Chapter Thirty-Five

Things Fall Apart

 

 

August 2014

 

ALICE HAD NEVER learned to swim, and so all she’d been able to do was run along the embankment, screaming – my baby, my little girl, Emily, Emily – as she tried to keep that little red scrap in sight and pray, pray that Emily was fighting to keep her head above water. Mummy couldn’t swim but Emily could: she’d had lessons at the baths in Hastings, she’d be all right, wouldn’t she?

Unless she was stunned or winded by the fall. Hadn’t Alice read somewhere that women floated face-down in water when unconscious – when they didn’t have any control over it – and men face-up? Or was it the other way around?

“Emily!”

She kept running – but oh, God, it had been too long since she’d visited the gym and she was already out of breath, the rhythm of her run failing and breaking up, and Emily spun away from her, the little red scrap shrinking and shrinking, and then up ahead she saw it – the weir. And she screamed, but a scream could do nothing, a scream couldn’t change the laws of physics, couldn’t stop a body in motion, driven by water pressure.

And Emily hit the lip of the weir. And there was white foam in the water. And Emily was gone. And Alice finally registered Andrew’s voice, shouting her name, over and over, from the phone. And she ended the call, switched him off, because she couldn’t tell him, not yet, couldn’t tell him because she knew that this was the end of them, of their life together, the life that had seemed so perfect two minutes ago, and she couldn’t tell him what she had to tell him, not now. And she dialled the emergency services and put the phone to her ear and said police, said ambulance, said things she could never remember later in a ragged sobbing voice just an inch away from screaming. And then when it was done she dropped the phone to clatter on the ground and sank to her knees as people ran towards her, and she ignored it when it began to ring again because it was Andrew and she still couldn’t tell him. And then at last she screamed again, screamed across the thundering water, screamed her child’s name.

 

 

THE POLICE CAME, and they were kind; the paramedics came too, and so were they. There was a hot drink and a blanket round her shoulders. There were questions from them and monosyllabic answers from her that she had no conscious part in making. About her and about Emily, and about her husband: about how his name was Andrew Villiers and how he worked at Amberson’s and how they could reach him on this number.

And there was the hospital, where doctors and nurses shone lights in her eyes and tested her reflexes. And at long last there was Andrew, and she couldn’t look at him, and at the same time she couldn’t refuse to look at him, because it hurt her to do so, but she deserved to hurt, deserved to feel pain, deserved to suffer. You took your eyes off our daughter and she went in the river and now she’s dead. Drowned. Lost. Gone. All your fault. All your fault. He didn’t say any of that, of course. Perhaps he didn’t even think it, but she doubted that. How could he not, for Christ’s sake? Emily was dead because of her.

“It’s all right,” he told her. “It’s all right.”

“It isn’t,” she said, “it isn’t.” And of course he couldn’t answer that.

“It’s my fault,” she said.

“Don’t say that,” he told her. “Don’t blame yourself. I don’t blame you. I don’t. It was an accident.”

But accidents don’t happen, they are caused. That was what Dad had always said. And what had caused this? Emily climbing through a gap in the railings to try and catch a lizard; slipping, falling. And why had she climbed through, why had she slipped and fallen? Because someone hadn’t been looking, someone had been thinking about her career instead of her child and look what had happened.

“I don’t blame you,” Andrew said again, whispering, holding her, whispering in her hair.

But something in how he held her felt wrong. As if he didn’t really want to hold her; as if, despite their physical closeness, he was withdrawing from her. Even in his arms, she felt alone.

 

 

THEY WENT HOME. At some point they had a pizza delivered. Didn’t seem right to be hungry after what had happened; everything should have stopped with Emily going into the water. The growling of her stomach seemed to say well, fuck it, life goes on – and of course it did, went rattling blindly along, indifferent to the deaths of good men and bad, good women and bad, of children, of the old, the crippled and the whole, the black and the white and all other colours in between. But it shouldn’t. Not with Emily gone.

