2 SEPTEMBER

Eight days after abandonment

11

An ambulance was parked at the entrance to Indigo Park, its back wheels off the duckboards, sun splashed like paint across its doors. Odie barked at the sight of it, dashing forward until Christie dragged on the lead to bring him to heel.

Agnes was slow to react, the bark confusing her, throwing the picture out of focus. The last time she saw an ambulance it was in the aftermath of the storm when the only light came from next door, from Maythorn.

‘Wait here,’ she told Christie as Odie fretted at the lead.

‘No way.’ He walked with her, deeper into the caravan park.

Bette stood a short distance away, pink fleece zipped to her chin, red wellies on her feet. She raised a hand in greeting, smiling when she saw Odie. ‘Come here, you bugger.’

Christie unclipped the lead and Odie ran to be scooped up, licking at Bette’s face.

‘You silly bugger,’ she said. ‘Did you have a nice walk, then? Did you?’

Agnes needed to turn and look at their caravan but she couldn’t do it. What if paramedics were in there with Dad, trying to revive him? What if they were too late? Her head was thick with fear. Iris would get her story: Adrian Gale haunted to death. Agnes couldn’t separate out what she had been afraid of at Blackthorn Ashes and what she was afraid of here and now.

‘It’s her from the flashy trailer. Jonelle.’ Bette clicked her tongue. ‘Her son’s in a right state.’

Not their caravan. Not Dad. Her heart unclenched a little.

‘What happened?’ Christie asked.

‘Not clear.’ Bette set Odie down. ‘Accident of some kind, might be.’

Odie scampered up the steps into her caravan.

Errol was sitting at the top of the steps in fraying jeans and a flappy white silk shirt, pineapple-printed scarf wound below his dreadlocks. He smiled at Agnes, propping his chin in his hand. The sun crazed the front of his shirt, making it hard to keep looking.

‘I should check on my dad,’ she said.

Bette nodded. ‘I haven’t seen him,’ as if she usually did.

As if Adrian came out of the caravan when Agnes and Christie left and stood chatting with Bette, sharing a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits, being a good neighbour.

Her stomach shrivelled, her feet sweating in her shoes, hands sweating too. ‘I’d better check.’

Christie was ahead of her, going up the steps into their caravan. Bette called after him, ‘Thanks for taking the mutt for a walk. Hope he was good for you?’

‘Yeah.’ Christie nodded across his shoulder. He’d slipped the backpack to the front, holding it tight to his chest. He couldn’t take his new treasure to the shed until the ambulance had gone.

‘It was fun to walk him, thanks for asking us.’ There was more Agnes should say, something from earlier, about hot tea and Errol being in bed. ‘How’s your cold?’

‘Under control.’ Bette clucked her tongue at her grandson. ‘He’s getting some fresh air at least.’

‘Who’s he?’ Errol called back. ‘The cat’s grandson?’

Bette batted this away with her hand. ‘Let me know if you need anything.’ She fixed Agnes with her sentry’s stare. ‘Any time.’

‘Come by later,’ Errol told Agnes. ‘Please.’

‘I’ll try.’ She wanted to tell him about Iris but it would have to wait. Family first.

Inside the caravan, Dad sat staring at the TV. The volume was muted, the screen full of the suntanned faces of holidaymakers. Christie didn’t bother saying hello, just bumped through to the bedroom he shared with Agnes. The caravan smelt of overheated plastic and bodies. Dad hadn’t washed in a while, his hair plastered to his head. The summer’s tan was long gone. He looked old and tired. An empty plate sat at his side, cling film rolled into a ball. He’d eaten her sandwich at least.

‘I’m making a cup of tea, if you’d like one?’

She waited, knowing it took a while for words to reach him. He turned his head from the TV, staring at her with his sad eyes. Pain twisted in her chest. It was easy to pity Dad but she couldn’t do it without knowing how rarely she pitied Ruth, even when her mother deserved or needed pity. She’d fallen into the habit of blaming Ruth for all her problems. Growing up, Dad was so often working away from home. All her childhood terrors and adolescent demons, every mistake she made, each slight she suffered, fell on her mother’s shoulders. Agnes didn’t even call her ‘Mum’, wielding ‘Ruth’ like a weapon because she couldn’t afford the loss of her defences. That’s how it had felt, as if adolescence was a war and she was losing it. An image stormed into her head of Iris here, intent on interrogating her family, wanting her story. But she’d been at Blackthorn Ashes before, at the barbecue. Why was Iris at the barbecue?

