing a pole into the ground, putting all her weight behind it because she didn’t want it blowing away in the first gale. This bit of bog might be of interest but from what she knew of the rest of the estate she wasn’t expecting any dramatic finds. Most of the mires had long been drained and the land farmed by the Holme Park tenants had been grazed so close by sheep and rabbits that it was as smooth and green as a billiard table. She wasn’t sure why the project needed a botanist at all. But perhaps that had been Godfrey Waugh’s idea.

As she straightened, the valley was filled with noise as a fighter plane from R. A.F Boulmer screamed overhead, so low it seemed that if she’d reached up she would have been able to feel the air move across her fingertips.

Chapter Twelve.

Anne Preece first saw Godfrey Waugh, Chairman of Slateburn Quarry Ltd, at a meeting held in St. Mary’s Church Hall, Langholme. It had been called by the developers to explain their scheme. There had, they said, been a lot of wild speculation in the press and when the villagers appreciated the real nature of the new quarry, they might actually be in favour of it.

Anne had been asked by a number of people in the village if she would attend. They seemed to feel she would have some influence in the decision-making process. Perhaps this was because she had a reputation for being lippy and standing up for herself. Perhaps it had something to do with her uncanny resemblance to Camilla Parker-Bowles. The similarity was so striking that occasionally there were rumours that she was indeed the prince’s lover, incognito. Of course the idea was ridiculous. She had lived at Langholme Priory with her husband since they were married. Anne herself had always been irritated by the comparison. She could give Camilla almost ten years.

She attended the meeting, not to please her acquaintances in the village, but out of self-interest. What she loved most about the Priory was the garden and the view over the Black Law Valley. That was where the proposed quarry would be. She saw from the beginning that what was planned was essentially an industrial development. There would be new roads, arc lights, the constant sound of machinery. The noise alone would madden her. Then there was the effect on the garden.

She imagined a fine silt of lime dust settling over her plants and her flowers, her raspberry canes and her vegetables, killing them slowly despite her efforts.

She tried to persuade Jeremy to go with her to the meeting. “Think what it’ll do to the value of the house,” she said. But Jeremy had decided that he had an important meeting in London so she went alone.

She sat in the front seat in the body of the hall. Although she arrived late, a chair had been left free for her because it was expected that she would speak for everyone.

The meeting was chaired by a local councillor, a solicitor from Kimmerston. Anne recognized him and gave a little wave. He ignored her and she thought his wife was probably there, sitting at the back.

From the start he pushed the line that any industrial development would be good for the area because jobs were so urgently needed.

“We are losing our young people,” he announced.

Pompous prat, she thought.

She could tell from the beginning that he was trying to win the meeting, while appearing to remain impartial by mentioning vague environmental objections. At last she couldn’t stand it any longer.

She had come prepared. She raised her hand, a diffident gesture, and stood up, smiling sweetly.

“I wonder if I might put a question to the Chair?”

Councillor Benn looked nervous, but he could hardly refuse.

“Could you tell me where you live, Councillor Benn?”

He stuttered before replying, “I don’t think that has much bearing on this case.”

Anne looked at him. He was balding, slightly shortsighted. She thought it was just as well that he specialized in property and employment law. He would be torn apart in a criminal court.

“All the same. Humour me.” She turned slightly to face the crowd for a moment. She had always known how to play a crowd. There was a murmur of expectation. He stared back at the hall, blinking.

“I live in a village on the south side of Kimmerston. But just because I’m not local… “

“The village of Holystone?”

“I’m not sure what my personal details have to do with the matter in hand.” And he was so stupid that he really couldn’t see. Anne felt a brief moment of conscience because he was such an easy target, but she was enjoying herself too much to stop now.

“Could I just quote from a passage in the Kimmerston Gazette dated July twenty-first? The headline is: HOLYSTONE RESIDENTS RISE IN PROTEST.

The article is about a planning application for an open cast mine by British Coal Contractors. Could I ask you if you remember that application, Mr. Benn? It was made two years ago.” He continued to stare into the audience. Panic seemed to make him incapable of rational thought. His mouth opened, fish-like, but no words came out. She persisted, ruthlessly.

“Tell me, Mr. Benn, weren’t you vice chair of an organization known as HAVOC the Holystone Association Versus Open Cast Mining?”

This pushed him at last into coherent speech. He blustered, “Really, I can’t allow any individual to take over the meeting in this way.”

“I have proof,” she said gaily. “There are letters from HAVOC which bear your signature to local supporters. I don’t think you can deny it. And it seems very bizarre to me, Mr. Benn, that you are so concerned to provide work for the youth of our community through the development of the quarry, yet so reluctant to give the same benefit to your own. I’m sure the open cast mine would have provided work too.”

She sat down. Behind her there was cheering and clapping and a couple of catcalls. It served Derek Benn right. If he’d been more even-handed in his chairing of the meeting she’d never have brought up that business of HAVOC. He hadn’t given a toss about the open cast mine, hadn’t even attended most of the meetings. His involvement with the group had provided an alibi, an excuse to be out of the house when he was meeting her. Good God, she thought, whatever did I see in him?

After the meeting a group of protesters went to the pub to discuss strategy. It was midsummer and still light. Anne would have preferred to be in her garden, but she followed them across the road to the Ridley Arms. Living at the Priory had given her a certain, ambiguous status within the village. A responsibility. She wasn’t in the same league as the Fulwells at Holme Park. They wouldn’t be expected to participate in village events, except occasionally to open the church Summer Fayre. All the same she had a standing.

They’d invited her to be St. Mary’s churchwarden, for example, although she hardly ever attended church. The job seemed to go with the house. They’d thought her a stuck-up cow for refusing.

Inside the pub it was noisy and chaotic and very quickly she was forced to take charge. Some of them wanted to organize a petition. She talked them out of it. “Look,” she said, “Planners don’t take much notice of petitions. They get them all the time. They know people sign bits of paper without reading them properly or because they don’t like to say no. You should organize individual letters of protest.

They carry more weight.”

When she sat down Sandy Baines, who had the garage, asked shyly if she’d like a drink.

“I’d have thought this quarry would be in your interest,” she said.

“The lorries would have to fill up somewhere, wouldn’t they?”

It seemed that this idea hadn’t occurred to him and she saw with amusement that as soon as he delivered her G &T, he disappeared. He had been caught up in the village’s general suspicion of change and strangers. She doubted if even self-interest would make a difference to that.

She was approached next by the small man, whose name she could never remember, who lived in the modern ugly bungalow on the way into the village.

“Look,” he said. “A few of us have been talking. We’d like you to sit on our action committee. Speak for us, like.”

He had a head the shape of a sheep’s and white woolly hair. She fancied the ” came out as a ”. She seemed to remember now that he had once been a butcher. She declined graciously. Despite her support for the project and enjoying a fight, she knew she’d soon be bored with it. Bored at least with them. She finished her drink and stood up to go.

“My husband will be wondering where I am.” Though she knew that even if Jeremy were at home he wouldn’t give a shit.

Outside the pub she stood for a minute enjoying the last of the birdsong. Someone had been cooking a barbecue. She realized she was hungry and almost turned back into the pub because although Milly was a crappy landlady who understood sod-all about customer service, as Anne was some sort of heroine, she would at least have to come up with a plate of sandwiches.

Then a sleek, black car pulled up in front of her, moving out of the shadows with hardly a sound. The window was lowered with a purr. She saw Godfrey Waugh and knew then that he must have been waiting for her.

“Mrs. Preece,” he said, as though he had arrived there quite by chance. “I wonder if I might offer you a lift.”

She had recognized him at once as the owner of the quarry company. She had seen him on the platform during the meeting. He had been introduced though he had hardly spoken. When she had looked at him from the audience, stiff and uncomfortable in his subdued suit and highly polished shoes, he had reminded her of an interview candidate trying too hard to please.

“I have my own car, thank you.”

A grotty little Fiat. When she married Jeremy she had assumed there was money in the background. It hadn’t quite worked out that way.

“I would very much like to speak to you. Have you eaten? Perhaps I could buy you dinner.” He was diffident, a bit like the old men in the pub.

“I’m not bribed that easily.”

“No, of course not!” He took her seriously and was shocked.

She smiled. She might look, in a bad light, like Camilla Parker-Bowles but she knew the effect that smile could have.

“Oh well,” she said. “Why not?” By now it was too dark to do much in the garden and she was curious.

“Would you like to come with me? Or perhaps you would prefer to follow me in your own car? I was thinking of the George.”

Very nice, she thought. The George was an unpretentious hotel in the next village where the chef worked magic with local ingredients.

“No, I’d rather come with you if you don’t mind bringing me back here later.”

Suddenly she didn’t want him to get too close a view of the grotty Fiat. There was something about him which made her feel the need to impress. At the time she thought it was his money.

Chapter Thirteen.

“Tell me about yourself,” she said. She was leaning across the dinner table, her elbows on the white cloth. There was candlelight for which she was grateful. Recently she had noticed fine lines above her upper lip and knew that she could no longer get away with sleeveless dresses.

It wasn’t the George Hotel but another evening, another restaurant.

Godfrey Waugh had called her that morning.

“I thought we should get together again. I found the last meeting very useful. I’d like to hear any suggestions you might have for making the quarry more acceptable to the community.”

But she told him here in the restaurant she would rather discuss him.

“There’s not much to tell,” he said, though she could see he was pleased to be asked. He spoke with a local accent, with a slight stutter. He was very shy. She realized at their first meeting that if it ever came to seduction, it would be down to her. She would have to be the active partner. He might be as old as she was, but there was something awkward and adolescent about him. She had been expecting a brash and vulgar businessman not a boy, and she was touched.

He continued, mumbling so she had to strain to hear him.

“I was brought up in Kimmerston. Failed the eleven-plus and went to the secondary modern. I was never much good at school. Couldn’t see the point really. Not that I mucked about. I just didn’t bother. When I was fifteen I left and went to work in the quarry at Slateburn. It wasn’t much of an operation then, nothing to what it is now. The old man prepared dressed stone for mantelpieces, ornamental walls, headstones, you know the sort of thing. He’d lost interest in it, the business side at least. He liked fiddling with the stone and his chisels but he couldn’t be bothered chasing up unpaid bills. I got a chance to buy in. Making money always appealed to me, even when I was at school.” He smiled at her apologetically. Perhaps he thought she was a woolly-minded environmentalist to whom money didn’t matter.

“That’s it really. We were able to expand. It was as much a matter of luck as anything else. Being in the right place at the right time. You know.” He stopped abruptly. “Look, I shouldn’t be going on so much about myself.” As if it was something he’d read in a magazine.

“Are you married?” she asked, thinking it was probably the advice page in his wife’s magazine that he’d been reading. He wasn’t wearing a ring but she thought he was married. He had the look.

He paused and she was expecting him to lie but he said: “Yes, to Barbara. She doesn’t get out much.”

“What a strange thing to say!” So strange that she pressed him to elaborate but he refused.

“I’m married,” she said at last, stretching extravagantly. “And I get out all the time.”

For some reason the remark seemed to embarrass him. He didn’t answer and stretched over to fill her glass. She’d drunk most of the bottle already. He’d offered to drive.

“Are you local?” he asked. He was very polite as if they’d just met.

“I mean, were you born near here?”

“Quite near.”

She hated going into her background. She’d always considered that her parents were rather horrible little people. Her father had been headmaster of a boys’ prep school. Until she was old enough to go to school herself she was brought up in that atmosphere of petty tyranny and ritual, of competitive games and fake tradition. Her mother lorded it over the other wives and her father lorded it over them all.

“Where did you go to school then? The grammar, I suppose.” She was amused that this business of education seemed to matter so much to him.

She rather despised people with formal qualifications but it seemed to be his way of defining them.

“Lord, no! I got sent away to a ghastly heap on the North York moors.

I didn’t learn a thing.”

She always described her years at the ghastly heap in this way but she knew it wasn’t quite true. There was a woman who taught Biology, Miss. Masterman, who had seemed as lonely and isolated as any of the girls.

She was young, straight out of college, rather prickly. A Scot who would have been more at home in an inner city secondary modern than this gothic pile. Even then Anne had wondered what she was doing there. It was hard to imagine her drinking afternoon tea in the panelled Mistresses’ common room with the stuffy spinsters who made up most of the staff. And she certainly seemed to prefer the company of a small set of older girls to that of her colleagues. She arranged tramps on the moors, and away from the school she seemed to relax. She carried with her a sketchbook full of pencil drawings. The lines were fine, the pictures full of detail. She sprayed them with a fixative which smelled of pear drops to prevent smudging.

Occasionally, Miss. Masterman led them on fungus forays. Away from the school she encouraged the girls to call her Maggie but Anne always thought of her as Miss. Masterman. They’d carry flat wicker baskets and listen with delicious horror as she recounted, in her dry Edinburgh voice, tales of people who’d taken poisoned fungus by mistake. Putting off the return to school as long as possible they would build a camp fire at dusk and fry up the edible fungi, the field mushrooms and the ink caps.

Sitting in the restaurant, watching the candle flicker, Anne could remember the smell of woodsmoke, the feel of the battered tin plates, the taste of buttery juice wiped up with crusty bread. She had learnt something from the Biology teacher. She’d learnt that she never wanted to be like Maggie Masterman, depending on adolescent girls and mushrooms for fun. And that she had a passion for plants.

“Do you work?” Godfrey asked, breaking into the memory. “Or perhaps you have children?”

As if the two were mutually exclusive.

“No, no children. And no permanent work. Bits and pieces, you know.”

When things were tight. When Jeremy’s mysterious deals failed to come off. She learnt, very soon after marriage, that Jeremy was gay in a camp, rather jolly way. Of course he knew when he married her but perhaps thought, like the old Archbishop of Canterbury, that the right girl would cure him. She was sure that no malice or spite was intended in the transaction but there were other deceits the impression, for instance, of money. He did have the Priory, which had sounded grand at the time but which had turned out to be no more than a glorified farmhouse built from the stone of a Tudor chapel. And he hadn’t paid for that, it had been left to him by his grandfather.

By nature Jeremy was wonderfully optimistic. He imported antiques, art, books. Usually he managed to make enough just to tide them over but recently she suspected he might even fail to do that. They never discussed finance. If she asked about money he wagged a podgy finger at her. “Now, old girl. Leave all that to me.”

Recently there had been fewer plans for the house, less discussion about interior decoration usually he loved talking fabric and furnishing. She wondered, not for the first time, if he was being blackmailed by one of his little boys.

But Anne resented working for money. It came hard to put in so much effort and receive so little reward. She found it demeaning. For example, she could spend a whole day landscaping someone’s garden and still not be paid enough to buy this dinner. It hurt her pride to be valued so little. She found she preferred to work as a volunteer. That was how she first met Peter Kemp.

She responded to an advertisement in the Wildlife Trust magazine.

People with botanical skills were required to help with an English Nature survey. She was sent on a course and shone. Since then she’d worked regularly for the trust as a volunteer, and loved every minute of it. It was like Miss. Masterman’s botanizing expectations all over again.

Sitting in the restaurant, Anne realized that Godfrey was looking at her, pleadingly.

Oh God, she thought. He wants to talk about his offspring.

“And you?” she asked with resignation. “Do you have children?”

He replied immediately, becoming much more animated than when talking about his business. “We’ve a little girl. Felicity. She’s nearly ten. Very bright for her age. At least that’s what we think. She’s still at the village school at the moment; Barbara says the teachers there are good. Later we’ll have to see… “

Anne yawned discreetly into the back of her hand. She almost expected him to bring out the photo which he certainly kept in his wallet. Yet this was the moment she decided she could afford to have an affair with him. He would never get too serious. There would be no talk of divorce, of their moving in together. He would do nothing to upset his daughter.

Now the restaurant was almost empty. It was in Kimmerston, right on the bank of the river. They were alone in an extension built almost entirely of glass. A cold green light was reflected from the water.

The candle on their table provided the only pool of warmth in the room.

“Do you have to get back?” she asked. She spoke abruptly. Certainly there was no seduction in her voice. She leant forward over the table and stretched a long white hand towards him. She would never use gloves for gardening or fieldwork and was aware that her hands wouldn’t stand up to close scrutiny. There was a stain on her thumb which she couldn’t get rid of, they were scratched, she had to keep the nails short. But she wanted to touch him. He watched the hand slowly approaching his with fascination. When the fingers met she looked up at his face and saw that he was blushing, breathless.

“Well?”

His fingers were rough, like hers.

“I don’t know.”

“Will Barbara be expecting you?”

“I could phone. Say I’d been held up.”

He was stroking the palm of her hand with his thumb. She was surprised by the effect the simple gesture had. She thought she was getting old and jaded, yet here she was, wanting this upright, middle-aged man so much that she was almost fainting.

“Why don’t you do that? Because Jeremy’s in London and you could come home. For a nightcap. If you’d like that.” She could hardly articulate the words.

Outside they stood for a moment hand in hand. Anne could smell the river. Although they were a long way from the coast it had traces of salt and seaweed. Across the road a car started up. For a moment it caught Godfrey’s attention and she felt the hand tense. He turned his face away from the headlights. She was flattered by the reaction of guilt. Adultery obviously didn’t come easily to him. It occurred to her that this might be the first time he had ever been unfaithful to his wife.

“Well?” she said. “Will you come back with me?”

But they didn’t make it home to the Priory. Their first sexual encounter was in the back of the BMW. Godfrey pulled it off the road and parked in a farm track overhung with trees. Afterwards, lying back on the leather seats, she saw the moonlight filter through the summer foliage. She identified the trees as elder and hawthorn.

Chapter Fourteen.

That summer Anne saw Godfrey regularly but secretly. She was discreet in a way which didn’t come naturally to her. In the past she had flaunted her men. Jeremy had pretended he didn’t mind, and perhaps he really didn’t, though he liked the fiction that they were a happy couple of independent means, devoted to each other and to country pursuits. Anne was afraid that if he found out about Godfrey he would laugh. At the Marks & Spencer suits, the pretentious gold watch, the shiny shoes. Despite the company he kept, Jeremy was a snob. Godfrey was even more eager than she that the affair remain secret. He couldn’t face the prospect of his wife or his child finding out that he had a lover.

Therefore, she continued as usual. It was a hot dry summer and she spent long hours working in her garden. Her forehead turned as brown as leather and her arms and neck spotted with freckles, so once she said to Godfrey, “I look at least sixty. How can you possibly fancy me?” She expected a quip about his liking older women; instead he said, “I don’t fancy you. It’s much, much more than that.” And she believed him. By the beginning of autumn she had picked the early apples, wrapped them in newspaper and stacked them in boxes at the back of the garage. And she still looked forward to the clandestine meetings.

By the autumn too, opposition to the super quarry had gathered in momentum. She continued to be involved. She liked attending meetings to which Godfrey had been invited. There was an anticipatory thrill in standing outside the door of a shabby church hall, knowing that he was inside. Sometimes she could hear his voice, low and monotonous, making a point. His points were often technical. He might not have passed exams but he carried statistics in his head and could recite them flawlessly, like a child performing a favourite nursery rhyme. She loved arguing with him in public.

The people in the action group thought she disliked Godfrey Waugh intensely.

“Come on, lass,” the man with the sheep’s face said to her. “No need to let it get personal.”