Nonetheless, they were hungry and they ate. They went to bed but didn’t sleep. Didn’t speak either. She heard Andrew draw breath a couple of times, as if to say something, but then he’d breathe out again and whatever he’d meant to utter was forgotten. Perhaps he knew – how could he not know? – that virtually anything he might say was certain to trigger the end of everything between them.

And the bedside clock ticked and the night went by and still she couldn’t sleep and nor could he and still they waited. And Alice wanted the phone to ring and wanted it never to ring, because if it rang then at least she’d know, one way or the other, but while it didn’t ring, while she was still waiting, it meant there was at least a chance, at least some tiny sliver of hope of Emily washing up on a riverbank bedraggled and cold and crying and scared, hurt and hypothermic and ill, needing hospital time, yes, very sick for a while, yes, but alive. That sliver was all she had to cling to, that thousands to one chance; it was her marriage’s only chance of survival, perhaps hers as well.

And then finally the phone rang. Not the mobile phone; the landline. It rang several times in the dead silence of the house with neither of them moving – Andrew must be hoping she’d get up and take the call, just as she was willing him to. Alice was lying on her side, her back to him, staring at the wall. The figures on the digital clock on her bedside table glowed blood-red in the darkness: 2.07 am. And she lay on her side, breathed in and out, nice and regular, as if she was sleeping through it.

“Alice,” Andrew said. “Alice?”

She didn’t answer. Did he know? He must know. The phone continued to ring. At last he muttered something under his breath and got up. She felt the bed creak and shift. His footsteps padded away.

Abruptly the phone stopped ringing. A beat of silence. Had the caller given up? But then she heard Andrew say, “Hello?”

More silence. Could she hear, if she listened closely, the faint sound of the voice on the other end of the phone?

“I see,” said Andrew. More silence. “No, it’s okay. I can meet you at the, I can meet you there.” Meet you at the what? What word had he just stopped himself using? But of course she knew. “Where is it? Right. Okay. We’ll be there in half an hour.”

We? No. No. She didn’t want to see what had happened. But at the same time, having failed her daughter so profoundly, how could Alice refuse to look on her one last time?

“Thank you,” said Andrew. Thank you for what? For calling with that news? She tried to tell herself that maybe it wasn’t that news. It might be good. They might have found Emily alive. But if that was true, why was Andrew’s voice so dull and flat, so empty and so drained?

After that, a silence. Then the click of a phone going down.

The house seemed to wait and breathe. A moment or an hour later, she couldn’t tell which, she heard Andrew’s footsteps, creaking on the floorboard, coming back to the bedroom door.

No. No. Stay away. Don’t come in. But of course he did, and turned the bedroom light on. His face was grey – he looked drowned. He looked dead.

“No,” she heard herself say. She didn’t want to hear it. But he was going to say it; of course he was going to. She wanted to shout, scream, drown him out, shout him down, but nothing would come beyond that tired little whimper of sound.

“They’ve found her,” he said.

Please say more, she silently begged. Say she’s in a bad way – hypothermia, broken bones, anything, but clinging on. Say it’s touch and go and she might not make it because then at least there’ll still be hope, still a chance it might not be –

“They want us to go and identify her,” he said.

And then her voice worked again, when it was too late to drown out the news, and she howled, and even as she did it Alice marvelled at the sound, the agony of it, as if made by something whose guts were being torn out of its body. But it was her who made it, just as she had on the riverbank before. And she fell to the bedroom carpet and curled up around the pain, howling again until she thought her throat was bleeding. And Andrew dressed, then laid her clothes out and stood and waited until she was ready to go.

She’d already believed their marriage would be dead if Emily had died, but hadn’t realised until that moment that she’d still nurtured some tiny embryo of hope that she might be wrong, that somehow they would get through it, survive, repair – maybe even, maybe, somewhere down the line, have another child. That hope died the first time she looked up to see Andrew waiting by her neatly-laid-out clothes, his hands behind his back, his face like stone. Waiting with an executioner’s terrible patience for her wailing to stop and for her to come with him. Because no entreaty on her part would prevent his demanding her presence, witnessing the consequences of her inattention. He would make her. Not because he needed her support or because it would in the long run be best for her to see the body and be sure that it was their child, but because he would suffer and wanted her to suffer alongside him.

