‘Be ready. They might be waiting for us,’ Rachel said nervously as they turned off the main road. ‘We’re late.’
She drove into the yard. There was no sign of Meehan or his men but as she stopped the car, her phone rang.
‘That’s him,’ she said. ‘What am I going to say?’
The policeman gave her no chance to say anything. They could hear the metal rattle of his voice though she pressed the phone hard to her ear. ‘We got held up . . .’ she said quickly. ‘Oh, right. What about tomorrow morning? Tonight? An hour? No, I don’t . . . ninety minutes. Yes, yes. We will. No, you don’t need to do that.’ She switched it off and hung her head then looked up at Mike. ‘We have to be there in an hour and a half. If not, he’s coming to get you. I’m sorry.’
‘Well, I suppose that’s that, then.’
They got out of the cars. Gally seemed to come fully alive as her feet touched the ground. She sniffed the air like a dog.
‘Let’s go inside,’ Rachel said. ‘Gally? Will you come and talk to us? There’s very little time. We need to know how you made your mixture.’
The girl took no notice. She walked slowly across the yard to the old stone poking up through what was left of the brambles. She knelt down on one knee in front of it, spreading her hands out on the ground, palms down, like a runner taking up her position for a race. Rubbing her hands on the ground as if making proper contact with the earth, she gazed at the stone through the foliage.
‘This is where we died,’ she said. ‘The first time. They killed us here, by this stone.’
Fleur frowned, took a pace towards her. ‘Jo,’ she said, ‘we didn’t come back here for this.’
‘That’s not her name,’ said Ferney. He put a finger to his lips. ‘Just listen a moment,’ he said. ‘She’ll get to it her way.’
Gally stood up, reached a hand out to him and turned to face them, her back to the stone.
‘When we met, we were terrified and terror was with us all that short time, all through that night. To lessen it we began to love each other, and there was nothing but those two passions from the moment we met until the moment we died. They killed us here, pinned us hard against each other with a spear, killed us in love and in terror. We were enemies, then we were lovers, then we were dead, all in the snap of a finger. We died right here against this stone.’
They stood in a wide ring as if anxious not to crowd her.
‘That’s why I was born here the second time,’ she said.
‘The second life?’ Ferney spoke with sharp surprise in his voice. ‘You remember the second life?’
‘Can we save this for later?’ said Rachel.
‘No. Leave her be,’ said Ferney. ‘This matters. We’ve never remembered it before.’
‘But Mike needs to—’
‘Trust her. Just listen.’
But it seemed the damage was done. Gally was shaking her head, pursuing something as ephemeral as an interrupted dream.
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve lost it.’
‘What do you see?’ Ferney asked.
‘The stone and the trees. Trees?’ She turned her head, lifted her hand to point towards the house, but her eyes seemed to look beyond it. ‘The tree by the hut – the old ones’ hut. That tree.’ She stood up, took Ferney’s hand and her voice came again, strong and clear. ‘I know something,’ she said. ‘Come with me.’
They followed her around the side of the house to the ruined terrace. She stopped there and looked at Mike with the sunlight glinting on the tears in her eyes.
‘I thought you would know,’ she said. ‘I thought this was the sure and certain place for it. I’m so sorry to have put you through it all.’
‘What place?’ he asked, then looked behind her at the rotten wreckage of the tree that had fallen ten years earlier. It stretched out from the sideways claw of roots to vanish into brambles, sagging into soapy disintegration under its own weight. The hollow tree in which he had hidden their breakfast on that birthday, the place she used afterwards for surprises, for the concealment of small things to delight him.
‘I thought you would look here,’ she said.
‘For what?’ he asked, sensing the answer as he said it.
‘For my letter. I put it in the tree.’
‘Why?’
‘So you would find it, not some stranger. That’s why I left it there, inside our hollow.’
‘What did it say?’
‘The words are too far away from me,’ she said. ‘I just have the shape of it.’
‘Gally, tell me.’ Rachel’s voice was urgent. ‘How high up was the hollow?’
