AUGUST. THE FIELDS were beginning to be full of harvesters pouring grain into trucks, and the roads were full of harvesters and trucks getting in everyone’s way.
Robbie suspected that his dad thought that deep down Robbie was disturbed by him and Sheila splitting up, and Robbie wanted to say to him, ‘Dad, I was disturbed by you and Sheila getting together.’
Surprisingly, given what he’d done, the Stricklands seemed to have lost interest in him. Alice thought they would be terrified now.
‘They’ll be looking, but not for you,’ she said. ‘Everyone will be. Everyone who knows, who’s in with that family.’
‘Most people try and keep out of their way.’
‘My guess is they’ve got lots of friends and their enemies are scared of them and there’s going to be a core who know all about this stuff. All of it. I said that to you.’
‘I could go snooping round the Allardyces’ house.’
‘You won’t get anything from them.’
‘So we just sit and wait.’
‘I was going to say it’s not our problem, but, Robbie, you’re in this somehow, and that’s for a reason. It’s you, it’s your dad, it’s your mum, it’s something.’
‘Mags.’
‘Yeah, Mags.’
‘I was in it from the start with her.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes.’
*
More and more he thought about Mags. Finish it, Fran had said. But he couldn’t without Mags. And he wasn’t even sure Fran was talking to him, maybe she was just talking to whoever was watching, whoever found the memory stick. Maybe she thought Mags would find it, she was the obvious one. But there was anxiousness everywhere now, in the air, in the heat and the dust, and in the endless noise from the roads and fields.
He remembered Mags saying, ‘I’m worried about you and your dad.’
‘Why?’ he had asked.
‘You need him. He needs you. And you just ignore him.’
‘He’s a loser.’
‘You always say that, and no, he’s not. He works hard. He does his best for you.’
‘This is my dad you’re talking about?’
‘Don’t be like that. He’s all you’ve got.’
‘I’ve got no one. I’m on my own. Apart from you, Mags. And Alice.’
She seemed not to be listening, just looking at him with those pale eyes, a little kink in her forehead.
‘You need him, Robbie. And he loves you.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I can tell.’
‘How?’
‘The way he looks at you. The way he talks about you.’
‘I’ve never heard him talk like he loves me.’
‘Not when you’re there, you wazzock. That’s the way he is.’
‘Am I like that?’
‘Sometimes. Often. Not when you’re thinking about your mum, though. And you’re still angry.’
‘Not these days.’
‘Maybe. But there’s so much going on in there that doesn’t come out.’ She pointed a forefinger at his heart.
Being Mags, of course she was right, but he was right too. He didn’t think he was as crazy as he had been, in fact, he knew he wasn’t, and she’d had a lot to do with that. He wasn’t so impulsive, so ambushed by life. He no longer felt he was running away from everything, and, if this didn’t sound a little bit cheesy, maybe he was finding a way of running towards something, though he wasn’t sure what it was yet. Maybe they would sell the house and go back to London. But then he wouldn’t see Mags. And for the first time, he thought, he didn’t need London as much as he thought he had after all. He was beginning to feel part of the slow rhythm of the seasons, the opening up of spring, the serenity of summer. He knew the names of the trees now, and all sorts of other things, such as the likely movement of the cattle and who the flocks belonged to. He and his dad had this in common, at least. The land was claiming him. There was a life to be had here.
Then there was Fran. Poor besotted Fran. She was the clue to everything, why everything was happening the way it was, why people were doing and saying what they were. She was at the centre of it all, she was like the blood pulsing through the world, a drum beating, on to the end. Robbie remembered Mrs Allardyce’s words. The brutality of love, the pain that’s left behind. For all Mags says, you’ve got to be careful with your heart.
He thought of that glade in the woods with the faded flowers tied to the tree.
Outside his house at the back were his dad’s favourite late summer dahlias, and he went to cut some, bright blood-red, their petals swirling geometrically.
On the other side of the fence Hugo Allardyce walked past the corner of his house. He was wearing shorts and trainers and carrying a walking stick. He looked in Robbie’s direction, then turned away as if he’d never seen him before.
