Tom was going to kill him this time, he really was.
He stepped outside and, for a moment, forgot that he was angry, forgot that he was getting very close to being scared. So this was what it was like then – the night-time – soft and scented and strangely warm, a place where all the colours had gone, leaving black and silver and moonbeams in their place. He took another step away from the house.
Then that feeling began to creep over him again, the one he seemed to get every time he left the house these days. Even inside the house sometimes, especially when it was getting dark outside, it could steal up on him. Some days, it seemed to Tom, the curtains just couldn’t be closed quickly enough in the evening.
Someone was watching him now, he knew it, someone very close. He could almost hear breathing, he just had to hope it was his brother. Tom turned his head slowly towards the corner of the house.
Two large eyes in a pale, flabby face looked back at him. Then they were gone.
Tom ran for the house. In the relative safety of the doorway, he stopped and turned back.
A girl, about his own age if size was anything to go by, was shinning up the wall that separated the Fletchers’ garden from the church land. She climbed quickly, as if she’d done it many times before, long hair trailing behind her and loose clothes fluttering in the breeze. Like Tom, she was barefoot, but her feet were nothing like his. Even at this distance they looked enormous compared to the rest of her. So did her hands.
Then Tom caught sight of something else at the corner of the house, at the exact spot from which the girl had appeared. He was ready to dive indoors when he realized it was Joe, in his red and blue Spiderman dressing gown.
‘What are you doing?’ he hissed as Joe came trotting towards him. ‘Come back inside now or I’m getting Dad.’ Glancing back up towards the church wall, he saw the girl had gone. Really gone, or just hiding? Because that’s what she did. She hid and she watched.
‘We’re not supposed to be here, Tom,’ muttered Joe.
‘I know we’re not,’ shot back Tom. ‘So let’s get back inside before Mum and Dad wake up.’
Joe lifted his head. His eyes looked huge in his pale face. ‘No,’ he said, letting his eyes drift away from Tom to the wall. ‘We’re not supposed to be here,’ he repeated. ‘It’s not safe.’
13
22 September
M ILLIE, THE LITTLE GIRL WITH HAIR THE COLOUR OF SPUN sugar, was in the garden. She was wearing hand-me-down clothes from one of her brothers, dark-blue jogging trousers and a blue and white football sweatshirt. Mud clung to her as she sat on the bare earth. The nappy, peeking out over the top of her joggers, made her bottom look enormous.
‘Millie.’ Her mother’s voice, from inside the house. She appeared in the doorway, plastic bowl in one hand, the other on her hip in exasperation.
‘Will you look at you?’ she called. Millie beamed back. She tried to stand, made it halfway and then fell back on her bottom.
‘Stay there for a minute, poppet,’ called Millie’s mother. ‘I’ll get you some clothes. Then we’ll get the boys. Bye!’ She disappeared inside the house again and the child opened her mouth to wail. Then her head shot round to face the other direction. She’d heard something.
Millie got up and set off along the rough ground, almost to the wall that bordered the property. She stopped when she was only a few inches away and looked up. A yew tree, possibly several hundred years old, grew in the churchyard so close to the wall as to be almost part ofit. Millie looked up.
‘Lo,’ she said. Lo Ebba.’
14
24 September
SHE WAS TALLER THAN HE REMEMBERED, BUT EVERY BIT AS slender. She had a bridle and reins slung round her shoulders as she appeared from the horse-box. She slid her right arm under the saddle that hung waiting on a large hook and then set off down the yard. Her left arm gripped a heavy-duty steel-and-plastic walking stick as she made her slow, ungainly way across the concrete.
Harry remained still, half hidden by the low branches of a huge walnut tree, watching her limp towards the tack room. She pushed the door with her shoulder and, rather awkwardly, disappeared inside.
Was this really a good idea? It was months since he’d asked a woman out. And why on earth had he picked one he knew absolutely nothing about?
Except he did know one or two things, didn’t he? Like the fact that the sciatic nerve was the longest and widest single nerve in the body, starting in the lower back and running down through the buttock and the leg. He knew that it fed the skin of the leg and also the muscles of the back of the thigh, lower leg and foot. The day he’d met Dr Oliver – Evi, he now knew she was called – he’d sat at his computer after dinner and started searching. Ten minutes later, he’d felt like he was prying.
The door to the tack room was opening and she was coming out. No longer loaded down with tack, she walked more easily, but still with a pronounced, rolling limp.
She saw him before he had a chance to move and stopped walking. Was that good or bad? Then she reached up to unfasten and remove her hat. Good? She carried on towards him and that twitch on her face could be a smile or it could be a grimace of embarrassment. Difficult to be sure and no time to make up his mind because she was feet away and he really had to say-
‘Hello.’ She’d got there first. Hello was OK, wasn’t it? Better than What the hell are you doing here?
‘Hi. Good ride?’ Good ride! Was that really the best he could do?
‘Bracing, thanks. What are you doing here?’
He pulled his right hand out of his pocket. Ten seconds into the conversation and he was already employing Plan B.
‘Is this yours?’ he asked, as the tiny silver bracelet with blue stones caught the light. She didn’t move to take it.
‘Nope,’ she said, shaking her head. The hair around her temples was damp with sweat, flattened against her head by the pressure of the riding hat. She put a hand up to it and then brought it back down again. Her face was pink; five days ago it had been pale with shock.
‘Did you find it on the road?’ she asked.
‘No. I bought it on Rawtenstall market a couple of days ago,’ he confessed. Well, that was a bit high risk but it might just have paid off. The twitch around her mouth had widened, might even be verging on a smile.
‘That was a bit rash,’ she said. ‘I don’t think it’s your colour.’
‘You’re right, I’m more of a soft-lemony man, but I needed an excuse.’
Yes, definitely a smile. ‘What for?’ she said.
‘I was worried about Duchess.’
‘Duchess?’ Lips pulled straight again. Eyebrows raised. Eyes still smiling.
‘Yes, how is she?’ He turned to the box where the grey cob stood watching them and took a few paces towards her. ‘This is her, right?’
She was following him. He could hear the clatter of the stick on the concrete. ‘This is Duchess,’ she confirmed. ‘None the worse for her adventure at the weekend. Which I haven’t mentioned to anyone here, by the way.’
‘My lips are sealed. How does she feel about Polo mints?’
She was standing at his side now, inches away. ‘She’ll bite your hand off,’ she said.
Harry felt in his pocket again and brought out the thin green tube that he’d also bought at the market. In her box, Duchess whickered at him. Two boxes further down a horse began kicking against its door.
‘You’ve done it now,’ said Evi. ‘Horses can smell Polo mints through the wrapper. And they recognize the paper.’
‘At least someone’s pleased to see me,’ said Harry, unwrapping the tube and holding out the flat of his hand to Duchess. A split-second later the mint had been replaced by a good dollop of horse slobber. Now what, exactly, was he supposed to do with that? Wiping it down his jeans was not going to look good.