CHAPTER SIX

Tuesday at around two p.m. Maisie finally arrived back in Solgreve. As she walked from the bus stop up to the cottage, she made several vows to herself. Number one, she would control her homesick loneliness. Cathy was only a bus ride away, she could call Sacha if she wanted, and surely not every resident of Solgreve could hold a grudge against her grandmother. Number two, she would be cheerful when she met the locals, not mention her grandmother, and, as Cathy had suggested, imply she wasn’t staying very long. Number three, she had to make herself more comfortable at the cottage. She needed a CD player and a few good crime novels. She needed wine in the house all the time, and she had to stop eating microwaved noodles. Why be so reluctant to cook properly? What else was she going to do with her time? All of this starting today. But first, she had to drop off her bag and make sure that Tabby was still alive.

Of course the cat was fine, although her frantic weaving about between Maisie’s ankles may have pointed to Tabby’s own desperate conviction that she may starve. Her food bowl was empty, which made Maisie almost sick with guilt, but she still had plenty of water. Maisie gave her some cat biscuits and took the litter tray down to the back garden to empty it. As she was walking back towards the cottage, she stopped to look at the laundry window where Tabby usually sat, where Maisie herself had last week thought she’d seen something. She gazed at it for a few moments, focusing on her own reflection in the louvres and trying to see what it might have been that had appeared behind her shoulder that night. But she saw nothing. No branches or bushes with the right colouring or shape to match her vision of a hooded figure. A tiny shiver crawled up her right arm as she thought about how close the thing, whatever it was, had been to her.

“Sybill, if it is you,” she said under her breath,

“please don’t frighten me any more.”

Drinking with the locals was one of the Reverend’s rare pleasures in life. He lived a spartan existence huddled alone in his tiny cottage on the main street, had never married (not for want of trying), and generally had only his own thoughts for company. But every now and then a couple of the parishioners would come by and invite him over to the Black Cat for a few drinks. They always ended the evening with a standing invitation for him to join them, but the Reverend could never convince himself that they meant it. Drew and Wendy Beaumont, who had invited him, seemed far more interested in their conversation with Morris, the pub-owner, than they were in him. He sat with them, quietly sipping a beer, feeling conspicuous and uncomfortable. Still, it had been a good day so far. Not too cold, the arthritis in his knees not too severe, and Sybill’s granddaughter still hadn’t returned, leading him to think that Tony Blake was right. Laughter burst out around him, and he realised Drew was looking at him.

“What do you think, Reverend?”

“I’m sorry,” he replied. “I’m afraid I missed that. My mind was elsewhere.”

“Morris just said that . . .”

But the Reverend heard not another word, for the door to the pub had opened and a pretty girl in dark clothes stepped in and looked around. It was her. He felt his stomach sink, and an old anxiety jittered in his hands.

“Reverend?” Morris asked.

“Do forgive me,” the Reverend said, forcing a smile. “I’m rather preoccupied tonight.”

When he returned his attention to the girl, he noticed with horror that she was heading towards him, a friendly grin on her face. He waited for her to arrive, his heart beating madly. Did she know something? Sybill Hartley had known so much. Had she left evidence of her investigations lying around? Shortly after her death, he and Tony had tried to break into the house, but it was like a fortress. Tony had suggested burning the place down, but the Reverend had dismissed the suggestion. Perhaps that had been a mistake.

“Good evening, Reverend Fowler,” she said,

extending her hand for him to shake. He reached out perfunctorily, closed her hand in his for an instant, then let go.

“Good evening, Miss . . .” He trailed off, having forgotten her name.

“Fielding. But call me Maisie.” She looked

expectantly at him and he realised she was waiting for an introduction to his friends.

“Oh, forgive me. Maisie, this is Drew Beaumont, his wife Wendy, and Morris Dollimore who owns the pub.”

Maisie turned to Morris. “Hi. I was wondering if I could buy a bottle of rum. The off-license is closed. I think I left it a little too late.”

Morris nodded. “Sure.” He excused himself to the others. “I’ll be back in a moment.” The Reverend watched him move over to the bar.

“Reverend, I’m just back from York,” Maisie was saying.

The Reverend returned his attention to her.

“York?” he asked, bewildered. Why on earth was she talking to him? What was all this friendliness about?

“Yes. I have a friend down there. I expect I’ll be spending quite a bit of time with her. I shouldn’t be here much past Christmas.”

“Oh.” Pale hope began to wash through him.

“So you won’t be seeing me much. It’s a bit cold and dismal up here for me, as you suggested the first time we met.”

The first time they met. He barely remembered that now, but yes, he knew that he’d gone up there to find out how long she was staying. Here was his answer, his most coveted answer: not long.

“Dismal? Where are you staying?” Drew Beaumont asked in a friendly tone.

“Drew,” the Reverend said pointedly. “Maisie is living in her grandmother’s cottage, Sybill Hartley’s place. I’m sure it’s terribly cold and lonely up there.”

Drew looked into his beer, chastened. Even if people around here weren’t sure what went on in the foundations of the old abbey, they all knew that Sybill Hartley had endangered the whole village with her tourist trade and her incessant prying.

“I just thought I’d let you know,” she continued,

“and I won’t be taking you up on the offer of coming to a service.”

Once again, he couldn’t remember making that offer, but if he had made it, it would not have been sincere. He would have said it to deflect suspicion.

“Never mind. Do drop by the church office and let me know when you’re leaving.”

Maisie nodded. “I’ll try to remember. Goodnight.”

She went up to the bar to pay Morris and take her bottle of rum.

“Sybill’s granddaughter?” Wendy said.

The Reverend nodded. “It’s all right, she won’t be here long.”

“I should hope not. Especially if she’s anything like Sybill.”

“I have no reason to believe that she is,” the Reverend replied, and took comfort in that. No evidence suggested that she had inherited any of Sybill’s power along with the cottage. That had most likely died with the old woman.

Which is what they had intended, after all. It had always fascinated Maisie how quickly the telephone could become a locus of anxiety. She had quite comfortably replaced the receiver after talking with Cathy – she had called to make sure Maisie had got home safely – but now she sat staring at it as though it might bite her, wondering if she dared call Sacha. Was it a misplaced and perhaps transitory sense of contentment which was leading her to contact him? To be honest, her new-found optimism about being in Solgreve surprised her. Of course, her conversations with Adrian had lifted her spirits; he was so excited about being on tour and working with her father again. Then there was the fact that she had spent a weekend away in good company, and her successful exchange with Reverend Fowler and the other locals at the pub. She now had a conviction that she would be able to survive at least until after New Year’s. And in that positive spirit she had gone to the phone book to look up Sacha’s number – only one Lupus in Whitby –

and returned to the telephone to call and invite him over for dinner.

That’s when it had all fallen apart, really. Because that tiny, doubting voice in her head suddenly weighed in on the issue, saying, “Perhaps he didn’t give you the number because he didn’t really want you to call.”

It made sense. He’d had ample opportunity to scribble his number down somewhere for her, but he hadn’t done so. Instead, he had told her to look it up. Had he been making it difficult for her on purpose?

But this was absurd. He had met her once: he couldn’t possibly have formed any kind of prejudice against her, or not enough that he wouldn’t want her to call. Unless he suspected how attractive she found him. Damn, had she been too attentive? Had she mentioned her boyfriend? She should have mentioned Adrian, then he couldn’t have got the wrong idea. Maisie sighed and sank back in the armchair next to the phone, gazing at the page of the phone book where she had circled Sacha’s number. The wrong idea? Wasn’t calling him and inviting him to dinner the wrong idea too?

This had happened once before, two years ago, while tutoring a university student in music theory; he too had been dark, exotic. The warm skin on his arm had always seemed to seek out hers as they sat together side by side at his piano, talking about bigger issues than triad inversions and parallel fifths, indulging in glances and intimations which she convinced herself weren’t dangerous. But in truth she had been well beyond friendly, meeting him for coffee too often, devising too many convenient ways to be alone with him. One day Adrian had simply said to her, “What are you doing with that guy?”

“He’s just a friend,” she had replied, defensive as only a guilty person can be.

“If he’s your friend, how come you’ve never introduced him to me?”

Her intimate friendship, or whatever it had been, ended there. The student had been referred to a colleague and she had snapped herself out of it. It was always smarter to avoid such complex matters of desire. She wouldn’t ring Sacha.

Five minutes later she dialled his number.

“Hello?”

“Hello, is that Sacha?” Damn her girly voice, damn her stupid unexotic accent.

“Yes.”

“It’s Maisie here.” Then, to save embarrassment:

“Maisie Fielding, Sybill’s granddaughter.”

“I guessed that part. I only know one Maisie.”

She laughed. Probably too nervously. “I only know one Sacha,” she replied, suspecting immediately that she sounded like an idiot. “How have you been?”

“Good. How’s Tabby? Is she settling in okay?”

“Tabby’s fine.”

A short silence. Maisie waited for him to ask how she was, but he didn’t.

“Ah . . . I was wondering if you’re doing anything on Friday night?” She realised her heart was pounding.

“Why?”

“Maybe you’d like to come over for dinner.”

“Friday night’s not a good night.”

“Oh.” Should she suggest another night, or wait for him to suggest it? Again, there was too much silence. She had to fill it. “Saturday then?”

“No, Saturday’s not good either.”

He had a girlfriend, that was it. Friday and Saturday nights were taken up with his glamorous, long-legged girlfriend.

“How have you been, anyway?” he said before she had a chance to suggest dinner another time.

“Okay. I’ve been in York with a friend the last couple of days. Before that I was a bit lonely and homesick but I think I’ve settled down now. And I’ve had a couple of run-ins with the locals like you said but –”

“Thursday would be all right.”

“Sorry?”

“Thursday. For dinner.”

“Of course. Yeah, sure. Come over Thursday night. Say about six? Six-thirty?”

“Okay. I’ll bring some wine.”

“Great. Great, I’ll see you then.”

“Bye.”

She put the phone down. She felt vaguely

embarrassed, dissatisfied with the tone of the conversation. It had been so clunky. He had been so offhand. Was he socially inept or just rude? She should have worked Adrian’s name into the conversation. She didn’t want Sacha to think that she fancied him. Especially as she did fancy him.

She needed a diversion, something to get her mind off Sacha. The back room was crammed with piles of boxes she hadn’t even looked at yet. That would be good for a few hours of mindless sorting. She switched on the radio and turned the volume up loud. If there were strange noises outside tonight, she just didn’t want to hear them. Whether it was ghosts, or mad locals, or just ordinary Yorkshire seaside noises, what she didn’t hear couldn’t scare her. With purpose, she went to the back room.

By the looks of it, her grandmother had saved every piece of correspondence she had ever received, and that included junk mail. Maisie tried to be ruthless, putting aside only personal letters – most of them from Sacha’s mother, Mila, and none at all from her own mother –

and throwing out the rest. She tried not to get sidetracked reading things, but it was hard. Sacha, she found out through the letters, was twenty-nine and had once attended a posh school called Aloysius College in London. Which made the fact that he now swept floors in a bakery even more tragic. Maisie told herself to get a grip on reality. What Sacha Lupus did or did not do, and how little he had achieved was nothing to do with her. She had a perfectly wonderful boyfriend back home who, it must be added, was the same age as Sacha and was already going to be an opera star. Maisie whittled down the clutter while Tabby sniffed around and was generally in the way. Bits of drawings, paperbacks too yellow and bent to give to a second-hand shop, empty envelopes, loose change, mouse droppings, a live spider (ugh!), pressed flowers between tissue paper, old handkerchiefs and cheap jewellery – all of it went into a stack in the hallway (except the spider which Tabby did not allow to live). Maisie’s nose was itching from the dust, but the satisfaction of finally seeing the floor of the room – an Indian rug spread over bare polished boards – made up for any discomfort.

So she turned to the violently lurching cupboard and threw the doors open, started pulling everything out. The more she took out of it, the more it leaned to one side, as though the junk had been ballast. Finally, the whole thing tipped over. Tabby skittered away. Maisie crouched next to the cupboard, examining the legs. Perhaps she could knock them both off, or maybe she should just throw it out. It didn’t look like an expensive antique, unless there was something expensive and antique about chipboard.

As she stood up, she felt something move under her foot, nearly overbalancing her. She looked down, and noticed that one of the floorboards was loose. The one, in fact, that had somehow supported the crooked cupboard for all these years. She took a step back and crouched down again, feeling along the board to see if it was safe. It wasn’t. With a bit of weight on one end, the other end popped up. She picked up the free end and found that the whole board was not secured at all. Just as she was dropping it back into place, the light caught something glinting dully underneath between the floor and the stone. She put the board aside and peered into the dark. An iron box, almost black around the corners.

“My god, buried treasure,” she muttered, and she would have been lying if she had said she wasn’t expecting to find jewels, banknotes, Spanish doubloons. She pulled the box out and flipped up the clasp. Opened it with shaking, eager hands. No treasure. A tiny book. Or at least a section of a book. It had a hard front cover but looked like it had been torn apart. She flicked through it and saw that it was handwritten, but realised immediately it could not be her grandmother’s: the first page was headed with a date in 1793.

“A diary,” she breathed. An old, old diary, locked away in a rusty iron box under the floorboards. She couldn’t wait to tell Adrian. More importantly, she couldn’t wait to read it. She put the board back in place and shifted the fallen cupboard over it, so that she or Tabby wouldn’t accidentally fall through the floor, took the diary to the lounge room and turned the radio down. Outside, gusty rain was driving against the windows. She laid the book carefully aside while she made tea and stoked the fire, then settled in a lounge chair and prepared to decipher the centuriesold scrawl.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Saturday, 7 September 1793

And so, little book, prepare to become the custodian of all my News. For although I have a perfectly good diary, handsome and leather-bound, which Mme. Bombelles gave me some two years ago, You come from a far more precious, and certainly much more handsome source, than hideous Mme. Bombelles with her chin hair and rolling neck. Who, then, is this precious benefactor, little book? Why, none other than the most beautiful Man who ever did walk this earth in a human form: Mr. Marley, Mr. Virgil Marley, of Fenchurch-street. Not a salubrious Address, you understand, but one of which I am sure I could grow increasingly fond, given its dear inhabitant. He is tall and chestnut-haired, with warm brown eyes and skin like alabaster; but that does not describe the gentleness of his countenance, the slow, warm beat of his laughter, nor the swift intensity of his Mind. He has a little of what Papa would call “la maladie anglaise” or the English condition: that is, he is given to fits of melancholy, but mostly he is charming fun. His favourite jest is to make fun of my English, as though it were very ill, when he knows that it was my first language on account of my Mother being born right here on St James’s Square (and not in Lyon where we live with Papa in general contemplation of the Necessity to “keep an irreproachable conduct”). Why, I hardly have an accent, at least in my ears, which I confess may be biased. Papa would think me

monstrous for declaring it, but for Virgil I will gladly never speak French again. No French man can say my name the way Virgil says it – “Georgette” – in such a tone to make me ache, or sometimes only “Gette”

which I infinitely prefer to the “George” to which some people shorten it. I dearly hope that I shall see him tomorrow, for there can be less than a fortnight before I must return to Lyon. Aunt Hattie’s friend Mrs. Ariel on Portman Square is hosting a ball: four hundred are expected, and an orchestra is to play. I hope to see him there.

Sunday, 8 September 1793. Late

How I am supposed to sleep after such excitement, I do not know. I did indeed attend Mrs. Ariel’s ball and Aunt Hattie accompanied me. She then left me in the company of one Miss Noble, a misnomer if ever there was one, for she is a Sickly and Dull creature who makes conversation only around the topic of her Father’s banking business: how many wealthy clients he has, how much money he makes, &c. I endured her company for an hour, always with my eyes returning to the door in the hopes that Mr. Marley would come. He did not disappoint. In fact, he arrived with two friends: Mr. Edward Snowe, a merry-eyed young man with dark hair, and Miss Charlotte Andrews, a rather round girl with red curls. Edward is a fellow Poet (did I not mention that my Virgil is an excellent Poet?

Shame on me for such an oversight!) and Charlotte is his Intended. I made my excuses to Miss Noble and joined them. She seemed hardly to notice I had gone. I suspect any person with ears enough for her vapid chatter would have suited as a companion.

After introductions had been completed, we

withdrew to a card room where a number of older people were playing cribbage. We four found a sofa against the wall behind a bookcase and settled there for most of the evening. We laughed and joked, and we danced from time to time as well, though Virgil insists he is not a good dancer (he is, of course). I don’t know that I like Miss Andrews particularly. She is only recently returned from a year in Italy, and some of the manners of that Country are apparent in her. Mr. Snowe is very nice – Virgil told me his father is merely an apothecary – and he has promised to show me some of his poetry on our next acquaintance. I do hope it will not be long before we are all reunited, because I cannot remember such good company at any time in my life before.

