She ran. Her legs felt so heavy and her feet pushed desperately at the uneven ground, trying to run as fast as she could, but only achieving a wild, marionette-like movement of up and down rather than forward.
She fixed her eyes on the legs of the man in front of her. He wore tartan slippers, too-short trousers and his ankles were skinny. His feet seemed to skim the muddy potholes hidden in the grass, light and almost like a dancer, though he appeared to be old. He said something at her over his shoulder, urging her on, and she tried but it was impossibly exhausting. His feet rose, first one then the other, as he climbed over the sill of an open window into the old house. She heaved herself after him.
A sharp stab in the palm of her hand – she looked down at a blood smear on the shabby frame and the splinter sticking in her flesh. Strong fingers grasped at her shoulder and pulled. She fell into him. He smelled strongly of tobacco and old sweat. His eyes were in shadow and his crooked teeth gleamed in the pale spill of the moon.
"Don't you remember?" he demanded in a dry rasp, his breath making her recoil.
She shook her head and he wheeled around and disappeared into the gloom. She followed, lagging behind again, through the doorway, down the hallway and into a large entrance hall where the moonlight struggled through the grimy fanlight to pool onto chequered tiles. The nylon of his anorak hissed as he brushed past a potted palm and into the maw of another dark hallway, and she followed.
From behind one of the closed doors, a woman's voice called out, "Hello?"
Wait – she wanted to cry, but her own throat silenced her. They had run so far, down the hillsides and through the cobbled streets, between the gates into the garden, where the blue and white primroses bloomed even at night, but it was not breathlessness that stopped her voice.
There he was, poised with his hand on a doorknob. He rattled it: locked. From behind her, elsewhere in the house, there was a noise. He heard it too and their eyes met briefly before he sank to his knees in a pile of desiccated leaves. For a moment she thought he had given up, but instead his hand moved to his ear and, like a magician, he pulled out a piece of chalk. For a second she saw it, orange or perhaps pink, before it flashed across the air in his hand. He drew a large, slightly lopsided rectangle across the panels of the door and looked into her eyes again as he folded himself through the wood as if it wasn't solid at all.
She stared. She could feel the wind gusting towards her through the house, and knew that time was short. The doorknob wouldn't turn; still locked, of course. She pushed her toe against the false opening he had drawn on the wood: solid. She patted her pockets: empty. The soft slap of pads and the tap of claws on tile echoed down the hallway behind her. They were here.
First Wednesday
Welcome to Bruckholt: Kate
The peel tower comes into view. It rises, from the rolling scrub of Holcombe moor, like a finger of smutty stone against the buff sky - a celebration, warning, or defiant symbol of Man's conquest of the inhospitable environment, who knows? I climbed it once, when I was a child. I remember the tight sunburn on my shoulders, the spring of the heather under my dogged footsteps, unyielding stone as we trudged around the narrow staircase and the thrilling terror as my dad hoisted me onto the turrets and pointed to the hazy horizon.
"That's where the rich buggers live, Kathy," he said, a sardonic crease in the corner of his mouth, his weasel eyes darting across the landscape to where the towers of Manchester looked, from that distance, almost lost in a wasteland that stretched for miles.
Spied once in the soft focus of pollution, this image of civilisation became a secret treasure I kept with me. When I finally made it to a city, I wasn't disappointed, it was everything I had hoped for.
I feel the pull of it now as I speed north into the unknown, the known, my hometown, and I can't help but watch for the last glimpse of a refined panorama reflected in my rear-view mirror. The new glass tower they call Beetham is a shadow against the sunset, so very tall it looks to reach much higher than the distant range of the Peak District; but it's a deception, Man's follies will never be more impressive than the hills of the north.
Manchester is not my city, never has been – I went so much farther than that, oh yes, there's a safety in the anonymity of a city that there can never be in the countryside. Still, I watch my mirror until the M56 sweeps me over the brow of the hill, over the border into the Rossendale Valley, and the persistent peripheral lure of the Holcombe monolith warns my guts it's time to clench, because this is a homecoming, and is long overdue. As I turn my gaze back to the route ahead, the loneliness for what I've grown accustomed to is already heavy on my heart.
It's not for long.
Far below, streetlights and home lights are winking on up and down the narrow, parallel terraced streets that criss-cross the well of the valley. I pull the car onto the hard shoulder and cut off the engine. Only the wind as it rocks the car and the fashionable analogue clock on the dashboard make noise, the same gale that combs the moorland fleeces and chivvies the clouds into the dark, the clock with its hands closing in on seven o'clock on a spring evening. For a few minutes, these villages live up to their nickname of Golden Valley as the day dies in a blaze of colour that winks off glass and turns the moorland grasses into wild, unspun treasure.
I slip the last cigarette of the packet between my lips, light it and open the driver's window a fraction. The gusts breathe through the gap. I smoke slowly, making the most of it, looking for rain clouds, but the sun is dropping behind the hills now and makes them all look suspect.
How long, how long has it been? I do the maths again; numbers never had stuck in my mind. Twenty two years. No, 23 years, eight months, two weeks and … does it matter? Time, Aunt Annie had always said, is relative to speed. Only since then have I learned that Einstein said it first.
He'd probably heard it from the old woman too.
And, of course, distance is part of that equation, too. Two hundred and twenty-two miles, probably at an average of about 60 mph; twenty-three years, eight months, two weeks plus … three days. In my time away from here, the valley looks much the same, those years are a small breath in the rhythm of its existence; I feel as if London speeds along on a timeline of its own, and I with it. At the sight of the hills and the narrow streets and the old mill chimneys that rise from the valley floor, I feel as if I've come back in time.
Now, that is a thought.
I poke my cigarette butt out of the gap and glance at myself once in the rear-view mirror as I start up the engine again: blue eyes, blonde hair; all reassuringly me, I hadn't changed back during my journey like a modern-day Cinderella. Cars speed past me down the hill, a few looking so retro, so unfashionably old and battered, not quite 24 years old, but they give this leg of the journey a time warp feel to it. I pull up close behind a tired Fiesta as orange-and-white cones flicker at the edge of my vision: road works, front-page news. The road dips and curves through the scrubby hinterlands of the River Irwell towards the valley centre, Rottenstall. It's aptly-named, an anachronistic Mecca bright with takeaway signs. I don't linger here, but turn east onto the short bypass, feeling pressed to get to my destination. I know what comes out to play when the sun goes down, and it isn't pretty.
At Foot-O-Water, I step onto the slimy garage forecourt in my Italian heels. Must change these when I get home.
Home. I smirk a little. But it feels uncomfortable.
The petrol-mart, so bright and shiny on the outside, is nevertheless illuminated inside with a sickly spill that has all the sparkle of a 25-watt energy saving light bulb. The sales assistant, a curt-expressioned mother-of-four-boys type, gives me a dismissive once-over as she listens to the man in the padded anorak who is leaning with one arm across the counter. She doesn't recognise me, maybe she takes me for a foreigner - someone from outside the Valley. Which I am, I'm a stranger in my own hometown.
Well, that's good.
"– don't like our Andrea hanging around the park at night, but you can't keep 'em indoors, can you?" She makes a little clucking sound at the back of her throat.
