Phil Rickman - The Chalice

Except Diane was always here too, head down, a woman driven. A lot of grief, a lot of upset inside. But she wasn't letting any of it out, not in front of Sam Daniel. She had guts, and you didn't expect that. Or else it was another aspect of her reputed insanity.

Diane pushed her chair back. 'I've got to go. Got to open the shop.'

'Bet you've not had any breakfast, have you?'

She was losing weight, too. Not that she couldn't afford to lose a couple of stone, but not this way. And her face was always pale. It was like somewhere behind her eyes there was always an image of what she'd seen that night.

'Oh, well, you know, I've got some carob bars at the shop.' Diane pulled her red coat from the peg. The kind of coat you'd think twice about donating to Oxfam in case the Third World sent it back.

Sam raised his eyes to the ceiling. 'Bloody carob bars. I'm not saying the humble carob hasn't got its place, look, but a slice or two of toast, soya marg, a dab of Marmite, nothing would've died to bring that to the table, would it?'

'Thank you so much for your concern, Sam.' Diane gathered her stuff together in a plastic carrier bag. 'Listen, could you let me see a proof, printout, whatever of the piece on the town-centre enhancement scheme when you've finished it? No hurry, but if I could have it by three at the latest…'

Strewth.

'Anybody, excluding family, wants to see you, Diane, what shall I say?'

'Oh, send them round to the shop. They'll have to join the queue. Bye'

He watched her through the window walking quickly, head held high, out of Grope Lane on to Magdalene Street. Gonna crack. Nothing surer.

After the fire, and no Juanita, Sam had figured the magazine idea would be straight down the tubes. But then, the day following the funeral, Diane had appeared, pale-faced, in the print-shop, a cardboard folder under her arm. Talking about getting started on The Avalonian. Like, pronto.

'I owe it to her, OK?' was all she'd say. Then they started work on the first dummy.'

How do we know, Sam read on the screen, that the thorn tree on Wearyall Hill is even in the same spot as what we like to think of as the Original?

Matthew Banks's original draft had been a sight more cumbersome. Diane had ripped into it, subbing it down to neat sentences, short paragraphs. 'The Alternative Community,' Diane had said firmly, 'have to learn from the outset that this is our paper, not theirs.'

Sam grinned, remembering that bloody tight-arsed Jenna – a 'Voice therapist' – coming in with a piece written by The Women of the Cauldron, with its own headline on top: WHY THE ANGLICAN CHURCH DENIES THE GODDESS MARY. Diane giving it back without even reading it, pointing out politely that The Avalonian would be doing its own headlines and any comment pieces would be specifically commissioned.

Suggesting they cut the piece by half and submit it as a reader's letter with actual names at the bottom. Jenna'd gone out with a face like an old shoe.

Sam was starting to warm to Diane. One thing about the upper classes, they knew how to put people down with style.

And slave-driving, they knew about that. Three weeks after starting from nothing – no design, not even a paper size – they now had almost enough for a respectable dummy, with real features, real news stones. Idea being they could take it around and show to people to stimulate advertising.

The plan was to start out as a monthly then come down to fortnightly. Anything beyond that, they'd need staff, which they couldn't afford. Diane insisted every contribution had to be paid for, even if it was just a token amount. Couldn't rely on volunteers like the guy with the three-legged dog.

You had to start out, Diane said, how you meant to go on: professional. Incredible. She'd seemed so soggy, that first time she came in.

Ah well. Sam stood up. Twenty to nine. Young Paul'd be in soon, then he could get some breakfast. No carob bars for Sammy, not after another dawn shift. Funny, everybody was up early this morning. Even Lord Pennard, who was obviously monitoring Diane's movements. Having her watched.

And with this family, it had to be more than just paternal interest.

Like she didn't have enough problem:

Mid-December already. The town-centre Christmas tree had just gone up in front of the Victorian Gothic market cross. There was a thin glaze of merriment on the streets – carol singers and also bands of pagan mummers with shamanic drums.

The former Holy Thorn Ceramics – now called the Goddess Shop – had a banner wishing customers a Happy Solstice.

Carey and Frayne had no specific wishes for anyone. Diane had found a box of Christmas ornaments for the bookshop window, including a chubby little electric Santa Claus with coloured lights around his hat which Woolly had made last year in his workshop. She hadn't the heart to display it; it reminded her too much of Jim Battle.

Jim's funeral had been awfully depressing. Woolly had rounded up a bunch of local mourners for the sake of appearances, but there was no family. His abandoned wife, unsurprisingly, had not attended; neither had his son, who also lived in Bristol.

An inquest had been opened and adjourned until the New Year. After taking her statement, the police had told Diane an open verdict was possible, although Accidental Death or Death by Misadventure were more likely. There'd certainly been nothing to suggest. suicide. Unless she knew otherwise?

Diane had shaken her head. In truth, she didn't know what to think.

Through the shop window, she saw a lanky red-haired man in black jeans and one of those lumberjack shirts slapping something to the side of a yellow litter bin on a lamp-post.

Darryl Davey. The biggest boy at Sam Daniel's school, apparently. Like a shark in a goldfish tank. Case of premature development. Shaving at about ten and a dad at sixteen, but now his son's sixteen and Darryl's pissed off that nobody looks up to him anymore. He seemed to be employed by the Glastonbury First people to display their material all over town. Probably illegally, but nobody stopped him. He was certainly quite open about what he was doing now, standing back to admire it.

It was a sticker, about four inches in diameter, like a no entry road sign. Diane went to the window to examine it.

It was horribly effective. You just knew that it was going to be all over the old-established shops and pubs in Glastonbury In the back windows of cars and delivery vans and farm vehicles. On the sides of buses.

The idea of restricting access to the Tor had caught on in a big way… given immediate and urgent impetus by the fire. Before that inaugural Glastonbury First meeting had even finished, fire engines had been struggling to reach the top of a Wellhouse Lane effectively blockaded by travellers' vehicles.

One of those frightful coincidences for which Glastonbury was famous. The local and regional Press had seized the angle, giving a tremendous boost to Glastonbury First. And, of course, to Archer, who had been interviewed on the local TV news.

'Had this system been in operation,' Archer had said soberly and sorrowfully, 'I believe we should not now have a tragedy of this proportion on our hands. I hope these people, wherever they may be skulking, can sleep at night.'

Efforts by the Press to find these particular travellers had, of course, failed. Woolly said they'd never even arrived at the road-protest meeting. Eventually, the rescue services had managed to remove the old bus which had broken down in the road. It apparently had carried no licence disc, and all the other vehicles had gone.

The following day, an entirely innocent travelling couple, just passing through, had returned to their van on the central car park to find all four of its tyres slashed and the words MURDERING SCUM spray-painted along one side. The chairman of Glastonbury First, Mr Quentin Cotton, had appealed for calm and restraint although, as he told the Evening Post, it was understandable that emotions were running high.