‘Thanks, love.’ Dad switched his eyes back to the TV. ‘Tea would be nice.’

Agnes pushed the thought of Iris to the back of her mind. She made two cups of tea, carrying them to the sofa, moving the empty plate out of the way so she could sit beside him, close but not facing; eye contact was hard at the best of times and they were a long way from the best of times.

Her father was wearing his old work jeans with a checked shirt, the same casual uniform Trevor favoured. His socked feet looked vulnerable and his hands too, callused from work, a light litter of nicks and scars across his knuckles. He’d built the shelves in her bedroom, put up the basketball hoop for Christie. When he wasn’t selling houses, he was fixing stuff, humming a tune with a mouthful of nails or screws. The archetypal dad. A simple man, Ruth called him although she never said it viciously, only ever fondly, ‘Your father’s a simple man.’

There was nothing simple about his depression, or his silence. Agnes sipped at her tea, tasting salt from the tears she was holding back. It was an odd feeling to grieve for someone still alive, someone sitting beside you on the sofa. Ruth had tried writing to him (lists of things that needed fixing in the caravan), stopping short of shouting. The caravan took every sound and multiplied it, crowding out the space until you couldn’t open the cupboards without finding the noise in there, or drink from a glass without tasting it.

‘Dad, can I ask you something?’

He kept his eyes on the TV. She could smell his sweat. That’s all it took. Not even a proper question, just the suggestion of one. His jaw clenched. In a moment, she’d hear it pop, if she asked him what she wanted to ask.

‘About Trevor,’ she said instead. ‘Not about you.’

It was cheating. Any question about Trevor was a question about Dad. For years, they’d done everything together. Except for the summer Agnes was sixteen, the summer Christie was born.

‘What?’ His voice creaked on the question mark.

‘How did you two meet? Was it at college?’ The further back, the safer he’d feel. She wanted to take him years away from Blackthorn Ashes, lead him to safer ground. ‘Or school?’

‘Sixth form.’ He reached for his tea. ‘Tertiary college.’ He drank a mouthful, wincing because the tea was hot. ‘Studying architecture, the pair of us. Or trying to.’

‘And you’ve been friends ever since.’

He pointed his chin in a nod, his eyes on the TV.

Agnes waited to see if he’d relax. Laura had taught her to read body language. Social cues were hard but she’d learnt to recognize a few. Raised eyebrows, a taut brow or half-open mouth – these were signs of fear. Curved shoulders signalled a sense of threat. Red skin and a clenched jaw were anger.

‘I saw him yesterday,’ she said. ‘Trevor.’

Dad didn’t move but he gave off such a strong pulse of sweat that her own armpits dampened in alarm. He pressed his fingers to the sides of the hot cup.

‘I suppose I thought he’d leave,’ she said. ‘Like Barry and Janis. Get as far as possible from what happened.’

She should stop. She was nearing the cliff edge, as close as she could get and still be safe.

‘He said something strange, too.’

Her father was staring at the TV as if willing it to explode, as if he’d sooner the caravan burst into flames than hear what she had to say.

‘He said he knew stuff about us. Secrets. He was warning me to keep quiet.’ She sipped at her tea, forcing her throat to swallow. ‘I was wondering if I should tell Mum what he said.’

Dad’s knuckles turned white, their scars standing out like silver.

‘Best not to worry her.’

‘She’s worried anyway. We all are.’

‘Still,’ there was a crack in his voice, ‘she’s enough on her plate.’

They’d met in Ruth’s first year of college, Mum dropping out of her course, pregnant at nineteen. The three of them – Ruth and Adrian and Trevor – inseparable, until Agnes.

She let the silence take shape before she asked, ‘What was he like at college? Trevor.’

