IT WAS A busy first day for Ashley at Red Rigg House. They had a choice of activities: croquet or archery on the lawn, tennis or badminton on the tennis courts, or watercolour painting by the pond that sat just under the thick trees at the bottom of Red Rigg Fell. Ashley – never a particularly sporty child – chose to do painting, which turned out to be the least popular activity. Only five of the ten easels were taken up when she got there, and they had a wide range of paints, papers, and brushes to choose from. At first, she felt stricken with choice. At school, there was just the one large jar filled with stiff brushes that hadn’t had the poster paint washed out of their bristles properly and five or six big squeezy bottles – the blue and black down to their last inch of paint. Here, each child was given either a box of acrylic paints or a dainty set of watercolours, each little pat of colour freshly unwrapped. They were all given pencils, erasers, and big sheets of white paper too.
‘Now tape your canvas to your easel with the masking tape.’ Lord Lyndon-Smith’s daughter, Biddy, was leading the class. She was wearing an apron splashed with paint. ‘I want to see what you make of our pond. Don’t be afraid to experiment!’
Ashley picked out her pencils and sketched out the pond, then filled it in with green watercolour paint. She added trees, long light-green reeds, and then, as an afterthought, a quick wash of blue for the sky. The last part was the mountain, and it was only when she picked up her pencil again to sketch out its outline – looming as it did over the woods – that she realised she didn’t want to look at it. Something about it made her chest feel oddly tight, as though there was a clenched fist behind her ribs.
‘It’s just a big stupid hill,’ she told herself.
She made herself look. The huge green mass of rock and grass loomed behind the woods, jagged against the blue sky. Aidan had once shown her a dog’s tooth he had found over at the dump, and Red Rigg Fell made her think of that; the top edge was uneven, with one large curving spike and then a number of smaller ones. The surface of the mountain was scrawled with what looked like scars, and she wondered what could be big enough and mean enough to wound a mountain. Reluctantly, she filled up her brush with black paint and placed it on the far left, meaning to trace the erratic outline of the mountain across her page, but she found all she could do was press it there against the paper. Runnels of inky paint seeped down her canvas, blurring and infecting the nice clean greens she had.
‘Stupid hill,’ she said again. One of the children sitting near her, a boy with carroty red hair, frowned at her.
Ashley put the brush back in her jar of water and took a stick of black charcoal from the packet they had given her. Then, with deliberate black lines, she began to draw figures down by the pond, dark figures with smudged faces. This was much more interesting to her than any old mountain. She lived with these figures every day of her life. They waited on street corners, or clustered in the bin room in their block of flats. It was strange to see them out here in this green place, far away from the concrete and buildings she associated with them. She became quite lost in the project, and when Biddy Lyndon-Smith appeared at her shoulder, it made Ashley jump violently enough that she knocked over her jar of water.
‘What on earth are those supposed to be?’
Ashley froze. The woman was making a face of deep disgust, as though she had trod in a fresh dog’s turd.
‘Well? Answer me, child. You’ve made a good start there, with the pond and the trees, and then you’ve just ruined it with these mucky marks.’
Around them, Ashley could hear the other children sniggering. Her throat went dry.
‘She’s just expressing herself, Mum. Isn’t that the whole purpose of art, or whatever?’ Malory was there, her beautiful face smiling faintly.
Ashley felt a wash of relief.
‘Oh really, Malory.’ Biddy rolled her eyes. ‘I might have known you would like it.’ The older woman reached over and snatched the wet paper off Ashley’s easel. There was a soft ripping noise as the tape tried to hold it in place. ‘You’ll just have to start again, girl, and try and paint what you can actually see this time.’
Much to her own horror, Ashley felt her eyes fill with hot tears. It wasn’t so much the loss of her painting – even she knew it hadn’t been very good – but the fact that she had been painting what she saw. She’d made the same stupid mistake she always made, eventually. She’d let the truth of the Heedful Ones out, just a little. She’d let it out into the light. And it had made her look stupid in front of the other kids. And Malory.