Gally reached forward into mid-air. ‘Level with my chin.’
The hollow was underneath. They paced it out from the roots, bent and pulled the rotting wood apart in handfuls. The bark and the sapwood broke away and they piled the dead meat of the tree to one side, all of them working urgently – all but Fleur, who stood immobile, her eyes fixed on the scene with the expression of someone watching a snake. When they reached the heartwood they found it still as hard as it had ever been, so they took to saws and axes to hack it away until one last axe-cut showed the corner of a yellow plastic bag, poking through the pulpy wreckage underneath. Mike pulled it clear, brushed it clean and turned it over in his hands. It was intact, firmly sealed, wrapped round with thick grey tape.
‘This?’ he asked.
‘This,’ she answered.
‘Would you rather do this alone?’ Gally asked him when they were all in the kitchen.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s all right. You all have a stake in this, one way or another.’
The bands of tape had melted together with the pressure of the wood and the stewing of heat and age. Adhesive clung to the knife as he tried to slice through it and stuck to the blade in ribbons. He wrestled with the wrapping, hurrying to get to its contents and at the same time increasingly afraid of them. When he finally pulled the envelope out of the remains of the plastic bag, he sat down at the table.
He knew the envelope. He knew the sheet of paper inside. It was the writing paper she had always used and the rest of the sheaf it had come from was still in the desk drawer where she had left it. He knew the ink and he knew the handwriting as if it were a warm hand tucked in his. A hollow sense of grievous loss came with the sight of it but then a real hand touched his shoulder – a warm, living hand. Gally’s hand.
He began to read and the others watched him as his eyes tracked down each page, sometimes lifting again to read one section a second and third time. They saw tears form, bulge, run slowly to halt at the top of his cheek until pushed by others behind to make the first sliding line down the dry skin, opening up a faster track for the rest. At the end he frowned a little, turned to pick up the envelope from the table and shook it. Something green fluttered out and fell to the floor – a torn half of a five-pound note. He bent to pick it up, turning it in his fingers and inspecting the ripped edge, then he held the letter out to Gally. ‘Why don’t you read it to everybody?’ he asked. ‘I think that would be the right thing to do.’
Her hand moved towards it as reluctantly as if it were a flame. Her fingers stopped short of it and it was Mike who pushed it into her hand. She took it, looking into his eyes, then dropped hers to it.
‘My dear, dear Mike,’ she began, ‘I know I am doing the very worst thing to you that it is possible . . .’ her voice broke and she stopped. Without looking she passed it to Rachel. The solicitor looked at Mike, who nodded, and she began it again, speaking clearly and deliberately. ‘My dear, dear Mike, I know I am doing the very worst thing to you that it is possible to do. I want to tell you over and over again in this letter that I am not doing it to be cruel to you, although I know just how cruel it is and that distresses me so very much. You will think I’m doing it because of the promise that Ferney and I made. You will think, I’m sure, that I made that promise at a time when you did not exist and it should not hold me. Please believe me when I tell you in utter truthfulness that our old promise is not the first cause of what I have to do. I am doing it only because it is the least bad of all the alternatives and I know it is what I have to do for Rosie’s sake. But it is also what I have to do for your sake.’
She paused and looked at each of them in turn. ‘Is this all right?’ she asked, and no one said it wasn’t.
‘I didn’t take you as second-best, Mike. I didn’t take you until something better came along. I have been thrilled to be with you. I love your endless kindness and your patience and your care. I had no idea at all that the things that have happened to us were possible and if I had known, I would have run away from you that first time we met to avoid dragging you through this. Above all, I feel so terribly sad that I have brought us to this point.
‘I have come to realise that there is no way out. There is no treatment that will turn Rosie into a different child. She seemed like your child and my child, and you have loved her like a father loves a daughter, but that was just in her first months before she found out who she really was. She is not our child. You know that really, I am sure. Now she knows that too. That is why she wants to harm herself and that is why she will destroy herself as soon as she is strong enough to find a way. He will make sure of that, won’t he? I can only see unhappiness ahead for all of us and it seems to me that this way you do stand a chance of happiness again at some future point, even though you will not think so now.
