‘Dennie?’ Angie’s irritation had given way to concern, and that was worse. ‘Is everything—’
‘No, it’s fine!’ she yelled back without turning. ‘I won’t say anything. I won’t scare them off. But I’m not wrong! I’m not seeing things!’
She went back to the shed and spent the rest of the afternoon chitting her potatoes, because they didn’t care about who was right or wrong, who died or who lived, they were going to need planting out all the same.
‘Insulated,’ she whispered to them, to Viggo, to the world, but mostly to herself. ‘It’s perfectly well insulated.’
* * *
‘Will it do?’ asked Everett as they left the allotments.
Ardwyn shrugged. ‘It’ll have to. There’s no time to find anywhere more suitable.’
‘I don’t like the number of people around. There are other places with blood in the ground that are a lot less conspicuous. Battlefields, like that one we passed at Hopton Heath.’
‘You read the same report that I did,’ she reminded him. ‘The Neary woman didn’t just murder her husband, she dismembered him. That’s ritual, whether she intended it or not. Moccus’ spirit is strong here. Gar tasted it. He agrees.’
‘Gar was right about the dog,’ he said. ‘It’s an absolute monster.’
‘Shh, baby,’ said Ardwyn, and took his hand in both of hers as they walked towards the allotment’s offices. ‘Leave the monsters to Mother.’
After signing the necessary papers they drove back to their new home.
He Who Eats the Moon had provided for them in the form of a semi-derelict farm a mile outside Dodbury. A solicitor’s notice posted in one of the windows of the farmhouse indicated that the Council had issued a closing order on it due to some kind of long-running legal wrangle, but that was the first thing to go on the fire when they started clearing out. The last inhabitant had obviously been a hoarder; they found teetering piles of yellowing newspapers and magazines blocking the hallways and staircase, rooms full of plastic bin bags stuffed with old clothes and crushed lager cans, and a kitchen rancid with rotting takeaway containers and crawling with vermin. The owner obviously hadn’t been able to get into his own bathroom for years because he’d been washing in one bucket and shitting in another in one of the outbuildings, which were in an even worse state.
‘Oh, darling!’ gushed Ardwyn, all dewy-eyed and clutching Everett’s arm in mock adoration. ‘It’s perfect! Our very first home!’
He carried her over the crumbling threshold and they collapsed into the hallway, laughing like drains. Gar looked on, bemused, then shook his head and went to look for some food.
Their ability to undertake any repairs to the place was going to be limited by the necessity to prepare the ground at the allotment first, but after fleeing Swinley and sleeping in a stolen van for two weeks in the depths of winter, a slightly mouldy mattress was positively palatial, and a small sacrifice to make in the cause of a much, much larger one.
3
THE SHED
DENNIE FIRST MEETS SARAH NEARY IN THE SPRING OF 2003, three years before Brian will be found dead in his own driveway. The Iraq War has ended and even though Dennie swore that she would never vote Labour again, not after the Winter of Discontent (having to keep two toddlers clean and fed in the middle of electricity blackouts and blizzards is a thing she said she would never forgive them for), in her opinion Saddam Hussein was a bullying bastard who deserved what he got. Christopher is twenty-nine and living the hedonistic lifestyle of a chartered surveyor in Burton-on-Trent – which is to say he’s left home and hasn’t asked them for money yet so he must be doing all right for himself – while Amy is sofa-surfing around America ‘finding herself’, and Lizzie has got herself an NVQ in Hospitality and Catering and is sharing a flat in Brighton with a nice young woman called Niamh on a basis that Dennie suspects is something more than platonic; Dennie herself is still only in her late-forties, with the children allegedly able to fend for themselves and enough of her life ahead of her, she hopes, to think about training as a social worker. But it is daunting. Her schooling finished at about the same time that Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, and studying for a diploma-level qualification seems just as remote. The textbooks are huge and expensive, she has to read them with a dictionary to look up every other word, and Brian makes no effort to disguise his disapproval of the cost but tolerates it because he’s convinced she’ll never stick it out.
Between this and keeping the household, the allotment provides a welcome respite. The fruit trees have established themselves and she’s got herself into a nice seasonal rhythm which means that she really only has to keep things ticking over. Brian doesn’t bother her here, of course. He has his own routine built around a calendar of the four sporting seasons: cricket, football, rugby, snooker.
So it is that in May of ’03 she sees a young couple exploring the vacant plot which is nowhere near as overgrown as it will be. Sarah is slim and blonde and heavily pregnant, while Colin is large, verging on overweight, and maybe it’s the fact that he’s wearing glasses which gives her the appallingly wrong first impression that he’s basically harmless. Dennie doesn’t introduce herself because they’re wandering away even as she notices them, but they seem nice, she decides. It’ll be nice to have new neighbours.
* * *
That Friday her new neighbours Ardwyn and Everett turned up with a van, a wheelbarrow full of pickaxes and shovels, and a helper: a tall slab of a man with a lantern jaw that made him