Monday, 9 September 1793

This morning Virgil called shortly after breakfast. I sat in the drawing room with Aunt Hattie and her dear friend Mrs. Ariel, and you, little Diary, were close at hand. It was Mrs. Ariel, in fact, who introduced Virgil to us, because his father is a Barrister and a very close friend of hers. Virgil was a terrible tease and read what I had written so far (not aloud, thank goodness!), and said it was all rather dry and colourless. I was a little hurt, but did not want to show it, because if he knew he had embarrassed me it would upset him so. Later, when Hattie and Mrs. Ariel were deep in gossip and not paying attention to us, he leaned very close to me and said, “Gette, you must put colour and fire in your writing, you must say how you feel, what you see, hear and smell. You must pour out your heart. That is why God gave us words.” So, Diary, I have made two vows. The first is to do as Virgil says, and put “colour and fire” in my writing. No more silly nonsense about Miss This and Mme. That and everybody’s shortcomings. I was ever too full of petty criticism. My second vow is that I will hide you far more carefully, because if I am to pour out my heart, then I shall have to regulate very assiduously who may read the fruits of such labour. Wednesday, 11 September 1793

Mama arrived today, and while I was glad to see her, it means there is only a week before we must return to France. Mama seems so serious compared to Aunt Hattie, I can scarcely believe they are sisters. Mrs. Ariel came by and we all sat in the drawing room to read or to talk. Mama asked me to play piano a little, which I did, and unfortunately it sparked an argument. I play but three or four pieces very well, for I haven’t the patience to learn new ones. I was in the middle of my second piece – a Mozart sonata – when I overheard Mrs. Ariel address Aunt Hattie thus:

“Hattie, we really must ask Georgette to play for Mr. Marley next time he is by. I think he already has quite an eye for her.”

And then Mama’s voice, crisp and firm, “Who is Mr. Marley?”

I willed my fingers to keep playing without the assistance of my mind as I was concentrating all on listening to them.

“Mr. Virgil Marley, Annie,” Aunt Hattie said quickly. “He’s the son of a dear friend and has been calling for the last few weeks. He and Georgette have struck up a friendship.”

“He had best not have designs beyond friendship,”

Mama said sternly, and returned to her reading. I felt myself grow hot in the face and neck, but played on. I remain certain that Mama would like Virgil if she met him – he is so very gentle and charming. But it is too sad! She has reminded me that soon I must return home, and that Papa has long favoured the son of one of his cousins as a possible husband for me. I will be eighteen in five months, and marriage is a Fate which I cannot reasonably avoid much longer.

I wish that Mama had not come, though I know I am terrible for thinking such a thing. Aunt Hattie is a Dear, and has always been quite happy for me to see Virgil. In fact, I do believe that she and Mrs. Ariel were enjoying watching the two of us become close, though it must not have escaped their notice that there is a great difference in Fortune between us. Still, what do I care for money? The only thing that I can imagine cheering me at the moment is a visit from Virgil, but I dread him not liking Mama, or Mama not liking him. I am in such a state over this that I can barely think.

***

Thursday, 12 September 1793

The very worst and the very best have happened on the self-same day. I feel afraid that I am so excited by it all I may not be able to constrain myself to write a narrative of the day’s events! Though now I have just heard the church clock-tower ring out three times, and it appears that it is not Thursday at all but Friday morning. For company I have only this candle and the scratching of my pen against the paper. So much has happened since I last wrote, I almost feel like a different girl.

First, Virgil came by quite early to ask if I could go walking in St. James’s Park. He was shown in as always, and bowed deeply to Hattie and Mama (though he did not, as yet, know who She was). He then turned his attention directly to me, and in that intimate way he has adopted, addressed me as “Gette, my pretty French poppet.”

Fatal Mistake. Mama’s eyes practically turned silver. They are usually very dark grey, you see, but when she is angry the pupils almost disappear, and her eyes seem to glitter.

“Sir,” she said sternly, “I would prefer you to address my daughter as Mademoiselle Chantelouve.”

He turned immediately to her, his eyes grew wide with – I know not whether it was fear or surprise. And instantly he bowed before her again and said,

“Madame Chantelouve, forgive me. I did not know that we had the pleasure of your company this morning.”

But the damage was done. The sad-eyed smile and the gentle flirtations which weaken the silly knees of Aunt Hattie and Mrs. Ariel were more than useless on my mother, who took them as affectations, and saw in them evidence that Virgil was little more than a vain dandy. By the time he plucked up the courage to ask for the pleasure of my company on a walk, Mama had set her mind firmly against him. She declined on my behalf, as I stood speechless and blushing beside the fireplace. Virgil looked to Aunt Hattie, who turned to Mama and said, “Come, Annie, let the young people enjoy some fresh air.”

“No,” Mama replied. “Georgette will stay here by me today.”

And with that, Virgil was dismissed.

I heard the downstairs door close behind him, and surreptitiously moved to the window, which had a good view of the Street. To my surprise and embarrassment, Edward and Charlotte waited below for Virgil. I saw him emerge, explain quickly to his companions what had happened, and then Charlotte looked up at the front of the building. I know she probably did not see me, but I felt she had. And I felt she wore the most condescending expression on her face, as though I were a mere Baby and she knew something much more than I could ever know. It made my skin burn with anger, and I turned on my mother.

“This is so unfair!” I cried. “Why could I not go walking? I’m in no danger. Mr. Marley is the son of Mrs. Ariel’s friend the Barrister, and a decent and respectable man.”

Instead of responding to my lament, Mama fixed Aunt Hattie with a stern eye. “I blame you for letting this young man become too intimate an acquaintance. You should have known better.”

Hattie looked chastened.

“Mama,” I said, moving to the sofa to put an arm around Aunt Hattie, “how can you be so cruel?”

She turned those silvery eyes on me and said, “I know more about Mr. Marley than you do. As does your aunt. It was ‘unfair’ and ‘cruel’ for her not to tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“His father is not a Barrister. He is a clerk in a law firm, and that an ill-regarded law firm on Fenchurchstreet. Mrs. Ariel’s interest in Mr. Marley Senior is spoken about in giggles and hushes all over town, and poor Mr. Ariel is constantly made a fool of. I expect Marley’s son to be just as bad, for all he’s dressed in the pretty things that Mrs. Ariel is too witless to refuse him.”

“Annie!” cried Aunt Hattie.

“Don’t dare to say otherwise, Hattie, for you know it’s true. As long as I am staying here, I request that you do not invite Virgil Marley again. Once Georgette and I have returned to Lyon, you may do as you please.”

Hattie, always a soft woman, mutely blinked back tears. I felt as though my whole world were collapsing from within. Not to see Virgil again? It was unthinkable. He had so quickly become the place from which the Daylight shone for me, that to remove him was to leave me in perpetual Night.

“Is it true, Aunt Hattie?” I asked quietly. Hattie nodded, pulling out her handkerchief.

“Most of it. Virgil’s family is indeed not a good family. But the rumours about Mrs. Ariel and his father are unfounded.”

Mama straightened her back. “Where smoke

blows, fire glows, Hattie.”

“I feel unwell,” I said, standing. “Would you excuse me? I think I shall lie down until dinner.”

Mama dismissed me with a wave of her hand. “Go. Sleep, and rid yourself of thoughts of that young man. You will do much better than him, Georgette. Soon you will forget him.”

I wanted to cry out “Never!”, but instead I kept the word inside, and it beat in my head along with my footsteps up the staircase. Ne-ver; ne-ver; ne-ver. I was utterly hopeless and desolate, and threw myself upon my bed to rage, to cry, to dream in dozy fits. If I were a more deceitful girl, perhaps I could have contrived a method to contact Virgil and tell him of our misfortune.

As it turned out, he contrived a method to contact me.

I had supped half-heartedly with Mama and Hattie at around nine, and we had all retired to bed shortly after. Because of my excited state and because of the nap I had taken earlier in the day, I could not sleep. I spent an age brushing out my hair, watching myself in the little glass atop my dressing table, and wondering how on earth I was to endure the long night with Virgil so far away from me, and bound to be that way Forever. In fact, he wasn’t far away from me at all. My window is directly above the drawing room, and as such looks over the street. On my first visits to Hattie, many years ago when only a girl of four or five, the sound of voices and hooves and carriages had purposed to keep me awake most nights, but I had gradually come to be soothed by them. There is a certain comfort in knowing one is surrounded by Man, by his laws and his machines and his civilised intentions, and I never feel this comfort back home in our chateau, where to wake in the middle of the night is to be surrounded by the blank darkness and amorality of Nature. Some say that Man is evil or wicked, but I hold that at least Man, or men, may be reasoned with, where wolves or blizzards or falling trees are invariably unheeding of entreaties. Virgil knew where my bedroom was, on account of Aunt Hattie having mentioned more than once that she found the street noise in the drawing room most bothersome, and remarked thereafter on the strange solace I found in the same sounds. It took merely a handful of pebbles to bring me to my window. He waited below, Edward and Charlotte with him once again. I lifted the sash and leaned out, my heart beating wildly, in love with his boldness, but terrified about where it may lead.

“Gette!” he called. “Come down.”

I looked over my shoulder and then back to the street. “Shh!” I said.

He motioned with his arms. Come down. I was frozen for a few moments, listening for footsteps in the hallway or curious voices. There were none. Although it went against everything in my upbringing (or perhaps because it went against everything in my upbringing), I nodded and closed the window. It took me only a few minutes to dress and to pin my hair unevenly. I crept into the hallway. No light came from beneath my mother’s bedroom door so I knew she was asleep. I tiptoed down two flights of stairs and paused near the entrance-way, listening. I could hear the servants mumbling to each other in the kitchen as they finished their chores for the night. Nobody was in sight. Trembling, I reached for the door and within seconds stood out in the street. Virgil was nowhere to be seen. At first I thought a cruel joke had been played on me, but then I saw Charlotte lean around the corner and beckon to me. I ran to the corner to find the three of them, laughing hysterically. I couldn’t help but laugh too, I was in such a state of tumult and fear. Even though it was not proper, I threw my arms around Virgil’s neck, almost weak with excitement.

“Oh, Gette, your mother doesn’t like me, does she?” he said, very close to my ear.

I shook my head. “Hattie has been told not to invite you as long as I’m here.”

“And how much longer are you here?”

“Barely a week.”

He fell silent. Edward’s and Charlotte’s laughter were dying away now. Edward jabbed him in the ribs with an elbow. “Well. Tell her why we’ve come.”

“Yes,” said Virgil, brightening. “We’ve come to take you for that walk in the park after all.”

I smiled up at him. “I should be delighted,” I said. He very properly offered me his arm and I took it. Edward and Charlotte adopted the same pose and we walked off in the direction of the park. It seemed so thrilling to be out walking at night, under the glowing lamplight. I love that London does not sleep, that at nearly any time of the day or night there are people about some business or other. Why, even as I write this, I can hear the occasional carriage roll by in the distance. I was almost disappointed when we came to the dark wilderness of the park, away from the lights and from humanity.

“Let us sit under a tree, far from the light,” Charlotte suggested. “I do love to sit and talk in the dark.”

She and Edward led the way further amongst the bushes, until we found an ash tree whose branches all but obscured the stars above us. We sat down. I was growing cold despite my wool coat, and Virgil urged me to nestle close to him. I cannot describe what it felt like to have his body pressed so near to mine. I swear I could almost feel his blood moving around hot in his veins, he seemed so very warm and so very alive to me.

“So, Mademoiselle Chantelouve,” Edward said as he settled nearby, Charlotte pressed up against him,

“what do you make of the situation in France? I should like to know as you are a native and your father so wealthy a landowner.”

“Edward, let’s not talk politics,” Charlotte said, pouting. “I do abhor politics.”

“I agree, Edward,” Virgil said. “Georgette need not answer your questions.”

“I don’t mind,” I said. “Although I have little interest in such things myself, you should know that my Papa was always very sympathetic towards the Revolution. Against his own interests he supported the National Assembly. But daily we hear reports of new violence, and I think Papa is terribly disappointed by that.”

Edward shook his head. “Sometimes violence is the only way.”

“You’ll have to forgive Edward,” Virgil said, “he’s a raving Jacobin.”

“And you?” Edward asked, almost a challenge.

“I, my friend, am a poet. I occupy a realm above the politic.”

“I am a poet, too,” Edward declared. “And I can remember a time when you spoke with as much passion about the Revolution as any Jacobin.”

“Oh, stop arguing you two,” Charlotte said.

“They’re the best of friends, really, Georgette. They pretend to disagree all the time just to keep themselves entertained.”

Virgil slipped his arm around my waist. “It’s true,”

he said. “We’ve been the best of friends since we were but lads.”

Charlotte turned her face to Edward’s. “Edward, will you come a little way into the bushes with me for a moment. I have something I’d like to say in private.”

Edward smiled broadly. “Why, of course, Miss Andrews,” he said. “I think I might have something to say to you also.”

“Excuse us,” Charlotte said, rising. “We won’t be but a few minutes.”

The two of them wandered off into the dark, leaving Virgil and me alone. I was both thrilled and apprehensive. It seemed we had adopted such an intimate posture together, and every moment I expected my mother to find us, though she was fast, fast asleep in her bed.

“What can they have to talk about that they can’t say in front of us?” I asked him, feeling that Edward and Charlotte were rude for running off together.

“I think they may talk about love,” Virgil said, knowingly.

I looked at my gloved hands as they lay in my lap, and thought that perhaps I was the most naive girl in the universe. Of course: love. And on my brief acquaintance with Charlotte, I had no doubt that her expressions of love would omit very little.

“In any case,” he continued, “it allows us a chance to be alone.”

I nodded shyly, cursing myself for being shy. I knew I was to go home in less than a week, and our time together was so very precious.

He loosened my hair a little, and entwined a single finger in a stray golden curl. My heart lurched as he leaned in and kissed the fortunate curl delicately, then dropped it on my cheek. His breath seemed very close.

“Gette, look at me,” he said softly, his fingertips gently tilting my chin so that my gaze might meet his. In the dark, his eyes were almost black. But not sinister: feeling, tender.

“Do you know that I love you?” he asked.

I smiled. My heart fluttered madly.

“For I know that you love me,” he said, and before I could open my lips to tell him, yes, yes, I do love you with all my heart and more, his own mouth had pressed against mine. Yes, he kissed me! And what an upheaval it created in my body. My skin seemed to be turned to liquid, my stomach seemed to become quite hollow, my brain seemed to buzz , and my lips – as though independent of my thoughts and my fears –

pressed hungrily against his and opened without protest to the insistence of his tongue. I had no idea that a kiss could wreak such chaos. I have seen Papa kiss Mama, but their kisses seem such a tidy affair. Virgil’s kiss was all body, all moisture, all hot hot blood, all pounding heart and wild thoughts. It was all I could do not to surrender to him completely, as I suspected somewhere close by Charlotte was

surrendering to Edward.

We kissed and kissed. I had no idea it was an activity one could involve oneself in for such a long time! I was intoxicated by his mouth, and every time he pulled away I would reach for him again. Finally, Edward and Charlotte emerged from their hiding place (and yes, her clothes were in disarray and he appeared quite flustered) and the four of us resumed our conversation. But by this stage I was becoming almost frantic with worry. I was certain that by now Mama had woken and that the house was in uproar because I was nowhere to be found. I couldn’t relax for imagining what would happen if I didn’t return home soon.

Charlotte and Edward stayed in St James’s Park. For all I know they are still there now, though I can hear rain dripping off the eaves and suspect that the damp could discourage even their passion. Virgil accompanied me back to Aunt Hattie’s, and of course nobody was awake when I came home. The house was not ablaze with lights and worry. I crept in as easily as I had crept out, and now, somehow, I am supposed to sleep. But two thoughts conspire to keep me awake. The first is the memory of Virgil’s lips, and how thrilling and hot and delirious it feels when they are upon mine. The second is the knowledge that in only a handful of days, I must return to France without him. Friday, 13 September 1793

I am so excessively tired that I can barely hold up my poor head. And yet, Diary, I have to relate the most recent Episode in the tale of Virgil and Georgette, for I fear it will soon come to its tragic close. I watched at my window after all had gone to bed this evening. A gusty wind had arisen, and the window panes all rattled. Windy nights always make me unsettled and, truth be told, I would rather have stayed in my warm room and burrowed down very low under my covers. But of course I was aware, too, of how little time Virgil and I have remaining to us. Just when I thought that perhaps he would not come tonight, he and Charlotte and Edward rounded the corner and waited for me in the street.

