Chapter Three

Sam started drinking almost as soon as the trial finished, eighteen years ago. We were living with our grandmother, back in Brooksby, and still reeling from the hideous shock of our mother’s death. At six, I had been more sheltered from the horrors of what had come before, and the night that ended it all. It was only as I grew older that I began to grasp what both my mother and Sam had shielded me from. This being, primarily, the monster we called Kane.

Upon moving to Grandma’s house Sam continued his role as protector – coming to hold me when the nightmares came, brightening my days with silly stories and surprise presents like a flower, or a piece of paper twisted into the shape of a mouse, coaxing me out of my hiding place in the wardrobe. He walked me to school every morning, before sprinting to reach his secondary school on time. He helped me with my homework, took me to the park or the library when Grandma needed a rest, and every single day made sure I felt safe, loved, and that I was not alone.

But the previous years had taken their toll – done deep damage that refused to heal long after Sam’s physical scars faded. Grandma tried, but she was hopelessly ill-equipped to deal with the anger and hurt of a boy with Sam’s level of trauma. When I remember that time, I still feel my growing distress as my hero began to disappear – frequently staying out well into the night, retreating into his bedroom the rare times he remained in the house, and meeting Grandma’s worried questions with silence.

It was only when I got the unexpected invitation to a classmate’s party, held in a pub, that I realized the smell accompanying my brother was alcohol.

By fifteen his attempts to drown out the pain had progressed to cannabis, pills and, soon after, cocaine. He scraped through school for my sake, still surfacing enough to be a surrogate daddy as best he knew how. But the stealing and the lies, the fights and the increasingly bad reputation were more than Grandma could cope with. The week after his seventeenth birthday, when a man showed up at the door with a baseball bat looking for money, she finally cracked. Sam came home the next day to find his meagre possessions waiting in a suitcase in the hallway.

For the next three years my big brother was a fleeting shadow in my life. Without him, I felt as though I had lost a lung – every breath a challenge, I clambered through the days exhausted, faint-hearted, a whimper of a girl. The days I would exit the school gates to find him slouched against the wall across the street were like brief bursts of oxygen.

We would hug, for a long, long time, before setting off to walk around the village, or find a seat in the café if it was too cold or wet.

“How are you?” he would ask, eyes hungry as he searched my face.

“I’m fine. I got an A in English.”

He smiled. “Good for you. You look taller. Have you grown again?”

“I’m taller than Grandma now.”

“Is she being okay? Managing to take care of you? Does she give you enough money for clothes and things?”

I felt too anxious to tell Sam that for weeks now I had been the one doing all the shopping and paying the bills.

“Yes. We’re fine.”

“Good.” He sighed, and I caught a whiff of the toxins on his breath.

Look closer, Sam. Look at me. I’m not fine! I need you. Grandma keeps forgetting things and getting tired all the time and I’m trying to keep everything tidy and make her pension last till the end of the week, but it’s so hard. I need you. Come home. Come back to me.

We would chat a little longer, but soon his hands would start to twitch and eyes wander beyond me to the café door. Sometimes before going he asked if I could lend him money. Other times he would offer out a fat roll of notes. I didn’t take them. Those notes scared me. They were tainted with the unmentionable things he must have done to get them. Instead I would lie about how Grandma had doubled my pocket money that month (which could have been true – zero doubled is still zero), or how I’d babysat for a neighbour.

But even when the months stretched past without a visit, every night I went to sleep thinking of my brother. Praying for his safety, wishing he would come home, imagining the dark and dangerous places and people he dwelled amongst.

And then, one morning, I woke up to find Grandma cold on the bathroom floor.

And I learned my wildest imaginings hadn’t come close.

Sam fled before the coffee had cooled on the tiles, but by the time Perry had carried me to a sofa, tidied up the mess, and said a charming, if brisk, goodbye to the guests, I felt recovered enough to get up again.

Perry found me in the kitchen. I turned from loading the dishwasher, a thousand apologies on my lips.

“Leave that. I can do it. You need to sit down.”

I mustered a weak smile. “No, I’m fine. Just embarrassed. I didn’t think I could top that meal, but…”

Perry leaned against the countertop, his hands in his pockets. “What happened with Sam?”