Dad’s mouth stayed tight. Remembering his best friend back when they were fresh-faced, full of learning. She wanted him to remember. It didn’t matter if he didn’t answer her questions as long as he didn’t forget, didn’t let it slip away from him, the way he was letting so much slip. His work and family, his life. She knew how it felt to lose yourself that way. And they needed him. Maybe not now but soon. When the investigation turned in their direction, as it surely would, as it must. She was afraid by then he’d have drifted too far, beyond their reach. This was the only way she knew to keep him anchored. He’d closed all the doors in his head. It was what she did when she was afraid. Laura said, ‘You go away. Lock up the house and you just . . . go.’ Agnes had tried to explain how it felt – as if time was folded into a paper fortune teller and she could open and shut it to find all the other Agneses, the ones from before. A twitch of her fingers taking her to that summer she was sixteen, the taste of beer on her lips. Sometimes she thought if she turned fast enough, she’d catch her sixteen-year-old self, watching.

‘I bet you got up to all sorts.’ She stayed on the sofa beside Dad. ‘You and Trevor.’

She wanted to open a door in his head, help him to remember who he was. If she could do that, she could bring him back. She didn’t need him to speak to her, just remember who he’d been when he believed in Blackthorn Ashes, before it all came undone.

‘He had a temper,’ Dad said finally.

‘At college?’ Trevor’s temper was like sparks coiled in smoke. ‘What did he do?’

‘Whatever he could get away with.’ Dad’s face caved at the cheeks as if his skin had lost its grip. ‘Same as always. Same as in that place.’

‘Blackthorn Ashes?’

‘You stay away . . .’ His voice sank to the back of his throat. ‘Why can’t you stay away?’

He knew? Where she and Christie went every day after Mum left for work? How long had he known? Cold clenched the back of her neck.

‘You can’t stay away.’ He wet his lips, eyes sliding away from her. ‘Can you?’

She should have been happy – she’d brought him back, just for a moment. But the shock of it silenced her. The idea of him knowing, and doing nothing. Her hands curled around her teacup, wanting to throw it, see it smash against the wall behind his head. In that moment, she didn’t just understand Christie’s anger, she felt it, burning through her.

Their father sat with his head bowed, giving no sign he’d spoken, wrapped in silence again.

What else was inside his head, hiding? What words were waiting in his mouth for her to pull them out in her clumsy bids to break his silence? Recriminations, confessions, what?

Be quiet, she thought, go away again, wherever it is you go when you’re not here. Go.

By the time her mother was home, the ambulance had gone. Christie didn’t mention it, Agnes following his lead. She’d prepared their supper, ready for Ruth’s return. Mum looked wearier than ever but she’d found work for a couple of weeks. It was good news, she said. The meal passed more comfortably than Agnes had hoped. Dad congratulated Ruth on the job. ‘That’s great, love.’

Agnes caught Christie looking between them, softness edging its way into his face. This was how little it took to mend her brother’s broken heart. He just wanted to be happy again, and he could be. She pinched the memory into her wrist. If they could hold this pattern, keep the frail shape of their family from tearing apart, it would be all right.

She washed the dishes after the meal. Dad and Christie settled on the sofa to watch TV together. By the time she’d made coffee, Ruth was arranging her work notes at the table.

She took the cup of coffee, saying, ‘Thanks, love.’

‘Thank you, for finding work.’ Agnes fought the urge to fidget, unused to this peace between them. ‘I wish I could do more to help.’

‘You’re here. That’s a lot.’ Her mother held her gaze. ‘I know it’s a lot.’

‘There was an ambulance here earlier.’ She’d meant to keep it secret but it blurted out. ‘Bette said it was the family from the trailers. Jonelle.’

‘I don’t know them . . .’ Her mother’s face clouded with a frown. ‘Did Christie see?’

‘Yes, but he was fine. Do you think—’

‘I need to get on.’ Ruth cut her short with a smile. ‘Lots to do tonight.’

She didn’t want to listen to speculation. She believed in the power of silence, of not saying out loud the thoughts that were in your head. Keeping mum, they used to call it.

‘There’s something else.’ Agnes needed to warn her about Iris. ‘Someone else.’

