Kitabı oxu: «Hiding From the Light»
Copyright
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1998 This edition published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016
Copyright © Barbara Erskine 1998
Maps and chapter head illustrations by Rex Nicholls
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
Cover photographs © Gary Ombler/Getty Images (woman); Stuart Brill/Trevillion Images (chapel with mist); John James/Alamy (grave stone)
Barbara Erskine asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007288632
Ebook Edition © March 2016 ISBN: 9780007320974
Version: 2017-09-08
Epigraph
Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love of thy only son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ.
The Book of Common Prayer
He who has once seen a ghost is never again as though he had not seen a ghost.
Cardinal John Henry Newman, 1870
God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
I John 1,5
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Map
Note
Part One
Chapter One: The Present Day
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Part Two
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter Twenty Six
Chapter Twenty Seven
Chapter Twenty Eight
Chapter Twenty Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty One
Chapter Thirty Two
Chapter Thirty Three
Chapter Thirty Four
Chapter Thirty Five
Chapter Thirty Six
Chapter Thirty Seven
Chapter Thirty Eight
Chapter Thirty Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty One
Chapter Forty Two
Chapter Forty Three
Chapter Forty Four
Chapter Forty Five
Chapter Forty Six
Chapter Forty Seven
Chapter Forty Eight
Chapter Forty Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty One
Chapter Fifty Two
Chapter Fifty Three
Chapter Fifty Four
Chapter Fifty Five
Chapter Fifty Six
Chapter Fifty Seven
Chapter Fifty Eight
Chapter Fifty Nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty One
Chapter Sixty Two
Chapter Sixty Three
Chapter Sixty Four
Chapter Sixty Five
Chapter Sixty Six
Chapter Sixty Seven
Chapter Sixty Eight
Chapter Sixty Nine
Chapter Seventy
Chapter Seventy One
Chapter Seventy Two
Chapter Seventy Three
Chapter Seventy Four
Chapter Seventy Five
Chapter Seventy Six
Chapter Seventy Seven
Chapter Seventy Eight
Chapter Seventy Nine
Chapter Eighty
Chapter Eighty One
Chapter Eighty Two
Chapter Eighty Three
Chapter Eighty Four
Chapter Eighty Five
Chapter Eighty Six
Chapter Eighty Seven
Chapter Eighty Eight
Chapter Eighty Nine
Chapter Ninety
Chapter Ninety One
Chapter Ninety Two
Chapter Ninety Three
Chapter Ninety Four
Chapter Ninety Five
Chapter Ninety Six
Chapter Ninety Seven
Chapter Ninety Eight
Chapter Ninety Nine
Chapter Hundred
Chapter Hundred and One
Chapter Hundred and Two
Chapter Hundred and Three
Chapter Hundred and Four
Chapter Hundred and Five
Chapter Hundred and Six
Chapter Hundred and Seven
Chapter Hundred and Eight
Chapter Hundred and Nine
Chapter Hundred and Ten
Chapter Hundred and Eleven
Chapter Hundred and Twelve
Chapter Hundred and Thirteen
Chapter Hundred and Fourteen
Chapter Hundred and Fifteen
Chapter Hundred and Sixteen
Chapter Hundred and Seventeen
Chapter Hundred and Eighteen
Chapter Hundred and Nineteen
Chapter Hundred and Twenty
Chapter Hundred and Twenty One
Author’s Note
Keep Reading Barbara Erskine’s Novels
Keep Reading Sleeper’s Castle
About the Author
Also by Barbara Erskine
About the Publisher
Map
Note
Matthew Hopkins was, of course, a real man and Manningtree and Mistley are real places. But this story is fiction. The parish about which I write does not exist. Neither does Mike’s church, rectory or street. Neither does the lane where Emma lives, nor is there a surgery where I have put one.
The old churchyard appears on maps and in guidebooks, but is now private land. The real church at Mistley does not appear.
Present darkness LAMMAS
Lightning was flickering over the low Suffolk hills and thunder rumbled in the distance, louder this time. Bill Standing glanced up at the sky where the clouds piled threateningly one on the other, black on purple above the land. He hunched his shoulders and walked on.
He had come out here to think, to clear his head and listen to whatever it was that was battering at his brain, trying to make itself heard. The tide was nearly high, the broad estuary a carpet of white-topped waves hurling themselves inland off the sea. Above his head a gull circled, letting out a wild, mournful cry, then it turned and flew away towards the coming darkness. Bill watched it go through narrowed eyes, feeling the wind on his face. The thunder was louder now and one by one the first heavy drops of rain were beginning to fall. It was early afternoon but it felt like night. Behind him the town was closing down ahead of the storm. He could feel it waiting, watching, bracing itself for what was to come.
His unease was not only caused by the impending storm. There was something else in the air and it scared him – scared him more than anything, in all his eighty-six years, had scared him before.
The old evil there beneath the surface was awakening. It would take very little to set it free. A lightning bolt into the river, a clap of thunder up on the heath, a flash of fire in the furze bushes on the hill and the dark would rise again and envelop the shore, the town, the whole peninsula.
He had known it would happen one day. His father had told him, and his father’s father had known it before him. Why now, he didn’t know yet, but there was no one left to stop it.
He pulled the collar of his coat up round his ears and looked up at the sky which had grown yet darker. He knew what to do, of course. More or less. But he was an old man, and alone. Were there others out there who could help him? He frowned unhappily, his weather-beaten face wrinkling into deep folds and canyons. If there were, he hadn’t seen them yet. What he had seen were signs of trouble, like the blue flames licking from tussock to tussock down on the marsh, fairy sparks, they called them, the sign of danger to come like the black mist hanging on the horizon far out to sea. Darkness long laid to rest was threatening to stir as it had after the Reformation, when the priests who knew how to mediate the dark were overthrown. Hundreds of years before that the evil had come from across the sea; native and Roman gods, and the Christian alike had been vanquished before it as it sucked black energy from this wild, mysterious borderland between sea and shore. For aeons it had lain sleeping, but now he could feel it growing restless. He remembered the words, the ceremonies, to contain it, but did he have the power?
Another clap of thunder echoed over the water and he jumped. It was drifting closer on the wind, circling the town. Lightning flickered behind as well as in front of him now and it was growing darker still, as though the whole world were hiding from the light.
Past darkness AUTUMN 1644
The room was dark and he could see nothing, but he could hear the creature in the corner, snuffling quietly to itself. He lay quite still in the high bed, staring up towards the tester he could not see, wishing he had not drawn the curtain so close around him. He was sweating profusely, his hands gripping the sheet, holding it tightly up against his chin.
Where was it? He hardly dared blink his eyes. It had moved. He could hear the scrape of claws against the boards.
Don’t stir.
Don’t even breathe.
It doesn’t realise you’re here.
If only his heart would stop pounding so loudly against his chest. The animal must be able to hear him, smell the sour fear. Inch by inch he edged up against the pillows away from the sound. There was a crack in the bed curtains now, as the sheet caught against the rough tapestry and he could see a faint line of light from the window shutters. It was nearly dawn.
Sweet Jesu, make it go away.
Another sound from the corner of the room sent a fresh sheen of sweat across his shoulder blades. There was a grunt and the sharp crunch of teeth on bone. Dear Lord, the creature had caught something. It was eating it, there, in his bedroom, taunting him. He could smell blood, smell the rank breath, the rotting teeth, he could almost see its small red, evil, eyes.
How had it got in?
He frowned. He could remember closing the door and sliding the bolt. He could remember barring the shutters. Or had he? He glanced towards the tell-tale strip of pale light. He had felt so ill as he climbed the narrow stairs the night before, the fever once again clamping its sweaty hold over his shoulders. He had fallen on the bed, racked with coughing, too tired even to pull off his bucket-top boots. He remembered that. He moved his foot slightly. No. It was bare. He must have kicked off the soft leather boots and removed his breeches and stockings before crawling under the bed covers.
Outside, the darkness lifted perceptibly. The stars and the quarter moon, hanging low over the hill behind his house, began to fade. The birds were waking. First one tentative call, then another, rang out in the cold garden.
His throat spasmed. He was going to cough again. He mustn’t. He mustn’t make a sound. He groped blindly for a kerchief, for the sheet, the pillow, anything to smother the noise. If he coughed, the creature would know he was there and turn its attention to him. He could feel the cough building, the tightness in his chest, the agony in his throat. His terror was overwhelming.
As the first cough exploded from him, he heard himself scream. He leaned over towards the bedside table and snatched the dagger that lay there, ready, thrusting it wildly in front of him as the bear turned to stare straight between the bed curtains into his eyes. For a moment they exchanged a long thoughtful glance, then slowly the bear rose to its feet.
Downstairs the maid heard his frantic shouting as she knelt to lay the fire. She glanced up and shook her head. Master Hopkins must be having another of his nightmares. She paused for a moment, listening, then she turned back to the fire.
Upstairs, at the first sound of the coughing, the tabby cat dropped her half-eaten mouse and fled from the room, leaving a small pile of bloody entrails in the corner as she leaped for the window, pushed through the unfastened shutters and vanished into the cold dawn.
In the bed, his fear drained away as swiftly as it had come and in its place he felt rage. Rage such as he had never felt before. The women who had caused him to feel such fear would pay and pay dearly for their foul conspiracy. And he knew who they were, for they were on his list. The Devil’s List.
Part One
1 The present day
AUGUST
The London air was coppery, metallic on the tongue, heavy with traffic fumes and sunlight. Emma Dickson climbed out of the cab, handed over a note and glanced at her wristwatch, all part of the same flowing movement.
The cabby made a great show of diving into his money bag for change. Mean cow. Only three quid from twenty. She could afford to give him the tip. He glanced at her and in spite of himself his face softened. A bit of all right. Black dress. Gorgeous legs. Slim arms. Nice hair. Good make up. Business lady, but would tart up nicely. He handed her the change. She took it, hesitated, then handed it back. ‘OK. You keep it.’ She grinned at him as though she were aware of every stage of his thought processes. ‘You got me here on time. Just.’
He watched as she turned across the pavement and climbed the steps towards the door. Devonshire Place. An expensive doctor, probably. He found himself hoping, as he pulled away from the kerb, that she wasn’t ill.
The shiny black door with gold knocker and nameplate opened to her ring and she disappeared inside, grateful for the coolness of the hall after the blazing heat of the street outside. It was Friday. She had taken the afternoon off to visit the dentist, then she was going home to stand under a cold shower before starting to organise the evening’s dinner party.
‘Good afternoon, Miss Dickson.’ The receptionist opened the door of the waiting room and ushered her in. ‘Mr Forbes won’t keep you long.’
There was no one else in the large elegant room. Sofas and easy chairs stood somewhat formally round the walls, two huge flower arrangements faced each other at opposite ends of the room and on the large low central table several piles of magazines lay, neatly squared, waiting to beguile her while she waited. Automatically she glanced at her watch. It was hard to relax, to slow down. It had been a hectic morning; she had been on the phone since eight a.m. There had been no time for lunch. For one of the senior fund managers for Spencer Flight, Jordan of Throckmorton Street, there very seldom was. To find she had to wait for her appointment was almost more than she could bear. Taking a deep breath she threw her bag on the largest sofa and picking up a magazine at random she flopped down and kicked off her shoes.
She had to learn to slow down; to relax. She wasn’t even sure any more that she was still enjoying the frenetic lifestyle in which up to now she had revelled. With a long slow sigh she stretched out the long legs the taxi driver had so much admired, opened the magazine and glanced at it casually.
