FRIDAY THE 13TH – APRIL 2018Viola is running again, bones juddering as her boots strike the hard earth. The two-way radio in her pocket bangs against her thigh. One foot lands in a grassy pothole and she bites her tongue at the jolt of it. There is blood in her mouth. She doesn’t stop.
Sitting still was no longer an option. The women were arriving for their early shifts at the Provisions Store. Tobacco smoke coiled its way into her shell hideout – the men making for the harbour, lighting their first roll-ups of the day.
The island was closing in on her and she was flooded with memory.
Hide and seek, played with her brother in the generous spaces of their 1930s house on the outer reaches of the M25; making herself small behind the vacuum cleaner in the cupboard under the stairs, breathing in the dry fug of its dust bag; Seb’s voice calling out, ‘Coming! Ready or not!’; his footsteps immediately there, the door swinging open to let in a brutal light. ‘Found you,’ he’d say with a sigh, expecting better sport.
This glimpse of the past was a warning, a premonition. She had to find a better place to hide, not make it so easy for them.
At full tilt, Viola drops into the channel that runs between the netted allotments at the nunnery. The narrowness of the passage makes her speed feel wild, her breath loud. Dot does her best to keep up, mouth open with the joy of it – a joy that is spiked each time she falls out of step and the lead snags her neck. Viola prays that the holy sisters are too busy with their kneeling and contemplating to see the flash of maroon coat and grey dog streaking across their land. Even if they were to report her, they’d say she is heading where she isn’t.
This is a roundabout route. This is a ruse.
They reach a fence dividing the allotments from the sloping land of the estate and Viola throws Dot over, then climbs the wooden rails herself, landing with a thump on the other side. They sprint across open ground, making for a stripe of trees. Once concealed by hawthorn and hornbeam, they turn nonsensically downhill, back in the direction of the east coast and the harbour, almost towards where they started. This convoluted route will take them away from the usual paths, the ones the rest of the island use to deliver children to school and themselves to work.
It means she will not bump into Michael, but she doesn’t need him now. She has a plan of her own – one of distraction, of delay. Her only regret is that she won’t catch sight of the Eldest Girls heading up the hill to St Rita’s as she instructed, acting as if this is just another day.
Though it is Viola who has given the girls their orders, she is not in charge. She is equal to them; that’s what she likes to tell herself, though she understands deep down how separate she will always be. Viola is a mainlander; the Eldest Girls belong to Lark. They know the island right down its blackest core; it has shaped them. And more than that, the girls are magical, heaven-sent. Viola cannot shake this belief, no matter how much she has seen behind the curtain.
Her complicated route reaches its conclusion: Viola and Dot dart along the ginnel behind the houses. They go through a gate, in through a door.
‘Hello!’
Viola’s hair is squally from the run, strands of it sticking to the sweat of her brow.
‘Hello!’
There are footsteps on the stairs. Dot whines in anticipation of who will arrive in the small hallway beyond the kitchen. When she appears, dressed formally, as if for work, a hairbrush in her hand, Dot tugs forward, eager to offer a greeting.
‘What are you doing here?’ the woman demands.
‘It wasn’t locked,’ says Viola, still breathless from the sprint. ‘I let myself in.’
‘I can see that. Don’t they teach you to knock first on the mainland?’
‘It’s important!’ Viola gasps.
‘Why?’ The hairbrush hangs limp in the woman’s grasp. ‘Has something happened?’
‘It’s Saul Cooper.’
‘And?’ says the woman, trying for nonchalance.
‘He’s at the stones.’
‘Why would Saul Cooper be –’
‘He’s with… a body.’
The woman’s eyes go large. ‘What body?’ The hairbrush drops. ‘Where’s Ben?’
‘You didn’t find him last night, did you?’ Viola keeps her grip steady on the reins, holding the woman’s gaze, waiting for the mask to fall.
‘No, no, I didn’t but… Are you saying that… What are you saying?’
Viola says nothing, she lets the woman fill in the gaps. The colour drains entirely from her skin.
‘No,’ she whimpers, sinking to the floor. ‘No, no, no, no!’ She clutches the end of the bannister to stay afloat.
‘Get up,’ says Viola sharply, playing the adult. ‘You need to get up.’
The woman does not. She mutters her denials.
‘It looks really bad,’ says Viola, raising her voice. ‘For you, I mean, this all looks really bad – with the ship arriving today…’ She gambles on the next part. ‘Your name in the ledger…’
The woman does not object. She quietens, still clinging to the bannister.
‘You need to go up to the stones.’ Viola’s breath is her own once more. ‘Get a story straight. But you need to go now, before it’s too late.’
The woman stands, her face wholly changed. A switch has been flicked. Here is what Viola always knew was behind that mask: someone selfish. The woman gives a nod of resolve and pulls on a coat, thrusts her stockinged feet into sturdy boots. Then she is off, pushing past the intruder in her kitchen.
The baton has been passed.
Viola depresses the button on the two-way radio and she speaks. ‘You need to stay where you are,’ she tells Saul, buying herself some much-needed time. ‘Leah Cedars is coming to find you. Over and Out.’