‘Not tonight.’ Ruth lost the smile, fanning her fingers over the paperwork. ‘Please.’

It was growing dark by the time Agnes left the caravan. Sunset was a distant streak against the trees. Birds chorused high above her. A slice of cold had crept into the breeze but the evening felt like late summer. She shook back the cuffs of her shirt to cool her wrists. Her head was throbbing, her bad tooth nagging. She nursed it with her tongue, discovering a grain of black pepper hiding there, a sudden hot shock on her tongue.

Errol was sitting on the steps to Bette’s caravan, smoking a cigarette. Its scent made her stomach flip hungrily. He’d switched the white shirt for a silk dressing gown, turquoise patterned with gold tulips. He slid along the step to make space for her, offering his half-smoked cigarette before remembering, ‘Hang on,’ digging out the packet so she could take her own.

She couldn’t smoke someone else’s cigarette. Laura used to say she’d never have a proper romantic moment until she did. Errol held out his lighter, lit her up. ‘Thanks.’

‘You’re welcome.’ He slipped the lighter into his pocket.

They smoked in silence. It was the happiest she’d been in a long time, if happiness could be the absence of a thing, of sadness. After a while, she realized how much of an effort Errol was making to keep quiet. He wanted to chatter, the way he always did. The effort showed in the arch of his feet and at the inside of his wrist when he lifted the cigarette to his lips.

‘What happened with the ambulance?’ she asked.

He shot her a look of relief; she’d been right about the silence.

‘Well . . . It took her away,’ a swooping gesture with the cigarette, ‘but she was sitting up. Walking wounded, you might say.’

‘What sort of wound?’

She was seeing the butcher’s block in Whitethorn, shiny handles like spines, Trevor’s shadow staining the glass of the door.

‘Oh, nothing so dramatic.’ Errol inscribed a smaller circle with the cigarette, outlining his nose and mouth. ‘Oxygen mask, and one of those silver blankets.’

‘Shock blankets.’ She remembered their insect sound, the tacky feel of foil under her fingers.

‘Bette said it could’ve been an asthma attack. Or these . . .’ He tilted the tip of his cigarette, considering it for a long second. ‘She was wearing yellow Crocs.’ He wrinkled his nose as if this were a symptom the paramedics had failed to diagnose: death by fashion disaster.

‘That’s what you meant by walking wounded.’

Errol arched his eyebrows at her.

‘Yellow Crocs.’ She mimed a shudder.

He gave a crow of laughter. ‘Funny girl!’ poking his elbow at her ribs.

She slid away before his elbow could connect.

‘Oops.’ He pulled a face. ‘Sorry.’

They reverted to silence, finishing their cigarettes. Agnes hated the taste of the filter, never smoked more than half a stick, but this wasn’t hers to waste. When Errol rubbed his filter on the step, she followed suit, holding the stub in her hand. He took it from her without touching her palm, the tips of his fingers as precise as tweezers.

‘Drink?’ he said then.

‘Please.’ She put her head back as he stood, dazzled by the golden tulips on his robe, a sudden flash of sculpted thigh.

‘Oh, hello. Where’d you spring from?’

His voice arched, making space in their closeness for whoever he’d seen standing a few feet away.

Agnes climbed upright, dusting the palm of her hand on the leg of her jeans.

Iris Edison stood where the ambulance had parked earlier. In her snakeskin leggings and tan ankle boots, a khaki jacket full of pockets. Her chestnut hair fell sleekly about her shoulders.

Errol stared from Iris to Agnes and back, exaggerating a look of intrigue.

‘Hello.’ Iris took a step towards them, smiling. ‘I hope I’m not late.’

As if they’d had a date, arranging to meet like this, tonight. Agnes could have corrected her but it would have meant explaining to Errol how she and Iris had met again, and that she’d failed to share this information with him. Her family was in the caravan, six feet from where Iris was standing. Christie and Ruth and Dad whose story Iris would love to get her hands on.