She had picked up a copy of Country Life. She flipped without much interest through page after page of house advertisements. Mansions and manor houses, even castles, all taken from their best angle, primped, air brushed, seductively enticing. Improbable. But they would all turn out to be someone’s dream. Someone who had had the time to stop to consider whether the place they lived was right for them; whether they were happy, whether they should move on.
She turned another page, about to throw down the magazine, then she frowned. She sat up sharply, swung her legs to the floor and sat, staring at the picture in front of her. There were four houses on the page, all in Essex and Suffolk, all smaller than those through which she had been idly leafing. It was the one on the top right hand corner of the page that held her attention. She frowned, looking at it more closely. It was a house she knew.
She read the details with a frown.
15th century listed farmhouse withsmall commercial herb nursery.3 bedrooms, 2 reception.Large farmhouse kitchen.
Garage. Offices. 3 acres.
The house was pretty, colour-washed with exposed beams, an uneven roof, half tiled, half thatched, an oak front door surrounded by the statutory roses. She looked quickly at the other houses on the page. They too were pretty. In fact one was a great deal prettier, but this one was special. Near Manningtree, the details said. North Essex. Minutes from the picturesque River Stour.
It was Liza’s.
‘Miss Dickson?’ It was the second time the receptionist had called her name. ‘Mr Forbes is ready for you.’
She jumped almost guiltily. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.’ Fumbling inelegantly for her shoes she rose to her feet, still holding the magazine.
‘Shall I?’ The receptionist held out her hand, ever helpful, ready to replace it on the pile.
Emma shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. I need to keep it. This house –’ She looked up and saw irritation in the other woman’s face. Shrugging, she held it out, then changed her mind. ‘Do you mind if I tear out the page? It’s a house I know.’ She had done it before the woman could object, folding the shiny paper into her handbag and closing the fastener firmly before turning towards the surgery.
The check-up was swift, followed by a change of room, change of chair, brisk polish from the hygienist and she was finished, standing once more on the doorstep staring down the dusty street. Two cabs cruised by in quick succession, glancing at her to see if she was a customer. She saw neither of them. She was still thinking about the cottage which as a child she had known as Liza’s.
Summer holidays away from London. Sailing on the Stour. Riding ponies round the paddock. Great-grandpa’s pipe. Great-grandma’s wonderful cakes. Walking the dogs round the country lanes. There had been all the time in the world, then. Aeons of it. They had walked past Liza’s several times each holidays, always very conscious of the cottage behind its hedge and the secrets it was supposed to hold. They had never gone in, never met the old lady who lived there and in her young mind little Emma had started to weave a fantasy about the place, in which that old lady – Liza – had featured as a character in an increasingly complicated fairy story. As an only child she was accustomed to making up stories in which she featured as the heroine, and this one was no exception. Her parents and great-grandparents had no idea about the story and the adventures which were going on in the little girl’s head, or the extent to which she missed those holidays when her great-grandparents, too elderly to keep up the big country house, had sold up and moved away. She had never gone back to the area.
She descended the steps into Devonshire Place and turned south, walking slowly, aware of the sun’s heat reflecting off the pavement and the house fronts. She was tired and hot and she wanted a cold drink. Reaching Weymouth Street she paused, waiting for the lights to change, then she walked on. The torn page was tucked into the zipped pocket in her bag. There was plenty of time to look at it again when she reached home but she realised suddenly that she couldn’t wait that long. The piece of paper was burning a hole in the bag! She stopped in her tracks and fumbled for it. A business man in a dark suit who had been following immediately behind her almost walked into her. He side-stepped past her, stared for a moment and walked on. Two workmen carrying an old sink out of the front door of one of the elegant houses on the corner edged past her and threw the sink into a skip which had been parked against the kerb. She didn’t notice the cloud of dust and plaster fragments which flew up as the ancient piece of plumbing crashed into the mess of rubbish. She was staring at the picture. When she did look up again she was ready to find a cab.
‘Ma?’ She pushed open the door of the small bookshop off the Gloucester Road, immediately spotting her mother standing by the till. The shop was empty but for a woman with two small children. Peggy Dickson raised her hand. She smiled a welcome then turned back to her customers, slotting two books deftly into a bag and handing it to the smallest child. When they finally left the shop she groaned. ‘I thought they’d never go. It took that woman twenty-five minutes to choose those books. Those poor little kids, they are going to equate bookshops with boredom, dehydration, the need to pee and starvation, in that order, for the rest of their lives!’
Emma laughed. ‘Nonsense, Ma. They were thrilled with their books. That little boy was an academic in the making, if ever I saw one.’
‘Maybe.’ Peggy sighed with exhaustion. An attractive woman in her early sixties, she resembled her daughter in bone structure alone. Their eyes and hair were quite different – Peggy’s hair had once been blonde, whilst her daughter’s was dark; the blonde was now the slightest hint highlighted into the smartly cut grey – but the timbre of their voices was similar. Low. Musical. Elegant.
‘So, my darling, what on earth are you doing outside that temple to Mammon you call an office?’
Emma smiled. ‘I took the afternoon off. It’s very quiet at the moment as it’s August. Everyone is out of the City. I’ve been having a check up at the dentist and I’m on my way to Sainsbury’s. We’ve got Piers’s boss and his wife coming to supper.’ She made a face. ‘Then, I hope, a long peaceful weekend! Do you and Dan want to come over for a drink some time?’
Peggy shrugged. ‘Can we let you know? I’m working tomorrow – at least till lunchtime. I’ll close up if no one comes in, but I don’t know what Dan’s plans are.’
Emma’s father had died in 1977 when she was still a child. Her mother’s toyboy lover – only six months younger than Peggy, but neither of them could resist joking about the age difference – was the best thing that had happened in Peggy’s life for a long time.
Emma fished in her bag again and produced the page from Country Life. ‘Ma, the reason I came over was to show you this. Does this house mean anything to you? Do you recognise it?’
Peggy reached for her spectacles and examined the picture closely. ‘I don’t think so. Why? You’re not thinking of buying a country cottage?’
‘No.’ Emma grimaced. ‘Piers would never hear of it. ‘No. It’s just –’ She hesitated and her face grew sombre. ‘I saw this at the dentist. Don’t you remember? Near where Great-granny lived at Mistley. I’m sure it is.’
Peggy squinted at the page again. ‘We did spend a lot of time there when you were little.’ She chewed her lip thoughtfully, holding the paper closer to her nose. ‘Wait a minute. Perhaps I do remember it now I come to think of it: Liza’s. You think it’s Liza’s? Are you sure, darling? There must be a million cottages that look just like that one. Anyway, it says it’s a farmhouse.’ She took off her glasses and, putting down the page she surveyed Emma’s face, frowning.
Emma nodded. ‘I’m pretty sure it is. I loved that house so much I’d recognise it anywhere.’
Peggy nodded. ‘I do remember now. You used to peer through the hedge and make up stories about that wonderful old lady who lived there. Liza, presumably. They were lovely times, weren’t they. Those holidays seemed to go on forever.’
‘Long, sunlit summers.’ Emma nodded.
Before Daddy died.
Neither of them voiced that last thought, but both were thinking it.
‘Wouldn’t it be strange if it was the same house?’ Peggy put her glasses back on, squinting. ‘It’s very pretty. I’m not surprised you’re tempted. You are tempted, aren’t you?’ She looked up and surveyed Emma’s face shrewdly.
Emma nodded. Somewhere deep inside an idea had taken root.
‘Is this interest a sign you’re feeling like settling down at last? Is it possible, sweetheart, are you feeling broody?’ Peggy surveyed Emma’s face for a moment, then she shook her head. ‘Well, maybe that’s for the best. Not till you’re sure about Piers. And you’re not. Are you?’
Emma frowned. ‘I love Piers, Ma. I wouldn’t do anything unless he agreed.’
‘No?’ Peggy raised an eyebrow. ‘He won’t agree to this, Em. I can tell you that right now!’
2
Piers stood under the shower for a full five minutes before he stepped out and reached for the towel. He had been expecting Emma to be there when he arrived home from his office but the door had been double-locked, the flat, on the top floor of the converted house at the end of Cornwall Gardens, empty but for two loudly complaining cats. He stopped to give each a brief hello before checking the fridge for dinner party supplies. She couldn’t have forgotten that Derek and Sue were coming over, surely. Hadn’t she said she was taking the afternoon off? Pulling on some cool trousers and an open-necked shirt he surveyed himself for a second in the mirror in their bedroom, checking out his tall lanky figure, smart haircut, tanned skin – even in casual gear he looked cool and sophisticated – before he went into the living room and glanced round. It was tidy as always, a full array of drinks on the top of the low bookcase in the corner. The pale cream sofas, the linen curtains and the wood floor gave just the right impression. Expensive. Elegant. Comfortable. Two young, well youngish, executives with perfect taste. He walked across to the French doors and reached up to the hiding place behind the curtain for the Chubb key, hanging from its little hook. Unlocking the doors he pulled them open and stepped out onto the roof garden. This was Emma’s very own paradise. She had created a little heaven from a sooty expanse between four ugly chimneys. Italian earthenware pots, small trees, roses, honeysuckle, herbs – her special passion – the unexpected riot of colour and sweet scents never failed to take his breath away. Emma’s love for gardening and her indelibly green fingers were one of the unexpected sides to her character which he could never quite reconcile with her astute business brain and the sophisticated lifestyle she shared with him. Closely followed by the two cats, he walked over to the wrought-iron table with its matching chairs and opened the large, bleached-linen parasol. Any moment now the sun would have disappeared behind the rooftops, but the parasol perfected the picture of elegance he so enjoyed up here. And on an evening like this where better to be than a rooftop garden?
‘Piers?’ Emma’s voice broke into his thoughts. ‘Sorry, darling. I got caught in horrendous queues in Sainsbury’s.’ She appeared at the French doors looking, as ever, a city animal, elegant and sophisticated and cool – the furthest one could imagine from a busy shopping queue, or a gardener. ‘I’ve got cold meat. Vichyssoise. Ciabatta. Smoked duck. Salmon. Salad. Strawberries and cream. It’ll take me five minutes.’ She greeted the two cats with a pat on each eager head, joined him under the parasol and held up her own face for a kiss. ‘Put the wine in the fridge. When will they be here?’
He felt obscurely irritated suddenly. She knew when they’d be there. Damn it, she had rung up and fixed it with Sue.
‘Unzip me?’ She turned in his arms just before his kiss landed on target, presenting him with the nape of her neck and the top of a long black zip. ‘I called in on Ma. I thought she and Dan might pop over and have a drink tomorrow.’ With a quick wriggle of her hips she shed the dress. Under it she was naked but for a pair of the skimpiest bikini briefs.
‘Em!’ In spite of himself he glanced round, shocked. He would never get used to this side of Emma. Unconventional. Provocative. Always teasing him.
‘No one can see! Not unless they’ve got binoculars and are standing on top of the power station chimneys!’ She tapped his lips with her finger. ‘Stuffy.’
‘I know.’ He knew he ought to laugh. But he was cross. He wanted her badly. But there wasn’t time. With a groan he ducked into the living room and went to rummage in the wine rack in the corner behind the kitchen door. ‘Dry Hills Sauvignon OK?’
‘The best! Lovely.’ She was still standing naked on the roof.
‘Em! They will be here in a minute.’
