Other than her practice session with Luke, Orla hadn’t photographed a person since before her acid attack and the thought of doing so now terrified her, but she needn’t have worried about drawing attention to herself; everybody seemed preoccupied with doing their own thing. Everybody except Mildred Smy, whom Orla had been introduced to by Bill just before the village hall opened its doors to the public. She was heading towards Orla now. A handsome woman in her late sixties, she was wearing a smart dress in a particularly hideous shade of green and her platinum hair was swept up in a severe chignon.
‘Ah, Miss Kendrick! Is there anything I can get you? A cup of tea, perhaps? A slice of cake?’
‘I’m fine, thank you.’
‘Well, you’re doing a sterling job. Sterling!’ She gave a tight, uneasy smile and then bustled off into the room again.
Orla took a deep breath. She could do this, she told herself. These were good people – they weren’t a threat to her. They were her neighbours. But then a man walked up the steps onto the stage and called for everyone’s attention.
‘We’re about to announce the prizes!’ he called out. ‘Please help me in gathering everybody inside.’
Orla turned to see a few people leaving the village hall and realised that the room hadn’t been full to capacity, as it had seemed to her. But it was about to get very full indeed as a surge of people filed in from the tables of bric-a-brac and the entertainments outside. The noise level rose steadily and the warm day seemed even warmer now. Orla looked around the room in panic. The door seemed a very long way away, but she knew she had to get through it.
‘Orla?’
She heard Luke calling from somewhere behind her as she fled. She didn’t stop, pushing her way through the throng until she was out of the village hall, and into the relative peace and space of the road beyond.
‘Orla!’
Her heart was thudding and she felt hot and chilled at the same time as her breath left her body in great gasps.
‘Are you okay?’ Luke was beside her now, his hand on her shoulder. ‘Let’s get you home.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s okay.’
‘I couldn’t do it.’
‘It’s fine. Nobody will mind.’
‘But I made a commitment.’
‘Don’t worry. You did your best.’
Orla felt her eyes filling with tears of frustration at her failure.
‘Orla – really – you did so well. I’m so proud of you!’
Orla let Luke take her back to the castle, and relief flooded her as soon as she was through the door. What had she been thinking? She knew she should never have agreed to such an assignment, and yet there was a part of her that longed to reach out and be a normal, functioning member of society again.
Only perhaps not just yet, a little voice said.
Luke made her a cup of tea and Orla sat in the blissful silence of the great hall, One Ear by her side, as if he knew she needed the physical comfort of his great body.
When Orla’s mobile rang, she picked it up and looked at the screen. It was her mother. Quickly, without giving it a moment’s thought, Orla switched her phone off. Today had tested her quite enough already.
The next day, Luke returned to his work in the castle, which meant venturing down to the basement and the mysterious section of board which somebody had seen fit to place against the stonework. He wasn’t sure what he was going to find behind it. It could be anything really.
Carefully, slowly, he began to prise the board away from the wall, revealing the pale Caen stone which had been hidden for so long. Why would somebody just section a random length of wall, he wondered? It didn’t make any sense. At least, it didn’t until he pulled the last of the board away.
For a stunned moment, Luke just stared. What he’d revealed left him speechless, and he gazed at it for a long time, not quite knowing what he was looking at. He certainly hadn’t ever come across anything like this before in the Home Counties he usually worked in.
There was only one thing he could do.
‘Orla?’ he shouted from the basement. Then, climbing a few steps, he shouted again. ‘ORLA!’ Honestly, he thought, there really should be some kind of bell or phone system in the castle for such emergencies. Luckily, One Ear heard his bellowing and started to bark, and it wasn’t long before he heard Orla’s footsteps.
‘Luke? You down there?’
‘Yes! Come and see what I’ve found.’
One Ear arrived first, charging down the spiral steps like a hairy cannonball. He was quickly followed by Orla, whose face was flushed from her exertion.
‘What is it? What’s happened?
‘I think you’re going to want to see this.’ He motioned towards the wall. ‘Remember it was boarded up? Well, this was what was behind it.’
Orla’s mouth fell open as she stared in wide-eyed wonder. ‘What on earth?’
‘Did you know this was here?’ Luke asked.
‘No. I’m not even sure what it is.’
‘Some kind of green man?’ Luke guessed.
Orla inched forward, bending down to take a closer look. The figure was no more than a foot high, carved from the beautifully pale Caen stone and looking so alive that Luke could well imagine him leaping out from the wall at any moment.
‘I’m not sure it is a green man,’ Orla said. ‘There aren’t any leaves around him.’
Luke took a step closer. ‘He seems to be made completely of hair.’
Orla shook her head. ‘Not just hair – scales too.’
‘Really?’
