Reservoir 13

On Boxing Day James and Rohan met at the Gladstone and compared notes on university. They saw Liam for the first time in years, and had bought him a drink before it became clear how little they had to talk about. He’d taken on the stone work with his father. His hands were swollen with bruises and pinched little cuts. There’s years of learning in it yet, he said, but it’s a good trade. We’re working on a demonstration wall at the visitor centre if you want to look? Rohan said p

robably they would. James was texting Sophie to get her and Lynsey to come down. A storm came and blew snow sideways across the valley, and when it had passed the trees were edged with white. The Jacksons had losses in the hills. Richard Clark came home just before New Year. His sisters had given their mother a mobile phone for Christmas, and when he got there it was still in its box. Rachel told me it would make it easier to keep in touch, she said, waving at the thing. Richard asked if she wanted him to show her how to use it. I’ve a perfectly good telephone right there. She can leave me a message if I’m out when she calls. Says she’s too busy for chatting on the phone, but it only takes five minutes. Richard gave her a look. Five or ten, she said. Ten at the most. She gave him a look in return which meant not to push it any further. Richard was fiddling with his own phone even as they spoke. I think the thing is, Mum, Rachel thought it could be useful in an emergency. What kind of emergency? Just, if you were out somewhere, if you needed to call for help. Or even if you were upstairs and couldn’t get to the landline. Landline? This wasn’t going well. He resented that he was the one having to do this, when it had been Rachel’s idea. Just let me get it charged up and turned on for you, he said. You can send the grandchildren texts, that would be nice, wouldn’t it? She picked up the box. It was awfully big and heavy. It didn’t seem very mobile at all. On New Year’s Eve there was another hard snowfall and drifts on the roadside by evening. A pale light moved slowly across the moor. The weather stayed cold and there was snow on the ground for another week.

7.

At midnight when the year turned there were fireworks on the big screen in the village hall and the sound of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ along the street. The Cooper twins were out for their first New Year, watching the fireworks from the Hunter place, their mother hurrying them back to bed as soon as the last rocket fell to earth. In the morning the snow was ankle-deep but by noon a hard rain had washed it away. The change came quickly, thick piles of snow falling in on themselves and hurtling away down drains and run-offs to the river, the river bright and loud with it and the streets left scrubbed and darkly gleaming and everywhere the first green tips of snowdrops nosing out of the soil. After the rain there was a quiet, and the melting of roof-snow down drainpipes, and the calling of birds on thawing ground, and the whine of a chainsaw up in Hunter’s wood. On the television there were pictures of an overturned ship, helicopters hovering, life jackets floating in the water. In the fields south of the church there were wild pheasants feeding, their dashed brown feathers muddled in amongst the tall dead grass. A line of parsnips were lifted at the allotments, the creamy heft of them shrugging free of the frost-black soil. At night there were foxes shrieking in the woods, and everyone who had stock on the hills sat up and bristled, listening. When the doctor came for Jackson’s check-up, Maisie admitted how little he’d been getting out of bed at all. She said she was worried there could be something affecting his energy levels, but that the physio hadn’t thought there was anything to worry about. The doctor examined him, and afterwards she told Maisie that she thought Jackson was depressed. Maisie laughed and said she didn’t think so. Jacksons don’t get depressed, she said. We don’t have the time. She’d heard it said so often that it just came out without thinking. She stopped and the doctor smiled gently. I think time might be his problem, she said. But there are steps we can take. He’ll not take happy pills, Maisie said. Well, that needn’t be our starting point. But we should look at something. A late-afternoon fog came in before dusk, and when the bus dropped off the secondary-school children their voices along the high street were muffled and lost.

In the pub before opening hours Irene was cleaning the floor. She was quick but she was thorough. Tony was talking about his plans for expanding the food offer, and she could have done without the distraction. He was talking about a pizza oven. She didn’t have an opinion. It wasn’t her money. On the television they said something about a missing girl in the south of England. Tony came around the bar to turn the sound up and Irene told him sharply to mind her wet floors. He stepped back and they both looked up at the screen. The news reporter said there would be a reconstruction. Irene carried the mop bucket through to the kitchen and told Tony to keep off until it was dry. A thirteen-year-old girl had been taken from a holiday cottage, and for a time it seemed there might be a connection with the disappearance of Becky Shaw. But her body was discovered, and a suspect arrested, and he was found to have been out of the country when Becky had disappeared. These things just kept happening, it seemed. The Tucker place was rewired and replastered and a new damp-proof course put in. There was talk the man who’d bought it was from Birmingham way and recently widowed. There were no signs of him moving in. Tony put a pancake dinner on at the Gladstone, and made the mistake of calling it All-You-Can-Eat. People could eat a lot of pancakes, as it turned out. The kitchen ran out of batter, and not everyone was understanding. On the bank at the far end of the beech wood the badger sett was quiet. Twenty feet in from the entrance, past dead-ends and leaf-lined sleeping nooks, the first cubs of the year were being born, spilling blind into a dark world of grassy warmth and milk. The days started with a cold mist that didn’t lift until lunchtime and then only seemed to get snagged in the tops of the trees. The butcher’s shop was empty. The chopping block had been left behind the counter, the bowled wood darkening with the years. There were fat spoony leaves of corn salad for those who knew where to look, under hedgerows and around the edges of the old quarries. At the school on the weekend Jones came in to buff the floors, the polishing machine humming softly as he pushed it back and forth. It took two hours to get all the way round, and he stacked the chairs and turned off the lights as he went. In Miss Dale’s class the socket for the machine was by the display of children’s artwork. There was a game he had of guessing whose names would be on which pictures. He was good at it. This was something people would be surprised about. He plugged the machine in and buffed the floor until it shone. He would have to be getting back. His sister would be restless. It couldn’t always be helped.