She glanced over her shoulder at him coquettishly, then she relented. ‘OK. I’ll jump in the shower. It will take ten seconds to dress.’ As she passed him she brought her hands to her hips briefly and gave a quick shimmy. ‘Not bad for a thirty-something, eh? And look at the teeth!’ She ducked out of reach and ran to the bathroom. In ten minutes rather than seconds she was dressed, her hair brushed, a quick skim of colour on lips and eyelids and she was ready, once again the cool calm City woman, fit partner for a potential director of Evans Waterman, one of the largest City broking houses.
In the event Derek and Sue were half an hour late. By the time they arrived the hors d’oeuvres were laid out on the wrought-iron table, the wine was chilled, the table was laid and the duck and the salad prepared, the duck locked securely away from the enthusiastic attention of the cats.
It was as they moved on to the coffee at the end of the meal that the subject of weekend cottages arose. ‘We have a place in Normandy, you know.’ Sue leaned back against the sofa cushions and crossed her ankles. ‘It would be lovely if you could both come over for a few days.’
Outside, the roof terrace was dark, lit by two shaded lights hidden amongst the flower pots. A gentle breeze wafted the smell of the hot London night into the window. Sue sipped at her coffee. The two cats were asleep on one of the deckchairs outside. ‘Have you ever thought of buying somewhere yourselves?’
‘No.’
‘Yes.’
Piers and Emma spoke at the same moment and they all laughed.
‘Sounds like a fundamental difference of opinion,’ Derek commented as he reached for his brandy glass. As so often, he found himself wondering how Piers managed to hang on to this lovely spontaneous creature.
‘That’s because we haven’t discussed it yet.’ Emma climbed to her feet and went over to pick up her bag which was lying on the side table. ‘I saw something today which intrigued me so much, I want to go and see it.’ She found the folded page and brought it back to the sofa. ‘It’s a little farmhouse in Essex.’
‘Essex!’ Sue hooted. ‘Oh, my dear, I think you could do better than that.’ She held out her hand for the picture.
‘Essex is quite nice, actually,’ Derek put in mildly. He raised an eyebrow in his wife’s direction. ‘The Essex they joke about is in the south of the county, part of the greater London area. But if you go up to the north you have wonderful countryside and lovely villages and towns. Constable country. You’re miles and miles from London there. It’s very rural.’ He held out his hand for the magazine page which Sue had glanced at and dropped dismissively on the coffee table. ‘This one, is it?’ He tapped the photo. ‘It looks a lovely place. Perfect weekend material. Good sailing up there. Do you sail, Piers?’
Piers had risen to his feet. ‘No, I don’t,’ he said briskly. ‘Weekend cottages are not my thing, I’m afraid.’ He looked angry. ‘Emma knows that. I can think of nothing I would like less than pottering about “doing it myself”, mowing grass and being nice to hay-seed neighbours! I hate the country! I was stuck in deep country as a child and I couldn’t wait to get away. I can still remember my parents vegetating, telling me to go bird watching, trying to make me interested in nature, for God’s sake! I couldn’t wait to get away and I will never, never go back!’
There was a moment’s intense silence.
‘Oh, well!’ Emma forced herself to laugh. ‘There goes that idea!’ She took the cutting from Derek’s hand and, folding it, tucked it into her pocket. ‘More brandy, anyone?’
Derek and Sue left early – ‘It’s been a long week, old things, bed for us, I think,’ – but it was after midnight by the time Emma and Piers had stacked the dishwasher and carried two more brandies out onto the roof terrace.
‘Do you think they enjoyed it at all?’ Emma was staring out into the luminosity of the London night.
‘Yes, of course they did.’
‘They left a bit soon.’
‘Like Derek said, they were tired.’ He leaned his elbows on the parapet, rolling the glass between his hands. ‘Don’t worry about it. They have asked us to go to Normandy, don’t forget. And while you and Sue were brewing that second pot of coffee he told me it’s OK.’ He turned to her and she saw the triumph in his face. ‘I’m going to be asked to join the board.’
‘Oh Piers, I’m so glad. Why didn’t you tell me at once?’
‘I wanted to wait till we had a glass in our hand. I wanted us to drink to the future. My future and our future.’ He held her gaze for a moment. ‘And I wanted to tell you when we were on our own because I think we should get married, Em.’
For a moment she didn’t move, and he could read the conflicting emotions on her face as clearly as if she were speaking out loud. Elation – that first, at least – worry, doubt, excitement, caution, then that moment which he recognised so well when she withdrew inside herself, her eyes suddenly unfocused as though viewing the future on some mysterious invisible internal screen. He waited. It would only take seconds for her private computation to take place. Until she had done it, he had learned to wait.
He felt a warm pressure against his ankle. Max was circling his feet, purring. He bent to pick the cat up, tickling him under his chin. ‘Well?’ He glanced at Emma and grinned. ‘So far I am not overwhelmed by your enthusiasm.’
She smiled. Reaching forward, she gave him a quick kiss on the lips. ‘I love you, P. You know that. And I want to live with you forever and ever.’
‘I can feel a “but” coming.’
‘No. It’s just –’ She hesitated, then putting her glass down on the parapet beside him she reached into her pocket. ‘When we talked about country cottages earlier, you were pretty damning.’ She unfolded the cutting. ‘It didn’t sound to me as though there was any room for compromise.’ She reached out absent-mindedly and rubbed the cat’s ears. ‘We’ve never talked about the sort of future that marriage means, P. Kids. Gardens. A life beyond EC1.’
‘And why should we? That’s all for the future, surely. Nothing we have to think about yet. In the abstract, yes, I’d like kids one day. If you would.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘I’ve never had any sense that you are hearing the time-clock ticking, Em. My God, that’s years off, surely.’
She laughed. ‘Not so many. I’ve reached the dreaded thirties, don’t forget.’ She reached over for Max, who climbed into her arms and draped himself across her shoulder with a contented purr. ‘I want to go and see this cottage. This weekend.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ He snatched the cutting from her hand. ‘Em, this is silly. What is it with this place? You know we can’t go this weekend. I’m playing squash with David tomorrow. You’ve asked your mother and Dan over. I’ve got a report to write. We have a hundred and one things to do.’ He moved over to the lamp and held the cutting so he could see it more clearly. ‘Three acres. A commercial herb nursery for God’s sake, Em. This isn’t even a country cottage. It’s a business. Look, if you’re so keen on the idea of a cottage why don’t we go down to Sussex or somewhere and take a look. Or why not France? Now that’s an idea. Derek said property there is still a fantastic investment.’
‘I don’t want it as an investment.’ Letting the cat jump to the ground, she threw herself down on one of the cushioned chairs. ‘In fact, I don’t know that I want it at all.’ There was a sudden note of bewilderment in her voice. ‘I just want to go and see it. I remember it from when I was a child. It’s a cottage I used to dream about. I built a whole fantasy world around it. It means a lot to me, Piers, and if it’s on the market …’ She shrugged. ‘Maybe it’s meant to be.’
He gave a short laugh. ‘Not for me, it isn’t. I told you what I think about the country.’
‘Well, I want to go and see it at least. As soon as possible. Tomorrow. I’m going to ring the agent first thing.’
‘Well, if you do go, you go without me.’ He threw the cutting down on her lap. ‘The place has probably gone anyway. Did you see the date at the bottom of the page? The magazine was three weeks old.’
3
For a long time Emma lay awake listening to Piers’s even breathing. They had tried to patch things up; to paper over the awkwardness; but it hadn’t worked. The night seemed to have grown chilly suddenly and going inside they had closed the windows and drifted, apart, towards the bedroom. When Emma had emerged from her long soak in the bath, Piers was sound asleep.
It was impossible not to toss and turn, and after what seemed like an interminable attempt to relax and follow suit Emma got up and walked through into the kitchen. Two alert pairs of eyes watched her from the kitchen table.
‘You know you’re not supposed to sit there,’ she commented half-heartedly, but she made no attempt to move them. Without bothering to turn on the main lights she opened the fridge door. The interior light illuminated the kitchen, filling it with a subdued eerie glow as she poured herself a glass of iced spring water. Slamming the door shut again, she walked on in the semi-darkness into the living room. The faint echoes of the evening were still there. The richness of wine and coffee, of Sue’s scent, the sharp aroma of brandy from the glass Piers had put down on the low table as he walked past on his way to bed.
Emma threw herself down on the sofa and closed her eyes. The curtains were open and a faint light seeped into the room outlining the furniture, reflecting flatly from the cut-glass bowl of roses on the table. Two black shadows padded silently from the kitchen and leaped lightly onto the sofa back to sit close to her, like bookends in the silence of the room.
She sighed and closed her eyes.
In her dream it was the year of Our Lord, 1646. The cottage was very small, the rooms dark, but the garden was bright and neat, a riot of colour. She stood by the gate, her back to the church, staring round, and she knew she was smiling. Hollyhocks and mallow crowded the beds with roses and honeysuckle vying for position on the front wall. She could feel the sun hot on her back as she pushed open the gate and walked up the path. She knew she ought to knock, but the front door was open and she ducked inside.
‘Liza? Where are you?’ She heard her own voice without surprise. ‘Liza? I’ve brought you some pasties from my father’s kitchens.’ She had a basket on her arm, she realised suddenly, the food inside succulent and still warm beneath a white linen napkin. She put it down on the table and went to the foot of the narrow steep staircase. ‘Liza? Are you up there?’
The house was silent. The only sound came from the sudden piping calls of the young swallows in their nests hanging under the untidy thatch.
She ran up the stairs, feeling suddenly anxious, and peered round the room. The small box bed was empty, the patchwork cover neatly spread across it. A coffer chest in the corner was the only other furniture.
‘Liza?’ She ran downstairs again, very conscious of the emptiness of the house. ‘Liza, where are you?’
Outside there wasn’t a breath of wind. The heat was overwhelming. Humid. Uncomfortable. The swallows were silent now. Nothing moved. She tiptoed along the path and peered round the corner to the patch where Liza grew some of her herbs. She had thyme there, and rosemary. Vervain. Cinquefoil. St John’s Wort. Elecampane. Horehound. A basket lay on the ground nearby and a pair of silver scissors. Emma bent and picked them up. ‘Liza?’ Her voice sounded strangely muted out here. And it echoed as if coming from a long way away. There was a piece of green ribbon tied around the mulberry tree. She stared at it for a long time, then slowly she turned back towards the gate. From the lane she could see down towards the blue waters of the estuary in the distance. The tide was in. Two boats were sailing in towards the shore. She stopped to watch them for a moment; only when she raised her hand to her face to brush away a tear did she realise she was crying.
When Emma woke, wondering where she was, she found her cheeks still wet with tears. By the time she had fallen asleep again her mind was made up. She would go and see the cottage in the morning and if Piers didn’t want to go with her then she would go alone.
4
Saturday
Mike Sinclair, dressed in an open-necked shirt and jeans, was standing in the kitchen of his rectory gazing down at the toaster, watching the red elements slowly browning the flabby white slices he had extracted from the bag of Co-op bread his cleaning lady had bought for him two days before. He sighed. He must make time to do his own shopping from time to time. In vain he wrote brown bread on the list, sometimes wholemeal, underlined. White and flabby was what he always got.
The two slices of toast leaped in the air and fell back into their slots. He whisked them out onto a plate and, picking up his mug of coffee carried both over to the table. Butter, still in its paper and already liberally anointed with yesterday’s toast crumbs, stood there waiting together with a jar of Oxford Marmalade. He grinned to himself. In spite of the bread it was still his favourite breakfast and it was going to be another glorious day. He had to spend most of it in his study catching up on paperwork and going over his sermon one more time, but it was still very early and there was going to be time for a walk.