“It wasn’t Sam. I’m really sorry he came round – he does that sometimes when he’s not well. And when he texted me earlier this evening I mentioned I was here. But I must have had a weird migraine. Or maybe the residual smoke overpowered me. It’s been a really busy day.”

He walked over and took my hands in his, lifting one to kiss it. “I’m sorry I caused you so much stress. You were amazing tonight. You saved the day. And the Baker deal. I’m so glad you were here. Will you come to all my disaster parties?”

“If you give me a couple of days’ notice, they might not be a disaster.”

He gazed at me. “Fifteenth of August.”

“Now that should be enough notice.”

He was no longer laughing. “Marry me on the fifteenth of August. Come and live with me and you can burn my dinner every night.”

“You expect me to cook you dinner every night when we’re married?”

“You can do whatever you darn well like. Just marry me.”

I took a deep breath. “The fifteenth of next August?”

“The very next one.”

“HCC will be booked up right through the summer.”

“They had a cancellation.” He quirked one eyebrow, knowing I would guess his hefty sway at the club would have had something to do with that.

“Let me think about it.”

While Perry drove me home, I thought. About Sam, and my empty bank account, pathetically dependent on Perry since my income had been slashed. About how this rich, charming man had laughed off the disastrous evening, allowing me to avoid answering his questions about my wreck of a brother. About the fun we had together, the simplicity of our relationship. Then I considered the alternative to marrying him, which made me shudder.

Perry walked me to my door, which wasn’t far, the front path of my tiny terraced cottage stretching three steps from pavement to porch.

“Are you sure you’re okay? I could come in for a bit.”

“No, honestly. I just need to sleep.”

He waited while I unlocked the door, then kissed me goodnight. “Sleep well. I’ve meetings until late tomorrow. But I’ll call you.”

I took a deep breath as he turned to walk down the path.

“Yes.”

He froze, spinning slowly back around to face me.

“The fifteenth of August. Next year. Yes.”

Perry burst into a grin, scooping me off the doorstep and swinging me around a couple of times before jigging down to the street and back again, kicking his heels up. “Fifteenth of August!” he roared. “Eleven months and she’ll be mine! Hallelujah!”

He let out a whoop as I stepped inside, smiling. “Keep it down! It’s nearly midnight.”

“I don’t care! I’m getting MARRIED!” He fist-pumped the air as the upstairs window opened next door and my neighbour called out.

“Fer mercy’s sake, Faith. Can’t you just invite ’im in like a normal person?”

“Ah no, kind neighbour,” Perry replied, ever the gentleman. “Surely you know there is nothing normal about Faith Harp?”

I said goodnight and closed the door, leaning on it for a moment while my brain slowed down enough to think.

Perhaps my fiancé knew me better than I thought, because he’d got it spot on. Nothing about me, or my life, had ever been normal.

I certainly didn’t feel normal as I lay awake, listening to the creaks and groans of my ancient house, shuddering with terror at the thought of the evil that was Kane, prowling the streets, hunting for revenge.

The next morning I stuck my game face on and went to see Sam. I took the bus to the supermarket first, loading up with bags of ready meals, cereal, fresh juice, fruit, and other simple food a sick man could eat with minimal preparation. Upon letting myself in, I did a quick walk-through of the flat, searching for the all-too-familiar paraphernalia that accompanies drug use. Finding nothing in the living area but empty cola bottles, ten thousand cigarette butts, piles of dirty dishes, and sticky filth coating every surface (pretty impressive since I had cleaned the entire flat only five days previously), I moved on to the bathroom.

Yuck.

I left the bathroom to its grossness and began to unload the shopping. I was placing a tub of fresh soup in the fridge when the bedroom door opened and a naked cheese string walked out, pointing a six-inch knife at me.

“What are you doing?” The cheese string, who on closer inspection appeared to actually be a woman the width of a cheese string with an enormous head of greeny-yellow dreadlocks, jabbed the knife in my direction.

I wasn’t intimidated. The scars on my collarbone and stomach were caused by a knife, and person, about twice the size of those in front of me. Six inches would never pierce my toughened hide.