Richard was back in the village to see to his mother, and on a quiet afternoon he and Cathy went for a walk on the moor. They’d found they could talk again about almost anything, and they talked a lot. As they came down the far side of the hill, dropping towards Reservoir no. 7, he asked if she’d been seeing anyone since Patrick’s death, and she asked about his relationships, and a conversation he’d been hoping would tilt towards a particular possibility became instead a kind of confessional. It felt like a mistake but there seemed no way of stopping it. In particular, having listened to Richard’s list of short-lived pairings, Cathy made the mistake of telling him about Gordon Jackson, years back. Richard was surprised, but he tried to sound understanding. Grief does things to a person, he said, and Cathy held herself back from asking how he would know. She told him that in fact it had happened before Patrick’s death. About six months before, she said. And regularly, for a time. I was with him when they called me to the hospital. It stopped after that. I could have carried on, but Gordon didn’t want to. She could see Richard was shocked now, although he claimed not to be, and she told him that relationships were more complicated than perhaps he realised; more complicated than it sounded like he wanted them to be. She felt something like irritation or resentment as she said this, and wasn’t sure why. He said that perhaps she was right but he was willing to learn. They followed the access track around the reservoir. The ground was dry. There’d been no rain and the water levels were low. They headed back towards the village. Afterwards it felt as though they’d had an argument. When she thought about Gordon, as she allowed herself to do once she got back home, it was only with a quiet relief that it had happened at all, long past the point of thinking she should be allowed those kinds of joys again. The first time had been rough and shambolic, and the only time risks were taken, but after that there were careful arrangements and they made sure not to hurry. They were such straightforward pleasures; lasting satisfactions that she

carried around with her for days afterwards and couldn’t shake off. One of the many surprises was how soft Gordon’s skin had been; even his hands, which by rights should have been more weathered. How gentle he also was, and how strongly felt his need. When she saw him in the village now she sometimes wondered about the softness of his skin. She thought about Richard and smiled at the timidity he hadn’t been able to grow out of. She had never decided whether it was something she found attractive. She heard Nelson barking, and went to knock on Mr Wilson’s door. Jackson’s boys were busy with lambing. There were some early losses but on the whole it went well. The nights were long and they took turns sleeping a few hours each. In his studio Geoff Simmons worked on handles, pulling each one down from a fist of clay, thinning it through his finger and thumb before slicing it off and laying it out to dry with the others. The whippet walked slow circles around him, waiting. In the beech wood the first fox cubs were seen above ground.

By April there’d been no proper rain for four weeks and there was a lack of good grass for the stock. The new month brought a warm wind from the south and by mid-morning the village was hung with wet washing. Susanna came in from her run through the woods and rushed to pour herself a glass of water, gulping it down before she’d got her breath back and feeling the cold shock of it wind down through her chest. The Spring Dance was held in support of Water Aid, at the insistence of Mr Wilson, who said that if they thought they were having a hard time with this so-called drought then he could tell them a few things to think on. His thoughts on the matter were known, and the decision was approved without him needing to hand out the information sheets he’d brought with him. Jim Stephenson from the high school brought his brass band for the dance. Rather than the more traditional pieces, they played arrangements of disco classics: Stevie Wonder, Donna Summer, Sly and the Family Stone. When he’d first introduced these pieces to the band Jim had needed to listen to them on CD in order to familiarise himself; but by now, with the performances confident and smooth, he found himself conducting with a movement that was close to dancing. Jim Stephenson was not a young man. Afterwards at the bar Miriam Pearson asked what had been going on with his hips. Some people watching had been amused but Miriam’s response was something else. Slightly flushed but not at all embarrassed, he told her that the music left him unable to keep still. That’s where you feel it when the rhythm’s doing the right job, he said, and Miriam smiled. That’s very true, Mr Stephenson, she said, as he wiped at his bald head with a large white handkerchief. There were St George’s mushrooms up on the bark chippings by the timber yard, and as far as Jones could tell no one else knew they were there. He took pleasure in fetching them since the yard had been sold to the Hunters. Was like taking something that belonged to Stuart Hunter, and he’d never liked the man. One of the protesters up at the camp broke his leg and had to be carried down the hill by the mountain-rescue team. He’d been trying to leap from stone to stone; something which was talked about as an ancient rite of passage but which was clearly impossible when the gaps between the stones were looked at in the cold light of day. The missing girl’s mother was seen with a man no one recognised, walking through the village. In the evening they were in the lounge bar of the Gladstone, sitting closely together and sharing a bottle of wine. She seemed to make a point of meeting the gaze of anyone who looked for too long, and holding the gaze until it was moved away. At one point in the evening they were seen to be holding hands.

In May the days broke open with light. Breakfast was eaten under the spell of clear sunlight, and tea prepared to the sound of children playing outside. In the horse chestnut tree by the cricket ground the woodpigeons were fighting, rearing up at each other with rattling wings. It wasn’t always clear what kept them from falling out of the tree. The noise of it could be heard as far down the road as the church. Early before school Jones was out at the allotments earthing up potatoes. Clive was on his plot putting out the courgettes from his greenhouse, but Jones didn’t see him and soon headed home, his tools over his shoulder. Later Clive saw Miriam Pearson carrying trays of plants to her plot from a car. She’d bought them in the garden centre, he took it. They’d need a whole lot of water before they even got into the ground would be his suggestion but he wouldn’t give it unwarranted. Her path edges were looking neat. At the parish council Janice Green read a letter from the bus company which threatened to remove the service unless there was an improvement in the car-parking situation. There was general objection to the letter’s tone but it was conceded that they had a point. A discussion about enforcement and pinch points ensued, and when everyone seemed to have finished William Pearson said that really what they were talking about at the end of the day was Martin Fowler constantly parking like a cunt. A number of those present actually turned their faces away. Judith was asked not to minute that last remark, and William was asked to leave, at which time it became clear that the coffee he’d been pouring from a flask all evening had been mainly whisky. Once the door was finally closed behind him it was noted that he did have a point about Martin’s parking habits, and it was suggested that words would be had. In the conifers above Reservoir no. 5, a buzzard sat warmly on her eggs while the wind pulled through the trees. There was rain in the evenings of the sort it was pleasant to be in for a while, taking the dust from the air. Ashleigh Wright friended her father on Facebook. He had found her and sent a message and she was excited to be in touch. She knew not to tell him where they were living, but there was enough in her posts for him to work it out. He dropped the name of the village into conversation and she had a bad feeling she couldn’t tell anyone about. Richard and Cathy took Mr Wilson’s dog in her car up to Reservoir no. 13 for a change of scenery. It was high ground, and the wind cut straight off the edge of the moor, pushing the water in dark furrows towards the top of the dam. They walked along the track around the shore, leaning into the wind and raising their voices as he told her he was thinking about moving into his mother’s house for the long term. He could take on contracts that didn’t require him to travel. He told her he’d enjoyed spending time in the village after so many years away. It had been good reconnecting with people. He asked what she thought and she said he should think about all his options carefully. She asked how his mother was doing, whether she’d had any more falls, and he felt her nudging the conversation away from what he wanted her to say. He let himself be nudged. He said she seemed fine but they were keeping a close eye on her. They reached the head of the reservoir, where the track came to an unsatisfactory end. When they turned and headed down to the car the wind at their backs gave them a sprung posture, their knees braced slightly to keep from running.

