Lives She Left Behind

Lucy and Ali walked up to where Jo was kneeling, still staring at the note in her hands.

‘Are you crying?’ Lucy asked. She reached out to take the sheet of paper but Jo wouldn’t let go.

Ali was craning over to see it. ‘It doesn’t mean anything, at least nothing worth crying about,’ she said. ‘I mean, who’s Gally? I don’t know anyone called Gally, do you?’

‘It’s me,’ she said. ‘Of course it is.’ She had never told them about her friend.

‘It’s always been me,’ she said, ‘and all the time I thought it was somebody else.’ She wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand and stood up, looking from one girl to the other with slight surprise, then she stared back into the woods and down the road ahead as if expecting to see somebody else.

She strode off towards the village. The other two walked fast behind her, trying to catch up, exchanging looks and mouthing silent questions at each other.

They came to a scatter of houses where five lanes curved round the corners of fields to meet in a loose group of junctions. Jo was still walking fast, straight to a gate on the far side where she stopped. They caught up to find her staring in through a graveyard at an old stone church with a squat tower.

‘Nothing at all. I told you.’ Jo turned to look at them with that same unsettling expression on her face as if they didn’t belong there with her.

‘Oh, I’m all right now. I’m more than all right. That . . . that was just a surprise.’

‘A surprise? What do you mean? It’s all nonsense, Jo – it was meant for someone else. The other ones too – all that stuff about being old and young.’

‘The song?’ said Jo from somewhere that was still some way away. ‘You know it, don’t you?’ She sang

‘For they’re never quite young and they’re never quite old

And their song is a secret that’s best left untold.

For they’re never quite old and they’re never quite young

And lifetimes have passed since their song was first sung.’

‘No, I don’t know it,’ said Ali, ‘and I don’t understand any of it,’ but as she spoke, Ali found she was looking at a version of Jo she had never seen before. It was as if the reserved, slightly hidden girl she knew had been turned inside out. This Jo smiled at her with a kind assurance, her face lit by something like serenity.

‘Well, never mind. Do you want to come with me?’ She went into the churchyard without waiting for an answer and they followed. They heard her say ‘Hello’ as she entered the church porch as if she had met an old friend, but when they caught up she was standing alone, looking at the inner doorway. Above it was a stone lintel, a lamb carved in the centre flanked by lions. Jutting out either side to support the lintel were two stone heads, carved in profile, gazing across at each other. Both wore crowns.

Jo was staring from one to the other and it seemed to Ali and Lucy that she had addressed her greeting to the two heads.

‘Who do you suppose they are?’ Lucy asked, because it seemed a safe question.

‘You’re very full of songs and rhymes and things. If it’s a rhyme, what does it rhyme with?’

‘Oh . . .’ Jo frowned in thought. ‘’Til Christmas falls on Candlemas, the king . . . something . . .’ She looked at the heads again, raised her hand and touched the face on the right. It had a sharper profile, with a hooked nose. ‘’Til Christmas falls on Candlemas, the king shall never kiss his lass.’

She stood gazing at them and both her friends thought she was shining with a happiness they had never seen in her before.

‘I like that,’ said Lucy. ‘The two of them staring across at each other and they can’t reach each other. When does Christmas fall on Candlemas? I hope it’s soon.’

‘It’s not,’ Ali said. ‘It doesn’t happen, not ever. Candlemas is forty days after Christmas. I suppose it means the king never gets to kiss her. Have you been here before, Jo?’ but Jo seemed to have lost interest in the church. She had gone back into the graveyard, staring over to the far corner where rows of more recent gravestones stood in neat lines. She shivered.

The other two hung back. ‘This is awful,’ said Ali. ‘We’re going to be in such a lot of trouble.’

‘I’m going to throw some of them away then Fleur will think she took them.’

‘Put them back. We can’t. Anyway, it might not be that. Maybe she just needs some food or something. I’m pretty hungry.’

‘So am I,’ Lucy said, putting the tablets in her pocket. She called to Jo. ‘Let’s go and find a shop. We need food. I’m not answering for my blood sugar level if I don’t eat. Oh, she’s gone.’ Jo was striding across towards those further graves but as she got to them, they saw her check abruptly and stare at the rows of stones with an intensity that stopped them in their tracks as if they should not intrude. She put her hand up to her mouth, doubled up, and her friends watched in horror as she vomited on the grass.

Ali grabbed at a practical explanation. ‘That’s what’s wrong. She must have eaten something.’

‘We haven’t eaten anything. That’s why we’re hungry – unless it’s those mushrooms.’

Jo was heading for a gate in the far wall and they followed, walking fast for another five minutes, again barely able to keep up with her, past fields as if the village had ended, then through more cottages to a junction where she turned left without a moment’s hesitation. There were houses all along this part of the road.

Jo took no notice, staring all around her with keen interest, then she faltered, came to a halt and looked hard at a house as if she expected it to be something else. An old woman holding a watering can was standing in the next-door garden. ‘Can I help you, dears?’ she asked.