"I blame video games," the man sighs, and he and the assistant both turned their heads and stare at me. I ask for cigarettes and slide my plastic into the PIN handset, feeling their eyes on me as tap my number in.
When I get in the car, the two are watching me, their mouths flapping again but I forget them as I pull off the forecourt and head through to the centre of Foot-O-Water, where the road splits into two: veering to the left Water; to the right, the road to Stagsteads and Bruckholt. Many of the once-great Victorian shops are empty, some with boarded windows, plastered with posters for Manchester events. The chip shop and the Indian takeaway are doing a good Friday night trade to the early drinkers from the factories, but the only person actually on the streets is – is it really? – Old Kenneth, pulling a shopping bag on wheels across the pedestrian crossing, his long greying hair fluttering behind him.
The first real sense of the strangeness of this, of being back, steals across my consciousness, and a twinge of nervousness as I'm forced to drive slowly through a sudden gaggle of couldn't-care-less stragglers, staggering between pubs.
The road to Bruckholt becomes dark through the snaking curve of Thrutch Gorge, along the line of the old railway tunnels that were stripped and left to rot when Beeching helped to condemn this community's future. The only trains that run into the valley are old-time tourist engines, and they terminate way back in Rottenstall. Hewn stones lie like broken teeth on the empty line in front of the gaping maw of one tunnel, which has partially collapsed. The streetlights are insipid and cast deep shadows beneath the rhododendrons that cling to the cliff sides. I pass a stationary bus, light on but going nowhere. Even in the gloom, the landscape is starkly familiar, places of my childhood: that was where I painted my name in correction fluid on the step; over there, where I'd had my first French Kiss and been fingered for the first time; over there –
There is a flash of light, and again. Speed camera. Shit.
Stamping hard on the brakes as I nearly miss the turn to Cemetery Lane, it occurs to me this is the first time I have driven through the Valley; I passed my test in London. I turn into the poorly lit lane and move slowly between the back-to-back terraced hovels and the abattoir, around the wheelie bin lying in the road amid the household waste spilled like guts.
Welcome to Bruckholt.
In the confusion I actually do miss the turning up to the farm, and I have to reverse back from the chained cemetery gates through rows of double-parked cars. Aha: the hawthorn beside the terraces has grown bushy over the entrance to my former home. I won't get the car past it without scratching the paintwork. And there is nowhere to park.
The house at the top of the street, they have a large driveway. I turn through the gates: former mill owners house, split into two now and occupied by at least one family with dubious taste in plastic garden furniture. Their curtains are already closed to the night and I can see a flicker of the television through the gap.
The car contains two suitcases, a pair of hiking boots and a few other bits. I change footwear, grab my handbag, torch and set off. The hawthorn isn't the only obstacle; the surface of the lane is pitted and waterlogged, and someone has burned out a car part way up. I squeeze between the sad Renault 5 and the privet bank, twigs snagging at my hair. Further along the lane, my torch beam briefly captures a badger as it trundles across my path and disappears into the undergrowth.
I peer up the lane as far as the dark will allow me to before it swallows my torchlight, a snake of disquiet coiling in my tummy. I judge it unlikely that a vehicle has been driven up here for two years or more. If this is the case, what am I going to find when I reach the house?
Annoyed, I turn to squeeze past the Renault again. A sharp pain across my left knee accompanies a ripping sound and I feel the heat of my blood trickle down my shin.
Great start.
Beer and apathy: Simon
In the full knowledge that I'm late for everything, as a general rule, I had already decided the best way to be on time for the meeting was to go to the Brindle Bitch straight from the job. This means I've been drinking for four hours and 15 minutes, at an average of one pint per 30 minutes, by the time Sarah arrives.
"I thought I was going to be late," she says, breathlessly, staring across the lounge bar at the gathering committee.
"Yup, me too," I reply, and order her a drink.
"My mum was late for the babysitting, both the girls are out."
"Ah."
She fixes all of her attention on me, and gives me the quick once-over. "Your grandson is fine, thanks for asking. Your kids on the razzle with their mates." She pauses. "You're pissed."
"A bit. Been working." I push her drink along the bar towards her.
"Good. Nicole's college trip needs paying for by next month."
"I'm on it." I feel the familiar dig-dig undermining my pleasant mood.
"Yeah," she mutters, taking the coke and leaving me to go and sit with the others. Reluctantly, I start to follow but at then I see Jo has come in with Pip. I meet them back at the bar.
"You look like you need a strong drink, love," I say to Jo, kissing the top of her head. She twists her mouth and shrugs, so I ask: "How's your dad?"
"Still breathing. Meeting started?"
"Only just."
"I'll get these," says Pip. "You two go and sit down."
The chairman of the steering group of Bruckholt Bites Back, former local businessman Jack Ramsbottom, is talking as we take our seats. "… Two issues that I think we're all agreed on. The first is the proposed demolition of the eighty properties known as the Sidings - that's Israel Street, Grimshaw Street and Back Grimshaw Street -"
"Eighty one, Jack," Sarah corrects in a stage whisper.
He gives her a brief nod and frowns as he tries to remember where he was up to. "Ah … yes, so they can build forty five new town houses in their stead. Secondly, the planning application by Mr Alan Bull to move Scar Meadow stone circle to a new location, enabling him to build a caravan park for ramblers on his -"
"And DSS recipients," Old Kenneth says loudly. The low rush of wind is silenced as the door settles into its frame behind him, noticeable only by its absence. Ken gives a mucous-rich sniff and wheels his bag aggressively through the tables to get to a seat.
Jack ploughs onwards. "Both destroy areas of our local heritage."
"They totally ignored the results of the consultation," Sarah adds, as if she has the floor.
"Yes they did, Sarah. Now, sign this petition if you haven't already. The planning committee meets at the end of next month. Between now and then we need to do more to make ourselves heard. The Valley Courant is sending someone tonight – not here yet, I don't think … no …"
"Do you mean we should hold a march or something?" Sarah asks, face intent.
"A march?"
"You know, raise the profile of the protest. It's just that signing a petition isn't exactly a great publicity stunt, is it?"
"Of course not," Jack says, "I agree. But march from where to where?"
"I don't know." Sarah shrugs. "From here to the town hall. Invade a meeting or something. Deliver the petition. Get our pictures taken actually doing something."
"Invading a meeting?" someone pipes up. "Wouldn't that be illegal?"
"I'm not talking about rushing council chambers with balaclavas and water pistols," Sarah says, laughing. "But if you don't like the idea of that, then how about having a community fun day or summat ? Get people from all over the valley to come and sample Bruckholt fun."
"Yeah," someone barks from the back, "it'll rain, ‘cause it always fekking does, but I guess your husband can supply the drugs so everyone'll go home happy in the end, eh?"
There's a loaded silence. I realise, suddenly, that the faceless twat is talking about me. I stand up, ignoring Jo's tug at my hand. "Who said that?"
"Me." The massive bulk that is Edward Fletcher rises above the heads of his family. But I'm so very pissed off that I shove aside the memories of all my previous humiliations at the hands - and feet - of this man.
"Ah, Fatty Fletcher," I say, jovially.
