16

Going Forward

THE HOUSE OF Puck, the Pokehouse, where will-o-wisps were wont to lead travelers astray—and cause police officers to break traffic regulations with extreme prejudice. I’d told Dominic to floor it, and that’s just what he’d done.

Whoever had smacked Derek Lacey on the side of the head, and my money was on Victoria Lacey in the kitchen with the bottle of Baileys, had a good twenty minute head-start. But, since they hadn’t taken a car, we might have a chance to cut them off—literally at the pass, as it happened.

The big Nissan roared as we did a ton down the B4632 toward Mortimer’s Cross. And, trust me, that is not something you want to do without an ejector seat. Behind us I saw lights and sirens as assets started piling in from Leominster—fuck knew what DCI Windrow was going to make of this.

“I think we’re going to be asked some questions,” I said.

“What’s with the ‘we,’ kemosabe?” said Dominic. “I’m planning to blame you for everything.”

He made a sudden right into a turn I couldn’t even see, and we went bouncing up a slope. I caught a quick flash of an English Heritage sign and then we slipped about on a rough track until Dominic told me to get ready to open a five-bar gate. So I leaned out the window and knocked it off its hinges with an impello. The Nissan bounced noticeably as we ran over the flattened gate.

“That,” said Dominic, “was not compliant with the countryside code.”

As far as I could tell, we were bouncing across an open field—ahead of us something dull and metallic reflected in the headlights.

“Another gate,” yelled Dominic, and I leaned out and knocked that one down as well. The staff seemed to ripple under my hand as I used it, purring as the metal five-bar gate fell down flat with no fuss whatsoever.

Then we were jolting down a tunnel of trees, with flashes of light gray to our left. I realized we were on the same path that Zoe had followed with baby Nicole over a decade ago. One that really wasn’t designed to be driven down at speed.

I saw pale faces suddenly caught in the headlights—so did Dominic, and he hit the brakes. The Nissan skidded, fishtailed sideways toward the riverbank before recovering, and slowed to a halt a couple of meters short of the figures.

It was substitute-Nicole and Victoria. The woman had bound the girl’s hands with what looked like duct tape and wound a piece around her lower face to gag her.

We climbed out of the Nissan and approached carefully.

“You can’t stop me,” she screamed and started dragging the girl up the path.

When faced with a low-level hostage situation your first task is to calm the hostage taker down long enough to find out what they want. Then you can lie to them convincingly until you negotiate the hostage back, or are in a position to dog pile the perpetrator. Dominic got his torch out and kept it on Victoria’s legs to avoid intimidating her—that could come later.

“What can’t we stop you doing?” I asked.

Victoria gave me a puzzled look.

“You can’t stop me getting Nicole back,” she said.

I looked at the girl who was not-Nicole but probably her half-sister. She glared back over the duct tape as if it was my fault. Which technically, I suppose, it probably was.

So it was a hostage swap—which meant if we were clever we might be able to get Nicole back and keep not-Nicole as well.

“Who are you making the swap with?” I asked.

We were emerging from the tunnel of trees. To our right the treeless slope of Pokehouse Wood swept up the ridge. The white poles that protected the new saplings thrust up among brambles and the stands of foxglove stood gray and trembling in the moonlight. I smelled horse sweat and malevolence—I didn’t think we were alone.

“The lady who owns Princess Luna . . .” she said. “She came to see me last night. I thought it was a dream. But it couldn’t have been a dream, could it? Because you never remember your dreams, do you?”

Victoria started to drag the girl up the diagonal forestry track—it was slow going, not least because not-Nicole had gone limp in an effort to stop her.

“This one is your biological daughter,” I said.

Victoria stopped dead.

“No,” she said.

“Remember when Zoe ran off with the baby?” I asked. “This is where she came.”

“For god’s sake, why?”

“For the attention I suppose—”

Victoria cut me off with a disgusted sound.

“Of course for the attention,” she snapped. “I mean why did she think it was a good idea to swap Nicky?”

“That was an accident,” I said. “She didn’t even notice it go down.”

“Oh, well,” she said. “That makes everything okay.” She shook not-Nicole roughly by the arm. “This isn’t mine,” she said. “Blood isn’t everything—I want my daughter back.”

“So do I,” I said. “And when the other half of this swap-meet turns up, maybe we can do some bargaining.”

“Um,” said Dominic urgently. “That would be about now.”