“Unpacking some shopping. Do you want a cranberry muffin?”

She waved the blade a little less convincingly. “Who are you?”

“Clearly no one for you to worry about. I’m bringing stuff in, not taking it away. Reverse burglary.” I carried on emptying the bags. “Put the knife down and get some clothes on. And while you’re in there tell Sam his sister’s here.”

She obeyed me, even coming back in a scruffy tracksuit and making a token gesture at washing up while introducing herself as April.

Sam shuffled out a few minutes later, olive skin wan under his black beard. I handed him a bacon sandwich, set down a mug of tea, and tried to hold back my newly resurrected tears, and my temper.

“Would you mind leaving us alone for a few minutes, please, April?” I asked.

April, one of the many, many sorry young women to fall for Sam’s brooding good looks and artistic talents, ducked her head. “Is it all right if I have a shower, Sam?”

He ignored her. April disappeared, and I took a seat opposite my brother.

“Tell me.”

He rubbed his face, took a gulp of tea, and started to weep.

A short while later, having read the letter from the probationary service explaining that Kane would indeed be free in two weeks’ time (unless something miraculous happened like he murdered someone else or tripped in the shower and broke both legs and arms), we were wrung out like damp washing.

We had no reason to believe Kane could find us, even if he tried. Sam and I both took different names after the trial – and no one alive knew save for the original Family Liaison Officer assigned to the case and a couple of social workers we hadn’t seen in over a decade. While we did currently live in our mother’s home county, we were several miles from Brooksby, one hundred and nineteen miles from where we had lived with Kane, and two hundred and fifty from the prison that would release him. It had been eighteen years. He would be on probation for the rest of his life, one of the conditions being that he never attempted to contact us. He had other things to worry about, scores to settle.

Did all this make the slightest bit of difference to the lightning bolt of terror that had struck the centre of our brains?

Nope.

I called Sam’s mental health nurse and told her he was struggling. She promised to be round after wading through the other reams of dangerously distressed patients on her books, most of whom were without a sister with bucketloads of free time to care for them. I sat with Sam through a couple of hours of daytime quiz shows, then double-checked for hidden booze stashes. Before leaving I firmly told April her new boyfriend was an addict with serious mental health issues, and in no fit state to offer any sort of relationship. If she did insist on hanging around, and did anything – at all – to empower his addictions I would take her teeny, tiny knife and chop her fingers off one by one.

Yes, I was feeling fairly angry and defensive that morning. My past-life ferocity had been awoken from its recent slumber. I was talking the finger-chopping talk. Would I walk the walk? Probably not. Definitely not. Nah.

I paced the streets around Sam’s flat, ending up on a bench near to the cemetery. Having brought my hyperventilating under control, I called Marilyn.

“Faith! How are you doing? Did you destroy the Ghost Web?”

Least of my problems.

“Hi Marilyn. I need cake. And a baby to cuddle. Are you busy?”

“I have nine-month-old twins, I’m always busy. Yet never too busy for cake. I’ll leave the door on the latch in case I’m feeding. Or just too knackered to get off the sofa.”

I spent the rest of the afternoon tickling fat tummies (Nancy and Pete’s, not Marilyn’s) and eating millionaire’s shortbread, which Marilyn found amusingly appropriate.

Halfway through the afternoon Perry texted to say he’d booked the wedding with HCC.

That led to a wrestling match with Marilyn while she prised my phone away and started typing a reply saying I wanted to get married in Grace Chapel and have my reception at Mirabelli’s on the Water.

“Marilyn!” Nancy chose that moment to throw up on her activity centre, allowing me to get the phone back. “I don’t care. I just want things over with with as little fuss as possible so I can get on with being Perry’s wife.”

“As little fuss as possible? And you see that happening at HCC? Have you met your future mother-in-law Larissa Upperton? Have you been to a committee meeting? Did you not used to work at HCC as events manager? Short-term pain for long-term gain, Faith. That man appears to be bonkers about you. Why do you think he would object?” She paused in her cleaning up of Nancy’s sick and waggled the muslin cloth at me.

