S Bolton: Blood Harvest

Evi had been lied to many times; she knew when a patient wasn’t telling her the truth; she also knew when someone wasn’t telling her everything.

She re-read the newspaper story. The town of Heptonclough is in shock… She’d read that bit several times, nothing new there… blaze could have been caused by a gas ring left burning… if Gillian had left the cooker switched on, the fire would, technically, be her fault. Was she torturing herself with guilt?

During the previous hour with Gillian, following normal procedures, Evi had steered the girl towards talking about her early years. It hadn’t gone well. She’d sensed tension in Gillian’s relationship with her mother and wondered if a lack of parental support had contributed to Gillian’s breakdown following Hayley’s death. Gillian had talked briefly about a dead father whom she could barely remember, and had gone on to mention a stepfather arriving on the scene several years later. Evi was still scanning the story on her screen. This latest tragedy comes barely three years after the loss of Heptonclough child Megan… The story moved on to a different incident and Evi closed the page down.

The more she’d probed Gillian about her childhood, the more agitated the girl had become, until she’d flatly refused to talk about it any more. Which was interesting in itself. Conditions as acute as Gillian’s rarely had a single cause, in Evi’s view. What was often seen as the primary cause – in this case the loss of a child – was all too often just the trigger; the final straw in a chain of events and circumstances. There was a lot more about Gillian to learn.

‘JOE!’

It was Friday afternoon and the boys hadn’t long been home from school. All things considered, it hadn’t been too bad a week. Thanks to Harry, the new vicar, Jake Knowles had had a serious telling-off about the church window and, for the time being at least, he was leaving Tom alone.

Tom was wandering around the downstairs rooms, wondering where Joe was and whether he could persuade him to go in goal while he practised striking. Hearing voices through the open back door, Tom pushed himself up on to the worktop and saw his brother sitting on the wall that ran between their garden and the churchyard. He seemed to be chatting to someone on the other side. Tom picked up the ball and went out.

‘Heads up, Joe!’ he called from the doorway and drop-kicked the ball towards him. Joe looked up, startled, as the ball sailed over his head, disappearing into the churchyard beyond.

Tom ran at the wall and sprang up. Although the wall was high, it was old and the earth behind it made the lower part bulge out into the Fletchers’ garden. Some of the stones were missing, offering plenty of hand- and footholds. All the same, Tom had never seen Joe climb it by himself before.

When he made the top, he realized he and his brother were directly above Lucy Pickup’s grave, the one that had interested Joe so much last week.

‘Who were you talking to?’ he asked.

Joe opened his eyes wide and looked down into the churchyard. He looked left, he looked right, and then back at Tom again. ‘No one there,’ he said, giving his shoulders a little shrug.

‘I heard you,’ Tom insisted. He pointed to the kitchen window. ‘I saw you from in there. You looked like you were talking to someone.’

Joe turned to the churchyard once again. ‘Can’t see anyone,’ he said.

Tom gave up. If his brother wanted an imaginary friend, who was he to worry. ‘Want to play goalies and strikers?’ he asked.

Joe nodded. ‘OK,’ he said. Then his lips curled in a sly little smile. ‘Where’s the ball?’ he asked.

It was a good question. The ball had disappeared.

‘Crap,’ muttered Tom, partly because he knew they didn’t have another one, and partly because he realized this would be the first time they’d gone into the graveyard since they’d been menaced by Jake Knowles and his gang. ‘Come on,’ he said reluctantly. ‘We’ll have to go and look.’

Tom jumped down. The ball couldn’t have gone far.

Well, clearly he didn’t know his own kicking power because the ball was nowhere to be seen. Tom led the way and Joe followed behind, singing quietly to himself.

‘Tom, Joe! Teatime!’

‘Crap,’ said Tom again, picking up his pace. They had less than five minutes now before their mother got steamed. ‘Didn’t you see where it went?’ he asked Joe.

‘Tom, Joe!’

Tom stopped walking. He turned to look back at the wall they’d just climbed over. It was twenty yards away. Their mother would be at the back door. So why was her voice coming from a small thicket of laurel bushes in the opposite direction?

Tom stared at the bushes. They didn’t seem to be moving.

‘Tom! Where are you?’

That was definitely Mum, her voice coming from the right direction, sounding 100 per cent normal and getting quite mad now.

‘Tom.’ A softer voice, lower in pitch, still sounding an awful lot like his mum though.

‘Did you hear that?’ Tom turned to his brother. Joe was watching the laurel bushes. ‘Joe, is someone in those bushes? Someone pretending to be Mum?’

‘Tom, Joe, get back here!’

‘We’re coming,’ yelled Tom. Without stopping to think, he grabbed Joe’s hand and half dragged him back to the wall. He leaped up and twisted round, ready to cry out, because he just knew something horrible had followed them, was ready to spring.

The graveyard was empty. Without looking down, Tom held his hand out to Joe and pulled him up.

‘Oh, good of you to show up. Now come and wash your hands.’

Tom risked a quick glance in the direction of the house. Yep, that was Mum, Millie clinging to her knees. She shook her head at them in exasperation and turned back into the house. Tom realized his breathing was slowing down. It had been echoes, that was all. The old headstones had a way of making echoes sound odd.

As Tom helped Joe to the ground on the garden side, he saw his brother smiling again. Tom turned. There was the ball. Right in the middle of the garden.

‘How?’

Joe wasn’t looking at him but directly at the kitchen window. Tom looked too, expecting to see Millie waving from the counter.

Jesus, that wasn’t Millie’s face. Who the hell was in the kitchen? It looked a bit like a child with long hair, except there was something very wrong with that face. Then Tom realized he was looking at a reflection, that the child – the girl – he could see was right behind them, peering at him and Joe over the wall. He spun round. Nothing there. Back again to the kitchen window. The reflection was gone.

Tom crossed the garden and picked up the ball. He no longer had any desire to play goalies and strikers. He wanted to get inside and shut the back door. He did exactly that, even taking the key from its hook and turning it. He stayed in the cloakroom for a second, just to get his breath back, thinking about what had just happened.

That was quite an imaginary friend his brother had, seeing as how Tom could see her too.

18 September

‘CAN I ASK YOU SOMETHING?’ GILLIAN WAS SAYING.

‘Of course,’ replied Evi.

‘I’ve met this woman, she’s new to the town, but I’ve been talking to her quite a bit and she was surprised that I’d never had a funeral for Hayley. She said funerals – or, if there’s no body, a memorial service – give people a chance to grieve, to say goodbye properly.’

‘Well, she’s right,’ said Evi cautiously. ‘Normally the funeral is an important part of the grieving process.’

‘But I never had that,’ said Gillian, leaning forward in her chair. ‘And that might be why I haven’t been able to move on, why I still… so this woman, Alice, she said I should think about a memorial service for Hayley. She said I should discuss it with the new vicar. What do you think?’