I can’t say they materialized out of thin air, but it was as if when I turned my head they arrived in my blind spot, so that when I looked back in that direction they were there. It was creepy, and it was definitely showing off.

And they were real, there in Pokehouse Wood, on the last of the quarter moon. They were flesh and blood. Human shaped but tall and thin, with long delicate faces and hands and black eyes. A woman stood ahead of us dressed in armor made not of metal, but of overlapping stone scales, slate possibly, polished to a bright blue-gray sheen.

Like the scales of a fish, Zoe had said.

Victoria might have called her a lady but I knew a Queen when I’m within genuflection distance.

She wore a silver circlet upon her head with a single large sapphire at her brow. In her hand she held a straight spear of white wood tipped with a leaf-shaped flint blade. I’ve seen enough Time Team to know how sharp a blade like that could be. From her shoulders hung a cloak of white wool, and sheltered under one hem I could see a small figure with a pale worried face. The real Nicole, I presumed.

For a mad moment I considered just stepping up and arresting the lot of them—as a plan it at least had the virtue of simplicity. Its principal drawback being that the Queen was flanked on either side by her beasts, real and stinking. I could see the sheen of sweat on their dappled flanks, and the one on the left had a nasty cut on its shoulder—a streak of dark blood down its side. That one had a particularly mad look in its eye, just for me.

“There’s a pair of good looking IC7 boys behind us,” said Dominic softly. “Carrying bows and arrows. And another two upslope.”

“Good fields of fire,” I said.

“That’s what I thought.”

“We’re okay as long as we don’t do anything stupid.”

“You’re giving me this advice now?” said Dominic.

Victoria grabbed not-Nicole by the shoulders and held her out at arm’s length toward the Queen.

“I’ve brought this one,” she said. “Now give me back my daughter.”

The Queen narrowed her eyes and suddenly I knew I’d seen that expression on someone else’s face. She twitched back her cloak and gently laid a long-fingered hand on Nicole’s shoulder.

Victoria shoved not-Nicole, who was having none of it and refused to budge.

“Move,” hissed Victoria, and the Queen’s lips twisted into a thin smile. She shook her spear and not-Nicole’s shoulders slumped and her head drooped—she took a step forward.

What does it profit a copper, I thought, if he should gaineth one hostage but loseth another?

I put a werelight into the air above our heads, the biggest I’d ever attempted. The staff hummed like a beehive and the light came out the size of a weather balloon and bright enough to get three paragraphs in UKUFOindex.com and a special feature in the Fortean Times.

I’d been going for sunlight, and it rolled over us like a sudden summer, painting the unicorns in pinks and whites, rippling like an oil slick across the scales of the Queen’s armor and flashing off the sapphire at her brow.

“This is the police,” I said. “Everybody needs to keep calm and stay where they are.”

“You moron,” shouted Victoria.

The Queen turned her eyes on me and I felt the power of her regard push and pull and shove at me as if it were a festival crowd.

“You wouldn’t believe the number of people who’ve tried that on me,” I said. “I’m afraid you’re just going to have to talk instead.”

The pale flawless skin of her brow ruffled, and fuck me if I didn’t recognize that expression—every single time I failed to finish what was put in front of me for supper at the Folly. So far the Queen had kept her gob shut, but I was willing to bet she had a mouth full of sharp teeth and, behind them, a long and prehensile tongue.

I laughed for sheer delight at having that question answered.

Now I knew what to look for, the similarities to Molly were obvious. Not so much the physical, but the way they held themselves, the way they moved as if they were standing still and the world was obligingly rearranging itself around them.

So Molly was fae or, even better, this particular kind of fae—whatever this kind of fae was. And so we progress in our knowledge of the universe step by step, pebble by pebble.

“Give me my child,” shouted Victoria. The Queen glanced at her, and Victoria fell suddenly silent and slumped to her knees.

“Stop that,” I said.

The Queen looked back at me and inclined her head.

“I can’t let you have either of the children,” I said. And, because I was raised to be polite, “Sorry.”

The Queen’s expression went from annoyance to contempt, and on either side her beasts stirred, stamped their hooves and lowered their heads.

I fixed my eyes on my unicorn, the one with the bleeding wound on its shoulder, and feinted with my staff. It flinched and then backed away a couple of steps before rearing up on its hind legs with a frightened whinny.