Once away from the house, Virgil pressed me in his arms and called me his “pretty, pretty thing.” He seemed quite delirious with joy to see me, and was in very high spirits indeed. I expected that we would go once again to the park, but instead we started in a different direction.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To the churchyard,” Charlotte replied, and I think I heard something of a challenge in her voice, as though she expected me to protest and say I was too scared to go near a churchyard after dark. And while, perhaps, that may have been my response under normal circumstances, I was not going to allow Charlotte to feel superior to me, when she was all but a whore, and I was a nobleman’s daughter. I grasped Virgil’s hand in mine and set my heart against childish superstition.

We approached the churchyard in the dark. The tombstones stood ghostly grey beyond the gates. All around, the trees tossed their branches this way and that in the wind. I thought at first that we would have to climb over the wrought iron, and I was prepared to do so if Charlotte did, but they all seemed to know that the gates would be unlocked and proceeded through them and towards the mound where most of the graves lay. Clearly, they had been here many times before. It hurt to know that the three of them had shared this adventure without me in the past, or perhaps even shared it with another girl in my place. And it hurt even more to know that when I had gone, they would probably still come here, and Virgil would recover from his broken heart and find someone new, while for the rest of my life I would be thinking only of him. I was growing despondent by the time Virgil pulled me down to sit next to him on a grassy patch between two graves. Charlotte and Edward daringly sat on a grave nearby, and were within seconds indulging in a passionate embrace directly in front of us.

“Not love tonight,” Virgil said, fumbling in his coat pocket for something. “Poetry, remember? If you weren’t so interested in making love you’d be a better poet, Edward.”

Edward all but dropped Charlotte and turned angrily on Virgil. “And when have you talked of anything but love since you met your French wench?”

“How dare you so infamously defame her?” Virgil demanded.

Charlotte intervened. “Stop it. What nonsense you pair go on with. Stop arguing. You know you’ll only be cooing over each other again in a few hours, so stop it.”

They apologised to each other, and everybody seemed to forget how monstrously I had been insulted. Virgil and Edward had now each produced a

notebook, and were deciding between them who would read first. In the end, it was Edward who read first, and thereafter they took turns. I cannot express to you my delight at hearing them read their own works. And it is no bias on my part, but rather plain commonsense, to say that Virgil’s work was far superior to his friend’s. I only wish that I could remember some of the lines well enough to write them down here, but Virgil insists he will make me a copy of all his best poems for me to keep forever. I could tell by the smug look on Charlotte’s face that she thought Edward’s writing superior, but that could only be Vanity, for if she had ears (which I have seen she does) there could be no doubt that Virgil was an infinitely better poet.

“How delightful!” I exclaimed when all were finished and the little books were safely tucked away in pockets. “Have either of you published anything?”

“Virgil and I are working on publishing a collection between us,” Edward said, putting his arm around Charlotte’s waist. He leaned with his back against a tombstone, and his legs stretched out before him as though completely oblivious to the poor soul who lay beneath him.

“Yes, Gette, we shall be wealthy men before long, you shall see,” Virgil told me, excited eyes sparkling in the moonlight.

“You had better hope for wealth, Virgil, as you refuse to learn any other vocation,” Edward said, laughing.

“I cannot squander my time so casually as you,”

Virgil shot back.

“Squander?”

“Learning to be an apothecary like your father. A poet must think always upon art, philosophy, the sublime. Not pills and potions.”

“My father has a noble trade, and I should be proud to learn his business. After all, our poetry has paid for nothing yet.”

“But it will,” Virgil declared emphatically. “I know that it will.”

“Enough!” Charlotte cried, and then did the most spectacularly shocking thing. She climbed across Edward’s lap. That is, she put a knee either side of him and sat there, facing him, her bosom close to his face. Edward responded by laughing and burying his nose right between her breasts. I glanced away quickly.

“It’s true, Gette,” Virgil said softly, ignoring the other two completely. “I know your mother must think I’m a ne’er-do-well, and not a fit suitor for such a wealthy young woman as yourself, but I shall make a fortune, I promise. My poetry is good – you can hear that for yourself – and I am certain it is better than other work that is published daily. I shall earn enough for a grand house in the countryside, and then I shall have you by me always.”

I gazed into his eyes, feeling my own well with tears. To be by him always was what I wanted more than anything in the world. “Virgil, we have only a few days.”

“But you’ll write to me? You’ll stay true to me?”

His voice was earnest, almost desperate. “By the time you come back next year I may be wealthy and your mother will gladly allow me to call.”

“I fear that things will have changed too much within that year, Virgil.” I was thinking now about Papa’s cousin and how Mama’s disdain for my own choice may lead her to recommend a swift marriage for me.

“But how can I live?” he asked. “How can I live if you are not to return?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

Charlotte let out a squeal of laughter across from us. Edward had loosened her dress and stays, and freed one of her breasts. His mouth closed over the nipple and she threw her head back in delight. I purposefully rearranged myself so that my back was turned to them and I could not see them any more. The wind gusted in the tree branches around us, and I shivered with cold and with revulsion. Why must Charlotte cheapen herself so? In doing so, she cheapens Love.

“We could run away,” Virgil said, so quietly that at first I could not hear him.

“Pardon?”

“We could run away. Together.”

I am not a fool. I know that Virgil had little money of his own, that running away would cut me off from my family, from the luxury to which I was accustomed. But I imagined us, living humbly together, a rural life perhaps. I could milk cows for him. I could make bread for him. As long as we are together, surely that is all that matters.

“Virgil, I don’t know if it would be wise,” I said, for although my imagination was in love with the idea, I needed for him to sway my reason.

Instead, he nodded. “Perhaps you are right. I couldn’t take you away from the elegance and comfort that is due to you. Come, let me walk you back to your aunt’s.”

He stood and helped me to my feet.

“I’m taking Gette home,” Virgil said to Edward and Charlotte.

I dared a glance over my shoulder at them. Her breast was covered now, but I could see his hand moving under her skirts. “Good evening,” she said to me with that smug, knowing look.

“We may see you again tomorrow night,” Edward said, smiling up at me.

“Good evening,” I said, trying to sound frosty and wishing I wasn’t so interested in just which exact location he was placing his hand.

And so here I am at home again. Virgil did not kiss me last night, and I am sorry for that. All was too serious for kisses, but still I wished to experience that feeling again. And, God forgive me, I have not been able to stop thinking about Charlotte and Edward, and imagining in a guilty way if Virgil and I will ever do those same things. I know it is wrong, and in fact I am almost too ashamed to write it down. But if we were married it would not be wrong.

But alas, we are not destined to marry, are we?

Who could have guessed, little book, that at such a short acquaintance you would become the repository of such tearful speculations? I am thankful to be so tired, for otherwise all these thoughts crowding my mind would keep me awake until dawn I am certain. Sunday, 15 September 1793

I cannot write for very long because my life is about to change forever. I shall explain as quickly as my pen can keep up. Yesterday, Virgil sent me a letter in his own beautiful hand, with a few new and sublime lines of poetry enclosed. Mama saw me receive it and press it to my bosom, and followed me upstairs later to demand to read it. I had to refuse. You see, in the letter he outlined his plan for elopement, and addressed my concerns about how we would live. He and Edward sometimes do work for a certain Doctor in a village some miles from York in the North Country. Virgil proposes for us to escape to this village, where he will earn enough money to support us for as long as it takes to have his poems published, which he assures me is but a few months away at the longest! Edward’s great-uncle owns a cottage up there in which we might live for a nominal rent.

When Mama pressed me to give her the letter, I threw it into the fire though I would have dearly loved to keep it. We had such a great quarrel as to make Aunt Hattie come upstairs and intervene. Mama is now determined that we will return to Lyon tomorrow at first light. But, and my pen shakes as I admit this, I shall not be here tomorrow morning. It is nearly the appointed hour. I must pack you safely among my things. I can scarcely believe it, but by the next time I write it will be from my new abode on the Yorkshire coast. And I shall be Mrs. Virgil Marley.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Maisie placed the little book in her lap and leaned back in her chair. Her eyes were aching from the effort of deciphering the old writing and she needed a break. She had only read half of it, but she was hungry. She tucked the pages back in the iron box and placed it in an empty space on her grandmother’s bookshelf. Maybe tomorrow night she would finish it off. It would be good to have a break from the television; when she was alone she always watched too much. She went to the kitchen and thought about the diary as she wolfed down a Pot Noodle. A French aristocrat and an eighteenth-century dandy eloping to Solgreve. How fascinating; better than Jane Austen. By comparison her life was positively dull. No need for her to elope with Adrian; her parents would probably be more excited than she if they married. She rinsed her fork and threw her rubbish away. Time to think of other things, mundane things. She needed a shower. She needed company and it was still a day and a half away. She went to the back door and called Tabby, who was sniffing around at the base of the old oak tree. Had the tree been there when Georgette lived in the cottage? How different had it been then?

“Tabby, come on girl.”

In typical cat fashion, Tabby decided she’d rather sit a few paces from the back door in the dark and not come in just yet. Maisie left the door open a crack and returned to the bathroom. She couldn’t face showering under the unpredictable hose-nozzle so she started to fill up the bath with hot water and found some strawberry-scented bubble bath in the bottom of the cabinet: probably manufactured in 1976, but it would do. A bath was a good way to relax, to contemplate. Darkness would complete the mood. She turned out the light, disrobed, and slipped into the water.

“Aah,” she said, and because it was nice to hear a human voice, even though it was her own, she said it again. Longer. “Aaaaah.” That sounded like a relaxed person. She leaned her head back on the porcelain. The dark was not so bad, not so spooky, when the electric light was only four steps away and the television buzzed quietly in the background. Her toes were poking out of the water at the other end of the bath. The nails were painted black, a contrast against her pale skin. When she’d painted them she’d still been at home. Miles and miles and miles away. Might as well have been on the other side of the universe.

“Shit,” she said, palming the stupid tears off her cheeks. “Shit, shit, shit.”

She closed her eyes and tried to think of anything but home. Tabby’s cold nose nudged at her elbow.

“Hello, puss,” Maisie said. “Did you close the door behind you?”

She heard the cat settle next to her. A warm, dozy feeling began to descend on her limbs. It wouldn’t be wise to go to sleep in the bath. What if she slipped into the water and drowned? Nobody would find her. Nobody would notice her missing. Adrian would call but assume she was out. Sacha would think she’d gone home. Tabby would have to catch mice and drink bath water to stay alive.

Stop it. Morbidity was not to be encouraged. Even if she did go home, she knew what to expect: a long summer without Adrian; more long hours working with people she didn’t understand or (be honest) like; her mother always preparing to be disappointed in her; her father looking at her as though he wasn’t quite sure how he’d managed to have such a musically un gifted daughter – a mix-up at the hospital perhaps? She’d be no closer to . . . To what? That mythical moment when happiness would just magically materialise? When fulfilment was suddenly hers? She had no idea at all what it would take to bring her to that moment. She didn’t even know where to start looking for it.

A bell in the distance. It would be Christmas soon. Perry Daniels had said it might snow. She had never seen a white Christmas before.

She began an unknowing descent into a light doze. The bell seemed to be tolling down a long tunnel – a sound that was both metallic and organic. Something familiar about it.

And somebody running. Somebody with cold bare feet. An unspeakable horror in pursuit. With sudden ferocity, the back door slammed shut. Maisie sat up with a start, her heart racing. Tabby skittered off, her tail bushy with fear.

“What the . . .?”

The wind gusted frantically outside. The

windowpanes rattled, and raindrops shook violently out of trees.

Maisie put her hand over her heart.

“Tabby?”

It was okay. Just a blast of wind. At least the back door was closed now. She had been dreaming, hadn’t she? That strange bell sound, the awful feeling of something pursuing her. But it had felt horribly, almost unbearably familiar. She grabbed her towel and got out of the bath, switched the light on. Not enough light. Soon, every bulb in the house was burning. As she approached the bathroom again, she saw Tabby sitting on the laundry windowsill, her tail switching restlessly.

“What the hell are you looking at?” Maisie

demanded, instantly hating her desperate tone. Calm down, be nice to the cat. Right now she’s your only friend.

Breathe.

She dried herself and pulled on her dressing gown and a pair of woolly socks. Loud television would fix it. The faintly strawberry water swirled down the plughole. Light nausea curled into her stomach. Breathe. Just breathe.

In the lounge room, Maisie turned the television volume up. What she needed was a Caramel Rabbit. Lots of hot milk, rum, caramel topping and a tiny dollop of honey. That would relax her. She busied herself in the kitchen. Tabby was now enthusiastically playing hockey with a bottle cap across the kitchen floor. Maisie stepped out of her way as she skidded into the refrigerator door. The microwave hummed and she watched her cup turning around inside. It was one of those novelty mugs, with a mouse and a cat hugging, and “best friend in the world” written across the top. She wondered who had given it to her grandmother, who her “best friend in the world” was. Maisie had never had a “best friend” or even known someone who would buy her such a gift. She supposed Adrian was technically her closest friend. Other people she saw in groups. She wasn’t given much to gossip or to sharing personal feelings with other women: they never liked her. Or at least she imagined they didn’t. Suddenly, Tabby dropped her bottle cap and

pricked her ears up.

“What is it, Tab?” Maisie asked.

The cat dashed out of the kitchen.

“Not the laundry again,” Maisie groaned,

following Tabby. A half moon glimmered a little light in through the louvred windows. The microwave stopped and beeped loudly. Tabby had already leapt up on to the washing machine and now sat there staring out the window. Maisie pushed her face up to the glass and peered out. To her horror, she could see a figure standing beside the oak tree, pressed up close to it, just half a silhouette. She pulled away from the window and flattened herself against the laundry door. Had he seen her? Was it a he? She crouched down next to the washing machine and cautiously peered over the sill again. Perhaps it was just a shadow. She watched the dark shape for a few moments, wishing that the moon were bright enough to illuminate it clearly. The shape didn’t move, and she started to believe it was merely a shadow behind the oak.

But then it detached itself from the tree and took one pace out. She stifled a cry of horror. It was a human shape, all right, and it looked like it was wearing a long cloak of some description. She dashed to the telephone and had the receiver to her ear before she realised she didn’t know the local police station’s number. The phone book was still lying on the floor next to her chair. With shaking hands she leafed through the pages and found the number, then dialled.

“Constable Tony Blake.”

“Constable Blake. This is Maisie Fielding from the cottage on Saint Mary’s Lane. There’s an intruder in my back garden.”

“I’m sorry?”

“There’s a person in my back garden. Standing by the tree. I’m alone and I’m afraid. Could you come by?”

There was a short pause, and Maisie had been certain he was going to refuse. But then, reluctantly, he said, “Sure. Sure. I’ll be there in a few minutes. Don’t open the door to anyone but me. I’ll knock three times.”

He hung up. She turned the television and all the lights off, crept back to the laundry and surreptitiously peeked out the window again. The figure was still there. She waited, watching, with the awful sensation that the figure was watching her in return. But that wasn’t possible. With no lights on in the house, he couldn’t see inside. Tabby made a low growling noise, her tail swishing madly. Maisie turned to the cat.

“Who is it, Tabby?” She wished she could shake the feeling that the figure wasn’t flesh and blood. She wished that she couldn’t see the outline of a cloak and hood, like that apparition she had glimpsed last week. She turned back to the garden, and the shape was gone. She pressed her face close to the glass. Definitely gone. But she had only looked away for a second, maybe two. How could it have disappeared so quickly?

For a few moments she merely gazed at the garden. A knock on the front door made her jump.

She rushed to the door, then realised there had only been two knocks. She stopped about a metre away, heart thudding in her chest. The village constable had told her to let no-one else in, that he would knock three times. And it had only been a few minutes since she had called him. He couldn’t be here yet. She licked her lips. Her throat had gone dry. “Who is it?” she managed to say faintly.

Knock, knock.

Jesus, this was unbearable. Why couldn’t her grandmother have installed a peephole when she was putting all the deadlocks on the door?

The deadlocks. Had she shot them all when she came in? Her eyes quickly ran over the door. Only one of them was locked. As she stood, paralysed, one of the handles started to move, as though someone were trying it from the outside.

She reached out. Her hand was trembling. With a sudden movement, like touching a snake, she clicked the other deadlock into place. The handle stopped moving. Moments passed. The microwave peeped once to let her know it had been five minutes since her milk stopped cooking. Darkness all around her and the intolerable pressure of fear in her chest.

Then, clearly, three short knocks.

“Who is it?” she called, terrified.

“Constable Tony Blake.”

She snapped the locks and pulled the door open. A big, burly man in a musty police uniform stood there. His face looked like it was made of granite, and his narrow eyes were hostile.

“Whoever it was, they came around the front and they knocked,” she said breathlessly.

“Probably campers. Kids on Christmas holidays. Let me check out back.”