And it was only just, she decided, that she should.

She climbed off the floor and stood. Her joints felt stiff and achey, as if she’d grown very old lying on the floor. Andrew just stood and looked at her. Unable to meet his eyes, she took off her nightgown and began to dress.

 

 

March 2015

 

“WELL?”

Sat at one end of the table, hands clasped tight in a bony knot, Alice glared at Andrew.

If she’d expected any real reaction from him – shock, fear, anger, contrition – she was disappointed. He just looked down at the pair of black lace panties on the table, said “Well what?” then took his jacket off and hung it on the back of the kitchen door, turning his back on her as he did so. He cared that little. He was that indifferent to her now. Her heart cried out for the sweet, long-haired boy she’d married. But he was gone; long gone.

Andrew sat down at the other end of the table. He loosened his tie, took it off. “Go on, then. Say what you’ve got to say.”

Alice pointed at the panties. “Those aren’t mine.”

“I know they’re not.”

“Who is she?”

“You don’t know her.”

“From Amberson’s?”

“No.”

“Where, then?”

“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

“Not my –” she fought for words, as if for breath. “Not my business, Andrew? Not my fucking business? I’m your fucking wife.”

He just looked at her and breathed out.

“Is that all you can say?”

“I met someone. Yes. And yes, I care about her. I could actually sleep in the same bed as her given the chance, instead of the spare room. Is that what you want to hear?”

“Want? No. I don’t want any of this. I suppose I was at least hoping it was just fucking, nothing else. Going off and getting your oats because you’re not getting them here.”

“You make it sound like it was you who cut them off. There’s a reason it’s me sleeping in the spare room, Alice. I was the one who chose to –”

“Then why are you still here?” Alice heard her voice shake. She knew the best thing to do right now was to stop talking. Throw the panties in the kitchen bin, end the conversation and pretend it had never started. Then they could carry on as they had, presenting at least the semblance of a marriage to the outside world. But she knew as well that she wouldn’t, that neither of them would or could stop now. The machine was in motion and it wouldn’t halt until the last of their marriage was in ashes.

Andrew sighed, then shrugged. “Habit,” he said at last. “Less trouble this way, isn’t it?”

True, of course; they both knew everything between them but the appearance of being a couple had died with Emily. She had thought, more than once, about leaving, about divorce. Why hadn’t she? Because she didn’t want to be the one who left, who abandoned her grieving husband? What a heartless cow, people would say. Because some part of her had still refused to give up hope that there was something to be salvaged? Because her pride rebelled against her sneaking home to Mum and Dad with her tail between her legs – because honestly, if it was comfort she wanted, if it was love, where else had she to go? Or, like Andrew, because it was just less effort to keep on going through the motions, maintaining appearances? It might have been any of these, or all of them at once.

It didn’t matter now. She’d had one last illusion to cling to: that it would be her decision what happened, that she’d choose whether and when to stay or leave. Now even that was taken from her.

“You bastard,” she said. It was his blank, tired indifference that hurt most of all, the way he’d confessed to the affair as if it was nothing much. She wanted to break that, to hit him with something that would hurt. “You rotten, adulterous bastard.”

“I was going to let you know soon,” he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. “The next few days. She’s asked me to move in with her.”

“You bastard.” This time it came out of her in a scream. Alone, abandoned, only Emily’s ghost for company. “You fucking bastard. You’re just leaving me?”

“Yes, I am. Come on, Alice, it’s time, we both know –”

“I need –” She needed him? For what? “You can’t leave me on my own,” she said. It sounded weak and whiny and she hated the words and herself for saying them as soon as they were uttered. It made her sound like a victim, and she had never wanted to be a victim. More to the point, she refused to accept she had a right to call herself one. Her single, cataclysmic fuck-up lay at the root of all that had happened: this was just the latest consequence. For Alice to call herself a victim was an insult to the dead.

And by the look of it, Andrew felt the same way, because she saw anger and maybe even loathing on his face then, and he got up. “Can’t I?” he shouted. “Why not? You left her!”