The wanker's face screws up into what he probably hopes is a menacing expression.
"It was for personal use," I continue, evenly, forcing a smile. "So I'd appreciate it if you shut the fuck up about it."
"Do you want another kicking, Tattersall?"
"I think we should get back to the meeting," Jack says, a bit desperately.
"I think a fun day's a … fun … idea," Jo adds in a strained voice.
"Sit down, Si," Pip says behind me. "He's just a dick."
"Right up your alley, eh, gayboy?" Fletcher leers, gesturing to the crotch below the bulge of his belly. "Fancy a bit of this, do you?"
"Thanks, once was enough," Pip says, amicably, setting down the drinks on the table. Several people snigger. Fletcher, flushing and snarling, sits back down.
Pip yanks me back into my seat by my belt, which I'm quite relieved about really.
"Well," says Jack, relieved, "A fun day, then? If you think it's a good idea? Show of hands? Good, excellent. Volunteers to organise it, show of hands?"
"Ah," I mutter, glancing around at the general no-show of hands, and I grab my pint. "Bruckholt. Where the gusto has been chased off by the … er … gusts."
~o~
I hang around with Jo and Pip after the meeting has dispersed, the beer haze wrapping me in its warm arms, watching Sarah in full flow with other members of the fun day sub committee. But as she joins us, I see her enthusiasm replaced by exasperation.
"Don't look at me like that," I say, reaching for her.
She moves away. "It follows you around, doesn't it? And, unfortunately, me and the kids, too. You going soon, Jo? Can I have a lift?"
"Yes," says Jo, abandoning her coke and reaching in her bag for her keys.
"I'll walk you home," I suggest.
Sarah gives me an old-fashioned look.
"What? Can a husband not offer to protect –"
"Bollocks," she says, looking mildly amused, "you're after a shag." But she lets me put my arms around her. She smells lovely, sweet. I glance down into her cleavage. Of course, she's right, knows me better than I like to admit. "Don't forget the money for Nicole," she adds, disentangling herself and walking off with Jo in her wake.
"You can walk me home instead," Pip says, finishing his pint.
I laugh. "Let's go and get stoned at the circle."
He groans a bit at the pun.
The streets are cool and dark and swallow some of the amber warmth of the evening. We turn up the lane towards the cemetery in silence and squeeze through the stile by the privet. An owl hoots and a breeze rustles the grass as we cross the field to the stone circle. I stagger, losing my footing in a rabbit hole, and Pip rights me.
"Looks like we've beaten the kids tonight," Pip remarks, looking ahead through the dark. "No fire."
"They have school tomorrow."
"We used to have school tomorrow."
"Yeah, but we knew how to live!" I fling myself through the uprights and onto the grass, narrowly missing the homemade hearth in the centre. "Oh, the good old days of cider that's never seen an apple."
"Coca-Cola and paracetamol," he laughs. "Go on, then, skin up."
But I'm staring past Pip, though the stones towards the farm.
"What is it, Si?"
"Light at Croft farm," I say, watching for it again. "Like a torch, maybe. Look, there it is again."
"Kids?"
"Dunno, let's see."
Familiar voices: Kate
With contrasting feelings of anti-climax and excitement, I climb back into my car and fumble for my cigarettes in my bag, then in the glove box. My hand touches a soft package wrapped in newspaper; I push it farther back, close the flap and rip open the new packet.
Well, obviously, I can't stay at the farm tonight. With hindsight, it had been a silly idea, I hadn't thought it through in my eagerness not to delay the homecoming for a moment longer than 23 years and …
I'll have to go back into Foot-O-Water, to the hotel.
My heart is pounding, my knee is hurting. Abandoning my smoke, I put on my seatbelt and start up the engine. Curtains twitch at the house as I turn on my lights.
There had been voices, near the farm, in the dark, the gruff and blunt-accented voices of local men. I'd have phoned the police if I hadn't been quite sure from their tones that they were intent on defending the place. Quite ironic.
I reverse down the drive and into the street. As I reach the junction at the bottom, I think I see two shadowy figures emerge from the lane. For a moment I pause, watching them in the rear-view mirror, wondering if they are real. Then I see one of them fall off the kerb into the road.
Rolling my eyes, I pull away, and they swing out of sight.
Memory: Kathy, June 1977
The plastic Union Flags fluttered madly in the breeze and sounded like hundreds of yammering politicians in the Houses of Commons - or so I'd heard Mr Stanley liken them to. The bunting criss-crossed between the terraced houses on both sides of the street, above the wallpaper tables covered with red, white and blue paper table cloths. The men were lounging on doorsteps and in front gardens, beers in one hand and cigarettes in the other; the cigars would come out later. The women and the older children carried out plates of food to fill the tables and added to the scores of mismatched dining chairs and stools from every dining room and kitchen. Most of the younger kids were playing in Sarah's Wendy House in her back garden, out of the way. Someone had set a record player on their windowsill to blast out Queen hits. The pensioners on the street complained there was no national atmosphere and at some point, someone stuck a Vera Lynn LP on.
Simon and I sat under one of the tables and shared a sneaked packet of Golden Wonder. They were salt and vinegar flavour. We both liked salt and vinegar, strong enough to sting our mouths.
Pulling the packet straight, he tipped the last of the flimsy shards into his open mouth. He smacked his lips like a dog before he said, "I broke my Jubilee mug. There were too many bits and my mum threw it in the bin."
I thought his carelessness was terribly irreverent, assuming it was carelessness. My Silver Jubilee mug was already on a high shelf in my bedroom, Queen Elizabeth II's pretty face smiling slightly down at me whenever I walked in. But it didn't spoil my mood: here I was with my best friend, hiding out, despite the lure of a dim, sweaty Wendy House full of girls that wanted to kiss and cuddle him.
At some point we were dragged out from beneath the table, leaving the crisp packet to slide away down the road when the wind caught it. But after the food, with full tummies and half a glass of wine that Simon lifted, we sat again in out long multi-coloured tent and sipped and talked about what we would do if we were royalty.
Simon showed me a cigarette packet with one left in, so we crept the length of the tent and made a break for it, slipping between number eighteen and number twenty to where the gardens were. We dropped down into the terraced haven that was Mr Stanley's pride and joy, and Simon struck a match.
We smoked with decadent guilt, the taste was bitter on my tongue and I didn't inhale, I didn't really like it but Simon did, so … Voices, adult voices, came closer. The male voice I recognised as that of Jo's dad and I made a face at Simon. He dropped the fag and stood on it, letting the smoke creep from his mouth, then clamped his hand over his face as his chest heaved, desperate to cough.
The woman laughed, low and soft, and there was something in her tone that spoke volumes about what was happening between her and the man, even to children. Simon recovered from his threat of coughing and we both ducked our heads to peer through the fence at what was going on. And yes, it was Jo's dad, his hands all over Mrs Kenyon from number 11, pushing her mini skirt even higher than it already was.
"I fucking love you," he growled at her in a laugh.
She giggled again and said something lower while she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and sucked at his face for all she was worth.
"Ew," Simon said, a bit too loudly, and I whacked his arm, shushing at him silently.
"Did you hear something?"
