At midnight when the year turned there were fireworks going up from the towns beyond the valley but no one in the village even lifted their heads to look. The fires from the two previous New Years had made people nervous. The village hall was empty and people were standing out by their barns and buildings, half a dozen police officers patrolling and the fire brigade on notice. By half past the hour the tension had eased. A few people set off their own fireworks and a belated ‘Auld Lang Syne’ was sung. From the old quarry there was an explosion and the empty storage buildings went up. The fire brigade were there quickly but couldn’t go near for fear of what materials might be on site. The buildings burnt through, and in the morning a thin trail of smoke was still rising. There was talk about whether the fires might have been set by the missing girl’s father, but apparently he had an alibi. The police had checked. You wouldn’t want to be the chap who goes and asks the man a thing like that, Martin pointed out. Irene was having work done on the house, now that Andrew was finally settled in his new accommodation. It was a lot of work, and she stayed with Winnie for the duration. There were doorframes to replace, and wiring to repair. Mostly it was a lot of painting wanted doing. Whole place wants freshening, she told Winnie. And she was having the kitchen brought up to spec for the tourist board. She had a plan to bring guests in for bed and breakfast. Because what else am I going to do in that big house all by myself ? she asked Winnie. I’ll be bored off my feet. Bit of company will do me good.
Cathy knocked on Mr Wilson’s door and asked whether Nelson needed a walk, and he was halfway out of the house before she’d even finished speaking. I think we’ll both come this morning, he said, Nelson already on the lead and bounding out ahead of him. As smartly dressed as ever, with something extra about him this time; the creases on his trousers sharper, perhaps, or his hair trimmed shorter. They turned left at the church and walked down past the orchard and the lower meadows to the packhorse bridge, and once they’d crossed the river Cathy asked whether he didn’t want to stop for a breather. He started to claim there was no need but thought better of it, standing beside the bench and gesturing for her to take the seat first. They sat and listened to the water turning over beneath
the packhorse bridge and the crows rising and falling from the sycamore trees. Nelson snuffled around in the long grass on the riverbank. The sun was high and the day was almost warm in the shelter of the overhanging rocks. Cathy tilted her face towards the sky to enjoy it. This was the first day of the year she’d been able to savour being out of doors. She noticed how still Mr Wilson was beside her. He felt poised. They were sitting closer together than she’d realised, and now he lifted a hand from his lap and laid it on her knee. Somewhere a little higher than her knee. It rested there, loosely, and they both looked at it. For a moment they seemed as surprised as each other. She lifted his hand, which was softer and warmer to the touch than she might have imagined, and placed it gently back on his lap. Neither of them spoke for a moment. My apologies, he said. But you won’t fault a man for wondering, will you? She smiled, and shook her head. It’s just that one does get lonely, on occasion, he said, looking away up the river. I know, David, she said, softly; we all do. The river turned over beneath the packhorse bridge. Nelson hunkered in the long grass, and Cathy reached into her coat pocket for the plastic bags.
Lynsey Smith moved in with her new boyfriend, who lived in one of the new houses on the far side of town. He was older than her and worked as a surveyor for the quarrying company. He owned the house and had two cars, and although it had started as something she expected to be brief she realised she’d grown fond of the certainties he carried with him. He had a tidy home and he could cook and he bought her thoughtful gifts. He encouraged her to apply for the nursing school she’d been talking about since she’d graduated. His name was Guy and she’d met him while she was working at the Gladstone. She told Rohan about it one evening, when he’d come into the bar on his own. He was sort of charming, she said, but he wasn’t trying to be charming, if you know what I mean? Rohan nodded. He had no idea why she was telling him this. I knew he was interested, but it was like he was interested in me and not what he could get from me, sort of thing? He sounds nice, Rohan said. I’m pleased for you. I know it looks sudden but it just feels right. Does it look sudden to you? I think you should trust your instinct, Lynsey. Exactly, it just feels like the right thing, all of a sudden. You get to our age and sometimes you just know these things. And it’ll be good to move out as well, it’s been a nightmare living at home again. How about you, how’s things? How’s your mum? Your mum, Rohan said, automatically. The Spring Dance was held to raise money for repairs to the churchyard wall, and went off without more than the usual incident. New steps were cut into the embankment leading down to the new footbridge by the tea rooms, and within weeks the earth of each step had once again been trodden deeper than the boards set in place to hold it back. A pair of goldcrests built a nest in the spruce at the end of Mr Wilson’s garden, too high for him to see the work of knitting grasses and moss together.
