‘How can you possibly know that?’
‘Because I saw it there.’ She briefly described yesterday’s adventure, and finished by pointing out that the fuel reservoir of the broken storm lantern was missing its little screw cap. ‘They want people to think that it was an accident, that I did it myself because I’m careless and stupid and not to be believed. Why do they have a trapdoor in the floor of their shed, David? What are they doing at the start of every waxing moon? Why are two people missing and nobody else seems to be concerned about it?’ What was the thing that attacked me? Who is He Who Eats the Moon? But of course she couldn’t ask that because then he really would think she’d lost it.
‘Three,’ he said, so quietly that she almost didn’t hear him.
‘Three? What do you mean, three?’
‘Ellen Webster. She’s a retired librarian, in her seventies, lives alone.’
‘There’s a surprise.’
‘She was supposed to be running an adult literacy class in Abbots Bromley last week and didn’t turn up. The organisers tried to contact her but had no luck, so put a request on the online community forum to see if anyone knows where she is. Apparently one of her neighbours went around but she wasn’t home.’
‘Dear God. David, we have to tell someone. You have to tell someone. They’ve already done a good job of making it seem like I’m paranoid and losing my marbles, but you’re a police officer, for heaven’s sake.’
‘I’m only a volunteer.’
‘It doesn’t matter! They’ll take you seriously! Tell me that you’ll say something – or at least that you’ll look into it. Please!’
‘I will look into it. But don’t expect me to go around kicking doors down and shouting “You’re nicked, scumbag!” because it doesn’t work like that.’
She took his hand and squeezed it. ‘Thank you. Thank you for believing me – and for being one of the few people around here that I can trust.’
* * *
David saw Dennie safely back to her house and then went home, feeling sick at his own hypocrisy. He tried to tell himself that he hadn’t deceived her, hadn’t actually lied to her by omitting the fairly significant fact that he had shackled his family to the fortunes of Farrow Farm, but it didn’t do any good. The only thing that allowed him to put it to the back of his mind was the fact that Alice – who had been looking and feeling a lot better since eating Daddy’s magical hot pot – was going to have her blood tested tomorrow.
2
GIVING THANKS
‘EXPLAIN THAT TO ME AGAIN,’ SAID BECKY. DAVID watched her biting the inside of her cheek and twisting her wedding ring, evidence of a war being waged inside her: the desperate hope that what the oncologist had just said was true battling with the fatalistic certainty that somehow it was a mistake, that it would turn out to be an equipment error or a mix-up with another little girl’s results or just some inexplicably sick practical joke. There were no miracle cures, they knew this. They were in it for the long haul. Through the window in the doctor’s office door he could see Alice playing a card game with Gavin, her ‘onkie’ nurse, chattering and laughing, brighter-eyed than he’d seen her in months.
‘Frankly, I am at a bit of a loss how to explain it,’ said Dr Barakhada. ‘But we’ve tested three separate samples from Alice and had the results cross-checked and verified by Birmingham Children’s Hospital and there really can be no doubt. Her count is a little on the low side still but well within the normal range for her size and age, and we can find absolutely no lymphoblasts in her blood at all. It’s as if she’s somehow leapfrogged the next eighteen months of treatment and gone right into complete remission.’
Becky glanced at David, her eyes swimming, and then back to Dr Barakhada. ‘But that’s impossible.’
He closed Alice’s file and sat back in his chair. ‘I don’t like to use the word impossible, especially when it comes to kids,’ he said. ‘There is such a thing as spontaneous remission, but it is staggeringly rare – about one in a hundred thousand patients, though that may be a conservative figure – and it isn’t really something you can hope for as a treatment option. There is some evidence to suggest that whatever mechanism is at work can be jump-started by an infection, which we know Alice had, but sometimes at the end of the day you simply have to throw your hands in the air and thank the universe for whatever it’s doing. Kids bounce. Sometimes they bounce in unpredictable directions.’
Becky put her hands to her face and wiped away the tears that insisted on spilling free. ‘So, what do we do now?’
‘What I’d like to do now is take another bone marrow sample and see if that’s clear too, and we should probably make an appointment to have her port removed. Remember that remission doesn’t mean she can’t suffer a relapse – she’ll still need all of the standard follow-up. But for the moment…’ He smiled and spread his hands.
‘Thank you, Doctor,’ said David, getting to his feet. It took a moment for Becky to join him, as if she’d forgotten how to make her legs work or she was still waiting for the bad news. She wouldn’t get that from Dr Barakhada, he thought.
No, the bad news was that they were going to have to move house. David was going to get his family as far away as possible from the people at Farrow Farm. Somehow they were