‘Please know that there will have been no suffering. It should not come as any surprise that I have, over the years, learnt how to do this in a gentle and painless way and I promise you, I know that is the way it is.
‘You won’t want to read this now, but later when you can, there is something I want you to do. Take the Poorman portrait to a gallery – the Tate or somewhere like that. Let them look at it and when they tell you who painted it, believe what they say. Sell it and use the money to start again somewhere new. Please do not sell Bagstone. At some future time, a different Ferney and a different Gally will come back to find it. Please let them have it. I think you will know them, but if you have any doubt I am leaving you a token. Ask her and she will show you the other half.
‘Please, please give yourself the chance to start afresh. Remember that for us, this is not death. Don’t wait for us. There is no happiness to be had in that. If I could save you the sorrow that lies immediately ahead I would, but unless I do this, there will be far more sorrow. Your Gally loves you and feels, at this moment, utterly cursed by her history. Please forgive me.’
She fell silent and Mike looked at Gally as if there was nobody else in the room. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I should have thought to look but I forgot everything when I opened that door.’
She went to him and they clung to each other but then he stepped back, took her hand and Ferney’s hand and put them together.
‘I don’t want to sell your picture,’ he said.
‘It’s pretty modern really,’ Ferney said. ‘It’s not important.’
Rachel looked at her watch, ‘I really, really hate to say this but we have to go, only because I’d like to keep you out of prison.’ She stopped. ‘But I don’t know if I can,’ she said. ‘All this is extraordinary but it gives me nothing to say.’
‘Take the letter,’ Gally said. ‘Let them read it.’
‘They’ll think it’s mad.’
‘That’s no bad thing.’
‘You don’t mind?’
‘They won’t arrest me, will they? Take it and show them and come back here.’
‘Yes, all right,’ said Rachel. ‘I don’t know how long we’ll be. Anything from two hours to twenty years, I suppose, depending on how good a lawyer I am.’
‘Go on,’ said Fleur. ‘Get on with it. We’ll still be here. We have a lot of talking to do.’
‘I don’t think Lucy’s right about her,’ Mike said as they drove out of the village.
‘Fleur? Don’t you?’
There was a long silence until Mike said, ‘How are we going to play it?’
‘If you mean how am I going to play it, wait and see.’
The next silence carried them all the way to Yeovil.
When they arrived at the front desk they were shown not to the usual interview room, but to Meehan’s office. He shook Rachel’s hand but merely pointed Mike to a chair.
‘This isn’t another interview under caution,’ he said, ‘not yet anyway. I expect you to be straight with me. I understand you’ve got something to show me?’
‘We have,’ said Rachel. ‘My client has found a letter from his wife written immediately before her death and dated. He has brought it for you to read.’
‘You kept this to yourself, Mr Martin?’
‘No. She left it in a hiding place. We didn’t find it until now.’
‘That’s a bit convenient.’
‘I was there as a witness when it was found; so were others,’ said Rachel. ‘There’s no doubt it’s genuine.’
Meehan raised his eyebrows. ‘You’ll have to show us the place later. Does it explain anything?’
‘If you read it, I’ll think you’ll understand,’ said Rachel.
The policeman held out his hand and she gave him the envelope. He studied the outside then took out the contents with care and unfolded them. He turned slightly away to get the light from the window and put on a pair of reading glasses that made him a little less like a policeman. They watched as he read, and saw him look up at Mike with an expression of curiosity on his face. He reached the end and went back to the start and read it all over again as if committing it to heart. When he put it down on the table, he went on staring at it in silence as if not sure where to begin.
‘All right,’ he said in the end. ‘Of course we’ll have to check this to establish the authenticity. We have specimens of the late Mrs Martin’s handwriting on file. Then I’ll have to talk to the Crown Prosecution Service.’ That means Anna Murray, he thought to himself, and I can guess what she’ll say. He looked at Mike. ‘I have no grounds for detaining you, Mr Martin. You may go. Did you ever think of getting medical attention for her?’
