Oh God.
‘Thea, I didn’t mean –’ I stop, shift uncomfortably, but it’s true, however my words sounded, I wasn’t trying to blame her, just work out how it happened. Then she sees the bloody mess of torn flesh and wool in front of us.
‘Fuck. What happened? What’s it got to do with me?’
‘Someone left the gate open,’ I say unhappily, ‘but I didn’t mean –’
‘It doesn’t matter who left the gate open,’ Kate breaks in sharply. ‘It was my fault for not checking it was closed before I put Shadow out.’
‘Your dog did that?’ Thea’s face is pale, and she takes an involuntary step back, away from Shadow, and his bloodied muzzle. ‘Oh my God.’
‘We don’t know that,’ Kate says, very terse. But Fatima’s face is worried, and I know she is thinking the same thing I am; if not Shadow, then who?
‘Come on,’ Kate says at last, and she turns, a cloud of flies rising up from the dead sheep’s guts, splattered across the wooden jetty, and then settling back to their feast once more. ‘Let’s get inside, I’ll phone round the farmers, find out who’s lost a ewe. Fuck. This is the last thing we need.’
And I know what she means. It’s not just the sheep, coming as it does on top of our hangovers and too little sleep, it’s everything. It’s the smell in the air. The water lapping at our feet, that is no longer a friend, but polluted with blood. The feeling of death closing in on the Mill.
It takes four or five calls for Kate to find the farmer who owns the sheep, and then we wait, sipping coffee, and trying to ignore the buzzing of the flies outside the closed shore door. Thea has gone back to bed, and Fatima and I distract ourselves with Freya, cutting up toast for her to play with, although she doesn’t really eat, just gums it.
Kate paces the room, restlessly, like a caged tiger, walking from the windows overlooking the Reach, to the foot of the stairs, and then back, again and again. She is smoking, the rippling smoke from the roll-up the only sign of fingers that are shaking a little.
Suddenly her head goes up, for all the world like a dog herself, and a moment later I hear what she already did: the sound of tyres in the lane. Kate turns abruptly and goes outside, shutting the door of the Mill behind her. Through the wood I hear voices, one deep and full of frustration, the other Kate’s, low and apologetic.
‘I’m sorry,’ I hear, and then, ‘… the police?’
‘Do you think we should go out?’ Fatima asks uneasily.
‘I don’t know.’ I find I am twisting my fingers in the hem of my dressing gown. ‘He doesn’t sound exactly angry … do you think we should let Kate handle it?’
Fatima is holding Freya, so I get up and move to the shore window. I can see Kate and the farmer standing close together, their heads bent over the dead sheep. He seems to be more sad than angry, and Kate puts her arm around his shoulder for a brief moment, clasping him in a gesture of comfort that’s not quite a hug, but near it.
The farmer says something I don’t catch, and Kate nods, then together they reach down and pick the ewe up by the fore and hind legs, carrying the poor thing over the rickety bridge, and swinging the body unceremoniously into the back of the farmer’s pickup.
‘Let me get my wallet,’ I hear Kate say, as the farmer latches up the tailgate, and when she turns back towards the house, I see something small and bloody in her fingers, something that she shoves into the pocket of her jacket before she reaches the house.
I step hastily back from the window as the door opens, and Kate comes into the room, shaking her head like someone trying to rid themselves of an unpleasant memory.
‘Is it OK?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know,’ Kate says. ‘I think so.’ She rinses her bloody hands under the tap, and then goes to the dresser for her wallet, but when she looks inside at the notes section, her face falls. ‘Fuck.’
‘Do you need cash?’ Fatima says quickly. She gets up, hands Freya to me. ‘I’ve got my purse upstairs.’
‘I have cash too,’ I say, eager to finally do something that could help. ‘How much do you need?’
‘Two hundred, I think,’ Kate says soberly. ‘It’s more than the sheep’s worth, but he’d be within his rights to get the police involved, and I really don’t want that.’
I nod, and then turn to see Fatima coming back down the stairs with her handbag.
‘I’ve got a hundred and fifty,’ she says. ‘I remembered Salten never had a cash machine so I drew some out at the petrol station on the way through Hampton’s Lee.’
‘Let me go halves.’ I stand, holding a wriggling Freya over my shoulder, and dig into the handbag I left hanging on the stair post. Inside is my wallet, fat with notes. ‘I’ve definitely got enough, hang on …’ I count it out, five crisp twenties, hampered by Freya joyfully snatching at each as they go past. Fatima adds a hundred of her own on top. Kate gives a quick, rueful smile.
‘Thanks, guys, I’ll pay you back as soon as we get into Salten, they’ve got an ATM in the post office now.’
‘No need,’ Fatima says, but Kate has already shut the Mill door behind her, and I hear her voice outside and the farmer’s answering rumble as she hands over the cash, and then the crunch of tyres as he reverses up the lane, the dead sheep in the flatbed of his truck.
When Kate comes back inside she is pale, but her face is relieved.
‘Thank God – I don’t think he’ll call the police.’
‘So you don’t think it was Shadow?’ Fatima asks, but Kate doesn’t answer. Instead she goes over to the sink, to wash her hands again.
‘You’ve got blood on your sleeve,’ I say, and she looks down at herself.
‘Oh God, so I have. Who’d have thought the old sheep to have so much blood in her?’ She gives a twisted smile, and I know she’s thinking of Miss Winchelsea and the end-of-term Macbeth that she never got to play. She shrugs off the coat and drops it on the floor, and then fills up a bucket at the tap.
‘Can I help?’ Fatima asks. Kate shakes her head.
‘No, it’s fine, I’m going to sluice down the jetty, and then I might have a bath. I feel gross.’
I know what she means. I feel gross too – soiled by what I saw, and I didn’t even help the farmer sling the corpse into the back of the truck. I shiver, as she shuts the door behind her, and then I hear the slosh of water, and the scccsh, scccsh of an outdoor broom. I stand and put Freya in her pram.
‘Do you think it was Shadow?’ Fatima says in a low voice, as I tuck Freya in. I shrug, and we both look down at where Shadow is huddled miserably on a rug in front of the unlit stove. He looks ashamed, his eyes sad, and feeling our eyes on him, he looks up, puzzled, and then licks his muzzle again, whining a little. He knows something is wrong.