A Crown of Lights

had been reported missing, I’d have... tried harder.’

She returned from seeing Mumford out to find Jane at the kitchen table. The kid was dressed in jeans and her white fluffy sweater. She looked about ten. Until, of course, she spoke.

‘He thinks she’s dead.’

‘Police always think that, flower.’

‘I think you think she’s dead, too.’

‘I don’t think that, but I do feel guilty.’

‘You always feel guilty,’ Jane said.

24 Against the World

OLD HINDWELL POST office was a brick-built nineteenth-century building a little way down from the pub, on the opposite side of the street. Betty was there by eight-fifteen on this dry but bitter Monday morning. The newsagent side of the business opened at eight. There were no other customers inside.

‘Daily Mail, please.’

The postmistress, Mrs Eleri Cobbold, glanced quickly at Betty and went stiff.

‘None left, I’m sorry.’

‘You’ve only been open fifteen minutes.’ Betty eyed her steadily. It was the first time she’d been in here. She saw a thin-faced woman of about sixty. She saw a woman who had already read today’s Daily Mail.

‘Only got ordered copies, isn’t it?’ Mrs Cobbold swallowed. ‘Besides two extras. Which we’ve sold.’

Betty was not giving up. She glanced at the public photocopier at the other end of the shop. ‘In that case, could I perhaps borrow one of the ordered papers and make a copy of one particular page?’

Mrs Cobbold blinked nervously. ‘Well, I don’t...’

Betty sought her eyes, but Mrs Cobbold kept looking away as though her narrow, God-fearing soul was in danger. She glanced towards the door and seemed very relieved when it was opened by a slim, tweed-suited man with a neat beard.

‘Oh, good morning, Doctor.’

‘A sharp day, Eleri.’

‘Yes. Yes, indeed.’ Mrs Cobbold bent quickly below the counter and produced a Daily Mail. She didn’t look at Betty. ‘You had better take mine. Thirty-five pence, please.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes,’ Mrs Cobbold whispered.

This was ridiculous.

‘Thank you.’ Betty also bought a bottle of milk and a pot of local honey. She took her purse from her shoulder bag. She didn’t smile. ‘And if I could have a carton of bat’s blood as well, please.’

This, and the presence in the shop of the doctor, seemed to release something.

‘Take your paper and don’t come in here again, please,’ Mrs Cobbold said shrilly.

The doctor raised a ginger eyebrow.

Betty started to shake her head. ‘I really can’t believe this.’

‘And’ – Mrs Cobbold looked at her at last – ‘you can tell that husband of yours that if he wants to conduct affairs with married women, we don’t want to have to watch it on the street at night. You tell him that.’

Betty’s mouth fell open as Mrs Cobbold stared defiantly at her. The doctor smiled and held open the door for her.

Robin paced the freaking kitchen.

She wouldn’t let him fetch the paper. She didn’t trust him not to overreact if there were any comments... to behave, in fact, like a man who’d been cold-shouldered by his wife, told his artwork was a piece of shit and then stitched up by the media.

She’d been awesomely and unapproachably silent most of yesterday, like she was half out of the world, sealing herself off from the awful implications of the whole nation – worse still, the whole village – knowing where they were coming from. Implications? Like what implications? A lynch mob? The stake? Their house torched? Was this the twenty- first century or, like, 1650?

Later in the day he’d actually found her sunk into a book on the seventeenth-century witch-hunts. The chapter was headed ‘Suckling Demons’; it was about women accused of having sex with the Devil. But she wouldn’t talk about it. He just wanted to snatch away the book and feed it to the stove.

She’d hardly moved from the kitchen for the rest of the morning, drinking strong herbal tea and smoking – Robin counted – eleven cigarettes. And still he hadn’t told her the truly awful news, about Blackmore, because things were bad enough. He’d just spent the entire day trying to persuade her just to talk to him, which was like trying to lure a wounded vixen from her lair.

Was she blaming him for the truth leaking out – like he’d been down the pub handing out invitations to their next sabbat. And the journalists... well, how was he supposed to have handled them? Invite the bastards in to watch them perform the Great Rite on the hearthrug?

Some chance.

If he’d had the brains he was born with, she’d told him, her voice now inflected with hard Yorkshire – this was while they were still speaking – he’d’ve kept very quiet, not answered the door. There was no car there, so they could quite easily have been away from home.

What? This had made him actually start pulling at his hair. Like, how the fuck was he supposed to know it was the god-damned media at the door? Might have been insurance salesmen, the Jehovah’s freaking Witnesses. How could he have known?

No reply. No reply either when he’d twice called George Webster and Vivvie, up in Manchester, to see if they knew anything about this damn TV show. He’d left two messages on their answering machine.

And then yesterday, after a lunch of tomato soup and stale rolls, Betty had said she needed time to think and went outside to walk alone, leaving Robin eking out the very last of the sodden pine wood. Maybe she went to the church to try and communicate with the Reverend freaking Penney. Robin wasn’t interested any more. When she came back, she started moving furniture around and drinking yet more herbal tea.

Maybe there was something on her mind he didn’t know about. Dare he ask? What was the damn use?

It was like she was waiting for something even worse to happen.

This was all down to Ellis. No question there. It was Ellis sicked the press on them.

Goddamn Christian bastard.

She came in from the post office and laid a newspaper on the kitchen table. She didn’t even look at Robin. ‘I’m going to change,’ she said and went out. He heard her going upstairs.

The room felt cold. The colours had faded.

This was bad, wasn’t it? It was going to be worse than he could have imagined, although he accepted that he maybe hadn’t endeared himself to the Mail hacks by going for their camera like that.

He looked at the paper. At least it wasn’t on the front. Nervously, he turned over the first page.

Holy shit...

Just the whole of page three, was all.

Down the right-hand side was a long picture of St Michael’s Church, in silhouette against a sunset sky, the tower starkly framed by winter trees. It was a good picture, black and white. The headline above it, however, was just crazy: ‘Witches possess parish church. “Nightmare evil in our midst,” warns rector’.