Robbie found some rubber bands in his dad’s desk to put round the dahlia stems, and got some tape from the shed in the garden to bind them to the tree.
When he reached the wood it was very still and out of the sun the sweat on his back began to cool. He hadn’t visited the place since he’d first seen her, and it felt as if it had lost its innocence, or, worse, somehow become contaminated.
The cooling sweat turned to the chill of something else. There was no one around, and he was walking towards a place of death. A place where pain, too much pain, had been extinguished. And the trees had gone on growing, and the sun beat down on the leaves above.
A girl was sitting on the little bank where the dip began. Most of the dried leaves had gone, broken up and dissolved into the bare earth under the trees.
He stopped and stared. She was blonde, her knees were under her chin, and she was looking at the tree where the flowers had been tied. She was wearing a denim jacket. The flowers were new.
It was her. The friendless one.
Alone.
His heart began to pound. His senses were open wide. He could feel every sound from far away, cars and trucks on the roads and sheep up on the beacon, every soft scent of the brackeny wood, every stroke of the sun.
Once more the stillness was alive.
For a long time he waited, watching her. She didn’t move, and he couldn’t see her face.
What would happen this time?
She turned.
He was wrong.
‘You going to say hello?’ she said, just like when they’d first met.
He was so relieved he could have cried.
‘Mags.’
She stood up and threw her arms around him.
‘I thought you hated me.’
‘I did.’
‘So what changed? Where’ve you been?’
‘Hiding. You know me. And I heard about what those guys did to you, and what you did to them, and everything else, and I was worried about you, and I was proud of you. And then I knew it was time.’
‘Time for what?’
‘Time for some things to happen. I can feel it. You can feel it.’ Her eyes narrowed as she looked at him. ‘But that was a mean thing you did. A bad thing. It got me into a pile of trouble.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Why did you do that? Why did you tell them?’
‘I didn’t mean to. I don’t think I knew what I was doing. And I didn’t know who she was.’
‘Eliza Strickland’s sister. Just the worst person you could have told about me and Fleet. Apart from Eliza, of course.’
There was a silence between them. He placed his flowers on the tree beside hers.
Mags looked at him and shook her head, but there was no real venom there, he could tell. He felt stupid, and sorry, and just not sure, as he hadn’t been all the time since, whether he’d done something wrong there because he meant to, because he was being too inquisitive, because he was happy to betray what Mags knew, or all those things. Sometimes it’s hard to know how guilty you are.
She smiled her graceful, pearly smile.
‘Here’s an idea. You want to go swimming?’
He knew there was a pool nearby, his dad had mentioned it a few times, but he’d never looked for it. He’d always supposed it would be crowded, but when they got there it was deserted, despite the heat. And it was beautiful; a river ran into it and out the other side and it was deep and clear between low mossy cliffs with big slabs of rock on its floor. Robbie sat on the edge and watched Mags strip and for a moment she seemed different to him. She dived in perfectly with hardly a ripple. He watched her slipping through the water, scaring the trout lying lazily at the bottom and he knew he had to try it. When he was in Mags started chasing him and for a while there was nothing but shrieking and splashing and the sun catching in the spray and the pool swirling around them.
They lay in the sun to dry off, then they pulled on their clothes and Robbie found himself getting sleepy. Mags kept kicking him with her foot because she was getting bored, and eventually she got up and said she was off for a walk. Robbie moved his head into the shade, listening to the murmur of the river. Sleep began to paw at him, and his eyes got heavy.
*
He hardly knew where he was when he woke up. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep, and for a fraction of a moment he couldn’t even remember why he was there.
He remembered Mags was walking somewhere in the woods, and he went on listening to the sound of running water, thinking about them swimming, the light under the surface, the shock of the cold clenching water and the warm sun opening them up.
He saw Mags at the top of the bank, staring down, her face in dark shadow. He waved to her and smiled. But she didn’t respond. She was watching something in the water.
He looked down, expecting to see her reflection, but instead he saw something white.
A white hare, her ears like two flames.
The cat of the wood.
He looked up at the bank. Nothing.
He looked back into the water. Nothing.
The hare and the girl had gone.
‘Robbie.’
He let out a shout and spun to face her.
