“Fucking hell.” She took a long, deep breath, waiting for the nausea to retreat. “What a bloody mess, Mum. Honestly.”
Her mind turned back to the screwed-up page, thinking of her mother’s mental state in the days before she took her own life. What had she been thinking? It was hard to imagine her mum—a woman with near religious feelings about the use of coasters and bookmarks—tearing out a page from a book, let alone crumpling it up like a piece of rubbish. But that was the dark heart of it all, the frightening truth Heather didn’t want to look at directly: her mother hadn’t been in her right mind. Something had stepped in and taken her reason from her; some cruel, lethal stranger had taken up residence inside her mother’s head. “None of this makes any sense to me. None of it.”
Shortly after she’d been called to take possession of her mother’s body, the police had put her in touch with a counsellor, who had been very kind and spent a lot of time talking about shock, about how people with severe depression could be very good at hiding it, even from their closest loved ones. Heather had listened patiently, nodding through her own numbness, and though she had understood perfectly what the counsellor had been saying, even then it had felt … wrong. Those old instincts had started to twitch, the ones that told her when a story was bunk and when a story had legs.
“You’re being ridiculous,” she told herself, listening to how cold and small her voice sounded. “Paranoid.”
Somewhere out on the road in front of the house, someone beeped a car horn, and she jumped. There were hot tears on her face, which she wiped away irritably with the back of her hand. After a moment, she slid her phone from her pocket to see a text message notification winking up at her.
Hello stranger—word is you’re back in Balesford. Want to meet up? I was so sorry to hear about your mum, I hope you’re ok xxx
Nikki Appiah. She looked around at the dark trees, wondering if the neighbors were watching and reporting on her somehow from between their net curtains. She sniffed, blinking rapidly to clear her eyes before typing a reply.
Are you on the neighborhood watch or what? Yeah I’m back for a bit. Are you around now? Spoons? I need a drink.
She paused, then added a green-faced vomit emoticon.
Nikki’s reply popped up almost immediately.
It’s eleven in the morning, Hev. But yes, let’s meet in town. It’s been too long, and it would be good to see your face (even if it’s green). See you in an hour? Xxx
Heather slipped the phone away. It was growing darker, and the air was beginning to smell sharp and mineral—it would rain soon, and it would be good to be elsewhere. The wind picked up, rattling through the tall bushes and making them sway, and for the barest moment it seemed to Heather that there was too much movement there, as though something was choosing to move with the wind, to hide its footsteps. She peered at the darker shadows, trying to discern a shape, then turned to the back door, dismissing it as her imagination looking for things to be scared of. The house still looked blank and unknowable, a little box of mundanity.
“What were you thinking, Mum?”
Her own voice sounded sad and strange to her, so she wiped away the last of the tears from her cheeks, and headed back through the house to the rented car.
CHAPTER3
THE WIND HAD freshened through the morning, driving away the clouds and leaving behind a scrubbed-clean sort of sky—chilly yet cheering. Beverly was pleased. Her grandchildren, Tess and James, would get a few hours out in the garden at least. Like all kids these days they were obsessed with their phones and their gadgets, but Beverly was proud to note that they could still be tempted out into her garden when the weather was fine, and with that in mind she shrugged her coat on—still the thin one, autumn hadn’t quite started to bite yet—and made her way out the back gate. Her garden was beautiful, but it had no horse chestnut trees, whereas the fields out back had two very fine ones, and she wanted to see if they were dropping yet.
Ahead of her were the line of trees that cupped the field, the two huge horse chestnuts and a cluster of oak, birch, and elm. Under the sunshine the leaves were as bright as stained-glass, green and yellow, red and gold, and yes, there were the thorny green casings scattered on the grass, spilling open their milky pale insides. Beverly began stuffing her pockets with fallen conkers, picking up only those that had survived the fall unscathed, and keeping an extra eye out for cheese cutters—conkers with a flat side, which were especially good for destroying your opponent. Once or twice, she found casings that had only partially split open. These she pressed on one side with her boot, smiling with satisfaction as the conkers popped free, all smooth and newly born. One of these produced a particularly fine cheese cutter.
“I’ll keep that one for myself, I think.” Beverly slipped the conker into an inside pocket. Conkers was no fun at all if she couldn’t beat at least one of her grandkids. It