‘Mum. Hey.’ Malory crouched down and put an arm around Ashley’s shoulders. She gave her a light squeeze. ‘Do you want to go for a walk, Ashie? Come on. The woods are much more interesting than this stupid old pond.’
Ashley nodded and stood. She wanted to get away from Biddy, from the other kids – she could feel them all looking at her, hiding smiles behind their hands.
‘Malory, the child has come here for an art class,’ Biddy said, frowning. ‘Leave her be.’
‘They come here to have some fun,’ Malory said. She took Ashley’s arm and smiled, but not before the younger child saw the poisonous look she shot her mother. ‘Come on, Ashie,’ she said. ‘I want to show you my favourite tree.’
* * *
‘Do these woods belong to you then?’
Malory looked amused by the question. The trees were thick on all sides and full of the new green life of spring. Underfoot, the ground was dark and wet, and the straggling branches of bushes clung to Ashley’s jumper as though they wanted her to stay with them. She was glad to be there. There was a fresh scent in her nose that she had never smelled in London, and there were magpies chattering overhead.
‘This bit of the woods? No. Beyond the pond belongs to the national park, although you wouldn’t think that to hear my mother talk about it. Where do you live, Ashley?’
‘In Lewisham. It’s in London? It’s nothing like this place.’
‘No,’ agreed Malory. ‘I bet stuff actually happens in Lewisham.’
Ashley looked at the older girl’s face, trying to read her mood. ‘You don’t like it here?’
Malory smiled again, although there was a fragile look to it that made Ashley feel uneasy. Her mother had a similar smile when Ashley asked where her father was that evening.
‘I suppose it seems daft to you that I might not like it. Living in such a big house, with all this space.’ She reached into a pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. Ashley did her best to conceal her shock, but she couldn’t quite stop her eyebrows raising as the older girl put a cigarette to her lips and lit it with a heart-shaped silver lighter. Malory took a long drag, the end of it glowing hot and yellow, then blew smoke through her nose in a kind of sigh. She offered the packet to Ashley. ‘You want one?’
Ashley blinked rapidly. This wasn’t something she’d expected to be dealing with at all.
‘I’ve never … I mean, I don’t …’
‘Give it a go.’ Malory shook the packet at her. ‘You’re only a couple of years off being able to buy them yourself anyway. Here you can try them out safely.’ Malory grinned and held her arms out to either side. ‘I am your responsible adult!’
‘Okay.’ Ashley took a cigarette, and Malory lit it. On her first breath, her lungs seemed to fill with hot, arid smog. She coughed until her eyes were running. Malory gave her a cheerful pat on the back.
‘How’d you like it?’
‘Eugh.’ Ashley rubbed a hand over her eyes. The taste in her mouth was undeniably disgusting, but her head was swimming in a way that felt new and exciting. ‘Do you get used to it?’
Malory beamed. ‘You do, unfortunately.’
They walked for a while, traipsing along a tiny muddy path while Malory made short work of her cigarette and Ashley did her best to take brief tugs from her own without coughing. She got halfway through it before she had to admit defeat.
‘That’s okay, just chuck it,’ said Malory. ‘You did well. I was sick as a dog when I had my first one. I thought Richard was going to have an aneurysm, he laughed so much. The prick.’
Ashley looked at the shortened cigarette in her hand before chucking it in a muddy puddle. She was thinking about how her dad smoked all his roll-ups down to the nub, and how her mum was always complaining about the price of her weekly packet of Silk Cut.
‘So, you’re rich,’ Ashley said, aware she was being blunt but unsure how else to say it. ‘That must be nice.’
Malory laughed, and Ashley smiled. Malory’s laugh was a big, bright thing. It was the moment that Ashley began to love her, just a little.
‘Red Rigg isn’t always a nice place to be,’ she said. ‘And Green Beck, the village down the road, it’s not all fudge and afternoon tea. Sometimes it’s a lot harder than you think, growing up here.’
There was a rustling of leaves nearby, as though something large had crashed through a bush, but Malory didn’t seem to notice. Ashley looked around, but the place looked green and identical to her. She wouldn’t have been able to find her way out on her own, she realised.
