Josie or Nick, her mind was engaged with the questions the London detective had asked her. She didn’t even stop to wonder about it when a ripple of whispers slid through the crowd. She’d been feeling rather dirty ever since the conversation in Mrs. Crone’s study, and she couldn’t exactly understand why. So her mind was taken up with turning over every possible reason as if each were a stone, and she was mostly conscious of waiting to see if a slug of previously unconscious guilt would slither away from exposure to the light.
She was used to feeling guilty. She kept on sinning, she tried to convince herself she wasn’t sinning, she even excused the worst of her behaviour by telling herself it was Mummy’s fault. Nick loves me, Mummy, even if you don’t. See how he loves me? See? See?
In reply, her mother had never used look-ateverything-I’ve-done-for-you-Margaret in the sort of play upon conscience that Pam Rice’s mother tried with no effect. She never talked in terms of deep disappointment as Josie reported her mother had done on more than one occasion. Nonetheless, prior to this very day, her mother had been the consistent, major source of Maggie’s guilt: She was disappointing Mummy; she was causing Mummy’s anger; she was adding torture to Mummy’s pain. Maggie knew all this without having to hear it. She had always been extremely adept at reading reactions on her mother’s face.
Which was why Maggie had come to realise last night precisely how much power she had in this war with her mother. She had power to punish, to hurt, to warn, to avenge…the list stretched on to forever. She wanted to feel triumphant in the knowledge that she’d wrested the ship’s wheel of her life away from her mother’s controlling hands. But the truth was, she felt troubled about it. So when she arrived home late the previous night — outwardly proud of the purple love bruises which Nick had sucked to the surface of her neck — the flames of pleasure Maggie had expected to warm her at Mummy’s frantic worry were instantly extinguished at the sight of her face. She made no reproach. She just came to the door of the darkened sitting room, and she gazed upon her as if from a place where she couldn’t be reached. She looked a hundred years old.
Maggie had said, “Mummy?”
Mummy had placed her fingers on Maggie’s chin, had turned it gently to expose the bruises, had then released her and climbed the stairs. Maggie heard her door click shut softly behind her. It was a sound that hurt more than the slap she deserved.
She was bad. She knew it. Even when she felt warmest and closest to Nick, even when he loved her with his hands and his mouth, when he was pressing It to her, holding her, opening her, saying Maggie, Mag, Mag, she was black and she was bad. She was fi lled with blame. She was becoming every day more used to the shame of her behaviour, except that she had never expected to be made to feel it over her friendship with Mr. Sage.
What she felt was like the prickles from nettle leaves. But they scratched at her spirit instead of her skin. She kept hearing the detective ask about secrets, and that made her feel dry and itchy inside. Mr. Sage had said, You’re a good girl, Maggie, don’t ever forget that, believe it completely. He said, We get confused, we lose our way, but we can always fi nd our way back to God through our prayers. God listens, he said, God forgives everything. Whatever we do, Maggie, God will forgive.
He was comfort itself, was Mr. Sage. He was understanding. He was goodness and love.
Maggie had never betrayed the confi dence of their times together. She had held them precious. And now she was faced with the London detective’s suspicions that what was most special about her friendship with the vicar was also what had led to his death.
This was the slug that writhed beneath the last stone of implication she turned over in her mind. The fault was hers. And if that was the case, then Mummy had known all along what she was doing when she fed the vicar dinner that night.
No. Maggie argued the point with herself. Mummy couldn’t have known she was feeding him hemlock. She took care of people. She didn’t hurt them. She made unguents and poultices. She mixed special teas. She brewed decoctions, infusions, and tinctures. Everything she did was to help, not to harm.
Then the whispers of her schoolmates rising round her made delicate fissures in the shell of her thoughts.
“She poisoned the bloke.”
“…didn’t get away with it after all.”
“The police came from London.”
“…devil-worshippers, I heard and…”
Maggie was startled into sudden comprehension. Dozens of eyes were on her. Faces were bright with speculation. She clutched her rucksack of schoolbooks to her chest and looked about for a friend. Her head felt weightless, oddly and suddenly divorced from her body. All at once it was the most important thing in the world to pretend she didn’t realise what they were talking about.
“Seen Nick?” she asked. Her lips felt chapped. “Seen Josie?”
A fox-faced girl with a large pimple on the side of her nose became the group spokesman. “They don’t want to hang about with you, Maggie. They’re not so dim they can’t see the risk.”
A murmur of approval lapped round the girl like a small wave, then receded in kind. The faces seemed to move closer to Maggie.
She held her rucksack tighter. A book’s sharp corner dug into her hand. She knew they were teasing — didn’t one’s mates always like to tease whenever they could? — and she drew herself taller to meet the challenge. “Right,” she said with a smile as if she herself approved of whatever joke they were trying to make. “Quite. Come on. Where’s Josie? Where’s Nick?”
“They’ve gone off already,” Fox-face said.
“But the bus…” It was sitting where it always sat, waiting for departure, just a few yards away, inside the gate. There were faces at the windows, but from the steps of the school, Maggie couldn’t tell if her friends were among them.
“They made their own arrangements. During lunch. When they knew.”
“Knew what?”
“Who you were with.”
“I wasn’t with anyone.”
“Oh right. Whatever you say. You lie about as good as your mum.”
Maggie tried to swallow, but her tongue got stuck on the roof of her mouth. She took a step towards the bus. The group let her go but closed ranks right behind her. She could hear them talking as if to each other, but all of it intended for her.
“They went off in a car, did you know?”
“Nick and Josie?”
“And that girl who’s been after him.
Teasing. They were teasing. Maggie walked faster. But the schoolbus seemed farther and farther away. There was a shimmer of light dancing in front of it. It started as a beam and turned into bright speckles.
“He’ll stay clear of her now.”
“If he’s got any brains. Who wouldn’t?”
“It’s true. If her mum doesn’t take a fancy to her mates, she just invites them for dinner.”
“Like that fairy story. Have an apple, dearie? It’ll help you sleep.”
Laughter.
“Only you won’t wake up real soon.”
Laughter. Laughter. The bus was too far.
“Here, eat this. I cooked it up special. Just for you.”
“Now, don’t be shy about second helpings. I can see you’re just
Maggie felt a hot ember at the back of her throat. The bus glimmered, got small, became the size of her shoe. The air closed round it and swallowed it up. Only the wrought iron gates of the school were left.
“It’s my own recipe. Parsnip pie, I call it. People say it’s
Beyond the gates lay the street—
“They call me Crippen, but don’t let that put you off your dinner.”
— and escape. Maggie began to run.
She was pounding towards the centre of town when she heard him calling her. She kept going, dashing up to the high street and then across it, tearing towards the car park at the base of the hill. What she was planning to do
