Rowan looks momentarily hurt. “Pickle, it’s a game. We can chat about something else if you like.”
Pickle shivers as a gust of wind thunders in off the mountain, stirring the fire and sending up a swirl of ash and flame: a collage in ripped silk and dirty snow. He stares at the spot where she had sat. “Sorry mate,” he mutters. “Going through some stuff myself and it’s a right downer thinking of Violet. She was pretty bleak once the tide took her.”
“Bleak?”
Pickle puts on an accent, imitating her. “All this ‘We didn’t know, we didn’t know.’ It was hard to watch, like. I tried to get her back to earth but she was all tears when she came back to herself. I felt awful, to be honest.” He leans in. “You don’t like to provide a bad high, do you? Not to people in pain. And she wasn’t herself for a bit. Didn’t talk much. I suppose we all have all locked doors in our head and sometimes they fly open.”
“All your doors are open, Pickle,” smiles Rowan.
Pickle looks at the glowing tip of the joint and jerks his head as if trying to dislodge something from his ear. Whatever memory he’s searching for, it comes back with a bang. “Violet went missing for a few days when she was at school. The posh school up past Gosforth – the hippy place that cost an arm and a leg. It closed donkey’s years ago but it was still around when she and her mates were all running about in knee-socks and blazers and pleated skirts. The other girl who went…,” he conducts the air with his burning spliff. “Yeah, the other girl, her mate - the vicar’s daughter. Was it Marlish? And I think I remember something about the third one being a redhead though I never knew her.”
Rowan glances at Snowdrop and is pleased to see her pencil moving, even as the microphone takes down every word. He looks back to Pickle. “I can hear the floodgates opening, mate,” he says, friendly. “What else you got inside that fascinating head?”
Pickle laughs, open mouthed – his molars packed with enough undigested pastry to feed a family. “New scoop, is there? New book on the way? I did read your last one. It was compelling. They like that word - the book-people. Everything has to be compelling.” He stops himself, lost in some labyrinth of mental-cul-de-sacs.
“Violet, mate,” prompts Rowan, gently. He feels like he’s talking to a suicide bomber in roller skates. The wrong nudge could see things end very badly.
Pickle gives him his attention: pupils swelling and diminishing in rapid bursts, as if controlled with a hand-pump. “All right, here’s what I know. Way I heard it, three went into the woods, and only two came back. But that’s just between you and me, of course.” He glances at the phone. “And for the benefit of the tape, I have smoked a great deal of marijuana….”
“Sorry, Pickle? Three went in, two came back …,”
He glances behind him, peering at a row of potato crates which groans beneath the weight of clutter. Old papers; mulched magazines, empty pop bottles and crunched-up cans of energy drink. He turns back, satisfied that whatever had distracted him has slunk back into the earth. “You do know what went on, don’t you? It was big at the time.”
Snowdrop and Rowan fix their gazes on the fire.
“Remind us …,” smiles Rowan.
7
Saturday, July 11, 1987
Silver Birch Academy, Wasdale Valley
4.44pm
“Look,” says Violet, wiggling her fingers in Catherine’s face. “I’ve got claws. Purple claws!”
Catherine does as she is told. Her friend has removed ten foxglove heads and placed them on her fingertips. It now looks as if each tanned and slender digit is wearing a purple witch’s hat.
Violet swipes at the air, growling like a tiger. Catherine can sense that in a moment her friend will test the effectiveness of the makeshift claws by slashing at her face. Catherine tries to distract her before the idea occurs.
“I thought we were seeing Mr Sixpence …,”
“He’s got friends,” says Violet, wrinkling her nose at having to use such a saccharine word. “Sat up there like garden gnomes around the fire, waiting for him. I scarpered before they saw but Rideal and Tunstall are up there. Some tall bloke too.” She looks at her fingers, then her eyes slide across Catherine’s face and to the cold, clammy hollow of her throat. “I don’t know if I feel like a cat or a witch …,”
“I think they’re poisonous,” says Catherine, quickly. She realises that she is sounding like a kill-joy and back-pedals at once. “But that’s probably just a lie they make up to stop us having fun.”
Violet looks at the flowers on her fingertips. She makes a face. “Actually, I think I’ve read that somewhere. Digitalis, I think. Shit. Have you got any wet-wipes?”
Catherine shakes her head. “Sorry, I didn’t think …,”
Violet rips the flowers from her fingers and glares at her friend. “You didn’t think? Says it all, doesn’t it?” She reaches out and wipes her fingers on Catherine’s coat, glaring at her, daring her to say something. Catherine looks at the floor.
Violet loses interest almost at once. She glares around her at the dense, dark wood. The treetops block out most of the light and the forest floor is a tangle of fallen branches and twisted roots. They came here with their registration class a few months ago – Mr Tunstall telling them all about the history of the wood. She tries to remember what he’d said. She remembers the names of the trees. Sweet chestnut. Larch. He’d said that most of the wood was planted around the time the school was built. Said it had red squirrels and that the sparrowhawks were vicious. He’d seen one tearing apart a blackcap in mid-flight. He’d talked about rhododendrons. Earned a snort of laughter from Violet when he said the numbers of great Tits were on the rise. They’d seen Mr Sixpence that day. They’d say outside his campervan in two semi-circles, bums on the damp forest floor or becoming numb on one of the rocks or tree-stumps. He’d shown them how to breathe. How to feel the universe flowing in and out of them. How to reach out with their minds and feel the cosmos. Then he’d made them find a favourite tree and hug it. She can see them now, only half laughing, wrapping their arms around gnarly, knotted trunks and pressing their faces to the bark. Violet had offered no words of scorn. She held the twisted rowan long after the other children had let go.
“Shall we be spies?” asks Catherine, and is surprised at herself for the boldness of the suggestion.
“Spies?”
“We could go listen. See how close we can get without disturbing them. You said you saw that lad in the Sinbad trousers last time you went up there by yourself. Bet we could get proper close.”
Violet closes an eye, scowling at her. “You want to be spies? You?”
“We probably won’t be back much over summer. It’s just for fun.”
Violet appears to weigh things up. She glares down at the pulped purple flowers on the forest floor then gives a shrug. “All right, but I’m going first. You follow my tracks. And if you step on a stick and snap it, You get three undefended punches, right?”
Catherine smiles, pitifully grateful. Violet rubs the juice from the foxgloves off Catherine’s front and smears her hand on the seat of her tight denim shorts. “Soz,” she says, though it’s too quiet for Catherine to hear.