The Queen shot it a poisonous look and I thought, Just wait till she gets you alone. You’re in so much trouble. The unicorn came down at her unvoiced command, but it stayed noticeably nervous.

Then the Queen turned back to me and smiled—this time showing her teeth.

And suddenly there were at least a dozen more armored fae standing among the foxgloves and between the trees that grew down by the riverbank. They wore the same armor of blue-gray slate and in their hands they held, half drawn, meter-long bows.

I took a deep breath.

“Peter,” said Dominic. “Can you even spell de-escalate?”

And I exhaled slowly.

“Let’s not do anything hasty,” I said, and lowered my staff.

I heard Dominic mutter something weird about a throne of blood. I looked at the girl half wrapped in the Queen’s cloak, at her half-sister bound and fuming, and her mother on her knees and weeping silently. My mind was suddenly clear and free of doubt and, given what I was about to do, possibly devoid of thought.

“My name is Peter Grant, I am a sworn constable of the crown and an heir to the forms and wisdoms of Sir Isaac Newton,” I said. “I offer myself in exchange for the children, the mother and my friend. Take me—let everyone else go.”

She made me wait, didn’t she? Of course she did.

Then her smile grew wider and she inclined her head in gracious acceptance.

“Dominic,” I said.

“You idiot,” said Dominic.

“Take the girls and Mrs. Lacey and get out of here as fast as you can and go to the nearest place indoors where there’s lots of people—a pub will do,” I said.

The Queen banged the butt of her spear against the ground.

“I’ll be right with you,” I said, and then to Dominic, “You’ve got to get a message to my governor, DCI Nightingale. Tell him that wherever they’re taking me it will be via Pyon Wood Camp, okay? The castle must be somewhere beyond that, in Wales I think.”

Two sharp raps with the haft of the spear—no more time.

“They don’t like the Roman road,” I said quickly, and handed Dominic my staff. “That would be a good place to intercept.”

Before Dominic could say anything I stepped forward until I was between Victoria and not-Nicole and the Queen. The unicorn I’d injured snorted and pawed the ground—I gave it the eye.

“Now the girl,” I said.

The Queen nodded cheerfully and set Nicole in motion toward her mother. She passed me, a small figure dressed in what looked like a woolen shift. I heard her mum sob with relief.

“Dom?” I called without looking round. “Have they cleared out of your way?”

“Yes, they have,” said Dominic.

“Then off you go,” I said and stepped forward.


You swear an oath when you become a police officer—you promise to serve the Queen in the office of constable with fairness, integrity and impartiality, and that you will cause the peace to be kept and preserved and prevent all offenses against people and property. The very next day you start making the first of the many minor and messy compromises required to get the Job done. But sooner or later the Job walks up to you, pins you against the wall, looks you in the eye and asks you how far you’re willing to go to prevent all offenses. Asks just what did your oath, your attestation, really mean to you?

I could have bottled it and not offered the swap. No disciplinary inquiry would have found me lacking in my duty had I merely sought to contain the situation and wait for back-up—in fact that would have been proper procedure.

And it’s not like my colleagues wouldn’t have understood. We’re not soldiers or fanatics, although I think I would have heard the whispering behind my back in the canteen whether it was really there or not.

But sometimes the right thing to do is the right thing to do, especially when a child is involved. And I reckon there wasn’t a copper I’ve worked with who wouldn’t have made the choice I did. I’m not saying they would have been pushing their way to the front of the queue, and they certainly wouldn’t have done it with a glad song on their lips, but when push comes to shove . . . ?

So I did it. Because I’m a sworn constable and it was the right thing to do.

Plus I fully expected Nightingale to come rescue me.

Eventually.

I hoped.

They followed the Queen as she turned and walked up the logging track. The unicorns wheeled and cantered ahead. Her heralds, I decided, and the manifestation of her desires. Around me the rest of the party moved in a loose formation, some on the track, some drifting silently among the saplings. It was hard to pin down how many there were.

I heard the Nissan start up and, after what sounded like a slightly desperate three-point turn, roar away. The engine sounded weirdly muffled, but at the time I just put that down to distance and the intervening trees.

Either we turned off the logging track or it petered out, because soon we were walking a narrow trail that threaded between mature trees. There was some moonlight to see by, but I found it hard to keep up and the Queen had to stop a number of times to wait for me. Whenever she did, I heard a familiar rhythmic hissing sound from her retainers—I recognized it from Molly. Laughter.

