Cars which worked perfectly well on arrival succumb to the gremlin and die. Like Steve, the music journalist, with his shiny bomber jacket, tales of record company parties and passion for glam rock, the ‘next big thing’, he says. It took Julian days to fix his flash car. Marianne who wanted to gather sheep dung for her collage, had to abandon her camper van and take the train home, dragging her sack of manure behind her. And Erica who arrived with her toddler Adrian (named after the Mersey poet apparently) and insisted on sleeping in a yurt in the garden. She would only eat raw food. Maggie couldn’t remember how she finally got away. Maggie sighs. It has to be said there is a shred of guilt that she didn’t start the nursing course. It’s never nice when your mother bursts into tears on the phone. But you have to make your own decisions about life and she doesn’t want to be a nurse anymore. Staying here with everyone else feels right. Who knows? Take life as it comes. Julian and David were talking last night about staying on Wyld Farm for a year or two. Back to the land, get city kids to come and run a holiday scheme, teach them about farming…
That’s when Maggie remembers the chickens. It’s her job to shut them into the hen house every night.
‘Shit!’ She scrambles to her feet. ‘Got to let the chickens out, be back in a bit!’ she shouts to anyone who may be listening.
She heads for the orchard, grateful to escape the tedium of work though she hasn’t actually done any yet.
‘I feel like a jailer when I have to shut the hens up in that tiny house,’ she’d complained last night at supper.
Everyone’s chairs were rammed up against the Aga; they were too fagged to make a fire. Someone passed her a joint.
‘At least they’ve got their b-b-boyfriend, the big c-c-cock, with them. I’m sure they don’t m-m-mind,’ Simon joked.
Was he flirting with her? She hoped so. They’d slept together several times since she’d been here but in the morning he would behave as though nothing had happened.
‘Maggie and the c-c-cock keep the hens safe from the b-b-big bad f-f-foxes!’
She adored Simon’s stammer. When he stuck on a word, his eyes would fix hers. Resisting the impulse to say the word for him, she would gaze at him mouthing it.
‘I’m not sure there are foxes round here. I’ve never seen one,’ she replied.
‘T-t-tell that to the hunt!’
‘I want the hens to be free, not locked up in the dark.’
‘You think that if you b-b-believe something hard enough that it w-w-won’t happen. That’s k-k-kooky.’
‘You’re teasing me,’ she pouted. His grin made her lustful.
Maggie strolls past the farmhouse kitchen window and waves.
Amy grimaces in reply; she’s struggling with the mangle on the washing machine, wringing water out of a bedsheet. Such an old-fashioned contraption, there’s no twin-tub here.
Maggie heads through the gate into the orchard. The fruit trees are bare of leaves now. She remembers seeing them for the first time when the boughs were weighed down with fruit.
It’s then that she sees it – the hen house – flipped over on its side. Strewn across the grass, the headless bodies and bloody entrails of the chickens. Hand clamped on mouth, Maggie runs howling back to the farmhouse.
12
With each station passing, the world looks more cluttered and less colourful. Shops and houses, roads packed with nose-to-tail cars, people everywhere and the only animals are dogs tethered to their owners. Amy already misses Wyld Farm and she only left an hour ago. She wonders vaguely if she is silly to miss a cow. Will Simon remember to milk Daisy?
Amy’s teeth feel gritty. Her headache, caused in part by last night’s party but also the thought of seeing her father again, is thumping in time to the train. The prospect of five whole days alone with him is not appealing.
Amy slips off her clogs and curls her feet up on the seat. Where will they open their presents? Sitting on her parents’ bed on Christmas morning without her mother will be weird.
The ticket conductor examines her ticket. ‘Going home for Christmas, are you?’
‘Yes, I am.’ Talking might calm her nerves. ‘My father sent me the money for the ticket.’
‘Did he now? That’s nice of him. Mum and Dad want you home, I s’pect.’
His words hit like stones.
She imagines what Christmas Day will be like on the farm. Lunch will start as daylight fades. The kitchen will be candlelit and warm. Seymour will carve the goose and dig out the stuffing he made earlier, Julian will hand round bowls of vegetables and potatoes while Simon stirs the gravy. Stella will…Amy sighs. Stella will drift about in a splendid frock weaving mistletoe between the glasses and scattering holly berries.
How she wishes she could be there too! But there was no question of leaving her father on his own the first Christmas since Shirley died. The possibility had crossed her mind briefly but she dismissed it as unkind when an envelope arrived with the train fare and a note from her father.
David and Maggie had been summoned home, too. Furious with them both for ‘dropping out’ as she called it, their mother had not sent them money for their fares, only demands. They had to borrow cash from Seymour. They were travelling home today, too. Suddenly her heart leaps. At the end of the platform, Amy can see her mother surrounded by a crowd of people. Shirley is waving gently at a departing train, straining to be seen, her face lit by smiles.
Amy knows that it cannot be Shirley. Shirley is dead. But something primeval in her muscles and