He had only been in the parish a few months and he was still feeling his way with both congregation and geography. The best time to explore, he had discovered, was the early morning when the streets and lanes were comparatively empty and he could wander round without being accosted by his parishioners. So, he would allow himself a couple of hours to eat and walk before coming back inside and facing the pile of papers in his study.
Breakfast complete, headlines from the paper which had appeared on his doormat scanned – he had been amused to see when he had first arrived that the lady from the paper shop had assumed he would read the Telegraph, so he had gone in to thank her, congratulate her on her business acumen in snaring a new customer and tactfully amended the order to The Times – it was time to set out.
The rectory stood back in its garden down a long gravel drive at the end of Church Street. It was not the old rectory, of course – that had burned down a hundred years before – but an old house none the less, acquired by the church in the 1920s as a fit home for a parson and his then large family. It was a big house for one man, but Mike had been enormously pleased to find his new parish was not one of those which had decided a characterless modern bungalow was a fitting habitation for its rector.
It was a pleasant Georgian-fronted building, painted a pale Suffolk pink, the interior probably Elizabethan and heavily beamed. He would try and find out about some of its earlier history one day when he was not so busy. The garden, he had noted sadly, was, apart from a few lovely trees, more or less devoid of interest. It was not very big, which was probably just as well, given the fact that he suspected he would have little time to give to it and there would be no money from either his own pocket or the diocese for a gardener. Wonderfully, he had managed to secure the services of a cleaning lady two mornings a week. Probably not for long. He doubted if he could afford her forever. It had been a shock when he realised just how small in real terms his stipend would be as a country parson. He gazed at the grass. It was as always neatly mown and as always he wondered who on earth had done it. One of the PCC perhaps, choosing a moment when they knew he would be out, or one of the other kind people who had offered him their services when he had first arrived in the parish. Many had offered help. The two food baskets – to stave off starvation, he supposed – which had greeted his arrival, had from time to time been discreetly replaced and two ladies had offered to cook him the occasional meal.
He grinned to himself. Several people, including the bishop, had warned him about the ladies. An unmarried, good-looking rector in his early forties – Mike was broad-shouldered, fair-haired, blue-eyed – would be a major target once they had decided amongst themselves that he wasn’t gay!
Slamming the door, he headed for the gate. Church Street was, up here at the top, actually more of a lane. Beyond his house, the church itself sat serenely in its churchyard sheltered by three huge yew trees, a surprisingly rural setting when one considered that Manningtree was actually a small town – the smallest town in England, so someone had told him – and that over the hedge he could see lines of old roofs rising gently up the hillside.
This early, the road was deserted. He strode down it purposefully, passing between houses much like his own, except that where it descended into the centre of the town they were terraced and what gardens they had were hidden by high walls. Down on the corner where Church Street met the High Street the last two houses had been converted into double-fronted shops, but a glance at the roofs showed that they too were as old as the rest of the street. One of them, he had noticed, had been empty since he moved in.
In the High Street he turned east, round the corner and down to the River Stour to walk along the road which bordered the narrow strip of salt marsh and the mudflats which were such a characteristic of the river at this point. He passed a solitary dog walker who acknowledged him with a raised hand and continued on his way. He loved this walk. Strolling along under the sycamores which lined the road to Mistley, the second half of his parish, he followed the pavement which on his right ran parallel to the long wall which once had bounded the great Rigby estates, a feature which had given the road its name, ‘The Walls’, whilst on his left lay breathtaking views of water, mud and sky. He stopped and stared for several minutes. The tide was out, the river estuary mostly mud, the low Suffolk coast on the far side hidden in the early morning mist. The shore was blue and mauve with sea lavender and tiny yellow-centred asters and as he walked slowly on he became aware of multitudes of birds running about on the mud. He wasn’t very good at bird identification but he could recognise a seagull when he saw one, and swans, and what he thought might be oystercatchers, with their smart black-and-white plumage and red bills.
He was heading for the second of the churches in his sprawling parish of Manningtree with Mistley, the one which, he admitted wryly to himself, fascinated him probably far more than it warranted. When he had first arrived he had asked to be shown it several times. He knew of course that it was a ruin, but surely, he had thought, there would be something to see. He knew he was a bit of a romantic, a side of himself he tried sternly to keep under control, but he did feel, quite strongly, that even a ruined church would still have an aura of sanctity about it. Perhaps he would be able to hold the occasional service in the ruins. He had not at the time had the chance to put this idea to anyone locally and perhaps that was just as well. His first few requests to see it had somehow not been heard. And this lack of response had intrigued him. He had investigated its history and found amongst other things that it might have been the burial place of the notorious Witchfinder General. He had of course gone looking for it himself at the first opportunity. What he found had disappointed him, but he had driven past on a rainy day. Today he was on foot and it was a glorious morning and he wanted to see if he could find out why the church had been allowed to fall into decay. Why it had been demolished.
Cutting through the centre of Mistley with its irresistible combination of Victorian industrial buildings, old Maltings and quay, its famous Adam Towers and swan fountain, its lovely houses and cottages, he made his way inland up a short track towards the path across the fields. He loved Mistley. The centre of the village was very small and these days so quiet it was hard to picture it as the bustling town it had once been.
The ruins of the old church lay up a narrow road beyond New Mistley, opposite the lane up which he strolled. Beyond, across the shoulder of the hill, he could see glimpses of the broad estuary, the water brilliant blue beneath the clear sky. There was a wind out there. He could see a white sail tacking out towards the sea, but inland it was very still, and the air was growing hotter. He could smell the wild honeysuckle in the hawthorn hedges, and the hot floury scent of the stubble in the fields.
He paused, looking round. There was still no one about. It was extraordinarily quiet. Turning slowly he found himself wishing suddenly that he had a dog to walk. It would be company on his early-morning strolls. In the distance he could see the huddled roofs of the small hamlet of Old Mistley, while behind him sprawled the houses of the new developments. But here, in the fields he was completely alone.
The site of the church was unmarked. All he could see was the brick wall which had surrounded the churchyard. It was almost buried under brambles and nettles now and behind it was what looked like a small orchard or paddock. There was no sign of the church itself at all. Within living memory, so he understood, the tower had still been standing and had been used to conduct funerals, then it had been declared unsafe and demolished. The site had been sold.
On the opposite side of the road was a pink-washed cottage, set back behind a wild tangled hedge. Its windows were dark and bare of curtains. A drunken-looking For Sale sign lounged beside the gate.
‘Can I help you?’
A stocky, bearded man had appeared in the lane behind him, two black labradors waiting patiently at his heels. The man’s eyes were hard with suspicion.
Mike shook his head. ‘I was just looking. I wondered if anything remained of the old church.’
‘It’s long gone.’ The man’s expression did not invite confidences and Mike found himself biting back his intention of introducing himself.
‘A shame,’ he said mildly.
‘Damn good thing. Evil place! You keep out of there. It’s private property.’ Whistling to his dogs, the man walked on up the road.
Mike exhaled loudly. Evil? No, how can it be, it’s church property, he wanted to shout. Mine! But of course it wasn’t true. Not any more. He watched the retreating back for a minute or two, then resumed his inspection of the site. As far as he could see there were no yew trees, no grave stones, no sign at all that there had ever been a church there except for the wall, and, he squinted through the nettles, the twisted remains of a gate lying below what had once been a gatepost deep in the undergrowth.
The wall beyond it, round the corner, had begun to crumble away. Without giving himself time to think Mike pushed his way through the nettles and scrambled over the broken bricks into what had once been the churchyard itself. Branches swung across behind him and within seconds he was totally screened from the road. He smiled to himself. It probably wasn’t wise for the rector to be caught trespassing but on the other hand his curiosity had been intensified by the man’s aggressive manner.
He moved forward into a patch of sunlight and stared round. He could see signs of old walls now, and a faint rectangular depression in the ground where the church must have stood. The whole area was thickly wooded. As far as he remembered from its description in The Lost Parish Churches of Essex it had been a beautiful medieval church with nave, aisle, porch and tower. The village had moved, the population drifting down the hill towards the bustle of the small port on the river’s edge, but that did not explain why it had been so completely lost. After all, there were other remote churches around; churches in the centre of a field or a wood and they had not been pulled down. They had been treasured and preserved. The voice of the man in the lane echoed suddenly in his head. ‘Evil place!’ he had said. Why evil? Was it something to do with Matthew Hopkins and the witches, or was it something else? Something infinitely older? An ancient ash tree shaded the ground and everywhere there were hawthorns and elders, heavy with ripening berries. The grass was kept short, he saw now, by some half-dozen sheep which were grazing on the far side of the trees. It was a beautiful, peaceful place. He took a couple of steps forward and paused. The birds had fallen silent. He shivered as a shadow fell across the ground at his feet.
Why exactly had they demolished the church? And if it was because it had grown dangerous, why had they allowed that to happen? And why had they to all intents and purposes flattened the graveyard? Not a single stone survived upright as far as he could see. And why, on this once-hallowed ground, was there not even one single cross as a memorial to the building that had once stood here?
Slowly he turned. The sun had disappeared behind a single stormy cloud and the warmth of colour had gone out of the morning. Making his way towards the gate he found himself conscious suddenly that someone was watching him. The skin on the back of his neck prickled and he glanced round again. He could see no one.
‘Hello?’ His voice sounded curiously flat in the silence. ‘Is there someone there?’
There was no answer.
By the distant wall the leaves rustled briefly and he swung round. ‘Hello?’ he called again. The wall was in shadow now, the bricks uneven, covered in moss and ivy. Something moved suddenly and he focused on it carefully. A tiny, mouse-like brown bird was running in and out amongst the ivy. A wren. He watched it for a minute and found he was smiling, his sudden tension defused.
Making his way back to where the gate had been he stared down at the gap in the wall. It had been filled with barbed wire. A rusty chain which had once held the gate closed dangled emptily in space. He fingered it slowly, then climbed back over the wall. Clearly he wasn’t the first to do so. He could see the signs now of other feet on the crumbling mortar, bent and broken vegetation, an old footprint set into the mud, long dried and baked in the August sun.
Once in the lane, he turned away from the church and began to walk briskly back towards Mistley. Next time he came up here he would drive up the hill, wear his dog collar and make a few calls. Whilst attending to his parochial duties he could ask a few questions about the church that was no more. He did not even glance at the cottage across the road.
5
Lyndsey Clark had lived in Mistley for five out of her twenty-five years. She knew every inch of this place – the church ruins, the churchyard, Liza’s – and regarded them all as her own. She had recognised the rector as soon as he had emerged from the path across the field and she watched curiously to see what he was up to, catching her breath suspiciously as he climbed into the churchyard, creeping forward in the shelter of the hawthorns to see what he was going to do. He shouldn’t be here. She shivered violently. He was disturbing the place, she could sense it already, although – she frowned, her head cocked like a dog picking up a scent – not intentionally. He didn’t know what he was doing. She shook her head in an anguish of worry suddenly, pushing her short dark hair back off her face.
Leave. Please leave. Quickly. Before you do damage.
Biting her lip, she craned between two branches, her vivid blue eyes focused intently on the figure under the trees.
He was feeling his way. After a while he turned back towards the road, then he stopped and looked straight at her even though she knew he couldn’t see her. She was wearing a dark green T-shirt and black jeans which must have blended into the shadows, and yet – she held her breath. Yes, he was a sensitive. That would be dangerous in a man of the church, although in her admittedly somewhat limited experience, those were rare these days.