After a long time we emerged onto the bare crown of a hill. One of the unicorns crowded me then, pushing its shoulder against me and guiding me roughly into a hollow between two grassy banks. There the Queen and her retainers made camp, sitting down and wrapping their gray cloaks around themselves. There was a chill in the air, so when one of the retainers offered me a cloak I took it gratefully, although it did smell suspiciously of horse.

The unicorns took station at either end of the hollow and, under their watchful eyes, I slept.

I dreamed that I’d pulled over a flying saucer and was trying to determine whether to charge the occupant with driving while unfit under section 4 of the Road Traffic Act (1988). Which was stupid really because it was a flying saucer and they’d have to be charged as being unfit for duty under part 5 of the Railways and Transport Safety Act 2003. Not to mention breaches of various CAA regulations, and of course Illegal Entry into the UK under the 1971 Act.

I woke to gray skies and damp grass.

Croft Ambrey, that’s where I reckoned I was, in one of the ditches that put the “multi” into multivallate Iron Age hill fort. I smelled wood smoke and, looking over, saw a group of gray-cloaked figures crouched around a campfire.

Never mind Nightingale, I thought, the National Trust are going to have conniptions about that. Quietly, I got up. And angling away from the campfire, I made my way up the side of the lower of the banks. If I was at Croft Ambrey it might be possible to make a dash down the slope toward Yatton. Despite the low cloud it was humid and I was sweating by the time I reached the top.

Stretching away below me was an unbroken sea of trees. Not the ordered ranks of pine and western hemlock, but the spreading multi-colored tops of oak and ash and elder and all the traditional species of the ancient woodland. I recognized the outline of the hills and valleys from Google Maps and from when I’d stood at the Whiteway Head further up the ridge.

But there was no farmland in sight, no white gouge of quarry works at Leinthall Earls, no village of Yatton—so no Stan sniffing her chemicals and listening to death metal. This was the Wyldewood, spelt with a Y, that once covered the Island of Britain and would again, once the pesky tool-using primates had done the decent thing and exterminated themselves.

I didn’t think it was time travel because faintly, like an old scar, I could see the line of the Roman road running north up the valley from Aymestrey toward Wigmore. And, beyond the road, the solitary mound where Pyon Wood Camp had stood—only here was Hannah’s castle, blue and orange and, well, I personally would have said salmon rather than pink. A grouping of slender bulbous-topped turrets with rounded roof caps. It looked like a cross between something on the album cover of a progressive rock band and a termite tower.

I realized then that the fae didn’t coexist with us within the material world. This was a parallel dimension of some kind. The sort that mathematicians and cosmologists get all excited about and smugly inform you that your tiny maths-deficient brain couldn’t get a grip on. But I had a grip on it all right. A terrifying, sick-making grasp of my predicament. Because I didn’t think Nightingale was going to be able to get me out of this.

“Fuck me,” I said out loud, “I’m in fairyland.”

I heard a hissing sound behind me and turned to find the Queen having a good laugh.

They were realer in their own world, particularly the retainers, whose faces showed acne scars and blemishes. Their fingernails were dirty and their armor sported the occasional cracked scale or sign of obvious field maintenance. The unicorns were still beasts the size of carthorses, with the temperament of a Doberman Pinscher and a great big offensive weapon in the middle of their foreheads.

The Queen scared me most of all now that her cloak smelled of damp wool and had a splatter of mud along its hem. As she turned to organize her retainers breaking camp she seemed far too solid for comfort.

It’s amazing what irrelevancies you find yourself thinking when it’s too late. Because as I looked over the Wyldewood at the disturbingly organic towers of the castle on Pyon Mount, I realized what gift it was that I could give to Hugh Oswald in exchange for his staffs.

We should open up the school, I thought, if only for a day. Bring down Hugh and all his mates and show them the names that Nightingale carved onto the walls. Let them know that they are remembered, now, while some of them are still alive, before it’s too late.

And bring their children and their grandchildren—even if, like Mellissa, some of them were definitely a bit odd. In fact, especially the ones that were odd. That way they would know that they were not alone and me, Dr. Walid and Nightingale could get a good look at them and take notes for future reference.

And why stop there—let’s bring the lot of them. Beverley, the rivers, Zach the goblin, the Quiet People, all the strange and illusive members of the demi-monde and show them the wall and have an alfresco buffet.