In these confrontations Godfrey was always polite. In private they never discussed the quarry. She thought he was relieved by the pretence that there was antipathy between them. His wife would never believe he could fall for such an aggressive, loud-mouthed harridan.

On one occasion she saw them together, him and Barbara. Even the child was there. Godfrey had given one of his worked-out quarries to the Wildlife Trust to form the heart of the new reserve. The pits had been flooded and turned into ponds. The director of the Wildlife Trust talked hopefully about reed beds and a wader scrape. Godfrey had donated a lot of money for planning and hides, but he had just made his official planning application for the super quarry at Black Law so there was some nervousness within the Wildlife Trust. What was Godfrey Waugh after? Did he make his donation as a pre-emptive strike in the hope of getting a soft ride over the quarry? Anne didn’t know the answers to those questions, but found it hard to believe that Godfrey was that devious.

Because of suspicion about Godfrey Waugh’s motives, the party to celebrate the opening of the new reserve had become a low-key event.

Anne overheard one trustee, a conservative country lady in a cashmere suit, say to another: “We had planned a marquee, but in the circumstances, well, it hardly seemed appropriate.”

It was lunchtime, early October and warmer than days in most summers.

The reserve was on a lowland site. Flat fields stretched to the coast.

Although a bund, built with waste from the quarry, made the sea invisible to the guests, it made its presence felt through a shimmer on the horizon, the enormous sky.

Cattle were grazing on the bank, looking down at the celebration. One pit had already been flooded, had attracted mallard, coot and moorhen.

Anne arrived late, on purpose, to avoid the speeches and joined the people who were spilling out of the visitor centre which had been converted from one of the quarry buildings. It was time apparently for the opening ceremony. A ribbon had been strung between two sickly, newly planted trees. Eventually this would be the entrance to the car park. She recognized the back of Peter Kemp’s head and slipped in behind him.

“Who have they got to do the honours then?”

He turned round, startled. “Good God, woman. You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

“So which celeb’s going to cut the cord?”

“Godfrey Waugh’s brat.” Peter pulled a face. “Sickening, isn’t it?”

“I’d heard you’d joined the fat cats yourself. Haven’t you set up on your own? A consultancy, I understand.”

“Ah well, that’s different.” “Of course,” she said. “Isn’t it always?”

“You should be nice to me, Annie. I might be able to find some work for you. Proper paid work. I’ve got the contract for the Black Law

EIA.” “Christ!” she said. “How did you manage that?” She was seriously impressed. “Didn’t they want to go for someone more established?”

“I’m the best, Annie. That’s all they needed to know.” He paused.

“You don’t want the job then?”

“I haven’t got any qualifications.”

“You’ve got the skills though. I’ve been taken on to complete the report and I can employ who I like.”

She was still thinking about this, wondering in fact what Godfrey would make of it, when they were called to order. Felicity Waugh was led by her father in front of the crowd. She was a plump old-fashioned girl with hamster cheeks and long crimped hair. He handed her a pair of garden shears and she struggled to cut the ribbon. It was an awkward task because the shears were very blunt. Eventually Godfrey helped her, putting his hands over hers. There was a burst of applause.

Godfrey returned to a woman standing at the front of the crowd. This must be his wife. Anne drank a toast to the reserve in tepid white wine and looked at her.

Anne had created a fiction about Barbara Waugh. She had imagined a plump, boring woman. Godfrey would have met her at secondary school.

Their domestic life would be dreary, their conversation limited. They probably hadn’t had sex since the conception of the wonder child and according to this fiction all the couple had in common now was the daughter.

Anne saw immediately that she had misjudged the situation completely.

For one thing Barbara was serious competition. She was expensively dressed, beautifully groomed. She had cheekbones some women would die for and softly per med hair. In comparison Anne felt scrawny, ill kempt.

While she was still watching, Barbara and Godfrey exchanged a few words then Barbara broke away from him and walked over the grass to Anne. For a moment Anne wondered angrily if Godfrey had, after all, told his wife about the affair. Seeing the woman had made her reassess the relationship. Perhaps he had only been bothered about secrecy so he could preserve his respectable media image. Perhaps they were one of those sick-making couples who had no secrets. She prepared herself for a scene.

But it seemed that Barbara wanted to be friendly. She smiled anxiously. Anne could sense a strain, a definite tension. The words came out too quickly. The smile was replaced by a frown, a nervous gesture which seemed habitual.

She’s a neurotic cow, Anne thought triumphantly, glad to be able to pigeon-hole her, feeling superior. She thought Barbara wouldn’t be much competition at all. Now that they were standing close to each other it was obvious that they were much the same age. Barbara must have been approaching forty when she had the chud.

Ill “Mrs. Preece. I wondered if I could have a word… “

“Of course.”

“I just want to tell you how much I admire the work you do. The environment’s so important, don’t you think?”

It took all Anne’s composure not to appear shocked. It was the last thing she was expecting. “Oh, I do,” she said, with just a hint of pastiche. Looking over the woman’s shoulder she saw Godfrey, staring at the cows in a distracted way. She could tell he was panicking.

Barbara continued earnestly, “I just wanted to tell you that neither my husband nor I resent your opposition to the quarry at Black Law. We are fully committed to nature conservation and if the Environmental Impact Assessment comes up with any information which indicates a problem, I can assure you that the scheme won’t go ahead. We wouldn’t wait for a public inquiry.”

“Right.” Anne didn’t know what else to say. “Well, thank you.” She was confused because although she hadn’t changed her opinion of Barbara as a neurotic cow, the woman was obviously sincere. She also found it odd that Barbara could speak with such authority about a company matter. Godfrey had never mentioned her in connection with it and Anne had imagined her a good northern wifey, staying at home and washing socks, keeping her nose out of her husband’s financial affairs.

“Are you involved with your husband’s business?” she asked. Perhaps Barbara went in a couple of times a week to work in the office.

“We’re partners. Not that I’ve played an active role since Felicity arrived, though of course Godfrey consults me. It was different in the early days. I grew up with the business. My father owned our first site at Slateburn. When we married he retired and we took it over. It wasn’t easy. In fact it was a terrible strain working every hour in the day just to keep going. But looking back I suppose I enjoyed it.” She smiled. “I enjoyed it more when a bit of money started coming in and we could catch our breath.” She seemed lost in thought. The nervous frown returned and she twisted the paper napkin she was still holding. She looked, Anne thought, like someone rolling a joint, though that was hardly her style.

Anne wondered why Godfrey never admitted to marrying the boss’s daughter. Perhaps struggling to success alone made a better story. She didn’t resent that. She told stories about her own past the whole time. The truth was so unexciting.

The woman stood silently for a moment. All around them was conversation and laughter. A great deal of the tepid wine had been drunk. Above the buzz she heard Peter’s voice, schoolboy clear, the diction perfect.

“Neville! Well, this has all gone very nicely, hasn’t it? You must be pleased.”

Langholme was a small place so she’d heard of Neville Furness. Son of Dougie who’d gone to college and got above himself. Land agent for the Holme Park Estate and then head-hunted to join Slateburn Quarries because, word had it, he was someone who could talk with the big landowners. Soon after, the deal was announced between Godfrey and the Fulwells. She had seen him when he’d lived in one of the tied houses on the estate. She’d taken to walking her dog along the lane at a time when he often went jogging, had tried to engage him in conversation but nothing had come of it. She’d tried to find out if he had a woman, but apparently not. She was aware suddenly that Barbara Waugh was looking in the same direction. But while Anne’s gaze at the dark muscular body was frankly admiring, Barbara’s was hostile, even afraid.

Barbara reached out and grabbed Anne’s arm.

“Come to see me,” she said, ‘ Alderwhinney. That’s the name of the house. We’re still in Slateburn. Anyone will tell you where it is.

I’d like to talk to you. Come for coffee. Or lunch. Any time. I hardly ever go out.”

It was almost a repetition of what Godfrey said when he first mentioned his wife. She didn’t say goodbye. She pecked Anne on the cheek and ran back to Felicity. Anne watched with astonishment.

Perhaps I should have gone, Anne thought. She pushed in the final pole. Tomorrow she would come back with the quad rats It might have been amusing. I suppose I could still go now, keep Barbara informed about the survey. It’s not as if Slateburn’s miles away. I wonder what Godfrey would make of that.

Chapter Fifteen.

The next day it was pissing down with rain so they were all holed up in the cottage together. Anne suffered an hour of Rachael nagging about how this was a good opportunity to tidy up a bit, then couldn’t stand it any longer. She took the grotty Fiat into Langholme. The rain was so hard that she had to stop occasionally for the windscreen wipers to push the water from the screen. She phoned Godfrey from the public call box next to the garage.

It would have been more convenient to go back to the Priory but Jeremy was there and she couldn’t stand the thought of his fussing. He’d spent the last few weeks telling her that they’d have to tighten their belts. He’d even raised the possibility of selling the Priory. She’d only realized then how much the house meant to her. The thought of giving up the garden made her feel murderous. She’d nearly told him that she’d only married him for the Priory but realized in time that might be foolish. One of his famous deals might yet come off.

A boy, whose voice still seemed to be breaking, answered the phone.

“Hello! Slateburn Quarries Ltd. How may I help you?” When Anne said she wanted to talk to Godfrey there was a pause, then some whispered conversation. She was immediately suspicious. At last the boy spoke again: “I’m sorry, Mr. Waugh isn’t available just now.”

“When will he be available?”

“Not until tomorrow evening. He’s at a conference.”

“Where?”

The boy sounded confused. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I don’t know.”

It was then, in a fit of pique, that Anne phoned Barbara. She wanted to pay Godfrey back for not coming to the phone, when she was feeling so miserable. He hadn’t mentioned a conference to her. First she dialled directory enquiries. That almost took the decision about phoning away from her. If the Waughs were ex-directory, which they almost certainly would be, she’d have to give up the idea. But she was put straight through and before she could have second thoughts Barbara answered, a curt

“Waugh’. It sounded so like the imitation of a dog barking that for a moment Anne was distracted. When she did speak she managed to sound as confident as if they were old friends.

“You did tell me to get in touch. I thought I’d better not just turn up. You might be busy.”

But Barbara Waugh wasn’t busy. And she remembered Anne perfectly, though they had met only once several months before. She insisted that Anne come to the house now.

“Do come if you’re free. Stay for lunch. It’s perfect. Felicity’s spending the day with a friend and Godfrey’s away for two days at a conference.”

So if he’s lying, Anne thought, it’s to both of us.

Godfrey had never invited Anne to his house. After all, it was one of Barbara’s characteristics that she never went out. Apparently, even if she occasionally planned a trip shopping or to the cinema, she didn’t always go. Perhaps it was a sort of sickness. Anne knew where the house was, all the same. She had driven past out of curiosity, seen a rather stern modern house built of grey stone with a grey slate roof.

Anne would have broken the harsh lines with creeper and climbers but the Waughs’ garden was conventionally tidy. There was a bare expanse of lawn, curved borders, coloured now by symmetrical clumps of crocus and snowdrops, backed by more mature shrubs. The only touch of imagination was the tree house, nailed into a gnarled sycamore.

Although the platform on which the house was built was only about three feet from the ground it was reached by a wooden ladder. Anne thought Godfrey had probably built the house himself for the Beloved Felicity.

Recently she had come to think of the child in this way, seeing the words beginning with a capital letter like an obscure saint or martyr.

When she arrived it was still raining. The front door opened before she left the car. Barbara was standing there. Anne sprinted over the gravel to meet her and stood in the hall shaking the water from her hair. Barbara was dressed in blue denim trousers, but not the sort of jeans Anne was wearing. These wouldn’t fade at the knee or rip at the bum. Over the trousers she wore a navy fine wool sweater. Her face was discreetly made up and there was a hint of perfume. Anne had considered going home to the Priory to change but couldn’t face bumping into Jeremy. Besides the jeans she was wearing a rugby shirt and a waterproof. She wore no make-up and her hair could have done with another application of colour tint. It was more grey than rich chestnut brown.

Anne was aware of a polished woodblock floor, a staircase with flower patterned Axminster and the smell of coffee. Barbara seemed eager and anxious at once. She was speaking quickly and Anne, shaking the water from her hair, couldn’t quite make out the words. Now that she was here it didn’t seem such a good idea. It had started as a bit of fun; now she wondered if she could decently make an excuse and leave. But Barbara had already led her into a large living room and was speaking, repeating perhaps what she had said in the hall.

“I’m so glad you could come. Something’s been troubling me. It seemed such a lucky coincidence when you rang. You are probably the best person to talk to.” She paused then, realizing that this wasn’t the stuff of normal social interchange. “I’m sorry. This is rude. Do sit down. Would you like a drink? Sherry or coffee perhaps? I think I’d like a coffee.”

Anne, who felt very much like a drink, said she would have coffee too.

When Barbara left the room, Anne tried to compose herself. She thought she might have the nerve to see it through without too much harm. She was sitting in a comfortable room which would have been more in keeping with an older house. Nothing was shabby, but the furniture was solid, heavy, rather dark. There was a wood-burning stove. Against one wall was an upright piano. On the stand, open, a book of child’s music. On another wall a pencil drawing of the Beloved Felicity was hanging. Anne wondered if Barbara had done it herself, but it was rather good and she thought not. The girl was frowning as if concentrating on a problem she had no hope of solving.

Barbara brought coffee in a Pyrex filter jug. She saw Anne looking at the drawing.

“Do you have children, Mrs. Preece?”

“Anne, please. No, no children.” Without thinking she continued with the flip explanation she always gave in these circumstances. “I never felt the need of them.”

Barbara looked horrified as if, Anne thought, a guest had farted at the dinner table, but she said immediately, “It was so good of you to come.”

Anne poured herself a cup of coffee but she didn’t reply. She thought the only subject Barbara could want to discuss with her was her relationship with Godfrey, but she sensed no hostility. Rather the reverse was true. Barbara seemed embarrassingly grateful to have her there, despite her not liking children.

“This is rather delicate.” She sat, hand poised on the coffee jug.

“It’s the new quarry. I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”

Anne was caught off guard. “I’m sorry?”

“I suppose you think I’m disloyal discussing it with you when my husband’s away but I’d say the same if he were here. I have said exactly the same to him. I think it’s a mistake. It’ll alienate too many of our customers. It’s bad for our image. I was involved with this business long before Goff was. It matters to me.”

“Why do you think he’s so keen?”

It wasn’t a question she’d ever asked Godfrey she wouldn’t ever be able to think of him as Goff but now she found it interesting. If she were in his place she’d want the quarry for the excitement of the development, the drama, even the confrontation. But Godfrey wasn’t like her. He wasn’t greedy and he never took pleasure in being the centre of attention. Perhaps it was a fear that his business might otherwise stagnate which drew him on.

Barbara, however, had other ideas. “I don’t think he is keen. Not personally. Neville Furness has persuaded him that it’s the only way the business will survive.”

“Neville Furness?” Anne needed time to think.

“He works for Goff. You must have seen him at some of the public meetings, very dark.” “Yes,” Anne said. “I know.”

“Since Neville started working for us Goff’s been restless, preoccupied. And I hardly ever see him.”

I can solve that mystery for you, Anne thought. She said, carefully, “Do you think an employee would exert that sort of influence?”

“Not usually perhaps but… ” She broke off and her mood suddenly changed again. “Let’s go through to lunch. You don’t mind eating in the kitchen? It’s only something out of the freezer. And only paper napkins I’m afraid. Would you like a glass of wine? I put some Muscadet in the fridge.”

Anne followed her. They sat at a round pine table set in the corner of the sort of kitchen featured in magazines which end up in dentists’ waiting rooms. Anne took in the gleaming surfaces, the spotless Italian tiles on the floor and supposed that Barbara had a cleaning lady. She wasn’t jealous though. The Priory was classier. Such cleanliness smacked of the suburbs.

She was, however, impressed by the food. The rich onion flan might have come out of the freezer but Barbara had cooked it before it went in. It was topped with tomatoes and parmesan and latticed with anchovies and olives. They ate it with a salad and warm close-textured bread which must also have been homemade. Considerable effort had gone into the preparation of this meal. Anne, who often set out to impress, if not through food, wondered what Barbara was after.

“You were talking about your husband and the company.”

Barbara drank half a glass of wine very quickly. Her face was flushed.

For a moment Anne thought she would change the subject again but she took a deep breath. “I think Neville Furness has a vested interest in the quarry being sited on Black Law. His family own the adjoining land.”

“Yes,” Anne said, “I know.”

“And now I understand his stepmother is dead.”

“She committed suicide.”

“Did you know Bella Furness?” Barbara demanded.

“Not well. I’d met her.”

“She ran that farm. It’ll pass to Neville.”

“You knew her then?” Anne wasn’t surprised. In these scattered communities the Waughs and the Furnesses were almost neighbours.

“I knew of her.”

“What do you think? That Neville would sell out to Slateburn if planning permission was granted? That’s why he’s so keen for the quarry to go ahead? There’s not much demand for hill farms otherwise.”

“I don’t think he’d sell. He’s too canny for that. The most convenient access is through the farmyard and he’d charge for that. Any other route in is going to mean building a new road. In effect he could almost hold Goff to ransom, charge well over the odds for allowing machinery down the track!”

“Godfrey must be aware of that danger.”

“You’d think so, yes.”

“But?” Anne wiped buttery onion juice from her plate with a piece of bread. Barbara seemed distracted by this. Felicity must already have acquired immaculate table manners.

“But where Neville Furness is concerned he seems to have lost all his business sense. I’d like to know why Goff s so willing to accept Neville’s advice. It’s not like my husband. He’s usually a cautious man. He comes to his own decisions in his own time.”

“What exactly are you afraid of?” Reluctantly Anne pushed the empty plate aside and sat with her elbows on the table. “Blackmail?”

Again Barbara seemed disconcerted, though whether it was by the elbows on the table or the notion of her husband being blackmailed, it was hard to say.

“No,” she said uncertainly. “Of course not.” That at least, Anne thought, was a relief.

“All I wanted to say,” Barbara went on, ‘ that if you, or one of your team, were to find something which would have an impact on the planning inquiry, if you could recommend that after all the development shouldn’t go ahead… ” She paused. “Well, it would certainly be in all our interests, wouldn’t it?”

This was said in such a gentle, unassuming way that it wasn’t until Anne was at the front door, poised to run out into the rain, that she realized that what had been going on here, if not blackmail or bribery, had certainly been some form of corruption.

Chapter Sixteen.

She was driving back through Langholme when she saw Lily Fulwell in the Holme Park Range Rover coming towards her. Lily stopped abruptly and flashed her headlights. Anne wondered for a moment if something vital had fallen off the grotty Fiat, but it seemed that Lily wanted to be friendly. Anne was surprised. They weren’t usually on those sort of terms. Of course Lily knew who she was. They’d been introduced when Anne had first arrived at the Priory and Lily, newly married, had taken over the running of the big house. Occasionally they bumped into each other. Lily would give her a wave from the Range Rover if she was feeling charitable or exchange a few words in the post office after collecting her child benefit. But intimacy had never been encouraged.

Anne was adept at picking up social signs and knew better, for example, than to invite the Fulwells for dinner.