In June the widower moved in to the old Tucker place. He came up the lane one morning in a hired van, and from his allotment Clive could see him unloading boxes and bags and chairs. It was obvious he was going to need help. Clive waited until he saw the man sitting on his wall for a rest and then went up the lane to offer. There was a sofa and a bed and a couple of long wooden packing cases in the van. The carrying didn’t take long. The widower was polite in his gratitude but there were no introductions and Clive wasn’t invited inside. The weather brightened again and in the sunlight the river was like glass beneath the packhorse bridge, breaking only when it fell over the weir. The keeper went out checking licences. It was known he was thorough so there was rarely anyone fishing without. But the holidaymakers sometimes knew no better. Les Thompson towed the mower around the first of the fields, cutting from the outside in, lifting and dropping the mower at each turn and leaving a broad swathe of grass to wilt in a haymaker’s sun. Brian Fletcher brought a mug of tea and a plate of toast outside and balanced them on the low wall beside his car. Sally had been up and out before he woke, leaving a note on the kitchen table to say she was off for a walk through the old quarries. Butterflies, again. This was her thing now. It was hard for him to see the difference a lot of the time, or to get close enough to tell. A flash of colour, gone in a moment. It was hard for him to take an interest. But she didn’t expect him to, just as he didn’t expect her to take an interest in his cars. No doubt she couldn’t tell the difference either. She probably hadn’t noticed that this was a new one. A 1968 Citroën DS with swivel headlights. He’d been after one for some time. It had taken some discussion before the man would sell. The emails had gone back and forth. But he’d been patient. He had a way with words, he liked to think. He had a way of judging what to say, and when to say it. The whole thing had been reminiscent of when he and Sally had first conversed. The emails that had gone back and forth before they’d even met. He looked at the clean lines of the bodywork, the elegance of the silhouette. He finished his tea and his toast, and went to lift the bonnet. In their nest in the conifers the first buzzard chicks were hatching. The long days raised the hedges high. Down by the river the walkers had already left a network of flatted paths in the meadows. Winnie worked on the well-dressing designs,

the sheets of greaseproof paper spread across her dining-room table. She started with the framing and arches, moved on to the lettering, lined out the sky and clouds and sun and hills, and finally detailed the figures and animals in the foreground. As always, she doubted it was sufficient for the committee’s purposes; as always they assured her effusively that it was. Three young blackbirds appeared on Mr Wilson’s lawn, plump and bristle-feathered, and were taken by crows. In their colonies the bats gave birth and held their pups in the folds of their wings. There was a nightly shift and murmur as the young bats fed and the movement was like a breeze through the trees.

At the end of his first year of university, James Broad drove his things back to the village and put them in the bedroom that had once been his. He’d been told he needed to do sorting out in preparation for the move. Neither of his parents could afford to buy the other out of the house, so they were selling up altogether. His mother was buying an ex-council flat at the end of the Close, and his father was moving away. James didn’t know what he would do. They’d told him he was free to choose. Sophie Hunter had failed her end-of-year exams, and come home unsure of what she needed to do to even qualify for her second year. Her mother told her she’d be able to resit them, surely, but that it wouldn’t be the end of the world to retake the year. Her father said that no matter what happened they were proud of her and they loved her. It was the obvious effort it took to say these things that stayed with Sophie. She felt as though she was the one who needed to make them feel better. Her mother was under the impression that a year of wild partying had got in the way of studying, but the truth was she had just found the work too hard. I do understand that this is a time for discovering yourself, her mother said; and if you can’t party out when you’re young then when can you? Sophie told her it wasn’t like that. There aren’t even that many parties, she said. I am doing the work, I’m just doing it badly. Her mother dropped her voice, and asked if Sophie was using protection. Sophie held up a hand and asked her to stop. It’s not like it was in my day. Just so long as you stay true to yourself. Sophie put her fingers in her ears and told her loudly that she couldn’t hear. Jess Hunter smiled fondly at her daughter. She could remember doing exactly the same thing to her own mother when she was that age. At the top of the meadows by the river the ox-eye daisies were thick through the knee-high grass. In the long grass around the cricket field the first skippers were emerging from their pupae and unfolding their wet wings. There were second clutches of swallows successfully fledged and their white flashing underbellies curved through the evening. The Workers’ Educational Association group took an IT-skills course. There was some awkwardness when a question was anonymously submitted about how to avoid stumbling on sites with excessively adult content. Brian Fletcher asked what the hell was meant by excessively adult, and nobody wanted to explain.