Get all of us in the same place so we could all get a good look at each other and come to some kind of proper arrangement. One that we can all live with.

The day was warming up by the time we headed downslope and into the valley where Yatton definitely no longer existed. Being really real hadn’t put a crimp in the way the fae moved, though, gliding among the trees even as I stumbled down the path and used both hands to steady myself. It got easier once the slope eased, but the trail stayed narrow and twisty and the canopy of the trees blocked out the sky.

After fifteen minutes of crossing the valley floor, the Queen held up her hand and the band stopped. She made a quick gesture at two of her retainers, one of whom pulled a rope from his pack while the other mimed holding his hands out in front of him, wrists pressed together. I glanced at the Queen who gave me a weary “just don’t get any ideas” look and so I held out my hands as directed. The other retainer wrapped the rope around my wrists, tied it with some care to keep the circulation going but without giving me any leeway, and looped the other end around his own wrist.

I felt a moment of excitement. They hadn’t been concerned to restrict my movements before, but the fact that they felt they had to now indicated that they feared I might try to escape. Which implied that there might be a way to escape nearby.

It was the road. The Roman road. Those imperial fuckers had put their mark on the landscape, all right. Even to the point where it impinged into fairyland. Had that been their intention, to break up the native fae and ease their conquest of the material world? Or had they just liked straight lines and not cared about the effect?

Maybe the road coexisted in both the mundane and the faerie worlds. Perhaps a bright young man who was quick on his feet might have it away down that road to safety. The Queen must think so, otherwise why bind my wrists? She took the other end of the rope in her own hand—I took that as a mark of respect.

Roman engineers like a nice wide bed, and a cross-country road was often eight meters across with the undergrowth cleared back for another five or six meters either side. I saw it first as a lightening in the wooded gloom and then as a long straight clearing. The Wyldewood had done its best—saplings and undergrowth had claimed the road almost to the middle. But none of the mature trees intruded further than a meter.

The band paused in the shadows at the edge. The Queen cocked her head as if listening to something far away. Beside her the unicorns stamped uneasily. Then she whipped around to face me—a question in her eyes.

“I can’t hear anything,” I said.

But then I did.

A buzzing sound that dopplered past my ear. A bee and not a fat bumblebee, I saw, but a slender working girl from a hive. She swerved past one of the unicorns which flicked its mane angrily at her, then back to me where she circled once around my head and then buzzed off back down the line of the Roman road.

I thought I heard the sound of tiny trumpets.

I glanced at the Queen who waited, still as a statue, for at least a minute before raising her hand to gesture us forward. But before we could move there was a crashing in the undergrowth and a huge white deer as tall as me at the shoulder thundered past the spot where we waited. And, as if he had been a pathfinder, a wave of animals followed. I spotted wild pig, more deer, rabbits, red coats and white, brown fur and russet red. Birds whirred overhead, screaming and crying.

By the pricking of my thumbs, I thought, something wicked this way comes.

The Queen let out a low snarl. And then I heard it.

It sounded like a train, like a steam train—huffing and blowing. The flood of animals reduced down to a trickle. I watched a cat the size of a Labrador zigzagging in panic before scuttling around us and vanishing into the undergrowth. I looked down the clear path toward where the noise came from, and saw the forest changing. Trees were falling backward away from the road, their trunks splintering and fragmenting as they crashed down, so that by the time they hit the ground they had gone to dust. Gray stones the size of my fist were pushing themselves up through the forest floor like stop-motion mushrooms.

The Queen screamed in anguish as her unicorns jittered and skipped back.

I heard marching feet and smelled wet iron and rotting fish as the old Roman road ripped through the forest like a new wound.

The Queen pulled me closer and then, with a savage yank on the rope, drove me to my knees. She shoved her face in mine, lips bared over sharp teeth and her restless tongue snapping like a whip around her lips.

“Make her stop,” she hissed.

“Make who stop?” I asked.

“Make her stop,” she hissed and grabbed my head and jerked it round until I could see the engine bearing down on us. I recognized then the black iron painted with crimson and forest green livery and saw the name written on the canopy—Faerie Queen. The driver was still hidden behind the pistons, spinning bits and pipes and struts. But I knew, suddenly, who had come to rescue me.

“Oh boy,” I said. “You’s in trouble now!”

