‘Kate, I – look, Fatima and I … we don’t …’
God, this is hard – how to say it? Kate has always been proud. I don’t want to offend her. How can I say what I’m really thinking, which is that Kate, with her crumbling house and broken-down car, clearly can’t afford two hundred pounds, whereas Fatima and I can?
As I’m scrabbling for the right words, an image flashes sharply into my mind, distracting as a jab from a stray pin when you’re dredging for your purse in your handbag.
It’s the note, slick with blood. Why don’t you throw this one in the Reach too?
I feel suddenly sick.
‘Kate,’ I blurt out, ‘what really happened out there? With Shadow?’
Her face goes suddenly blank, unreadable. It’s like someone has drawn a shutter down.
‘I should have shut the gate,’ she says flatly, ‘that’s all.’ And I know, I know she is lying. Kate has become as remote as a statue – and I know.
We swore never to lie to each other.
I stare at her, half submerged in the cloudy, soapy water, at the uncompromising set of her mouth; thin, sensitive lips, clamped together, holding back the truth. I think about the note that I destroyed. Kate and I both know she is lying, and I am very close to calling her on it – but I don’t quite dare. If she’s lying, it must be for a reason, and I’m afraid to find out what that reason might be.
‘All right,’ I say at last. I’m conscious of my own cowardice as I turn to go.
‘My card’s in my wallet,’ Kate calls as I shut the door behind me. ‘The PIN’s 8431.’
But, as I clatter down the stairs towards Fatima and the still-sleeping Freya, I don’t even try to remember it. I’ve got no intention of taking her card, or her money.
OUTSIDE, PUSHING FREYA’S buggy along the sandy track that leads up the side of the Reach, away from the Mill, I begin to feel the oppressive mood lift.
The day is calm and quiet, and the gulls are bobbing tranquilly on the rising tide, the waders stalking the mudflats with intent concentration, darting their heads down to pluck up unsuspecting worms and beetles.
The sun is hot on the back of my neck, and I adjust the sunshade on Freya’s pram, and wipe the residue of the sunscreen I have slathered over her fat little limbs onto the back of my neck.
The smell of blood is still in my nostrils, and I long for a breath of air to blow it away. Was it Shadow? I can’t tell. I try to think back to the spilled guts and the whining dog; were those tears from a strong jaw, or cuts from a knife? I just don’t know.
There is one thing for sure, though – Shadow could not have written that note. So who did? I shiver in the bright sunshine, the malevolence of it suddenly striking through to my bones. All at once, I have a strong urge to snatch up my sleeping baby and press her into my breast, hugging her to me as if I can fold her back inside myself, as if I can protect her from this web of secrets and lies that is closing in around me, dragging me back to a long-ago mistake that I thought we’d escaped. I am starting to realise that we didn’t, none of us. We have spent seventeen years running and hiding, in our different ways, but it hasn’t worked, I know that now. Perhaps I always knew that.
At the end of the lane, the track opens up to a road that leads in one direction to the station, and in the other across the bridge into Salten itself. I pause on the bridge, rocking Freya gently to and fro, surveying the familiar landscape. The countryside around here is fairly flat, and you can see a long way from the shallow vantage point of the bridge. In front of me, black against the bright waters of the Reach, is the Mill, looking small in the distance. To the left, on the other side of the river, I can just see the houses and narrow twittens of Salten village.
And to the right, far off in the distance, is a white shape that glimmers over the tips of the trees, almost invisible against the sun-bleached horizon. Salten House. Standing here, it’s impossible to pick out the route we used to walk across the marsh, when we broke out of bounds. Perhaps it’s overgrown, but now I marvel at our stupidity, remembering the first time, that chilly October night, dusk already drawn in as we climbed out of the window onto the fire escape, torches between our teeth, boots in our hands so we didn’t wake the teachers as we crept down the rattling iron structure.
At the bottom, we shoved our feet into wellingtons (‘Not shoes,’ I remember Kate telling us, ‘even after the summer we’ve just had, it’ll be muddy’) and then we set off, running lightly across the hockey fields, suppressing our laughter until we were far enough away from the buildings that no one would hear us.
That first part was always the dangerous bit, particularly as the days grew longer, and it was light outside long after curfew. From Easter onwards, any teacher looking out of their window would have seen the four of us fleeing across the close-cropped grass, Thea’s long legs eating up the distance, Kate in the middle, Fatima and me puffing behind.
But that first time, it was almost pitch black already, and we scampered under cover of darkness until we reached the clutch of the stunted bushes and trees that marked the edge of the marsh, and could let out our suppressed giggles, and turn on our torches.
Kate led the way, the rest of us following her through a dark maze of channels and ditches filled with black brackish water that glinted in the torchlight.
We climbed over fences and stiles, jumped ditches, paying careful heed to Kate’s muttered instructions over her shoulder, ‘For God’s sake, keep to the ridge here – the ground to the left is pure bog … Use the stile here, if you open that gate, it’s impossible to shut again and the sheep will escape … You can use this tussock of grass to jump the ditch – see where I’m standing now? It’s the firmest part of the bank.’
She had run wild on the marsh since she was a little girl, and although she couldn’t tell you the name of a single flower, or identify half the birds we disturbed on our walk, she knew every tuft of grass, every treacherous bit of bog, every stream and ditch and hillock, and even in the dark she led us unerringly through the labyrinth of sheep paths, boggy sloughs and stagnant drainage ditches, until at last we climbed a fence, and there it was – the Reach, the waters glinting in the moonlight, and far up the sandy bank in the distance, the Mill, a light burning in the window.
‘Is your dad home?’ Thea asked. Kate shook her head.
‘No, he’s out, something in the village, I think. It must be Luc.’
Luc? This was the first I’d heard of a Luc. Was he an uncle? A brother? I was almost sure that Kate had told me she was an only child.