Susanna Wright opened a shop in the old Tucker hardware place, selling crafts and gifts and greetings cards. She stocked a good range of pottery and Geoff Simmons was known to have taken offence. His studio shop was further out of the village and he was always struggling for trade. Susanna offered to stock his work but he declined. His reasons were mumbled but she heard him say knick-knacks and took offence of her own. He wasn’t invited to the opening party and he wouldn’t have gone if he was. There was sparkling wine and bunting in the street, and a man in a waistcoat who stood outside playing an accordion and trying to catch someone’s eye. People took pleasure in a new business being opened, although it was assumed that only tourists would buy the manner of thing she was selling. Cooper took a picture of Susanna with Rohan and Ashleigh outside the shop, the accordion man leaning in to the shot and all of them raising their glasses. The picture went on the front cover of the Valley Echo, and Ashleigh posted it on her Facebook page. In the morning the sun was high by the time Thompson’s men had finished the milking and washed out the parlour. They scraped out the muck and hosed down the surfaces, the water running greenish-brown and then clear into the drains outside. They went back to the house for breakfast. They’d been up three hours already. There’d be more money in pouring the milk straight down the drain. If the prices didn’t pick up soon it would be impossible to carry on. But there was nothing else. The reservoirs were like beaten pewter. A caravan appeared in Brian Fletcher’s orchard, wedged between the brambles by the gateway. There was moss in the window frames and silver tape across a crack in the panelling. It wasn’t known what Fletcher had in mind. At the heronry the nests were almost abandoned and the ground was littered with fallen sticks. The heather was in full bloom and the purple of it spread across the hills. There was rain for a week before the cricket match and no chance of play but the Cardwell team were entertained at the Gladstone all the same. A darts match was played to settle the trophy, which Cardwell carried comfortably home yet again. Mike Jackson told his family he was planning to emigrate. This place is never going to split five ways, he said. Maisie waved at him to quieten down and Simon slipped through to the sun room to turn up the TV. Any normal family would have settled this by now, but we’re supposed to just hang on and see what surprises Dad’s got in his will? He thinks he can sit in there and run the farm by remote control, but he hasn’t got a clue. You know that. We should have diversified years ago, expanded, taken on loans. Maisie was watching him talk but she couldn’t really hear. She was thinking about how far Australia was, and the certainty that she’d never go. It’s just for a while then, is it? she asked. They’re crying out for experienced men down there, Mike said. It’s good money. You can save up enough to come back and set yourself up then, in a year or two? There’s cheap land in the northern territories, he said. Grants and everything. But it’ll just be temporary? Mike looked at her. He was her youngest. He was the last. It’s only Australia, Mum. It’s not the moon.

The summer had been wet but in September the skies cleared and the mud in the lanes was baked into thick-edged ruts. There were springtails under the beech trees behind the Close, burrowing and feeding on the fragments of fallen leaves, and somewhere deep in the pile a male laid a ring of sperm. A blackbird’s nest was blown from the elder tree at the entrance to the Hunter place, the mud mortar crumbled and the grasses scattered as chaff. Tony produced an arrangement of hops for the Harvest Festival display, and it was certainly striking but there were some who felt the pungent smell was out of place in a church. Jones’s sister was seen at the post office, buying packaging paper and string, and this was understood as some kind of a breakthrough. Irene sometimes told people that Jones’s sister had been at her wedding, and had been the very life and soul. Such a shame, what happened, she would say. As though anyone actually knew. On Sunday in the evening Brian and Sally Fletcher ate a meal together. Brian grilled lamb chops and boiled potatoes while Sally made a salad. It was a rule they had, to make sure they did this. For most of the week they kept different hours, and communicated through notes on the kitchen table. This suited them both. They had come to marriage late, and were each comfortable in their own company. But they’d decided they should always eat together on a Sunday night. I don’t want to go forgetting what you look like, Brian had said. A meal, and a conversation, and then settling down together to watch whatever was on television. It was something about a murder, on the whole. At the allotments Ruth was seen working alone, pulling handfuls of beans down from the overloaded canes. The leaves were covered in blackfly but this late in the season she wasn’t concerned. It was food for the ladybirds at least. She was letting the courgettes mature to marrows because even if no one really liked cooking them they did look good in baskets outside the shop. They made people think of harvest festivals, and that made them come into the shop and spend money. The blackberries were thick on the brambles growing up around the greenhouse, and she thumbed a few into her mouth each time she went past. There had been words with the allotment committee about the brambles. The matter was not yet settled. Her phone beeped, and when she read the text a smile opened on her face that she found herse

lf hiding behind a berry-stained hand. She sat on the bench for a moment, watching the shadows lengthen across the valley and feeling the warmth and thinking carefully about her reply.

On Mischief Night there were stink bombs down every side street and passageway until the supplies ran out. Irene was heard grumbling that if they thought that was mischief they were leading very sheltered lives indeed. She asked if she’d ever told the story about her late husband hiding an entire dairy herd, and was told that indeed she had. There were costumes from popular horror films, and pumpkins with carved, glowing faces. Few turnips now. The stubbled fields on the south side of the church were thick with fieldfares feeding. In the pub while Irene was cleaning there was talk of a Bond film the cinema club was putting on. Someone said it wasn’t one of the better Bonds, and Irene said if it was the one with Daniel Craig in then it was the best. Now there’s a man, she said. I’d pay good money to watch that man in a documentary about paint drying. She had expected laughter but there was silence. She carried on mopping, and told them to lift their feet. She didn’t know why she’d said anything. People were surprised. Thought if you were sleeping alone that your blood had stopped circulating. Thought if you were not capable of exciting a man’s attention there was no excitement left in you. People were surprised by the most obvious things sometimes, it seemed. You only live twice, Tony said, from behind the bar. Classic Connery, Martin chipped in. There was a debate. Irene put the mop bucket away. At the school there was a row when Mrs Simpson brought in some heating engineers to inspect the boilerhouse and Jones refused them access. You can’t do this kind of thing without notice, he said. It’s not your boilerhouse, Mr Jones. I’ll not be pushed, he told her, and the engineers said they’d come back another day.