Richard’s mother had kept hold of most of her husband’s possessions after he’d died, and he was having to sort through all those as well as hers. Cathy had come across to help, and they’d emptied boxes full of paperwork from the wardrobe over the bed. There might be some of this you can just chuck without really looking at it, she said. There were men on the roof, repointing the chimney and re-laying the slates. They could be heard shuffling around precariously. Every now and then a broken slate was flung over the side, falling past the window and smashing into the skip by the front door. There were glimpses of his father all over the paperwork: in his handwriting, in the names of the farm suppliers he’d dealt with, even in the slight smell of engine oil and tobacco. And although it had been almost twenty years now Richard still found himself thinking back to the funeral. He’d only come over for the day, and had felt detached from the whole thing. He’d seen Cathy and Patrick as he was leaving, and that would have been the first time he’d seen them in years, and he hadn’t been able to tell if they were awkward about that or just awkward about not knowing how to express sympathy. It was known that he hadn’t much liked his father. He’d made it easier by asking Patrick about his work, asking them both about their sons. Cathy had held him, stiffly, and Patrick had shaken his hand. That was the last time he’d seen Patrick. A few years later, his mother had called him to say that Patrick had just peeled over in the street, and been quite put out when he told her she probably meant keeled. You weren’t even there, she’d told him. How would you know. Another slate was flung from the roof and smashed into the skip, and Cathy began picking through all the papers spread across the bed. There might be some letters here I suppose, she said. There might be something your sisters will want to see. Before he knew what he was doing, his hand was resting lightly on her back, his fingers trailing down along the thin wool of her cardigan, bumping over the bones of her spine. She didn’t stiffen or move away, as he would have expected had he thought about it first. Rather she seemed to soften to his touch, to ease her back slightly towards him. She was old enough for grandchildren now. It should have been too late for something like this. On the roof the men pulled out more broken slates and flung them over the side.
In early May a group of students doing a sponsored walk were lost in a thick fog while coming down from the Stone Sisters. Somehow they ended up around the back of the cement works, and when they were shown where they’d got to on the map they refused to believe it. There were fires started in the Hunters’ haybarns and in the bins behind the tea rooms, but there was nothing to link them with the New Year’s Eve fires. There was still no evidence that those had been started by the same person. By the beech wood the wild pheasant chicks were hatching. They came out in a crouch and scattered from the nest, scratching around for food and ignoring their mothers’ calls. The twins went on a school trip to the visitor centre, and when they came back Lee wanted to know about Rebecca Shaw. He said it quite casually, with his fist in the biscuit tin, and Su had to keep her voice light as she explained. He nodded while she talked, and she guessed he’d heard most of this at school. So what happened to her? he asked. Nobody knows. She was never found. She’s not dead then, Lee said, through a mouthful of biscuit. She might be, Su said. It seems likely. She would have turned up by now. Nobody stays hidden for that long. I could, Lee announced cheerfully. Me and Sam worked it out. There’s all those tunnels under the hill, mines and stuff. You could hide in there, and come out at night for food. You could come out in a different place every time, and no one would know. You could live down there for years if you wanted. You know, if there was a war or something, or if you were being hunted. That’s what she might be doing. Waiting for the right moment to come out and surprise everyone. How old do you think she’d be now, Mum? Su felt cold. She sat down at the table and put a hand to Lee’s cheek so he would look at her and concentrate. She told him very calmly that he must never go into any of the mines or caves. Ever. She asked him to promise. Her expression frightened him. He promised they’d never go in again. There was rain and the river was high and the hawthorn by the lower meadows came out foaming white. The cow parsley was thick along the footpaths and the shade deepened under the trees. The river rushed under the packhorse bridge. Richard and Cathy were both surprised by the lack of urgency with which they took each other to bed. If they’d thought about it at all – which Cathy admitted she had a little, and Richard said only that it had in fact crossed his mind – they’d imagined stumbling up stairs, tangling clothes, crashing into furniture. But there was none of that. There was a question carefully posed, and an answer thoughtfully given, and then there were clothes folded over the back of the dressing chair, the bedcovers lifted back and pulled over them both. More slow awkwardness than ever there’d been as half-blind teenagers rushing through things up on the moor. It was no less lovely for all that. It was as though, Richard thought, they’d waited for so long that there was now no need to hurry. He had no idea if this was also what Cathy thought. When she came it was with a low murmuring chatter whose repeated words he couldn’t quite make out, her face arched towards the dusty light from the window. Afterwards when he tried to speak she put a finger on her lips and smiled and looked back to the window. There were swallows or house martins restless in the air outside. He realised he should know which they were by now. He knew that she would know. He didn’t know if he should ask.
In June it was Austin Cooper’s sixty-fifth birthday, and for a treat Su agreed to walk the first three days of the Greystone Way with him, while the boys stayed with a schoolfriend in town. He’d been trying to talk her into it for years, but now she’d agreed he seemed more nervous than she did. In the morning he checked through their bags for a third time, and asked if she was sure she felt up to it. She laughed and said she should be asking him that question. She told him he wasn’t getting any younger, and pushed him out the door. At the visitor centre they stopped for a photograph, and then set off up the long low hill. They held hands for a while, but Austin soon found he needed to use both the walking poles he’d brought with him. It took them an hour to reach the top of the first climb, and they stopped to take more pictures. The light was clear and they could see the village and the river and the woods along the main road. Ahead o
f them a line of flagstones stretched right across the moor, the reservoirs off to one side, the motorway along the horizon, a line of wind turbines turning over on a distant ridge. After you, old man, Su said, smiling and prodding him in the back, and for a moment Cooper wanted to pick her up and carry her into a heathery hollow. But they had a good distance to make before dusk, and there wasn’t the time for that manner of thing. He wasn’t sure his back would hold. For the first time in a decade there was grazing at the Stone Sisters, the new grass heavy and green and no sign now that this had ever been home to all those young people with their banners and fires and dancing. Lynsey Smith got engaged, which surprised even her. Things were going well but she hadn’t been thinking that far ahead. But she was so comfortable around him, and when he proposed she could see he had no expectation of her saying no, which was enough to make her want to say yes. There was a lot of talk about the wedding, which was coming up soon. The thing was happening very quickly, was the feeling. Very little was known of Guy, but Lynsey was thought of as a level-headed woman who wouldn’t do anything daft. Do you have fun together? Sophie asked, when Lynsey worried that it was happening too soon. He’s very kind, Lynsey said. He’s thoughtful. The well-dressing boards were taken down and scraped clean, the clay and dressing materials dumped in a corner of the meadow. The boards were washed and dried, and two of Jackson’s boys hauled them up to the barn at the Hunter place and put them away for the year. Olivia Hunter finished her A levels, with no party to mark the fact. She already knew she was going to fail, and had kept her parents off her back by talking about a year’s volunteering overseas. In truth she had no intention of going abroad, but hadn’t yet found a better plan. She was spending a lot of time in her bedroom, making YouTube videos. On Thompson’s land the bales were finished and dotted the fields in their pale green rounds.