I waggled my hands back. “Hello? Have you met my future mother-in-law Larissa Upperton, the Achilles’ heel?”

“You need to come back to the choir with me next week. Get some personal power.”

“You’re going back to the choir? Hester didn’t even let you sing.” I sat back, surprised.

“I don’t care. I liked listening. And my sister doesn’t have to know that when I ask her to babysit again. Two hours without my delightful children. Three if you count the journey there and back. And once James is gone again the chance of a breather might be the only thing keeping me from going bananas.”

James, Marilyn’s husband, worked as a consultant geologist. This meant frequent long stretches away while he mined for valuable minerals in places like Antarctica or at the bottom of the ocean. Marilyn told me that before the twins had been born, she had found this lonely and frustrating, but coped with it as part of the deal. Judging from the state of the cottage of chaos while James was around, I didn’t want to think how she would cope alone with two demanding, exhausting babies added to the equation.

At least she wouldn’t have time to feel lonely.

The following Wednesday afternoon, we headed back to Grace Chapel. I’d put my fantasy wedding plans on hold for the week, but this seemed as good an excuse as any to meet with the minister. Assuming, of course, he showed up this time.

We arrived just as the rehearsal started. Hester gave me an unsmiling nod as I slid in beside the other altos. When Marilyn, who had lingered in the corridor to message her sister, sauntered in after me, the choir director’s eyebrow twitched. Translate: gobsmacked.

“Good afternoon, Marilyn. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Well, it’s a wonderful surprise then, isn’t it?” Marilyn waved at everybody.

“This is a serious choir rehearsal. Last week’s open day was a one-off. We don’t allow just anyone to sit in.”

“Lucky I’m not just anyone.”

“Please don’t make this difficult.”

Marilyn sighed. “All right. I’ll go. As long as the choir agree.”

Hester tutted. “Well, I can’t think why they would object.”

Marilyn opened up the canvas bag in her hand and took out a tin. Removing the lid, she released the warm, sugary, cinnamon smell of freshly baked apple loaf. Several pairs of eyes darted to the serving hatch, where a plate of plain biscuits sat forlornly on the counter.

Hester pulled her spine even tauter, flaring her nostrils. It was high noon at the O.K. Corral, formidable personality versus homemade cake. Rowan was the first to speak up. “Let her stay, Hester. Apple cake’s one of my favourites.”

“It does smell pretty good,” one of the Asian women, Uzma, said.

“I chipped a tooth on one of them biscuits a couple of weeks ago,” an older lady in the soprano section called out. “Look.” She opened her mouth wide and pointed into it. “Can you see it, Millie? There, at the back, next to the gold filling.”

“I can’t see it, Janice.” Millie, who walked on two sticks and wore a bobble hat even though it was one of the hottest Septembers on record, peered in.

“There, look.” Janice’s words were muffled by her finger, pointing out the hole.

“Ooh, I see it. Right in the middle of your molar. That’s a biggie, Janice. You should sue for compensation.”

“No! Not there. A chocolate peanut from the Vicky Centre market did that one. You know, that stall with the man who wears the monkey T-shirt. It used to sell peanut brittle, but then that dog from the –”

“LADIES!”

Janice and Millie snapped to attention at Hester’s command.

“There is no time to discuss this any further. We are already four minutes late. Put the tin in the kitchen and sit down quietly at the back. We shall take a vote at coffee time.”

“Probably a good idea,” Melody, whom I had sat next to last week, whispered in her lilting Jamaican accent, loud enough for everyone to hear. “We can see if it’s any good before we vote.”

Hester gave another nod, at the same time making a tiny circling gesture with her hands. Everybody stood up.

“Eyes closed!” We closed our eyes, including Marilyn. Then, for the next section of the rehearsal, we did no singing at all.

Accompanied by the soft notes of a violin wafting out from a music player, Hester began to talk. She first told us to take a few deep breaths in and slowly release them, then listen to our bodies.