‘I never knew anything like this was going to happen.’ said Mike truthfully. ‘I had no idea she might do it.’
‘I suppose it’s pointless to ask what she means by all that at the end?’ said Meehan. ‘There’s no logic to it, I dare say.’
‘No logic at all,’ said Mike, and that was the only lie he was called upon to utter.
‘I have also now made contact with a woman who can explain the taking of the photographs,’ Rachel put in. ‘She’s a healer from Keswick who—’
‘Spare me all that,’ said Meehan. ‘I’ll ask for it if I need to know, and the stuff with the boy is dead in the water too. I’ll have to keep this until we’ve checked the handwriting.’ He waved the letter at Mike. ‘Will you want it back? I’d burn it if I were you. No point in hanging on to past sorrows.’
‘Thank you,’ said Mike to Rachel when they were approaching the village. ‘I can’t really thank you enough for everything you’ve done.’
‘All part of the job,’ she said, sounding far away. ‘It’s what I get paid for. What was all that stuff about the painting?’
They got back to the cottage to find the others cooking supper from a motley collection of ingredients. He took Rachel to his study.
‘Ignore the mess,’ he said. He pointed to the picture hanging on the far wall. ‘It’s a bit dark. I’ll switch the light on.’
It was an oil painting of a cottage and the light showed her it was Bagstone. The stone itself poked out through the bushes on the right. The house was surrounded by trees. There were two figures standing by the gate. Mike carefully unhooked it from the wall and turned it round. ‘She had it cleaned,’ he said. The back was dark brown but for a small amber rectangle slanting slightly.
They fetched the little label she had found and she held it against the paler space. It fitted perfectly.
‘Oh Gally,’ he said, ‘You meant to stick it back, didn’t you?’ He propped the painting against a chair and stared at it.
‘It’s a good picture,’ Rachel said. ‘Let me guess. Ferney left it to Gally in his will.’
‘Yes, he did. He met the painter nearby. They got on very well. I’m trying to remember the story. The painter was in some kind of money trouble. Ferney suggested he paint the house for them.’
‘So, that’s them? That’s really Ferney and Gally at the gate?’
‘Yes.’
She went close and stared at the two little figures.
‘That’s utterly extraordinary. I wish they were larger. You can’t really see their faces.’
‘That’s what Gally said.’
‘So who was this itinerant artist?’
‘He called himself John Poorman, according to Gally.’
‘John Poorman is JP, not JO.’
‘That’s right. It wasn’t his real name. He was a bitter man, I think.’
She was still staring at the picture. ‘But . . . doesn’t it remind you of something?’
‘It’s definitely this house.’
‘I meant the style.’
‘What about it?’
‘A million prints? Birthday cards? Biscuit tins? The Hay Wain?’
He pursed his lips and looked at her, reluctant to say it for fear of sounding foolish. ‘Surely not.’
‘Give me that label again. It might not be an ‘O’. It could easily be a ‘C’. J for John, C for . . . now, what do you suppose C might stand for?’
‘Stop it. You’re meant to be the sensible one. How could that be?’
‘You should do what Gally said and ask an expert.’
‘I can just ask the two of them, can’t I? But perhaps some things are best not known. I’m not sure it’s mine to sell. I’m their custodian really. What would my lawyer say about it?’
‘Your lawyer would say there is no part of English law which applies to this.’
Ferney and Gally came quietly into the room. ‘The painting doesn’t matter,’ Gally said.
‘But it’s the two of you,’ Mike pointed out. ‘You don’t have photos. It must be the only image from all those years. Of course it matters.’
‘Yes, it’s us, but it could be anybody. Two tiny figures and he was no good at faces.’
‘Anyway,’ said Ferney, ‘we have other ways to remember. We have a song or two and a poem. They take us back. We don’t need the picture.’
Ali called that supper was ready. Rachel looked at her watch. ‘Oh my goodness,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to go.’