Today, however, Lily was unusually chatty. She got out of the Range Rover, leaving the door wide open, though it was blocking the lane, and a toddler, strapped in the back, was howling blue murder. Robert and Lily had three children and Lily prided herself on being a real mother.

There was always some sort of nanny in the background but Lily had done the play group shift, taken them to buy their own shoes, organized birthday parties. Now the two older ones were away at school, but she was always there for them in the holidays. That was the impression that was given. Anne had overheard Robert talking to Jeremy at some charity do. “We’re off to Austria. Lily adores skiing, but she insists on taking the little buggers with us. I think she’s a bloody marvel!”

Lily was younger than her husband, still only in her early thirties.

Apparently she’d been a child bride of impeccable pedigree. She had the complexion of a schoolgirl now, short curly hair which looked as if she’d just come out of the shower and a wide friendly smile which made people trust her. People who knew the family well said she was ruthless, very much the brains behind the Holme Park operation.

“I’m so glad to have seen you.” Lily was wearing a hand-knitted cotton sweater over jeans and a Barbour. The rain had stopped and the Barbour was unzipped. There was a stain on the front of the sweater which looked as if a child had been sick. “I’ve been meaning for ages to say you must come round for coffee.”

Before the start of the project Anne would have been delighted to receive this invitation. Now she wondered what Rachael would say if she accepted. The Slateburn quarry would be developed on Holme Park land. It was a joint venture. Liaising with the developers was Peter’s job. Or Rachael’s. Certainly not a humble contract worker’s.

Lily gave one of her generous smiles.

“I wanted you to know how much we appreciate what you’re doing. Robert and I both admire it. I mean the Priory seems so cosy and you’ve given it all up to camp out in that cottage in the hills. I mean we feel we’re on the same side as you, really. Holme Park’s the children’s inheritance, isn’t it? If you find something important up there we’d be the last people in the world to want to destroy it.”

The cries of the toddler reached a crescendo.

“Oh God, we can’t talk now. I always knew we should have stopped after Harry. Two’s enough for anyone. Or perhaps it comes so hard because there’s such a big gap.”

But it really didn’t seem to come very hard. She scooped the infant out of its child seat and fixed it onto her hip, jiggling it gently while she continued to talk. The cries subsided.

“Can you make it tomorrow? Elevenish? Or doesn’t that fit in with your work?”

By now Anne was curious. Sod Rachael.

“No,” she said. “Eleven will be fine.”

“Great.” Lily gave another smile. This time of relief? Or of a successful mission accomplished? Then she deftly strapped in the baby and drove off, hitting the horn in farewell.

On Wednesday and Sunday afternoons Holme Park was open to the public.

Anne had paid her three quid once to have a nose at the gardens, which frankly weren’t up to much, but she’d never been inside. Approaching the house the following day she wasn’t sure where to go. Perhaps she should go round to the back. She imagined that this coffee party would be an informal affair. They’d probably be in the kitchen, with the toddler doing something constructive and messy with paint and dogs sprawled on the floor.

But Lily was at the front of the house chatting to a plump young woman and when Anne hesitated, not sure whether she should park in the field which the public used, Lily waved her on. They didn’t use the grand front door with the stone steps and the porticoes, but she wasn’t shown into the tradesman’s entrance either. There were two wings, lower, less daunting than the main house, built at right angles to it, and she was taken into the entrance hall of one of these.

“I’ve just asked Arabella to take the horror out for a walk,” Lily said, ‘ we can talk in peace.”

Today Lily was more smartly dressed, though not, Anne suspected, just for her benefit. She had heard that Lily carried out most of the business on the estate. There would be meetings. The deal with Slateburn had been her idea. Robert had worried that it might affect the shooting and hadn’t been too keen. He was considered a soft touch, a financial liability.

“How’s Robert?” Anne asked.

“Out on the estate. A crisis with one of the tenants. He sends his apologies. Really, he’s so sorry not to be here.”

They had coffee not in the kitchen but in a pretty little sitting room.

The sofa and the chairs were covered in a pale lemon fabric which would show every mark and Anne thought it unlikely that the children were allowed to play here. After Lily had carried in the tray there was a moment of awkward silence which she must have taken as a failure on her part, because she gave one of her smiles and said apologetically, “Crazy, isn’t it, that we’ve got so much in common and yet that we’ve hardly had a chance to meet.”

Anne didn’t reply.

“Anyway, I’m so interested in this survey of yours. How, exactly, does it work?”

“There are three of us,” Anne said. “Three women.”

“Isn’t that unusual?”

“Perhaps. I’m the botanist. Rachael Lambert’s doing the bird work and Grace is our mammal expert.”

“Grace?”

“Grace Fulwell. No relation, I presume, but quite a coincidence.”

“Oh, there are dozens of Fulwells in the Northumberland phone book.

We’re a common lot. I expect we’re all related one way or another too.

Where does she come from?”

Lily’s voice was light but she seemed genuinely interested.

“I don’t know. She’s not very communicative.” Anne realized that might sound bitchy. She didn’t want to give the impression that the project was falling apart. Not to Lily Fulwell at least. “When you live and work on top of one another like that privacy’s important.”

“Oh yes!” As if a great truth had been revealed. “I do see.”

Anne talked Lily through the process of the survey, explained the system of the poles and the quad rats Lily listened intently and encouraged Anne to expand. Anne realized how the managers of shooting syndicates, the tenants and the businessmen could be persuaded to invest in her.

And where exactly do you intend to survey?”

“I’d like to do a couple of moorland sites, the peat bogs of course and I thought one square close to the lead mine. Sometimes the spoil changes the acidity of the soil. There might be something unusual. You don’t mind?”

“God, no! Go wherever you like. Absolutely open access. I explained yesterday that I think we’re on the same side.” She paused. “I suppose it’s too early to have come up with any results yet?”

“Much too early. I haven’t started the detailed work yet.”

“Ah.” She seemed disappointed and Anne thought that at last she had found the reason for this invitation. Either Lily was too impatient to wait for the full report or she was so much of a control freak that she wanted to see the results before Peter Kemp got his hands on them.

“Well, you must come again. Perhaps when you’ve something interesting to report.”

It was because she felt she had been manipulated, because she didn’t want this confident young woman to think she’d had the conversation all her own way that Anne brought up the question of Neville Furness. She introduced the subject clumsily.

“We were talking about connections and relationships earlier. I suppose it’s inevitable in a county with a population as small as this that everyone’s connected somehow, but it does seem a coincidence.

Neville Furness working for you then moving to Slateburn. And having an interest in Black Law Farm. More than an interest now, I suppose.”

“Isn’t it dreadful!” Lily opened her eyes wide in a gesture of shock and sympathy. She ignored Anne’s point about Neville having moved from Holme Park to Slateburn. “Poor Neville. We do feel for him. When’s the funeral?”

“Tomorrow.”

“We were wondering if we should go. To support him. But we’d never met Mrs. Furness and we thought in the circumstances he might prefer just family and close friends.”

“I suppose he’ll take on responsibility for the farm,” Anne said.

“I suppose he will.”

“The estate wouldn’t be interested in buying it?” The idea had come to her quite suddenly. She wondered why she hadn’t considered it before.

“Then if you get planning permission for the quarry you would control the access.”

“I don’t know that we’ve even considered it,” Lily said easily. “That’s Robert’s territory not mine.”

Anne could sense that she was preparing to move the conversation on to something safer, back to the baby perhaps, or an enquiry after Jeremy’s health, so she got her question in quickly.

“How did you find Neville Furness?” she asked in a gossipy, all girls together voice. “He was your estate manager, wasn’t he? I’ve met him a couple of times but I’ve never been quite sure what to make of him.”

Lily was too wily to be thrown by that. “Neville?” she said. “Oh, he’s a terrific bloke. A star. We were devastated to lose him.”

Then she did move the conversation back to domestic matters. The boys had just gone back to school after the Easter holidays and she was missing them like hell. Really, if there was any sort of decent day school in the area she’d have them out of that place like a shot, no matter what Robert thought.

At twelve o’clock precisely the young woman Anne had seen earlier returned. First they heard push chair wheels on the gravel then they saw her through the long windows. The child was asleep, its arms thrown out in abandon, its mouth wide open.

“I’m sorry,” Lily said. “I’ll have to go and retrieve the brat. It’s Arabella’s half day, but don’t feel you have to rush off.”

“That’s all right,” Anne said. “I should get back to work.” She knew that Arabella had been told exactly when to return with the child. Lily had allowed Anne an hour. No more.

She was reluctant to return immediately to Baikie’s. Rachael would want to know where she’d been and she supposed she’d have to confess to fraternizing with the enemy. She decided to call in at the Priory, pick up her mail, throw a few things into the washing machine. Perhaps phone Godfrey’s office and see if he was back from the conference.

The lane which led from Holme Park to the village had once been a private avenue bordered by trees, running through parkland up to the house. Now the fields on either side were fenced and farmed. At the end of the lane was a pair of semis, built in the twenties as suitable dwellings for senior estate workers and their families. By the side of the lane Grace Fulwell stood, staring at these houses, apparently transfixed.

Anne slowed down and pulled to a stop. Still Grace stared. She seemed not to have seen or heard the car.

Anne wound down the window, forced herself to keep her voice friendly.

“What are you doing here?”

Grace turned, came to life. “I was walking the stretch of river through the village. I’d heard about Holme Park. Vanburgh, is it? I thought I’d take a detour to look.”

From where she stood, if she had turned and looked up the straight avenue, there was a perfect view of the house, but it wasn’t Variburgh’s architecture which had Grace’s interest, but these modest cottages with their tidy gardens. More specifically, it was the left-hand semi with the child’s swing and the rotary washing line. Even now her eyes strayed back to it.

“Did you walk?” Anne demanded.

Grace nodded.

“It must be twelve miles from Baikie’s even over the hill. You should have asked me to bring you. Or Rachael. I’m surprised she didn’t offer when you told her where you were coming.”

Grace turned. There was a faint flush on her face.

“I wasn’t exactly sure then, where I was going.” “Tut tut,” Anne said. “You naughty girl.”

But Grace seemed not to hear.

“Well, at least I can give you a lift back.” “No,” Grace said. “That’s all right. I’ve not finished yet.”

So Anne left her there, still staring at the house, her eyes squinting slightly as if she were looking through a camera view finder.

Well, Anne thought. It’s her funeral.

Chapter Seventeen.

“Bloody hell!”

The woman coming into the crematorium chapel of rest might have tried to close the door quietly but a gust of wind caught it and blew it shut with a bang. Anne had been daydreaming, letting the pious words wash over her, and she started as if woken suddenly from sleep. Though she had muttered the expletive under her breath she could sense Rachael’s disapproval. With the rest of the congregation she turned to see the middle-aged woman appear in the aisle, apparently blown in like the door. Anne followed her progress to a pew with admiration. She seemed untroubled by the stares, the curious whispers. This woman certainly knew how to make an entrance.

Afterwards, waiting outside for Rachael, Anne saw the woman again. She evaded the other mourners, slipped past them with remarkably little effort although she had appeared so big and clumsy in the chapel. Then she let herself into a top of the Range Rover which had been parked close to the main gate for an early getaway. Not a tenant farmer then, Anne thought. Despite the poorly fitting clothes and the supermarket carrier bags this was a woman of substance. A relative of Bella’s perhaps. They would have been of a similar age, could have been sisters. There was a similarity too, not of looks but expression, off-putting, secretive, rather dour.

“Was that Bella’s sister?” she asked Rachael. “The show-stopper with the bags?”

“I didn’t know she had a sister.” Rachael sounded peeved as if she was the only person in the world with any right to know if Bella Furness had relatives.

“Nor do I. I was guessing. Asking.” She paused. “Look, I’m going. I can’t face a jamboree at the White Hart and it’s not even as if I knew her that well. Besides, it was her choice, wasn’t it? What she wanted.”

“If you wait a few minutes I’ll give you a lift.”

“That’ll be all right.” The crem was giving her the creeps and already she could feel one of Rachael’s lectures coming on.

She had started walking along the wide pavement towards the town centre when Godfrey’s car pulled up behind her. She presumed he’d got rid of his wife -perhaps she’d come in her own car and was about to climb into the front passenger seat when she saw that Barbara Waugh was already there. It gave her the fright of her life.

“Mrs. Preece, hello,” Barbara said through the open window. “Can we give you a lift into town?” Then

“Barbara Waugh, perhaps you don’t remember. We met at the opening of the Wildlife Trust Reserve.”

“Oh yes,” Anne said. “Of course.”

Godfrey stared straight ahead over the steering wheel. It had obviously been Barbara’s idea to stop. She hadn’t told her husband about the cosy lunch at Alderwhinney and wanted to make sure that Anne didn’t mention it either if they bumped into each other at the White Hart. That suited Anne very well. The impulsive gesture to phone Barbara already seemed childish and vindictive. She preferred Godfrey not to know about it.

“Are you going to the hotel, Mrs. Preece?” Barbara asked as Anne climbed into the rear of the car. “I gather Mr. Furness has invited everyone.”

“No, I didn’t know Bella very well. I only came to the funeral to give Rachael support. She’s been so upset.”

“Can I take you to Langholme then? I’ve got my own car in town and it’s not far out of my way. I’m going straight back.” “I thought I’d spend some time in Kimmerston. Since the project started I’ve not had much chance… “

Barbara seemed disappointed and Anne was worried for a moment that she might suggest a girls’ lunch out, a trip round the shops. Instead she said quickly, “Of course, I quite understand.”

Godfrey dropped Barbara off first at the car park next to the Sports Centre.

“I’ll get out here,” Anne said. “It’s not far.”

But Barbara wouldn’t have it and insisted that Godfrey should take her to where she wanted to go. So she went with him to the car park in the courtyard behind the White Hart. When he went into the hotel to make, as he put it, ‘ least an appearance’, she sauntered across the road and down an alley to a coffee shop. She drank a cappuccino and read an old copy of Cosmo until he came to pick her up.

He took her for lunch to a town in the south of the county, where once there were shipyards and coal mines. This was a place where they could be sure of avoiding people who might know them. It was also a place where Godfrey seemed at home. For Anne it was like straying into a foreign country. The boarded-up shops, the litter in the street, the bare-legged women pushing mucky babies in prams, all this seemed a million miles from Lily Fulwell and Holme Park and gave her a peculiar thrill.

Yet even here, Godfrey had found somewhere special to eat. There was a gem of a restaurant, very small and discreet, in a terrace between an old-fashioned park and the jetty where a ferry docked. The ferry carried shoppers back to a small community on the other side of the estuary. Once the terrace had housed the harbour master’s offices and the small dining room, simply furnished, the walls decorated with photographs of submarines and master mariners, had the feel of the officers’ mess. Now, at two o’clock, it was empty.

The owner recognized them at once and took them to their favourite table.

“A drink?” he asked. “The usual? Are you in a hurry today?”

Sometimes they were in a hurry. It was an hour from Kimmerston and Godfrey had meetings.

“No,” Godfrey said. “We’ve got all afternoon.”

So he brought them drinks, a menu and went back to his seat behind the bar and his book. He was reading The Brothers Karamazov. He only looked up to call over, “The chefs on good form today. You’re safe with any of the specials.”

The chef could be moody. He was an alcoholic, usually reformed, given to sudden rages. They smiled.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” Godfrey said. “Barbara insisted.”

“That’s all right.”

“She’d have been suspicious if I’d refused to stop.”

“She doesn’t suspect anything, does she?” It was one explanation Anne thought for Barbara’s original invitation at the Wildlife Trust Reserve. Perhaps she’d wanted a closer look at the opposition.

“No, of course not.”

“What was it like there, the… ” She wasn’t quite sure what to call it. Reception sounded like a wedding and wake was far too jolly for a finger buffet at the White Hart. “The do.”

“All right, I suppose. I didn’t stay long.”

“How was Neville bearing up?” Some of Barbara’s hostility must have rubbed off because what she had intended as a simple question came out with an undercurrent of sarcasm. He seemed not to notice.

“Bella Furness was his stepmother not his mother. I don’t think they were particularly close. You wouldn’t expect him to be upset.” “No,” she said. “I’m not surprised. He always seemed a cold fish.”

“I didn’t mean he didn’t care. He put on a decent enough show for her.”

“Will it make any difference to your plans for the quarry? Neville being in charge of the Black Law land?”

“Why should it?”

“It’d make access a heck of a lot easier if he gives you permission to use the track.”

He studied the menu intently, frowning. For a moment she thought he wouldn’t respond at all. “I’m not sure it’s altogether ethical, our discussing the quarry.” He adopted a joking tone but he was warning her off. She could understand why Barbara had felt excluded.

“What do you mean?”

“I could be influencing your results.” “Oh yeah!” she said. “Right. We’ve been having an affair for nearly a year, but a chat about Neville Furness is much more likely to influence my judgement than that. Come off it.”

“We have to be careful. Because of that.”

“I know!” She was indignant that he felt he had to say it. Then something about his voice, something about the way he looked down at the menu just as she was about to meet his eyes made her ask: “Why? Has anyone said anything?”

“No.”

“But you think someone might have guessed?”

He shrugged.

“I’ve a right to know, don’t you think?”

“That first time we went to the Riverside. When we came out together I thought I recognized the car on the other side of the road. We might have been seen. That’s all.”

“Who by? Whose car was it?”

“Neville Furness.”

“Oh!” she cried. “Bloody great!” Then she thought that Barbara’s notion that Neville was putting pressure on Godfrey to go ahead with the quarry against his better judgement, might not be so wide of the mark. Godfrey would go along with a lot not to have his wife and child upset.

“Has Neville said anything?” she demanded.

“No.”

“Not even indirectly? He could make a fortune out of the scheme.”

“Not even indirectly.” He sounded irritated. She had never known him so cross with her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “What’s the matter?”

“I have enough of that sort of talk at home.”

“What sort of talk?”

“Barbara thinks that Neville has too much influence over me. She’s never been happy about the quarry proposal. Since we’ve started to flesh out the details she’s become obsessed.”

“Perhaps she’s right!”

“No, you don’t understand. Neville’s not like that.” He handed her a menu. “Look, we should order. Rod will wonder what’s going on.”

Although Rod still seemed engrossed in Dostoevsky.

“What about this? Mullet baked with shallots and new potatoes.”

“Yes,” she said. “Anything.”

They sat in silence until the food had arrived and they’d begun to eat.

“Tell me then,” she said at last. “If Neville Furness isn’t into blackmail, what is he like?”

“An ordinary, decent bloke. A bit lonely. A bit shy.” He smiled. She could tell he was trying to please her. “He could do with a good woman. If he was the monster Barbara makes him out to be, do you think I’d have taken him on?”

“You might if you thought he’d be useful.” “No,” he said quietly. “Of course I want the business to grow. It’s how I measure what I’ve been doing, my achievement. But not at any price.”

“Why did he leave Holme Park?”

“I don’t know. I mean, not exactly. I can tell you how it happened if you’re interested?”

“Yes,” she said defiantly. “I am interested if that’s OK with you.”

“I had some preliminary meetings with Robert and Olivia Fulwell about the quarry. The approach came from them. At least I think probably from her. Furness was in on some of the discussions. I was impressed.