“What is it telling you today? What can you hear? Is it overworked, exhausted? Uptight and crunched up? Hurting? Weighed down? Sluggish? Does your body feel loved? Whole? Vibrant? Breathe in some love for yourself, ladies. Sigh out that tension. Out, out, ooouuut! Release the troubles and the to-do list. Let it go. Breathe in strength! Let go of your fear. Blow out all that anxiety and angst. Blow it out! That’s it, keep blowing…”

About halfway through, as we sighed out all the things we didn’t want to have, and be, and breathed in the stuff we wished we did, I felt an overwhelming urge to laugh. What was this? What on earth was I doing here, surrounded by strangers, with my eyes closed, “blowing out disappointment”? I didn’t need this. Fine, my life had some issues. But I coped with them pretty well. And how could I be disappointed when I had never expected life to be anything but hard?

And then, suddenly, I felt two warm hands on my shoulders, and realized the choking, hiccupping sobbing was from me. Big, fat, snotty sobs. Like the dam of tears just broke where the leak had formed a week earlier in the wedding shop. I didn’t even know why, or where it came from. Melody held me, whispering words of comfort as she rocked me back and forth and stroked my hair. By the time I’d finished, wiped my face, and blown my nose a couple of times, the rest of the choir had moved on to vocal warm-ups, la-ing up and down the scale.

Melody patted my arm. “How do you feel?”

Strange question to ask a woman who had spent the last ten minutes howling. I felt self-conscious, bewildered, and worn out. But not as much as I expected. Mostly, I felt sort of clean.

“What is this place?” I muttered. This place where people see into my soul and guess my deepest feelings, and somehow I’m safe to feel them?

Melody laughed, a deep rich melody. “This is the house of grace.”

Following the warm-up, where Hester insisted we stand, breathe, and start to think and sound like singers – “chins up, lungs open, shoulders back!” – we moved on to the piece the choir had been working on last time. I had heard some of the alto part, but not all, and had no idea what most of the words were, my knowledge of Latin being non-existent. Hester asked Melody to coach me through it for thirty minutes, and I did all right until we moved back to singing all together. The sopranos, who sang the main tune, kept confusing my brain and knocking me off course. Hester rapped her knuckles on top of the piano.

“Faith! Stop being distracted by women you cannot compare to and were not created to be like! You are an alto – learn from other altos. Listen to them, tune in to them. Focus, focus, focus! You spend too much time worrying about the wrong things, eyes and ears wandering. Find your tune, lady, and hold on to it. From the beginning, last time!”

I tried. I tried to ignore the sopranos with their trills and piercingly beautiful dipping and soaring, focus, focus, focusing in on the depth of the rich, resonant voices around me, earth and deep water, strong and sure. And for a moment – maybe a line, a little longer – I got it. I joined these women in their song.

Wow.

Wouldja believe it?

I helped create something beautiful.

And I would not start crying about it. We’d had enough of that for one day, thank you.

Seriously, though. That was something else.

Rehearsal over, nobody mentioned my earlier “moment” during coffee time. Neither did Hester mention a vote regarding Marilyn, once she’d eaten a tiny, perfectly square piece of her scrumptious cake. Dylan appeared a couple of minutes later, and I tried to ignore the uncomfortable urge to go and check my face for blotches in the women’s toilets. Many years of struggle had drummed all potential vanity out of me. I didn’t want my new millionaire-fiancée lifestyle to start pumping it back in. I certainly didn’t want to feel the need to impress the chapel caretaker, like a desperate housewife swooning over every handsome, rugged man who pays her attention and looks her in the eye when he asks her how she is, as if he actually means it. I fiddled with my engagement ring until the urge scuttled away back where it belonged, deep in the corner of my imagination.

After a couple of minutes of small talk, Dylan asked me about the wedding.

“Did you make any decision about using the chapel?”

“Um, no. Not yet.”

“I suppose your fiancé wants to have a look at it.”

“Mmm.”

“Do you have any more questions? I could show you around again, if that helps.”

“No, thanks. I do need to see the minister though, to see if it’s okay to get married here when we don’t actually come to the church. And if the date’s free.”

“You’ve set a date?”

“Yes. August.” I still wasn’t quite ready to declare the actual day.

“Next year? Not long, then. And the middle of wedding season. You might want to get in there quick.”