Maisie showed him into her house almost

reluctantly. She could hear that Tabby had resumed her hockey game in the kitchen. Constable Blake opened the back door and strode out into the garden, flashing his torch about. She waited for him by the door.

“Whoever it was, they’ve gone,” he said, returning to the house.

“Thank you for coming, anyway.”

He fixed her with those hostile eyes. “I used to say this to your grandmother and I’ll say it to you. This house is too far from the town for a woman living alone. It’s dangerous. You could be in danger.”

Maisie thought he sounded like he relished the idea. She locked the laundry door. He stood, barring her way into the hallway. She felt very small next to him.

“For your own safety, get yourself off to Whitby or Scarborough, or somewhere there are more people and a properly staffed police station,” he continued. “If you’d called half an hour later I would have been off duty. It’s not safe here for you.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” she said, willing him to move. She was beginning to regret calling him. Phantoms in the garden suddenly didn’t seem as menacing as the big policeman blocking her way. Suddenly, thankfully, he turned and was heading back down the hallway to the front door. “Well, if there are people with mischief on their minds, they’re always going to come here first. The cottage stands out, alone here, and it’s an obvious target.”

“Thank you for coming. I’m sure your car must have scared them away.” Just go.

He stopped and turned to her once more.

“Remember – I’m off duty between ten p.m. and six a.m., and Sundays. If it’s an emergency . . .” he said this word emphatically “. . . you can call me at home. Otherwise, just keep everything locked and don’t answer the door.”

She nodded. He bade her goodnight and headed towards his car. She closed the door with some relief and carefully locked it. She headed to the laundry window and once again looked out.

The garden was empty. She felt almost certain that her intruder hadn’t been a thrill-seeking kid on a camping holiday. In fact, she had an awful suspicion that it wasn’t even human.

Adrian waited in a cafe at Darling Harbour: a tastefully decorated place in oak and chrome, soft lights glancing off polished surfaces, and the smell of ground coffee hanging heavy and sensual in the air. Even though he lived in Roland Fielding’s house, he still felt apprehensive about meeting him here. Of course, it made sense for them to meet up for lunch while they were both in Sydney working on the same production. It was just that the two of them were so rarely alone together. Usually Maisie was there, calling Roland

“Dad” and making fun of the way he couldn’t keep his hands still if music played in the background, even if it was the neighbour’s radio playing middle-of-the-road seventies rock. But to be alone with Roland Fielding, internationally acclaimed conductor, an imposing man with silver hair, an erect back, and a distracted gaze. It was all Adrian could do not to call him “maestro” when he arrived.

“Hi, Roland.”

“Hello, Adrian.” Roland settled across from him and picked up the menu. “Last night went well, don’t you think?”

Adrian nodded. “I think so.” He knew he wouldn’t get a compliment on his personal performance out of Roland, so he didn’t wait for one. “I thought I might have the pasta. What about you?”

“Hmmm . . . I’ll have the salmon.”

Roland motioned for a waitress, who came to take their orders. When Roland had handed her the menus and she was on her way back to the kitchen, he turned to Adrian.

“Have you heard from Maisie?”

“I spoke to her yesterday.”

“How is she?”

“She’s fine. She spent the weekend with a friend in York, and she sounds a lot less homesick than she was last week.”

“Next time you speak to her, tell her to call her mother.”

“Sure.”

“Janet’s too stubborn to call her, but I’m sure she’s worried sick.”

Adrian opened his mouth to ask Roland about Maisie’s grandmother and the arrests, but a loud burst of laughter from a neighbouring table interrupted him. Roland looked over his shoulder and bestowed on the group one of his trademark looks of disdain, but they didn’t notice him. By the time he turned back, Adrian had thought better of delving into personal matters. Lunch arrived and they slipped into a discussion of difficult scores and errant flautists while they ate. Roland ordered a bottle of wine between them and started to relax into an afternoon reverie, reminiscing about other orchestras and other concerts, long ago and in faraway places. A three o’clock sunbeam lay across the table when he began to describe his years conducting the Berlin Philharmonic in the seventies. His eyes glinted with excitement as he spoke about the concerts he had been part of, the famous musicians he had worked with.

“So why did you leave Berlin?” Adrian asked.

“Janet was pregnant.” He refilled his wine glass.

“But I don’t regret it, of course,” he continued, in a voice that suggested he may actually regret it but was trying to convince himself otherwise. “Maisie has been worth it.”

“But why come to Australia?”

“Berlin felt unsafe, and anywhere in England was too close for comfort to Janet’s mother. We both agreed that we wanted to bring up the child back here at home.”

Maybe it was the two glasses of wine – Adrian rarely drank alcohol – but he found himself asking,

“Why did Janet and her mother fall out?”

The waitress stopped by to ask if they wanted to order dessert, but Roland waved her away. “I don’t know what to say in answer to that,” he replied finally.

“Maisie thought it might be to do with her fortunetelling business, then Janet let something slip the other day about her mother being arrested.”

Roland nodded. “So you already know a little.”

“Just enough to make me curious as hell.”

Roland tapped his cheek and considered for a moment, then decided to answer. “All right, I’ll tell you what I know. Janet and Sybill – that’s her mother’s name – had widely different values. Janet was a neglected child. She learned piano not because of a doting, encouraging mother, but because her neighbour was a music teacher and took pity upon her. Sybill never dressed her properly or took proper care of her. The silly woman had strange people over all the time, conducting seances and probably taking drugs. Janet had an enormous talent for music, but Sybill barely recognised it. Thanks to her neighbour, who could see something special in her, Janet won a scholarship to a music school at ten. The school was in Sydney and at the time they were living in country Victoria. So Janet left home while still a child and boarded with another family. Sybill, who was originally from Yorkshire, moved back there soon after.”

“Left the country?”

“Yes. Absolved herself of responsibility for her child. You can see now why Janet’s will is fired in iron.”

“I guess I can.”

Roland sighed and ran a hand through his silvery hair. “Unfortunately, I confused the issue when Maisie was born. I had some traditional ideas about parenthood, and thought that Sybill should be informed. I contacted her without telling Janet, and was delighted when the old woman said she would come to Australia to see the child. I imagined there may be a tearful reunion, a forgetting of old grudges. I was very, very wrong.”

“Why? What happened?”

“Sybill arrived, as a surprise. Janet could barely conceal her hostility, but Sybill was very friendly, very relaxed. There were no apologies, and I think Janet needed to hear an apology. Maisie was only a few weeks old, and Sybill sat next to Janet and cooed and made all the noises a normal grandmother would. I still held out hope that things could be resolved. But then Sybill said, ‘You know, Janet, your daughter has the Gift.’ This upset Janet terribly, and she ordered her out of the room, crying and clutching Maisie to her chest.”

“The Gift?”

Roland finished his wine and pushed the glass away from him. The CD playing in the background was jumping, and a waitress hurried across the room to turn it off. Silence. Adrian waited.

“She meant that Maisie had inherited her psychic ability.” Roland shook his head. “I feel ridiculous even saying it, but Janet took it very seriously. Janet is far more superstitious than she lets on. She likes to pretend she thinks it’s all nonsense, but I think she saw some frightening things as a little girl in her mother’s house, things that have traumatised her.”

“You mean supernatural things.”

Roland shrugged. “Who knows what really

happened? To a small child, all that talk of communicating with the dead would have been terrifying whether it was real or not.”

“I suppose you’re right. So Sybill went home?”

“No. She stayed for a few more days, and I

convinced Janet to let her baby-sit Maisie while we went out for lunch. I wanted to give Janet a break from the baby – she’d been working and worrying herself to exhaustion over the little thing. We were only gone a few hours. When we came home we found Sybill leaning over Maisie’s cot, mumbling some strange incantations, and dropping some kind of sweet-smelling powder over her. Like something out of Sleeping Beauty, with the three fairy godmothers. And I’m sure it was just Sybill’s way of blessing the child, but Janet …” He paused, shaking his head sadly. “It was all over. Sybill left the next morning, and Janet never, never forgave her.”

“What did she think Sybill was doing?”

“Casting a spell. Which she was. Of course she was. The woman believed she was a witch. But even if I believed in spells, I wouldn’t have been too concerned. Sybill clearly doted on the baby, and would only have been acting with benevolent intentions. Janet thought otherwise, Janet thought . . .” Again he paused. An embarrassed smile. “Janet thought that Sybill was trying to turn Maisie into a witch too.”

Adrian leaned back in his chair. “Wow,” he said.

“I know. It’s all a little hard to believe.”

“And so what was the deal with the arrests? She was arrested twice, right?”

“Actually, it was three times. I managed to keep the first time a secret from Janet. Her solicitor contacted me to ask if we’d help with the fine. We paid all three fines, but never heard a word of thanks from Sybill.”

“But what did she do? What was she arrested for?”

“Desecrating graves.”

Adrian was astonished. “What?”

“She desecrated some graves in the local cemetery.”

“Vandalised them?”

Roland glanced away. “Something like that. I think she was senile, but once again, Janet has other ideas. But she won’t talk about it. She simply won’t be drawn on the subject. She didn’t even shed a tear when we found out Sybill was dead. I think she was more relieved than anything else.” He nodded at Adrian. “So you can understand now why she was upset over Maisie wanting to track Sybill down.”

“Of course. My god, why didn’t Janet just tell her?”

“Because she’s stubborn. And besides, do you think it would have made a difference? Maisie probably would have been twice as interested.”

Adrian nodded: he knew Maisie. “Perhaps you’re right.”

The waitress discreetly slipped the bill onto the table, and Roland laid his American Express card on top of it. “Now you mustn’t let on that you know. Janet would throttle me.”

“Of course not. But I can tell Maisie, right?”

“I don’t know. You decide. Let’s just make sure Janet never knows that we’ve had this conversation.”

“You have my word.”

“To bring it all into the open would be pointless,”

Roland said earnestly. “Let’s just leave it in the past where it belongs.”

***

After she had changed her bra three times, Maisie stopped to admonish herself. It didn’t matter if she was wearing her white lacy bra, her cute gingham bra, or the black one that made her skin look creamy. Sacha was not going to see her underwear.

“Sacha is not going to see my underwear,” she said to Tabby, who watched her from the bed. “Not tonight. Not ever.” She wriggled into her long, black skirt and a dark grey top, smoothing both as best she could over that curve on her midriff, and turned to her make-up bag. Kept everything understated except for the red, red lipstick. She had taken care blow-drying her hair, coaxing it into glossy ringlets. If Adrian saw her, prettied up for company, he would have said she looked like a china doll. He always said that. Out in the lounge room, she selected one of her new CDs – she only had two – and inserted it into her new portable CD player. It squeaked reluctantly for a few moments and then decided that, yes, it would play. The trip to Whitby that morning had been worth it. The place felt more comfortable already with music playing. Though she’d probably soon get sick of listening exclusively to Jeff Buckley and Tori Amos.

Five minutes to six. He might not be here for another half an hour. She hated waiting, the rubber band winding up in her stomach. She fed a couple of pine cones to the fire, checked on the lasagne that she had prepared in advance – anything to make the evening proceed more easily – and peed for the fifth time in an hour.

Why was she so nervous?

Because he was cute. She was always nervous around cute guys.

A knock at the door. He was punctual. She liked punctuality in a man.

“Hang on,” she called, checking her reflection once more before answering the door.

“Hi,” she said, offering her most dazzling smile.

“Hi.” He handed her a bottle of wine. “I wasn’t sure what to bring. I hope red is okay.”

“Red’s great. Come in.”

She closed the door behind him. He shrugged out of a brown leather coat and hung it on the hook by the entrance. Underneath, he was wearing black cords and a dark blue shirt.

She motioned towards the lounge room.

“You’ve done loads of cleaning,” he said.

“I sure have. I’ve got a stack of things to go to Oxfam. Would you mind taking them in your van? I asked the second-hand place in the village to collect them, but they wouldn’t come up here.”

“Of course.”

“Sit down,” she said, pointing to the armchair nearest the fire. “Would you like a drink?”

He sat down, stretched out his legs. “No, thanks.”

“Oh. Okay, I’ll just … I’ll be in the kitchen for a moment.”

She went to the kitchen and dropped the wine on the table. It was set beautifully for two, but she hadn’t put candles out. Candles screamed intimacy. She took the lasagne from the fridge and slid it into the oven, guessed where medium was on the dial – hard to tell with figures still in fahrenheit. Now to make conversation. She had carefully prepared a mental list of topics that day just in case things got

uncomfortable. And she had to remember to drop Adrian’s name in there somewhere: she couldn’t have Sacha getting the wrong idea about her intentions. When she returned to the lounge room, Tabby was purring happily in Sacha’s lap.

“She won’t sit on my lap,” Maisie said,

feeling hurt.

“She’s probably still getting used to you.”

Maisie sat in the chair opposite him. “Do you have any idea how old she is?”

“Four or five, I think. She was a little stray when Sybill took her in.”

“She probably misses her.”

“Probably.”

“She sits on the washing machine all the time, gazing out the back window. Do you think she’s watching for Sybill?”

Sacha shook his head. “No. Tabby always did that. Sybill used to joke about her seeing the spirits that hung around the magic circle.”

A little chill ran up Maisie’s spine. She leaned forward. “Were you and my grandmother very close?”

He seemed to be considering his answer carefully.

“I suppose I was the closest person to her in the last few years. I mean, I saw her more regularly than anybody else. But Sybill wasn’t a chatty woman. She didn’t divulge any secrets, if that’s what you want to know.”

“Yeah. That’s what I want to know. I want to know what she used her magic for.”

“It wasn’t anything . . . black. I promise you, your grandmother was a white witch.”

“I saw a figure in the back garden last night. I called the police, but it disappeared. It seemed … I don’t know, not human.”

“If it was dark, windy, moonlit, anything would look scary. A lot of kids camp nearby. I used to do it when I was a lad. There’s a great little cove about a half mile from here, with a cave in the cliff face. It’s always been a popular spot. Most kids usually wouldn’t come anywhere near Solgreve, though. The reputation of the locals isn’t good.”

She nodded. “The locals don’t like me much.”

“I’m not surprised. You have Sybill Hartley genes.”

Maisie stretched her legs, settled back into the chair and vowed not to think about creepy things while Sacha was here. He and Constable Blake were probably right, it was some mischievous teenager trying to scare her. Or even a mischievous villager trying to scare her out of town. “They wouldn’t deliver my groceries to my door, they wouldn’t pick up the second-hand stuff, they all went silent when I walked into the pub the other night …”

“Sybill liked to go up to the pub and sit by the bar listening to everyone’s conversations. They hated it.”

“I’m trying to give them the impression I’m not staying long. Trying to disarm them.”

He tilted his head to one side, scratched Tabby behind the ears. “Noticed how many old people there are around here?”

Maisie considered. “I suppose there are a few.”

“Next time you’re in the village, count the wrinkled heads. You’ll be surprised.”

“I suppose it’s the kind of place people would want to retire. It’s quiet, it’s near the sea.”

He shook his head. Tabby jumped off his lap and curled up in front of the fire. “They don’t retire here. They grow old here. Really, really old. And they stay healthy. Sybill told me she knew of at least twelve people who are over a hundred.”

“You’re kidding.”

“It’s true. Must be something in the sea air. Or something in all that fervent praying they do. A local television station tried to do an article on them late last year, but everybody refused to talk. They didn’t like the idea of the place being overrun by people wanting to live longer. Though I can’t think of anything worse than living to that age. Surely you’d be tired enough to die by eighty or so.” He looked up and smiled. “Sybill had dated Reverend Fowler to be at least ninety.”

“What do you mean ‘at least’?”

“She hadn’t found a record of his birth and the church records weren’t helpful. She was really obsessed for a while with finding out how old he was.”

Maisie considered this for a few moments, the fire crackling between them. “Sacha,” she said, looking up, “did Sybill ever mention to you a diary she had found? A really old one?”

“Yes, I think so. Is that the book she found hidden around the house in parts?”

“In parts? Then there’s more than one piece?”

“I think she found three. But she put them all back where she found them. Don’t ask me where.”

Maisie sighed. It was all too much. Strange shapes in the garden, unnaturally old priests and diaries stashed in floorboards.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Sorry?”

“You sighed. What’s up?”

Maisie smiled. She didn’t have to solve any of it now, she just had to entertain Sacha. “Nothing’s up. I’m fine. It’s just that Sybill left so much junk behind, I don’t know what to chuck and what to keep.”

“I don’t think she would have expected you to keep anything. She had a healthy disdain for all things material.”

“So why didn’t she throw away some of this stuff?”

Sacha shrugged. “Can I have a drink after all?”

