S Bolton: Blood Harvest

‘I think it could be a very good idea,’ said Evi. ‘But I also think it’s important to get the timing right. It would be a very emotional experience for you. You’ve only taken the very first steps towards recovery. We need to be careful not to do anything that would set you back.’

Gillian nodded slowly, but her face showed her disappointment that Evi hadn’t immediately fallen in with her plans.

‘It’s still very early days,’ Evi continued quickly. ‘I think a memorial service would be a good thing to think about, but maybe not rush into. We could talk about it again next week.’

Gillian sighed and shrugged her thin shoulders. ‘OK,’ she agreed, but she looked deflated.

‘And you’ve made a new friend?’ asked Evi. ‘ Alice, did you say?’

Gillian nodded, brightening a little. ‘She and her family built a new house just by the old church,’ she said. ‘I don’t think people really wanted them to do it, but she seems nice. She wants to paint me. She says I have a remarkable face.’

Evi nodded her head. ‘You do,’ she said, smiling. Since their first appointment, Gillian’s skin had cleared a little, and without the distraction of the spots, it was easier to notice the high cheekbones, clean jaw-line and tiny nose. She would have been a striking girl, before grief turned her inside-out. ‘Are you going to sit for her?’ she asked.

Gillian’s face seemed to cloud over. ‘She has three children,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind the two boys, but there’s a little girl. She’s almost exactly the age Hayley was.’

‘That must be very hard.’

‘She has blonde curls,’ said Gillian, staring down at her hands. ‘Sometimes, if I see her from behind, or if I hear her in another room, it feels like Hayley has come back. It’s like there’s a voice in my head saying, ‘She’s yours, get her, get her now.’ I have to stop myself from grabbing her and running out of the house.’

Evi realized she was sitting very still. She reached out and picked up a pen. ‘Do you think you would do something like that?’ she asked.

‘Like what? Take Millie?’

‘You say you have to stop yourself,’ said Evi quietly. ‘How hard is it to stop yourself?’

Gillian shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t do that,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t do that to Alice. I know what it’s like, not to know where your child is. Even if it’s only for a few minutes, a part of you just dies. It’s just that sometimes, seeing Millie, it’s like…’

‘Like what?’ asked Evi.

‘It’s like Hayley’s come back again.’

19 September

THE COTTAGE WAS LITTLE MORE THAN A FEW PILES OF blackened stone. It lay at the end of a short cobbled lane and was the first house Evi came to as she approached Heptonclough. Taking a detour from her usual route, she’d followed a little-used bridle path directly west across Tonsworth moor. Duchess, a sixteen-year-old grey cob had carried her safely along tracks strewn with fallen stones, through dense copses and across moorland streams. They’d even managed to negotiate a five-barred gate with a swing handle.

The cottage had a low, dry-stone wall and a simple iron gate. It wasn’t too hard to imagine a terrified toddler pushing it open and wandering away in the dark. Looking at the house, seeing how close it was to open countryside, Gillian’s actions in the weeks following the fire made some sense. Evi eased back on the reins to bring Duchess to a halt.

Lord, it was hot. Duchess was damp with sweat and so was Evi. She dropped the reins and tugged off her sweatshirt, fastening it around her waist. The cottage in which Gillian Royle and her husband had spent their married life had been rented from one of the older families in the village. After the fire the couple had been offered a one-bedroom flat above the general store. Peter Royle had since moved on, was living several miles away with a new, now pregnant girlfriend. Gillian was still in the flat.

Duchess, ever the opportunist, set off towards a patch of grass growing beneath a gate opposite. Evi gathered up the reins. There was nothing here to see, no insights to be had into her new patient. Just black stones, a few pieces of charred wood and a tangle of brambles. She lifted Duchess’s head and gently flicked her whip on the horse’s left flank.

They passed two more cottages, each with small gardens packed with root vegetables, fruit bushes and canes of runner beans; then the houses on either side of the lane became more uniform, stonebuilt, with slate roofs.

closer to the town centre, the cobbles were smoother. On both sides of the street, three-storey stone buildings towered up. Evi turned Duchess and headed up the hill, drawing closer to Heptonclough’s most famous landmarks: the two churches.

The remains of the medieval building stood alongside its Victorian replacement like an echo, or a memory that refused to fade away. Even seated on Duchess, the great stone arches of the ruin towered above her. Some of the old walls soared towards the sky, others lay crumbled on the ground. carved pillars like standing stones stood proudly, thumbing their noses at gravity and the passage of time. Flagstones, smooth and shiny with age, covered the ground, and everywhere she looked, the moor was bursting through, pushing up corners and stealing into gaps, as it tried, after hundreds of years, to reclaim the land.

The newer building was less grand than its predecessor would have been, built on a smaller scale and without the large, central bell tower. Instead, four smaller, apex-roofed turrets sat at the roof corners. About three feet high, each was constructed from four stone pillars. On the other side of the narrow street stood tall darkstone houses.

There was no one in sight. Evi and Duchess could almost have been alone in this strange town at the top of the moors.

The large house closest to the churches was new, judging by its pale stonework and the untouched small garden at the front. On the doorstep, like the only signs of life in a ghost town, stood a tiny pair of pink wellington boots.

A high-pitched squealing broke through the silence and something brightly coloured shot past Evi’s left shoulder. Duchess, normally unflappable, gave a little jump and slipped on the cobbles.

‘Steady, steady now.’ Evi was tightening the reins, sitting straight and still in the saddle. What the hell had that been?

There it was again. Twenty yards away, flying along, pennants flapping. Evi urged Duchess up the hill, away from the churchyard. With any luck she’d be able to turn higher up and get back on to the moor.

It was coming back, heading straight for them. Duchess skittered backwards into the wall of a house. Evi had been thrown off balance but she grabbed a chunk of mane and pushed herself upright. ‘Don’t come near us,’ she yelled. ‘You’re scaring the horse.’

She made eye contact for a fraction of a second and knew she had a serious problem on her hands. The boy on the bike knew perfectly well that he was scaring the horse.

Evi pulled hard, turning Duchess to face the hill. If the horse was going to bolt, they had to go upwards.

There was another one, travelling in the opposite direction. Two teenage boys, on high-performance bikes, riding round the high wall that circled the two churches. It was utter suicide, they were going to collide, to fall six feet on to hard, flint cobbles. The boys got within two feet of each other and then one disappeared, his bike finding some ridge that took him down into the churchyard. The remaining rider shot past Evi as she fought to get Duchess under control.

There were more of them. Four young stunt-riders, travelling at impossible speeds around the old walls, pennants flying from their handlebars, brakes screaming as they spun around corners.