The reservoirs were dry and the spillways rose into the air like chimneys, reaching for a volume of water it was difficult to imagine ever returning. The sun was hot and unrelenting and cracked open the soil. In the beech wood a boar badger stood and watched as a sow turned circles in front of him. They both made low feeding sounds. The boar covered the sow for some minutes, biting the nape of her neck. There was a flurry of scrape-marks in the bare soil. The fledgling woodpigeons were falling from the nests. There were first attempts at flight. In the old quarry by the main road the toadflax was in full flower, low to the ground and buttery yellow in the pale evening sun. Rohan Wright left home for the second time. He’d been looking for work for months, apparently, but it was only once Susanna sat down with him and went through some applications that a job materialised. He asked if she was trying to get rid of him, and she said he knew she loved him to bits but she didn’t want him to be the sort of weirdo who still lived with his mother. When Susanna told Cathy about this they both laughed and then Susanna changed the subject abruptly to ask about Richard. Cathy dipped her head to hide a smile and said it was fine. It was good. It was going well. Susanna waited for more. What? Cathy asked. That’s it. It’s going well. He’s a good man. But it’s not a big deal. Although. Susanna waited. Although what? she asked. I think he’s making more of it than he needs to, Cathy said. I mean, it’s all good fun, he’s lovely, but I feel like he’s on the verge of doing something daft, like proposing or something. Would that be so bad? asked Susanna. Cathy rolled her eyes. I’ve done being married, she said. I don’t want to get into that again. I like not being answerable to anyone, you know? Like, this is my house, these are my boys, this is my time. I feel like he might have something different in mind. Rohan went for the interview, and got the job, and moved in with some friends in Manchester. Swiftly along the river and down the lane the adult bats flew in deft quietness and were gone by the time they were seen.
In August Lynsey Smith was married at the registry office in town. The reception was held at the Culshaw Hall Hotel. James and Rohan and Sophie were all there, and after the photographs they stood on the lawn trying to work out when they’d last been together. Must have been that summer after graduation, Rohan decided. I never graduated, Sophie pointed out. True fact, he said. And look at you now, new-media hotshot. Natural talent; there’s no degree certificate for natural talent. Is that what they call it now? They saw Liam heading indoors with a toddler in one arm and an older child holding his hand. He nodded in their direction but didn’t come over to say hello. They had to wait for the speeches before they could have any food, and at one point Sophie put her hand on James’s glass to suggest he slowed down. The look he gave her was unfamiliar and sharp. He drank on, quickly, and later in the evening Sophie had to ask Will Jackson to take him back to Rohan’s house, where he was staying. In Cardwell the cricket match was played right through for the first time in three years, and tradition restored with a win for the home team. Jackson’s boys went out and took the lambs away from their mothers and put them in a field out of sight and for three days and nights the racket they made carried over the village. By the middle of the month the evenings were earlier, and chill. The dew that rose in the morning brought with it a smell of must. Richard’s mother’s house still hadn’t been put on the market, and Richard was trying to explain to his sisters that if they wanted a good price they should wait until things picked up. They’d come for a long weekend with their husbands, the children old enough now to be left with friends, and after an evening of eating and drinking and catching up the subject of the house finally arose. Rachel gave out the same heartfelt sigh Richard remembered her developing as a twelve-year-old and her husband, Tim, told the room that everyone was tired of tiptoeing around all this bullshit. Richard asked could he be a little more frank and for a moment Tim didn’t hear the sarcasm. Sarah said there was no need for this kind of thing, and Tim said rather sharply that in actual fact there was. Where will I live? Richard asked them. Where will I go? This has always been my home. No one’s turfing you out, Tim said. But it’s time to talk about money. You were never here anyway, Sarah murmured. They all knew what the house was worth, inflated beyond sense by wealthy commuters and the second-homes market; and he assumed they knew that as a freelancer he’d never get a mortgage of that size. Why are you doing this to me? he said. He left the house and walked up through the square towards the beech wood. He wanted to talk to Cathy but he wanted to calm down first. If they could just leave it a bit longer. A few months, a year. If he and Cathy kept going the way they were they would move in together. It seemed inevitable. After all these years. But it was too soon to mention it now. He didn’t want her thinking it was only because of the house. He wanted her to know how much she meant to him. He thought she was ready to hear that. She’d as good as said something along those lines. If his sisters could just back off about the house. He’d said nothing about Cathy, of course. They wouldn’t take him seriously if he told them about that.