Over a glass of wine each, they knocked off every topic on Maisie’s list – from siblings to favourite movies – except her boyfriend. There was no help for it, she simply had to bring it up. It couldn’t go unspoken any longer, not with the way Sacha was looking at her (though he may have just been squinting against the fire).

“We’re having lasagne tonight, is that okay?”

“Sure,” he said.

“It’s my boyfriend’s favourite.” This was untrue. Adrian stayed away from red meat and from cheese as much as possible. Just a couple more things which were bad for the voice.

“What’s your boyfriend’s name?” He hadn’t even blinked in surprise and he hadn’t changed the way he was looking at her: just a little too steadily.

“Adrian.”

“And is he a musician too?”

“He sings. Opera.” Why did she feel embarrassed to say that? Was it because Sacha swept floors in a bakery?

Sacha didn’t seem to be embarrassed that he swept floors in a bakery. “And why didn’t Adrian come with you?”

“He’s busy. He’s working all through Christmas and then he’s teaching at a summer school in January. Besides, I needed to be alone.”

Sacha raised his eyebrows.

“I’ve got a lot to think about,” she continued.

“About my future.”

“Ah. The future.”

“Yes. Like what am I going to do with my life.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-four. Nearly twenty-five.”

“I should say you’re already doing it.”

Maisie laughed. “Well, it doesn’t feel like that. It feels like I’m waiting and waiting for something amazing to happen, and the longer it doesn’t happen, the more stuck I’m going to be with second best.”

“You’re like your grandmother. She was always yearning after something, she didn’t know what. She used to go for long walks along the cliffs, gaze out at the waves and get herself all wound up. Then she’d come home and find me in her garden and say, ‘Sacha, the sea knows something about me. Even if no-one on earth can understand, the sea knows something about me.’ But I always understood her. And I think I understand you.” He rose and took two steps towards her. Maisie’s breath caught in her throat.

“I can smell something burning,” he said, walking straight past her and out to the kitchen.

“Oh, god. The lasagne.”

She raced to the oven and pulled open the door. It wasn’t ruined, but a dribble of the cheesy topping had dripped over the edge of the pan and was merrily burning on the element. The lasagne was well and truly done. She’d have to remember that halfway on the dial wasn’t necessarily a medium heat.

“Sit down,” she said, indicating the table.

“You’ve really made a difference to this kitchen,”

he said, looking around him as he pulled out a chair and sat down.

“Thanks.” She had spent hours cleaning the

kitchen properly, adding decorative touches like dried flowers and fresh fruit. Now it was inviting and homey, rather than jumbled and smelly. She served up the lasagne with potato salad on the side, then filled two fresh glasses with wine and joined Sacha at the table.

“I can’t imagine how Sybill lived amongst all the clutter,” Maisie said.

“I don’t think she noticed it. Hey, this tastes great.”

“Thanks.”

“You should have seen the place when I first met her, when I was just a lad. Really creepy. You could still see the roof beams – they were centuries old – and it was really dark and very gloomy. But over the years she renovated the inside, put in the new ceiling, new floors in places, the new bathroom – don’t you love the colours?”

“Kind of sickening.”

“In fact, the only thing she didn’t change was the fireplace in the lounge room. That’s why it looks a bit old and crumbly. It’s original, probably dates to around the middle of the seventeenth century.”

“Wow. Is the house that old?”

He nodded because his mouth was full of food.

“In Australia, we’ve got nothing that old. Not built by European settlement anyway.”

“You get used to it living here. I hardly notice. So, what are you doing for Christmas?”

She shook her head. “Trying not to think about it. I might see if Cathy, that’s my friend in York, wants to get together.”

“Oh.” He kept eating.

Idiot. Maybe he was going to ask you to join him for Christmas. “ But that’s not for certain,” she said quickly. “I don’t know what Cathy has planned.”

He didn’t respond. Had she missed her chance?

What chance, Maisie? What are you planning?

She had to stop thinking about him like this. By the end of the evening she had given herself a headache. Don’t be encouraging. Don’t be unavailable. Don’t hold his gaze too long. Don’t look away too quickly. Don’t forget about Adrian. Don’t talk about your boyfriend so much. Where was the voice of reason? Where was the voice telling her that flirting just proved she had a pulse, and if she could simply enjoy Sacha’s company all would be well?

“I’d better go,” Sacha said around nine-thirty, pulling himself to his feet. “I have to work early in the morning.”

“Okay.” She succeeded in not sounding too

disappointed. She followed him to the door and waited while he put on his coat.

He stood still for a moment, looking at her.

“Thanks for dinner,” he said.

“You’re welcome.”

He leaned over and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. She could feel herself light up. He fumbled with the door and walked out into the cold evening air.

“I’ll see you soon,” he said.

“Great.”

Then he was on his way to the van, and it was too cold to hold the door open any longer, so she went back inside and sat by the fire. She was a little tipsy from the wine (she had drunk more than he because he had to drive), and a warm glow settled over her. He had kissed her.

He had said he would see her soon.

It wouldn’t be soon enough.

She had to do something to get her mind off Sacha, so she pulled out the rest of the diary. It was late and she should have been sleepy from the wine, but lying alone in her bed was only an invitation to toss and turn all night. Maybe the diary would help her doze off.

CHAPTER NINE

Monday, 23 September 1793

Though far from being a blissful New Bride, I find myself quite comfortable and hopeful in my new surroundings. I notice it has been scarce a week since I last wrote, but I feel a lifetime has passed. Virgil and I made our escape on a series of mail coaches, with a corresponding series of disagreeable horsemen to make innuendoes about our circumstances.

We were due to stop over with friends of Virgil’s in Nottingham, but found their residence deserted and boarded up. We slept on their doorstep, then continued on to Gretna Green, where we were married in the Scottish way. We headed immediately back to York, and from there we made our way by hackney coach to Solgreve, population 650. This village has the most extraordinarily large burial ground, which lies directly behind the great ruins of an old abbey and a small modern church. We have been reluctantly welcomed to Solgreve by a pious Reverend named Fowler, who I can tell thinks little of our hasty Presbyterian marriage. We now live in a little stone cottage about a quarter-mile from the sea, on St. Mary’s Lane. It is a rather old and curious place. Edward’s great-uncle’s father built it himself, and lived in it until he was 109! It has been empty for many years, and is quite small and dim.

We are very close to the sea here, and Virgil and I have already learned to appreciate its comforting sounds. In fact, we have been down to the beach on two occasions. I suppose I need not blush to admit these things now that I am a married woman, but there is a little story that I would like to record of our first trip to the beach. You see, we found there an old fishing boat. We pulled it out of the sand and saw that it looked whole and unbroken, and decided foolishly to try it in the water. It floated perfectly for the first five minutes, as Virgil and I paddled with our arms out onto the pale blue sea. Virgil christened her the Good Ship Sweetheart, and we thought ourselves terribly clever for finding such a sound vessel. But then I noticed my skirts becoming wet and it became apparent that there was a tiny leak somewhere. We hastily paddled back to shore, up to our ankles in seawater before long, and pulled the boat back up to its place behind the rocks. Here in the soggy boat, laughing and falling about like children, Virgil and I made love under the smiling sun. Yes, out in the open!

I can scarce believe that I did it, now, as it seems so incontinent a thing to do. But there, I have done it, and I enjoyed it, and here I am, two days later, boasting about it like a silly fool!

I have written to my parents in Lyon and hope for a reply in the coming days. I know that they will be angry, but I’m sure they will come to love me again as time passes; perhaps even to help with our money problems which appear to be greater than either of us first anticipated. We have yet to acquire more than the most basic of Furniture, Silver and Plate, and I now regret not bringing more than one case with me, as I find myself with only three good dresses and one house dress, which I have hardly been out of these eight days. Still, Virgil is due to start work later this week, assisting a local medical researcher, Dr Aaron Flood. He says he has helped him once before, and insists the man pays well. I have some little savings of my own which will bear us until things improve, and there is always the prospect of Virgil’s poetry being published very soon by an interested House in London. We hope daily to hear an answer from them.

You may sense in my words a kind of curious contentment with my lot, and I must admit that this is exactly how I feel. I have not the trappings of luxury to which I am used, but I have by my side the most beautiful partner for whom I could wish. We eat nothing more exotic than bread, bacon and cheese, and yet we eat it together. We have no fine linen, and yet we awake next to each other in the morning. We light no fancy lanterns, but we love each other just as well by rushlight. I feel every day that I have made the right choice, that I would much rather be here with Virgil than in France without him.

At this point, the only thing which troubles me is the inclement weather! This town must be the windiest place on Earth, and such a tumult of weather at night did ever make me anxious. I expect I will become used to it very soon, and as long as I have my husband’s body against which to warm myself at night, I vow that I shall not complain. Let the mad, rich world of barons and dukes and countryside mansions spin on without us. We shall nurture each other with love. Tuesday, 1 October 1793

My entries, you see, are not as regular now I am occupied with the business of Marriage. It is usually Virgil to whom I turn when I need to express what I feel or think. However, tonight I am alone, for Virgil is out at his new place of employment. And tonight also, though I despise myself for admitting it, I am so very angry with him that I can only write it down, for to tell him would certainly cause an argument, and I have vowed we shall never argue.

It seems we are soon to have the company of Mr Snowe and Miss Andrews, living with us in this self-same house. You cannot imagine my misery, my

disappointment. In the short time we have been together, Virgil and I have learned to live modestly, and I can endure modest living most sweetly when it is just we two. We create Peace between us. The thought of losing our privacy is intolerable to me. And to lose it because the house will contain those two! Of course I don’t mind Edward on his own, but Charlotte I despise, and she leads him on to greater and greater ruin I am sure. When they come to share our house, all the harmony and agreeable solitude which Virgil and I have had will be gone. Virgil says that as this house belongs to Edward’s great-uncle, we can scarcely say No to him. But I rather think that Virgil may be looking forward to his company, so that they may work on their poetry together. He has also mentioned that Edward may work for Dr Flood too, and that the extra income may –

Diary, the most odd thing has just happened. As I was writing, I heard a knock at the door. Upon answering it, there stood the local Reverend. I invited him in, but he refused my invitation.

“Not while your husband is out at work,” he said.

“I shall not disturb your peace for long. I wanted only to ask whether or not you have been in touch with your family yet, to tell them of your new

circumstances.”

The Reverend, of course, knew that we had been married in Scotland and could easily see I was under 21. It does not surprise me that he had deduced our marriage did not have the approval of our families.

“Yes, Reverend, I have written to my parents, but as yet I have not heard anything in reply. My aunt in London sent me a note just a day or so ago to tell me my mother’s last letter to her mentioned nothing of my marriage. So either she has not received my last letter –”

“Or she is not acknowledging you.”

“That is what I fear, Reverend.” I did not tell him that even Aunt Hattie had become frosty towards me, accusing me of not knowing the difference between Life and a Game. I do not know that they are so very different. He nodded as though satisfied with my response.

“Do let me know if you hear from them. Shall we see you in church this weekend?”

Virgil and I have not attended a service since our arrival. I was raised a Catholic (albeit a reluctant one), and Virgil is experimenting with atheism, so it hardly seems appropriate. But we had promised the Reverend when we first met to become faithful members of his congregation.

“Perhaps,” I said, turning my eyes down so I wouldn’t see his disapproval.

“Very well. Goodnight, Mrs Marley.”

I bid him goodnight and returned to you, Diary. What a strange, inquisitive man he is. I’m sure Virgil would not be so kind in his summation. I wish the Reverend had not made me feel so guilty, for what should I care for his opinion of me? I suppose that I have been used to being treated as a Lady, as an example of moral fortitude and grace. However, when Reverend Fowler looks at me, I am sure he sees another Charlotte. I wanted to tell him that I was a virgin until my wedding night, and that this elopement is the first disobedient thing I have ever done, but I doubt he would have believed me. When he talks of my parents, my family, he would not believe that my father is noble, that my aunt a rich widow. He probably imagines they are cobblers or tailors or some other such lowly profession. Why, it makes my flesh burn with indignation.

But listen to me! As I write these words I must remember that I have chosen lowliness. We cannot afford even one servant, but Virgil promises upon Edward’s arrival to engage a maid-of-all-work immediately. The house shall be overcrowded, for it is only a little place, old and draughty and dark, with tiny, dingy rooms and hideous black beams in the ceiling that seem to weigh me down.

I am sorry. I really must pull myself out of my misery. It is Virgil’s place to be melancholy, and mine to be all cheer and optimism. This place has been the seat of all my bliss as long as just Virgil and I were here, but I suppose I have always known that bliss would be short-lived. Virgil must go to work every evening now, and sometimes does not come home until nearly three a.m. If I hear the church clock strike two and he’s not yet in bed with me, I worry and pace until he comes home. And when he does come in, he is too tired to talk with me or to make love (which I suppose I should be ashamed to admit an appetite for!). I think he dislikes his employer, because he often seems disturbed and distracted when he comes home, and sometimes must take a few drops of laudanum for his nerves. Still, any day we may hear from my parents, with some forgiveness and perhaps generosity: I know I am entitled at least a little money. And any day we may hear from the publishing house in London who are considering Virgil and Edward’s collection. I’m sure these circumstances are only temporary, and I must take heart that my misery will be short-lived. I have chosen this life, and I stand by my choice. Sunday, 6 October 1793

What an evening we had last night! Edward and Charlotte arrived in the early afternoon, insisting that they will not stay long, a declaration that caused me no end of happiness. Already my spirits were buoyed, and became even more so when I saw how much Virgil cheered in Edward’s company. I know that I have said I prefer it when only we two are here, but I perhaps was being selfish, and had not noticed how withdrawn Virgil was becoming. He is like his old self, full of teasing and gentle smiles (for Virgil smiles never more than gently). With all Edward’s raucous joking and Charlotte’s squealing, and with all the conversation and drinking of wine, I could not hear the awful wind outside (which even now howls over the eaves and down the chimney). Then, at suppertime as we sat around the table in the kitchen, Virgil began to tell Edward about his nerves, and that Dr Flood had given him opium, which he took as a tincture. I had heard stories about opium, and was immediately appalled.

“Virgil!” I exclaimed, “how is it that you have not told me about this?”

Virgil looked at me, bewildered. “But, Gette, you know that I take it. What do you think laudanum is? It is merely opium in alcohol.”

Charlotte saw no shame in screaming with laughter at me.

“I did not know,” I mumbled, not meeting anyone’s eye. You see, I had always thought laudanum a medicinal, and opium-eating an immoral custom imported from the East. I remember my father breaking off a friendship with another man because he engaged in the debauchery of “l’opiomane”. But then, my father is a stern and strictly self-regulated man. As Charlotte’s laughter trailed off, Edward said,

“Do you have any left?”

I looked up. Virgil nodded. “Shall we?”

I began to protest, but Virgil grasped my hand.

“Gette, do not worry. It’s just like drinking wine, only a little more potent. We have had it before, and do not forget that it is a medicine. It works to heal the body, not to harm it.”

I was not going to allow Charlotte to laugh at me again, so I merely nodded. He let go of my hand and rose to go to the bedroom. One of the candles on the table began to splutter, so I went to the sideboard for my snuffers. We are trying to conserve our candles, so we have only two burning most nights, and they are tallow and smell faintly of sheep grease. I clipped the wick and the candle surged back to life.

Virgil returned with the crystal bottle which sat beside our bed, and proceeded to pour out a measure of the red liquid to all four of us. I picked up my glass and sniffed it gingerly, but could smell no Sin. Rather, the liquid smelled faintly of cinnamon and eastern spices. Charlotte and Edward held their glasses to each other’s lips, quickly downed the tincture and then pressed their mouths together in a passionate kiss. I returned my attention to Virgil. He was gazing at me solemnly, his eyes nearly black in the candlelight, so beautiful that my breath stopped in my lungs.

“Gette?” he said quietly, holding his glass close to my face.

“I’m frightened,” I whispered in return.

“I would never let anything bad happen to you,” he replied.

I looked once again at my own glass, then boldly held it up to Virgil’s mouth. At the same moment, I felt the cool of his glass touch my own lips, and we tilted in unison, the bitter-sweet drink passed over my tongue and I swallowed it. Virgil put our glasses aside and kissed me, but not in the animal way that Charlotte and Edward kissed, just a slow, gentle touch of warm reassurance.

“What now?” I asked.

“We wait,” Edward said, pulling Charlotte on to his lap.

To my dismay, they returned to ordinary

conversation. I felt no immediate difference, except perhaps a light sickness of the stomach. But within ten minutes (and some of the following descriptions may not make sense) it seemed as though the whole room began to pulse, as though with an unnatural heartbeat, and the candlelight seemed to glow suddenly so much brighter.