She heard the wren in the ivy near her, saw him spot the bird and watch it for a moment, smiling to himself, then he was on his way over the wall and out into the lane. He did not even glance in her direction.
Silently she whispered a thank you to the little bird which had taken his attention. It paused, cocked its head in her direction, bobbed a quick acknowledgement and it was gone.
She gave him a minute or two to get well down the lane, then she made her way to the crumbling part of the wall where it was easy to climb in. The atmosphere, usually, thanks largely to her efforts, so placid and dreamlike, was uncomfortable, the air tense and jumpy. She made her way slowly towards a rough patch of grass where lichen and moss had grown over the foundations of the long-fallen wall. It was near here she felt Hopkins most strongly, the man whose evil haunted her life. It wasn’t the grave, of course, but too many people had thought it was even after the church was finally demolished, the graveyard destroyed, the land deconsecrated. Especially after it was deconsecrated. Their thoughts, their fears, their excitement and their malice had congealed into a tangible weight of sorrow and fear. Most of the time she could contain it. She knew the ways. Counter spell and spell. Prayer. Binding charms. They all worked if one knew what one was doing; all prevented the reality manifesting from the thought. As long as nothing – no one – upset the balance.
Glancing round to make doubly sure no one was there, she fished in the pocket of her jeans for a small pouch. In it were dried herbs. Herbs gathered from the garden at Liza’s. Carefully she scattered the dusty leaves around the inside of the walls before going back to the centre, where she crouched down on the ground and scraped a small hole amongst the grasses with her fingernail. She tucked the pins and the small piece of knotted thread into the soil and covered them, rearranging the grass around the place. In seconds all signs of her intervention had gone. Standing up again she wandered over to a tree stump where for a moment she sat down, the sun on her back. She could hear the bees humming in the flowers nearby. They were calm now, their agitation soothed. If she listened she could hear their gossip, the hive memory, relayed down the years …
The garden had been smaller in Cromwell’s time, enclosed within a picket fence, the small neat beds in summer a riot of undisciplined bounty. Fruit and flowers, herbs and vegetables, all crammed into the spaces between the gravel paths where yet more herbs had seeded in a riot of colour. Marigold and feverfew, dandelion and hyssop, thyme and marjoram. Liza made her way slowly between the rosemary bushes, her basket in her hand, plucking a sprig here, a leaf there as the sun dried the dew and the plant oils began to release their scents into the morning air. She woke at dawn on these summer mornings, glad to lever her aching bones from her bed. As her body bent and grew frail the pain became more intense. It was hard to look up now, the curve of her back was so pronounced. Hard to look at the sky, to see the sun, to watch the birds fly over. Her knowledge and experience of remedies and medicines was of little use to her now. Nothing she did seemed to help. Only the sunshine, with its blessed warmth shining down on her eased her a little. She crooned a greeting to the old cat sitting on the path ahead of her and it rose, coming to rub against her legs, before sitting once more in the patch of sunlight and lifting a fastidious paw to wash its left ear.
She needed horehound and pennyroyal and thyme for young Jane Butcher who was near her time. It would be a long and painful birth if she was any judge. The child in her belly was huge – the babe taking after its father, John Butcher, a large man whose two earlier wives had both died in child bed. Why didn’t he choose a woman with broad hips and meaty thighs like his own? Why did he pick such little child-wives with such narrow bones? She shook her head sadly. Jane was terribly afraid. And with reason. Liza passed on amongst her plants. She needed hyssop and blackberry leaves for her neighbour’s sore throat and a poultice for Sir Harbottle Grimstone’s cowman who had a cut on his hand which was swollen and yellow with undischarged pus. She sighed. They paid well, her customers, and she was happy to help them with their pain, but sometimes she wished there was someone who would help her. Someone to bring her warm soothing possets in the evening, someone to help her change her old woollen gown when the ache in her arms made her cry as she tried to pull it over her head, someone who would take over the garden for her before it ran riot for the last time and took her by the throat and strangled her. She gave a hoarse chuckle at the thought. As long as the plants survived she supposed it was all right. They didn’t need to be as neat as they were when she had first planted out her little medicinal garden. And they would probably outlive her. And Sarah came when she could with a basket of food or a warm shawl or a jug of ale. Sarah, daughter of the manor, her suckling child, the little girl who had replaced her own dead baby at her breast. She pulled her small shears out of her pocket and snipped and cut and tugged at the leaves until the basket was overflowing.
The cat had followed her. It stopped near a patch of catnip and threw itself headfirst into the clump, rolling ecstatically amongst the aromatic leaves and she chuckled again.
On a shelf in the cottage she kept the utensils of her trade meticulously neat. Pestle and mortar, bowls, scoops and jugs, all washed and drained and clean. Baskets and bags of dried herbs hung on hooks from the ceiling beams and boxes were stacked carefully on a table in the corner. She set her basket of fresh pickings down on the table and went to check the fire. The iron pot of water hanging over the coals was nearly boiling.
Jane Butcher’s medicine first.
She worked on for a long time, conscious that the beam of sunlight coming through the kitchen door was moving steadily across the floor. Soon the sun would move round into the south and her kitchen would be shadowy again and cool. Squinting at the jug in her hand she tried to work faster. Once the sun had gone it was harder to see what she was doing and more and more often the thick black tinctures which came from her pots would spill across the scrubbed oak of her table.
Once she stopped and stared at the door, listening. Had that been someone at the gate? She could hear the high-pitched alarm call of a mother bird telling her young to hide low in the nest – a cry understood and acted on by every other bird in the garden. Perhaps it was the old cat which was causing such consternation. His roll in the catnip might have rejuvenated him enough to stalk a bird but somehow she doubted it. She frowned. Her hearing was still acute even if her eyes were growing dim. In the silence of the garden she could hear menace. Slowly putting down her jug and spoon she hobbled to the door and stood looking out. There was no one to be seen. The lane was empty. There was no sign of the cat. But somewhere something was wrong.
Then she saw him, the man standing half hidden in the shade of the old pear tree in the hedge and she recognised him. It was one of Hopkins’s servants. She stared at him for a moment, puzzled. Why was he watching her? Seeing her turn towards him he drew back into the shadows and she saw him clench his fists into the sign against the evil eye before he turned and fled, and in spite of the warmth of the sun across her shoulders and the scents of the herbs around her she suddenly smelled the cold breath of fear.
6
Pulling her MG into the car park near the Co-op Emma crawled slowly between tightly packed rows of cars trying to find a space. ‘Better to park there and walk up to the shop,’ the house agent had said. ‘There’s no parking along the High Street here and not much anywhere on a Saturday.’
How right he was. The place was teeming. Someone backed out in front of her and she turned into the space with relief. She was exhausted. It had been a two-hour drive from London – a drive starting with a row with Piers …
‘I’m sorry. I told you yesterday, I am not going off on some wild goose chase to see a cottage I don’t want in a county I don’t like on a weekend I want to stay at home!’
He had been furious when she confessed she had rung the agent that morning at nine a.m.
‘Yes, you’re right. It is Liza’s.’ The young man’s voice had been hoarse, as though he had a bad cold. ‘Yes, it is still on the market. There’s been a lot of interest, but no one has made a definite offer yet. Yes, you could view it today.’
‘Liza’s.’ She had repeated the name to herself as she hung up. ‘Liza’s Cottage.’
Will Fortingale, the young man at the estate agent’s, did indeed have a bad cold. His nose was red and swollen and he was clutching a large handkerchief as he opened the filing cabinet and pulled out a folder of particulars and a bunch of keys.
‘Do you know how to find it?’ He withdrew a couple of stapled sheets of A4 and handed them to her.
‘It was a long time ago.’
‘Right. Well. It’s not occupied, so they won’t mind you looking round it on your own. You don’t want me to go with you?’ He glanced up anxiously and she saw the relief in his eyes as she shook her head. He had summed her up as she walked through the door. He could always tell a serious buyer and Emma Dickson wasn’t a serious buyer. There was no point in trying too hard with this sale, especially as he was feeling so damn rotten.
She waited whilst he scribbled down some instructions for her, found and photocopied a local map, handed her the keys, then she was out in the street again.
She did not remember Manningtree at all. She stood outside the agent’s shop and stared round in delight. It was a pretty town, the centre consisting as far as she could see of little more than the narrow, busy main road in which she was standing with a couple of other streets crossing it at right angles. She squinted at the map in her hand. She was standing on the corner of Church Street. South Street ran parallel with it fifty yards or so along. All were hung with flower baskets – old houses and shops alike decorated with fuchsia and geraniums, lobelia and ivy. She pressed back against the wall as a car swept by and hesitated for a moment, wondering if she should have a cup of coffee somewhere before going on to see the house. She had left home without having any breakfast, and she had been on the road so long she was feeling quite weak. Besides, she was, she realised, suddenly a little apprehensive about finally going inside the house whose keys were clutched in her hand. The whole enterprise had acquired an emotional overload which had begun to alarm her.
She could see a coffee house from where she was standing outside an empty shop, its windows whitewashed, a For Sale notice hanging from the jettied storey above the front door. As she stood hesitating the door opened and a man came out. Talking hard and looking over his shoulder back into the shop he cannoned into her violently, nearly knocking her off her feet.
‘Oh my God, I’m sorry!’ He grabbed her arm and steadied her as she staggered into the gutter, the cottage keys flying out of her hand. ‘Oh shit! Let me get those. Have I hurt you? Come and sit down a minute.’
Before she knew it she had been drawn through the door into the empty shop and pushed into a folding canvas chair.
‘I’m OK, honestly.’ She had finally got her breath back enough to speak.
‘No you’re not, look at your foot!’
She looked down at her sandalled feet. Below her pink jeans her ankle looked a bit swollen and was already distinctly black. ‘It’s not as bad as it looks, honestly.’ She was overwhelmed and not a little embarrassed by his concern. ‘It’ll be fine.’
The man who was now kneeling at her feet was tall and wiry, probably like her in his mid-thirties. Dressed in blue jeans and a checked shirt he had short cropped dark hair and a long, rather mournful face. ‘It doesn’t look fine to me. I am a clot. I never look where I’m going. Colin, do something!’
Emma had not even realised there was someone else in the room. The man who now stood forward was shortish and solidly built with pepper-and-salt hair, perhaps in his mid-forties. He grinned at her peaceably.
‘My colleague is always flattening people and I constantly find myself picking them up!’ His voice had the unmistakable singsong of the Welsh hills. ‘Would you like a doctor, an ambulance, a bandage, a lawyer or a cup of coffee?’
Emma burst out laughing. ‘I’ll settle for a coffee. That is where I was heading when we bumped into each other.’
‘God, that’s tactful!’ The younger man straightened up. ‘Bumped into each other! I completely bulldozed you.’
‘You’re forgiven!’ Emma was rubbing her foot. ‘Much as I’m enjoying the sympathy this is not a bruise, you know. It’s actually dirt.’
‘Off my great clumping shoes.’ The younger man looked down at his feet ruefully. ‘This place is filthy.’
‘I’ll fetch us some coffee while Mark looks after you.’ The Welshman fished in his pocket for some change. ‘We have made an arrangement with the café next door. They will let us bring real cups across here and they have nice home-made cakes and buns.’ He winked.