Cathy knocked on Mr Wilson’s door and asked whether Nelson needed a walk, and he told her the kettle was already on. Nelson paced backwards and forwards while they sat in the front room, his tail crashing against the coffee table. Mr Wilson had been baking cakes again. They were really very good, but she knew there was no point asking why he never donated cakes to village events. That’s more of a ladies’ thing, isn’t it? he’d said, the one time she had asked. She’d told him this was nonsense, but knew he wouldn’t change his mind. She couldn’t remember him doing any baking while his wife was alive. But that was a long time ago now. She probably wouldn’t have noticed if he had. Jean had died fifteen years before, or more, when Cathy’s boys weren’t yet at school, and it was all Cathy could have done then to know what day it was. She remembered standing behind the front door with them and counting to ten, regaining her composure, so that she could walk through the village without it being apparent that she’d had to physically wrestle them into their clothes, and clean food off the walls, and scream into a pile of cushions. And then straighten clothes, smile, open door. Be ready to say good morning, be ready to listen to advice from anyone who passed in the street. Mr Wilson hadn’t been elderly then at all, she realised. He possibly hadn’t even retired. And yet she’d always thought of him as that, as elderly. Unconscious association with the word widower, perhaps. Or the distance of youth. Although she hadn’t been as young as all that, and had felt older, so much older all of a sudden, tired all the time. Smile, breathe, straighten clothes, open door. Be ready to agree what a delight the two boys were, to agree that yes they were a handful sometimes but it was worth it in the end, with a chuckle. Always the fucking chuckles, in those days. And keeping it together all the way down the lane because Mr Wilson was so often outside his house, doing something with the flowers or mucking about with his dog – it wasn’t Nelson then, this was a pointer, Franklin – and then collapsing through the front door but not stopping because she couldn’t stop, she could never stop, the boys always needed something else or were breaking something else and the tea needed making and the boys needed putting to bed, please, finally, and Patrick needed something when he got home. She finished her tea, and thanked Mr Wilson for the cake, and went to fetch Nelson’s lead. The sound of a truck came from way up in Hunter’s wood, dragging out timber, the engine over-revving with the strain on the heavy ground. The first snows of the winter fell at the end of the month but they were wet and they didn’t settle.

The Christmas decorations went up in the square and Tony put up a sign saying he was taking bookings for Christmas dinners. There was carol singing on the radio in the tractor shed, and when Gordon Jackson heard Will singing along to ‘Silent Night’ he wouldn’t give over about it for days. He kept breaking into Shepherds quake at the sight every time Will came into the room. Susanna’s ex-husband opened the shop door one afternoon and said hello as though he’d been invited. He seemed relaxed and open-handed, but there was something about the way he shut the door behind him. Susanna, he said. Here you are. Smiling broadly. He was a small man. He was. She nodded. She didn’t trust herself to speak. She looked past him through the window and there was no one outside. People tended not to pass through on this street. He stayed between her and the door and he asked how she’d been. Her phone was on the shelf beside the till, and he was in the way of that as well. It was a small shop. She wanted to ask him to leave but it didn’t feel safe. She felt all her placatory instincts rushing back. Her passive defences. But she kept her posture tall. She tightened her core. She told him she was well and asked what had brought him here. Susanna, relax. You seem tense. Come on. I’m not here to stir anything up. Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not here to win you back. She breathed through the rush of irritation. She shook her head very slightly and he stepped towards her. I’m just here to see Ashleigh. It’s been long enough. She needs a father. She shook her head again. Ashleigh’s at school, she said. I can wait, he replied. This isn’t what we agreed, she told him. You’re not supposed to be here. He took another step towards her, but with his palms held out as though this would make it look like he was stepping back. Susanna, we didn’t agree anything. The way he said the word agree. She stood very still. Her phone was out of reach. The shop was small. She heard his breathing quicken as he stepped towards her.

The pantomime was Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Andrew was cast as Baby Bear. He was too old for this but he went along with it because he knew his mother would be happy. He could feel his speech thickening with the anxiety of being on stage, and it was muffled further by the costume’s fluffy head. When he found Olivia Hunter sleeping in his bed, her long blonde plaits trailing over the pillow, he gave up trying to make himself understood and just watched over her. This felt like the right thing to do. There was something peaceful in it, he thought. Jess Hunter was dressed as Mummy Bear and she came rushing on stage to talk. Who’s that sleeping in your bed, Baby Bear? she asked, and even with the fixed features of the bear costume Andrew managed to look baffled. He left the stage sooner than the script required, and afterwards couldn’t be found for a time. Richard Clark came home for New Year’s Eve and his sisters were talking again about their mother moving into a home. The conversations were whispered and fraught and she cottoned on. I’ll be going nowhere, she said. You needn’t worry about that. You’ll have to carry me out in a box. Don’t upset yourself, Mum, Rachel said, raising her voice as though hearing or lack of understanding was one of Mrs Clark’s problems. We just want you to be somewhere you can be a bit more comfortable, Sarah added. Somewhere you can forget about me, you mean. Somewhere we don’t need to be worrying about you every five minutes, Mum, yes. Come on now. Don’t take on. Richard watched the conversation as if he had no part to play. It was as though they were following a script. The decision would be made without him, either way. He had to leave early to get back for a meeting, and when he left they were still discussing it. There were lights seen in the caravan in Fletcher’s orchard, and someone moving around. The brambles began to be cleared. Mike Jackson sorted all the paperwork for his trip to Australia, and was starting to pack a bag. Maisie refused to help him or to even discuss it. You’re breaking your father’s heart, she told him, and he was more or less sure this wasn’t true. He’s just putting on a brave face, Maisie said. The missing girl’s name was Rebecca, or Becky, or Bex. In the photo her face was half-turned away from the camera as though she didn’t want to be seen, as though she wanted to be somewhere else. She would be twenty years old by now but she was always spoken of as a girl. It had been seven years, and there was talk that now she would legally have to be declared dead. This turned out to have no basis in law, according to a statement released by the police. Any such declaration would always depend on the circumstances. The girl’s parents had never stopped looking and the police statement confirmed that the case remained open. In the village people looked up to the hills and felt that they’d long known. She could have walked high over the moor and stumbled into a flooded clough and sunk cold and deep in the wet peat before the dogs and thermal cameras came anywhere near, her skin tanned leather-brown and soft and her hair coiled neatly around her. She could have fallen anywhere and be lying there still.

8.