Then, oh, what a revolution to my senses! My hands had been resting on the table-top, and without realising it, my fingers were moving over the smooth polish. It felt like nothing I had ever felt before – like silky glass, or wet diamonds, sending tingles through my fingertips that wove icy cobweb patterns in my brain. I could not stop feeling the table-top. It seemed to me as though my hands could sense colours, but not the colours we ordinarily see: my hands could find the truth about colours. Although I had always known the table as chestnut, I realised now that it was actually glacial white. I said aloud, “The table-top is white,”

and Virgil replied, “I know.”

So I touched Virgil, and found that he was the colour of red wine as one sees it by candlelight through glass: glowing darkly, mysterious, promising. I leaned over and kissed his hand, which was lying upon the table, and found he tasted the same.

“If only we had music,” he said, and even his voice was dark wine. My cheek rested on the table-top, my mouth closed around one of his fingers. I breathed in the impossible combination of the glacial wood and the dark liquid of his skin.

“Charlotte will sing,” Edward declared, and I looked up to see him propel Charlotte out of his lap so that she stood unsteadily in the candlelight, an amused smile curling her lips.

“Where e’er you walk,” she began in a clear belllike tone, “Cool gales shall fan the glade, Trees where you sit shall crowd into a shade . . .”

I closed my eyes to listen, and though her voice was unaccompanied, it was as though a choir of angels were singing with her. Even the wind outside seemed to have found a harmony for her voice. It

was little short of rapture to listen, as I was, slumped over the table with Virgil’s finger still trapped between my lips.

But then Virgil withdrew his finger and I heard him say, “Bravo.”

I opened my eyes and sat up. Edward was now standing behind Charlotte, caressing her ribs while she sang.

“Where e’er you tread, the blushing flowers shall rise . . .”

“Yes. Come, my angel – sing, sing!” Edward cried as his hands rose and closed over her breasts.

“And all things flourish, and all things flourish, and all things flourish . . .”

Now his fingers had pulled apart her bodice.

“Where e’er you turn your eyes.”

He pushed underneath her breasts so that they spilled out of her stays. She stretched like a cat, clearly enjoying herself.

“Where e’er you turn your eyes, where e’er you turn your eyes. ”

Indeed, I could not turn my eyes away. Edward gathered her skirt and chemise, pushing them up so we could see her thighs (I was not so out of my wits that I didn’t notice what awful, sturdy, man’s legs she has). She had stopped singing now, and instead had leaned her head back on Edward’s shoulder, letting him undress her before us. The sudden resumption of silence, or at least what passes for silence in this windy place, caused a strange shock to my senses. A peculiar panicky feeling came over me. When Edward grew bolder and exposed the very flower of her womanhood, I pushed myself out of my chair and thumped my fist on the table.

“Don’t!” I cried. “Do not!”

“Jealous little virgin,” Charlotte hissed in reply. As I looked at her, it seemed her mouth was a huge, wet thing; her breasts, her thighs, everything womanly about her suddenly became obscene, overdeveloped, grotesque and hungry.

Rather than look at her, I fled to our bedroom. It was blissfully dark. I threw myself upon the bed, and clutched at the sheets as though they might stop me from falling into the awful abyss that seemed to have opened around me. I realised after a few moments that I could hear muffled laughter from the parlour, and I became so angry that I thought my feelings would split me in two. I simply could not bear the thought that Virgil might be enjoying such a display of Harlotry, but I knew if I called him I would seem like the jealous little virgin which Charlotte had accused me of being.

I pressed my palms to my eyes and tried to calm my senses, which was impossible because they were in such a tumult from the opium. Once again, I heard the muffled laughter, and this time I heard Charlotte make a little moan of delight. I simply could not stand for it, so I called for my Husband.

“Virgil,” I cried, trying to sound pathetic and not at all angry. “I am so very ill. Would you please come?”

I heard him push his chair back and approach the room. In a moment he had closed the door behind him and sat down next to me.

“Gette?”

I sat up. “I have a sickness in my stomach.”

“It’s just the laudanum. You’ll get used to it.” He touched me tenderly on the forehead. I was so overwhelmed with sensation that I began to cry.

“Please, Virgil, promise you will always love me.”

“Of course, my little poppet, of course I will.”

What I really wanted for him to promise was never to love Charlotte, but he had gathered me in his arms to comfort me, and I knew that I would only demonstrate my jealousy if I asked him. He lay me down and wrapped me amongst the covers, then sat with me until he thought I was asleep. In fact, I dozed a little, but as soon as he got up to leave I woke again, and lay there listening. I dreaded hearing sounds from the parlour that may suggest Virgil was enjoying Charlotte and Edward’s debauchery, but even though I strained my ears over the gusts of wind which shook the windows, I could not hear her voice or her laughter. I did not know how long I had dozed, but I think perhaps she and Edward had finished their ridiculous business, and she had gone to bed also. Still, I listened to Virgil and Edward talk. I found it comforting to hear the low rumble of male voices. Rain had just started falling outside, and a constant drip-drip sounded off the eaves. I burrowed further under the blankets, feeling warm and content. I heard them speak of poetry and politics, and of returning to London as soon as they could, as soon as they had enough money or their collection was published.

“And so you have told Flood that I’m looking for work?” Edward asked.

“He says he’ll be happy to have you work for him again,” Virgil replied. A clink of glass against glass told me they were drinking wine together.

“Does Georgette know what kind of work you’re doing?”

“No. And she won’t find out. It would disturb her too much.”

My skin prickled.

“Are you sure it’s not you who will become

disturbed?” Edward asked. “I remember last time.”

“I’m better now. I can endure anything for Gette’s sake. No other employer would pay me so well for only a few nights’ work.”

“No other employer is a monster.”

A short silence prevailed. I could see reflected candlelight dipping and swelling against the wall of my room. The rain had become heavy, making it hard for me to listen.

“Do you think he is a monster?” Virgil said at last.

“Truly?”

“You know he is,” Edward replied.

“He does monstrous things, I’ll grant you. But it is in the interests of scientific discovery.”

“I don’t believe that, Virgil. I think Flood is interested in far more personal goals than scientific discovery.” I heard one of them, Edward I think, stand and walk to the sideboard, perhaps to fetch the snuffers.

“Have you ever touched his hand?” Edward

continued.

“Yes. Upon our first meeting I shook it.”

“His fingers are icy but smooth. So unnaturally smooth, like a pebble worn down by the sea.”

“I think he is very old.”

“I cannot imagine how he can live where he does,”

Edward said.

“A fitting lair for a monster,” Virgil said laughing, but I sensed from his voice that it was only mock cheer. That perhaps Flood frightened him a little. “The dark, the cold, the half-finished experiments.”

“I once found half a frog in a glass dish behind his work bench. The back half. I almost didn’t recognise what it was, divorced from its context like that.” More laughter, the kind that we rely upon to disperse discomfort.

Their conversation turned elsewhere, and Virgil came to bed shortly after. I have not been able to rest for worry, so I left him sleeping peacefully and came here to the parlour to write. Dawn would be upon us if the sky were not so laden with the coming day’s rain. I am all confusion, not knowing what to do with this new knowledge. I want to ask Virgil what it is that Flood does, but I find that I am irrationally afraid. Monstrous science? I simply cannot imagine. I shall think on it some more, for I cannot sleep. I cannot even close my eyes.

CHAPTER TEN

Maisie sat back to contemplate what she had just read. The rest of the page was empty, but Georgette always started a new entry on a fresh sheet. So Sacha was probably right, the diary didn’t end here. Maisie had recognised her grandmother’s handwriting in the margins clarifying a word here or there, and then, under the last entry, Sybill had written in pencil: “look up”. Whatever that meant. Maybe she’d intended to look up some information about Dr Flood, or about Georgette herself.

Far from putting her to sleep, the diary had awakened a sense of unease, although she couldn’t quite put her finger on why. It could have been the last mention of Dr Flood as some kind of monster, it could have been because Georgette had described the house –

this house – in ways that made it seem old and grim and with a history that stretched back into a darker past. She tipped her head back on the armchair and looked up at the ceiling. No black beams in the roof now. A new ceiling, painted pale yellow, had been put in. Double glazing blocked the wind, and electric lights warded off the night’s shadows. The shadows that were deepening towards midnight beyond the windows. No, she knew why she was unsettled. A “pious Reverend named Fowler” had come calling on

Georgette when she first arrived, just as his namesake had called on Maisie. And Sacha had told her that very evening that Sybill, obsessed with finding out how old he was, had dated her own Reverend Fowler to at least ninety. But of course it was just his namesake. It was probably common for parishes to stay in one family for centuries. Or common to be surnamed Fowler in North Yorkshire. Or common for fabulous

coincidences to occur when a girl was all alone in a cold place away from loved ones.

It meant nothing.

Still, she left the lights on in the lounge room when she went to bed, hoping the bright electric yellow would keep at bay the eerie shade of centuries. The cold haze of morning hadn’t yet lifted, and Maisie’s breath made dragon puffs in the air as she left the house and headed towards the road. Icy threads of wind tangled in her hair. She jammed her hands into her pockets. Even with gloves on, her fingers felt numb. Saturday. Empty time stretched out before her until Christmas. Since she had woken up that morning, her loneliness and emptiness had woken up with her. The cold was everywhere and she was a long way from home.

She headed towards the cemetery, intending to seek out her grandmother’s grave. She could hear the sea battering the bottom of the cliffs and thought about what Sacha told her Sybill used to say: “The sea knows something about me.” Well, perhaps it knew something about Maisie as well.

All the trees lining the main road were now completely stripped of their leaves. Their bare branches were stark against the freezing sky. A blackbird on a gnarled branch watched her approach and flapped away. The abbey rose up like a phantom watching over the graves. Maisie still hadn’t managed to shake her first impression of it, that unsettling, almost uncanny, sense of deep-buried dread. Other old ruins she had seen were beautiful, but there was something dark and rotted about the stone Solgreve Abbey was built from. She turned from it and headed towards the low cemetery wall: pale stone, covered in moss and creeping lichen. A sign on the wall, old and weather-beaten, said, Church Property: No Trespassers. She assumed it didn’t apply to mourners and clambered over into the cemetery proper.

Maisie walked right down the centre of the

cemetery until she came to the cliff, and stood there for a few minutes watching the sea foaming and bubbling, grey and white. Seagulls ducked and weaved above her. The yearning was back, that thing that lived inside her like a ravenous, puling child. How was she supposed to be happy while she had this feeling: this queasy, bored feeling which attached itself to the weirdest objects as though they had the answer to all life’s problems? Every morning for as long as she could remember she woke up hoping that today she’d feel satisfied, contented, fulfilled. But then the feeling would start to seek her out. It hid in her favourite songs, or it lazed on the eyebrows of exotic boys, or, like now, it rolled in with the grey waves as she watched them.

She turned her back on the sea and surveyed the expanse of the cemetery. How on earth was she to find her grandmother in here? Perhaps she should have contacted Reverend Fowler, asked for directions. She inspected the graves nearest her. Wind and rain had worn away the inscriptions on the headstones, nearly eaten the entire surface to wormwood ribbons. They looked as though they had rotted in sympathy with the bodies they stood guard over. One had worn through completely. The top half lay in the grass, as though in disgrace. She wandered slowly up towards the road. If only she hadn’t been thinking obsessively about Sacha all morning. Adrian was a known quantity, everything about him was known to her: his irrational fears and his vain habits and even how his breath smelled first thing in the morning. All was open with him, and she did love him. Of course she did. But here was Sacha, all darkness and mystery, exotic, dangerous even. She had gone over their conversation in her mind, scoured it for evidence of his feelings for her –

(feelings for her? was she mad? she’d only met him twice) – and in her more reckless moments, imagined in shadowy detail where things could lead one freezing midwinter night.

Stop.

These graves were all too old. She paused to look at one. Sheltered a little from the wind by other headstones, some of its inscription was still legible. Here lieth Mary Margaret Hapselth. Born . . . Died 14- 5-1715 of . . . from Heaven and returned . . . Forever missed. Forever? The inscription wasn’t even going to make it to three hundred years by the looks of it. The entire mid-section of writing was missing. People died, and then some time later their mourners died, and then some time later, even the material signs of grief died too. There was nothing permanent about life, not even the loss of it.

Morbid thoughts again. She felt like she had been living entirely inside her head for the last two weeks. Perhaps even Cathy and Sacha were spontaneously created figments of fantasy.

Further back from the cliffs, the inscriptions were closer to entire. She stopped to read one, and was surprised by what she found. Below the usual details of name, date, birth, and mourners, were two extra lines: Whoever disturbeth this peaceful bower/Shall fall soon after to the devil’s power.

A curse. She read it again and backed away. She was probably standing right on top of the remains. Was that disturbing the grave? Too much weird stuff had happened in the last two weeks for her not to be superstitious about things like that. She moved up the pathway, looking from gravestone to gravestone. It took only a few moments to realise that more than half the graves were protected by curses.

Damned is he who troubles this grave.

Eternal hellfire to all who attempt to resurrect the occupant.

The men who dare to diggeth upon this tomb will face God’s mighty wrath.

It wasn’t the cold that made her shiver this time. She strayed off the path, trying to be mindful of where bodies might be lying below the ground, and read as many headstones as she could.

The cold grey sky arched above, the cold grey sea endlessly pounded below, as Maisie flitted from grave to grave in the enormous cemetery, reading curse after curse. A few drops of rain spattered here and there, and the wind pulled her hair around, impatiently making knots. Maisie filled her eyes with grey stone and dark promises, and wished she wasn’t totally alone. She wove up through the cemetery towards a newer area. But over near the abbey were graves that looked even older than the eighteenth-century headstones on the cliff-top. She remembered what Cathy had said: “I bet there are burials over a thousand years old there. Could be some amazing stuff in the ground.” Maybe she’d go over and have a look after she had found her grandmother.

A motor stopped nearby: Constable Blake’s patrol car. She paused to watch as he got out and climbed over the cemetery wall, strode towards her. Her heart sped up a few beats. What did he want?

“What’s the matter?” she called.

He didn’t answer until he was with her. “I’m sorry. You’ll have to leave.”

“Leave?”

“The cemetery. It’s private property.”

Maisie nearly laughed, but he looked totally serious. “Private property? But I’m just looking for my grandmother’s grave. To pay my respects.”

“It’s this way.” He began to move off towards the west wall, and she had no choice but to follow him.

“Here,” he said, coming to a halt.

Maisie stopped next to him and looked down. A simple plaque set into a flat stone said: Sybill Gloria Hartley. At peace. She gazed at it, aware that the police officer hadn’t left her side. Growing irritated, she turned to him and said, “Is there any chance of being alone with my thoughts?”

He nodded. “You have to have church permission to come into the cemetery, and Reverend Fowler will accompany you. I’ll just be over there.” He indicated the wall nearest where his car was parked. He strode off, and Maisie watched him go. This was too bizarre.

“Hi, grandma,” she said softly. “Sorry, I can’t chat, but there’s a hairy policeman watching me. You lived here for a long time, so you’ll probably understand.”

She wished she had brought some flowers.

Constable Blake was watching her like a hawk from his car. She gave him a quick wave and left her grandmother’s grave, headed out of the cemetery, over the wall and back up the main road home. She heard his car start and a moment later he drove past her. How embarrassing to be moved along like that as though she were a teenager. What was so wrong with visiting the cemetery? It wasn’t like it was midnight and she planned a Satanic rite. This village was full of crazy people. Crazy enough to do what they did that night. Around ten-thirty, when she was getting ready for bed, Maisie was shocked to hear a loud thump on her roof.

“What the hell . . .?” She dropped her toothbrush and went into the hallway. The noise again: a loud thump and a clatter. Tabby started and ran towards the back door. Please, not the hooded shape in the garden again – she couldn’t handle another bout with that. Then the sound of smashing glass from the front of the house. Maisie raced up the hallway and into the lounge room. Someone had thrown a rock at the window. Glass lay in shards all over the floor. She immediately reached for the phone, but then remembered Constable Blake’s warning: he went off duty at ten p.m.

Instead she crept across the hallway to her bedroom, and peered out the window cautiously. If she saw that hooded figure again, she was going to pack up and move tomorrow. But the hooded figure wasn’t there – just a perfectly ordinary male of the species throwing another rock at her roof. This one clattered into the eaves and fell to ground. She fumbled with the latch and hoisted the window open.

“Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

The man, whose face was obscured by shadows, immediately backed away and began to run down the street. Maisie raced to the door and threw it open, but thought better of chasing him. In the distance she could hear a car start, and knew she would never catch him. The bastard had probably timed the attack so that she couldn’t call the police. She closed the door and walked carefully into the lounge room. She began to collect some of the glass. How was she going to patch up the hole in her window until she could get someone out

here to fix it?