Simon took my arm and we crept quickly through the back gardens away from them, wordlessly. I didn't like what I had seen. It made me feel sorry for Jo, and her brother, and her mum. It gave me a creepy feeling in my tummy to have seen that.
As we neared the last garden by the ginnel , where we could cut back to the party, which was still as loud as anything despite it being almost 11.00pm, Simon said, soberly, looking into my eyes, "Our secret."
My tummy flipped again. I nodded. It gave me a different feeling entirely to be sharing secrets with Simon.
First Thursday
In the morning, I stand again at the foot of the lane that leads up to the farm, to my past, everything I'd left behind. I've lingered here and contemplated the same view many times, pausing to brace myself, listening to my dad's fury tumble down the lane, or the silence that I filled with my imagination.
The past clears as I focus on a familiar mason's mark carved into the gable end of the terraced row, its loops and whorls brushed by the swaying branches of the hawthorn. Next to this, the grass has all but obscured the well-worn tracks up to the homestead, there are scorch marks around the corpse of the Renault, and the privet is out of control. My feet occasionally crush an old can or slide on a bottle, and the hedge almost swallows me as I carefully negotiate my way past the car; a branch scrapes past my cheek. Everything smells fresh and sweet in the early drizzle. Birds swoop ahead of me and hop into the undergrowth and I can hear nothing more of the world except this wilderness. It seems almost impossible to escape humanity in the cities, but here it's as if anything human is a trespasser.
Ahead, the yard opens up and someone who didn't know might miss the old cotton trail continuing straight ahead, the way over the tops to Manchester. I'm surprised to see it inhabited by a clutch of trees that can't be more than 10 years old and it seems to me that nature has taken over there too, though the signs of a trail are still obvious to me. But I turn my face towards the west as I think I hear a dog barking in the distance, as I kick at the grass that seems to snag my ankles, watching the farm come into view.
The first thing that strikes me is that it looks so small. I advance across the rough hard-standing where the weeds are pushing up, past the rusted tractor and the skeleton of a sheep, until I am standing at the garden gate. The small plot in front of the house was my mother's pride. I tried to keep it looking as nice as possible after her death, though now her rose bushes are straggly and wound with wisps of knotweed. There are several rotting sacks piled against the wall. I poke one with my foot and a split gapes, revealing what looks like clay soil. I wonder what it was for and where it came from. My gaze moves past, drawn to the corner of the wall where Sasha's grave is and, for a moment my mind's eye shows me a fast-moving tumult of images that I have to drag myself away from.
I have a job to do, here and now.
Someone has boarded up the windows and the wooden door looks back at me, blankly, though its history is written in every peel of varnish, every dent and scratch. It could speak a thousand stories that I had missed since I was last here, I'm sure. My gloved fingers feel for the key in my pocket and I push it into the keyhole. It won't turn. I try again, and again. I kick the door, the thud of the rubber against the wood is loud - I haven't come so far to be denied now -
"Now then," says a soft male voice some distance behind me.
The key strikes stone as I drop it and turn to look at him. He opens his mouth to continue, but as he sees my face he falls silent, his mouth agape, looking almost comically shocked as he recognises me. I control my own expression quite well, I think; but, oh-my-god, I know him well.
The irony of it being him, of all people.
"Well, fuck me, Kathy," he says eventually, the beginnings of a smile creasing the corners of his eyes, and the boy that I knew shines out.
But I pretend not to know him, frowning to conceal my genuine surprise.
He raises his arms, open-handed. "Simon," he offers. "Simon."
I blink at him and finally allow him to see that I recognise him. "Simon." And I stoop to pick up the key. "Hello." I really can't think of anything else to say.
When I turn back, the smile in his eyes has gone as he gestures to the door. "I called by to see if the place had been burgled. We had someone up here last night - but I reckon that were you, eh?" He grins slightly. "You locked out?"
Nodding, trying to cover my embarrassment, I said, "It's the right key, but the wrong lock."
"Aye, I see. Could just be stuck. Been a while since anyone were in there." He steps forward and holds out his hand for the key.
"No … I'm sure he … I think someone just changed the lock."
I don't offer him the key but it is tugged from between my thumb and forefinger and he steps up, reaching around me to the lock. I catch a sharp whiff of toiletries before I step back, my throat dry and the snake of an old rage stirring in my belly. The wind titters through last year's papery leaves still clinging to the oak at the side of the house: Did you think it would be so easy, sneaking back, sneaking away again?
Instinctively, the retort escapes before I can check it, a sharp breath cut off. Simon gives me an odd look as he gently wiggles the key in the lock. I expect him to say something, but he doesn't. He looks just about as I might have imagined, had I given him any serious thought over the last 23 years and eight months and … his eyes are clear, shrewd and gentle. His copper-coloured hair has mellowed with some grey. His freckles. I note the cluster of brown dots across the bridge of his nose, the three that form the triangle I had once joked was a tripoint, like we saw on the Lowe on the sponsored walk we did for school, and as long as I knew where he was in the world I'd never get lost.
That's painful to remember.
He is quite as scrutinising of me. He says, "You look as I imagined. Apart from the blonde." And he smiles a bit and looks back at the door, giving it a hard thump with the heel of his palm before I can think of how to react to that. "Fucking thing." He stands back. "Looks like your old man changed the lock."
"Like I said."
He shrugs. "I can kick it down. Break a window for you …" he sees my expression. "Joking. I know a way in, I bet."
I tug a strand of hair and tuck it behind my ear, watching him.
"This way, miss." He turns on his heel, all cocky-like, and strides out of the garden and around the side of the house. The oak tree jeers softly as I follow.
Simon gets on his knees beside the huge slab of the back doorstep, his hand in the weeds down the side, feeling around. The past comes at me so fast it could almost have knocked me over.
"Oh," I murmur.
He grins, flashing his crooked teeth at me. It's dazzling and makes me feel a bit angry at my sudden helplessness. "I think I feel it - but my hands are too big now." He withdraws and wipes the mud onto his jeans. "You have a go."
I crouch carefully, tucking my jacket under my bum so it doesn't trail in the filth, and slide my hand down the side of the step. I feel for the edge of the stone, into the gap, feeling carefully, not wanting to think about what might be living in there.
"You pushed it too far back," I complain.
"Yeah, yeah … don't break a nail," he says, dead-pan.
I feel it. It moves under my finger and I scrape gently at it until I can grasp it and hold it in my hand. Simon laughs softly behind me, looking over my shoulder at the rusty back door key. I stand quickly, moving away from him again, stepping up to the knackered old door.
"Long time since you hid that there," he says quietly, warmth in his voice from the recollection.
My cheeks prickle as I too remember why it was there. I insert the key and pull the door towards me a little by the handle, then turn. It's stiff, but the levers yield with a click.
"Fucking aye," he says behind me, approvingly.
I turn back to him without opening it. "Thanks."
He looks down at me, closely, as if he's taking in all the little details and comparing them to the girl. "No problem." Then he seems to realise I'm waiting for him to leave, there's another slight grin, and he doesn't move. "Be good to have someone living here again."
"I'm sure it will."
Pause for a heartbeat. "You won't be living here yourself, Kathy?"