I also had the feeling that he wasn’t happy. The relationship between him and Mrs. Fulwell was… strained. I offered him a job. He accepted.”

“What did Lily Fulwell make of that?” His calm explanation reassured her. She was starting to relax, to enjoy the idea of Godfrey poaching Neville from Lily.

“I don’t know. It was none of my business.”

An idea occurred to her. “Do you think they’d been having an affair?”

“Like I said. None of my business.” Unusually he poured himself a second glass of wine. He looked tired. She pushed away her plate, still littered with fish bones, twigs of thyme, and reached across the table, a repeat of the gesture which had first brought them together.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have questioned your judgement.”

He seemed about to say something but lost his nerve at the last minute.

They spent all afternoon in the restaurant, finishing the wine then several cups of coffee. In the end Rod took their money and asked them to see themselves out. He’d long ago put up the closed signs and locked the door. Anne had the feeling again that Godfrey was building up to some confidence, but it wasn’t until they were out on the street that he seemed prepared to speak.

They’d wandered into the town centre, towards the secure car park which they always used. Anne, waiting for him to spit out whatever was bothering him, saw her reflection in the window of a shop selling cut price shoes. She looked so wretchedly old that she thought: he wants to get rid of me, that’s what he wanted to say. That’s why he picked that fight. At just that moment he started to speak.

“It’s Barbara.”

“What about her?” Anxiety made her aggressive, shrill.

“I’m not sure I can stay with her. Not indefinitely.”

“What are you saying?”

He stopped in the middle of the pavement. All around them were jostling women, kids on their way home from school. The stream of people eddied round them, took no notice. They were used to couples making a scene in the street.

“I’m asking what you feel about that.”

“I didn’t mean to come between you. That wasn’t my intention.”

“No. It’s nothing to do with you. It’s Barbara. You don’t know how much I owe her… “

“If you hadn’t married her you’d still be a craftsman, chiselling stone?”

“It’s not just that.” He became impatient because he’d lost his drift.

He raised his voice but still the crowds moved on, unheeding. “What I mean is that being grateful isn’t enough. What I mean is, I’d rather be with you. Not yet. When Felicity is a bit older. More independent. When this business with the quarry is settled. I need to know how you feel about that.”

It was only then that she realized he wasn’t giving her the push.

“You mean openly, publicly?”

“Marriage, if you want it.”

The next morning when he left her at the end of the lane to walk down to Baikie’s, she felt about fifteen again. She’d not slept. Godfrey had fallen asleep quite suddenly in the early hours and she’d lain awake listening to his quiet breathing. It was the first time they’d spent the night together. But still she felt she had the energy to work all day. And that she’d do anything Godfrey Waugh asked her to.

Chapter Eighteen.

If it hadn’t been for occasional trips out to meet Godfrey, that week after the funeral would have driven her demented. Being trapped in Baikie’s with the two other women was worse than being back at school.

She even considered moving back home despite the long drive to the survey area, but Jeremy had returned from London and seemed installed in the Priory for a long stay. He seemed chastened. Perhaps one of his love affairs had gone sour, or perhaps it was one of his business ventures, but he was in little boy mode, in need of comfort, and she didn’t have the patience for it. Not now.

Rachael she could have handled. Even though Rachael was a frustrated bitch, uptight and heartless, at least she was sane. But ever since she’d come across Grace staring at the estate workers’ cottages at Holme Park, Anne had realized that she was as mad as a snake. Anne wasn’t given to whimsical fancies, but being woken at night by the rustling of Grace’s night clothes, the padding of her feet on the bare floor, made her seriously worried. She wouldn’t have put it past Grace to lose it altogether, and if someone was going to wake up with Grace’s penknife through her ribs, she didn’t intend it to be her.

So she told Rachael in the pub that she was going to move into the box room It might not have a lock, but at least she could wedge a chair under the door and she wouldn’t have to put up with Grace’s midnight wanderings. The pub had been Rachael’s idea. She’d been on management courses. She probably saw it as a team-building exercise. But as Grace spent all evening in the public phone box in the street outside and Anne used the opportunity to tell Rachael what she thought of Grace, it was a bit of a failure.

“Have you seen her records?” Anne demanded. She’d had a lot to drink in a short space of time, though she could tell Rachael disapproved.

She needed it.

“Not yet. Not in detail.”

“We’re talking fantasy here. I mean real fairy-tale time. The other day I saw her miles outside the survey area. Miles from the nearest river if it comes to that. Where did you get her from anyway?”

Rachael muttered something about it being Peter’s decision. Anne thought Rachael wasn’t really management material despite the courses and the degrees.

The next day she felt she needed cheering up. The vegetation classification had been going well. The quad rats in the peat bog had proved interesting. There was nothing so special that the development of the quarry would be threatened, but she’d enjoyed the variety of species there. She had a hangover and could afford to take time off.

The last time she’d seen Godfrey, he’d presented her with a mobile phone, so they could keep in touch. She hadn’t told the others and when they were around she kept it switched off. There was no real reason for the secrecy she could have said she’d bought it herself but she knew what would happen. Rachael would consider it communal property and suggest that whoever was going furthest into the hills should borrow it as a safety measure. If Anne objected she’d be made out to be a heartless monster. Well, bugger that, she thought. If Peter Kemp wasn’t such a tight bastard he’d have provided mobiles for them all. Another reason for wanting a room of her own was so that she could charge it up without anyone else seeing.

That morning Rachael drove into Kimmerston for a meeting with Peter and the developers. Grace, more together than she’d been for days, actually had breakfast with them and volunteered the information that she’d be out all day. As soon as they’d left Anne called Godfrey on her mobile.

“Can you come out to play?”

“I don’t know… “

“You weren’t planning to be at the meeting with Kemp Associates, were you?”

“I hadn’t realized there was a meeting. Neville must have fixed it.”

“If Neville’s as good a bloke as you say, get him to drag it out. Keep Rachael out of the way and give us longer.”

“I can’t involve him.” “Why not? If he knows already.” She paused. “Have you got a pen?”

“Of course.”

“Write down this shopping list. You can call at Tesco’s on your way over.”

“You’re expecting me to come over to Black Law?”

“Why not? They’re both out.”

“Well… ” he said. “Someone might see.”

“So what? You’re entitled from time to time to look at the development site.”

“I want to see you.”

“Then come.”

When he arrived he was laden with carrier bags like a suburban husband.

He seemed quite comfortable with the role. She thought he must have been shopping for Barbara. Like a suburban housewife she unpacked the groceries. He held out a polystyrene tray of chicken pieces wrapped in cling film

“Shouldn’t these go in the oven now, if we’re going to eat them at lunchtime?”

“Are you joking? I’ll do them later. I’m not wasting time cooking when I’ve got you to myself.”

It was a grey and misty day and she’d lit a fire. They had a picnic in front of it. She’d ordered salad, bread, a lump of Stilton, olives, chocolate.

“All the things,” she said, “I love most in the world.”

And me?” “You?” she said. “Oh, I don’t think I could fall for anyone who fishes for compliments like that!” But she pushed the tub of olives out of the way and pulled him down beside her instead.

They were at the undignified stage of events. His trousers undone but not fully off, her bra undipped but dangling from one shoulder, when Grace arrived. They heard the kitchen door open then shut and they froze. Godfrey started scrabbling for his clothes then, but it was too late. She came straight in and saw them. She stood in the doorway staring, her eyes blank, not quite focused, as if she were thinking of something else altogether.

She didn’t say anything. Not even “Sorry for disturbing you1 which Anne thought was a bit of a cheek. She just turned round and went out.

Anne was tempted to let her go. What did it matter if she told the world she’d been shagging Godfrey Waugh in Baikie’s cottage? Then she thought it could make things difficult, and not just for Godfrey. Anne fastened her bra and pulled on her top. In the kitchen Grace was standing, writing on a sheet of paper from out of her notebook.

“I thought you weren’t coming back,” Anne said.

Grace didn’t reply.

“What are you doing here anyway?”

“I’d forgotten to leave details of my route and my ETA.”

“Look,” Anne said, ‘ what happened just now.”

“None of my business, is it!” She can’t have recognized him, Anne thought, or she’d have said something.

“None of my business who you mix with.” So then Anne wasn’t quite sure.

“Look,” Anne said again, and even she could hear the desperation in her voice. “He’s married. With a child. No one knows about us. You won’t say anything?”

Grace looked at her. Anne couldn’t work out at all what the other woman was feeling. Contempt perhaps. Pity? Envy?

“No,” Grace said at last, “I’ll not say anything.”

“Thanks.” Anne was surprised at how relieved she suddenly felt. She wanted to make a gesture. “Why don’t I cook a meal later? For the three of us. Something special. It’s about time we made an effort to get on. OK?”

Grace shrugged. “OK.” She walked towards the door, paused, gave the ghost of a smile. “I’ll let you get on then.”

For the attempt at humour, for letting her off the hook, Anne could have hugged her.

But when Anne returned to the living room Godfrey was fully dressed.

His shirt was buttoned to the neck, his tie knotted.

“What are you doing? I’ve got rid of her.”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing. And she won’t say anything.” She paused. “And I believe her.”

“I should never have come. I told you it was a risk.”

He looked at her pathetically, reminding her of Jeremy, irritating her so much that she said: “Anyway, I thought you wanted to go public.

Isn’t that what you said after the meal on the coast?”

“Not now. Not like this.” He looked around the grubby room, with the remains of the meal scattered across the floor.

“Fine,” she shouted. “That’s fine! Because I’m not into commitment either. Never have been.”

They stared at each other.

“I’m sorry.” She reached out a hand, touched the cotton of his shirtsleeve. “Finish the wine at least. Our first row. We should celebrate.”

“No.” Then more gently, “I’m going to walk up to the lead mine. Then if anyone recognized the car there’s an excuse for me being here.”

“Who would recognize it? You’re being paranoid.”

“I want to go. I want to see the site again.”

“I’ll come with you then.”

“No, really, I prefer to go by myself.”

She wandered around the living room, picking up the scraps of food, piling plates and cutlery, then she went upstairs and washed out a few things in the bathroom sink. It wasn’t much of a drying day but she took them outside and pegged them on the line, thinking that from there she might see him walking back down over the hill to the cottage. She wouldn’t have gone out to look specially. There was no sign of him or of Grace.

Inside again she started to prepare a casserole for the evening meal, using the ingredients Godfrey had brought. She put Annie Lennox in her cassette player and played it very loud, so when he got back he’d know she wasn’t bothered about him one way or the other. She told herself it wouldn’t be long before he did come back, apologetic, flushed, out of breath. She thought he must look really stupid out on the hill in the clothes he’d put on for the office this morning.

But he seemed to be away for hours and it came as a shock when at last she heard the engine of his car. She rushed out into the yard but it had driven off at great speed. She had to walk up the track and close the gate behind him. He had driven on towards the ford without bothering to stop and shut it.

Later she tried to phone him at his office, but his secretary, who must have recognized her voice, said that he wasn’t taking any calls.

At first she was surprised when Grace was late back from the hill.

She’d thought they’d come to an understanding, had even thought they might get on better for the remainder of the project. Then she thought Grace was making a point, letting Anne know that her cooperation couldn’t be taken for granted. She tried to tell Rachael that there was probably nothing to worry about, but Rachael insisted on going out there herself, screaming and making a scene.

Later, when it got very dark and still Grace hadn’t returned, Anne wondered if Godfrey had followed her and frightened her off. Usually she wouldn’t have said that was in character at all in every situation he was understated, undramatic but today he had behaved very oddly.

Rushing away without talking to her then refusing to take her calls, that wasn’t like him. Anne thought it probably wouldn’t have taken a lot to scare Grace off. You could tell she was pretty near the edge already. Anne could imagine her walking to the nearest road and hitching a lift back to where she’d come from. Wherever that was.

In the end she couldn’t stand Rachael’s melodramatics any longer. She’d put on a brave face but she was panicking about Godfrey. About losing him. She hadn’t realized how much a part he’d been of her plans for the future. She went to bed and although she hadn’t expected to, she went to sleep very quickly. She didn’t hear the arrival of the mountain rescue team and the first she knew of Grace’s death was the sound of Rachael snivelling at the bottom of the stairs, early the next morning.

Grace

Chapter Nineteen.

The day after her arrival at Baikie’s Grace woke suddenly. The room was filled with light and she knew she had overslept, thought with a sudden panic that she might be in trouble. She looked around the room, not sure for a moment where she was. There were bunk beds, crammed into the big room so as many students as possible could be accommodated on field trips. They had been stripped of sheets but each had a grey blanket folded at the foot. The pillows were covered with striped cases. There was a musty, institutional smell. For an instant she was reminded of another place where she had stayed and she was confused.

Then Rachael shouted up the stairs that coffee had been made if Grace wanted some.

“And what do you fancy for breakfast?” So she jumped back to the present. She saw that one other bed in the room had been made up, and remembered Anne, picking her up from the station and driving through Langholme. She remembered the track from the road into the forest, then out onto the open hill, the feeling that emerging from the trees was like arriving in a different world. A child’s fantasy, beyond the wardrobe door, a place anyway she’d dreamt of since she was little.

“Ibast?” Rachael’s voice was more impatient.

“Please. I’m nearly ready.”

She opened the curtains. Beyond the garden which was still in shadow, the hill was bathed in sunlight, so last year’s bracken shone like copper. She pulled on her clothes and went down to the kitchen.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t have set the alarm clock.”

She was aware of Rachael looking at her, concerned, sympathetic. She had seen that look before too.

“No problem,” Rachael said. “As long as we meet the deadline we can set our own timetable, but I thought I’d wake you. We’re sure to lose days later with the weather.” She smiled. Grace tried to respond, to be friendly too, but she felt awkward. It was more difficult with just the two of them. She wasn’t used to deceit. The kitchen was so small that they had to stand very close together and she felt exposed. Last night Anne had done most of the talking. Grace had pretended to listen but mostly she’d been able to concentrate on her own thoughts. Now she drank coffee, ate toast and as soon as possible she prepared to go outside.

“Where are you going?” Rachael asked.

“I’m sorry?”

“I need to know where you’re going. Health and Safety rules. I explained before.”

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

Rachael was still in the kitchen, standing because there was no room to sit, with a piece of toast in her hand. Grace put her map on the formica bench.

“I thought I’d start close to the cottage. I’ll just walk the Skirl today, get a feel for it, look out for spraints, see what the bank’s like. I should be back by two.”

“Good.”

Grace saw that she had reassured Rachael, who had previously been watching her rather oddly. She should take more care. It occurred to her suddenly that Rachael looked very like an otter herself, with her chunky front teeth, the brown hair which would turn grey when she was still young, the downy lip.

“Will you take sandwiches?” Rachael asked. “There’s cheese and the bread’s still OK.”

“No.” Then, seeing that more explanation was required, “I’ll get something when I get back.” In fact she’d never been much interested in food which seemed rather strange in view of her father’s profession.

From the kitchen door she walked round the house, past the tractor shed and into the front garden. There was a lawn, on which apparently students played croquet in the summer, but it hadn’t yet been cut. This was surrounded by bushes and shrubs. The boundary of the garden was marked by a dry stone wall. There was no gate onto the open hillside but a stile, in the form of a large boulder, on each side of the wall and an upright wooden stake beside it. There was a path, presumably flattened by students and sheep, which led through the bracken to the burn. The Skirl was as wide in some places as a river, and seemed to Grace a good place for otter. She imagined she could smell them.

She crossed the burn by a series of deep flat rocks. The water was very clear. The strong sunlight reflected from the surface dazzled her and she almost lost her footing. On the other side the bank had been cut away and a muddy beach had formed. She scrambled up the bank and began walking towards the old lead mine.

She walked along the bank slowly, looking for pulling-up places and spraints, the droppings which were distinctive because they smelled so strongly of fish. At university it had been a comprehensive study of the contents of otter spraints which had won her a First. That and her dedication. She’d never been distracted much by a social life or men.

In her interview for this job Peter Kemp had said: “There won’t be much to do, you know, out there on the hills. Not in the evening. You won’t be bored?” “Oh no,” she’d said quite truthfully, not telling him of course that she had her own reasons for wanting to be part of the project.

She followed the burn from the Black Law farm land towards the estate and the old lead mine. There it was channelled into stone culverts.

She presumed that once it had been used as part of the mining process.

Perhaps to wash the ore or power a wheel. The boundary between Holme Park and the farm wasn’t marked on the map, but she had added it in pencil, and she knew she must have got it right because past the mine where the burn opened out again, she came to a dead weasel which had been thrown into the water. Its gingery coat was perfect but it was quite stiff. Nearby she found the tunnel trap which had killed it. A spring-mounted trap had been placed in an old piece of piping in a gully and covered with stones. She couldn’t find signs of any other corpses, but near to the trap there lingered the smell of rotting flesh. This must be Holme Park land because only a keeper would have gone to this much trouble. She considered blocking the entrance to the trap, but thought that would be foolish. She didn’t want to draw attention to herself at this stage.

The discovery of the weasel upset her, though she couldn’t quite work out why. Perhaps it was because there was no outward indication of injury. She tried to put it from her mind and continued walking but almost immediately thought she heard footsteps, splashing water, at some distance behind her. She turned round but the hill was empty.

There was nowhere to hide except the old mine workings and who would want to skulk there? So she knew she had been imagining things again.

She walked on and she began to count, though not now the traces of otter left on the bank. Now she counted the foster parents who’d cared for her, though she knew the number already. She listed them. Recently it had become an obsession to list their names. She knew it was unhealthy, this preoccupation with the past, and perhaps if she hadn’t found the weasel, the sunshine and the smell of the peat would have kept the old memories away.

But perhaps not. Rachael’s story of the discovery of Bella’s body, white in the torchlight, had jumbled the past and the present in her mind. That was what had started the confusion. It was as if a child had shaken a jigsaw puzzle in its box. The picture was fractured.

Grace’s mother had committed suicide by hanging.

There had been six foster families. In the social services department this was something of a record for a child like her. At the beginning everyone was sure she would be adopted. She was pretty enough, white, only four years old. She had been well brought up and already spoke politely. She didn’t have tantrums. Occasionally she wet the bed but that was only to be expected after coming in from the garden to find her mother hanging by her dressing gown cord from a light fitting. It had been sunny that morning too. The psychologist said she was very bright.

The first couple were Aunt Sally and Uncle Joe. She could hardly remember them because she was there for such a short time. It must have been emergency placement but she knew their names because they were in a scrapbook kept for her by her social worker. There were no photos.

She crossed the burn back to southern bank, this time wading, feeling the pressure of the water against the supple rubber of her expensive Wellingtons. Although it was stupid she wanted to avoid the mine buildings and the tunnel trap. Out loud she said: Aunt Sally and Uncle Joe,” and had a brief recollection of a flowery dress, a whiff of cigarette smoke, being held on a lap against her will.

She remembered the second couple better. The plan was that they would adopt her. Recently she had returned to this memory over an dover again. It was like poking a sore tooth with her tongue.

Chapter Twenty.

She had been in this house for a long time, months certainly, perhaps a year. She had started school. School was a modern brick building, with large windows and grey carpet tiles on the floor. Because of the carpet they had to be very careful wiping their feet before going in.