‘We were about to get drunk actually.’ There was a possessive note in Errol’s voice, under the curiosity. He stood shoulder to shoulder with Agnes, his left wrist loose at his side, fingers crooked towards her, close enough for her to reach and take his hand. He was protecting her, as if he sensed Iris might be a threat. He made a strange champion in his exotic clothes, naked underneath.

‘Drunk? That sounds fun.’ Iris cocked her head at Agnes. ‘We could do this later . . .’ She let her stare travel around Indigo Park. ‘How’s Christie?’

A bark from inside Bette’s caravan and Odie dashed out, barrelling down the steps to bounce up against Iris’s knee. She laughed, ‘Hello again!’ and made a fuss of him, lavishing attention.

Errol drew a sharp breath and looked at Agnes, his eyes demanding answers.

‘They met on our walk.’

She didn’t know what else to say. It was slipping away from her – the happiness from a moment earlier, sitting at his side on the step.

‘This place is amazing.’ Iris moved nearer, Odie dancing attendance at her side. ‘How many people live here?’

Errol watched her with Odie for a moment before he said, ‘Do you drink vodka, Iris?’

‘Only when there’s no whisky, Errol.’

Sixteen-year-old Agnes watched the pair of them with her heart foundering in her chest. Other kids – holidaymakers – formed gangs so easily, coming together like metal filings pulled by the summer’s heat. She’d watch them and imagine what it must be like to find a way into those loose knots of arms and legs, become part of the group. It had never bothered her, being on the outside, but it was different now. Seeing the ease with which Iris moved into Errol’s orbit, mirroring his body language, loosening her hips, arching her eyebrows. She made it look so easy, being alive. Sixteen-year-old Agnes was hollow with envy.

An animal sound brought her back into the moment – the beat of wings or the scrabbling of claws, or nothing at all. They were in the middle of the countryside but Indigo Park was full of homes; the sound was more likely to be someone’s television or laptop.

‘Sorry,’ she said, addressing Iris. ‘But we should get going.’

Errol flung her a look of hurt surprise. She hated hurting him but it would be worse if Iris stayed, if they got drunk and she made Errol tell his secrets, teasing them out of him until he had nothing left. Agnes didn’t know what secrets Errol was keeping but she knew Iris. Not logically but instinctively. She knew the sort of person she was, what she wanted. Even if she never wrote a story about Errol, she could hurt him. By emptying him out, the way she wanted to empty Dad and Agnes and anyone with a story about Blackthorn Ashes. People needed their secrets. You couldn’t go around dragging them out, passing them from hand to hand as if you were at a child’s party, playing a game. Secrets weren’t separate, they were part of who we were, like blood or skin or teeth. Laura was the first person to understand how important Agnes’s secrets were to her. In the end, though, her secrets had been too much, even for Laura.

‘We could sit out here,’ Errol said. ‘I could bring a tray . . .’

Agnes shook her head at him. ‘We have to go.’

Iris switched her stare between them, calculating. She knew Errol might have something worth knowing, something he’d seen or heard or thought about what had happened at Blackthorn Ashes. Agnes could use that – if Iris was distracted with Errol, she might forget about Dad, at least for the night. The way Errol liked to talk, it would be midnight before they were done. Time enough to warn Ruth and come up with a plan to protect her family. But if she did that, Agnes would be using Errol, substituting his secrets for hers.

‘Come on.’ She made herself put her arm through Iris’s, turning their backs on Bette’s grandson. She could feel his hurt like hands behind her, pushing her away.

Iris waved at him across her shoulder, letting Agnes lead the way towards the big trailers at the end of Indigo Park.

For preference, she’d have taken the cliff path. It was dark which meant Iris wouldn’t be able to see her face when she lied. But the cliff path was dangerous, too many places where they might lose their footing. Agnes was used to walking the route alone at night. Iris wasn’t. Or else she was, in which case Agnes was in even greater danger than she realized.

‘I heard about the ambulance,’ Iris said. ‘That must’ve been a bit déjà vu-ish.’

‘They have ambulances everywhere.’

‘Still . . . When was the last time you saw one? Or the first time, at Blackthorn Ashes? I’d like to hear about that. I’d like your story from the beginning, back before it started to go wrong.’