"No. I'll put it on the market as soon as possible."
"Right. I see."
There's a less than comfortable silence.
"How's Sarah?" I ask.
His cheeks flush this time. "She's okay."
"How many kids do you have, now?" My tone is polite, but it seems he knows me better than I remember. He laughs, softly again. It's like a kiss of lightning from a spring storm, sending a shiver up my spine.
"Eh, I'm a granddad now," he replies, something alight in his eyes as he turns. "Nice to see you, Kathy."
I don't correct him on my name. After so long, I should expect I'll still be Kathy to him - Kathy with her wild hair, Kathy with her scabby knees, Kathy with her crush on him. I just watch him leave, listen to his footsteps through the long grass and the faint whistle of a tune.
Somewhere close by, but distant too, a dog barks again. If I didn't know better, I might think it was laughing.
Kathy: Simon
I practically march down from the farm, feeling like I'd better leave before I'm thrown out. I'm whistling some nonsense fucking pop tune I heard our Nicole singing, but I feel like turning right around and yelling something at Kathy Croft, something filthy that'll splatter her nicely ironed clothes and her clean skin and her shiny hair, where the mud won't touch her.
For fuck's sake.
I kick the car wreck on the way past and there's a brief shower of rust petals over my boot. "Jesus Christ. Like nothing happened."
Shaking the drizzle out of my hair, I turn on to Cemetery Lane. She really was the last thing I'd expected to see at the farm. The ghost of her dad would have been more likely.
"Two years?" I ask myself as I turn onto Bruckholt Road. Two years since her dad died. How long since she had left?
Oh well ... that's not hard to work out, just look at our Leila's age.
Losing all momentum, I stand in the middle of the pavement, gazing, unseeing, at people passing me by, not answering those who bid their good mornings. I see a different Kathy in my mind, her face pale and her eyes wide. What's that expression, what does it mean? My mind tries to shy away from it again, as it has every day since she left that I ever thought of her. But I turn back to it, open it up, and there she is, standing on the back doorstep of her house. It's open this time and I see her little brother standing in the shadows of the hallway, trying to eavesdrop with a smirk on his face.
You're fucking doing what? she had asked, her voice thin.
I can't watch it again. I blink and see someone has stopped right in front of me. Fletcher. He stares back at me for a moment, then pokes me hard in the ribs and knocks my shoulder as he walks on by.
"Oh grow up!" a female voice calls after him and Sarah swoops into view. Full makeup and hair even at this time, but the paint is thicker and the blonde is brighter, not like Kathy's at all.
I suddenly feel ashamed at comparing them and come back to myself.
"I think we can organise a fun day in a couple of days," she says to me. "What do you think? Sunday? Saturday?"
I recognise the question is loaded and simply agree with her. "Deadlines are ... motivational," I reply.
She smiles and does something with my hair. "I'm going to be on the phone all day," she sighs, bringing a leaf out of my wet mop and flicking it into the gutter. "You been hedge diving?"
I avoid the question. "If anyone can do it, it's you. Put me down for music."
She beams at me and turns away, walking back in the direction of her house, already pressing buttons on her mobile. I watch her go, and something nags at me quietly in the back of my mind. I pick the fresh dirt from under my nails, then start whistling again and turn into the newsagents to buy some baccy.
Cats and dogs: Kate
I find I can't go into the house. The door stands slightly ajar, revealing a tantalising slice of blue and dirty-white tiled floor and a patch of grubby, woodchip wallpaper. Stepping down, I reach into my handbag for my cigarettes and lighter. As I smoke my eyes skim the yard, the outhouses, the untidy woods and the tangle of the new copse, the meadows and the cliffs above, the cap of the moors beyond. It feels unreal, being here. I blink the drizzle from my eyelashes and avoid the phantom of Simon's presence. I think about coffee instead, a hot pot of coffee with cream, the rich scent -
Behind me, there is the faintest clackety-tap of what sounds like a dog's claws on tiles on the other side of the door. Confused, I turn - the uneven gait is familiar and a forbidden sound, alarming me from the pit of my stomach right up to my throat.
Get out of the fucking house!
I flinch a bit as I hear my dad's bellow echo across the years. The door admits to nothing. It's barely blue, only a few flakes of gloss left on it. Imagine Simon remembering where I had hidden the spare key. A fact I had forgotten myself.
On the other side of the door, something snuffles.
Dropping the cigarette, I step up to push it open again; not hard and it swings back easily, despite its age and lack of recent use. The funky, faecal smell inside makes me recoil. As my eyes adjust to the gloom, I swear I can see the shadowy tail of a border collie exiting right, and there is the hushed flutter of plastic ribbons that have always served as a kitchen door. Not just any dog, A bitch. A bitch named -
"Sasha?" I whisper as I step over the threshold. Even as I speak her name, I know it can't be true, even though I'm sure of what I've seen.
I walk down the chilly hallway towards the front door, and put my hand out to part the plastic fronds. As I do, something small and dark bolts past me, barely touching me. As I turn to watch its escape, I see that it's feline in size and shape.
Ghost dogs, indeed.
But feeling a bit stupid, I step inside the dark room, finding my torch and switching it on, still half-expecting to see soft brown eyes looking back at me. A table, tatty kitchenette, gas cooker wrapped with yellow condemned tape, upturned chair, small fridge and an archaic-looking microwave oven. No dog, no Sasha.
Confused, I walk back outside, blinking in the brightening morning light. Not even the oak whispers this time as I pass. I fight my way into the corner of the garden and crouch down again, pulling handfuls of grass up and feeling around in the undergrowth. I can feel the headstone, a small, dome-shaped piece of stone I found when I'd been digging around in Aunt Annie's garden. Barely visible are the scratches on it that make up her name. I had broken my compasses making that and been given a crack across the side of the head for it. But at least he'd let me bury her.
Not many things make me cry any more but I have to blink hard not to let anything spill from my eyes right now. Somewhere close, but too far, a dog whines.
I stand up and go back into the house. It is mainly quiet, barring the tapping of my feet on tile and stone flag, creak of my weight on the staircase. I walk in and out of every room, breathing in the mustiness, closing each door behind me. Nothing smells of him anymore. I imagine it might have, if they hadn't removed the mattress he'd begun to putrefy into. Wisps of hair make small grey tumbleweeds at the edge of the carpet on the landing. It doesn't take too much effort to summon his phantom in my mind's eye: the crazed squint of his eyes, the beer-breath, the power in his hands.
My throat is dry. I've done it, I've come here and I've looked at it, even if I don't want to look at it all too closely.
On my way back downstairs, I pause and put my eye to a knothole over the landing window and peer over the familiar view. I look past the cemetery to the old line of the railway and follow it along, west, trace my gaze up Sackville Street and across the main road, up the curve of Hartley Drive. The trees have grown a lot, in almost a quarter of a century, but I think I can see that part of Aunt Annie's roof has caved in.
I pull back and turn away.
Memory: Kathy, winter 1981
The corpses lay on the white-frosted ground of the yard, the fleeces with blood on them and their eyes already in the bellies of the crows. Something bigger had taken their throats. I stood, captivated by the dreadful scene, my school bag dangling from my hand. Dad strode around the side of the house with a third dead sheep slung across his shoulders and threw it with a grunt and on top of the others. It made me wince.