Lynsey stopped working at the Gladstone, partly because Guy had said he wasn’t comfortable with her being up on show behind the bar all hours like that. She’d started a place at nursing college, in Derby. Guy had bought her a newer car so she could drive in each day without worrying about breaking down. It was a lot of driving but she enjoyed having the time to herself. The quarries and the lanes were thick with rosebay willowherb, the purple stemmy flowers curling over and the seed-flights wisping away. The first guests came to stay at Irene’s and she told Winnie the weekend had gone well. They weren’t all that talkative, she said. I don’t think they wanted to chat at all, which was a shame. They spent a lot of time in their room. But they were very complimentary when they left. Winnie asked if there were more bookings and Irene said that since Andrew had made the website for her the diary had been filling up quickly. He must have done a good job, she said. Andrew was in the supported-accommodation place in town, and apparently very content with it. He was doing a course at the college. Irene went to see him most weeks, and he sent her emails. He’d shown her how to do emails. Late in the month Ashleigh Wright left for university, and Susanna was alone i
n a three-bed house. It was sudden and there was nothing to be done. She made enquiries about exchanging for a smaller place, and even though nothing was available she still had to pay the bedroom tax. She spent a lot of time at the allotment, harvesting the beans and first squashes and preparing the ground for the following year. In the cold evenings Ruth sometimes walked down from the allotment with her for dinner, and when she’d had too much wine to drive she stayed over. In the conifer plantation above the Hunter place the young goldcrests were already feeding up for the winter, fattening.
In October the old Tucker place went up for sale, and was on the market for no more than a month. A removal van appeared and the house was cleared. Jones helped himself to what fruit there was. The sound of two-stroke engines came from the Hunters’ land, and the whining of chainsaws cutting into timber, and the branchy crash of another tree felled. From the beech wood the young foxes lit out for new territory and were killed on the roads in great number. At the river the keeper took out the crayfish traps. They seethed with claws and bodies crawling over each other. There was a rattle as he tipped them into a damp sack. The eating was a perk although his girls wouldn’t touch them. It was true there was a job in stripping out the flesh but the work was worthwhile, he thought. The swallows which had left a few days earlier were most of the way to South Africa by now, and would spend the winter on feeding grounds down there before finding their way back in the spring. Richard had been seen spending nights at Cathy’s house, but nobody had felt need to comment. The two of them were entitled, was the feeling. In the mornings Richard was out of bed first, moving quietly through the house, making coffee. Getting into bed again, drawn back for more. They wanted each other in a way he had forgotten was possible or perhaps had never really known. He felt restless unless he was fitting his body to hers. When they’d done this as teenagers, high on the far side of the hill overlooking Reservoir no. 12 and the motorway, the two of them had felt weightless, lifting each other into the air and whispering. Thirty years on they both had more substance but there was no less delight. Her body weighed down on his and he gave himself up completely and only now did he realise how often he’d held something back before. With the others, even when it had been serious, he’d always looked ahead to what would come after. He’d always assumed there would be a moving on. He’d convinced himself it wasn’t the case but it was clear now he’d been waiting for Cathy. Waiting for this. The two of them grown old and returning to each other, surprised by the things they could still do. The things they could do better than they’d ever been able to do back then. When she pulled him back against the bedroom windowsill and took him inside her, their fingers laced together and the sash window rattling in its frame, he could see in her eyes she was thinking these things as well. There was no need to say them out loud. This was the way he had thought they would be. Coming to their senses. While she slept he cooked dinner and they ate it and went back to bed. There would be questions about arrangements in the months ahead but for now those questions could wait. As they were falling asleep again that night she told him they should be careful. She whispered this into his ear. He thought he knew what she meant.
On top of the moor a wreath of poppies was laid beside the remains of the Lancaster bomber. There were few in the village now who could remember the years of the air-raids; the bombers nightly ploughing the sky and the glow of burning cities from beyond the horizon, and the smell. There was a mishap with the fireworks at the bonfire party, a couple of rockets tilting over in the soft ground after the fuses had been lit and shooting over the heads of the crowd. But no one was hurt, and it was agreed to go on with the display. In his studio Geoff Simmons loaded the glazed pots into the kiln for a second firing. It was raining and there was water running down one of the walls. He had buckets under most of the drips but the rugs were wet. There was a smell of mouldering paper and the pots were taking longer to dry. The whippet was gone and he didn’t know what to do with the hours the kiln was firing. He opened the door and let the air blow in and a curtain of rain swayed across the threshold. Nobody came up the lane. The river turned over beneath the packhorse bridge and moved on towards the weir. Nobody much mentioned the missing girl, but she was still thought about often. What could have happened. She could have been hurt by her parents in some terrible mistake, some push or stumble that wasn’t meant that way at all, and in a fury of panic they could have carried her somewhere they’d know she was at peace before running back down to the village for help. She could have been hurt by her parents in some deliberate way, pushed or tripped or struck repeatedly from behind, and fallen without getting up again, and they could have taken her up high on the hill and laid her to rest somewhere they knew she would never be found.