At midnight when the year turned there were fireworks in the rain, and thunder in the next valley. The rain broke over the hill like a wave and blew straight into people’s faces. The river was high and thick and there were grayling in number feeding on the caddis larvae and shrimps. In the morning Ian Dowsett was out with a new box of flies and having a job to keep his footing in the current as he dropped the weighted nymphs into the water. Susanna’s ex-husband appeared again, and this time the altercation was seen. The police were called, and he was arrested. There was a new injunction. Susanna was embarrassed and she didn’t want to talk about it but in the end the story came out. When she’d first moved to the village it had been to get away from him. She’d been living in a refuge with the children, but

he’d found out where they were. His threats hadn’t been enough to have him charged, but there was an injunction. She was offered support to move away from the area. She knew about this village because an aunt had once lived here, and it had seemed as good as any. She’d planned to keep this information to herself. She thought that part of building a new life involved not thinking about what had happened. She’d thought she could leave it behind. But now he’d shown up, and everyone knew. This came out in conversation with Cathy Harris one evening, when Cathy was helping clear up after yoga. Cathy had a way of waiting that made you want to say more, Susanna had found. When she nodded it was as though she already knew what Susanna was going to say. Few people, seeing her husband, had thought him capable of that sort of violence. He didn’t have the build for it; he didn’t seem the type. She’d heard people say this, even after they’d known some of what he was doing. There’d been a time when this had made her think it was her fault; that there must have been something she was doing to provoke such a well-mannered man into behaviour he wasn’t otherwise prone to. That there must have been something she could do to protect him from the storm of his own rages. He was always so apologetic afterwards. Careful to explain just what had gone wrong and what he wanted her to do differently in order to help him not do it again. He had always talked in terms of this loss of control, and yet he was so careful not to leave marks on her face. He had twice broken her arm, and once dislocated her shoulder. She had lied about these injuries at the hospital. He had told her she’d be nothing without him, that people thought she was brash and loud and awkward. He’d told her she needed to lose weight, build strength, dress differently, laugh less loudly, not eat in public, have different friends, be a better mother. When Rohan had asked why they didn’t leave it had been the first time such a thing had even felt possible. He was twelve at the time. He seemed to understand what was happening before she did. She’d told him that his father loved them and was just having a difficult time at work and things would be better soon, and he went and printed out an information sheet about domestic violence and the refuge network. When they left there’d been no relief, and no certainty that she’d done the right thing. Those feelings had only come gradually. But in the village she’d found herself ready for something new. She’d found herself standing taller. Straighter. The yoga had helped.

In February it snowed solidly for a week, and on the hills the drifts were eight feet deep. The road between the village and the town was ploughed, high banks of snow heaped on either side, but beyond the village it was blocked. Jackson’s boys had to go up on foot to pull out as many sheep as they could. Most of them were easy enough to find, pressed in the lee of a drystone wall or huddled around a tree, but the losses were high. On the estate the pheasants were moved from their winter enclosures to the smaller laying pens and their feed was enriched. At the allotment the last of the leeks were yellow against the snow, fat-bodied and toppling, their papery skins peeling away. By the river a willow came down in a storm and carried on growing as though nothing had changed, the branches all bending slowly towards the sky. Molly Jackson had her second birthday. At the party Maisie watched Will and Claire carefully, and afterwards she had questions Will didn’t want to answer. She knew things were going badly again and there was nothing she could do but look out for the children. Shrove Tuesday fell on the fourteenth, and in the kitchen at the Gladstone Olivia Hunter was having a hard time making heart-shaped pancakes. It had been Tony’s idea, and she didn’t think he’d tried it out himself. He’d given her a cookie-cutter to use as a mould, which was fine until it came time to flip them over. She kept burning the tips of her fingers. In the lounge there were jokes made about broken hearts, and Tony was careful to relay these to her when he came into the kitchen. It was a long evening. The next day there were only three people at the Ash Wednesday service, and one of those was Jane Hughes. She suggested they sit together in a circle by the altar, and she ran through the liturgy in a soft murmur that wouldn’t have carried much past the first row of pews. At the close she daubed Irene’s and Brian’s foreheads with ash, and asked Irene to daub hers, and they sat there with the cold marks on their faces. Outside in the late-winter sunlight Sally Fletcher was seen bringing down two mugs of tea from the house and talking to the man who’d been staying in the caravan. He was her brother, it turned out. He’d made a good job with the brambles and the general clearance and was starting to work on the trees. Brian Fletcher had told him to take out the dead wood first and they’d see where to go after that. It wasn’t clear what arrangement they had with the man, but there was an impression he never went into the house. He was sometimes seen standing in the doorway of the caravan, smoking. He had a sullen look about him. There were tattoos.

The widower was settling in at the old Tucker place. He’d done a lot of work in the garden. He’d taken out the paving and planted fruit trees and built up a number of raised beds. It looked more like an allotment than a front garden and there were some who thought words should be had. But under the circumstances it was felt he should be left alone. He’d not been much seen in the village and it was understood that his quietness might be part of the grieving. There was little known about the family he was said to have lost, and nobody wanted to ask. At the allotments Jones planted onions. His rows were straight and there would be no weeds. When he was done he carried his tools back to the house. At the school, heating engineers had gained access to the boilerhouse and condemned the boiler. There was talk of a modern system in the main building. Mrs Simpson told Jones he could still use the boilerhouse as a storeroom and he said nothing in reply. The clocks went forward and the evenings opened out. The buds on the branches were brightening. Irene was having trouble with Andrew. She’d tried talking to the vicar but it was never the right time. There were support groups at the day centre but they weren’t for her. They were for the parents who wanted things to be different, who wanted things fixed. She knew there was no fixing to be done. Just wanted a way of managing. A way of being safe in her house. That was putting it a bit strong, maybe. But he was a big lad now. And he had tempers that came on quick. Like his father. He’d called her terrible names. She didn’t know where he was learning these words. From the computer, it must be. No idea what he was doing on that computer most of the time. Only that when he sat there he was absorbed. Still. But there were days when he wouldn’t move away from it. Days he didn’t get dressed, wouldn’t come to the bus stop. There were dangers on the internet, she knew that; but she didn’t rightly know what they were. She was worried but she didn’t know what she was supposed to be worrying about. She could talk to Cooper. He knew computers. And she could always unplug the thing, if anything bad started happening. Although what would Andrew do then. He was a big lad now. At Reservoir no. 3 the maintenance team worked across the steep face of the embankment, looking for burrows or soggy ground or unexpected vegetation. So far they’d found nothing but they kept looking. The levels were falling quicker than they should be. There were losses that couldn’t be explained. There was a storm in the night and the rain came hard against the windows like gravel.