‘The big hill,’ she said slowly. ‘Behind these woods. I tried to paint it, but … there’s something about it.’
‘Technically it’s a mountain,’ said Malory. ‘Red Rigg Fell.’ She looked at Ashley out of the corners of her eyes. ‘What stopped you painting it?’
Ashley shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It just gives me the creeps. Like it’s an evil place. I know that doesn’t make sense.’
Malory gave her a sharp, delighted grin.
‘I’ve always thought that too. Here we are, look.’ She pointed to a tree ahead of them that seemed to stand on its own, slightly set apart from the other trees. The trunk was warped and twisted, almost forming a spiral before low branches spread out their gnarled limbs. The leaves had serrated edges, and there was a deep hollow filled with old forest litter in the base of the trunk. Malory stubbed her own cigarette out in the mud and patted the thickly ridged bark as though the tree were an old friend. ‘It’s a red mulberry tree. It’s not native to these woods, so once upon a time someone came all the way out here and planted it. Doesn’t it look like a witchy tree to you? Like a witch might live inside it?’
Ashley agreed that it did. Malory retrieved some paper and charcoal from her bag, and she showed Ashley how to make rubbings of the bark, filling their sheets with smudgy grey whorls and loops, like a giant’s fingerprints. And then she showed Ashley how to make animals and monsters from the rubbings; adding a pair of eyes or ears, a set of claws and teeth. It was, Ashley thought, a lot more fun than Biddy’s lesson.
‘Do you live with your mum and dad, Ashie?’ asked Malory. They both sat on the wide roots of the tree, sketchbooks in their laps.
Ashley hesitated before she answered. It was in her nature to want to give accurate responses, and truthfully her dad wasn’t around all that much. There were weeks when he wasn’t there at all.
‘Yeah,’ she said eventually. ‘Most of the time.’
‘And are they nice to you?’ When Ashley looked up in surprise, she saw that Malory was looking at her intently. ‘It’s all right to tell me if they aren’t, you know. You should always tell someone older than you if someone, even someone you love very much, is being horrible to you.’
‘Oh. No, they’re okay, I guess.’ It was true that her mum and dad doted on Aidan, who they firmly believed was going to be their big football star one day, and she often wished that she received the same attention and enthusiasm. And even at fourteen, Ashley knew it was easier to ignore the bookish, shy child who preferred her own company. But that didn’t feel like the sort of thing that Malory was asking about. ‘They argue a lot, and I wish they wouldn’t do that so much, but they don’t take too much notice of me.’
Malory looked oddly disappointed in this response, and Ashley was trying to think of something else to tell her – some morsel of misery to complete this rich girl’s picture of her – when the crashing noise came again. Ashley looked up, thinking that she had seen something in the space between the trees. Not a Heedful One, but a real, solid figure. She stood up, feeling uneasy, but there was nothing there.
‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Malory, standing up too. ‘It’s probably time to head back in for lunch. It’ll be sandwiches and crisps and pop, but you’ll get something hot at supper, I promise. Look …’ She took a packet of Polos out of her pocket and passed it to Ashley. ‘Eat a couple of these, will you? If my mother smells cigarettes on your breath, we’ll both be for the high jump.’
They began to walk back, crunching through fallen leaves on the muddy path. Ashley felt oddly proud; she hadn’t made friends with anyone on the coach, but she had been interesting enough for Malory to want to spend time with her. That felt much more important. It felt special. At that moment, she happened to glance off to their right and she saw a man watching them, half-hidden by a row of younger, shorter trees. He wasn’t wearing a shirt or trousers, and he had mud smeared across his chest and thighs. His hands were black with dirt, and his untidy hair was plastered to his cheeks with sweat. The look he gave them both was wild, and it was this last part that made Ashley afraid. She gave a little hop of surprise and grasped Malory’s arm.
‘What is it?’
Malory looked up, and Ashley was sure the older girl must have seen the man – his skin was shockingly white against the green, where it wasn’t covered in dirt – but all she did was frown slightly and turn away. She squeezed Ashley’s arm.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We don’t want to be late.’