The path stuck to the cliffs, tracing the shape of the country where it met the sea. All day it was there, blue and calm, a vast expanse on their left, simultaneously calming and terrifying, beautiful and completely other. The drop down to it was often dramatic, but fences to their right kept them out of the farmers’ fields and firmly on the last strip of earth between land and sea. Jen thought about the land, stretching inland for miles, across mountains and valleys, towns and cities, supporting the lives of millions of people, and none of it accessible to her or Ethie and Wolf as they walked this path between barbed wire and certain death.
How would it feel to jump? If she chose the right spot, where there were no rocks beneath, where the cliff fell straight and true into a depth of water, would she survive the impact? Would she be able to dive and swim? She’d never been a strong swimmer. Not like Danny.
They passed through Skinningrove where the boats had all gone out to sea and ponies were left to graze the fields. There were makeshift huts of wood and corrugated iron, but not a person to be seen. Jen shivered even though the sun was strong.
They followed the headland round the high cliff of Boulby, and passed though Staithes, a small town falling over itself getting down to the water, its houses stepping on each other’s heels, its pub kissing the water on a narrow beach.
At Runswick Bay, the beach stretched out wide and flat and the sea sparkled like a day in childhood. They walked across the sands, making sure not to step on the small clear jellyfish that pocked the sand.
The path took them up to the clifftops again. They walked in single file and rarely spoke. Jen’s body was learning the rhythm of walking and her old trainers covered the miles smoothly. The steps ate up the hours of the day, and it was late afternoon when they reached another high point and she saw Whitby Abbey below them, its ruined arches framing pieces of the sky.
“This is Kettleness.” said Wolf. “We’ll wait down in the quarries along from here until night falls, then go into the town under the cover of darkness.”
There was a steep descent through woodland. Jen caught hold of tree branches to steady herself, felt the slide of her soles on the rough ground.
Then they were in the abandoned quarries. The path drew a line between two distinct landscapes. On their left, the old spoils heaps stretching into the sea, bleached white and grey, devoid of life. Jen stood still looking at the shape of the land, backed by the blue of sea and sky. It reminded her of one of the vases on the shelf in her mum’s kitchen, banded with mineral colours.
“Look, meadowsweet,” said Ethie. Jen turned around. On the other side of the path, a huge bowl of greenery, an abundance of wildflowers, birdsong. Ethie snapped off a head of white frothy flowers and handed it to her. Jen put it to her nose and sniffed. It was hay and summer and childhood, and also the bed which she’d slept in at the cottage.
“What’s this?” she asked, moving her hand through a stand of green plants that looked like wire brushes gone soft with life. They were everywhere, tall and pricked with black seedpods.
“Horsetails,” said Wolf.
“They don’t look like horses’ tails.”
“They’re older than horses. They’ve been around since the dinosaurs were. They’ve seen everything there is to see.”
“There’s a spot over here where we can rest,” said Ethie. “Come on.”
On the day they’d visited Whitby, Finn had taken her to the museum. He wanted to look at the fossils.
“They blasted the whole coast,” he told her, “looking for alum.”
“Alum?”
“It’s a mineral. Really important for – well, just about everything. For industry. And this was one of the only places you could find it. So there are loads of old quarries all along the coastline.”
“Don’t they use it anymore?”
“They can make it now. In a lab.”
“How come I’ve not heard of it, if it’s so important?”
“Some things are like that. Some of the most essential things are unspectacular; we don’t even notice they’re there.”
“Some people, too.”
“Maybe. But the thing is, while they were blasting the cliffs to bits, they kept finding fossils of huge creatures that hadn’t been seen before. It changed our whole understanding of the history of the world.”
“And they’re in this museum?”
They were in a park on a hill topped by a low-slung building with views across the town. “They’re embedded in the walls.”
Inside they walked through an art gallery to a crowded room at the back of the building and paid their entrance fees to a woman who gave them a laminated diagram of the museum. The fossils were in the left-hand corner, some of them, as Finn had said, integrated into the building.