Each morning Lesley walked with her to the white wooden gates which had been pushed open to let the teachers’ cars through. Lesley would go with her into the cloakroom and hang up her coat. There she would try to kiss her goodbye. In the classroom there were two boxes one for reading books and another for packed lunches. Grace’s packed lunch box was made of pink plastic and had a picture of Barbie on the side. Each day she returned a reading book. She had already moved on to the ones with orange stickers on the spines; most of the children in the class were still reading the blues.

If it rained Dave gave them a lift to school in the car and then she wore Wellingtons pink to match the lunch box which had to be changed in the cloakroom. Lesley and Dave were her foster parents’ names but she already called them mum and dad. She wanted to be the same as the other children in her class. She could be on the books with the green stickers but had slowed down so she wasn’t too different.

They lived in a new house on a new estate. This too was made of brick with large windows. There was a garage which held Grace’s tricycle and her doll’s pram, a small patch of lawn and a rockery at the front, and a garden at the back. In the summer, Lesley said, there would be a swing. The road was still being built, and there were muddy puddles everywhere. Lesley hated the mud and so did Grace. They were both tidy individuals and so appeared perfectly matched.

That was what the social worker said when Dave and Lesley told her that they didn’t want Grace to live with them any more.

“But I thought you were perfectly suited.”

Grace knew that was what she said because she was listening at the door. It was slightly open, but nobody noticed her. She must have heard Lesley explaining apologetically that they didn’t think the placement was working out, but later she didn’t remember that bit. She just heard the social worker say, “She’s such a sweet little thing.

What’s wrong with her?”

“Nothing’s wrong with her.” Lesley and Dave looked at each other hoping the other would explain. They might just as well have said everything was wrong with her.

“You didn’t phone to say there’d been any problems.” By now the social worker was getting desperate. If the placement broke down it would be considered her fault. She was a messy woman with flyaway hair. The hem of her skirt had become un stitched and her long cardigan was wrongly buttoned. Grace disapproved of this lack of order. She took great care of her clothes, especially her blue and white school dress.

The woman continued: “I mean we might have been able to help. Has she been wetting the bed again?”

“That was never a problem.” This was David. He was chief mechanic in a big garage on the main road out of town. Grace had seen him there.

He wore blue overalls with his name embroidered on the chest and sometimes a blazer with gold buttons. He had come home early for this meeting. He had scrubbed his nails and put on a jacket and tie.

Awkwardness had made him aggressive.

“We weren’t bothered about that. Of course not. What do you think we are? Ogres? And at least it proved she was human.”

“What do you mean?” The social worker’s voice rose as if she was about to cry. Even at the age of five Grace realized that, in this situation, this wasn’t the right way for a responsible adult to behave.

“Look.” Dave leant forward. From her hiding place Grace could see the curve of his back. He was a very big man and from this angle he looked deformed like one of the illustrations in Jack and the Beanstalk, her latest reading book. Perhaps, as he had just said, he was an ogre.

“Look, we don’t want to muck you about, but we’ve got to be straight, haven’t we? I mean, better now than when all the forms have been filled out. Save you some work, eh?”

He gave a quick barking laugh. Grace understood that this was supposed to be a joke but the social worker didn’t find it funny. Nor really did Dave because he continued seriously. “We can’t love her,” he said.

“We wish we could but we can’t. She’s so cold.

She stares at us with those eyes. She won’t let us touch her. You’ve got to love your own kid, haven’t you?” He paused. “Perhaps it’s where she comes from.”

“What do you mean? Where she comes from?” The social worker’s voice was shrill, almost hysterical.

“Well, they’re different to us, those people, aren’t they?”

“She’s a child,” the social worker said. “She needs a family.” She didn’t deny the difference. She turned towards Lesley. Dave moved and Grace saw that he wasn’t an ogre at all. He too looked close to tears.

“Do you feel the same way?” the social worker asked.

“We’ve tried,” Lesley said. “When you first told us about Grace we thought she’d be perfect for us, we really did. Despite the differences. And when you told us what she’d been through we expected her to be upset. We wouldn’t have minded. We could have coped with bad behaviour, nightmares, tears. We thought we’d be able to help. But we can’t get through to her. That’s what’s so dreadful. She doesn’t need us.”

“You’re wrong,” the woman cried. “Don’t you see she needs you just because she’s so withdrawn. So self-controlled.” She paused then went on stiffly, “But I won’t try to persuade you. You must be fully committed if you want to be adoptive parents. I’m sure that was explained when you applied… “

The sentence was allowed to hang like a threat. Grace sensed the menace though she didn’t understand exactly what the words meant.

“You’re saying if we turn Grace down we won’t get another one!” Dave was about to jump to his feet when Lesley put her hand on his elbow to restrain him.

“Of course not,” the social worker said, but her voice was smug. She had got her point across. “Look,” she continued, ”t make any hasty decisions. Give it another month. See how you feel then.”

They gave it another month. During that time Grace tried very hard.

She let Dave kiss her goodnight. She let Lesley cuddle her on the sofa when they were reading their bedtime story, although the feel of the woman’s soft body through her Pooh Bear nightdress almost made her gag.

But all the time she was puzzling about what could make her different.

She looked the same as the other children at school. Slightly skinnier, slightly browner, she supposed. Would that prevent Dave and Lesley from wanting her? In the end she came to no conclusions. And her efforts did no good. After a month she was moved to live with Aunty Carol and Uncle Jim. She didn’t call them mum and dad. She knew there was no point.

Chapter Twenty-One.

The next vivid memory was of going for a walk with Nan. For a while through the upheaval of changing foster parents two people stayed with her. She didn’t see them often but they were a constant thread linking the various aunties and uncles. One was Miss. Thorne, the social worker whom Grace had come to see now almost as a friend. Or if not a friend at least an ally. She did at least try to persuade Lesley and Dave to keep her. The other was an old woman called Nan. Grace assumed that the woman was her grandmother, though she couldn’t remember being told that explicitly. But then she was told very little explicitly. The scrapbook, which was supposed to help, only confused her.

The day which specially stuck in her memory was the one when Miss. Thorne took her to see Nan for the first time. There was a drive in the car. The foster parents all lived in town and this trip into the country was an adventure for Grace. She sat in the passenger seat directly behind the driver and through her window she could occasionally glimpse the sea. The town where she lived was on the coast, but there the sea was hidden behind power-station chimneys and cranes.

They drove down a road like a tunnel, covered in trees with red and brown leaves, then they took a track into a field. In the field there were three burnt-out cars and a bony piebald pony. In one corner a rusty caravan was propped up on a pile of bricks. The caravan door was opened by a fat old lady.

“I’m afraid she’s a bit eccentric.” The social worker whispered as if she were talking to an adult. Grace was only eight but she understood what the word meant More loudly Miss. Thorne said, “Come on, Grace. This is Nan.”

Through the open door Grace, who hated mess at the best of times, saw black bin bags spilling over with clothes and newspapers. There was a cat standing on the cooker, the smell of cat piss and stale cat food.

“Shall I stay for a bit?” the social worker asked. Grace nodded, though she would have preferred that neither of them stayed at all.

By the time they started out on their walk the social worker had gone.

It was autumn. Bundles of purple elderberries were hanging down over the river. They were so heavy that the branch was bending. She remembered plump hips, the colour of fresh blood and little haws which were a darker red, some of them shrivelled and almost black. There were blackberries. Nan ate them and offered a handful to Grace but she refused. Earlier she had seen a white maggot crawling from the overripe flesh of one. There was rose bay willow herb covered in wispy white hair, thistle heads and dead umbel lifers The umbel lifers were rather taller than Grace. The stalks were brown and ribbed. She reached up and broke one. It was hollow and quite easy to break. At the top of the stalk were branches like umbrella spokes and when she snapped it the hard seeds scattered.

Then she saw a red squirrel at the top of the tree. Nan didn’t point it out to her, she saw it for herself. She knew it was a squirrel because she’d seen pictures in story books, but this was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her. She wasn’t thrilled by the animal because it was cute or furry, but because it was skilful, so competent. When she first saw it, it was eating a hazelnut, holding it with its front paws and nibbling. Then it jumped from one branch to another, a huge jump which took it across the river. It judged the gap perfectly. If you were a squirrel, it seemed, it was all right to do things well. For Grace, who had to pretend at failure to be accepted at all by the other kids at school, this was a revelation.

Years later Grace could remember the red squirrel with photographic detail. It had a huge eye, whiskers and its tail was nearly black. She could see it dropping a nut into the river and the spreading ripples. She knew too, with certainty, that they didn’t see otter that day, although the river was probably very good for otter.

Nan didn’t speak to Grace while they were walking, though she did seem to be talking to herself. At first Grace tried to be polite.

“I’m sorry?” she said when Nan muttered. Nan turned and glared at her but didn’t reply.

Grace was pleased with this response. She was fed up with people asking how she was feeling then staring at her waiting for an answer.

She would prefer to watch the squirrel and the brown trout in the river.

“Did you have a nice time?” the social worker asked in the car on the way home.

“Yes, thank you.” She didn’t say this just to be polite. She enjoyed the walk. She decided as an afterthought, “I didn’t understand anything Nan said though.” “Oh,” said the social worker. Grace realized she wasn’t listening.

Miss. Thorne often asked questions and didn’t listen to the replies.

The other trips to visit Nan all followed the same pattern. The social worker would drop her off and come back later to collect her. Grace asked her once where she went on these occasions, there wasn’t time to drive back to town. She said she had another client to see.

“A foster child?” Grace asked wistfully. She would like to be placed out here in the country.

“No. Someone who might like to foster one day.”

Grace would have liked to ask if that person might want to foster her but that would have been rude to the present aunt and uncle, who were trying their best.

No matter what the weather was like Grace went for a walk. She hated sitting all afternoon in the smelly caravan. Often she went by herself. Even if Nan was with her there was still little communication between the old woman and the child. Grace found that restful.

As time passed Grace became convinced that Nan was her father’s mother.

She could remember nothing of her father. In the scrapbook put together by the social worker there was a picture labelled

“Dad’ but it meant nothing to her. There were no photographs of her mother and father together, or of them all as a family. The photograph of her father showed a tall thin man standing outside a brick house with a steeply pitched slate roof. There was a storm porch which had plants growing in the window. This certainly wasn’t the house where she had lived with her mother, where her mother had died. She had a perfect recollection of that house, which was flat-faced and new like many of the foster parents’ homes.

It never occurred to Grace to ask her social worker about the photograph or about her father, to ask even if he was still alive. She knew that she wouldn’t get a straight answer. Miss. Thorne had always seemed frightened by information. She was prepared to talk about feelings, to go on about them at length, but facts disturbed her.

Perhaps that was why Grace enjoyed them so much.

She came to the conclusion that the man in the photograph was related to Nan because the garden beside the brick semidetached house in the picture was such a tip. The weeds were waist high and piles of rubbish in black plastic bags were piled in front of the garden wall. It was the black plastic which first linked Nan with her father in Grace’s mind. That, and the way the man was standing, glaring out at the camera.

Nan glared at everyone, even if she wasn’t particularly cross.

One day they were sitting in the sun on the caravan steps waiting for the social worker to come in the car to take her home. Grace had had a good day. She’d seen a kingfisher for the first time, and she’d tracked down its nest to a hole in the river bank. There were bluebells in the woods. She was older, in her last year at primary school. Suddenly she asked, “Where’s my dad?”

She hadn’t planned the question, but she was feeling comfortable sitting there in the sunshine, relaxed after the walk, so when it came into her head she spoke it, without her usual calculation. But then she realized its significance. She watched Nan carefully. Usually Nan muttered because she had no teeth, but with some effort Grace had learnt to make sense of what she said. Today, however, Nan didn’t attempt to speak.

“You do know, don’t you?” It wasn’t like Grace to be so persistent.

She waited. A tear rolled from Nan’s eye down the groove which separated her cheek from her nose and onto a stubbly upper lip, but Grace refused to be put off.

“Well?” she demanded.

Then they heard the social worker’s car jolting up the track. The sun was so low that it shone straight into Grace’s eyes and she couldn’t see the car, except as a blurred shape, until it stopped outside the caravan. Nan wiped her eye with the hem of her apron.

On their way home the social worker asked, “What was wrong with Nan?”

“I don’t know,” Grace said truthfully.

At the time the social worker seemed to accept the reply but Grace was never taken to visit the old lady again. No explanation was given.

Chapter Twenty-TWo.

The following September Grace moved from primary school to the high school. This was a large establishment with more than a thousand pupils. There were three square buildings like factories, with rows of windows separated by sheets of blue and yellow plastic. In places the plastic was split, many of the windows could not be shut. Grace’s first impression of the school was of a constant battle with the buildings: the heating failed, the roof leaked, cracks had been found in the gymnasium floor so there was nope

The lack of PE didn’t bother Grace. There had been plenty of that in primary school and she was looking forward to learning new subjects.

She’d been visiting the public library secretly to get an idea of what would be expected. She was especially excited by the idea of biology, physics and chemistry. When her form tutor, a harassed middle-aged man, handed her a printed timetable on the first day she ringed these subjects in red. She was in the top set in all lessons. For the last two years of junior school she had been marking time, taking care not to show off.

By that time she was living with Frank and Maureen. Before moving in with them she had a short period in an assessment centre, which for some reason was almost empty. In the centre she was subject to interviews and questions. Here, perhaps, she could have brought up the topic of her father, but she never did. She felt she wanted to discover him for herself.

With Frank and Maureen she was happier than she’d been with any of the other foster parents. Frank had been a self-employed lorry driver until back trouble had forced him to give it up. Maureen still worked as a cook in a hospital. They saw fostering as a job, a business, and this took the pressure off Grace. She didn’t have to pretend to love them. They mostly took teenagers, the sort of kid no one else wanted.

Now there were four, and Grace was the youngest. They lived in a four-bed roomed 1930s semi on the edge of a once respectable, but now rather neglected council estate. Grace was the only girl so she had the smallest bedroom to herself. The boys were rowdy and troublesome, all had been known to the police. Grace didn’t care. She took no notice of them and shut herself in her room with her books.

The other reason for Grace’s contentment at this time was a dog called Charlie. Frank and Maureen were the first of her foster parents to own a pet. Charlie was a frenetic mongrel, with wild eyes, a stray. Frank took him in with the same tolerant good nature which prompted him to open his door to delinquent boys, but amid the chaos of the house he was often neglected. Since her arrival Grace took responsibility for Charlie, who repaid her with lavish and exuberant devotion.

The first day she saw her father it was sunny. She had Biology last period and they studied the structure of the flower. She drew a diagram, neatly coloured, of petals, stamen and stigma. The biology lab was at the top of the building, a real sun trap The others had taken off their jumpers and cardigans but Grace kept hers on. Maureen was too busy with her work in the hospital and a particularly disruptive glue sniffer to iron shirts. So Grace felt pink and a little sweaty as she humped her large bag out of school and towards the bus stop.

The man was standing on the other side of the road to the school entrance. He was dressed, inconspicuously, in jeans and a plain heavy sweatshirt. He pretended to read a newspaper and that was what made Grace notice him first. He was reading the Guardian. Carol and Jim, two sets of foster parents ago, read the Guardian. Jim taught Art and Carol was a librarian. But Frank and Maureen, and the other adults into whose homes she was occasionally invited, read the Mirror or the Sun or occasionally the Express. So as she waited for her bus she watched him with interest. She watched which child he was looking out for. It occurred to her that if the father read the Guardian the child might feel odd and isolated too. They might be friends.

But the man didn’t seem to know exactly who he was waiting for. He looked over the edge of his newspaper with increasing desperation at the stream of children who flowed past. Occasionally he seemed about to ask one of them for guidance but at the last minute he lost his nerve. When her bus arrived he was still standing there. She climbed onto the bus and showed her pass, letting a crowd of pupils push past her to go upstairs. She found a seat by a window. The bus started noisily and drove straight past the man. Perhaps the diesel engine disturbed his concentration because he stared angrily after it. Then she realized that he was waiting for her. This man was older but he was the same one as had glared out at her from the photograph in the scrapbook for as long as she could remember.

She stared back, and banged on the window, hoping that he would notice her and that would provide a spark of recognition, but he had already given up. He turned away and she watched him walk down the street.

That’s it, she thought. I’ll never see him again. She leapt to her feet and rang the bell in an attempt to stop the bus but the driver was so accustomed to naughty children playing tricks that he just turned round and swore at her.

“Please!” she cried. It was like a nightmare, watching her father disappear into the distance. But still the driver wouldn’t stop.

He wasn’t there the next day. She came out of school looking for him.

She was certain by now that the man was her father and not just a figment of her imagination. The night before she’d taken out the scrapbook and studied the photograph. The likeness was so good that she was surprised she didn’t recognize -him immediately. She let the first bus go without her, hoping that he might turn up but he didn’t show.

Exactly a week after the first appearance, again after double Biology, he was there again. By now she had given him up. She had planned strategies for dealing with an appearance, but that was last week, and now she wasn’t sure what to do.

She stood for a moment. The bag on her shoulder was very heavy and she stood at a list, her head tilted, so she saw him at an odd angle. Today he had no newspaper and seemed more restless, more determined. He paced up and down the pavement, occasionally approaching groups of children. Grace, who was more streetwise than many children her age, thought he’d have to watch it or he’d get himself arrested.

She waited for the lollipop lady to stop the traffic then she crossed the road. He didn’t notice her because his eyes were fixed on another fair-haired girl of about her age. Grace knew her slightly. Her name was Melanie and she was very pretty.

“Excuse me.”

He turned sharply.

“I think you might be waiting for me. I’m Grace.”

He looked down at her. She stared back and waited coolly for his reaction. She wouldn’t be surprised if he was disappointed, if he was hoping for someone like Melanie. He stepped back a little. He was wearing spectacles and seemed to be finding it hard to focus on her. He smiled.

“Yes,” he said. His voice was so loud and clear that people nearby turned around to look. “Yes, of course. I can see you are.”

“Can you?”

“Oh yes. You look so like your mother.”

It was a long time since anyone had mentioned her mother. Psychologists and doctors in the assessment centre had asked about her occasionally, but they spoke tentatively, carefully. This was normal, almost joyous.

“Do I?” “Of course you do. Hasn’t anyone told you before?” “No,” she said.

“Well, you don’t look much like me, do you?”

That was certainly true. He was dark with a long, narrow face the shape of a horse’s. His eyebrows, which were starting to turn grey, met over the top of his nose. Grace had been told that was a sign of madness. She hadn’t believed it at the time but now she started to wonder. Not that it mattered.

“Well then,” he cried. “What should we do? Will anyone miss you if you don’t go straight back?”

She shook her head. Frank and Maureen had enough to worry about getting the boys under police curfew back in time. There weren’t any other rules.

“We have supper at about seven,” she said. “I should be home by then.”

That wasn’t quite true. Supper was a flexible meal usually eaten on trays in front of the television. Anyone not around was served later from the microwave. What she meant was that Charlie usually ate at seven and if she wasn’t there nobody thought to feed him.

“So we’ve got hours.” He tucked her hand in his arm and marched her down the wide noisy street towards the centre of town.

He seemed to know exactly where he was headed for and she thought perhaps he was taking her to his home. In the square the market was starting to pack up for the day. She came here often on Saturdays to buy cheap veg for Maureen and the stall holder called out to her, “You all right, pet?”

