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.