‘Are you okay?’ It was Mags, coming quietly out of the woods without warning.
She looked into his eyes. ‘What have you seen?’ she asked.
‘I thought I saw you.’
‘She’s been here, then,’ she said to herself. ‘Sorry.’ She stroked his face. ‘I shouldn’t’ve left you. Try to concentrate. You’ve had a shock. What did you see?’
‘I thought it was you,’ he said again. His heart was pounding. ‘Up on the bank. But she wasn’t looking at me, she was looking in the water. And her reflection wasn’t her. It was a white hare. Her. Fleet.’
‘Yes. Of course.’
‘Mags, am I going mad?’
‘No, no. It could drive you mad, though. That’s why I’ve said so little. I was trying to tell you that up on the beacon, after you ran away. But we’re too far in now. Too far in.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘Think reflections. If you see the hare in a mirror you’ll see the person she really is, or who she really was. It’s all in the stories. And it works in reverse. If the woman is reflected, you’ll see the hare. They’re in different dimensions, but they’re twinned with each other. Forever. Inseparable.’
‘That’s sad,’ Robbie said, not understanding.
‘Is it?’
‘So what happens now?’
‘She’s very near,’ said Mags.
‘What does that mean?’
‘They’ve got walkers out everywhere, looking for her, looking for me.’
Mr Allardyce in his shorts, thought Robbie.
‘They won’t find her, though, will they?’
‘Somehow, somewhere, they’ll meet. The lovers. They have to. They always do.’
‘We can’t do anything, then,’ he said.
‘We need to be there.’
‘Why?’
Mags said nothing.
‘Mags?’ he asked.
She started playing with her hair, undoing it and doing it up again.
‘Mags?’ he asked again.
‘She was my best friend.’
‘Are you going to try and help her, Mags?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No. But she’ll need me.’
‘So can we work out where she’s going to be?’
‘Sometimes,’ said Mags, ‘she appears near to where she was first seen.’
‘That field,’ said Robbie.
‘Maybe.’
‘But the Stricklands and their friends won’t know that,’ he said, and then he remembered. ‘The trouble is, actually, they do,’ he said.
‘You didn’t,’ she said.
‘I did. I’d forgotten.’
She stared at him in fury.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘On the other hand …’
‘What?’
‘It kind of makes it easier, right? If it’s all going to happen anyway, it’ll just happen faster.’
‘They’ll be prepared, though.’ Mags was so angry her voice was tight in the back of her throat. For a while she said nothing.
Then, finally, she let it go.
‘In the old days when the white hare came they’d burn the stubble,’ she went on. ‘That’s one of the hare’s names, from the poem: the stag of the stubble. They’d start on one side of the field and work to the other. When the animals in the field broke cover, the guns had them. That’s how they flushed her out. But they never knew whether she was there, and often she wasn’t, and instead, somewhere, somehow, later she’d be revenged. And now they’ll be ready for her.’
‘Mrs Allardyce said the hare rarely fails.’ He went on, ‘So will they burn the field?’
‘It depends what it’s had in it. Stubble burning’s not allowed any more, it’s been banned for years. Bad for the soil. There are so many pollution restrictions now, it’s hard to set fire to anything. But when someone’s desperate, well, in late summer fires can start very easily. They’ll try anything, those boys, at the best of times, and for them, or one of them, this is the worst. They’ve got to find her before she finds them.’
‘So they flush out the animals. Does that work?’
‘The thing is, hares aren’t afraid of fire. A bit like you.’
‘Mrs Allardyce said. They jump through it.’
‘Maybe that’s the connection,’ said Mags. ‘Is that your affinity, Robbie? Is it fire?’
He shrugged. ‘Who knows?’
‘They’ll jump through the fire if they think it’s less of a threat than a line of men with guns,’ Mags went on.
‘You can’t kill a ghost.’
‘She’s not a ghost, she’s not a pretend hare, she’s flesh and blood and needs to eat and drink and she’s out there in the fields like the ordinary ones.’
‘So she might be in that field and she might not, and the Stricklands might have a go at her and they might not, but one way or another we know something’s going to happen. What do we do?’
‘We watch. And we wait. It’s only a matter of time.’