‘Are you buying this shop?’ Emma looked round for the first time as he disappeared out into the street. The man she now knew as Mark shook his head. ‘God, no. In fact I gather the shop is almost unsaleable.’ There was another folding chair in the room beside the one in which Emma was seated, and two large metal cases of what looked like cameras and photographic equipment, a heavy coil of cable, two large canvas bags and a spotlight on a tripod. Uneven oak floorboards covered in dusty footmarks and heavily beamed walls and ceiling proclaimed the age of the building. In the far corner a broad flight of stairs led up out of sight. There was an ugly modern counter to one side of them, bare but for a couple of notebooks, two empty coffee cups – presumably from the obliging café next door – pen, light meter and clipboard.
‘You’re photographers?’ Emma waggled her foot experimentally.
‘Film. TV.’ Mark turned to his briefcase and pulled out a pack of Kleenex. He proffered it hopefully. ‘Will this help clean you up? Or there’s a loo upstairs.’
‘Actually I might go up and wash my hands.’ She pulled herself to her feet with a wince.
‘Straight up. You can’t miss it.’ He grinned. It was his lucky day. A beautiful woman, literally, falling at his feet!
Glancing into the upper room from the landing at the top of the stairs she saw that it was large and empty, the windows leaded and dusty. A bluebottle was beating against one of the panes and on the floor below the sill she could see the bodies of several others. She shivered. In spite of the frenzied buzzing of the fly there was a strange stillness in the room which was unnerving.
She found the cloakroom, cleaned off most of the dust, washed her hands and was making her way back towards the empty room when she heard someone walking across the floor towards the staircase. She paused in the doorway, looking round. ‘Mark?’
There was no answer. ‘Mark, are you there?’ The room was empty. The bluebottle was lying on its back on the window sill, spinning feebly in circles. She stepped cautiously into the room. ‘Hello? Is there anyone here?’
The silence was intense, as though someone was holding their breath, listening.
‘Mark? Colin?’ She stared round nervously. ‘Who is it? Who’s there?’
There was no answer.
Retreating to the top of the stairs she glanced back towards the window and caught her breath in surprise. There was someone there, surely. A stooped figure, staring at her across the pile of boxes in the middle of the floor.
Welcome back.
The words seemed to hang in the air.
For a moment she couldn’t move, her eyes locked onto the pale, indistinct face, then a child shouted suddenly in the street below and the moment was over. The figure was gone – a mere trick of the light – the room was empty.
She felt a knot of fear tightening in her chest. Sternly she dismissed it. Hurrying downstairs she limped towards her chair and flung herself down in it, shaken. ‘You weren’t upstairs just now, were you?’
Mark glanced up from the notebook he was writing in. ‘No. Why?’
She shrugged. ‘I thought I heard someone up there.’ Cautiously she began to rub her ankle.
He scrutinised her face for a moment. ‘Really?’
She nodded. ‘It was a bit spooky, to be honest!’ She gave a small apologetic laugh. ‘It was probably my imagination. Did you say you were making a film here?’
Mark nodded. ‘A documentary.’
‘And what is so special about this place? I mean, I can see it’s very old and attractive, but presumably that’s not enough to warrant a film?’
Mark shook his head. ‘No. Well, as I think you might have guessed, it’s part of a series on haunted buildings.’ He gave a wry laugh. ‘You weren’t thinking of buying it, were you?’ He nodded towards the keys lying next to her bag. The estate agent’s tag was large and obvious.
She shivered ostentatiously. ‘Good Lord, no. I was on my way to see a country cottage.’ She frowned uncertainly. ‘Perhaps I’m going mad, but I think I might have seen your ghost up there. A figure, by the window. Does that sound likely?’
Mark stared. ‘It’s possible. What did it look like?’
‘Sort of wan and transparent!’
He grinned. ‘Sounds fairly authentic. I’m jealous. I haven’t seen a thing yet.’
‘It could have been a trick of the light.’
‘True.’ He was watching her closely.
She raised an eyebrow. ‘So, who is this ghost?’ And quite suddenly she didn’t want to know. She quite desperately didn’t want to know. But it was too late. Mark was launching into his story.
‘OK, I’ll tell you the full sordid tale. This shop is so haunted it has been owned or leased by about a dozen different businesses in the last few years. No one stays long and now its reputation goes before it so it’s been on the market for three years.’
‘And you’re going to film the ghost?’ Without realising it Emma had wrapped her arms around herself tightly. She glanced up at the ceiling.
‘That’s the general idea. We heard about it in a roundabout way through one of our scouts who had worked on House Detectives just up the road, and after a bit of research we felt it would fit our series really well. Ah, Colin, sustenance!’
The Welshman had appeared in the doorway with a tray. On it were three large cups of coffee and a plate of cakes. He slid the tray onto the counter. ‘If this project takes more than a day or two I’m going to want danger money for cake overload.’ He passed Emma the plate. ‘Please take the chocolate one because if you don’t I will and I mustn’t.’ He patted his stomach ruefully.
Laughing uneasily, Emma helped herself to a large sticky slice. ‘Anything to oblige.’ She glanced round the room. The atmosphere was better now. Normal. ‘Have you seen it, Colin?’
‘It?’
‘The ghost.’
‘Ah,’ Colin glanced at Mark. ‘No, not yet. And I’d be grateful if you didn’t spread it around why we’re here. We’ve told the café people we’re surveyors. Which I suppose, if one were being a little bit disingenuous, one could say was true. They know the story of course, and they’ll find out in the end why we’re here, but I don’t want every bored kid in town tapping on the windows and wailing at the locks the moment it gets dark if I can help it.’
‘Have you filmed ghosts before?’ In spite of the distraction of the chocolate cake, she couldn’t stop herself thinking about the silent upstairs room with its shadowy occupant.
‘Yup.’ Mark took a bite of coffee and walnut. ‘With mixed results and open to all sorts of questions but Col and I were pretty convinced we’d caught something. The last one was up in Lincolnshire.’
‘This is a difficult one.’ Colin sat down in the other chair. ‘The story involves this whole town. It’s a very emotive subject. This place is supposed to be haunted by several ghosts, amongst them a guy called Matthew Hopkins. He was Oliver Cromwell’s Witch-finder General. One of those all-time villains of history. You must have heard of him? There was a film about him.’
‘A bit before her time!’ Mark grinned. ‘It was a Michael Reeves film. 1968. Our hero was played by Vincent Price, who was fifty-seven years old at the time, although Matthew actually seems to have died before he was twenty-five.’ He sucked his breath in through his teeth. ‘Well, we all know about historical veracity in films. Perhaps we can do something to put some facts in place. There is enough horror in the truth here, from what I gather.’
‘I do remember the film.’ Emma frowned. She was feeling uncomfortable again, ever more aware of that upstairs room. ‘I must have seen it on TV. I don’t know if that was based on fact, but weren’t hundreds of poor old women burned at the stake?’ She shuddered.
‘Ah, well, no.’ Mark squatted down on the floor beside one of the bags and drew out a file of papers. ‘I’m still researching, but it seems that they weren’t burnt at all. They were hanged. And there weren’t hundreds of them. More like dozens.’
‘Mark is getting all evangelical about this one,’ Colin grinned, almost indulgently. ‘But that is good. We have to get the facts right. Then whatever story there is here will be all the stronger. Hopkins is supposed to have tortured some of his victims in this building – this shop was part of a much larger house originally. It belonged to the Phillips family and Mary Phillips, who worked with Matthew Hopkins, lived here at some point. She was a really nasty piece of work. She pricked the witches with a vicious spike to find the Devil’s mark.’
‘Oh, that’s awful.’ Emma stood up. ‘Is that her I saw upstairs?’ Suddenly she was shivering violently.
‘You saw something?’ Colin stared at her. ‘A psychic, eh? Bloody hell! And you’ve only been here two minutes! Well, perhaps we can use you to entice the ghosts out for us.’
‘I don’t think so!’ Emma shuddered. ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘No, it was my imagination.’
Mark grinned. ‘You’ve gone quite white. There’s nothing to be scared of – not in broad daylight.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘As you say it was probably a trick of the light. The trouble is, once stories like this one start going round they take off like wildfire, then everyone who sees a shadow thinks it’s a ghost, and then it’s hard to separate out the objective from the subjective from the downright lies. Although as Colin says, there seems to be so much round here that’s quite sinister, almost as though –’ He paused and shrugged. ‘I don’t know. There’s a sort of evil ambience about this place. Not just the shop, but this whole area.’ He paused thoughtfully. ‘Odd, when it’s all so pretty. Sorry. Take no notice. We’re going to be very objective about this, aren’t we, Col? We’re conducting interviews over the next week or so and of course we’ll be filming in here day and night. It’s a good opportunity while the shop is empty. They’re arranging yet another short let and once that’s under way we won’t be able to get in.’
Emma shook her head. ‘Well, you certainly have an intriguing job! I suppose this is for the telly?’
‘It certainly is.’ Mark nodded.
‘I shall look forward to seeing it.’ She hesitated. ‘It feels really spooky up there, whatever it was I saw.’
Mark and Colin exchanged glances. ‘I think so,’ Mark said quietly.
‘I try not to.’ Colin grinned affably. ‘I don’t want my hand shaking while I’m filming.’ He paused, his head on one side. ‘I don’t suppose you fancy being in the film? You could regale us with what you saw just now.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘OK.’ He grinned. ‘Worth a try. Here, have some more cake.’
Laughing, she shook her head. ‘I must go.’ Gathering up her bag and map, she picked up the bunch of keys. ‘Thank you for your hospitality. Perhaps if I buy my cottage I’ll see you around?’
Mark shrugged. ‘Maybe. Good luck with the viewing. I hope it is all you dreamed of.’ His gaze followed her to the door. Turning to raise a hand in farewell as she closed it behind her she didn’t see the wistful appreciation in his eyes or hear Colin’s resigned chuckle. ‘Give up, Mark! She’s gone.’
7
Emma remembered Mark’s final words as she drew up outside the cottage and switched off the car engine. Dozing in the sun behind its curtain of roses it was pink-washed with black beams. Half the roof was thatched, the other half roofed in old lichen-covered tiles and it stood sideways to the lane at its junction with a smaller, narrower road heading off into the country, set well back behind a wall of overgrown garden. She climbed out of the car and for a moment stood still, just staring. It was enchanting.
The gate was broken, the once-black paint peeling off in brittle flakes, looking too frail to touch. She was reaching out to push it open when she became conscious suddenly that someone was watching her. She turned round. A young woman was standing a hundred yards away holding a bicycle, staring at Emma with undisguised hostility. As she saw Emma spot her, she climbed onto the bike and pedalled off. Emma shrugged and turned back to the gate. If someone else had wanted to buy the cottage they presumably had had time by now to do something about it. So why should they resent someone looking at the place? Cautiously pushing the gate back on its hinges she let herself into the garden. The flowerbeds were alive with bees and butterflies, a mosaic of bright scented colour. It was the cottage of her childhood memories, her fantasies, of the dream she only hazily recalled. The woman in the lane was already forgotten. Taking a step forward, she stopped again. It was strange. Although as far as she knew she had never set foot inside the gate, she did seem to know it all so well. She knew where each flowerbed lay, beneath the tangle of untended shrubs and weeds, she knew where the pump handle was, to the side of the front door, she remembered the medlar tree and the mulberry and the blackthorn and the pear in the hedge, the apples in the back garden and the circular beds separated with large round lumps of stone and flint.
Shaking her head she sniffed and she realised suddenly to her astonishment that she was crying. Brushing her cheek with the back of her hand she took a few slow paces towards the door. Only then did she realise that she had been so eager to climb out of the car and look at the house that she had left the keys on the passenger seat. Retracing her steps, she found them. There were six on the bunch. Two front door keys, a back door key and three shed keys. Selecting the most likely with a shaking hand, she inserted it into the lock. It clicked back easily and she found herself pushing the door open. But she already knew, without having set foot inside, that she was going to buy this house, whatever the cost, financially or emotionally. She couldn’t live without it.