Perhaps she thought it odd for her to be walking along, arm in arm, with a middle-aged man.

“Fine,” she said. She would have liked to tell her that this was her father, but by then they had moved on, across the road, down the alley by Boots and towards the harbour where the big ships carrying timber from Scandinavia docked. He stopped outside a row of houses and at first she thought this was where he lived, then she realized it was a restaurant. The door had a sign saying closed but when her father pushed it, it opened. He seemed to know the owner, who was lazily polishing glasses, because although the restaurant was obviously shut he was waved good-humouredly to a table by the bar.

He said, “Any chance of coffee?” And when the barman nodded he added, “And ice cream? You’d like some ice cream, wouldn’t you, Grace?”

She answered that she would, though really she would have preferred coffee too.

The coffee came in a very small cup made of thick white china. There were three scoops of ice cream -strawberry, chocolate and vanilla in a white china dish.

“Now,” he said, ‘ don’t you tell me what you’ve been up to?” He replaced the cup in its saucer and it rattled slightly. She realized then that he was nervous. He had probably been building himself up to this meeting too. The jolly good humour outside the school was an act, like Charlie bouncing playfully around a stranger he wasn’t sure of.

So she took his question seriously and talked to him as she would to the social worker on one of her monthly visits, about school and how well she did in the maths test, and how difficult she found French and about the trip to the Hancock Museum in Newcastle. At first he listened intently but after a while his attention wandered. In the end he interrupted, “I expect you’re wondering why I haven’t looked you up before.”

“Nan wouldn’t tell me where you were.”

“You mustn’t blame her.”

“Is she still there?”

“Oh, she’s still in the caravan. They’re trying to persuade her to move into a home before the winter. She’s an embarrassment. She’ll go in the end but she likes to make them sweat.”

“Them?”

“Social workers, housing officials, people who know best. My bloody family, as if it had anything to do with them.” “But I thought she was your family.”

“What do you mean?” “I thought she was your mother.”

He threw back his head and gave a loud laugh like a vixen barking.

“Nan? No, of course not.” Then realizing that Grace was blushing at her mistake he added gently, “Next best thing though. She looked after me when I was little.” He looked at her across the tablecloth. “Don’t you know anything? Didn’t they tell you?”

“They gave me a photograph. You standing outside a house. Lots of rubbish.”

“I remember that one!” He seemed delighted. “That was the summer they let me stay on the estate. Before your mother rescued me.”

“From what?” She took the statement literally and was imagining robbers, pirates, hostage takers.

“From myself, of course.” He rubbed his hands and laughed. “From myself.”

“It didn’t look much like an estate. The photograph.”

She was thinking of the estate where she was living with Frank and Maureen, the neat cul-de-sacs of Barrett homes which housed other foster parents. This time he seemed to understand.

“Estate’s another name for the land attached to a big house,” he said.

“In this case Holme Park, Langholme.” He looked at her. “Have you heard of it?”

She shook her head.

“You’ve not met Robert then. Or Mother.”

“I’ve only ever met Nan.”

“So that’s how they played it.” He seemed shocked, but at the same time almost pleased. Grace thought it was like when someone you can’t stand lives up to your worst expectations, so you can say, “See, that’s what they’re like. I told you all along.”

“Who’s Robert?” “My brother.” He paused. “My elder brother.”

“Where do you live?”

For the first time he was evasive. “Nowhere special,” he said.

“Nowhere like Holme Park. And nowhere I could take a child.”

“I don’t want you to take me. I just want to know.”

“No point, until I’m settled.”

He stood up and she followed him to the door. It was only five o’clock and she expected him to take her somewhere else. He did, after all, talk about their having hours to spend together but outside the restaurant he shook her hand awkwardly.

“Can you make your own way home?” he asked.

She said she could.

“I’ll be in touch,” he said and walked away quickly, not stopping to look back.

Chapter Twenty-Three.

After waiting for four weeks without any word from her father Grace decided to take matters into her own hands. She knew that it was often necessary to force people to do the right thing. Some of the lads in Laurel Close would never attend school unless Frank took them there and watched them go in. Something about her father reminded her of a certain type of bad boy, the reckless ones who took drugs or set fire to buildings just for kicks.

At breakfast she told Maureen she’d be late home from school because she was going to a meeting of the Natural History Society. Maureen was hunched over the bench in the kitchen, spreading margarine on sliced bread to make packed lunches, as if, she often said, she didn’t have enough of that to do at work all day. She turned briefly.

“That’s all right, pet. I know we can trust you.”

At that Grace felt a pang of guilt because Maureen would inevitably find out that she had been lying. She’d feel hurt because Grace hadn’t talked to her first.

At midday, instead of queuing up to eat her sandwiches in the school hall she slipped out to the telephone box on the main road. There was a pay phone outside the sixth form common room but she was nervous to go there. The sixth formers, wearing their own clothes, talking in confident voices about music and parties, were more intimidating than the teachers.

The main road was noisy. She dialled the number she had copied from the list stuck next to the phone at home, but could hardly hear the tone. A motherly voice answered. “Hello. Social Services. Area Six.”

“Could I speak to Miss. Thorne, please.”

The social worker still called herself Miss. Thorne, though Grace thought she’d married the year before. A ring had appeared and she had been mellower since, more inclined to listen. “Who’s speaking?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t hear.”

“Who’s speaking?” the motherly voice yelled.

“Grace Fulwell.” It seemed very strange to be shouting her own name at the top of her voice.

Miss. Thorne came onto the phone almost immediately.

“Grace? Is anything wrong?”

“No.”

“Why aren’t you at school?”

“It’s lunchtime.”

“How can I help you?”

“I want to make an appointment to see you. Will you be in the office?

Today. About four thirty.”

“I can be if it’s important. But what’s it all about?” Grace could hear panic in her voice, even with a lorry rumbling past. “I thought you were settled with Maureen and Frank.”

Grace didn’t answer. She banged back the receiver, hoping it would sound as if the money had run out.

She had been to the social services office before but only after some crisis, to hang around while Miss. Thorne tried to find another foster family to take her in. She had to look up the address in the phone book. It was a tall house in a tree-lined terraced street, close to the park. All the houses had been turned into offices. Grace passed solicitors, insurance agents and two firms of dentists on her way.

On previous occasions she sat by Miss. Thorne’s desk in the large open plan office on the top floor, but today she was taken into one of the interview rooms. It had a low coffee table and three easy chairs covered in orange vinyl. A no smoking sign was prominently displayed on the wall but Grace could see cigarette burns on the nylon carpet.

Miss. Thorne was nervous. Despite being a social worker, Grace had come to the conclusion that she didn’t like the unexpected. And if Grace had fallen out with Frank and Maureen she’d probably come to the end of the line where foster parents were concerned.

“Well, Grace?” she said. “Why the mystery?”

“It’s about my father.”

“Yes?”

“I do have a right to know him, don’t I?” She had learnt a lot by listening to other foster children.

Miss. Thorne hesitated. “Where appropriate,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

“It’s in the guidelines. Foster children should keep in touch with their natural parents, where appropriate.”

“Why isn’t it appropriate for me?”

Miss. Thorne seemed thrown by the question. Perhaps she thought Grace hadn’t heard the word before, wouldn’t understand it.

“Miss. Thorne?”

“Look.” Her voice was persuasive and Grace was immediately suspicious.

She looked at the woman, sitting beside her on the orange vinyl chair.

Her legs were folded at the knee like a man’s. She was wearing the same sort of clothes knee-length skirts and shapeless cardigans as when Grace first met her. She reached out and patted Grace’s hand. Grace made an effort not to flinch.

“Look, we’ve known each other a long time and I’m not your teacher.

Isn’t it about time you called me Antonia?” Grace continued staring. She knew she was being fobbed off with this chumminess, but she was intrigued by the exotic name. “Antonia? Is that really what you’re called?”

The woman nodded encouragingly, but Grace was determined not to be distracted again. She raised her voice and said firmly, “Tell me about my father.”

Quite suddenly the social worker gave up her resistance. She caved in.

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything. From the beginning. Why wasn’t he at home when my mother died?”

“Because he’d already left your mother to live with another woman.”

It seemed to Grace that she took a spiteful pleasure in the words, that she was really saying. So, you really want to know, do you? Let’s see if you can handle it.

“Is that why she killed herself?”

Miss. Thorne nodded. “She left a note saying she couldn’t live without him.”

Grace thought of the man who’d sat opposite her in the shadowy restaurant drinking coffee. She felt proud that her father could be the cause of such romantic passion. It didn’t surprise her that she hadn’t been enough to keep her mother alive.

“You mustn’t blame him,” Miss. Thorne said, in such a way that Grace knew that secretly she hoped Grace would. But blame was the last thing on Grace’s mind. She was after facts, information.

“Is he still living with the woman?”

“No. They separated soon after your mother’s death.”

“Why have you never let me see him?”

“It was never a matter of that. Of not letting!”

“What then? Not appropriate, you said. What did that mean?”

“For a long time we didn’t know where he was. Your mother’s death upset him. He travelled.”

“Where?”

“He worked as a diver for oil companies. I understand he was in Central America and the Middle East. We learnt that much from his family. They didn’t know any more.”

“Family?”

This was a potent word and Grace was jerked back to the present. She’d been imagining her father swimming through a clear blue ocean. Foster children were always talking about families. Even Maureen’s bad boys had brothers in the nick or aunties who came occasionally to take them to Mcdonald’s. Grace had always been left out.

“Your father’s brother and his mother, your grandmother. They live in a village in the country.”

“Langholme?” She had remembered all the facts passed on to her during that meeting in the restaurant. “I guessed from something Nan said.”

Grace picked some of Charlie’s hairs from her pleated school skirt.

“Why didn’t you tell me my family lived in Holme Park? You could have told me that.”

“We didn’t want to raise expectations which couldn’t be met.” Grace wasn’t sure what that meant but ignored it. She had a more important question.

“Why didn’t I ever see them, my gran and uncle? You took me to meet Nan.”

“They didn’t want to see you. Nan did.” As soon as the words were spoken Miss. Thorne seemed to regret them. Perhaps even for her, even provoked by this stubborn and demanding child, they were too hurtful.

But Grace considered the idea seriously.

“They didn’t know me,” she said at last.

“They felt you were your father’s responsibility,” Miss. Thorne said more gently. “They never found it easy to get on with your father.” Grace understood. “Oh,” she said. “They didn’t want to be lumbered.”

They looked at each other and shared a rare smile of understanding.

“Is my father still abroad?” She turned away as she asked the question, casually. Of course she knew he wasn’t abroad, but it would be a betrayal to let on to Miss. Thorne. Besides, it was a sort of test, to see whether or not she was lying.

“No. He came back a while ago.”

“Where does he live? With his family?”

“Different sorts of places. With friends. In hostels. He moves around a lot. He’s found it hard to settle.”

“Why?”

“Perhaps because he’s an unsettled sort of person.”

“Like me.”

“In a way.”

Grace rubbed her finger and thumb together, releasing dog hairs which floated to the floor.

“I want to see him.”

“That might be possible. But he has problems.”

“Problem’ was a euphemism much used by Maureen and Frank. Gary was a glue sniffer. Matthew took smack. Both had problems.

“Does he take drugs?”

“Not in the sense you mean.”

“What sense?”

“He’s probably an alcoholic. Do you understand that?”

“Of course.” Gary’s mam was an alcoholic and Grace added, “It doesn’t stop Gary seeing his mam.” “I’ve said it might be possible.”

“When?”

“When I’ve talked to him again. And to Maureen and Frank.”

“Again?” “I have been trying to arrange it,” Miss. Thorne said defensively. “Your father isn’t always an easy person to deal with. He has his own way of doing things. I didn’t want to build up your hopes only to have him disappear again!

“I understand,” Grace said. “Thanks.” And she did feel grateful.

She’d never expected Miss. Thorne to make any effort on her part.

“And you mustn’t expect too much,” Miss. Thorne went on. “He wouldn’t, for example, be able to have you to live with him.”

“That’s all right.”

She was perfectly happy with Maureen and Frank.

And Charlie would miss her. She didn’t want a change in her circumstances, just to know her father, to see him occasionally. To find out more about her family.

It took three weeks for Miss. Thorne to arrange a meeting between Grace and her father but Grace was patient. She was enjoying school and concentrated on her work. In Biology they gave chloroform to fruit flies so they remained still long enough for the pupils to count the vestigial wings. Grace was fascinated. The girl sitting next to her was heavy-handed with the chloroform but returned the dead flies to the jar, hoping no one would notice.

Grace knew the social worker’s promise hadn’t been forgotten because at home Maureen and Frank discussed her father. They were very impressed that Edmund Fulwell’s family lived at Holme Park. Apparently it had come as news to them too. Perhaps the social worker had remembered Dave’s awkwardness, his feeling that Grace was in some way different, and thought she’d be better accepted if her wealthy connections weren’t known.

“We’ll have to take you there one day,” Maureen said. “They do guided tours and there’s a lovely tearoom.”

Grace and her father met at last, not in the tearoom at Holme Park, but in the front room of 15 Laurel Close. Maureen and Frank had taken the bad boys out, the ones which were left. Gary was back in the Young Offender institution. Maureen had cried when the police came to take him away.

Antonia Thorne waited in the house with Grace. Edmund Fulwell was late. Miss. Thorne didn’t mention that to Grace, but she could tell because the social worker looked at her watch every now and then, with resignation as if it was just what she expected. Grace, waiting, didn’t feel anger or fear. She was numb. She thought this must be what it felt like to be dead, then wondered if this was how her mother felt before she killed herself. Perhaps she’d been waiting for Edmund to leave his lover and come back to her with just this sort of numbness. Perhaps she’d decided she might as well be dead.

The doorbell rang. Miss. Thorne gave a start and frowned. Grace thought she was annoyed because Edmund after all hadn’t fulfilled her expectations. She would have preferred it if he hadn’t turned up.

“I want to go,” Grace said.

She opened the door and he was standing on the doorstep, pulling a strange face so his eyebrows did definitely meet over his nose. His hands were in his overcoat pockets. It was late afternoon in October, almost dark, with a gusty wind which blew litter and dead leaves into the doorway. He stooped so his face was almost level with hers.

“So,” he said, ‘ must be my lovely daughter.” And he continued very quickly so she understood again that the previous meeting was a secret between them.

Antonia Thorne shouted in a jolly, primary school teacher’s voice, “Come along, Grace. Don’t keep your father standing in the cold.”

And he came in, just as if she were the teacher and he was doing as he was told. Shrugging out of his overcoat he seemed to take up all the room in the corridor though he couldn’t be much bigger than Frank.

The social worker left them together in the front room, though she said pointedly that she would be in the kitchen making tea if Grace needed her. She didn’t close the door behind her.

“Anyone would think she didn’t trust me,” he said. He laughed, then when Grace didn’t join in he muttered, “I suppose you can’t blame her.”

He seemed less comfortable than when he was waiting for her outside school, more uptight. Grace, who had seen Gary’s mam in various states of inebriation, thought he was probably sober today. Last time he’d had a few drinks.

“You said you’d be in touch,” she whispered.

“Yeah, look, I’m really sorry. Things haven’t been easy lately. I expect she… ” he nodded towards the open door,”… explained. I needed time to sort myself out.”

She heard the self-pity in his voice and for a moment she was cross.

What about me? she wanted to shout. Didn’t you think of me? Then she realized it was no good. If she wanted to keep in touch with her father she wouldn’t be able to make demands on him. Edmund Fulwell would need looking after.

Chapter Twenty-Four.

For nearly four years Grace took responsibility for her father, though this went largely unrecognized. It was an unprecedented period of stability for them both.

One day, soon after Edmund arrived back on the scene her Biology teacher called her back after class. “Have you ever thought of joining the Wildlife Trust? There’s a junior section. I think you’d enjoy it.”

The junior section consisted of Grace and two spotty adolescent lads who refused to speak to her, but she was taken under the wing of three elderly spinster sisters. The Halifax sisters lived in a house which had remained largely unchanged since their parents’ day. It was a suburb of the town which had once been very grand, housing ship owners and traders, though many of the houses had now been converted into flats. It had a library, filled with natural history books field guides, sets of encyclopaedias and monographs.

She spent hours in the library. Although Grace had never complained of the noise in Laurel Close, very soon after meeting her the sisters invited her to use the room for homework. They said it was good for them to have someone young in the house again. Later Grace suspected this had been suggested by her Biology teacher; at the time it seemed miraculous.

When she was working the sisters left her to her own devices, except the youngest, Cynthia, who had per med hair and large squelchy bosoms.

She interrupted occasionally to bring Grace cups of tea and home-baked ginger biscuits.

During the summer the Wildlife Trust organized field trips. A coach took them up the coast to look at sea birds or inland to walk in the hills. Then, for the first time, Grace plodded along pebbly river banks looking for otter spraints. Later in the season they saw bats flying into the stone barn to roost.

It was the badger watch which made the biggest impression. She sat with the Halifax sisters in a wood at dusk and waited for the badgers to emerge from a sett, their noses snuffling the air. Leading the trip was a postgraduate student who talked about her research. She knew each individual badger, how the group was organized.

When I grow up, Grace thought, that’s what I’m going to do.

Occasionally she invited her father to accompany her on the Wildlife Trust excursions but he always refused.

“Na!” he said. “I’ve never been much into wildlife. Except for eating it.”

Grace was already a vegetarian but she didn’t rise to the bait. She suspected that food was more important to his life than she was. At least it provided him with an income. He’d started work in the little restaurant where he took her on their first meeting. He’d been at school with Rod, the owner. He was an inspirational and meticulous cook and the restaurant appeared in good food guides. Because of this Rod put up with his occasional bouts of drinking, his truculence. He also allowed Edmund to live in squalor in the flat above.

Grace continued living with Maureen and Frank in Laurel Close but she spent little time there. Before school every day she took Charlie for a walk in the park. She could already identify all the common birds there. When school was over she walked to the sisters’ house, stopping on the way to have coffee with her dad if he was there. Sometimes he was out with a woman, though seldom, she thought, with the same one more than once. In the summer she walked to the town centre from the sisters’ house and caught the bus home. In the winter, when it was dark, Cynthia gave her a lift home in the sisters’ ancient Rover, or Frank would pick her up. Maureen and Frank didn’t seem to resent the time she spent away from home. Her Biology teacher told them that she was Oxbridge material and they said they wanted to help. Grace never seemed to have friends of her own age, but she didn’t really want them.

Suddenly, in the summer before her fifth form, she noticed a change in her father. She had listened to him talking about his women before, given sympathy when it was needed but in those cases it was a matter of hurt pride, not unrequited love. This time, it seemed, it was serious.

He gave up drinking. Completely. He cleaned the flat, got his hair cut. Grace asked if she could meet the woman.

“Not yet.”

“She’s not married?” She didn’t want him to get hurt.

“No, it’s not that. She won’t go out with me. Not yet. But she will, I can tell she’s weakening.”

And eventually she must have weakened because when Grace called into the restaurant again he couldn’t stop grinning and he couldn’t sit still for a second.

“Has he been drinking?” she asked Rod. She liked Rod, who was Welsh and calm. She never found out how he ended up running this unlikely restaurant.