The sound of an engine outside brought her to the window again, but she wasn’t in time to see the car or its licence plate. Only in time to hear the man bellow one bewildering word from his car window.

“Witch!”

***

Reverend Fowler placed his elbows carefully on his scarred desk and tried to look stern, but the five people facing him displayed no signs of discomfort. They were Tony Blake, who had called this meeting; Douglas and Elsa Smith, local busybodies by most standards, but invaluable members of the community in Solgreve; and their neighbours and close friends Walter and Margaret King. Last night, Walter King, encouraged by his wife and neighbours, had taken it into his own hands to try to run the girl out of town. Perhaps it had seemed like a good idea at the time, but by mid-morning it had turned out badly. She had called Tony up to the house to inspect the damage for an insurance company, her solicitor had arrived huffing and puffing and getting quotes from glaziers, and now, at three p.m., there was a truck parked out the front of the cottage and two workmen taking their time fixing the window. All it had caused was trouble.

“I don’t understand what the problem is,” Walter King was saying, his hairy eyebrows shooting up in consternation. “Nobody’s told her I did it, Tony’s not going to fine me over it, so why bother with this meeting?”

“Because you have to stay out of it. You have to let me take care of it,” the Reverend said, trying to sound reasonable but firm.

“You take care of it?” This was Elsa Smith, a sharp-eyed octogenarian with a shock of white hair.

“What have you done? Sat here and waited and hoped

– that’s all. Walter was just trying to scare her. We all want her out of here.”

“But his action brought more people to town, focused more attention on us. That solicitor could mention it to people he knows in York. We don’t want to arouse that kind of suspicion.”

“She was in the cemetery!” Elsa almost shouted these words.

“We needn’t worry,” Tony replied. “She might not know anything.”

“She’s Sybill’s granddaughter. These things are passed between generations,” Margaret King said. The Reverend had to stop himself from physically recoiling. It was his greatest fear that Maisie would prove to be just as powerful and formidable as Sybill.

“What are you going to do to protect this town if you won’t let us protect it?” Douglas Smith demanded. The Reverend put up his frail white hands. “Stop

. . . please . . .” He had to raise his voice to be heard over the outraged questions. “Please . . . be quiet.”

Finally they ran out of steam. Tony gave the Reverend an encouraging smile.

“I hear your complaints,” the Reverend said at last.

“I understand your concerns because they are also my concerns. The girl has told me herself she won’t be here much past Christmas. Why don’t we wait until then? If she still hasn’t gone, then I will do something about it.”

“What will you do?” Elsa asked sharply.

“Try to understand this: when people are

confronted by rock-throwing locals, they will always –

always –report that to the authorities. It’s a crime, and they know it’s a crime. But when people are confronted by other frightening things, things they can’t explain or even believe, they are very reluctant to come forward.” The Reverend laid his hands on his desk, reached for a pen to idle with. “I can call on . . . well, you know.”

They were all nodding slowly now.

“I think she’s already had a visit from one of them,” Tony said. “I suspect that’s what was in her back garden when she called on Wednesday night.”

“Her presence may have aroused their interest,” the Reverend said. “But they can do more than stand in the back garden and look mysterious. We all know that.” He paused. “Sybill Hartley found that out.”

They all nodded, sagely, smugly.

“So if she’s not gone after Christmas –” the Reverend began.

“No. Now. Scare her now,” Elsa said. “Make sure she goes.”

“But if there’s no need –”

“Just once.” This was Tony interjecting. “What do you say, Reverend?”

He sighed, clasped his thin hands together. “All right. Just once before Christmas.”

“We’re agreed then,” said Walter King. “Just a little something to scare her now and we’ll leave her alone. And if she doesn’t go after Christmas, you’ll take care of it.”

“Yes, I shall,” the Reverend replied. Though he was hoping fervently that the girl would leave of her own accord as she had said she would. He would much prefer to avoid resorting to those tactics again.

“Hi, Maisie, it’s Cathy.”

“Cathy! How nice to hear from you.” Maisie sat heavily in her armchair. “I just made a cup of tea. Your timing’s perfect.”

“Well I’m standing in the freezing hallway in the boarding house. So enjoy your cosiness, won’t you.”

“I will. I’ve had a bugger of a day.”

“Yeah? Why?”

“Last night some dickhead put a rock through my front window, so today I’ve been sorting it out. I suppose I shouldn’t complain as it’s given me something to do. To top it off, though, now I think I’m coming down with a cold.” And nobody to make her hot lemon drinks. Colds were miserable at the best of times.

“Who threw a rock at your window?”

“One of the locals. I don’t think he meant to break it. It was a good shot to get it through the bars. This whole place is crazy. I got evicted from the cemetery yesterday while I was paying my grandmother my last respects.”

“Really? I wonder if it has anything to do with the archaeologists who keep asking to dig it up,” Cathy said. Maisie sighed. “No, I just think everyone here is loco. ” Though Cathy’s explanation did make sense.

“Anyway, you don’t want to hear about that. You know, I found an old diary stashed under the floorboards.”

“A diary?” Cathy exclaimed. “Whose diary?”

Maisie summarised the story for Cathy, who found it all thrilling. “Hey, maybe you can help with something,” Maisie said. “Do you have access to historical records down there?”

“All kinds of historical records. What do you want to know?”

“I’m trying to find out some information about the local Reverend. Specifically, what year he was born.”

“I can look for you. Is this Reverend Fowler you were telling me about?”

“Yeah. The Reverend in the diary had the same name.”

“Maisie,” Cathy said with a suspicious tone, “what are you thinking?”

“Nothing too stupid. Don’t worry.”

“I’m glad. I thought for a minute the insanity in Solgreve might be contagious.”

“Would unhinged religious freaks scare you off coming up for Christmas?”

“Christmas? Oh, Maisie, I’m sorry. I’ve already organised Christmas.”

“Oh.”

“My aunt’s ex-husband’s family live in Edinburgh. I’m going to stay with them. I organised it weeks ago, I was so afraid of being alone at Christmas.”

“That’s great. I’m glad you’ve got friends to stay with.” An admirable effort at keeping her voice even there, not pitching into desperation. Christmas alone. It was unthinkable.

“I could ask if you could come too,” Cathy

suggested.

“No, that would be too uncomfortable. It sounds like you barely know them yourself.”

“I can ask.”

“No. Don’t ask. I’ll be fine. I might even see Sacha.”

“Sacha?”

“The gypsy gardener.”

“You know,” Cathy said slowly, as though she were planning in her head. “I won’t be going up until Christmas Eve. I can catch the late train and we can go to the Christmas Eve service here at the Minster together. What do you think? You could come up on Thursday and stay the night, then catch the late bus home. Or book into a B&B.”

Maisie suspected Cathy might be putting herself out, but simply couldn’t refuse. “Okay. Yeah, that’s a good idea. I’ll come out on Thursday, same bus as last time. Will you meet me?”

“Of course. That’ll be fun.”

“So, how are all the assignments going?”

“I’m finishing my last one off at the moment. It’s already three days late. Hang on.” There was a clunk on the line and muffled voices as Cathy talked to somebody in the hallway. “Maisie? I’m going to have to go, there’s a girl waiting to use the phone.”

“Okay. You won’t forget to look the Reverend up for me?”

“No problem.”

“It’s Reverend Linden Fowler.”

“Got it. I’ll see you Thursday.”

“Sure. Bye.”

“Bye.”

“A penny for your thoughts.”

Adrian looked up. He was sitting in the Green Room backstage at The Duchess Theatre, waiting to go on. The woman standing at the doorway, looking at him with an amused smirk on her face, was Penny Dayly, the soprano with whom he sang the duet of O

Soave Fanciulla. He suspected that she enjoyed the duet too much. She always held his hands too fervently, kept too appreciative an eye on him. That kind of female attention always annoyed him. Everyone knew he was with Maisie.

“Sorry?”

“Here I am – a penny for your thoughts. What’s on your mind? You look worried.”

Adrian shook his head. “It’s nothing.”

She smiled and approached him, sat down next to him. Too close. “Come on, you’re all pensive.”

“I’m a little worried about Maisie, that’s all.”

When in doubt about unwanted sexual attention, invoke the name of your girlfriend. That always worked.

“Maisie? Isn’t she in England?”

“Yes, I spoke to her before I came here tonight. Some vandals broke her front window with a rock, and I really just want her to come home.” There, it felt better to say it out loud.

“But you aren’t at home.”

“I know. Which is why she won’t come.”

“After Christmas maybe?”

“I’ll be in Auckland.”

“It’s going to be hard spending Christmas without her.”

Adrian nodded. “But I’ll be with my family. I won’t be lonely. I’m worried that she will be.”

Penny was clearly doing her best to sympathise with his girlfriend. “It would be awful to spend Christmas alone. But it was her choice to go.”

“That’s right.”

“Feel better for talking about it?”

Adrian looked across at her. Her thigh was pressed too close to his thigh. He stood. “I’d better warm up.”

It was a lie. He’d warmed up ten minutes ago.

“Want some help?”

He shook his head. “I’m fine.”

Penny shrugged and got up to leave. He watched her go then sat down again and thought about Maisie. It wasn’t just the locals throwing rocks on her roof; it wasn’t just the head cold that made her sound vulnerable and in need of care (so awful to be sick when you’re alone). It was her reaction to the story Roland had told him about her grandmother, to the possibility that she, too, may have the Gift. Excited. She’d been excited. Not dismissive. Not mildly interested and sceptical. Not disturbed. Really, really excited.

“It makes sense, Adrian,” she had said. “I used to have these dreams when I was little, but they always made me sick. After a while I got so sick that the dreams wouldn’t come any more, like my body was protecting itself.”

“Dreams? Dreams about what?”

“About things that would happen. Just silly, trivial things, like what colour shirt somebody would wear the next day, or what the neighbours would name their dog.”

“Why don’t you come home?” he had suggested. “I don’t want you to be in any danger.”

“No way. Not now. I want to find out more about my grandmother.”

“She wasn’t a great person according to your father.”

“That’s all in the past.”

“She desecrated graves.”

“Which is clearly why I was evicted from the cemetery the other day. Probably why I got a rock through my window. What was she doing? I’ve got to keep looking through all her papers and things.”

Adrian leaned his head back on the sofa and looked at the ceiling. All that talk of psychic powers unnerved him. Not because he was afraid, but because it sounded like crazy talk. He didn’t like it when his girlfriend talked crazy. Maybe Janet had been right to be worried about Maisie going to the cottage. Maybe the danger wasn’t physical, but emotional. Or spiritual.

He glanced at the clock. The concert started in ten minutes. Pushing all other thoughts out of his mind, he headed for the wings.

Frozen pinpoints of light far above her, the endlessly moving sea far below, Maisie paused on the cliff’s edge, trying to ignore the wind needling through her scarf and overcoat. She looked up at the stars feeling

… what was she feeling? Was this happiness? It was too painful, hammering too hard under her ribs to be happiness. Excitement then? Perhaps.

She was different. She was special.

It had been ten hours since the phone call from Adrian, since she found out that she had met Sybill, and that Sybill had seen in her something that nobody else had ever seen. The Gift. She had the Gift. The regret about not inheriting her parents’ musical talent paled into insignificance when she considered this much greater inheritance. Some kind of psychic ability lurked within her, long dormant. All she had to do now was to find it, lure it out of hiding. How she was to do that, she didn’t yet know.

Perhaps the ache under her ribs was fear. How could she have not known that this power was inside her? And what could it do to her if she exercised it? If only she had some kind of guidance. I wish I’d known you, Sybill. Her life could have been so different. The wind dropped suddenly and the sky was very still. She took deep breaths of the cold, cold air. It was demented to be out here on the cliff-top after dark, but she felt a little mad. A little delirious.

Different. Special.

A new determination filled her. There were still stacks of boxes, mounds of papers tucked in corners of the cottage. She would go through all of them, come to know her grandmother and find out what her Gift might mean. It was time for some earnest excavation.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Damp hair trailing about her face, Maisie inspected herself in the bathroom mirror. A cold was not only miserable, it was bad for the complexion. Her eyes were watery and her nose was red. She spotted a blackhead just below her lip and gave it an enthusiastic squeezing. Strange, she’d have thought that being psychic might mean she was more than mortal. This morning she looked profoundly

ordinary.

She pulled on her dressing gown and headed for the lounge room to open the curtains. Was it her imagination or was she walking straighter, taller, this morning? “I’m psychic,” she said out loud, then laughed at her foolishness, held out her hand to an imaginary new acquaintance: “Pleased to meet you. I’m Maisie Fielding and I’m psychic.”

She spent a moment gazing through the window surveying the weather: the freezing sky had descended, embracing the world in mist. Trees were tall shadows behind the veil. But the mist was not so thick that she couldn’t see Sacha’s van pull around the corner, heading towards her house.

“Oh, my god!” she squealed in horror. Wet hair, red nose, blackhead, only in her dressing gown. She had roughly ten seconds to fix it all.

She raced into her bedroom and fumbled for some concealer, quickly pulled on a black skirt and cardigan. A knock at the door.

“Just a second,” she called, quickly towelling her hair and pinning it back. Her reflection in the bathroom mirror scared her. She looked a mess.

“Just a second,” she said again, heading back to the bedroom and trying again with some hastily-applied mascara. She ran her tongue across her teeth. No time to clean them. She would have to remember not to breathe on him.

“Hi, Sacha, I wasn’t expecting you,” she said.

“Can I come in?” No apology. No explanation.

“Sure.” She stood aside and let him through, locked the door behind him. “I’m just making a cup of tea. Come down to the kitchen.”

He followed her to the kitchen where he sat down, clearly more comfortable than she was. “I forgot to take that stuff for Oxfam the other night. Thought I’d pick it up today instead.”

“Thanks, that’s great.” She switched the electric kettle on and got out two cups.

“You look nice,” he said, nearly flooring her.

“Thanks. I don’t feel nice.”

“You have a cold?”

“Yes.”

“Best to get it out of the way early in winter. Do you need anything? I can go up to the chemist for you.”

My hero. “No, I’m fine. I think the worst of it is over.” The kettle whistled. She made two cups of tea and then joined him at the kitchen table.

He took a sip of his tea and then sat back, considering her. “So, what kind of a weekend did you have?”

“An interesting one. Somebody put a rock through my front window.”

“Kids? Vandals?”

“Locals. Or at least a local. He called me a witch too.”

Sacha raised his eyebrows. “They must have you confused with Sybill.”

“Were they afraid of my grandmother?”

“I think so, yes. Sometimes they did nasty things: threatening letters and the like. Were you scared?”

She shook her head. “Not really. He seemed like a bit of a bumbling idiot, really. I was more irritated. Bewildered, even.”

“They’re afraid of you, Maisie.” She loved the way he said her name. He made it sound French or something.

“They needn’t be.”

“But they are.”

She sipped her tea, staring into middle distance, thinking about what Adrian had told her. “Maybe . . .”

She trailed off and didn’t finish her sentence. A few seconds ticked by. “Maybe what?” Sacha said at last.

She focused on him. Eyes met eyes. She couldn’t be safe as long as he met her gaze so evenly, didn’t deflect her interest. “Maybe they do have a reason to be afraid of me. Maybe I am like Sybill.”

“In what way?”

“I just heard why my mother and my grandmother didn’t get along.”

“Tell me.”

So she did tell him. Because of his background she felt she could trust him, that he would understand. Adrian had thought her crazy to believe what Sybill had said, but Sacha wouldn’t. His mother and Sybill had formed a bond over magic and fortune-telling. When she had finished, Sacha sat quietly for a moment considering her.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, her stomach dipping. “Do you think I’m crazy?”

He shook his head. “Me? Never. I grew up at spook central.”

“Then what’s the matter?”

He leaned forward, spreading his hands, palms upwards, on the table. “While it’s true that psychic gifts are supposedly inherited, I just have a bit of trouble believing that you didn’t know.”

“But I did know. Or at least I did when I was younger. But then I got sick and . . .” She shrugged. “It stopped happening.”

“Are you very intuitive? Know what people are going to say next? Know who’s on the telephone before you answer it?”

Maisie shook her head with an awful sense of deflation. Sacha’s mother was psychic, and he had known her grandmother well. If he didn’t think she had the Gift, then she probably didn’t. All her hope went rushing past her fingertips.

“What about dreams? Do you dream things that happen?”

“I used to.”

“Yes, you used to. But now? In the last few years?”

Again she shook her head. “Not really. Though I had a spooky dream in the bath the other night. And it seemed like I was remembering something.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

He nodded. “Remembering what?”

“Something bad. But not something that had

happened to me.” She snapped her fingers, optimism returning. “And straight after I felt sick. Nauseous.”

He finished his tea and took the cup to the sink, leaned his back against the cupboards. “If you do have this ability, why would it make you sick?”