In the excitement of the moment she did not give Piers a thought.
The hall was dark. It smelled of rich, sun-warmed wood and dust. She stepped over the pile of circulars and junk mail on the mat and stood, holding her breath.
Welcome home, Emma.
The voice in her head was quiet, but clear. The same voice that she had heard in the shop, surely, but this time it wasn’t frightening. It was warm. Enticing. It enfolded her.
She smiled and took a step forward.
I have waited a long time for you to come, my dear.
She frowned. And in spite of herself she shivered. It was her imagination, of course it was, but just for a moment it sounded as though the voice came from outside herself. She glanced round nervously. It was Mark and Colin’s fault, with all their talk of ghosts. How silly. There was no one there. No one at all.
This is your house now, Emma. Yours and mine. We’re going to live here together, Emma. You’ll be happy here, Emma.
The voice was inside her head again, almost as though it were part of her. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. When she opened them, the voice had gone.
‘Is there anyone there?’
Of course there wasn’t. How could there be? She was just being foolish.
There were two downstairs living rooms and a largish kitchen, all heavily beamed. The narrow oak staircase led up from the hall to a landing off which there were three bedrooms, one of which, overlooking the front garden and the lane, was by far the nicest and instantly ear-marked by Emma as her own, and a small bathroom which looked as though it had last been modernised forty years ago. The whole place was dusty and shabby, but it exuded a wonderful feeling of peace and happiness. Upstairs the rooms smelled of flowers. It felt like home.
It is home, Emma!
Again, the strange voice in her head. Seductive. Gentle. Insistent. Her friend.
‘It is, isn’t it!’ Emma smiled as she discovered she had spoken out loud. ‘You’re right, whoever you are. This is home!’
She spent the whole afternoon at the cottage wandering round, sitting in first one room then another, exploring the garden, poking around in the outbuildings, totally and completely happy. The gardens were, if she were completely honest with herself, all that she had ever wanted without even knowing that she harboured any such longing at all: sprawling, untidy, packed with flowers and herbs, begging for someone to come and work on them and love them and coax them back into shape. As she stood at the rear of the cottage, surveying the scene, she could feel every fibre of her being aching to get to work, to plunge her hands into the soil, to pick the few remaining roses and bury her face in the soft damask petals. This place had been a nursery. It had been a business. It would be a way of life to whoever bought it. It could be a herb nursery again. It could be a business again, under her ownership.
It was as she glanced at her watch and realised that she would have to leave to catch the agent before he closed that the panic started and the image of the young woman who had glared at her in the lane returned with full force. That woman did not want her to buy the cottage. Why?
Will Fortingale was just about to go home. His secretary had already left and he was tidying away the papers on his desk when Emma opened the door and came in. He smiled at her wearily. ‘What did you think?’
‘I love it.’ She put the keys down on the desk.
‘You do?’ His eyes brightened perceptibly. ‘Of course, it’s been empty for a long time. It needs a lot doing to it. The last owner ran the nursery but they didn’t live in the house. They’ve got a place up in Bradfield. I think they let the house from time to time to holiday makers, but otherwise it’s been empty as you probably realised.’ He paused, sizing her up with a quick glance from beneath his eyelashes. Re-assessing her. Well-heeled, but no fool. ‘They would probably take a lower offer. It’s been on the market a while.’
‘Who was Liza?’
He was taken aback by the question. ‘I’ve no idea. Some old biddy who lived there, I suppose. The Simpsons might know. That’s the current owners.’ He glanced at his watch, torn between wanting to hang on to a potential customer and wanting to lock up and go home.
Emma smiled at him anxiously. ‘I’m prepared to put in an offer. Today. Now. You said no one else is interested? But I saw a woman up there watching me.’ She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, still embroiled in her inner turmoil. Her hands were shaking. This was madness but she could feel waves of real panic constricting her chest.
Will Fortingale laughed. ‘Probably a nosy neighbour. To be honest no one has been up there to look for a couple of weeks. There was a flurry of interest after the ad in Country Life, but that fizzled out.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s got too much land for a weekend cottage and not enough for a viable business.’ Glancing at her, he raised an eyebrow. ‘I presume you want it for the former?’
‘No.’ Emma spoke without thinking. ‘I’d live there permanently –’ She stopped abruptly. That was nonsense. Complete nonsense. How could she live there? Of course it would be a weekend cottage. If that.
She found herself groping for one of the chairs in front of Will’s desk. Sitting down, she rubbed her face with her hands. Piers would never agree. She couldn’t do this. Not without talking to him. It was madness. Complete madness.
‘Are you all right?’ Will was watching her carefully. He had recognised some of her feelings at once; he’d seen it all before. The falling in love with a house, the longing, the day-dream-could-happen syndrome. Sitting there opposite him she was within seconds of making some fantasy come true. Usually people hesitated at this point, back-pedalled a bit, played for time. Either they would offer a sum so ludicrously low that there was no chance of it being accepted and their face would be saved, or they would disappear without trace – the dream confronted, acknowledged and rejected as impractical.
He walked round to the front of the desk. ‘Can I get you a glass of water?’ Her face was pasty and white.
She nodded, clenching her hands together and waited as he disappeared into the cupboard at the back of the office which served as a kitchenette and reappeared with a glass and some bottled water.
She drank it greedily and put the empty glass down on his desk. The voice in her head had returned, no longer seductive. This time it was insistent.
You’ve got to buy it, Emma. You’ve got to. We’ve waited too long for this chance. Buy it, Emma!
She took a deep breath. ‘I have to have it. I can’t explain it. It’s completely stupid.’ The anguish in her voice was real. What about her job? She loved her job. But did she really enjoy working in the City? Was that going to be her whole life, forever? Until she retired? Was that what she really wanted? Had that voice been her inner self speaking? An inner self who wanted to opt out, to return to that golden time when she was a child, before her father died, when life was full of certainty.
And what about Piers?
She looked near to tears and in spite of himself Will bit his lip in sympathy. ‘Why not sleep on it, Miss Dickson? No one else has made an offer.’ There he was again, telling her! What was the matter with him? ‘You could safely take a day or two to think about it. Maybe go and see it again? Maybe bring someone for a second opinion?’ He paused. He did quite badly want her out of the office, he realised suddenly. She was making him feel extremely uncomfortable. Anxiety – even fear – was coming off her in waves.
She was sitting with her eyes shut and for a moment he didn’t think she had heard him until he realised that she was staring at him again. ‘What sort of offer will they accept?’
He hesitated, toying with the idea of inflating the price, but something made him hold back. He shook his head remorsefully. ‘They’d accept fifty K under the asking price. To get rid of it quickly.’
‘All right.’ Her voice was tightly controlled. ‘I’ll go for it.’ She could afford it. She had her savings and her father’s trust money and he would have approved of this, she was sure of it. He had always been an enthusiast.
‘But you’ll want a survey?’ Will couldn’t cope with this spontaneity. It didn’t fit the norm.
‘No.’ Shaking her head she stood up. She went and stood by the window, gazing out into the street. The empty shop across the road where she had passed her unexpected coffee break that morning was deserted, the front door padlocked. She turned back to Will. ‘Ring them. Now. Check they’ll accept it.’ Her knuckles were white on the edge of his desk. ‘And a deposit. They’ll want a deposit –’
‘Not before Monday, Miss Dickson.’ Will found himself seriously worried now. ‘Honestly. If you want it, it’s yours.’ He reached into the file to find the phone number. Glancing up, he indicated the chair. ‘Please, sit down again while I phone them.’ He smiled at her. ‘Relax. I’m sure there won’t be a problem.’
8
Saturday lunchtime
‘I suggest we do the interviews upstairs.’ Colin, having taken the tray back to the coffee shop, was adjusting the lens on his camera. ‘The wall up there would be a good background. The herringbone brickwork or whatever it is.’
Joe Thomson, their sound man, had joined them at lunchtime with his daughter Alice who was going to act as production assistant. Joe at forty-two was balding, very tall and thin. His daughter had inherited his height and build. At eighteen she was already as tall as her father. With short cropped hair and studs in eyebrows and nose she appeared far more confident and outgoing than in fact she was. This was her first assignment – a gap job before going up to university. Half of her was determined she would not blow it. The other half was scared stiff.
Colin and Mark had been in Manningtree for two days now, staying at a bed and breakfast in Brook Street, and Joe and Alice had joined them after driving down from London. The first day had been wasted for Colin and Mark when the expected key had not been forthcoming and Stan Barker, the owner, had proved extraordinarily elusive. They had only run him to earth that first evening at the pub, so their first visit to the shop had been perhaps appropriately after dark. The atmosphere had been suitably sinister.
After the visit Mark had slept uneasily and woken early. The second night he had been shocked awake by the sound of someone screaming. Splashing his face in cold water he had stood for several minutes in the bathroom of the bed and breakfast, staring into the mirror before he had tiptoed back to his bedroom. The sound had been part of his dream, he knew that. And yet, somehow it had come from outside him. He climbed back into bed and sat there, with the table light on, huddled beneath the bedcovers fighting sleep. When at last he had dozed off he dreamed he was running down a dark road and there were people chasing him. He could hear them shouting, baying like hounds and growing closer all the time. He was still running, out of breath and drenched in sweat, when his alarm clock woke him.
Mark glanced up at the others from the clipboard. ‘I’m going to want the interviews in different settings. Perhaps some outside by the river, or some of the other places associated with Hopkins. Unless the ghosts appear there’s basically not much to see here. An empty shop. An empty upstairs. But I’d like to get some shots of that staircase if we can light it properly. I’ve got three interviews set up for this afternoon, Joe. Barker first. I’m easy where he goes, wherever he feels most comfortable, then we can fit the others round him.’
‘You don’t think he’ll back out at the last moment?’ Colin hefted the camera up onto the counter.
‘He seemed quite keen.’ Mark flipped over the page and made a quick pencil note on his schedule. ‘I had a moment of inspiration and told him programmes like this lead to dozens of people trying to buy a property after it’s appeared on TV.’
‘Not necessarily after a programme like this one!’ Colin commented dryly.
‘No, well you never know!’ Mark glanced at his watch. ‘Let’s go up and see where it would be best to put him.’
He led the way up the creaking staircase. At the top he stopped, looking into the large upper room. He frowned. Something in there had changed from when he had been in there earlier.
‘Problem?’ Colin was immediately behind him, Joe and Alice at the rear.
‘No.’ Mark walked into the room. The last person up here had been Emma. She had seen something. Felt the atmosphere. He stared round thoughtfully. ‘Feel anything?’
‘Apart from cold?’ The others had trooped in behind him. Colin shivered.
‘Cold is a start. This is August.’
Colin strode over to the window and glanced down into the street. The window sill was level with his knees and he had to stoop to see out of it. ‘We expected bad vibes. What would a haunted house be without them?’ Hunkering down he reached for the window latch and pushed the small casement open. ‘The room just needs a bit of fresh air. This place has horrendous rising damp and probably dry rot and death-watch beetle and every other scourge that old buildings are heir to. Any of that would be enough to put off a buyer, you know.’ He stood up and faced the others. ‘Mark?’
Mark was staring at the brick wall. ‘I saw something move. There. In front of the wall.’ His face had gone white.