How far back would they need to go for that? Before Agnes’s diagnosis, certainly. Pre-school, when all she had were ‘funny habits’, games she played that made sense to no one but herself. Or back to when she was newborn and Ruth said she lifted her head to look her mother in the eye but when Ruth told the midwife, she said, ‘Baby’s neck’s not strong enough for that yet,’ so then Agnes did it again, only this time she fixed the midwife with her stare, provoking a startled laugh in response. Should they go back further even than that, to when Ruth was pregnant at nineteen? Or a year earlier, when she wasn’t. When she hadn’t dropped out of college and didn’t have morning sickness or puffy ankles or the awful fear she wouldn’t be a good mother or any kind of mother, that she couldn’t be one. Back before it started to go wrong.

Agnes led Iris away from the big trailers – Elvis playing inside, a low crooning – to the rear of Christie’s shed where two cane chairs faced the blackness of an unlit field. Enough light leaked from the trailers to show the places where the cane seats had frayed and sagged.

‘What is this place?’ Iris tried to peer through the shed’s grimy windows.

‘Nowhere, just a place.’ She sat, waiting as Iris turned the second chair to face her.

Iris pushed her hair from her face, smoothing her expression into one of attentive expectation. ‘Can I record this?’ She reached for her phone, dislodging a ball of blue paper from her pocket.

‘I’d rather you didn’t.’ Agnes leant to pick up the ball of paper, smoothing it in her fingers. ‘And first I need you to tell me what story you’re writing, or planning to write.’

A cartoon was drawn on the blue paper, next to a name: Dearman.

Panic bubbled in the pit of her stomach.

‘If you tell me about the story, then I’ll know if I can help you or not.’

Iris had written Dearman and drawn a dog’s face with zigzag ears like bolts of lightning. ‘Do you want this back?’

She shook her head at the piece of paper. ‘Just a bad habit, doodling. I’ve done it since I was a kid . . .’ She slipped a thumb inside the neck of her orange top, adjusting a bra strap. ‘Fair enough about the recording . . . I suppose you’d say I’m writing an exposé.’

Agnes could hear her own heart beating. ‘Exposing what?’

‘The truth of what happened, why those people died and who those people were. I know they’ve said it was carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, whatever. But we both know it was more than that.’

Agnes put the scrap of paper into her pocket. ‘I don’t know any more than that.’

‘We could’ve stayed for drinks with Errol.’ Iris looked at her through the darkness, her eyes yellow as a cat’s. ‘It must be hard to make friends after everything that’s happened.’

‘I was friends with Errol before. And anyway, most people have been kind.’

‘To the other families, sure. But to yours?’

Iris put her hand into her pocket before leaning to pick a slim branch from the ground. ‘Your dad’s the closest they have to a scapegoat . . . He was involved in the development from the concept stage, that’s right, isn’t it?’

Her hand stayed in her pocket; Agnes was sure she’d switched a button on her phone to record what was being said.

‘He’s not a developer, just a contractor. A salesman, really.’

‘He was just doing his job?’ She stripped leaves from the branch with her fingers. ‘Of course you want to defend him, I get that. But you knew the people who died. Three adults and three children, one of them a baby. You were there, you witnessed it. That’s a heavy thing to carry.’

Her tone implied she was doing Agnes a favour, helping her to lay the burden down. She stripped more leaves, smoothing the branch to a switch.

‘It was meant to be paradise but it must’ve been hell, watching what happened.’

The cliché grated; surely she wouldn’t write a line as clumsy as that?

She was trying to spook Agnes but she hadn’t the first idea. You couldn’t spook someone who’d been haunted her whole life.

Agnes tipped her face to the sky. The dark was shredded by clouds as thin as tissue paper. It was too soon to see stars. The air had lost its chill from earlier. She could smell the earth in the field and the smoky scent Iris was wearing.

‘What’s so funny?’ Iris’s voice didn’t change.

‘You.’ She curled her legs up into the chair, laying her arms along its back. ‘You think you’re intimidating but you don’t know anything.’