They didn’t hold her interest in the way they did Finn’s, and soon she wandered off to look around the rest of the museum. She read about St Wilfrid’s connections with Rome, and Saint Hilda who had supposedly turned the snakes of Whitby to stone when she founded the abbey here. The stone snakes were ammonites. She walked quickly past the glass cases of stuffed animals, pinned butterflies and birds’ eggs, and the grotesque Victorian puppets dangling from their strings.
Finn found her staring at the mummified hand of a hanged criminal, the Hand of Glory, said to bring bad luck to all who owned it. “It’s like something from Edgar Allen Poe,” said Finn.
“Can we leave please? It’s really creepy in here.”
“I guess it is. Come on, we’ll go to the Abbey.”
With Finn she’d entered the Abbey through the visitors’ centre, but Wolf went to a wooden door built into the wall. It had a large metal knocker and he rapped it hard three times. After a few minutes, it was opened by a monk. He led them into a hall that Jen didn’t remember. She could hear the sea, but the roof and walls were keeping the sky out. Wolf talked to the monk in hushed tones and Ethie paced back and forth. Jen heard the names Egfrith and Beau and saw the worried look on the monk’s face.
“Someone else will have to be found to accompany them,” he said quietly. “It is imperative that you leave for Rome immediately. The synod needs you to represent them; no one else has your experience.”
Jen thought about lying on the grass in the middle of the ruined abbey with Finn. The night in the bed and breakfast that never happened.
“Could I charge my phone?” she said.
“Pardon?” said the monk.
“I want to phone someone. Have you got a plug point where I can charge my phone?” The monk looked at Wolf who nodded, and the monk rang a little handbell. Another monk appeared out of the shadows and the first monk spoke to him softly.
“Please come this way, lady,” the new monk said to Jen. She looked at Wolf and Ethie.
“It’s OK, you’ll be safe,” said Wolf.
Jen hoped that Ethie would come with her, but she was paying close attention to the conversation and she didn’t seem to notice as Jen followed the monk down the length of the hall, out through a small wooden door into the night air. Jen looked about her. This was more familiar. Mown grass rolling over hillocks, the stumps of pillars, huge arches open to the sky, the call of seagulls above the shush of the sea.
The monk had a huge bunch of keys which looked like something from a gothic novel. They were on a big iron ring and each key was longer than a finger, ornate and heavy. The monk used one of the keys to open a door which took them through a storeroom filled with cardboard boxes and till rolls and into the gift shop. Jen expected there to be an alarm he’d need to turn off, but nothing happened. No bleeps or flashing lights. Moonlight coming through the windows cast the shelves and tables into relief, strange rectangular mounds on the backs of four legged beasts, all motionless.
“I believe this is what you’re looking for.” The monk was pointing to a plug socket behind the till.
“Thank you.” She stopped staring around her and unzipped her bag, groped about to find her phone and charger, which were right at the bottom.
“It will probably take a while to charge,” she told him.
“I can wait.”
He folded into himself, seemed to turn himself off almost. He was wearing a monk’s robe with a hood, and his face disappeared inside the hood until it wasn’t visible. His hands were held together inside the folds of his robe. He was still and silent, a shadow. He seemed like part of the shop, the silent merchandise waiting through the hours of darkness for the arrival of light and people and the chink of coins.
Jen plugged her phone in and sat down on the floor. It was completely out of battery and it would be a while until there was enough to even turn it on. She closed her eyes and fell asleep.
When she woke she was disorientated. Her phone was flashing and the monk was still standing in exactly the same position, but the quality of the darkness had changed. The piles of books on the sale tables had more weight to them, gave a sense of substance to the surrounding air.
Jen turned on her phone. She had thirty missed calls, twenty-three texts and seven voice messages. She blinked at the screen. It was hard to look at its bright glow in the darkness; maybe she was imagining it. She never got any calls or texts. Not many, anyway.
She scrolled down the list of numbers and saw her mum, her dad, Finn, Rebecca and some other numbers she didn’t recognise. She thought about reading the texts, listening to the messages, but she just wanted to talk to Finn. The longing that had come to her last night intensified when she saw his name on the screen of her phone. He wouldn’t answer. It was the middle of the night in France as well, and he probably had no signal anyway. But she would hear his voice on the answerphone message, and she could talk to him even if he couldn’t reply.
She dialled the number. He answered on the second ring.
“Jen.”