I’ll say this for the Queen. She was brave—or possibly stupid. It’s easy to mistake the two. She stood her ground while all her retainers fled alongside the other animals of the forest. She kept me on my knees by her side as the huge iron machine huffed and hissed and clanked and lurched to an uncertain stop beside us.

We waited for what seemed like a long time as the engine ticked and whirred and let off occasional mysterious bursts of steam. There was a clang from inside the driver’s compartment and a familiar voice said, “Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck.”

Then silence.

Then Beverley Brook stepped onto the footplate and pointed a shotgun straight at the Queen’s head—I recognized the Purdey from my trunk. It was nice to see it getting an airing.

Beverley herself was wearing an oversized leather jerkin and jeans. Her dreads had been tied into a plait down her back and a pair of antique leather and brass goggles were pushed up onto her brow.

“Put your hands on your head,” she said, “and step away from the boyfriend.”

The Queen hissed and gripped the rope harder.

“I don’t care,” said Beverley slowly. “He is not free to make such a bargain.”

“Nonetheless,” hissed the Queen, “he made a bargain and he must keep it.”

“Ladies,” I said.

“Peter,” said Beverley, “you stay the fuck out of this.”

She reshouldered the shotgun.

“I’ve loaded this particular gun with scrap iron,” she said. “Now, I don’t know if a shot to the head will kill you or not. But just consider how much fun we can have finding out.”

While they were chatting, I created a little shield and, very carefully, sliced off the ropes around my wrist. The Queen felt when they went slack and turned to grab me but Beverley shouted, “No!” And she thought better of it. She watched sullenly as I picked my way to the traction engine and climbed aboard—managing to burn myself just the once on hot metal.

“The railings,” said Beverley. “Keep your hands on the railings.”

When I was onboard Beverley ducked back into the cab, pulled what she called the reversing lever, checked the single brassbound gage and pulled a second lever. The Faerie Queen lurched into reverse.

As we backed away, I heard the Queen, the real Queen, shriek with frustration. But even as she did so, the sound began to grow fainter. As it faded, the sun came out and the trees that had crowded the road melted away like dew until we were reversing up the good old A4410 and overlooking the hedgerows to the calm and civilized fields beyond.

The clouds had gone and so had the termite castle.

I sighed with relief.

Beverley stopped the traction engine and spent, what seemed to me, a very complicated ten minutes, getting it turned round to face in the other direction. Beverley shushed me when I tried to talk.

“This is not easy,” she said. “In fact, if I wasn’t cheating I’m not even sure I could do it.”

I wanted to know how she was cheating, but she glared at me until I shut up.

Once we were safely lurching in the right direction I got her to explain how she came to be the one who rescued me. She’d returned to Rushpool about the same time as Dominic. Beverley had insinuated herself into the conversation—“I felt it was my duty to offer my expertise,” she said—and, having assessed the situation, made her own plans.

“Your boss approved of it, of course,” she said. “He’s waiting for us at Aymestrey.”

I doubted that Nightingale had been quite that relaxed about Beverley’s role and boy was he going to freak when I tried to explain the whole parallel universe thing to him. Not to mention the all-too-human loose ends which were flapping around this case.

I asked whether Nightingale had any idea what to do with not-Nicole.

“Are you saying that you did that whole stupid hostage swap when you didn’t even know what you were going to do with the evil little strop afterward?”

“It was a high-pressure situation,” I said. “Do you think Molly would like a friend?”

“Not that kind of friend,” said Beverley. “Besides, Molly has her own friends.”

“Like who?” I asked and thought—like how?

Beverley hesitated. “That’s not for me to say, is it? You’ll have to ask her yourself.”

“The girl has to go to social services,” I said.

“Like that won’t be a total disaster,” said Beverley.

“I’m open to suggestions.”

“Give her to Fleet,” said Beverley. “She’s already got like a gazillion foster kids, and she’s married to a fae. So little Miss Psycho’s not going to worry her.”

“Married to a fae?”

“Yeah,” said Beverley. “Scandalous, isn’t it?”

Ahead I could see the bridge across the River Lugg next to which I’d allowed myself to be taken into the water. There were stands of alder on the river banks and dogwood, hazel and hawthorn in the hedgerows. Robins and thrushes sounded across the fields and a couple of wood pigeon still refused to bloody shut up.

I put my arms around Beverley’s waist and buried my face in her hair. Beneath the oil and metal she smelled of peppermint and shea butter.

I was ready to go home to London.