As the dusk deepened over the badger sett at the far end of the woods, a rag-eared boar called out a sow, pacing around the entrances until she emerged with a soft circling whine and was taken. The woods were thick with the stink of wild garlic and the leaves gleamed darkly along the paths. Jackson’s boys went out to the fields and checked over the sheep. Most of the lambs were on grass now and growing fast. The mothers had lost condition and some were marked out for extra feed. The morning was warm and there was a heady tang of nutrition coming up from the land. The lambs were electric with life and jolting around each other. There was a rare chance to sit on the trailer for a smoke while they watched them. At the weekend Cooper took the twins out for an early walk to give Su a chance to catch up on sleep. She’d been working a lot recently, and coming to bed late. He filled their backpacks with snacks and drinks, and they headed out through the garde

n into the woods. They were excited, running on ahead and swiping at the nettles with sticks. He let them choose the way when they came to junctions in the path, but managed to steer them towards the visitor centre and the track leading up to Reservoir no. 3. It was further than the pair of them had managed before. At one point they passed the locked access hatch to a cave entrance, and were bursting with questions. He explained about the lead mines, and about the natural caves, and told them that yes, there were people who went down there to explore. They asked if it was safe and he said not for them it wasn’t, laughing and walking on as though that would be the end of their interest. They were flagging by the time they crested the hill, so he decided to stop there. They sat on a flat rock and ate their snacks, and Sam asked if it was true that there were houses under the water. Lee called him an idiot for even thinking this, and Cooper explained that there had once been villages down there, that all the reservoirs had been made by flooding the valleys. They looked at him, waiting to see if he was joking. The world didn’t always sound right when it was first explained. There were a few in the village still who could remember the river spilling its banks behind the newly built dams, a slow seeping over that didn’t seem capable of filling the valley in the way the engineers had promised, each day a little higher, the outlines of the demolished villages being lapped over by the waves and the dam making more and more sense until by the time the Duke came to ceremonially open the sluice the water was pouring over the top of the wall. Business at Susanna Wright’s shop wasn’t keeping pace with the projections she’d shown her small-business adviser. She stayed open late and picked up sales from people in the village who needed last-minute birthday cards or gifts, but the walkers who came through mostly had no interest in the candles and crafts she was selling. Ashleigh sometimes worked with her after school but it took some effort to look busy. Geoff Simmons walked past most days with his whippet but he never came in. At the Spring Dance Irene found herself being asked by Gordon Jackson. She couldn’t remember all the steps but found herself falling into them easily enough. She hoped no one was looking. She could feel the thickness of his body beneath his shirt, and found no reason not to think about that. He was holding her as though he might lift her into the air. Twice she felt his legs against her, and the stiffness of his thigh muscles was the memory she carried with her afterwards. He said something she didn’t catch and smiled down at her and for a moment she felt as though he didn’t know anyone else was in the room. This was a talent, she understood. Ted had never looked at her in that way. She had long suspected that Gordon had a reputation and now she understood why that might be. The dance finished and she went to sit down. Gordon was startled by the unwanted possibilities he’d felt stirring in himself. He wouldn’t pursue them but he was worried they’d even arisen. Some people would call it a problem, he knew. He looked around for Susanna Wright.

In May the reservoirs were low and the river slowly carried a scrim of weed to the weirs. The sun was higher in the sky. The days filled out and the long nights of winter were distant. Les Thompson walked his fields and waited for the first heading of the grass. The stems were starting to stiffen and at the base the leaves were dying back. The cut was days away. In the conifer plantation the goldcrest nests were thickly packed with eggs the size of babies’ thumbs. There were sheep bones by the side of the tracks on the moor, picked clean and beginning to brittle. The sound of a lorry missing the cement-works entrance was heard, climbing the hill to the village and the engine rising suddenly in pitch before cutting out entirely as the driver dropped another gear. In the beech wood the fox cubs were weaned. By their den entrances they fell about each other or sat waiting for their mothers to return. There was trouble at the Jacksons’ when Simon told his mother he’d be going to Australia with Mike. A second man was seen in the orchard with Sally’s brother, and although he was known to be staying in the caravan it wasn’t clear that he was welcome. He didn’t appear to be doing any work. Richard Clark called round to see Cathy. They’d agreed to go for a walk, but when he knocked on the door one of her sons answered and said she was out. Richard waited for more information but none was offered. He asked if she’d be back soon and the boy said did he want to wait. Hardly a boy in fact; a young man now, already done with university and filling the house with his lumbering uncertainties. Thanks, Nathan, he said, guessing at the name; I will, if that’s okay. Nathan shrugged and left the door open. Richard went through to the kitchen and checked his phone. Probably he shouldn’t text her. She’d be driving back from somewhere. Held up in traffic, or by a conversation at the market, or wherever she’d gone. He looked at the photos and notes stuck on the fridge. REMEMBER JOBSKILLS INTERVIEW WEDS, in Cathy’s handwriting. And a photo of Patrick amongst the ones of the boys at university, and of people who were presumably cousins and grandparents. So much that he didn’t know. So much that he’d missed. Nathan came into the room and slapped out a kind of drum roll on the worktop and asked if he wanted tea. Thanks, Richard said; yes please. Nathan put the kettle on and reached over a mug. I was at school with your father, Richard said, tapping the picture on the fridge. Nathan either knew this already or wasn’t interested. The three of us were very close friends, he went on; your mother and Patrick and I. We did everything together. Nathan had his back turned, fishing the teabag from the mug. Milk’s in the fridge yeah? he said, edging out through the door. From somewhere in the house, Richard heard a television turning on. He waited long enough to drink the tea and then let himself out. When he texted Cathy later to ask if there’d been a mix-up she said she was sorry but she’d had to go to Manchester and had forgotten to let him know.