Richard and Cathy were in bed together when she told him she didn’t think they should carry on doing this. His first thought was whether she couldn’t have waited until they were dressed. He’d had enough of these conversations to recognise the pattern but it had never happened in bed. Lately it hadn’t even been while he was in the same country; and geography was usually the point being made. Cathy’s point was something more elusive. They were trying to re-create something from the past, she told him. It couldn’t work like that. They had both changed so much, and yet they still thought of each other as being eighteen years old, and they would come to resent each other for changing. She knew this, it seemed. She could see it would cause a problem. But is it a problem now, he asked. No, but it will be, I can see it, she said. I want to protect us both from that happening. I want to protect our friendship, she told him. He didn’t know how to disagree. When he dressed he was suddenly self-conscious and he carried his clothes in a bundle to the bathroom. He ran the taps. Downstairs he told her he wouldn’t stay for coffee. He told her again that of course he understood. He said hello to Mr Wilson, who was standing in his open doorway with Nelson, and walked to the top of the lane. There were carol singers going from door to door for the local hospice, carrying candle-lanterns on poles, their breath clouding in the yellowy light and their voices pressing through the low air. For a moment Richard was caught up amongst them, and obliged to join in. O little town of Bethlehem. How still we see thee lie.
In the parlour at Thompson’s farm, the last cows of the day came in to be milked. The men were tiring. What little conversation there’d been had faltered, and for the last ten minutes there was only the rhythmic slurp and click of the machinery, the occasional snort or stamp of the cows. At the reservoir a heron speared suddenly towards the water and stopped just before its beak broke the surface, carefully straightening and holding itself still once more. In the beech wood the foxes were loud. Mating season was approaching and claims were being made. There were barks and screams and at night the sounds carried the old dread. There was scent-marking and fighting until pairs were established. There were springtails in the soil of the cricket ground, a million or more, moulting and feeding and moving up to the light, and amongst them a female springtail laid the last eggs of her life. The goldcrests fed busily deep in the branches of the churchyard yew. Richard and Cathy were seen up on the moor with Mr Wilson’s dog, walking much further than Nelson was used to. He didn’t seem to mind. Richard was explaining to Cathy why it wasn’t such a bad idea for them to try and make a go of a relationship. They were financially independent; they’d been together before and there was something then that had worked and something they still had now; they were both from the village, and belonged here, and they had an understanding of the place they could share. He’d actually numbered these points, and was counting them off on his fingers. He seemed to have been talking for a while. She stopped him. Richard, she said. This isn’t like putting in a tender for a contract. You do know that, don’t you? He started to laugh and then realised she wasn’t joking and he didn’t know where to look. He was still bending back his little finger to indicate the fifth point. It was starting to hurt but he couldn’t let go.
13.
At midnight there were fireworks in the next valley and tension in the village and no fires were set. It wasn’t until the next day that the old water-board buildings by Reservoir no. 7 were found smoking and charred. On the television there were pictures of a public search for another missing teenage girl, the volunteers strung out in a line across a hillside, their heads bowed. The pantomime was Cinderella. It was known that rehearsals had been late and under-attended, and that Susanna had needed to bring new people in at the last minute, and there was as much anxiety in the audience as there was amongst the cast. When Olivia Hunter stepped forward to begin the narration the main lights were left on and there was still furniture being shifted around. She had to be prompted twice in the first few minutes, but was so sprightly with the pleasure of being on stage that no one seemed to mind. Be careful, she announced, bursting with anticipation, here comes the Wicked Stepmother now! There was a long pause and then Les Thompson shuffled on to the stage, stubbled and made-up and minus his false teeth, unable even to remember his first line. The audience took a long time to settle enough for the prompt to be heard. No one had known he would be in the role, and his enjoyment of playing it, wandering in and out of scenes with no concession to the script, made everyone’s night. Ruth Fowler and Susanna, who had stepped late into the roles of the Ugly Sisters and worked a long time on their bawdy repartee, were entirely upstaged, and at the end of the show Les was surrounded by people wanting their picture taken with him. At the party afterwards Gordon Jackson got talking to Olivia, and congratulated her for keeping calm amongst all the chaos. He told her it took a lot of maturity to hold it together like that. He reached out without thinking and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
At the allotments there was little to harvest besides some hardened winter greens: thick-veined spinach leaves, small handfuls of mustard, a yellowing mulch of kale. The frosts had been hard. In the beech wood the foxes were quiet. The earths had been prepared and were warm and well lined, and the vixens stayed down there in the dark. The old Tucker house was refurbished as a holiday cottage, rewired and replastered, the woodwork painted a pale grey-green. The front garden was landscaped for low maintenance. There were planters with gravel and mixed grasses, and a picnic bench with a patio heater. In the beech wood the trees were traced with snow, the sunlight filtering through and shaking it loose. The river wedged branches beneath the packhorse bridge and poured fiercely over the weir. The missing girl’s father was questioned about the fires again, and arrested. At the heronry the nests were rebuilt. On Shrove Tuesday Mr Wilson asked Cathy to come round for pancakes. She had to help him lift the cast-iron frying pan on to the hob, but after that he insisted she sit at the table and be served. The first pancake caught and was thrown on the floor for Nelson. The second one was fine, but Nelson made such a fuss that Mr Wilson put that one on the floor as well. You must think me a soft touch, he said, and she didn’t deny it. She quartered the lemons on the chopping board while Mr Wilson made a stack of pancakes and kept them warm in the oven, and when he was done they sat and ate them together. Jean made a very good pancake, he said. Frilly at the edges. You know the way? Cathy nodded, and Nelson came a
nd rested his head in her lap, and she said she’d never known how to get them like that. When they’d eaten they walked up together towards the village with Nelson. For a change they stayed on the main street and headed towards the allotments and the beech wood. At the square Mr Wilson said he’d stop for a drink at the Gladstone and catch them on their way back, and Cathy asked if his hip was feeling okay. He told her it wasn’t too bad but he felt entitled not to go traipsing up the moors at this point in his life. As she laughed and turned to go he stooped slightly towards her and made a gesture which must once have been called doffing one’s cap. She waved in reply, and let Nelson pull on the lead towards the path through the beech wood and the visitor centre and the high breathless hills.
