“You’ll never finish that,” his father muttered.
“I’ve got to. It’s for the portfolio.”
Mac sat, took out a cigarette and lit it. “Don’t paint this in, mind.”
“Do you have to? It changes all the shadows.”
“Tough.”
Rob’s mother stood. “I’ll give Maria a hand with clearing up.”
“You’ll do no such thing, Kate Mcguire. This husband of yours will do that. You’ll have a lie down. You’re too pale, girl.”
“And you’re a bully, Mac. You talk as if I was still a little girl in Ireland.”
“You’ll always be a little girl to me.”
“Idiot.” She went out, walking fast across the lawn, head down against the fine summer rain, and Rob’s dad went after her.
Mac smoked thoughtfully. “She sleeps all right?”
“I don’t know.”
He painted in silence. Rain fell heavily on the glass roof, spattering hard, sheeting in cascades down the gutters and gurgling in drainpipes. The sky darkened; Rob muttered, “Typical,” and mixed a little more viridian into the color for the lines between Mac’s nose and mouth. The mouth moved.
“They’ve got money troubles, Rob.”
Rob looked up. “No way!”
“How much do you think full-time nursing care costs? Your mother’s turned down work. A film, she said.”
“She told you?”
A cloud of cigarette smoke. Through it Mac said, “In confidence. But you should know. This job of yours—save the cash. Don’t ask them for anything.”
The rain crashed. Rob muttered, “I wish you’d shave. Stubble is a nightmare.”
He was stunned. They’d always had money. More than enough. His mother was well known, she’d won a BAFTA, her agent was always on the phone with offers. He worked red into blue, lightened it, darkened it.
Money defined him. Dan was always broke, his mother a single parent. Rob paid for everything—it was never an issue. Well, not for him. Maybe Dan resented it. He’d never noticed.
Putting the paint on carefully, he said, “They won’t stop paying for Chloe.”
“Of course not. But it’s ruining them. The longer it goes on.”
His hands were shaking. He couldn’t do this now: he put the brush down with a clatter that made Mac look over, and then he sat down on the faded blue bench as if the strength had all gone out of him. He knew what this was. It happened when he let himself realize that Chloe was lying there, little Chloe, never moving, never speaking. Right now. Right now.
Mac said, “Okay?”
“Great. Just great.”
The rain came down harder. Mac got up and stood looking out. Then he gave his harsh laugh. “Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse, here’s Dan.”
Dan was on the bike. He was going up to the house, but at Rob’s shout he came wobbling toward them over the grass, dumped the machine against the streaming glass and stumbled in, soaked to the skin.
Mac ground out his cigarette stub on the step. “Ever heard of a coat?”
“Coats are for wimps.” Dan sat, oozing water. “Anyway, it just came up over Waden and caught me. It was dry when I set out.” He squeezed out his hair, which he was growing long, because any heavy metal guitarist was nothing without long hair. “Brought you this.”
It was a Sunday paper, a tabloid. Rob’s dad wouldn’t have it in the house.
“A rag,” Mac said sourly.
“Yes, but look.” Dan folded the paper to an inside page and pointed. The headline was small but lurid. It screamed, SECRET SACRIFICIAL SITE UNCOVERED: WHAT WILD AND WEIRD RITES WENT ON IN DEEPEST WILTSHIRE?
“Oh God,” Rob said.
The photographer must have been standing in the lane. Maybe Max had kept him out. But you could see the top of the hedge, and across the field the high metal fence.
Behind this enigmatic structure lies British archaeology’s newest and best-kept secret. Older than the pyramids, in the heart of mystic Avebury the black timbers of a lost prehistoric monument are being uncovered in strictest secrecy.
“Where did they get it?” He thought of Clare. She would be so furious!
Dan rolled his eyes. “This is Avebury. People out all hours looking for crop circles, UFOs, little green men. It was bound to get around.”
“This is where you’re working?” Mac studied the article with distaste. “Why the fixation with human sacrifice? Don’t they think our ancestors had other things to do?”
“I’ll be the next one,” Rob muttered. “She’ll think it was me.”
“That’s hardly reasonable.”
He laughed, mirthless. “She’s not the reasonable type.”
“But it wasn’t you. Was it?”
Rob glanced up. His godfather’s blue eyes were watching him.
“No,” he said quietly. “It wasn’t.”
Next morning a security guard was at the end of the lane with a cell phone. He checked with someone on the other end before letting Rob through. Wheeling the bike, Rob wondered if it was legal to stop people. After all, this was a right of way.
The field was unrecognizable. A perimeter fence was going up, and the old wooden gate he and Vetch and Rosa had climbed over two nights ago was already replaced with a high metal one. Marcus came out of the trailer, and said, “I really hope you had nothing to do with this.”
“Don’t be stupid. I wouldn’t come back if I had. Don’t you think all the security is a bit over the top? Or is Clare spitting nails?”
Marcus’s eyes flickered, too late. He walked off.
“I warned you, Rob.” Clare was standing behind him. Her cold glare chilled him. “I’m surprised you dare show your face.”
“It wasn’t me!”
“Who then? The dog?”
“Anyone. The farmer could have gossiped in the pub. National Trust people, your students, anyone. It’s not fair to blame me, but if you want me to go, I’ll go.” And stuff your job, he thought, turning, skewing the bike in the mud, hot and angry. Guilty.
Her voice stopped him dead. “This Vetch. Does he have a small scar on his forehead? Does he have three burns on the back of his hand?”
After a moment he said, “Yes.”
She swore.
The key. He had to get the key back.
He turned to face her.
She looked tired and fed up. “You told him?”
“No, I didn’t. He knew already. Honestly.”
To his surprise she laughed, a harsh amusement. “Oh, I believe you. And no doubt he’s found a few new devotees. Women probably. Hanging on every word he says.”
Rob rubbed the handlebar of the bike. “Was that what you used to do?”
He thought she’d be furious. Instead she said, “Oh yes. I was a student, Rob, in my last year at uni. And I was the best in my year, a highflier, expected to get a first. Everyone expected me to be anything I wanted.”
She sat on an upturned bucket, glanced around to see where Jimmy was, then lowered her voice. “I met …Vetch in Oxford. His name was Gwion then. He wasn’t a student, or a tutor, but he did occasional things for the Department of Celtic … readings, talks on Welsh poetry. That was his thing. We … got to be friends.”
Rob found it hard to imagine. She must have been a lot less hard.
“Looking back, he was fascinating. He talked about poetry, about how the Celtic myths might go right back to prehistoric times, that the stories in them, of goddesses, and battles with trees and glass castles, were legends told by people who built the henges. Bronze Age. Maybe even Neolithic.” She laughed, sour. “I thought he was right. I neglected my studies. I read myths, wrote essays that my tutors despaired of, full of theories, the more unlikely the better.... I wore crazy dresses and went to festivals, lived in squalor. And yes, got into drugs, though Vetch never was. But I had to keep up with him. He lived in a dreamworld of ideas and stories. All I wanted was his respect. And then one day he vanished. Just upped and left. I was devastated. I suppose it was a miracle I even took the exams in the end.”