"Foxes, dad?"
A welcoming bark from Sasha, but she didn't come running and there was the sliding-clink of a chain. I frowned as my dad stood with his hands on his hips, catching his breath. A flicker of a movement in the living room window caught my eye and I saw my mum turn away and merge with the shadows.
"Dog," he said, tersely.
Something in the way he said it, and the fact Sasha was chained up, made me feel very, very cold inside. "Eh?"
"Your bitch's got a taste for blood, Kathleen." He used my full name, my Sunday name, my naughty name.
"No!" I cried, suddenly terrified because I knew ... I just knew what was going to come next.
And there would be nothing I could do to prevent it.
"Aye."
He turned and I know he's going to get his gun. "Dad, Dad stop! Sasha wouldn't do it, honest! She never would!"
He fended me off with his hand but I kept at him till he grabbed my arm and dragged me with him around the back, stopping between the lane and the back door. The dusting of frost showed me a clear trail paw prints leading from the direction of the moors, down into the yard, ending at Sasha's kennel. The dog, straining on her chain, wagged her entire back end at the sight of me, unaware of her fate as I took in the smear of dark blood on her white chest.
"No!" I knew it wasn't true. I knew it in my heart.
"Shoulda killed the runt when she were born," he said, gruffly, turning into the house, heading for the cupboard where he kept his weapons. "No use for herding, and you've ruined her, no discipline. Pregnant ewes. Can't have it, Kathy. You know that."
"It wasn't her, she wouldn't hurt a fly, Dad. She's always been -"
"Go to your room, unless you want to watch."
"Dad -!"
"Now!" he roared, cocking his shotgun over his knee. "Get your arse up those stairs!"
I risked a beating by resisting, I knew it: but the pain of one of dad's beatings wasn't as bad as a pain of the heart - I didn't love him anymore, so his hands and his belt only made surface wounds; I loved Sasha, and I could already feel the slice of something deeper into the place where love lived. The grief already felt bigger than I was.
He didn't make me watch but there was a curl to his lip as he half-dragged me upstairs. If mum heard, she didn't respond or appear. If Anthony heard, he kept out of the way too.
"One more fucking word out of you!" And he snatched the loose brass handle and spindle off my side of the door and pulled it shut.
My fault, my fault, I wasn't careful enough and now he's going to take her from me, I forgot to cross my fingers and do my chores well and brush my teeth 100 times a night and I went to see the Wild and I forgot God is watching and I stole that pretty handkerchief from lost property and I don't love my dad and I'm sorry, I'm sorry - just beat me, belt me, starve me but don't take my dog, please don't take my dog, because there's only her and Simon and if she goes then he's next and I can't be a good girl all the time -
I heard Sasha woof again. There was a dreadfully long pause; the sound of the shotgun when it came was much louder.
First Friday
Shedding light: Kate
The signs for a 'fun festival' start to appear everywhere. 'Bruckholt Bites Back': no kidding. One is even pushed under the door of my room at the hotel, a mish-mash of artwork photocopied to within an inch of its life. I turn it over and write a list on the back of the things I need to do to the farm then slot it into my personal organiser.
In Bruckholt, I heave a bag of stuff up the lane past the dead Renault and drop my load by the garden gate, which hangs tenuously from one hinge, and stand and stare at my property. This was all he left me: an old farmhouse, practically a ruin, and some memories, and some deep, deep bruising that will only heal when I am shut of it.
Half of it is Anthony's, of course. If I ever find him. I don't know if finding him will ease the hurt. I doubt it. He was Dad's third fist, after all.
I let myself in via the back door and go down into the cellar with my torch, noting the latch on the cellar needs replacing because it's been broken at some point. Some of dad's tools are laid out on a stone slab workbench, other hang from hooks in the low ceiling. There's a crowbar there. I take it back up stairs in time to see a black, feline tail disappearing into the cover of the woods again. I think she must be getting in and out using the coalhole, which has lost its cover at some point. I walk around to the front, and set about prising the boards off the windows. The splintering wood is loud and birds alight from a nearby hedge. I listen with half an ear for the dog again but she doesn't make a sound this morning.
"Don't break a nail."
I almost drop the tool and turn to stare at Simon for a moment, not understanding why he could possibly be standing on my land for a second time in two days. He gives a slight grin back.
He brings a hand out of his pocket and holds up a creased photocopied flyer for the festival. "Called by to see if you're coming."
I examine his expression to see if he means it, and I'm quite astonished to think that he might. "Thanks," I say, sounding more hesitant than I intend to, and step forward to take the flyer. The dog woofs from within the house. He doesn't show any sign of hearing her.
"I'll be playing," he adds.
"Playing?" I tuck the paper into my pocket.
"Play with some mates. Not quite a band, we're not organised enough for that." He flashes me a grin. "We just play when we fancy it."
I nod, feeling slightly dazed by all this information. "What are you calling yourselves?"
"We're not organised enough for a name either." He scratches the side of his nose and his gaze wanders to the wood panel hanging from the window frame. "You okay there?"
"Just shedding some light on things. I'll have to get someone to do the upstairs for me."
"I've got a ladder," he remarks, scanning the upstairs with his bright, sharp eyes, and running his hand through his tousled hair. "No big job, that. Wi't right footwear." He glances down at my feet in Wellington boots, and I open my mouth to protest until I realise he's poking fun at me.
There's a pause that's slightly too long for comfort. I force a smile and thank him for his offer.
"So, you're going to do the old place up to sell it off, eh?" He holds out his hand and I pass the crowbar without thinking.
"Well at the least, I need to empty it." I watch the muscles bunch under his sweatshirt as he levers the tool under the sheet of wood I had barely loosened.
"Took your time coming back, lass. Did it take 'em that long to find you?"
The first board drops to the ground and reveals part of the filthy window into the living room. "No," I reply, maybe a little defensively. "I paid for his cremation." The words sounded harsh, even to me. But he had known my dad. I turned away and grabbed my bag off the wall, looking for my cigarettes.
"Ah," is all Simon says to that.
I light up and looked out across the Valley, picking out the cemetery in the mid-distance. I would have set the old bastard on fire myself to make sure he was really never coming back. The splintering of wood was satisfyingly loud behind me, the twist of my guts quite comforting.
"Well, this'll make a nice project for someone," he adds, sagely, and he moved past me to the kitchen windows.
"I need to get rid of the smell of cat." I step forward and peer through the dirty living room window. The windows are filthy and the day doesn't shed much light through the grime.
"Cat piss, eh?"
I nod. "And the rest." The splintering of the cheap wood is loud. The oak is silent at the side of the house.
"Surgical spirit," he grunts, levering another off. "Take it from me."
"Oh. Okay."
The last board from the front is off and he stacks them against the wall, flattening weeds and grass like they're not there.
I offer him a cigarette from the packet and he shakes his head and pats his jeans' pocket. "Roll my own. I'll just get these back windows uncovered for you." He sets off around the side of the house. I follow, watching his familiar walk, the way his shoulders swung. Then my eyes stray to the trees, feeling eyes upon me from the shadows.
