appeared in his eyes. 'What do you really want? Have you had second thoughts? Are you trying to put me off going back?'
'Of course not, Ben.'
'Because if you've any doubts, then we'll just have to stay where we are.'
'I do want us to move. I'm sure the people there will make us feel at home. I just wanted to be certain that you do.'
'Then stop worrying.' He stroked her cheek so gently that at first she didn't realise he was wiping away a tear. 'I didn't want to say before,' he said, 'and I can't tell you why I feel this because I don't know myself, but I feel as if it'll make a new man of me.'
'Can't I keep the one I married?'
'Wait until you test the new improved model,' he said with a wink, and traced her spine with one finger to give her a delicious shiver. When his hand settled on her bottom she nestled against him, and almost at once she was asleep.
The event of the week was an offer from Kerys Thorn – twenty thousand pounds as an advance against royalties for their next two books, to which Ember would buy world rights. 'It's meant to show how much faith we have in your books,' Kerys assured the Sterlings when they called her, Ben holding the receiver between his face and Ellen's. 'We'll be acting as your agent, since you haven't got one. Let me send you a contract and if there's anything in it you don't like, give me a call.'
'Sounds fine,' Ellen mouthed, and Ben said 'Sounds fine.' The contract arrived three weeks, later, and Kerys sounded quite relieved that they were asking for changes. 'You keep the media rights by all means and double your number of complimentary copies. I'm here to keep you happy if I can.'
By then Ellen had written an icily polite letter thanking Sid Peacock for his consideration and hoping that he would be pleased to learn she had received a better offer. She had also returned to Stargrave to see how work on the house was progressing, since Dominic Milligan had asked Ben to avoid taking days off. The newly plastered walls downstairs and the floors stripped of their worn carpets made her footsteps sound as though she was walking through a series of vaults. She heard Elgin's men shifting like large birds on the roof, and once she thought she heard a voice from somewhere even higher. It must have been one of the builders on the roof, but for a moment she thought it was calling her by name. Perhaps that was why it reminded her indefinably of Ben, though the shrill voice had sounded nothing like his.
Stan Elgin offered to redecorate the house for her. Choosing carpets and wallpaper and paints in Stargrave made her feel she was already part of the town. Next day in Norwich she learned that a married couple, both teachers, had made a bid for her home. The pattern of her life and the family's was falling into place, but she couldn't help feeling wistful on behalf of the house where the children had always lived. She wondered if Ben shared her melancholy, he seemed so preoccupied that she decided not to ask.
Soon she felt happier. An elderly couple signed a lease for Ben's aunt's house, and Dominic Milligan interviewed a young woman who he thought would be perfect for the shop. She hadn't started work there when it was time for a last check of the Sterling house.
It seemed transformed. The exterior had been painted red as autumn, except for the woodwork, which was bright yellow. Ellen switched on the central heating and strolled through the house, smelling the newness. The only addition about which she might have had second thoughts was the wallpaper in the corridors and over the stairs, patterned with pines so dark you had to gaze at them to make sure they were green, but she would learn to live with it. 'Here's to you, Stan Elgin,' she said aloud, and thought she heard an echo more or less repeating her last word, though it didn't sound like her voice. On second thoughts, it must have been a voice calling someone from above the house.
The teachers had obtained a mortgage and wanted to move into the Norwich house in six weeks. Preparing for the move took the Sterlings as long: wrapping in newspaper anything which might be fragile, packing cartons until they were piled nearly to the ceiling in the rooms their contents had occupied, Ben having to lift them down again to write on each carton which room in the Stargrave house it was bound for, Ellen trying to persuade the children that they had outgrown at least a few of their toys and books… In the midst of all this Ben managed to complete the text of their new book, which he finished rewriting and sent off to Kerys the day before they would leave Norwich.
The morning was bright and cold, the sort of spring day which feels poised to revert to winter. Johnny insisted on helping the removal men to load their huge van, and then stood panting to watch his breath appear. 'We're leaving our breath behind,' he said. Margaret gazed at the daffodils blossoming beside the garden path and ran into the house to hide her tears, and Ellen let her stay in there until it was time to check that nothing had been overlooked. Once Ben had strode through the rooms as if he could hardly wait to leave, Ellen dabbed at the girl's eyes and coaxed her downstairs from her denuded room. 'It's been a good little house, but the new people will look after it. Just you wait until you see how snug we're going to be, though. It's like being in a cocoon,' she said.
THE GROWTH
'Daddy's pattern, heart and brain, Sprinkle with the golden rain For the rising of the Star.'
Algernon Blackwood, The Starlight Express
Ben dreamed of being surrounded by ice under a featureless sky. On every side of him a flat blank whiteness radiated to a perfectly circular horizon. Either the ice or something in it was aware of him. He was gazing into the ice on which he stood when it began to shine with a light colder and more pale than moonlight as whatever was beneath rose towards him, and he awoke in the dark.
He didn't cry out, but he turned to Ellen, his mouth opening before he made out that she was asleep. All at once he had so much to tell, but he was suddenly glad that he would have to keep it to himself, at least for now. He eased himself away from her and tiptoed out of the bedroom.
It was on the top floor of the house, above the children's bedrooms. Next to it was the guest room and beyond it the workroom which used to be the attic. He stood in the dark, listening to all the breathing in the house, feeling enlivened by the chill which had settled into the core of the house as it waited for the central heating to switch on, and then he inched the workroom door open.
As soon as he was in the room he saw the forest. The twilight before the October dawn must already have reached it, because as he made for the desk at the window he was able to distinguish ranks of trees, patterns developing from the dark. He sat at the desk and gazed into the forest and let thoughts manifest themselves to him.
If the anticipation he had begun to experience couldn't be put into words, the insight which had wakened it could be. He felt as if he was growing up at last. As a child he'd half believed that Edward Sterling had discovered a ritual which kept the midnight sun alight, and even as an adult he'd found the idea imaginatively appealing, but now he saw that it was nonsense: no human action could affect the sun. Edward Sterling might have witnessed such a ritual, but it made no sense to deduce that he had then set off to discover its source. If he had found anything significant in the unpopulated frozen wastes, it could only have been the reason for the ceremony – the reason why people were afraid the midnight sun might fail. if only Edward Sterling had written down what he had found! But the last words he'd written had apparently been his last wish. Once he had been fit enough to travel after being brought home to England he and his wife Catriona had journeyed north. Stargrave had apparently been intended only as an overnight stop. Perhaps the late December cold had affected his mind, because he'd risen in the night and headed for the moors, shedding his clothes as he walked. In the morning his naked corpse had been found in the centre of a grove of ancient oaks. His limbs had been flung wide as if he'd been trying to embrace the night or had been crushed by it; his eyes had been wide and pale as ice, and he might have been smiling or gritting his teeth. He'd broken his nails in the process of scratching two words in the earth in front of him: 'trees grow'. The way Ben's grandfather had told the story one night just before Christmas, those who found the corpse