At the bus stop Andrew waited with his mother. There was something happening way up on the hill. There were vehicles moving on the access road. The first phase of a construction project. He could search the planning records online when he got to the day centre. Now that he’d seen the activity he would find it hard to get through the day without finding out. For now he just watched, and his mother watched him. She had no idea what was going on in his head most of the time. He was old enough not to need walking to the bus stop, but she preferred seeing him off. If she let him just walk away from the house she wasn’t going to stop worrying. But if she saw him going up the steps and sitting in the seat behind the driver she could switch off for a few hours. Which was half the purpose of the day centre. Respite. His quietness was a relief now. It had been a noisy morning. He wasn’t what anyone would call dressed appropriately. But he was dressed. She felt his hand pulling at hers, and holding it. He tipped his head down towards her, still looking up at the hill. He mumbled something that sounded like Mummy, and laughed. He said it again. Who knew what he was thinking. The bus came round the corner and he dropped her hand like a hot coal. She watched him climb the steps and when the bus drove away she didn’t know where to go. She didn’t feel ready to go to the post office as she’d planned. She didn’t quite know what had happened. She went and sat in the churchyard, in sight of Ted’s grave but not too near. He wouldn’t have had a clue, of course. That man. What had she expected, really. She’d been young but she should have known better. She sat for a few minutes, moving on before anyone could see her and think they should ask. She could do without the asking. In the village hall the well dressers were pressing strips of bark into the wet clay where the design had been pricked out, and it was late in the afternoon before this first stage was complete. In their nest in the conifers the first buzzard chicks were hatching. There were hot days and one afternoon the Cooper boys ran back and forth from their house, filling water pistols and balloons and tracking water through the hallway until no one in the Close was safe from a soaking. Some people took it in good heart. At midsummer the protest camp held a full-moon party, and some of the younger villagers went and joined in. The drumming was heard for most of the night. There was talk of nudity, although this was never confirmed. The missing girl’s father did a long walk for charity, from his London home to the top of the moors above the village. There was a lot of publicity about it in the papers, and a website published updates of how far he’d got. He mostly followed canals on his route north, as he said that was the best way of not getting lost. He also made lengthy remarks about following the psychic energy of the water right back to the reservoirs, but most of the papers chose not to publish those. He came north at a surprising pace, and when he arrived there was a crowd of reporters waiting to meet him in the village. He said he was proud to have raised so much money for the missing-persons’ charity. He asked for some privacy to go up to the hill and the photos in the newspapers were mostly of him walking away on his own. The evening before Mike and Simon left for Australia, the Jackson boys all went into town for a few drinks. Claire was with them for a rare night out. They’d left Tom and Molly with Maisie. At the start of the evening Claire was talking quickly and making a point of pacing the brothers for drinks, and then at some point she was no longer there. She’d been in the pool room when Simon had last seen her, and Mike thought she’d gone out in the yard for a smoke, and when they made Will phone her to see where she’d gone there was no answer. She’ll have gone home and be asleep already, he told them. It’s what she does. Simon started to argue but Gordon gave him a look to leave it, and while he was at the bar he phoned Susanna and asked her to check. None of them thought it worth asking why this seemed like something that had happened any number of times before.

The long days of July were hot and the heat rose from the heather in waves. In the mornings the air outside the Jacksons’ lambing shed was dashed with swallows. James Broad finished his second year of university, and didn’t come back to the village at all. His mother had prepared the small guest room in her new flat for him, but from his Facebook page she learnt he was travelling in Thailand with someone called Saoirse. The girl looks pretty enough, his mother told Susanna. But I don’t even know how to pronounce her name. There was a day of action at the protest camp. Some of the villagers went up there to join in, but most people just listened to the noise of drumming drift down the hill. The first excavations started a week later. Su Cooper found a post-office book for a savings account of Austin’s that she knew nothing about. There was close to five thousand pounds. When she challenged him about it he said it was meant to be a surprise. Bloody well is a surprise you’ve got five grand I didn’t know about, she said. What else is there, a second mobile phone? What are you, Austin, some kind of a drug dealer? Or are you having an affair? She giggled when she said this, at the outlandishness of it, but she was furious enough not to regret the hurt on his face. He told her he’d been saving up for a big family holiday, that he’d been planning to surprise her. He wanted to take them all to China, he said. China? she asked. He thought the boys would appreciate learning about their roots, he told her. Their roots? Their roots, Austin? Their roots are in bloody Chorlton

, man. What are you talking about, roots? I thought it would be important for them, he said. She shook her head. You haven’t even got a passport, she reminded him. What do you know about travelling? Do you know how big China is? Where would we go? I thought we could talk to your parents, he said. I thought they’d have ideas. I wondered if they might want to come with us, show us around? Su covered her mouth in shock, her eyes widening. She leant back in her chair and looked up at the ceiling. Really, Austin? But my parents fled China, remember? They actually fled. Do you know what that word means? Do you have any idea? Things have changed now though, he said. It’s not the same place they left. She looked at him, shaking her head again. She loved him but he could be such a prat sometimes. We’re not going to China, she said. This conversation is finished. You can keep the money for something else. You can spend it on your mistress if you like. She smiled at him in exasperation. She held on to the savings book and put it with the rest of their papers. Martin Fowler was seen talking to that pair in the caravan in Fletcher’s orchard, and sometimes even sitting at their fire, drinking cans of lager and looking out of place while they muttered jokes he didn’t understand. Ruth sometimes asked after him, and was told he was doing okay. Cathy Harris and Richard had lunch together in town, and she told him that she’d signed up to an online dating agency. He kept his voice casual and asked how that was going. She said there’d been a few misfires but that she was seeing someone regularly now. He could feel her watching his face for a reaction. I wanted you to know, she said. He shrugged, and said that was nice, and then he asked the man’s name. Anthony, she said. He works in Manchester. Is it serious? he asked. I’m not sure yet. But it’s nice. I’m having a good time. It felt strange not telling you, that’s all. He said he appreciated that. He talked about the next project he would be working on, and when she wondered whether they might have any dessert he said he should really be going.