“Well. If the minister shows up, as Hester said he always does after choir practice, I’ll ask him. Although he wasn’t here last week. Unless he’s so unnoticeable I didn’t spot him. Not known for their charisma, generally, vicars, are they?”

Oh dear. I seemed powerless to prevent the torrent of awkward wedding-related verbal diarrhoea…

“Usually quite mousy. Sort of hunched. A bit insipid, like watery custard.” I was, in fact, merely describing the minister who showed our class round the chapel fifteen years ago. I didn’t actually think all men of the cloth fit the soap opera stereotypes, but I couldn’t stop. Dylan made me nervous, looking me in the eye like that. Talking about my wedding made me nervous. When I get nervous my brain gives up and my mouth takes over. “All polite and bland. Maybe he blended into the background. Like a chameleon! A watery, hunched…” I stopped as a horrible realization dawned. “Oh no. It’s you, isn’t it?”

Dylan looked at me. His eyes were a Celtic blue – bright and clear in contrast to his pirate’s stubble and shaggy black hair. A muscle jumped in his jaw as he clenched it.

For a brief moment I hoped the combined heat of my hideous embarrassment and Dylan’s steady gaze would cause me to melt, so I could ooze between a crack in the floorboards.

“I am so sorry. I didn’t actually mean that. I mean, I know not all ministers are like custard.” Did I really say that? “I’m sure most aren’t, even. Hardly any. None! I bet no ministers even slightly resemble custard. At all…” I petered off into a mortified squeak.

Dylan took his eyes off me and stared hard at his shoes. Navy blue Converse. Now, surely nobody would guess that a man in those shoes could be a minister? Aren’t they supposed to be on a higher plane, above all earthly things like designer labels?

“I suppose you won’t want me getting married here now. Totally understandable. You don’t want to be marrying someone who’s prejudiced against ministers. Ministerist. Shouldn’t let them in the chapel, really. And what would God think? You’re like, his man on the ground, and I’ve just called you insipid, in his house of worship. I’m a bit scared, actually, that I’ve offended God. I think I might see if Marilyn’s ready to go home.”

I craned my neck, making an exaggerated display of looking for Marilyn.

“Having said that, the tool belt and overalls would have fooled anyone. And you had plenty of opportunity to tell me who you were, instead of all ‘call me Dylan’, not Reverend Dylan or Pastor Dylan. And aren’t people like you supposed to wear dog collars and black shirts, not ripped jeans? Right. Well. I’m going to shut up and leave now. Nice meeting you. I probably won’t be seeing you again.” I scurried a couple of steps away, before looking back at him. “And you’re not, by the way. Unnoticeable. At all.”

Dylan’s shoulders were shaking. He reached up a hand and wiped both his eyes. Good grief! I knew people in his line of work were supposed to be sensitive, but had my ridiculous babbling made him cry? I would definitely never be able to set foot in here again. Stupid, clumsy idiot. It was only because he made me flustered that I even –

He lifted his head and smiled at me, his face bubbling over with mirth. When I tore my gaze away from those blue eyes, sparkling like mountain streams and as wide open as a cloudless, February sky, I saw he held out a card. “Give me a ring. Let me know which date in August and we can set up a meeting with your husband-to-be. I’d like to meet him. And we can discuss your requirements for the service.”

I took the card, hoping he didn’t notice the tremor in my hand. “Really? Even though I’ve proven myself to be a terrible, rude, and judgmental heathen? You’ll marry us?”

Dylan nodded his head, another smile tugging at his mouth. “Yes, I’ll marry you, Faith. Call me.”

I gathered up my bag and jacket and located Marilyn, nattering away to Rowan, her hands waving wildly as she talked. She caught my gesture and nodded, giving Rowan a brief hug before coming to join me. On our way to the door, we walked past Dylan, two women now clucking around him like chickens. His eyes met mine as I passed. He shook his head slightly in mock disappointment and mouthed, “Watery custard?”

Blushing, I pushed Marilyn out of the door and nearly sprinted to the car. As always, my friend kept schtum. But I knew what she was thinking. I thought the same.

Watch out there, Faith. You could be heading for big trouble.