Blood Harvest

13

22 September
MILLIE, THE LITTLE GIRL WITH HAIR THE COLOUR OF SPUN sugar, was in the garden. She was wearing hand-me-down clothes from one of her brothers, dark-blue jogging trousers and a blue and white football sweatshirt. Mud clung to her as she sat on the bare earth. The nappy, peeking out over the top of her joggers, made her bottom look enormous.
‘Millie.’ Her mother’s voice, from inside the house. She appeared in the doorway, plastic bowl in one hand, the other on her hip in exasperation.
‘Will you look at you?’ she called. Millie beamed back. She tried to stand, made it halfway and then fell back on her bottom.
‘Stay there for a minute, poppet,’ called Millie’s mother. ‘I’ll get you some clothes. Then we’ll get the boys. Bye!’ She disappeared inside the house again and the child opened her mouth to wail. Then her head shot round to face the other direction. She’d heard something.
Millie got up and set off along the rough ground, almost to the wall that bordered the property. She stopped when she was only a few inches away and looked up. A yew tree, possibly several hundred years old, grew in the churchyard so close to the wall as to be almost part ofit. Millie looked up.
‘Lo,’ she said. Lo Ebba.’