“Finn.”
“Jen, is that really you?”
“Where are you, Finn? Are you in France?”
“Thank God! Jen, are you OK?”
“Why are you awake?”
“Jen, where are you? Everybody’s looking for you. Including the police.”
“The police?”
“You’re officially a missing person. Jen, I’m so glad you’re OK. Tell me where you are.”
“I’m in Whitby right now, but I think we’ll be moving on soon.”
“We? Who are you with?”
“Oh, some people I met. I’m fine. Why am I a missing person?”
“You’ve been gone for weeks. No trace of you since the hospital.”
Jen was quiet. Finn knew about the hospital. Had they told him why she was there? Did her mum know? The police?
“Jen, Jen, are you there? I’m coming to get you.”
She imagined it, the homecoming, her mum tearful and angry, desperate to get back to her church duties, her dad throwing an arm round her shoulders and giving her a squeeze before sloping off.
“No,” she said.
“Jen, everyone...”
“You can come. But I don’t want to go home. You can tell them I’m OK, but not where I am.”
“Jen, you don’t understand. Your mum is frantic. Your Aunt Barbara has come down from Scotland.”
“Are you with my family?”
“I felt bad for leaving you alone in York. I kept thinking about your face when the train pulled out of the station, I kept thinking I should have tried harder to get you to come with me. I haven’t stopped thinking about you, to be honest.”
The table in front of her was mostly different editions of Dracula. Paperbacks, hardbacks, some gothic in design, some with film stills on the covers. When they’d visited together, Finn had asked her to choose which one she wanted, and she’d gone for a plain black paperback, slim, with pages of tiny print. It was in the bag by her feet, scuffed and bent from many readings.
“I’m not coming home.”
“Danny is here.”
“What?”
“Danny, your brother, he’s here in the room with me now. I’m sharing his room. He can hear this conversation.”
“You’re sleeping in Danny’s room? Does Mum know?”
“I’m sleeping on a camp bed on the floor.”
“I can’t believe you’re there. That you’re with Danny.”
“Everyone’s waiting to hear from you.”
“Is Lee there?”
“Who?”
“From Mum’s church. A blonde guy with tattoos.”
“I haven’t seen anyone like that. I saw Terence and Stella though. I knew them straight away from your descriptions.”
“Finn, I miss you.”
“God Jen, I –”
“I want to see you. But if you bring all those people with you, you won’t find me.”
“OK. Just me and Danny.”
“I might not be in Whitby. We’re going south.”
“Keep your phone on. We’ll set off straight away.”
“OK.”
“Are you alright, Jen?”
“Tell Danny I’ve been looking for him.” Jen ended the call and turned the phone off. The gift shop was grey now, the glimmerings of day creeping in through the windows. She’d been there all night.
She stood up and turned to the monk, still motionless by the wall.
“I’m done,” she said.
The monk lifted his head. Jen could see the beginnings of a beard growing on his chin, wispy and thin. His eyes were shadowed by his hood. He walked to the door and unlocked it with one of the huge iron keys and held it open for her. She walked through and it slammed shut behind her.
She turned quickly. She was alone in the ruins of Whitby Abbey and apart from the light, it was just the same as it had been that time with Finn. Seagulls were circling and she could hear the sea far below. The ruins of the old abbey stood black against the sky. There was no sign of Ethie or Wolf. A new day was beginning and it was very different from the one she’d been in yesterday.
She was trespassing. She couldn’t be here when the staff came to open up. She had to get moving. She walked quickly across the grass, past the old monk’s grave and the high arches, alongside the fishpond and down to the wall which bound the west of the Abbey grounds. She found a foothold and managed to hoist herself up. It wasn’t graceful, and the wall cut painfully into her belly, but she was over. She was on the road and before long the sun would be coming up over the horizon. She hoisted her backpack over her shoulders and started walking.
She had no food. She dug into her pockets to see if she had any money. Her fingers touched something metal and she gasped. She still had the medallion.
She could have given up, phoned Finn or her mum and dad, caught a train, gone home. But she was worried about Ethie. Where was she? And was Ely even a home to Jen anymore? She decided to keep heading south. She’d stay hidden, not draw attention to herself, look out for signs.