Cooper was seen outside the old butcher’s shop, half-kneeling, with his fist clenched against his chest. By the time Su got to the hospital he was already sitting up in bed. Just a scare, he said, hoarsely, and she told him very quietly that she’d give him an actual bloody scare if he ever did something like that again. The nettles grew up around the dead oak in Thompson’s yard, the timber stained white in the sun. A flock of fieldfares lifted from the elder trees on the bank behind the school, climbing out of the valley and heading north-east towards the reservoirs, the hills, the North Sea, Norway. Sally Fletcher persuaded Brian to let her keep hens in the old orchard, and asked Will Jackson to build her a coop. Will told her the hens would scratch up everywhere so to make sure the ground was safe, and she paid the Cooper twins to pick up what was left of the caravan. They filled six sacks with lumps of plastic and the cottony shreds of old cigarette butts. Martin saw Les Thompson at the new supermarket in town, standing at the checkouts with a basket of shopping. He hadn’t seen him there before. When Les noticed the price on a litre of milk he asked the young woman to tell him out loud. He looked at her for a long moment and then put his wallet back in his pocket and walked away, leaving his shopping half-packed and the young woman confused. A pale light moved slowly across the moor, catching in the flooded cloughs and ditches and sharpening for a moment before the clouds slid closed overhead.
In April the first swallows were seen, sweeping low over the pastures in the early evening and taking the insects which rose with the dew. And still the sound of a helicopter clattering by was never just the sound of a helicopter but everything that sound had one night meant. Gordon took on some timber work up at the Hunter place, and was seen by his van talking to Olivia on his breaks. Survey stakes went up along the edge of the woodland by the Stone Sisters, and Cooper found a new planning application from a quarry firm. Richard’s mother’s house went on the market and was sold within a month, and Richard took a weekend to clear it out before dropping the keys at the solicitor’s. He thought about calling in to see Cathy on his way to town, but in the end he drove straight past the end of her lane and down towards the quarry and the woods and the bend in the river by the main road. The new bracken shoots were curled tight, waiting for the lengthening days. Mr Wilson died, after a short illness, and Jane Hughes was invited back to conduct the funeral. Cathy took Nelson in to live with her.
Su Cooper carried the new issues of the Valley Echo around the village in a large shoulder-bag. The bag was heavy, and it took her the whole afternoon to finish the job. Austin had tried to insist he could manage, but he’d already worn himself out getting the issue printed off. She was the one who’d listened properly to the advice he was given after his heart attack, and she was the one making sure he stuck to it. Gentle exercise, a good diet, sleep. Not lugging a bag up and down steep cobbled streets. She was strict with him, as the doctor had said she might need to be. It came easily. She wasn’t going to let him bugger himself up again. There was rain and the river was high. The reservoirs filled. Towards the end of each day Maisie Jackson filled a bowl with hot water, added soap and a little oil, and carried it through to the front room with flannels and a towel. When Jackson saw her he made a face that carried as much love as it did disdain. She ignored him, stripping back the covers and unbuttoning his pyjamas, and squeezing out the hot clean flannel. While she washed him he kept his gaze turned firmly to the window and the hills beyond. The fieldfares were gone from the field behind the church.
In the meadows by the river the early knapweeds were up, their thistly pink heads nodding when anyone walked past. In the village hall the well-dressing design was laid out on the boards, pinned into place, and the outlines pricked through into the clay. Irene watched to see that it was done well, then gave the nod for the paper to be peeled away. In Thompson’s fields the wrapped bales were lifted on to a long low trailer and taken to the yard to be stacked and netted. Les Thompson watched with a careful gaze as they worked. At the allotments Mr Wilson’s asparagus spears nibbed from the thick black soil. After a week the first two dozen were cut and carried away by Clive, the rest left to grow to their full ferny height, ready for the following year. James Broad fell and broke his leg while climbing on the edges below Black Bull Rocks, and was taken out by the mountain-rescue team. When she heard, Lynsey took the day off from college and went to visit him. He was asleep when she got there and for a few minutes she sat and looked at the dressings on his leg, the bruising on his arms. The movement of his eyelashes. She pulled the chair a little closer to the bed and he woke up. Here for some practice? he asked. She looked at his leg again. Someone needs to change those dressings, she said. But I’m not touching it. You’ve probably got the lurgy or something. He looked at her. The lurgy? Yes, James. The lurgy. It’s a medical term. And plus you smell. The nurse training’s going well then? he asked. Must be scoring well on bedside manner. Great, she said. It’s going great. How’s the climbing? Yeah, fine, he said. Climbing’s fine. It’s the falling I’m not so good at. She laughed, finally, and when he laughed as well he winced suddenly and stopped himself. She flinched. Ribs? she asked. Very good, Nurse. Yes, ribs. Not broken, but kind of fucked up. She didn’t say anything. She stood up and leant over him slowly and kissed his mouth. She hadn’t meant to and once she’d started it was difficult to stop. He kissed her back, and his hand came up to the side of her face. She stepped away. She didn’t actually wipe her mouth but she might as well have done. Lynsey, he said. James, no. She looked as though she might say something else, but she picked up her bag and left.