“No. He’s been like this all day. High as a kite.”

The woman was called Sue. She ran an office supplies business from a shop on the High Street. She was much younger than him. He saw her first when he walked past the shop and he went in on impulse and bought some typing paper and a bottle of Tippex.

“Best fiver I ever spent,” he said.

Grace looked at him anxiously, like a mother watching her child embark on a first romance. She hoped it would work out for him. She’d like to pass some of the responsibility for looking after him on to Sue.

Sue was small with sleek blond hair. She wore the sort of make-up which gave her skin the shine of porcelain. She was very lively, never still, always talking and smiling and waving her hands. She and Edmund talked about things in which Grace had little interest cinema, music, theatre. Grace wasn’t jealous it was quite a relief to spend more time in the Halifax library. She didn’t find the syllabus hard but she wanted to do well in the exams. When she did see her father he was excitable, happy, full of plans.

It was at this time that his mother died.

“So,” he said to Grace on one of her occasional visits to the restaurant, ‘ old bat’s finally gone.”

“Can I come with you to the funeral?”

He looked at her sharply. “I’m not going,” he said. And that was it.

He wouldn’t discuss it any more.

Grace was a bit disappointed. She still dreamed of meeting the family in the big house. Then she thought they must have offended her father very badly if he wouldn’t attend his mother’s funeral.

One Sunday in November, the day before the start of her mock exams, she received a phone call from her father. She had spent all day in the sisters’ library and Maureen and Frank were making a fuss of her. They said she’d been working too hard and she needed to relax. They were sitting in front of the television drinking tea. The bad boys were out.

Frank took the call. When he came back he was frowning.

“It’s your father,” he said. “Do you want to take it?”

“Of course, why not?”

“I’m sorry, pet. I think he’s been drinking.”

This was an understatement. Her father was raging drunk, just coherent enough for her to work out that Sue had dumped him. She wanted to rush round to the flat to see him but for once Frank put his foot down.

“Come on!” he said. “He’ll not even know you’re there, the state he’s in.”

“But he might be sick. Choke. People can die.” “I’ll go,” Frank said.

She realized for the first time what an unusually good man Frank was.

The night before he’d been up until midnight sitting in the police station with one of the boys who’d been caught brawling in the youth club. All day he’d been ferrying them around football training for one, the Halifax sisters for her. He always cooked lunch on Sundays to give Maureen a break. He looked exhausted but he was prepared to go out again. She went up to the chair where he was slumped, his feet in his slippers she gave him two Christmases ago, his sweatshirt splattered with cooking stains. She sat on the arm of the chair, put her arm round his shoulders and hugged him. It was the first intimate physical contact she’d had with another human being since she was five and trying to impress the foster parents that couldn’t love her. Frank knew this was an important moment but he didn’t say anything. He took her thin hand in his and squeezed it, then he got up to put on his shoes and find his car keys.

When he got back Maureen was in bed because she had to be up for the early shift the next day. Grace was waiting for him.

“How is he?”

“Well, he’s had a skinful, that’s for sure.” Frank was born in Liverpool and when he was tired he talked like a Scouser.

“But he is all right?”

“Oh aye, he’ll be fine. Right as rain in the morning. And yes, he has been sick down the toilet. I got him to bed and he’s fast asleep.”

“Frank?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks.” This time she just reached out and touched his arm. He understood, and smiled.

“Getaway,” he said. “Now off to bed. It’s an important day tomorrow.

Mo and me have never had a kid go away to college before.”

At first she thought this would be a drinking bout like many others her dad had been through. For a few days he’d be dead to the world then he’d emerge, sheepish and bedraggled, to apologize. She concentrated on her exams.

Three days later she called into the restaurant to find Rod doing the cooking.

“It’s Ed’s day off; he said. “He’s gone out.” She thought that was a good sign. At least her father wasn’t upstairs in the flat drinking whisky straight from the bottle. He’d never been a social drinker.

“Does that mean he’s back with Sue?”

Rod shrugged. She took that, optimistically, to mean that things were pretty much back to normal.

Then she saw him in the town. It was the last day of the exams and the Halifax sisters had invited her to a special tea to celebrate. She was walking down the High Street with a gang of girls. She’d tagged along because there was a question in the Chemistry paper she wanted to discuss, but they weren’t very interested. They were talking about a party one of the sixth formers was giving, to which most of them had been invited.

The High Street had been pedestrianized and paved with ornamental brick. Wrought iron seats had been placed, back to back, in the middle of the streets and there were tubs of plants and shrubs, long since dead and waiting to be cleared out for the winter. Her father was sitting alone on one of the benches. He was dirty, unshaven and he was crying. An empty bottle lay on its side under the bench and rolled occasionally when there was a strong gust of wind. At least the other girls, still talking about the party and which of them definitely looked old enough to get into the off-licence, didn’t notice him. And Edmund was too absorbed in his own grief to see her.

She walked straight past him and on to the street where the Halifax sisters lived. Before knocking on the door she composed herself.

Cynthia had prepared a magnificent tea with smoked salmon sandwiches, meringues and gingerbread. Grace exclaimed over it and ate everything they pressed on to her.

She didn’t visit her father for two days. How dare he ruin a day when she was supposed to be celebrating? Then she cracked, and went to see him after school. The town had been decorated for Christmas in a mean-spirited way, with a tall thin spruce lit by ugly white bulbs. On the door of the restaurant there was a wreath of real holly.

The restaurant was empty but Rod was behind the bar. He’d poured himself a brandy in a large round glass and seemed surprised, rather embarrassed to see her.

“Didn’t that social worker tell you?”

“What?”

“Edmund’s not here.”

“Where is he?”

“Look, I’m really sorry. I phoned her first thing yesterday.” There was a pause. “He’s in hospital.”

“What happened? An accident?”

“Nothing like that. Not that sort of accident.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s in St. Nick’s.”

St. Nicholas’ was the big loony-bin on the outskirts of the town.

Victorian gothic surrounded by 1930s villas. Everyone had heard of it.

In primary school it was the standard term of abuse. “You should be in St. Nick’s, you should.”

She didn’t know what to say. He came out from behind the bar.

“I’m really sorry,” he said again. “It wasn’t only the drink, you know. He was getting depressed and it wasn’t only Sue. His mother’s death hit him harder than he let on. I was afraid he’d do something daft. He needs time to sort himself out. I couldn’t cope. He needs professional help. Something more than I could give him anyway. More than you could too.”

Chapter Twenty-Five.

Miss. Thorne took Grace to visit her father in hospital. Grace was reminded for a while of the times they used to visit Nan. Antonia Thorne turned up at Laurel Close in her car. Grace climbed in beside her and they drove off without a word. Even the stilted conversation which did eventually occur was much the same.

“How are things going at school?”

“Very well, thank you.” This was true. She’d been predicted an A Grade in every subject except French for her exams.

“No problems with Maureen and Frank?”

“None.”

The hospital was approached by a curving drive up a hill. The car stopped sharply, jerking Grace forward to the extent of her seat belt, when two elderly men shuffled out in front of them. Miss. Thorne muttered, pulled on the hand brake and attempted a hill start. The engine stalled and she became flustered, especially when she saw a car approaching in her mirror. At the second attempt it leapt forward and she drove on.

Grace’s father was being kept in Sycamore, which was one of the villas.

The garden was tidy but the woodwork needed painting. The door was locked and

Miss. Thorne rang the bell. Standing on the doorstep, Grace thought it didn’t look like a hospital but a large suburban house. The impression was confirmed by the woman who opened the door. She looked just the sort of woman who would live in such a house. She was slim and smart, wearing a navy pleated skirt and a white blouse with a bow at the neck.

It was 1985 and she reminded Grace of a young version of Margaret Thatcher.

“Yes?” The woman was friendly enough but very brisk. She made it clear she had important things to get on with.

Miss. Thorne was still flustered by her problems negotiating the hill.

She opened her bag, dropped a glove, stooped to pick it up.

“We’re here to visit Edmund Fulwell.”

“I’m sorry.” The woman smiled graciously. “Afternoons are the times for relatives’ visits. Perhaps you could come back after lunch.”

Miss. Thorne was horrified by the notion that she might be thought one of the patients’ relatives. She groped again in her bag and came out with a laminated identity card.

“Actually,” she said, “I’m a social worker. I did phone.”

Grace looked past the woman in the navy skirt. A thin girl, not much older than her, dressed in a nightdress and slippers walked down the corridor as if in slow motion. There was a smell of institutional food and cigarette smoke.

“We agreed eleven o’clock.” By now Miss. Thorne was indignant.

The woman was apologetic. She introduced herself as the sister in charge of the shift. “Edmund’s doing very well,” she said, as if that would redeem her in Miss. Thorne’s eyes. “The consultant’s very pleased with him. We could be talking discharge in a few weeks. We don’t keep them in long, these days.” She seemed to notice Grace for the first time. “And who’s this?” “The daughter,” Miss. Thorne said abruptly.

The nurse, who according to her name tag was called Elizabeth, let them in, locking the door behind them.

“Ah yes!” She sent Miss. Thorne a look of great significance. “Of course.”

In the building it was stiflingly hot. The corridor ran the length of the villa. Large painted radiators stood at regular intervals and each time they passed one they were hit by a wave of heat. Elizabeth seemed not to notice, but Antonia took off her cardigan and Grace held her anorak by its hook over her shoulder.

“You can use the interview room. It’ll be quiet in there. Stan, have you seen Edmund?”

Stan, a middle-aged man in a grey overall, was washing the floor. Grace wondered idly if he were an inmate or a member of staff. He shook his head and continued to move his mop over the lino tiles.

Elizabeth pushed open the door of a large room. Chairs were lined in front of the television screen. On the television a jolly young man dressed as a clown was making a kite from brown paper and orange string. Behind him teddy bears and dolls sat on a plastic bus. The programme seemed to fascinate the audience. Grace didn’t believe that her father, even when he was ill, could ever enjoy children’s TV, but it was impossible to tell if he was there because a cloud of cigarette smoke hung over everything and the people were sitting with their backs to her.

“Has anyone seen Edmund?” Elizabeth asked. She used the same tone as the TV presenter. Grace thought that any minute she’d break into song with Large Ted and Jemima.

“Non-smoking lounge.”

This information was volunteered anonymously. No one turned away from the screen.

The non-smoking lounge was as large as the TV room but only two people sat there, in chairs close to a window. A pane, too small for anyone to climb out of, had been opened and let in a blast of cold air. They seemed deep in conversation. With Grace’s dad was a large-boned, dark woman in cord trousers and a checked cotton shirt. As they approached Grace heard her say, “I’m not used to all this sitting about. In the last place I was attached to the market garden. It broke your back that work, but there wasn’t time to be bored.”

She wasn’t at all the sort of woman Edmund would fall for, but Grace sensed an easy rapport between them which she’d never seen before in his relationships with women. With Sue especially he’d been flirtatious and devoted but never friendly.

Edmund’s reply was drowned out by the repeated shout of an exotic finch, perched in a cage standing against one wall. The cage door was fastened by a huge padlock. Grace wondered if the noise of the bird irritated the patients so much that they tried to kill it. She wouldn’t be surprised. Against the other wall there was a tank of tropical fish. The water was murky and green.

“You’ve got a visitor, Edmund,” Elizabeth said brightly.

“I’ll be off then,” said the dark woman. “Leave you in peace.”

“Thanks, Bella.”

Bella walked away quickly. When she caught Grace’s eye she smiled a clear, unclouded smile. Grace was convinced she must be a nurse until Elizabeth said, “Bella will be leaving us soon too.”

Edmund deliberately turned his back on Elizabeth. He looked up at Grace. “Sorry about all this.”

She shook her head. He looked dreadful, worse than when he was sitting in the town centre.

“If you want to use the interview room, I’ll fetch you some tea.”

Elizabeth looked at her watch.

Edmund groaned. “We’re all right here if it’s all the same to you. I can’t stand that place. It’s like a cell.” When she turned and walked away he added, just loud enough for her to hear, “And I can’t stand her either, stupid cow.”

He ignored Miss. Thorne. She might as well not have been there. He talked to Grace as if they were alone in the room.

“I really fucked up this time, didn’t I? I just couldn’t stand the thought of being without her. And I thought you’d be better off without me to worry about.”

“You tried to kill yourself?”

“And I couldn’t even manage that. Instead I’m in here with Busy Lizzie ticking me off every ten minutes to check I’m still alive.” “I’m glad,” she said. “That you’re still alive.”

After that first time she was allowed to visit her father without the social worker. On Christmas Day she went there for lunch. Most of the patients had been allowed home for the holiday so Sycamore Ward was almost empty. She had considered asking Maureen and Frank if he could come to them but decided that they had enough to worry about. This group of boys were particularly troublesome and Maureen always looked tired. She’d lost weight and there were shadows under her eyes.

So Grace walked the three miles up the hill to the hospital and sat with her father at the formica bench in the dining room. Also there were Wayne, a teenage schizophrenic whose parents were embarrassed by him, and a woman whose name Grace had never been told. From an overheard conversation between other patients Grace had learnt that this woman had had a child, who had died soon after birth.

“She won’t accept it, see,” the patient had said. “They caught her in the maternity hospital, trying to walk out with a little boy.”

The two nurses on duty tried to do their best and it was quite a pleasant meal. They ate turkey which had already been plated up in the hot trolley, pulled crackers and wore paper hats. Her father had been much calmer lately and didn’t even make too much fuss about the dreadful food.

After Christmas there was a period of quiet, very cold weather. She and her father, wrapped up in coats and scarves and gloves, because after the heat of the ward it felt glacial, even in the sun, went for walks in the hospital grounds. He was allowed to be away from the nurses for half an hour at a time now. She pointed out a red squirrel in the tall trees which separated the hospital from farmland beyond.

“I saw my first one when I went for a walk with Nan,” she said.

“Did you?” He was pleased, amused. “Fancy you remembering that.”

“Does she know you’ve been ill?”

She knew that her father had kept sporadically in touch with Nan who’d moved at last into sheltered accommodation.

“God, I hope not.”

He was being prepared for release. He had to attend a group. That was what it was called the group. It was run by a pretty young psychologist. There was a lot of drama and role play, lots of talking.

At first Edmund was sceptical, even antagonistic.

“Load of crap,” he said. “I wouldn’t go if I didn’t think they’d let me out quicker.” After a while Grace thought he must be finding the group useful, because he wouldn’t miss it, even when he was given the opportunity for a legitimate excuse. She was curious about what went on at these sessions but he wouldn’t answer her questions in any detail. It seemed unlike him to be so cooperative and she hoped he hadn’t fallen for the pretty young psychologist.

Usually the group met in the lounge with the finches and the fish tank.

They shut all the curtains so no one could see in. But one day when Grace arrived to visit her father, the time and the place of the group had changed. They were meeting in the TV room and it was still in session. It was cold and almost dark, so although the corridor was curtained they hadn’t bothered with the windows facing the garden. The therapist must have assumed that no one would venture outside.

Grace realized this by chance. She hadn’t meant to pry. When Elizabeth told her Edmund wouldn’t be available for at least half an hour she decided to walk to the WRVS canteen to buy him some chocolate.

On her way back she saw the light from the windows falling on the unpruned rose beds. Although she knew she shouldn’t look she was attracted closer, like a moth.

They had pulled the chairs into a circle, almost a huddle. Her father was sitting next to Bella, who had been released from the hospital but returned as a day patient to attend the group. Grace recognized most of them. The woman with the dead baby, who had shared Christmas lunch with them, was there too.

Bella was talking. The others were listening intently. Grace had the impression that it was a new development, Bella taking centre stage.

The psychologist who was sitting on the floor because there weren’t enough chairs to go round, nodded, encouraging Bella to continue.

Suddenly Bella got up from her chair and moved to the middle of the circle. She stood with one hand above her head, still talking. She seemed agitated but Grace couldn’t hear what she was saying. She dropped her hand to her side and began to cry. The others crowded round her. Grace saw Edmund put his arm round her and hug her.

She felt awkward about being there, pulled up the hood of her anorak because now she was very cold, and walked on round the building. She rang the doorbell and stood shivering on the doorstep for Elizabeth to let her in. When the door to the TV lounge opened and they came out, they were chatting and laughing like old friends. No one would have been able to tell that Bella had been crying. Edmund seemed preoccupied. Grace said she wouldn’t stay long, soon they’d have to go into the dining room for supper. But he walked with her to the bus stop.

“Good group tonight?” she asked.

He didn’t answer. “They’re letting me out next week.” He seemed almost sad.

“Will you go back to Rod’s?” “He says I can.”

“Well then.”

“It won’t be easy,” he said, and though he didn’t say so, she knew he was thinking about the support he’d received from the group.

“No reason why you shouldn’t stay in touch.”

“No,” he said relieved, ‘.”

When she arrived back in Laurel Close there was an ambulance outside the door. Frank had had a heart attack. The ambulance crew wheeled him out on a trolley. Grace rushed through the crowd and touched his hand. Before Maureen climbed into the back of the ambulance Grace put her arm around her, and they cried together.

Frank died before he reached hospital. Grace was offered another foster family but she opted instead for the children’s home. There she slept in a room with three empty beds. There were blankets folded at the foot of them and pillows in striped cases.

Chapter Twenty-Six.

The memory of the room in the children’s home, so similar to her room at Baikie’s, jolted her back to the present. An hour had passed. She had come to one of the stone blinds built by the estate for grouse shoots, and she imagined her father’s relatives crouched here, guns raised, waiting for the whirring grouse to speed overhead. They would have waxed jackets, braying voices. Her family’s decision to sell this land for the quarry had only reinforced her prejudices about them. In the days leading up to Bella’s funeral, once she had finished her survey in the morning, she would walk the hills, getting her bearings.

Late one afternoon she climbed Fairburn Crag. From there it was possible to look down on Holme Park House, laid out beneath her like an architect’s plan. In a bend in the river was the main house, with two wings, and beyond it the formal gardens. Grace understood that the gardens were what the visitors came to see. She had never been herself. The Halifax sisters had offered to take her, had planned a jolly day out in the Rover with a picnic. They said the park was the only place in Northumberland where you could guarantee seeing hawfinch.

Grace had been tempted but when Cynthia muttered something about her heritage she’d refused.

Now, looking down, she felt no connection with the house. She wouldn’t have wanted to live there. Her father’s bitterness seemed misplaced and she wished she hadn’t been drawn into it.

She began the long walk back to Baikie’s reluctantly. She hated the evenings in the cottage. She hadn’t expected it to be like this. She’d known it wouldn’t be easy she’d told her father that but she thought she might enjoy living with other women. She’d hoped for the easy camaraderie she’d experienced in the Halifax library. University had been competitive but she’d put that down to the presence of men. Here, she’d thought with three women sharing the same expertise and interest there’d be no pressure. She might even build some sort of friendship. Instead there were questions and suspicion. Anne Preece was the most intrusive.

“Fulwell?” she’d asked as soon as they’d met. “I don’t suppose you’re related to Rob and Lily at the park.”

She’d laughed so Grace had felt no obligation to answer, but the question had made her uneasy. Since arriving at the cottage, since hearing the story of Bella swinging from the beam in the barn she’d been frightened. She only felt safe when she was alone in the hills, and even then occasionally she had a sense of being followed.