“You mean that’s not normal?”

“Not from what I understand. Something bad must have happened to you to have such a strong reaction to it. But you can probably overcome it if you know what you’re doing.”

Maisie sighed. “Here’s the problem. I don’t even know where to start. You know, to develop it.”

“I know a little about it.”

Excitement layered upon excitement. “You do?”

“Yeah. My mum tried to teach me. Unfortunately, I have no psychic ability. Or at least very little beyond a slightly heightened sense of intuition. She was very disappointed in me.”

“But you could teach me what she taught you?”

He shrugged. “I could try. But if you don’t have the Gift, I can’t help you.”

“We can try, though.”

“Sure. Here, let’s do a little experiment I used to help your grandmother with.” He moved across the room and grabbed his chair, brought it around next to hers and turned her to face him. The touch of his fingers on her arms, even through the sleeves of her cardigan, made her heart race. They held that pose for a moment, he holding her upper arms, she gazing, scared-rabbit like, into his face.

“Close your eyes,” he said softly.

“Um . . . okay.” Nervous laughter. Get a grip, Maisie. She closed her eyes.

“I’m going to get you to open up your energy centres. Ever done that before?”

“No. I don’t even know where my ‘energy

centres’ are.”

“That’s fine. Most people don’t.” He laughed. “I always forget how ridiculous stuff like that must sound to someone who didn’t grow up steeped in it.” His hands left her arms. “Take a few deep breaths . . . Good. At the base of your spine is a red light. See it spinning?”

“I can’t see anything.”

“Visualise it. You’re a musician, you must have some imagination.”

That stung. She concentrated, tried to imagine the red light.

“Now open it up. Imagine it, I mean.”

She followed his instructions as he described coloured lights all over her body, opening them up when he asked. Perhaps it was the deep breathing, but she was feeling very relaxed, almost buzzing with a sense of well-being. When he had taken her right to the top of her head – violet – he let her sit for a while, breathing deeply.

“Maisie, you’re open.”

He was turning her on. “Yeah, okay.”

“I’m going to ask you to do something. Don’t think about how to do it, just do it, okay?”

She nodded.

“Show me your Gift,” he said softly, darkly. From somewhere inside her, a bubble of energy seemed to rise. Sacha grabbed her hands, placed them palm to palm against his own.

“Let it come,” he said.

Without even knowing what she was doing, she opened her mouth and dropped her head back. A wave washed over her and broke along her skin. There was a sound like a popping, and Sacha pulled his hands back.

“Ouch!”

She opened her eyes, came back to the kitchen. Feeling mildly embarrassed about what had just happened. What had just happened?

“You zapped me,” Sacha said, rubbing his palms together. “You were on.”

“On?”

“On. As opposed to off. Sybill was right.”

“Then I am . . .?”

“I’m sure of it. I only wish I could get in touch with my mother, she’d love to teach you. But I have no idea where she is at the moment, so you’re stuck with me.”

Sacha as teacher? It was dazzlingly appropriate. Her feelings of excited anticipation about her psychic power matched her feelings for him exactly.

“I’ll work so hard,” she said.

“Do you feel sick?”

“No.”

“If you do it properly you shouldn’t get sick. Can I tell you something, Maisie?” He hadn’t moved his chair, but he leaned back, out of the danger zone.

“Sure. Anything.”

“I don’t want to scare you.”

A little thrill licked at the base of her neck. She placed a hand there, rubbed the skin. “Go on.”

“I’ve been around when my mother opens up, and Sybill. They’re both … light. The energy seems bright, yellow almost.”

“And?”

“You’re not. I don’t know if that means anything.”

“What colour am I?”

“You’re dark. Really dark. It kind of frightened me at first.”

Her skin crawled. “I . . .”

“Don’t worry. It might mean nothing. Perhaps it’s an auric cast. Ma would be able to tell me. She’ll probably call soon.” He rose from the chair and stretched his arms above his head, yawning. “I’d better get going. Where’s all this stuff you want me to take?”

She helped him load armfuls of old clothes and bric-a-brac into the back of his van. When they were done, he turned to her.

“I didn’t scare you, did I? I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No. No, really I’m fine,” she lied. She folded her arms over herself. She hadn’t bothered to put her overcoat on and it was freezing out here. And although she fancied him like mad, she didn’t want to give him a conspicuous nipple display.

“Okay. Well, I’ll see you again soon. I’ll look around my flat for any of my mother’s books.”

“Thanks.”

In a second he was revving up the van and taking off down the main street. She shivered and turned to go back inside. Aching with fear and excitement and desire. Maisie went directly to her grandmother’s

bookshelf and began checking the spines for titles about psychic development. Then she checked the cupboard beneath the shelf and found masses of rubbish. Amongst it, she located several books about chakras and meditation and theories of the Afterlife. She sat amid piles of junk, leafing through the pages for a few hours. She tried a couple of the meditation experiments, but they didn’t work for her. That was okay, she was only new at it after all.

Setting the books aside, she decided to tackle the other piles of stuff looking for anything specific Sybill might have written down about psychic development. She found only old exercise books full of recipes and budgets, lots of badly written poems and stories, sketches, lists of phone numbers, and junk mail. And mouse shit. Plenty of that. It may as well all be thrown out. After the culling, she checked her watch; it was half past three and she had forgotten to have lunch. She filled an empty box with the rubbish and left it near the door.

Something seemed out of place but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

Of course. Tabby. She hadn’t seen the cat since this morning. She must have slunk out the front door when Sacha had come in. Maisie went to the laundry and opened the door, expecting to see the cat sitting there waiting. But the back garden was empty.

“Tabby!” she called, walking outside. A frosty wind from the north had blown all the mist away and now teased at the treetops. The cat was nowhere to be seen. Maisie went back inside and closed the door. Yes, a cat flap would have been a great idea. Tabby would probably scratch and miaow if she wanted in, but the cottage felt kind of lonely without her.

Maisie toasted a sandwich and made some potato wedges to go with it, read a book while she ate, then cleaned it all up, and still Tabby wasn’t home. It was well and truly dark outside now. She put on her overcoat and gloves and walked once more to the laundry.

Something’s wrong.

The feeling was powerful, convincing. She tried to dismiss it. Maybe she’d spent too much time today reading books about the supernatural. She left the back door open in case Tabby returned and headed into the garden to search.

The cat wasn’t under the rosebushes, or up the oak tree, nor was she anywhere in the front garden or along the street. Maisie turned and headed back through the trees that led down towards the cliffs, calling all the time. Fine wet branches caught on her clothes. The air was heavy with the smell of wet, mouldering foliage.

“Tabby! Come on, girl. Where are you?”

She could hear the sea grating against the rocks. Surely Tabby couldn’t have gone over the cliff. She dreaded the idea, but felt she should check anyway. At the cliff’s edge she looked down and saw nothing except phosphorescent seaspray.

“Tabby!” she called, and her voice was carried away behind her by the wind. She turned on her heel and slowly headed back.

Halfway through the wood, a shadow suddenly detached itself from a tree and sprung out at her, hissing madly.

“Tabby!” Maisie cried, bending to pick up the cat. Tabby hissed again and clawed out wildly, leaving a scratch across Maisie’s cheek. Maisie dropped her and put her hand to her face.

“Ow. Bitch . . .”

Tabby ran off towards the cottage, her tail bushed up and her fur on end. Maisie ran after her. Maybe she’d been injured. That would explain the wild behaviour. Maisie found her waiting, low to the ground, a few paces from the back door, looking warily inside.

“Tabby? Are you hurt?” Maisie kneeled and

hesitantly reached out to stroke her head. Tabby fixed her gaze on the doorway, flicking her tail suspiciously. Maisie checked her over quickly in the dark, squeezed her paws and gently pulled her ears, but she didn’t react. A faint smell of something rotten clung to the cat, as though she may have rubbed herself on a dead animal.

“Okay. Come inside,” Maisie said, having satisfied herself that the cat was probably fine. But as she headed into the house, Tabby crawled a few cautious steps backwards and wouldn’t come in.

“Tabby?” Maisie looked from the cat to the

cottage. It seemed very dark inside. A few seconds passed. She collected herself. Just go in. She strode into the laundry, switched on the light. Nothing, still dark. The bulb must have blown. She went to the kitchen and tried the light there. Again nothing. The pit of her stomach grew icy.

Probably just an electrical fault. The display on the microwave was blank and the fridge wasn’t humming. An old place like this probably had dodgy wiring. It was only a matter of calling an electrician and it would soon be sorted. But first she needed candles. Fumbling around in the dark, she dug inside Sybill’s witch’s chest for candles, then felt in her top drawer for matches. By candlelight she looked in the phone book for an electrician nearby, then picked up the phone to dial.

No dial tone.

“Shit!” she said, slamming down the phone. This was too creepy. No lights, no phone, the cat wouldn’t come inside. She was just contemplating going down to the pub to ask for help when she heard a noise from the kitchen. Like four or five laboured breaths. Wet and eager.

“Tabby? Is that you?” She took one of the candles and rose from her chair. It wasn’t Tabby, she knew it wasn’t Tabby. She didn’t want to go anywhere near the kitchen. If only the lights were working. If only she hadn’t left the back door open. She was frozen to the spot, listening hard for the sound again, but all was silent. No amount of willing herself to calm down could bring her to go to the kitchen. Her heart thudded madly in her throat.

Suddenly, lights came on again and the noise stopped. Maisie let out a huge breath she hadn’t even realised she’d been holding.

“Thank god,” she muttered. She turned on the lounge room light and blew out the candles, then went through the rest of the house switching lights on. The kitchen, when she peeked in, was thankfully empty. She had panicked over nothing. When she got to the laundry, she called for Tabby again.

“Come on, girl, it’s all right. Just an electrical fault.” Tabby still refused to come in, and Maisie closed the door on her. When she was hungry enough, she would let Maisie know.

But she hadn’t checked the telephone. Perhaps there had been a local outage and the exchange had gone down. She went back up the hallway and reached for the phone.

The candles were still burning.

“What the . . .?” She had put them out, she could remember it clearly.

Okay, no need to panic. Perhaps she hadn’t

blown hard enough or something. She tried again. They were definitely extinguished this time. She checked the phone. The dial tone was back,

everything was normal. She checked the candles again. Definitely out. Smoky trails led from their wicks.

Calm down, Maisie.

God, she hated, hated, being alone. Phone’s back on. Lights are back on. Everything’s okay.

But then, from the kitchen, the strange noise again. Four, five, six breaths and she was rooted to the spot. Her body was frozen over with fear. A scraping sound like bones on linoleum, a faint whiff of decay. The lights flickered, went down again. Then, horribly, in front of her eyes, the candles re-ignited.

Get out. Run.

She raced to the laundry, flung open the door and was nearly bowled over by Tabby running in. Two steps out the back door, her breath ragged, she turned back. Tabby was waiting for her.

No, Tabby was looking over her shoulder.

Maisie shrieked and ran back inside, slammed the door and shot the bolts. Deadlocks, Maisie. There for a reason.

Tabby skittered up onto the washing machine, but Maisie couldn’t bear to look out the window to see if the dark shadow was by the tree. The lights came on once more and the fridge hummed back into life. She went to the lounge room, extinguished the candles for the third time, then took them to the kitchen and immersed them in a sinkful of water.

Maisie sagged against the sink with her hand to her face. Her cheek stung, and she remembered that Tabby had scratched her. She would deal with that later. Just for the moment, she had to collect her thoughts. Already the encounter – whatever it was – had taken on a surreal cast. Had it really happened at all? The memory of the candles, eerily flickering into life, already seemed indistinct, like a half-forgotten dream. Like something imagined.

Tabby trotted in then, tail merrily in the air as though nothing were wrong.

“Is he gone?” she asked the cat. In reply, Tabby went to the cupboard where her cat food was kept and tapped it with her nose. Situation normal. The cat wanted to be fed.

Maisie dished out some cat food, checked all the locks again, cleaned up the scratch on her face, checked the locks once more for good measure, then sat in the lounge room with the television blaring. Although she was sure she wouldn’t sleep, she dozed off sometime around three.

***

“Where the hell is he?” Tony Blake checked his watch for the third time in ten minutes, then gave the Reverend a sheepish smile. “Sorry, Reverend. Where the heck is he?”

The Reverend shook his head dismissively.

Blasphemy and cursing had long since ceased to offend him. He, too, would like to know where the hell Lester Baines had got to. He sat with the village constable in the patrol car, the cloying scent of car deodorant giving him a headache, hoping that Lester would turn up soon. And alone. He was already half an hour late and the Reverend had started to worry that he had run afoul of the law, that any minute a few detective cars from York would round the bend and it would all be over. He rubbed his hands together nervously, papery skin chafing against papery skin.

“Don’t worry,” Tony said, as though sensing his thoughts. “He’s just late. He’s a criminal, we shouldn’t rely on him to be punctual.”

“Yes, yes. You’re right.”

“There’s another problem I need to discuss with you,” Tony said, shifting in his seat.

“What’s that?”

“Abe Cox is turning one hundred and thirty next month. We’ll need to sort out what to do about him. He’s too old.”

The Reverend nodded. They had to do this

occasionally. Couldn’t have a one hundred and thirty year old roaming around, attracting media attention, medical experts, new-agers. Usually, they had Dr Honour from Cross Street issue a false death certificate (the Reverend always found it amusing that Dr Honour could be relied upon to be so dishonest), and then the church provided a pension. On one or two occasions they had arranged for an entirely new identity for the person, which was far more risky. It involved bribing someone in public records, or employing Lester to do something illegal involving computers which the Reverend simply couldn’t understand, but which he feared was extremely chancy. “The church can afford to support him,” he said.

“But Reverend, with a single payment to Lester, we can give him the identity of a recently deceased octogenarian and then –”

“No. It’s too dangerous.”

“Reverend, it’s not dangerous.”

“I’d rather spend the money. The church isn’t going to go broke.”

“If people keep living this long, the church will soon be paying for everyone in the village.”

“Tony, not everybody lives that long. You know that.” Yes, there were one or two who made it to Abe Cox’s age, but they usually died within a few years. There was only one person who kept on living. The Reverend shivered despite the cosy temperature in the car.

“Look. Is that Lester?”

The Reverend held his breath as he peered through the windscreen. Headlights coming closer. Finally he could make out the shape and colour of Lester’s car.

“Yes, it’s him. Thank heavens.” He opened his door and stepped out into the cold.

Tony followed his example, and soon Lester met them in the beam of the headlights. “How goes it, Rev? Sorry I’m late. Had a bit of car trouble.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” said the Reverend, following Lester around to the boot of his car.

“This geezer had a bit of car trouble, too,” Lester continued in a chatty tone as he opened the boot. “Hit by a van. No I.D. Bit of a mess, but that doesn’t matter, does it?”

“No. It doesn’t matter.”

Lester and Tony hoisted the body in its black bag out of the car and started towards the abbey. The Reverend was following close behind them when Tony tripped on a rock and pitched forward, dropping his end of the body. The bag was clearly not properly zipped, because the upper half of the corpse slipped out, its head thudding onto the ground. Lester dropped his end and kneeled to scoop the body back into the bag, but it was too late. The Reverend had already seen it in the glow of the headlights. The left arm was mangled almost beyond recognition, and huge spidery contusions purpled the left side of the body. His face, which had clearly been dragged along the road some distance, was a mess of grated flesh that would never heal, scraped down to the skull on one side of the forehead. The Reverend clutched his stomach and turned, sour bile shot up into his throat. He spat it out and took deep breaths, willing himself not to vomit.

“Reverend? You okay?” This was Lester, a hint of amusement in his voice.

“He’ll be fine if you give him a minute,” Tony said.

“He has a delicate constitution, our Reverend. I’ve even seen him pass out at the sight of blood.”

“Yeah?” Lester was, by now, clearly perplexed. “Then why does he . . . I mean, what does he do with . . .?”

“You don’t need to know, Lester,” the Reverend replied, straightening his back. “Is it . . .? Is he . . . away, now?”

“Yeah. You can turn around,” Lester said.

The Reverend turned back to them. They had the body, anonymous once more, between them and were heading towards the abbey. He walked with them, unlocking the iron door while they laid the body on the ground.

“Are you all right with it, Rev?” Lester asked. The Reverend nodded. “Thank you. Tony will pay you.” He dragged the body into the spire. “You may go now.”

Tony and Lester left and he paused at the top of the cold staircase, looking down at the body. Already queasy, he was remembering sickly smelling leaves of vellum, impossibly antiquated handwriting,

dispassionate discussions of “extractions” and

“immurements”. A blunt, nauseous dread welled up within him. Sometimes he felt as though things were out of control. He was frightened, and absolutely certain that he was too old for these arcane adventures.