The first time Gordon Jackson slept with Olivia Hunter he was reminded vividly of the time on the hill with her mother. For a moment he had reservations. There was a similarity in her voice, although she had less to say. She seemed less certain of what she wanted than her mother had been. But she wanted something, and it hardly seemed fair to explain what his reservations were. Her parents were away and the barn conversions were all empty. He’d been working on Olivia for a time now and things were at a good stage. She was naked almost as soon as they got into the room. She was good to look at, but she seemed uncomfortable with him looking. She knelt on the bed. Her skin was very clear. Taut. He felt himself to be in good shape but looking at her now made him feel worn-down. She held out a hand and reached for his belt. He took hold of her shoulder and laid her down. She kissed him so hard it lifted him off the bed. There was a crushed smell of lavender coming in through the open window, and the sound of a quad bike on the hill. In the conifers there were buzzards bringing food to their nests, the chicks growing quickly and demanding more each day. At the allotments the early potatoes were lifted, pale and smooth as hens’ eggs on the warm dark soil.
August was dry and still and a dust rose from the fields and there was a great fear of fire on the hills. The young woodpigeons left the nests and practised their flight, beating up from the trees before cracking their wings into a stiff glide down to the ground. The badgers spent more of the night outside, and ranged closer to the edges of their territory. There was scent-marking, and in the morning small piles of soft scat could be found. In his studio Geoff Simmons wrapped pots in tissue and bubble wrap and sealed them into cardboard boxes. The people who’d ordered them thought they were getting vases or jugs or cups but they were all simply vessels to him. He labelled the boxes and carried them down the lane to the post office. He left the door hanging open all the time now. The Jones house was empty. There was uncertainty about where Jones had gone, and no one could agree on when he’d last been seen. But the house stayed dark and when the leaves fell they blocked the gutter and the rain started spilling under the eaves and staining the render. The post was still being delivered, and could be seen piling up behind the glazed front door. Brief consideration was given as to whether he might in fact be in there, passed. But Brian Fletcher knew where his sister was, and on enquiry was told that he was still visiting her, and so the matter was dropped. What he did with his house was his business, people said. Irene visited once or twice, and tidied the front garden, and arranged for the gutters to be cleared. At the cricket ground the game against Cardwell was lost.
In September Rohan and James came over from Manchester, and Sophie from London, and they met up with Lynsey for the day. They’d talked about it at Christmas and it had taken this long to arrange. The original plan had been to go for a walk, but James was still on crutches so they went for a drive instead. They met at the Hunter place on a Sunday morning, and the four of them sat at the breakfast bar with coffee and croissants. Stuart was working away, but Jess hovered around asking questions and talking about how little time seemed to have passed since they’d been teenagers perching on the same high stools. I don’t suppose you’ve got the time to look at photographs now, have you? she asked. I’ve got some wonderful ones from your last day of school. They were polite but they said they had to get on. She stood in the doorway and watched as they all piled into Sophie’s car. The kitchen shook with quietness behind her. Olivia was already out for the day. She turned, and tidied their breakfast things away. The four of them drove up past the visitor centre and headed for the access roads by the higher reservoirs. They didn’t have much of a plan. Sophie asked James how bad his leg was and he said he wasn’t a total cripple but he couldn’t walk more than a couple of miles. It’ll get better though, will it? As long as I don’t do anything stupid. Like fall off Black Bull Rocks, that sort of stupid? Yeah, that. As long as I don’t do that again I’ll be fine. And as long as we don’t hold you down and jump on your leg? Yeah, that’s not going to help either. Got it. Just checking. Sophie headed up the new access road to the wind turbines, and parked at the top. From here they could see seven of the reservoirs, stepping down towards the village and the river beyond, and in the other direction the motorway. The wind was up and the car was shaking. This should blow the hangover away, Rohan said, and they all opened their doors. James needed a hand to get steady on his crutches, and Lynsey and Rohan walked either side to keep him sheltered from the wind. They made their way along the ridge. The turbine blades whipped round overhead. The clouds were being scattered ragged in the wind and the light around them flickered. Lynsey put her arm through James’s and leant into him slightly as they walked. The three of them moved slowly. Sophie was impatient and kept striding ahead, turning to take pictures of them on her phone and then waiting for them to catch up. The road became a track and the track became a footpath and James started to wince. They could see the old water-board buildings at the top of Reservoir no. 7. They stopped, and he said he thought he’d had enough. There was weather coming from the motorway and they agreed to turn back. Well, it wasn’t exactly the Iron Man challenge, but it’ll do for a first attempt, Rohan said. We’ll try a bit further next time, will we? James was already clenching his teeth with discomfort and didn’t reply. Lynsey kept hold of his arm. Next spring, Sophie said. We’ll do the whole of the Greystone Way, the four of us. All of it? That’s a ten-day walk, at least. Book the time off now then. You’re not scared, are you? That’s a long time to be away, Lynsey said. She didn’t quite say