Alice opened her mouth both no words came. Andrew, please, no. Don’t say it. Don’t.

“My little girl’s dead because of you,” he said.

She screamed something, looked for things to throw, found nothing. Andrew had already thrown open the kitchen door and was striding down the hall. She screamed after him, telling him to fuck off and never come back, calling him every ugly name she could think of, but he didn’t turn around, never even slowed down. Just opened the door, flung it shut behind him and by the time she got it open his Audi’s engine was already roaring into life. He tore down the drive and off onto the main road as she stumbled through the exhaust fumes, coughing between obscenities.

The car’s roar died away. Silence returned. A bird trilled somewhere. Nature: the Green Machine. Mindless, indifferent, chugging along through its endless, millennial cycles. Emily was dead and the Machine ground on. A huge mindless mechanism that worked and turned without a mind, and what did it matter in that great schema if one tiny mote, one little pattern of energy that had appeared to be matter and appeared to be alive and conscious, had changed its form and behaviour? It was grist to the mill. Emily’s ashes had been scattered and would be assimilated into the ecosystem, would make new organisms grow. That was all. None of it had a point; none of it meant anything.

The bird trilled again. Across the road, a hedge rustled as some small creature moved in it.

Alice turned and went back inside the house. She shut the door. She went up the stairs. She went into the bathroom and she opened the medicine cabinet. She took out the two packets of paracetamol she found there and sat on the edge of the bath looking at them for quite some time.

 

 

THE BLUE AND white void of energy and light heaved and writhed. Faces swam before her. Before it had been the ogre’s, Old Harry’s, Arodias Thorne’s, but this time they were the children’s, baying and snarling. Children taken too young, lives snuffed out like Emily’s had been – but by design, not accident.

Arodias Thorne had plotted the children’s deaths: not out of sadism or perverted lust, but merely as a means to an end, for him to attain the immortality he’d sought. Her crime? Her guilt?

She was guilty of imperfection. She was guilty of being flawed. She was guilty of a moment’s distraction. How many parents were guilty of it? All might be: it was only ill-luck or blind chance or the casual cruelty of whatever power did preside over this world that had caused that brief distraction to coincide with a moment of life-threatening danger to her child.

It was so easy to say it – so much so that it sounded glib to her own ears – but it had been hard, the work of months of therapy, to say it with anything that even approached belief. It would be years before she truly believed that, assuming she ever did. But she had managed to say it, and would again; had begun the slow and tortured process of self-forgiveness.

She remembered that moment, and reached for it, held fast to it through the raging of the sea.

 

 

MY DEAREST ALICE,

I hope this email finds you well – as well as the circumstances permit, at least. It seems an obscenity to hope somebody is ‘well’ in a situation like this. I’m sorry, but I’m at something of a loss for words. I’m used to being clever and witty, and none of that is really appropriate here.

I should have sent this email a long time ago, and I’m sorry for that as well. Stefan and I were busy settling in, and we’ve rather lost track of our friends in the UK. But even before that, I hesitated – we hadn’t spoken for some time before this awful tragedy happened; I was afraid you might have come to think of me more as Andrew’s friend than your own. As excuses go, that seems decidedly pathetic now – but of course, the longer I left things, the harder it was to write.

My darling, I cannot express how sorry we both are for your loss, and nor can I even begin to imagine the pain you must be suffering at this moment. I’m trying to find something to say, but I can’t. I’m trying to think of something amusing, or wise, or kind, or healing, something that will make you feel better, but I know that there are no such words. I wish only that I could hold you in my arms and let you cry, but I can’t even do that. Things being what they are financially, I have no idea when we’ll next be able to come over to Blighty – I would love to tell you that I’ll be on the next flight across, but unfortunately that’s something only characters in a Hollywood movie are able to do – or perhaps, the kind of people who write, direct or star in Hollywood films, as they can afford to jet off anywhere at the drop of a bloody hat. I’m sorry; I’m trying to be clever again. I will be there in person as soon as I have the opportunity. In the meantime, please get in touch. Whatever has happened, whatever you feel yourself to be guilty of, you are still my friend.