When she arrived back at Baikie’s it was almost dark. She hesitated on the doorstep, tempted in a moment of panic, to turn round and walk away. There was a smell of food. Rachael, in the kitchen, must have heard her boots on the yard because the door opened. Grace didn’t know what to make of Rachael. Sometimes she thought she was more dangerous than Anne.

“Hi,” Rachael said. “Come in. I was just starting to worry.”

Walking in from the clear air the smell of tomatoes, garlic and browned cheese made Grace’s stomach tighten.

“I’ve made a veggie lasagne,” Rachael said. “Why don’t you have some?

There’s plenty. It’s a bit late to start cooking.”

“Great. Thanks.” She didn’t know what else to say.

Because it was cold they sat in the easy chairs, pulled close to the fire, with the plates on their knees. No one had bothered to draw the curtains or put on the main light. Anne was still working at the desk, with the table lamp turned onto her papers, so they sat in shadow, lit occasionally by the red flash of a spitting log.

“I’ve been looking at your survey results,” Rachael said. Grace felt her stomach clench again. She poked the food with her fork.

“Yes?”

“Amazing! I mean I didn’t realize. This valley must have the greatest density of otters in the county. In the North of England.”

“I don’t know about that. I think they’ve generally been underestimated.”

“When this is all over you should think about publishing.”

At this Grace looked up, wondering why Rachael was so insistent.

“Oh?”

“If you don’t someone else will. You’ve done the work. Why shouldn’t you take the credit?”

“I suppose so.” Though she knew she would never present these figures for scientific scrutiny. She gathered up the plates and took them into the kitchen quickly, so Rachael couldn’t see how little she’d eaten.

When she returned to the living room Anne had stood up and was stretching her hands towards the fire.

“I called at the post office today,” Rachael said. “There was some mail. I should have given it to you earlier.”

She handed Grace a white envelope. It was the first letter she’d received since the project started and the other two stared at her, expecting her to open it immediately. But she folded it in two so it fitted into her jeans pocket.

Anne was equally secretive about one of the letters she’d received. She ripped the envelope open immediately as if she couldn’t wait to see what was inside, skimmed the contents then stuffed the page back into the envelope.

Rachael studiously avoiding any suspicion that she was prying, read her book while this was going on, but Grace watched. She saw that the letter was handwritten but that the paper had a corporate logo at the top. Even from the brief glimpse she had convinced herself that the logo was that of Slateburn Quarries. That only added to her unease, her sense that there was no one here she could trust.

Later she tried to find the letter. When Anne was in the bathroom that night, washing her hair, Grace went through the chest where she kept her clothes, and her handbag. She even emptied the waste bin onto the floor but there was no sign of the letter. Either Anne had kept it with her or she had burnt it when no one was looking. That, in itself, Grace took to be suspicious.

Although she was awake long after the others were asleep, Grace didn’t open her own letter that night. She had enough to think about. She waited until the next morning when she was out on the hill and she could see to the horizon in every direction.

The letter was from her father. He was still living and working in the restaurant and he’d been bad about keeping in touch since she’d left school. This was much longer than his usual notes. Even when she’d been at university she’d been able to tell a lot about his state of mind from the length of his contact. When he was sober and happy he kept in touch with chatty phone calls, postcards with a dirty picture on one side, and on the other gossip about Rod and work, perhaps a new recipe that had excited him. The length of this letter, even before she started reading it, made her suspect that he was depressed again and that he’d been drinking. The tone, obsessive, panicky, convinced her and made her own anxiety worse.

The letter started with a list of questions about Bella. He’d heard somehow about the suicide and he wanted to know all about it. “How did she die?” he asked. “Were you there when they found her?”

“Are they sure it was suicide?”

At first the questions confused her. Why should her father, even in an agitated state, care so much about the death of a middle-aged farmer’s wife? Then an almost throwaway line made her understand. He had written, as if he could take it for granted. “Of course you do remember Bella from the hospital.” Then it came back to her. For the first time she made the connection between the suicide victim and Bella the patient, the central member of the therapy group in St. Nicholas’.

Perhaps though she’d already made the connection subconsciously and that was why the memory of her father’s stay in hospital had been the subject of so many of her daydreams. It was an unsettling thought.

The letter continued: “There was a notice in the paper about her funeral. I’d like to be there. She was a friend and I feel awful that I didn’t give her more support when she needed it. But I can’t face those dreary rituals and I wouldn’t know what to say to her family and friends. So I thought I’d come to see you that day instead. It’ll stop me brooding. I’d like to see where Bella finished up. Strange that she ended her days so close to where I started mine. Perhaps you can take me for a walk. I’ll point out some of my old haunts. Don’t worry about my getting there. A friend has offered to give me a lift.”

The letter ended on a strange note. “You will take care, won’t you?”

She found that touching. He didn’t usually worry about her. She was the one that did all the worrying. All the same it hadn’t occurred to him that it might be inconvenient for him to visit her, or that after his making so many demands on her she might not want to see him.

“It would serve him right if I phoned him and told him not to bother,” she said out loud, but she knew she wouldn’t do it.

She tore the letter into many tiny pieces and threw them a handful at a time up into the air and watched the wind scatter the fragments safely over the hill. Then she walked on, well outside her survey area until she came to Langholme village. She thought she would use the public phone to talk to her father, but quite by chance she stumbled on the house in the photograph, the house where her father had lived before he had married her mother.

It was much more ordinary than she’d expected, on the outskirts of the village, not very close to the big house at all, though you could see Holme Park at the end of the long straight lane. It was tidier, of course, than in her father’s day. The bags of rubbish had gone. She wondered if it might be possible to dream up a plausible excuse for looking inside, but then Anne Preece arrived, intruding again with all her questions. Apparently she’d been at Holme Park drinking coffee with Lily Fulwell. That surprised Grace, who hadn’t previously had the impression that the two were good friends. It was another warning that she had to be careful.

Chapter Twenty-Seven.

The day of Bella’s funeral Grace saw Rachael and Anne off, then waited for her father. He appeared, surprisingly, on foot, walking down the track to Black Law with a small rucksack on his back. The track through the farmyard was a public footpath and at first she thought he was just another walker. He moved very fast, though once, as she watched, he turned to look over his shoulder. He seemed jumpy, restless. She put the kettle on because she knew he would want coffee as soon as he arrived and went out to wait for him.

“You’ve not walked all the way from the village?”

“I don’t know why you’re surprised. I’m fit for my age.”

“Not that fit.”

“All right,” he admitted. “A friend dropped me at the gate.”

“You should have brought her down for coffee.” She had guessed that it would be a woman. Rod was his only male friend and he still had the ability to attract.

“I asked but she’s a bit shy. Besides, she’s got things to do. She’ll wait for me up there later.”

She took him into the house. She expected comment about the state of the kitchen but he seemed too preoccupied to disapprove.

“I’ve seen this place from a distance but I’ve never been inside. A bit primitive, isn’t it? But I don’t suppose you mind that, do you, Gracie? You’re used to roughing it.”

In the rucksack, carefully wrapped, were homemade biscuits to have with the coffee and an asparagus flan for their lunch.

“But no booze, Gracie. I hope you’ll give me the credit for that.”

She thought then it would be all right. When she’d read his letter she’d worried that there’d be tears. A scene. She wasn’t sure she had the energy. He insisted on a guided tour of the cottage and all the way round he was asking questions, to most of which she had no answers.

He asked about Bella and Dougie and how they’d managed. About Constance Baikie and the Trust, and the students that came and the research they did.

She laid the table in the living room for lunch. He always thought food should be treated seriously. He hated picnics.

“You look as if you need feeding up,” he said, only half joking.

She managed to eat the flan. Most of it.

“I want to see where Bella lived,” he said.

“You’ve seen it. You walked past the farmhouse to get here.”

“I want to see it properly.”

She shrugged. It didn’t seem worth fighting over. They stood in the empty yard with the house on one side, and in the other the shed where Bella brought the lambs in to ewe. It was a gusty, sunny day. The shadows of small clouds blew across the hill. Edmund went over to the shed, unbolted the top half of the door and looked in. Inside were some wooden pens, a pile of mucky straw. He turned round quickly.

“I want to go in the house,” he said.

“You can’t. It’s locked.”

“You must have keys. For an emergency.”

“The police locked it all up when Dougie left.”

“I need to see where she lived. She talked about it all the time but I never came here.”

“You kept in touch then?” She hadn’t realized.

“A few of us from the old group met up occasionally. You know, for encouragement, support, it helps.”

“It must have done.” He still had bouts of depression but he’d never had to go into St. Nick’s again.

“So you can understand why I need to go inside.” “I’m sorry,” she said, starting to lose patience. “It’s not possible.

I told you I haven’t got the keys.”

“We’ll have to break in then.”

“Don’t be daft,” Grace yelled, thrusting her face close to his in an attempt to make him see sense. “How are you going to get away with that? And don’t you think I’ve got enough to lose here already?”

“Yes, of course. I’m sorry.” He seemed close to tears. “It’s just that you don’t realize… You have to have been through that sort of desperation. And then I feel responsible. Perhaps I should have guessed.”

“When did you last hear from her?”

A few of us met in the restaurant about a month ago. Rod lets me cook for them sometimes when it’s closed to the public. And I phoned her the week before she died.”

“Why?”

He seemed shocked by the question. “It’s personal. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“The police might want to talk to you. Rachael said they were wanting to trace people who might have some idea why she killed herself.”

“Rachael?”

“Rachael Lambert. She’s supporting the project. Bella was a friend of hers.”

“I didn’t realize Bella had any friends except us.” So much, Grace thought, for Rachael’s notion that she and Bella were closer than mother and daughter. Bella hadn’t even considered her worth mentioning.

“Anyway,” Edmund said suddenly, “I wouldn’t want to have anything to do with the police. Bella would hate it. She’d left all that behind long ago.”

“All what?”

But he shook his head and turned away. He walked round the house, looking in each window in turn, occasionally holding his hand between his forehead and the glass to shield the reflected light from his eyes.

“I don’t know what you’re expecting to find.”

“I can’t tell what went on here,” he said, as if he hadn’t heard her.

“What was she like?”

“How should I know?” Grace snapped. She thought it was morbid, this peering into the house of a dead woman and she was worried in case Rachael or Anne came back early and caught them at it. “She killed herself the night before I arrived.”

“Yes,” Edmund muttered resentfully, as if somehow Grace had been responsible for that, as if her imminent arrival had been the trigger of Bella’s suicide.

“Shall we go back inside then?” Grace touched his arm gently, her way of making peace with him. “We can’t do any more out here and I’m cold.”

She shepherded him back toward Baikie’s. He went ANN CLEEVES

without argument, and sat quietly while she made tea. Later he looked at his watch. “I’ll have to go soon. She said she’d be there about five.” She. No name. Perhaps he couldn’t even remember it. Since Sue he’d tried not to get too involved.

“I’ll walk up the track with you.” “No,” he said quickly, so she thought perhaps he’d made up a fiction about this trip. Perhaps he hadn’t admitted to a daughter. “I told you she’s shy.”

“I’ll say goodbye here then.” They stood awkwardly in the cramped kitchen.

“So?” he asked, an attempt to fatherly good humour. Now he seemed reluctant to go. “How’s the project working out?”

“It’s not easy. Doing what you ask.”

“No, well, I appreciate that. But you wouldn’t want it, would you? A great scar out of the hill. On my land.” He hesitated, looked at her significantly. “Our land.”

“I’m not even sure it’ll do any good in the end.”

“What do you mean?”

“A few otters. What do they matter compared with all that money, all those jobs. That’s what people’ll say!”

“More than a few.” He paused again. “According to your survey anyway.

Significant numbers. That’s what you promised.”

“I’m not sure I can keep that up. Rachael’s already started to question my counts.” And anyway I’m no good at lying, she thought. Not when it comes to science. To the important stuff.

“Do your best, eh? For me.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a strain.”

“I know.” But he didn’t know at all. Like a spoilt toddler he couldn’t recognize anything beyond his own needs, his own distress.

“Look, I’d better go.” “Can’t keep her waiting,” Grace said sarcastically.

“No.”

She went outside with him then turned in the opposite direction, towards the old mine. Deliberately she didn’t turn back to wave. She sat among the debris of the mine close to the stream which seemed very fast and deep channelled in the culvert, and began to brood again. She knew it was dangerous, this obsession, this desire to find meaning and connection. She almost believed that all the events which were troubling her were linked in an elaborate web Bella’s death, Anne’s hostility, the quarry, the person who seemed to be following her. And she was the spider in the centre of it, causing the events without understanding why.

At last the length of the shadows thrown by the mine building made her realize how late it was. As she walked back to the cottage in the orange evening light the exercise relaxed her and it occurred to her that she might be ill, like her father. He could be paranoid too and she’d read that such diseases could be inherited. Rather than frightening her, the thought was reassuring. She could talk to someone. Get treatment. She probably wasn’t in any physical danger at all. It was all in her head.

She kept this thought clear in her mind for two days, long enough to drop a note to her father, asking if he could arrange for her to see his doctor at St. Nick’s, and a letter to Antonia Thorne. The letter was unspecific. She still didn’t feel sufficiently safe to commit herself to paper. She just said it would be good to have a talk.

Something was worrying her. She got a lift out to Langholme with Rachael to post them. Even though the letters were sealed she was reluctant to hand them over.

Chapter Twenty-Eight.

Grace only went to the pub with the others so she could use the public phone in Langholme. It wasn’t so much that she had a puritan attitude to communal drinking but she hated the crowded intimacy, the jostling at the bar, feeling strangers’ breath on her neck. She’d gone out occasionally with people from her hall at university so as not to seem stuck-up, and student haunts were always packed and noisy. Edmund had never suggested taking her to the pub. When he drank it was seriously, on his own behind closed doors.

Rachael must have thought Grace would resist because when she suggested the trip she said, “Project leader’s orders. You’ve got to come. It’ll do us all good to get away from this place for a while.”

So they’d climbed into Rachael’s tiny car and driven through the dark to Langholme. Grace had been a bit anxious about leaving all her work at Baikie’s with the farmhouse empty anyone could break in, but the others said she was being ridiculous. Who would drive all that way to steal a pile of papers and a couple of pairs of binoculars? And she saw that she probably was being foolish. With help she’d come to realize that.

She waited until it was almost closing time to phone her father from the call box in the street outside. In the short space of time they were in the pub Anne drank four gins and flirted with the young boys by the bar.

Grace could hear the clatter of plates, sense her father’s wavering concentration.

“Well?” she shouted. “Did you get my letter?”

“Yes.”

“Have you made me an appointment?”

“Don’t be stupid. You’re the most sorted-out person I know. You don’t need to see a shrink.”

Only then did she realize how much she’d been relying on the doctor to provide her with a way out. She stood in the phone box, cut off from the pub by the road. A lorry went past, dazzling her with its headlights, making the small panes of glass in the old-fashioned box vibrate.

“Dad?” She’d lost concentration and was scared he’d hung up on her.

“Yes.”

“I can’t carry on doing this, Dad.”

“Of course you can. It’s not for much longer, is it?”

“It’s too long. You don’t know what it’s like.”

“For me, girl. Stick it out for me. The old team, working together.”

There was a shout in the background, a crash of plates and without saying goodbye, her father replaced the receiver.

For a long time she stood where she was, trapped in the box. She couldn’t face Rachael or Anne in the smoky pub. She was afraid she’d burst into tears, not of sadness but of confusion. She didn’t know what to do and she’d always been able to take decisions before. Then a drunk old man came out of the pub and staggered crabwise across the road towards her, lit by a single lamp further down the street. She pushed open the heavy door and fled. She passed him on the pavement but he seemed not to see her.

In the pub Anne was back at the bar.

“You’ve been a long time,” Rachael said.

“I couldn’t get through.”

Then Rachael told her that Anne was planning to move into the box room

“I think she just needs the privacy,” she said apologetically.

“Why?” Grace demanded. “What’s she up to?” It was her way of trying to warn Rachael, but the other woman looked at her strangely and changed the conversation, so for a moment Grace wondered if they were working together, if there was a conspiracy against her.

I am going mad, she thought. Just like my father.

The next morning Rachael went off early. She said she had a meeting with Peter and the developer. Grace, who hadn’t slept much, was up before her, and tried to make normal conversation. She made Rachael coffee, then watched the small car drive away, the engine straining up the hill. Back in the cottage she put bread under the grill to toast, but didn’t get round to eating it because Anne appeared, still in her dressing gown, her wet hair wrapped in a towel.

“I’m on my way out,” Grace said quickly. “I won’t be back until this evening. It’ll be quite late.”

Anne must have seen the bread slowly turning brown under the grill but she only shrugged and said OK.

It wasn’t until midday that Grace realized she’d rushed off in such a hurry that she hadn’t left details of her proposed route at Baikie’s.

She didn’t want to give Rachael cause to look more closely at her work so she decided to go back. She assumed that by then Anne would be out with her quad rats There was a car parked by the cottage and for a moment Grace was suspicious. It wasn’t Peter Kemp’s car and they never had other visitors. Then she thought again that she was being ridiculous. It probably belonged to someone who was looking at Black Law farmhouse and the land, a valuer or an agent.

As soon as she went into the kitchen she heard the noises in the other room, snuffling, squealing sounds. Without thinking she opened the door into the living room to look in. There was a smell of food, of smoked fish and ripe fruit, which made her feel sick. She saw Anne Preece lying on the floor with a man. His naked bottom was in the air, his trousers round his ankles, so like the pose in a smutty seaside postcard that she wondered briefly if it was a practical joke. Anne’s way of getting back at her. But Anne wasn’t laughing. Underneath the man but facing the door she saw Grace at once and was obviously shocked. The man had to turn to look at her. At the same time he was pulling up his underpants with one hand and bearing his weight with the other. It was quite a gymnastic feat. As soon as he turned, Grace recognized the man’s face. Edmund had sent her newspaper cuttings about the Black Law development and Godfrey Waugh had featured. Grace stared at him for a moment then withdrew, shutting the door behind her.

So Anne had been in league with the opposition all along. That at least hadn’t been part of her imagination While she was considering what to make of the information she tore a page from her notebook and wrote the details of where she expected to be that afternoon.

The door opened and Anne came in, not super cool any more, but ruffled, diffident. As uncertain, Grace could see, as she was. Looking at Anne Preece, Grace decided not to pass on the information about her affair with Waugh to her father. It would have to be dealt with, but not in that way. She hated the idea of Edmund gloating over it, rolling the details round and round in his mouth as if it were an expensive brandy to be savoured.

So when Anne talked about Godfrey’s wife and child she said, “It’s all right. I won’t say anything.”

She spoke slowly and firmly. She wanted Anne to believe her. Anne must have done because she smiled gratefully.

“I’ll cook tonight. I do a chicken casserole you’d die for.”

Grace almost reminded Anne that she was vegetarian but stopped herself in time. This was a gesture of reconciliation and she didn’t want to spoil it. There’d be time for all that honesty later. Instead she smiled and said, “I’ll go. Let you get on with it.”

Walking down the track towards the disused mine she felt better than she had done since her father first entangled her in this mess.