had no memory of writing it. I tore the damned thing up.… then this …” He ran his fingertips across the scrawl on the sketchpad.
“Bugger,” Nick breathed, awed. “I’d swap my mum for a chance at something like that.”
“But why me? I didn’t ask for this,” Montfort retorted fiercely. “I’m an architect, but my knowledge of the Abbey is no more than you’d expect from anyone who grew up here. I’m not particularly religious. I’ve never had any interest in spiritualism—or other-worldly things of any sort, for that matter.”
Nick pondered this for a moment. “I doubt these things are random. Maybe you have some connection to the Abbey that you’re not consciously aware of.”
“That’s a big help,” Montfort said, but there was a gleam of humor in his bright blue eyes. “So how do I find out what it is, and why this is happening to me?”
“You know it wasn’t Bond who did the actual writing, but his friend, John Bartlett. Bond guided him by asking questions.”
“You want to play Bond to my Bartlett, then?” Montfort sounded amused.
“You said you came from Glastonbury. That seems as good a place to start as any.”
“My father’s family’s been in Glastonbury and round about for eons, I should think. He was a solicitor. A large, serious man, very sure of where he stood in the world.” Montfort took a sip of his beer and his voice softened as he continued. “Now, my mother, she was a different sort altogether. She loved stories, loved to play make-believe with us when we were children.”
“Us?”
Montfort was silent.
“Us?” Nick repeated.
“My cousins and I. Duncan and Juliet.” Montfort smiled. “My aunt and uncle had a penchant for Shakespeare. We always visited them in Cheshire on our holidays. It was a different world. The canals, and then the hills of Wales rising in the distance …”
He fell silent, his eyes half-closed. Nick was about to prompt him again, when, without warning, Montfort grasped the pen. His hand began to move steadily across the paper.
Nick translated the Latin as the words began to form …
In that instant, Nick knew why he had come to Glastonbury, and he knew why he had stayed.
Faith Wills rested her forehead against the cool plastic of the toilet seat, panting, her eyes swimming with the tears brought on by retching. She had nothing left to throw up but the lining of her stomach, yet somehow she was going to have to pull herself together, go out and face the smell of her mother’s breakfast.
It was a bacon-and-egg morning—her mum believed all children should go off to school well fortified for the day. They alternated cooked eggs, or porridge, or brown toast and marmite; and on this Thursday morning in March, Faith had struck the worst possible option.
A whiff of bacon crept into the bathroom. Her stomach heaved treacherously just as her younger brother, Jonathan, pounded on the door. “You think you’re effing Madonna in there or something? Hurry bloody up, Faith!”
Without raising her head, Faith said, “Shut up,” but it came out a whisper.
Then her mother’s voice—“Jonathan, you watch your language”—and the crisp rap of knuckles on the door. “Faith, whatever’s the matter with you? You’re going to be late, and make Jon and Meredith late as well.”
“Coming.” Unsteadily, Faith pushed herself up, flushed the toilet, then blew her nose on a piece of toilet tissue. Easing the door open, she found her mum waiting, hands on hips, and beyond her, Jon, and her sister, Meredith, all three faces set in varying degrees of irritation. “What is this, a committee?” she asked, trying for a bit of attitude.
Her mother ignored her, taking her chin in firm fingers and turning her face towards the wan light filtering in from the sitting room. “You’re white as a sheet,” she pronounced. “Are you ill?”
Faith swallowed convulsively against the kitchen smells, than managed to croak, “I’m okay. Just exam nerves.”
Her dad emerged from the bedroom, tying his tie. “How many times have I told you not to leave studying until the last minute? And you know how important your GCSE’s—”
“Just let me get my books, okay?”
“Don’t take that tone with me, young lady.” Her dad jerked tight the knot of his tie and reached for her. His fingertips dug into the flesh of her bare arm.
“Sorry,” Faith mumbled, not meeting his eyes. Tugging free, she escaped to the room she shared with her sister and once inside, leaned against the door, praying for a moment’s peace before Meredith came back. It was a child’s room, she thought, seeing it suddenly anew. The walls were covered with posters of rock stars, the twin beds with bedraggled stuffed animals. Her hockey uniform spilled from her satchel; the sheets of music for that afternoon’s choir practice lay scattered on the floor. All things that had mattered so much to her—all utterly meaningless now.
She wouldn’t be fine, she realized, closing her eyes against the tide of despair that swept over her. Nothing would ever be fine again.
And she couldn’t tell her parents. In her mother’s perfect world, seventeen-year-olds didn’t start the day with their heads in the toilet, and her dad—Well, she couldn’t think about that.
She had promised never to tell, and that was all that mattered.
Faith hugged herself, pressing her arms against the new and painful swelling of her breasts. Never, never, never. The word became a litany as she swayed gently.
Ever.
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