Stefan also sends his fondest wishes.

With love,

Teddy

 

 

April 2016

 

“WAS IT MY fault? Yes. But on the other hand... I don’t know, can anyone, ever, say there wasn’t a second when they should have been looking and weren’t?” She dabbed at her face. She was crying freely.

“Probably not.” Kat, her therapist, looked back at her. There was no judgement in her face, only kindness and warmth and acceptance. That was how it worked: she wasn’t there to judge, she’d told Alice at the beginning, or to guide or to advise, only to listen to Alice and help her see her way to a solution. Always assuming one existed, of course.

“That’s what I thought,” said Alice.

“How does it make you feel to consider that?”

I don’t know, she wanted to say, but didn’t. It was a sort of unwritten rule of their sessions, although Kat had never actually stated it. In fact, Alice had a feeling that the rule was of her own invention, because she knew she’d get nowhere unless she made herself answer. “It hurts,” she said, “of course it does. If I could go back and change things... but I can’t do that, can I?”

“No,” said Kat, “it only goes one way.”

Alice took a deep breath. “If I’d looked away at any other moment, it would have been a near miss, or nothing at all. I...” Deep breath. This was so hard to say. “I made a mistake anyone could have made. At the wrong time. Can I forgive myself? I...” Don’t know. “I’ll try. Maybe – I mean, after Andrew left, I took the pills, yes. But then I changed my mind. I rang the ambulance. I could have just given up and laid down and... you know, gone. So even then, part of me still wanted to live. Maybe even thought I’d deserved to.”

Kat nodded, waited, but Alice couldn’t think of anything else to say. After a minute or so, the therapist asked, “So how are you feeling right here and now?”

“Here and now?” Alice blew out a long breath. “I’m not sure how to describe it. I can’t say I’m happy or at peace or any of that bollocks... any of that... stuff... you probably want to hear.”

Kat smiled.

“I still miss Emily more than I thought it was possible to miss anything. Every day I see something that sets me off again. A toy, or a flower or an animal – she loved animals, you know, used to beg us to buy her a dog. Nature as well, wild animals, all of that. All of that, any of it, makes me think of how Emily would have loved it, and that can just send me over the edge. Or seeing parents with their kids – mums especially. Mums and little girls. Sometimes I end up watching them like a bloody hawk. Just in case the mum’s concentration slips. Just to spare her what I went through.”

Alice stopped, thought for a moment, then went on. “No,” she said, “I’ve got to be honest here. Haven’t I? It’s not about them, it’s about me. If they fuck up, if their kid’s put in danger, then if I’m watching I could save the child. That child would owe me their life; to that mother, I’d be a heroine, a saviour. Be nice to see myself like that. Like a superhero with a special power.”

Kat laughed. “Yeah, it would.”

Alice snorted, her own smile fading. “Wouldn’t make much of a film, though, would it? Not really. This mad woman who hangs around on footpaths or in supermarket carparks, almost wanting someone to make a mistake and endanger their child’s life. When I saw myself that way – when I realised that was what I looked like, not some sort of heroine – you know, I realised I couldn’t just... it was just another way of trying to make the pain go away with a magic wand.”

“Do you still think you’re mad?”

“No. No. Just in pain. I probably always will be now. I’ve accepted that. It’s just letting it become... manageable. People live with chronic pain all the time, don’t they? And they still manage to have lives. I’m not there yet, but... you know.”

Kat nodded. “And what are your feelings now about Andrew?”

“Andrew?” She shook her head. “I just realised this morning, before I came here, I didn’t really feel anything much. Nothing bad, anyway, for him. I felt sad for him, and I remembered a few things, like when we got married. It was sad, but I could still remember the good times, and that they were good. I didn’t feel any more anger, or bitterness – I suppose I just realised that I’d forgiven Andrew ages ago. He was in pain and he was blaming me – we both were.”

“What do you think will happen between the two of you now?”