Simon makes light work of the boards, which is good because I can't think of any polite conversation to interject between the groans of the boards as they come off.
He stacks them by the back door, points out where the police forced the kitchen window when my dad hadn't been seen for a while, then stands staring at the coalhole. "That's how your squatter's getting in, eh?"
"Yes."
He turns and pushes his sleeves up, then digs in his jeans and brings out a pouch of tobacco. His forearms are as freckled as his face, and look strong. "I can bring my ladder up at lunchtime," he says as he deftly makes the cigarette. His hands are graceful, his nails dirty. There's no sign of a wedding ring. "I haven't got any jobs this morning. But I do tomorrow. House clearance down on Wolfenden." He looks up from his task and catches me staring at him. "How long are you staying, Kathy?"
"However long I need to."
He grins and pops the cigarette into his mouth as I grind mine into the mud under my boot. "Well then, you'll have time to come and watch me make a tit of myself to a few hundred people at the fun day. I'm writing a song, 'specially for it."
"A song about fun?"
He laughs. "Well most of the old favourites are about women and getting wasted. But this will be about stopping the developers from destroying our heritage to build starter homes for commuters out of mashed paper and spit."
"Developers?"
"It's all on your invite."
I take the poster out of my pocket and struggle through the small print. There's a hand drawn map showing fields and streets and a big cross. Simon taps the paper with his finger. I can smell him again as he stands closer.
"There's where they're planning the estate." He turns and points east towards the neat - from this distance - collection of terraced streets known locally as the Sidings, only a hop, skip and jump from my land. "Right on your doorstep, Kathy. Well. Whoever buys your property. They're going to rip down all those nice homes that have stood for more than a century and replace them with uncharismatic starter homes made out of cardboard and spit."
Nice homes? Kitchens you can't swing a cat in, some of those back to backs hardly even having a bathroom, kids without gardens playing in the streets?
"And they're talking about possibly letting some bloke bulldoze our stone circle and build a caravan park." He gestures through the hedge; that's a lot closer.
I frown down at the map again. "Where's the access road?"
He looks at me meaningfully and draws on his cigarette, letting the smoke flood down his nose, and turns to glance at the track that not only leads to the farm, but also leads up to the old cotton trail.
I blink. "No-one has said anything to me." I wonder how much they would pay me for the road, if it's on the deeds to the farm.
He shrugs. "Just an idea."
I note the date and time of the fun day and tuck the paper back into my pocket. He looks down at me for a moment. He's unkempt, unashamedly so, and for some reason this gives my guts a stir, an uncomfortable sensation, a reminder that I don't belong in this world where men are dirty and proud of it and houses stink of cat shit.
He backs away, puffing on his cigarette again. "I'll be back later with my ladder." He turns and walks away.
"Nah," he says, in a laid-back tone, and vanishes around the corner.
The leaves of the oak tree rustle a little, almost like laughter, and it picks up like a Mexican wave that sweeps around every tree within hearing distance. I turn and walk back into the house. Light seeps through the downstairs now, sickly and grey. The water will be turned on tomorrow. I need to get rid of that Renault so the skip hire company can deliver. Maybe I can employ Simon and his workmates to help me get rid of the house contents. I turn the thought over in my mind that this is why he visited again, which is more comforting to me than the idea he might want to hang around for any other reason. I don't want to ask or answer any questions about the past or the present. Nor, I think, do I want to argue with him about why I don't want to go over old ground, or catch up, rekindle any friendships.
I walk into the sitting room. Perversely, there is nothing to sit on, no suite or even a chair. The hearth is littered with old charcoal. A fresh, dead bird - a thrush - is laid out on the threadbare rug in front of it, head lolling on broken neck. I wonder if it's fallen down the chimney, but it's unlikely. I stoop to pick it up with my bare hands. It feels delicate, plump and cold. I take it outside and walk over to the trees and drop it into the undergrowth where it can decay into nature. For a moment I stand still, looking down at the speckled body half-hidden in the grass, then give a low, "Chish-chish". I don't expect the cat to respond but when I turn back into the house, I'm just in time to see a long feline tail curling around the banister on its way upstairs.
Rattling nuts and bolts, creaking doors: Simon
On the way to pick my ladders up to help Kathy, I get a tense call from Jo. I'm a bit short with her, my mind still on the neat, clean woman at the farm who has all but lost her Lancashire accent and had distance in her eyes. Feeling guilty as soon as I hang up, I detour over to Jo's house and find her standing in front of her car, the bonnet propped up, and tears on her cheeks. There's a puddle of something under the old Saab. It could be tears, or even blood on the cobbles, for all I know. Poking my finger in it, I discover it's only washer fluid.
I wrap my arm around Jo's shoulders and give her a quick squeeze. She wipes her cheeks and leaves grubby smears. She's scowling and her voice has a catch in it when she speaks.
"It's going to die before he does." She kicks the front tyre.
"Eh …calm down, it's probably nothing. Get in and turn the key."
She checks her watch and sits in the car and turns the key, pumping the gas pedal. I let out a sigh.
"I think you flooded the engine, Jo."
Giving me a dark, wild look, she says, "But I need to be going like … half an hour ago! And it wasn't starting before!"
"Let me take the spark plugs out and clean 'em for you." I roll my sleeves up again and dip into the car's guts.
She gets out and stands by my side, watching. "I'm going to miss visiting."
I take out my lighter and touch the flame to the spark plug and watch the flame curl briefly around the part before it dies. "You haven't missed once."
"I know!"
I look back at her. "Jo, I mean … one day ... can't be helped, probably won't hurt."
She wrings her hands then starts messing with her hair.
"How's his chemo going?"
She sets her jaw and glances away, her eyes glistening. I take out the second plug and burn off the petrol. Finally she says, "I always think today will be the day when he says it." Her voice is small, almost like a girl's. "And my tarot cards keep saying death. And they're not showing my anything much beyond that."
I hold the flame of my lighter to the third plug and imagine it's her dad's big toe and I'm torturing him into saying it. Even if it is a lie. Even if he shouldn't need torturing into saying it. Fucking tosser. I think about Kathy and the cold way she said she'd paid for the disposal of her dad's body. These women could learn something from each other.
"This'll only take a minute," I say, lamely.
It starts. But she decides she can't drive. I nod for her to move over and get in. I know I'm going to miss doing Kathy that favour today but after so long I think she can wait a bit longer. She gets out again and tries the front door to make sure it's locked. I know I'll remind her that she did it when we've driven a couple of miles down the road and she wants to go back and check it. I've been here before with Jo, in the last few weeks.
We travel in silence until I try the radio. She pulls the visor down and rubs the mirror, then rubs at her smudged cheeks and faffs with her hair. "How's things with you? Not working today?"
"I was doing someone a favour today. Working tomorrow."
She looks at me, wide eyed. "Oh, I messed up your plans!"
I smirk and shake my head. "Nah." There is a pause as I wrestle with how to phrase my next line. Pausing has a taste to it, I discover, fleeting flavours of different words nibbled at and discarded. Finally, I say, albeit slowly, "I was doing Kathy a favour."