‘I know people died.’ Iris ran the switch through her hand. ‘They’re blaming the builders for that, and the planners. All the contractors.’ Emphasizing the word Agnes had used to describe Dad’s role. ‘The land wasn’t safe to build on, the construction faulty from the start.’ Her voice sharpened in self-defence. ‘I’ve done my homework, seen the plans. Those concealed heating systems weren’t safe. Flue pipes weren’t connected securely, some ventilation wasn’t connected at all. There were actual loose pipes inside the walls, unfinished. How does your dad explain that?’

She was talking about the first show house, Hawthorn, rushed through so sales could start. The ventilator hood over Hawthorn’s oven hadn’t been connected to the extractor pipe that took steam and smells outside the house. Ditto the extractor fans in the bathrooms. In the days immediately after evacuation, investigators opened the walls to find pairs of pipes lying inside, waiting to be connected. The work was meant to be done before the houses were made habitable, Dad said. It was scheduled to be done, he didn’t know how it got missed. But Tim and Val didn’t die because of unfinished extractor flues. They died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Like Felix and Chloe and baby Sasha. All this was explained to them at the hospital. Children take more breaths than adults, making them more susceptible to airborne toxins.

Iris said, ‘Those poor little kids,’ as if reading her mind.

Dad weeping into Ruth’s lap. Christie standing, staring. The sweeping lights from the ambulance. Tim and Val’s bodies waiting to be found, like Emma’s in Silverthorn.

‘Even those of you who got out might have health issues. Permanent tissue damage, heart problems . . .’ Iris stripped the last leaves from the switch in her hand. ‘Anxiety. Depression.’

Something moved at the base of the trees, scratching at their roots. Agnes caught the sharp stink of a fox. In London, the foxes sat on cars or bins. One night, she and Laura watched a fox and her cubs on the scrub of grass at the back of their flat. The foxes stared back at them, unfazed. Out here in the countryside, humans were the invaders. Agnes and Iris, Errol and Bette. The field was full of mice and rats, shrews, weasels, foxes. The fields belonged to them.

‘You seem depressed to me,’ Iris said softly. ‘Your brother too. It must be hard to have seen what you saw. And to be stuck waiting to find out whether or not your dad’s going to be charged with manslaughter. He was only one of the contractors but he was deep in the pocket of the developers, their golden boy, their Midas.’

She was speaking in headlines now, the piece already written in her head. It wouldn’t matter what Agnes said, what anyone said. This was Iris’s show, everyone else a spectator.

‘Why were you there? At the barbecue. Before anyone died. You were there.’

Bloodstained hands, and questions, ‘Can I use your bathroom?’ and Agnes led her upstairs, left her alone next to Ruth’s room and Christie’s, too.

‘You know what I was doing. Delivering meat.’ Iris’s answer sounded rehearsed. ‘I’m freelance, can’t earn a living from my writing, not yet. I take on odd jobs to pay the bills. It’s funny how often they turn into stories. Nothing like this, though. Blackthorn Ashes was a first, in every sense.’

Somewhere above them, an owl hissed, warding off a predator. Agnes closed her eyes. The night was soft as ink against her face. Iris shifted in the cane chair.

‘I think you’re brave. To go back there, to be able to do that.’

Agnes opened her eyes to see her bending the switch into a circle.

‘I don’t think I could do it . . .’

‘But you did. You were there. It wasn’t your first time today. You’d been back before.’

‘You and your brother aren’t the first people I saw on-site.’ Iris lifted one shoulder in a shrug. ‘Some builder’s been hanging around. He was there at the barbecue, with the blonde in the pink bikini. But your dad hasn’t been back. Has he?’

Some builder . . . She was talking about Trevor.

Agnes slid her little finger into the rotting weave of the cane seat, out of sight. The weave was razored, biting the tender tip of her finger.

‘He’s too upset.’ Iris offered up the words as if trying them for size. ‘Your dad. Or too ashamed.’

She held back the word guilty but it was there on her tongue, the word she’d write in big black letters, in her headlines.

‘He’s not supposed to go on-site,’ Agnes said. ‘No one is.’

‘Hmm . . . Does he know you and your brother go back there?’

‘No.’ She could lie to this woman because she had to.

‘What about your mum? Does she know?’