that Guy wouldn’t like it, but they could see that’s what she meant. By the time they’d got back to the car it had been agreed that they would definitely do it in the spring, but only Sophie really believed they would. They went back to Sophie’s so Rohan and Lynsey could drive their cars into town and they had lunch at the pub by the river. The weather had passed and it was just warm enough to sit outside. Rohan talked a bit about how his music was going, and Sophie tried to explain about the start-up she was involved with in London. Lynsey’s phone chirped a few times, and the third or fourth time she said she’d have to get home. James suddenly pointed in alarm at something on the other side of the river. There was nothing there, but while Rohan and Sophie turned to look he leant forward and kissed Lynsey softly on the cheek. She shook her head urgently and he smiled. Let’s go, he said, taking off his shoes and socks and setting them on the table. He didn’t wait for the others to join him and he didn’t count to three, but by the time he’d hobbled over to the water’s edge they were beside him, barefoot, Sophie and Rohan taking an arm each and helping him down the bank. Lynsey carried his crutches. Even at the end of a long summer the water was gasping cold coming down from the hills, and they each caught their breath as they made their way across. In the middle they paused. They’d be setting off in different directions from the car park, and three of them had a long way to go. They weren’t ready to leave. The water washed around their ankles and turned over beneath the bridge. In the beer garden a blackbird poked at the crumbs beneath their table. The river was cold and it kept moving and they stood and looked up into the hills.
The days shortened and the light grew hazy and thick. Garden furniture was taken in. The teasels along the banks of the river stood brown and tall, scratching stiffly at the air. In the evenings through the beech wood the last small coppers were seen, roosting head-down on the grasses beside the track. The sun angled low over the hill as Les Thompson led his cows out of the parlour towards the night-grazing paddock. He closed the gate behind them and headed back to the parlour for washdown. The metallic smell of coming rain rose up and the air felt charged and tight. There was a tingling before the first fat drops fell and they came as a letting go. Susanna Wright gave up her tenancy in the Close and moved in with Ruth Fowler above the shop in Harefield. They’d been together for months now, and those who’d noticed were only surprised it had taken so long. They’d made no great announcement but neither had they troubled to keep it to themselves. They carried on working their own allotments. On changeover days Irene was kept busy at the Hunters’ barn conversions. She bagged the bedding first and opened the windows so the mattresses would air. She mopped and hoovered and wiped, moving back and forth between the three units as the floors dried. She sang as she worked. There was rain forecast but for now the air blowing through was warm and heather-fresh. In the smaller bedroom of the end conversion she stood and said a prayer, as she had done for years now. She felt the old urge to check under the bed. She changed all the sheets and duvets, put welcome baskets on the kitchen counters, arranged fresh flowers in vases and jugs. She pulled the windows to and locked the doors. It was a simple enough job but she made sure it was done well. People knew they could count on her. She pocketed the keys and walked back down the driveway, her feet crunching in the gravel. An hour yet until the bed-and-breakfast guests were due at her place. Time enough to sit. A rare enough treat, still.
At the allotments the first frosts edged the winter crops and broke open the soil. Cathy had thought Richard would be in touch since selling his mother’s house, and might even have found a reason to come back to the vill
age. But there had been nothing, and when she called his number there was a strange dialling tone that suggested he was somewhere abroad. He didn’t answer until the third time she called, and after they’d spoken for a few minutes she said that she missed him. She’d realised she missed him, she said. The river was high and thick with peat and there were grayling in number for those who knew where to look. Ian Dowsett was out in the channel between millponds, working a weighted nymph around the rocks and waiting for the chance to strike. The cold was already seeping inside his waders. It was hard to stay out in the water as long as he once would have done. The reservoirs were high and the wind funnelling down the valley pushed the water in waves over the tops of the dams. At the foot of the churchyard yew the goldcrests pressed close together against the chill. The missing girl had not yet been forgotten. The girl’s name was Rebecca, or Becky, or Bex. She had been looked for, everywhere. She had been looked for in the lambing sheds on Jackson’s farm, people moving through the thick stink of frightened ewes and climbing up into the lofts and squeezing behind the stacks of baled hay, and in the darkness outside great heaving lungfuls of fresh air were taken as people made their way across the field to the other barns. She had been looked for in the caves, and in the quarries, and in the reservoirs and all across the hills. It was no good. Dreams were had about her, still. There were dreams about her catching a bus to a railway station and boarding a train which ran out of control and hurtled off the rails. There were dreams where she ran down to the road and met a man with a car who took her to a ferry. Dreams where she ran and just kept running, to the road, to a bus station, to a city where she could find enough places to hide. There were dreams about finding her on the night she went missing, stumbling across her on the moor in the lowering dark and helping her back to her parents. In the dreams the parents said thank you, briefly, and people muttered something about it being no problem at all.