‘You’re a bit too late,’ the woman answered. ‘It was here. It closed, getting on for twenty years back.’

‘Not any more. There were lots of them once. There was the King’s Head just down there and the Queen’s Head right by it. Then there was the old Rest and Be Thankful before that.’

‘I’d have liked that,’ said Lucy. ‘I would have been really thankful for a rest.’

‘You wouldn’t have liked it at all,’ said the woman. ‘It was a rough old place, that one. Always fighting in the Rest, I was told.’

Jo had said nothing throughout this exchange, staring hard at her. ‘Mary?’ she said faintly.

‘Right down that way,’ said the woman, pointing onwards. ‘You go on all the way to Zeals. It’s a mile or two down the hill. You’ll find something there.’ She considered them for a moment. ‘You look a bit done in,’ she said. ‘Would you like a cup of tea and a biscuit to set you on your way?’

They sat on the bench in her garden. Lucy, sneezed, fiddled in her pocket for a tissue, turned away to stir sugar into each of their mugs, then handed the tea to the other two. ‘As soon as we’ve drunk this, let’s get out of here.’

Jo said, ‘There are things I need to do here. There’s someone I have to see.’

To Ali’s surprise, Lucy said, ‘Well, all right – but come down the road and get some food with us first. We all need to eat. Please? I’d hate it if you just went off and left us. At least let’s have one last picnic,’ and Jo considered, then agreed.

They walked out of the village but now Jo was hanging back behind them, looking over hedges, into gardens and all around. The other two found themselves far enough ahead to talk quietly. ‘Why did you agree?’ Ali asked. ‘We can’t leave her. It could be shock from the tower.’

‘If anyone should be in shock, it’s me,’ Lucy retorted. ‘Nothing happened to her.’

‘How long will it take?’ They turned at the final cluster of cottages and watched her walking slowly towards them. ‘I don’t know,’ said Lucy.

Not long, seemed to be the answer. She caught up with them, smiled at them vaguely, and they walked on down the hill in a silence that neither Ali nor Lucy wanted to break. Silence seemed safer. After twenty minutes they came to a larger village.

‘I like this place,’ Lucy said. ‘It’s normal. It’s got traffic and signposts and street lights and houses with straight walls – and look, it’s got a real shop.’ Jo shivered and stopped to stare behind her. She said nothing for a while, then she turned back to them, frowning.

They bought pasties and chocolate bars, then they took to the countryside, climbing fences and edging around fields away from the drumming of the main road until they came to a flat triangle of grass hidden away in the corner of a field where they put up their tent.

Tearing the wrapper off her chocolate and watching Jo closely, Lucy said, ‘I didn’t like that place, Pen Selwood. It was odd.’

‘I was a bit worried,’ put in Ali judiciously. ‘I thought you might be coming down with something.’

Jo turned her head and looked up towards the ridge that rose to the west. ‘No,’ she said, and her voice was slower, flatter. ‘I’m fine. I just felt like – I don’t know, like I was in a bit of a dream. I really loved it there. It was . . . calm.’

‘No. Calm like walking on Dartmoor. Living in town is phone calls and being places at the right time and mobiles and text messages—’

‘You never hear your mobile ringing,’ Lucy retorted, ‘and there’s no point in texting you because you don’t answer.’

‘Yes, but half the time I’m with you you’re talking to somebody else. It’s like not being there at all.’

‘And you’re saying you loved that village?’ Ali asked. ‘And all we did was go to a church and walk past some houses and talk to one not very exciting woman.’

Jo was silent for a time then seemed to gather herself for a reply. ‘You could talk up there. You could sing for yourself and not have to listen to other people’s voices on earphones. Down here it’s different. Listen to that noise.’

‘Yes, the cars on the road, going somewhere as fast as they can. They stop us hearing the larks and the warblers. They stop us smelling the hedges and the grass. All for the sake of taking us shopping to buy new clothes we only need because someone else tells us we need them.’

‘What are you on about?’ Lucy demanded. ‘You wouldn’t know a warbler if it pecked you. Is this the same Jo who was drooling over shirts in Topshop last week?’

‘Anyway, I don’t want to go back there. I don’t care about the three castles any more. Let’s go somewhere with lights and cafes.’

‘What about Andy?’ Ali pointed out. ‘They’re going to be digging there next week.’

‘Oh yes. Not to mention Conrad,’ Lucy retorted. ‘Well, I’ll care next week but not right now.’

Lucy yawned deliberately. ‘Why don’t we just go to bed?’ Ali suggested. ‘Aren’t you tired? I am.’

So they settled in, putting Jo between them as if for safety. ‘We’re on a slant,’ Lucy complained. ‘I’m sliding downhill,’ but within a minute or two she was asleep and instantaneously, it seemed to her, she was abruptly awake again. It was morning, her head was pushing against the cold nylon wall of the tent and Ali was shaking her.

‘Jo’s gone,’ said Ali. ‘She’s taken her backpack and she’s gone. She’s left us a note.’

CHAPTER 17