Adrian Gale, guilty. Ruth Gale, complicit. Or would Ruth be guilty too? Complicit wasn’t a word Iris would write. Too soft, not sufficiently emphatic. Ruth Gale, guilty.

‘Does my mum know?’ Agnes echoed. ‘How old do you think I am?’

‘I know exactly how old you are. You’re twenty-nine. But your mum would want to know, wouldn’t she? That you and Christie are going back there. And she’d want to know why.’

Agnes drove her finger deeper into the cane seat.

‘You and your brother . . . I remember him, that day in the house. What was Errol’s joke: “Exit, pursued by beer”!’

Iris laughed as she loosened her grip on the switch. It sprang free, quivering in the soft dark air. ‘Why do you keep going back? What’re you looking for?’

‘Odie. He runs away sometimes.’ She felt eerily calm, as if floating. Only her finger was real, anchoring her to the chair, keeping her here. ‘He won’t stay on the cliff path. There’re holes in the hedges at the backs of the houses, I’m sure you know that.’

‘Like the holes in the walls . . .’

‘Maybe. Yes.’

‘I love dogs,’ Iris said. ‘I love all animals. Do you?’

The change of topic threw her.

‘Do I love animals? Yes, of course.’

‘Not of course. Plenty of people don’t.’ Her voice changed, becoming quieter but at the same time more ferocious. ‘Some of the cruelty out there, you wouldn’t believe.’

Agnes felt a lurch of almost-understanding. They were close for the first time to the real reason Iris was here, that was how it felt.

‘What sort of cruelty?’

But Iris shook her head, saying only, ‘You wouldn’t believe.’ She knotted her hair into a ponytail before dropping her hands into her lap. ‘My parents died in a house fire. It was my dad’s fault, that’s what the investigation concluded.’ Another change of subject. ‘He was drunk, and he was smoking. His fault, they said.’

Just as Blackthorn Ashes was Adrian Gale’s fault?

Agnes felt the conversation slipping away from her. She listened with the sense that Iris was telling her a story. Perhaps it was true, perhaps not, but she was telling it in the hope Agnes would share the stories she wanted to hear. She was young to have lost both parents, if she had. She couldn’t take anything Iris said at face value.

‘I suppose I’ve been a bit obsessed with domestic disasters ever since . . .’

Iris straightened, holding her hands out in front of her, their fingers fanned.

‘What happened to Emma Dearman?’

The field was a churned black sea at their feet, nests of mice knotted in its hedges. A stoat, sinuous, threaded its way along the bank. All of the night was moving, full of secret things.

‘She didn’t die of carbon monoxide poisoning,’ Iris said.

She placed each word like a stone, smooth and white in the darkness.

‘Her death is unexplained. Not suspicious, not yet, but unexplained.’

Leaves ticking in the trees, an owl’s harsh hiss.

‘I was thinking, the other day, how easy it would be to do that.’

Agnes’s finger was bleeding, cut by the cane. She pushed the pain away, needing to focus on the threat from Iris. She wanted to stand and run, anywhere but here.

‘To hide a death among all the other deaths. All those people falling ill and with panic all around. It would be the perfect place to hide a death, if that’s what you wanted to do. If it’s what you needed to do.’

Agnes saw Emma outside Silverthorn, narrowing her eyes against the glare.

‘Agnes?’ Iris’s voice reached her slowly. ‘How well did you know Emma Dearman? She lived in the house across from yours. Her husband broke his foot. He was on crutches at the barbecue.’

‘He tripped in the garden . . .’

‘He broke his foot in the garden. That was his explanation? Is it what really happened?’

‘It’s what we heard.’

Her heart was in her mouth, beating black and thick as tar.

‘And his wife?’ Iris said. ‘What happened to her?’

A light went off in one of the big trailers, dropping them down into darkness.

In the darkness, Agnes saw Ruth’s face on the night of the evacuation and before, when she was five or six, peeping through the gap in the bedroom door, seeing her mother’s stony face that might split at any moment. She felt the press of Iris’s stare on her skin.

‘Did you know Emma Dearman? Agnes?’

The creak of the chair as she leant forward.

‘Do you know how she died?’