“Nothing. It’s too late for anything like that. I don’t think we ever had a chance of staying together after...” After Emily died. “After what happened.” She was stumbling through language like a newborn foal; words were a shifting, treacherous rubble. “Never mind getting back together again.”

“Do you think you’ll stay in touch? Maybe stay friends?”

“No. No, I don’t think so. Things went too far. Things got said, done... no.”

“So what has been achieved?”

“The hate’s gone. Or it’s going anyway. We’re just ending things and walking away” She shrugged. “I think that’s as good a result as we could have hoped for.”

Kat nodded. “We’re coming to the end of our time together,” she said. “Both this session and the ones you’ve arranged up to now. How do you feel about where we’ve got to?”

“Somewhere important, I think. I’ll try to forgive myself, if I can. God knows how that’s going to happen, but I’ll get there.”

“Are you still planning to go back to Manchester?”

“Yeah. There’s nothing left for me down here now.”

“Do you want to arrange further sessions before you go up?”

“I don’t think so, at least not for now. I think I need to – you know, just go off and try get on with things. Have a life. You know?”

“Yeah,” said Kat. She scribbled something down on a piece of card. “Well, if you ever feel you’re struggling and you need to talk to someone, you can get in touch with me and we can arrange something. Or if you need something a bit more local, these are a friend of mine’s contact details. Same line of work. She’s based round Manchester and she’s very good. If things get bad, you could contact her. Or me, if you want.”

“Thank you.”

“Right, then.”

“Yeah.” Alice stood.

“Good luck.”

 

 

WHEN THE TIME came to go back up north Alice insisted on driving herself. Her parents begged her to let them come and pick her up, but she said no.

It was a small thing, but important to her, that she made the journey under her own power; drove herself back, out of choice, rather than be picked up and carried away like a broken, helpless, crying little girl. Perhaps somewhere there’d been a faint memory of leaving John, of Dad loading her things into the car. Daddy coming to sort things out, because she couldn’t any more. Take me home, Daddy. Wrap me up in blankets and cotton wool, and coddle me from the world.

That wasn’t her. She would not admit to being so weak, so broken. Nor would she accept such comfort when it was undeserved. She was not the child; the child was dead.

It was a long drive from Sussex all the way back up to Greater Manchester, that sprawling conurbation that had subsumed parts of both Cheshire and Lancashire into its mass. The lanes of the motorway unrolled beneath her, like an endless path. It felt as though she were hardly driving at all, as though the car just slid along of its own accord, along a predetermined path. More than once the idea crossed her mind that if she took her hands from the wheel, her feet from the pedals – even crawled into the back seat to sleep – it would still ferry her home. Once or twice, she actually felt her hands relax their grip as if to put the idea into practice, but caught herself in time and took hold once more. She would not tell her parents of that; she would not tell anyone. They must not know how close she’d come.

At last she turned off the motorway and down a succession of B-roads; at last she was turning down the little cul-de-sac in Sale, pulling into the driveway of a bungalow. She remembered their old house and the men who’d kicked down the door. The Pinstripe Man. Such a long way away now. Her parents had come far; they’d done well, for themselves and for her.

There was movement inside the house, behind the glass of the front door. It opened; Mum came out first, arms outstretched. Dad ambled out of the house behind her. Alice took a deep breath and got out of the car.

“Oh, Alice, love.” Mum threw her arms around her, kissed her forehead and cheeks. “Oh, love, what do you look like? You look so pale. When did you last have anything to eat? You look half-starved –”

“Give her a bit of space, Ann,” Dad said. He put a hand on Mum’s shoulder, his other arm going round Alice’s. “It’s been a hard time for her. Hard time for us all.”

Mum hugged her tightly. Dad’s arms encircled them both; his lips brushed Alice’s hair. A line of Robert Frost’s came back to Alice, about home being the place where they had to take you in. But she remained stiff, unbending, wouldn’t accept the comfort she had no right to, not when her own child was ashes. But something broke and she fell against them. The crying tore out of her as if she’d swallowed cogs of metal on a chain and now they were being wrenched free of her, tearing and gouging.