They all followed the pointing finger and looked hard at the bricks. The temperature in the room had plummeted. For a moment they stood in total silence, no one daring to move. The traffic noise from the High Street had ceased and the quiet was unnaturally claustrophobic.
‘Can’t see anything. Shall I go down for the camera?’ Colin said quietly. He glanced at Alice. She was gazing at the wall with a slight frown on her face. If she was scared she was hiding it well.
‘No.’ Mark stepped over beside him. ‘No, it’s gone, whatever it was.’
Outside a car hooted.
‘Probably a spider,’ Joe put in firmly. He rearranged his lanky frame, folding his arms nonchalantly.
‘Probably.’ Turning, Mark stared out of the window, taking a deep breath of the air flooding into the room. A strong smell of traffic fumes rose from the street below, where cars paused to pass each other in the narrow thoroughfare. Suddenly the room felt marginally warmer.
The interview took only twenty minutes from beginning to end. They could tell it was going to be a disaster from the moment Stan Barker walked into the shop.
‘I’m not going upstairs.’ He stood, uncomfortable in his best suit, just inside the door.
Colin eyed the florid face, the too-tight collar, the jazzy tie, and glanced at Mark with a raised eyebrow.
Mark gave a barely perceptible shrug. ‘Perhaps you could stand there, at the bottom of the stairs? I just want to ask you a few questions then we’re going to do some shots of the shop itself.’
As interviewer-cum-presenter he was going to remain out of shot. If necessary he could get Colin to insert one or two angles of himself later. They always took a few interviewer shots in case.
‘So, Mr Barker, how long have your family owned number one Church Street?’
Colin, with the camera, had positioned himself beside him; Joe had pinned a mike to Stan’s tie. Stan had the look of a man facing a firing squad.
‘My grandfather bought it just after the war.’ He hesitated. ‘The old house was split into two and turned into shops about the turn of the century, I reckon. The lad as owned this half never come back. His wife wanted shot of the place so it was going for a good price.’
‘And what kind of a shop was it then?’
Mark’s question seemed to floor him. He hesitated, then he shrugged. ‘Butcher. He was a butcher, my granda.’
They were going to have to extricate every word. It was like drawing teeth.
‘And what happened next?’
‘He weren’t well, so he suggested my dad took it over. Well, he didn’t want to be a butcher so he said no. They got a man in to manage it. Old Fred Arrow. He only lasted a year.’
Silence. Stan’s eyes were riveted to the microphone baffle on top of the camcorder.
‘And what happened then?’ Mark prompted quietly. Colin moved smoothly to one side, stepping over the trailing cable, changing the angle.
‘He said he weren’t going to stay another day in the place. Hated it, he did. Said it were haunted. He said he saw Dave Pegram – that’s the lad as was killed in the war – standing on the stairs …’ He broke off and the look he shot over his own shoulder was one of pure terror. Colin smiled. Yes!
‘Well, he went and so did the next chap and then another butcher opened up down the street and Da thought he’d pack it in. So he tried to sell the place. No one was interested. Not as a butcher’s. Then a woman came along in about 1950. She wanted to run it as a bakery. Fancy cakes and things she sold. She lasted a year – maybe a bit longer, but then she saw Dave as well –’
‘When you say she saw Dave,’ Mark interrupted smoothly, ‘would she have recognised him?’
‘No.’ Stan shook his head vigorously. ‘She weren’t local. She’d never met him.’
‘But she described him?’
Stan shrugged. ‘On the stairs, she said. And upstairs. She had a flat up there, above the shop. There were three rooms in them days and then there’s an attic, too. She said he used to walk up and down all night. She’d lie there listening and she could hear him pacing up and down. You might well shiver, young lady!’ He addressed Alice suddenly who, dressed in jeans and a skimpy T-shirt had hugged herself with a shudder as she stood nearby with Mark’s clipboard clasped importantly to her chest. The goose-pimples on her arms were clearly visible.
Mark sighed. It didn’t matter. They could cut that bit.
‘I take it she checked there was no one there?’
‘She wouldn’t go up there. She left. Halfway through the lease, she upped and left. After that there was a whole load of different people. Dress shop. Hardware. Another baker. Bikes. A little tea shop once. None of them stayed.’
‘And I understand you asked for the shop to be exorcised?’
Stan looked uncomfortable. ‘Stupid business. But nobody would take it on after my Da died, so I got the old rector up here. We reckoned if Dave had never had a proper burial wherever he died, poor bastard, perhaps a few prayers and that would sort him out.’
‘And did it?’
The camera moved closer, focusing on Stan’s face.
He shook his head. ‘No. It wasn’t Dave, was it. We’d said the prayers for the wrong bloke. His son turned up in the town one day to see where ’is dad had lived. Turned out he hadn’t died at all – or not till years later! He’d gone to Canada with someone else’s missus!’
A snort of laughter from Alice broke the tension abruptly. Joe and Colin both glared at her. Mark continued soberly: ‘So, what happened after that?’
‘Well, we thought maybe the prayers would work anyway, but the noises got worse.’ Stan looked down suddenly as though afraid to stare any longer into the camera lens. ‘Much worse.’
Mark found his mouth had gone dry. The question he was about to ask died on his lips. There was a long silence. Colin glanced at him with a frown. He stopped filming. ‘That’s great. Do you want any more, Mark?’
Mark fished in his pocket for a handkerchief and mopped his face with it. ‘Yeah. I do. We need to come up to the present. Why you’re trying to sell it again now.’
Stan shrugged. He shifted uncomfortably as Joe moved in to adjust the microphone clip and Colin started filming again. ‘There’s always noises. People walking up and down.’
‘And at what point,’ Mark took a deep breath, ‘did you decide that the house was haunted by Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General?’
Stan stared round wildly. For a moment Mark thought he wasn’t going to answer, but he turned back to the camera and speaking fast and confidentially he started on an explanation which sounded, Mark thought suddenly, just a bit too rehearsed.
‘Him – the Witchfinder – he’s been seen in all sorts of places in the town. And they’ve seen him up at Hopping Bridge and at the Thorn at Mistley. That’s named after him, you know. The Hopping Bridge. So, why not here, too? The worst place is in the Indian across the road. Used to be the Guildhall or some such, that little place where they tried them. The witches. Well, I thought to myself, supposing it’s him here. And it was.’ He stopped almost triumphantly.
‘How do you know it was him?’ Mark glanced down at Joe, who had resumed his position slightly behind him, on one knee, second microphone in hand. Joe raised an eyebrow.
‘’Coz I do. I seen ’im.’
Mark wasn’t sure whether the shifty look in the man’s eyes was because he was lying or because he was afraid to admit the sighting.
‘Can you describe him for us?’
‘Tall. Wearing large boots. A pointy sort of hat. And a goatee beard. Everyone as sees ’im says he’s got a goatee beard.’
‘And he was here in this house?’
‘On the stairs. Right behind where I’m standing.’
He turned and they all followed his gaze to the point where the uneven oak risers disappeared around the corner. As Colin focused in carefully and panned the camera across the breadth of the stairs, Alice gave a small whimper.
Mark persevered. ‘And was there a historical connection between Matthew Hopkins and this building?’
‘He walked the witches here.’ Stan folded his arms defiantly. ‘Up and down. All night. Didn’t let them sleep. In the end they was so muddled they didn’t know what they was saying. He’d get a confession out of them, then they’d be packed off to the dungeons in Colchester Castle.’
‘What a bastard!’ Alice’s voice was shrill.
‘Cut!’ Mark brought his hand down sharply in a chopping motion. ‘Alice, one more interruption and you’re going home!’
Joe turned to his daughter with a frown. ‘Get a grip, Alice. You knew what this job was. Groovy, I believe you said!’
Alice shuffled across to the counter. She was scowling. ‘Sorry.’
Mark looked back at Stan. ‘So, having decided the building was haunted by Cromwell’s witchfinder, you decided to cut your losses and sell it. But no one wants to buy, is that right?’
Stan nodded gloomily. ‘Trouble is, the place is falling down. It needs all sorts of repairs. The roof leaks.’ He shrugged. ‘I can’t afford to keep it on. Don’t want it. No way. And I need the money. I thought people would like a haunted house. Someone told me there was a market for such like. But, no one has gone for it yet.’
Joe glanced at Mark and winked. So, they had finally got there. The old bugger was making it up. He thought he’d get a better price for the shop if it had a famous ghost. Mark hid his irritation. This wouldn’t do a lot for the credibility of the programme.
‘Thanks, Stan. I think that’s all we need for now.’
‘Right.’ Stan moved away from the stairs with alacrity. ‘I’ll leave you to it, then. Just you remember I want you out of here by tomorrow. There’s a new tenant moving in Monday.’
‘Stan!’ Mark called suddenly as the old man moved towards the door. ‘What about the other part of the house. The shop next door. Isn’t that haunted, too?’
Stan shrugged. ‘Never heard that it was. They only walked the witches here, see.’ He jerked his thumb towards the stairs. ‘Never took them to the nicer side of the house. That’s where the family lived. Couldn’t hear them scream from that side of the house!’
There was a long silence after he had gone.
Colin eased the heavy camera off his shoulder and put it down with a groan as Alice closed the door behind their interviewee and stood watching him walk out of sight.
‘Christ, only one more day! I thought we’d got a week at least,’ Mark complained as Joe began to coil up his cables. ‘He told me it’s going to be an end-of-line discount shop, this and that, probably most of it fallen off the backs of lorries – just till Christmas. You’d think they could give us a bit longer.’
‘We can do it.’ Colin retrieved the clipboard from Alice. ‘If we spend the whole day at it tomorrow – and there’s always tonight, of course.’ He grinned at her. ‘After all, ghosts appear at night, don’t they?’ He sighed. ‘I was more worried about his remarks about ghosts being a selling point. What do you think? Have we wasted the whole afternoon? If he’s made all this up, the programme has gone. Damn! If he hadn’t said that!’
‘We’ll cut that bit,’ Joe said. He was lighting up a cigarette.
Mark shook his head slowly. ‘We’d still know he’d said it.’
‘I think he’s telling the truth.’ Alice hauled herself up onto the counter and sat, swinging her legs. ‘That last bit was awful – how they couldn’t hear them scream in the other half of the house.’
Mark shrugged. He was inclined to agree with Alice. ‘The trouble is, he’s after a quick sale. But perhaps it’s backfired on him a bit. People like ghosts, but not these particular ghosts. Not to live with. I’m afraid the shop’s history, if it’s true, will put purchasers off. Still,’ he paused and gave a wry grin, ‘I suppose when one thinks about it, for our purposes, it could add credibility to the film.’ He walked across to Alice. ‘Let’s see the interview list. We’ve got two more today. Out and about. I wonder if we should reschedule them and concentrate on this place for now. There’s a couple more tomorrow. That’s fine. We can do atmosphere here. Then we want corroboration and a few shots of Colchester Castle and its dungeons – you checked for permissions for that, Alice? Good. Then that should about do it. Nice piece. OK, folks. Let’s get some film in, of the attic and the first floor. The shadows are moving round a bit now. It’ll look a bit more spooky. That’s what Emma called it. Spooky. And that was unprompted.’ He smiled at the recollection. ‘Then we can get some street shots. OK?’
As they busied themselves collecting camera, lights and clipboard a shadow appeared on the staircase by the newel post in the corner where the dusty oak steps disappeared out of sight. Alice glanced round sharply. But it had gone almost as soon as it had appeared.
None of them noticed the sound of footsteps on the dirty boards upstairs.
Pulsuz fraqment bitdi.
