“Thanks.”
“Oh, don’t thank me. It may come to nothing, just to warn you. I’ll make up that bed upstairs for you, shall I? The rate’s forty-five a night.”
“Take a credit card?”
“Of course.”
“I’m Zach, by the way. Zach Gilchrist.” He held out his hand, which the landlord shook with a smile.
“Pete Murray. Good luck at The Watch.”
Dimity had been dozing again, after a lunch of hard-boiled eggs and salad leaves. Two of the hens were going into molt. They looked patchy and bedraggled, and she muttered to them when she found no eggs underneath them. Lay, lay my girls. Let the eggs drop or be straight to the pot. Repeated over and over, the little rhyme sounded like a spell, and soon the voice Dimity heard was her mother’s, not her own. Valentina kept coming back to her since her waking dream, since her vision, her premonition. Her mother had been gone a long time. Dimity had thought maybe forever, and hadn’t been sad about that-apart from the endless quiet sometimes, the stillness. But lately she’d caught her mother watching her from the citrine eyes of the ginger cat; in the coils of skin as she peeled an apple; reflected, minute and upside down, in the bloated drip of water that always hung from the kitchen tap. After the night of the storm, after the night she saw Celeste and had her premonition, Dimity had found the old charm on the hearthstone. Knocked out of the chimney by the wind after nigh on eighty years, a shriveled nugget of old flesh the size of an egg; the pins gone rusty, and some of them missing. And then the dreams had started. That was how Valentina had got in; and that was a puzzle, because the charm should only keep evil spirits away. Perhaps not such a puzzle.
Dimity would have to make a new charm, and soon. Where to get a bullock’s heart, fresh, no more than a day old? Where to get a packet of new pins, clean and sharp? But each day without it the house was open to intruders. A wide-open door, especially when she slept. She roused herself from her doze and caught a flash of yellow hair, reflected in the windowpane. Dull yellow hair with black, black roots; gone when she blinked.
“Good day to you, Ma,” Dimity whispered, just to be civil. Just to stay on the safe side. She stood carefully, straightening her back with caution. The light outside was still gray, but bright enough to make her squint. There was much to do before night fell. All the animals to do, and something found to eat, and a new charm of some kind for the chimney flue. She couldn’t make a proper one yet, but something to tide her over-a mermaid’s purse would be a start. Down to the shore, then? Dimity hardly ever went anymore, didn’t trust her own feet. Didn’t like to be seen. But there might be one tucked away somewhere, around the house, and she resolved to look because it was unsettling, having Valentina back. Unsettling to think that her mother might notice her looking for a mermaid’s purse and guess at her purpose. The retribution would be awful.
Dimity turned from the window but as she did, her eye was caught again. Not Valentina, not a vision. A person. A man. Her heart got caught in her throat. He was young, tall and lean. For a second, she hardly dared to believe it, but it could have been… But no. Not tall enough, too broad at the shoulder. The hair too light, too short. But of course not, of course not. She shook her head. A rambler, nothing more. Not many came past the cottage, because the track was not a footpath; he shouldn’t have been there. It was private land, her land, and beyond the cottage he would find no way through. Dimity watched him approaching. Looking at The Watch intently, slowing his pace. Curious. He would get to the bottom and then have to turn around and go back again. Would he be one of those that gazed in at her windows? Twenty years ago nobody ever walked past, but these days there were more. She didn’t like the intrusion. It made her feel as though a tide of people was gathering out of sight; growing, swelling, coming to nudge up against her. But this one wasn’t walking past. This one was coming to the door. He had nothing in his hands; he wore no badge, no uniform. She couldn’t tell what he might want. The hairs stood up all along her arms. This was him, then. This was the one she’d seen coming. Valentina capered in the slant of light on the side of the teapot, but whether it was in warning or simple glee, Dimity couldn’t tell.
Zach listened hard at the door, trying to hear some sound of movement behind the hum of the sea and the fumbling breeze. The Watch was a long, low cottage, the upper story built well into the eaves of the thatch. The straw was dark and uneven, sagging into deep pockets in some places; great tufts of grass and forget-me-nots grew along the ridge and around the chimney stacks. Zach knew precious little about thatch, but it was obviously badly in need of replacing. The stone walls were whitewashed, and it sat facing west at the top of a long slope that ran down into the valley, where Zach could see scattered farm buildings half a mile or so below. The track to the cottage was dry and stony but looked as though heavy rain would turn it to mud. It approached from the north, towards one end of the house, so Zach had seen that the place was only one room deep. Behind it was a yard enclosed by a high wall, and behind that a small stand of beech and oak trees left over from an earlier century. The breeze whispered through those trees, twisting the dry leaves, speaking of the coming autumn.
Zach knocked again, louder this time. If there was nobody at home, he was back to square one; and pointlessly paying for a room for the night. He turned and looked at the view, which was wide and lovely. The cliff, a short way beyond the cottage, was much higher here, dropping perhaps thirty or forty feet. Below, down the slope, he could see the lane that he had driven along earlier that day-following the crease of the valley down to where the land dipped into the sea. The footpath turned inland from the eastern side of the little car park, crossing pasture and then the track to The Watch farther up towards the village. He couldn’t understand why it did this, instead of simply following the cliff edge, and was leaning backwards, trying to see around the end wall of the cottage, when the door cracked open.
The face that peered around the door was pale, lined, and bright with anxiety. An elderly woman with a thick cascade of white hair hanging loosely around her face. Cheeks limp and deeply scored, and a hump across her shoulders that forced her to turn her head slightly to look up at Zach. She took a step backwards when their eyes met, as if she’d changed her mind and would slam the door again, but froze. Hazel-and-green eyes watched him with such suspicion, such doubt.
“Hello… I’m sorry to bother you.” He paused in case she would greet him, but her mouth stayed shut. It was a wide mouth, thin lipped, but the ghost of bow shape, of a delicately pronounced upper lip, was still visible. “Um, my name’s Zach Gilchrist and I was told… that is, I was hoping I might be able to have a quick chat with you about something? If it’s not too much trouble, if you’re not busy?” There was a long pause and Zach’s polite smile began to feel too heavy for his face. He struggled to keep it from drooping. The breeze went in through the door and lifted up tresses of the woman’s white hair, moving it gently like seaweed under water.
“Busy?” she said eventually, and quietly.
“Yes, if you’re busy now I could… come back another time? Maybe?”
“Come back?” she echoed, and then Zach’s smile did fade to nothing, because he feared that old age had muddled her, and she didn’t understand what he was saying. He took a steadying breath and prepared to take his leave, disappointment gripping him. Then she spoke again. “What do you want to talk about?” She spoke with a Dorset accent so strong the words seemed to buzz in his ears, and had a peculiar cadence that was somewhat hard to follow. Zach remembered what Pete Murray had said, about pitching himself right. He had no idea what might be the right way, and on instinct he chose the family connection.