Her sobs became howls, but her parents didn’t speak; they just held her. For all their faults and their mistakes, this was constant, this endured. She didn’t think she had or could have loved them more than in this moment; beautiful in their fragility and humanity, flawed and burdened by failures, but striving still.

 

 

IN THE WRITHE of the sea, the shifting patterns of blue and white, that fragile self-forgiveness was a raft and she clung onto it, steadying herself before dragging herself aboard. And then she crouched, balancing against the storm.

As she did so, the wind died and the sea levelled out.

Alice stood. I am the sea. All creation rolled beneath her, ready to change at the lightest touch of her will.

All creation; past, present and future. Time flickered before her and she stood on Collarmill Height, looking down. Days and nights flurried past: years, centuries. Men in rags of fur knelt before her, with fire and weapons and stone; she saw men of bronze and men of iron. Men in chainmail and women in linen knelt at her trickling shrine. Cavaliers fell, and Roundheads shouted of idolatry, heaped stone and earth upon her spring and took fire to the church above it while she watched, her arms held out.

The ruined church rose again, then fell. And a great house rose about her, a wall and garden rising beyond the walls. The servants came, and then one came in particular – a woman in her thirties, brown-haired and blue-eyed, unworldly yet graceful. Mary. And the months flickered on.

And Alice knew what she must do next; she rose now, drifting upwards, rising through ceilings and walking through walls until she found Mary Carson’s room, found it on the night the shattered, brutalised woman grovelled in her own filth on the brink of insanity. I know that place, Alice thought, I know that place so well. And it only took a moment to let Mary see her, to fill the room with light. And that was all it took to convince Mary of grace and pull her back from madness – to ensure she’d live and thrive.

And to ensure that one day she would inherit Springcross House and leave her testimony behind, to arm Alice with knowledge in the future.

The rowan wood called to her; she wavered, witnessed a hundred people in different times holding talismans and crosses of that wood aloft. Collarmill Height faded, and the woods of the Fall appeared. She saw herself now, hiding among the trees, heard Old Harry’s growling approach. With a thought she drove him back. And then she was on the Height again, and standing in the house she’d bought, 378 Collarmill Road – she clung to that tiny, mundane detail, that little anchor to reality – to drive the children away from her. She saw herself falling through the door into the hallway as the children vanished, saw the armed men outside the door vanish back into the past.

The sea rolled and calmed. She was everywhere and nowhere, but falling back towards where she’d come from.

– If I could go back and change things... but I can’t do that, can I?

– No. It only goes one way.

Except that it didn’t, not here.

She could go back to that day, to the lizard, the path by the Cuckmere. She could be watching when she needed to be. Emily could live again. All she had to do was reach into this shifting ocean, change a single detail.

And what then? Would none of this have happened, be only the fading echo of a dream? Or would Arodias Thorne still be working to bring her to him; would he find another way for Emily to die?

Had Emily’s death truly been accident, blind chance, or all a part of some terrible pattern? And whose pattern? Arodias’, the Red Man’s?

Or had some greater pattern brought her here, to do what had to be done, end this violation that Arodias had begun? Had Emily’s death just been one step along the way to deliver the right object to the right point in space and time, the click of one gear in a machine vaster, more intricate and more cruel than the Moloch Device could ever be?

And then there were the other children to consider, all the ghosts of Collarmill Height.

Emily.

There might be time; there would be, she’d make sure of it. But first, this had to end.

She put all other thoughts aside and focused. The water became sparks of blue and white glittering light, and then at a thought from her, the focus shifted, moved out. Galaxies of quarks and quanta coalesced; another order of magnitude, and these shrank, flew together, and she contemplated the electrons whirling around atomic nuclei. Back again and the atoms joined together into molecules; zoom out a little further and now she could begin to see the structures those molecules fitted together to combine.

Back, back, further back – let me see, for now, as I always did.

And with that, the chains of molecules became cells – plant cells with their cellulose walls and bright chloroplasts – and those cells became a blade of grass, and the blade one blade among many on the ground before her, and the ground the top of Redman’s Hill.