Blood Harvest

19

‘YOU’RE OBSESSING, YOU SILLY COW,’ MUTTERED EVI TO herself. ‘Shut it down and go to bed.’ She looked at the JL clock in the bottom left-hand corner of her computer screen: 9.25 p.m. She couldn’t go to bed at half past nine.
Would there be anything on TV? She spun herself round in the chair and glanced across the room at the set. Was she kidding? It was Saturday night. And there was nothing on her bookshelves she hadn’t read at least four times.
She looked back at the screen, at the picture of Harry that she’d found on the Lancashire Telegraph’s website. He was wearing a black shirt, clerical collar and black jacket. The photograph was perhaps a year or two old. His hair was a little longer and in the lobe of his left ear he wore a tiny metal cross. The accompanying story told her that the Reverend Harry Laycock had been appointed to the living of the recently united benefice of Goodshaw Bridge, Loveclough and Heptonclough, and that in his previous post he’d been a special assistant to the archdeacon in the Diocese of Durham. Earlier in his career, he had spent several years working at an Anglican ministry in Namibia. He was unmarried and gave his hobbies as football (playing and watching), rock-climbing and long-distance running.
She could print the photograph off.
Except that she was absolutely, positively, not going to do anything that pathetic. She scrolled up the page and typed ‘Heptonclough’ into the search engine, pressing Return before she had time to think about what she was doing. The site found several entries. This wasn’t obsessing, this was legitimate research. She had a patient in the town.
Heptonclough didn’t make the news too often. The most recent story was the reference to Harry’s appointment. She passed over it quickly before she was tempted to open it up again. Heptonclough man fined for poaching, New bus service linking Heptonclough with nearby Goodshaw Bridge. He lived in Goodshaw Bridge – oh, get a grip, woman. She found the story about the fire in Gillian’s house, and then a follow-up article reporting that Barry Robinson had been discharged from hospital but remembered nothing about the fire. Search continues for missing Megan; Heptonclough pub’s warning to under-age drinkers …
Evi scrolled back up the list. Search continues for missing Megan. Why did that ring a bell? The story was six years old. And – she scrolled down the list – there were several follow-up stories and one that preceded it: Child missing on moors.
She opened the link and read the first few lines. She’d been working in Shropshire when the story first made the news, but she remembered a young girl going missing on the Pennine moors. The search had gone on for days. The child, or the child’s body, had never been found. Evi had even mentioned it in a lecture she’d given at the university – the particular stages of grief people suffer when their loss is unquantified and unconfirmed, and the difficulties of closure when hope – however unrealistic – lives on.
Dozens of local people joined the police search for missing four-year-old Megan Connor. Megan, who wandered away from her family during a picnic, has blonde, shoulder-length hair and blue eyes. She was wearing a red raincoat and red wellington boots. Photographs are being distributed throughout the north-west, and in the meantime, Megan’s family have asked the public to remain vigilant and pray for their daughter’s safe return.
The picture accompanying the story showed a girl in a Snow White costume, no longer a toddler but still with the plump, soft features of the very young. If Gillian had taken part in the public search for Megan, it might explain why, three years later, she’d become obsessed with the idea that her own daughter might be similarly lost.
It was no good, she couldn’t sit still any longer. For some reason the pain in her leg seemed worse tonight. She had Tramadol in her bathroom cabinet. She hadn’t taken one, hadn’t needed to take one, for nearly six months. Did she really want to start using them again?