"Oh, Kathy who?" She primps in the mirror again.
"Croft. Kathy Croft."
"Goddess - really?"
I laugh.
"No way!"
"Yep."
Jo stares at me, looking quite amazed - and actually, that's about how I'm still feeling.
"How are you helping her? No - scrub that. Where the hell has she been?"
"Making money. Marrying it or making it, anyhow." That's something, I hadn't noticed any rings, but then again I hadn't looked.
"Well. Shit."
"Found her up at the farm."
"She's moving back home? After all this time?"
"I don't think so, Jo. Says she's selling it."
Jo snorts softly. "Well, shit," she repeats.
"Anyway," I add softly, reluctantly, "we know why she left."
"Oh, aye ... we know that. Just not where she went."
I feel her looking closely at me. I flip her the bird.
"Just goes to show, it's never too late to say sorry," she says, turning her attentions back to her reflection.
"What goes to show?"
"Synchronicity."
"Wasn't that a Police album?"
Now she flips me one right back, without looking away. "Fate, Simon Tattersall."
"Flake," I mutter.
"Pot-head. Fire starter."
"Slag."
She pauses. "Thief."
"Eh? I never stole anything … oh okay, there was that time - "
She laughs. "Thief of hearts."
I feel my cheeks colour. "We were teenagers, for fuck's sake."
She shrugs and starts rummaging in her bag, bringing out various bits of make-up covered in fluff. "I'd like to think there are some men in the world who say sorry when they should. The universe has brought Kathy back for a reason. Time to make amends, maybe."
I don't reply, torn between images of Kathy from the past, and fantasies of what I'd like to do to Jo's dad when we get to the hospital. And sometimes, I swear Jo is fucking psychic, like she always said she was, because she adds, quite innocently, "You won't mind waiting in the car for an hour will you? I'm really grateful."
I stare across the yard at the outline of the falling-down shed and the dark of the trees beyond. The sun is going down and I'm annoyed that Simon, almost predictably, has not turned up like he said he would.
Like things might have changed, Kate?
Part of me is relieved, too.
I watch, not for him anymore, but for signs of the life that mainly hides during the daytime, unless it's stormy and it chooses to ride in on the elemental violence to deliver some of its own.
The memories are tumbling in, quick and clumsy. Some of it ... I don't know whether it was real or my imagination. Other parts I know to be true, the less fantastical images for instance. I like to think I have a sharp memory but there are some I just can't reconcile in my adult brain.
My discovery of the Wild had been magical. That had been a dream come true, and maybe it was a dream; but at the time it was like stepping into a fairytale that lived right on my own doorstep. I was a child that liked to spend hours on the hills, making daisy chains and little shelters and colourful, pretend meals of berries and grass buds. I sang songs into nature and, one day, unexpectedly, Nature sang back.
Their voices were soft, slightly louder than the rush of the wind through the coarse grass, not as loud as the crickets rubbing their legs together. But they became louder, soon I could hear them quite clearly, even if I didn't understand what they were saying. It was an odd language. As I grew older, I thought of it sometimes as being like the speeded-up sound of shifting of tectonic plates, the sliding together of strata in the folds of the moors, combined with the rush of a flooded spring bursting forth from the hillside after a storm, the scuttle of scree tumbling down on itself, the hum of a wasps' nest, and indeed the rush of the wind through the coarse grass or a tree toppling alone in a copse. They might sound like the random noises nature makes, to someone who did not believe in the chaotic organisation of the universe, where nothing is completely random.
I heard the rhythm, most often when there was a storm brewing. They would call me to the brink of the moors and I would tell them about myself and my friends and my life, beneath a canopy of gathering thunder clouds. They knew about my dog, about Aunt Annie, about the first time Simon kissed me, about my loud dad and silent mum and stupid brother. They were fascinated and in return they showed me themselves, in the storms and the insects and the stones and the plants of the valley.
It changed when I got my period. As if the onset of menses signalled something, they became vicious. They liked the smear of my blood on the grass and stone, as long as it wasn't from my womb. They appreciated my pain as long as it wasn't the cramps preparing me for motherhood. It was as if there was something dirty about me, threatening, and they wanted to show me exactly how powerless I was. They had the ability to harness incredible power, once even throwing me like a doll into the cliff face so I broke my wrist.
This was a language I understood, better than their strange inhuman words and the different animal forms they appeared as. While I couldn't do anything about the language as it was spoken at home, I had a choice with the Wild. So I sometimes I resisted going up onto the moors, and I stayed inside when it was dark or the weather was stormy.
I congratulate myself how very different I am now.
With a smirk into the gathering dusk, pretending I'm not leaving because I feel at all frightened, I pull the back door closed and lock it.
The storm was a loud one and it was boring to have to switch the TV off and unplug the arial to prevent it blowing up if Simon's house was struck; all very responsible behaviour; instead we went upstairs to his bedroom and listened to his music.
His mum and dad were at work, so we had the house to ourselves and it felt really bad to be in his room with him, and really good. Even though we'd snogged a lot and we'd had our hands in each other's underclothes and had a really good idea what it felt like in there, we'd never been all the way. Partly this was all the taboos; partly it was the coincidences of my periods, and in no small way too was it that fact that sometimes my body bore bruises I thought would put him off any idea of sex.
Today was the day. I knew as soon as he put the Cure's Head on the Door on the turntable and looked at me over his shoulder; can't say how I knew, I just did. And he did too.
Simon threw himself on the bed next to me and tugged me down for a kiss. This time when I didn't lay my hand on his to halt its progress, but to move it to where I wanted it, I might easily have thrown a lit cigarette onto the moors.
It wasn't very graceful, but it was funny and sweet - Simon running off first to get a dark blue towel to put under us in case I bled, and then again to get a condom. We snuggled under his duvet, which smelled of his aftershave, he asked if he was hurting me - and he was but that's an acceptable part of this ritual - and the mild panic as he messed up the removal of the condom.
"Be 'right," he said with his lopsided grin, trying to clean me up with the towel.
"You're marrying me if I get pregnant," I replied.
"Aye," he promised with a twinkle in his eye. "Maybe I'll marry you anyway, eh?" And he kissed me. "Swalk," he murmured, as though saying the entire 'sealed with a loving kiss' was too soppy.
But him saying all those lovely words made me think he must feel the same way as I did about him. He made all my other secrets inconsequential; his love seemed to wash me free of everything that was less than he was.
That sunny evening, with no clouds in the sky any more, I took a lone walk up to the Horseshoe, the cliff formation where I met with the Wild. I took my knickers off, strongly scented with jizz and juice and stained with a little hymen blood, then smeared the crusty crotch over the rocks and rubbed it into the grass. I ripped up a slab of turf by the entrance to the arena and hid the garment in the root and clay, so there was no evidence for my mum to find.
"Up yours," I muttered with a grin, then turned to walk back down to the farm, my heartstrings still reverberating with the tune of Simon's words.
[1] Around 6,000 miles of national railway line were closed in the 1960s for economical reasons, following a report by British Rail chairman Richard Beeching.
[2] Lancashire dialect: Something
[3] Narrow alleyway, footway or footpath between streets, gardens or houses.
