4 SEPTEMBER

Ten days after abandonment

18

Christie went straight to his bunk when Ruth brought him home, shoving the mended Game Boy from his pillow. He had a new modelling magazine and made a point of reading it, shutting Agnes out when she tried to ask about his day.

Ruth told her to leave him alone. ‘Is supper ready?’

‘I’ll start it now. It won’t take long.’

Her mother looked around the caravan, her eyes passing over Dad on the sofa in his pyjamas. ‘You might’ve tidied up.’

‘I’ll do it after supper.’ Agnes didn’t want to fight but she recognized the need in Ruth to do exactly that, her mother searching for a place to put her day’s frustration. She took an ovenproof dish from the cupboard. ‘How was town?’

‘Busy.’ Ruth pressed the back of her hand to her forehead. ‘Too hot for September.’

‘Was there any work?’

A strange question to ask a forty-eight-year-old former executive, as if Ruth were a farm labourer from another century. Her suit was creased at the shoulder from the car’s seat belt. She smelt of supermarkets and petrol stations.

‘Nothing new.’ She shrugged off the jacket, hanging it from her hands. She worked so hard at being the strong one. It had to be exhausting.

‘Were you and Christie able to spend some time together?’

‘Only in the car . . . You’re feeling better, I take it?’

‘Yes, thanks.’

Agnes filled a saucepan with water, clicking on the stove. Her mother was making her nervous. She should have prepared the meal earlier, when she was free to focus.

‘Well enough to spend time with Errol, smoking.’

‘What?’ Agnes turned to face her.

‘I can smell it on you,’ Ruth said flatly. ‘He’s the only one who smokes around here. Or he was.’

‘He was smoking, I wasn’t. We spent a bit of time together, that’s all.’

‘You can smoke, if you can afford to.’ Her mother shrugged. ‘You’re a grown woman. But I’d thought you weren’t well enough to look after your brother today. That was my understanding.’

‘I slept.’ She was sweating, in danger of stammering. ‘I felt better when I woke up.’

‘Just not well enough to tidy up or prepare the supper.’

Agnes needed to stop this, and sensed Ruth did too. There was a wildness in her mother’s eyes, flickering almost too rapidly to see but Agnes saw it. Ruth was afraid of fighting tonight.

‘I’ll do better,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow.’

Ruth started to say something then bit her tongue; Agnes saw her wince, could almost taste the pain in her mother’s mouth.

‘What?’ she asked, as softly as she could. ‘Tell me.’

But Ruth just moved her hand, shaking her head. She didn’t believe in Agnes, or in tomorrow. She needed things to be better here and now, in the caravan where the kitchen was too small to fit the awkward elbows of their battling, this war that went on and on.

‘I could go,’ Agnes offered again. ‘Back to London.’ To Laura, whose hands would smell of lemongrass from stroking the soldier’s missing foot. Her throat closed. ‘I could.’

‘Stop saying that. You know it isn’t possible.’

‘The investigation might take months.’

‘It will take months.’ Her mother reached past her for a bottle of water from the fridge. ‘That’s obvious. There’s no sense of urgency from their side.’

Their side. As if the investigators were the enemy. Ruth was good at battlelines. She’d been drawing them all her life. She thought she knew where all the risks lay – out there with the health and safety investigators. Agnes should tell her about Iris. And she should ask about Emma and Luke, his history of violence. She watched her mother unscrew the cap from the bottle of water, shutting her eyes as she drank. When she opened them, the wildness was still there, a pulse beating in her throat so strongly Agnes could see her blood under the pale of her skin.

Dad joined them for the pasta supper, sitting with the light in the lines of his face. He didn’t speak more than a handful of words. Christie pushed the food around his plate in silence.

After the meal, while her parents were drinking coffee, Agnes tidied the living space, brushing the sofa free from crumbs and the dull strands of her father’s unwashed hair.

The cushions were gritty, reminding her of holidays long ago, sand in the sheets. She stooped to collect the ball of cling film from the carpet and for a second she was back there, folded into the past: the fizz of lemonade on her tongue, laughter in her throat, her mother’s arms catching her as she leapt. In the caravan, she brushed orange sand from the sofa into the cupped palm of her hand.

Ruth glanced across at her. ‘What is it?’

‘Just rubbish.’ She straightened, showing Ruth the ball of cling film before crossing to drop it into the bin.

At the sink, she washed her hands, watching as the water took the sand away, rinsing the last grains of it down the plughole until it was gone.

The next morning, the sun had gone behind a bank of putty-coloured cloud. Agnes could smell rain. She felt it in the joints of her fingers, a dry fractious sensation.

Their mother left for work almost as soon as Agnes and Christie were up. Breakfast was bowls of cereal. Ruth didn’t look at Dad on her way out. Usually she flicked him a glance, even on days when it was clear she hadn’t the patience to talk to him. Now she’d stopped looking altogether. It was what Dad wanted, Christie said. For the rest of them to stop seeing him, judging him, ‘He wishes he was invisible’, but Agnes knew her father was making himself smaller because he was ashamed of how much space he took up in the world. She was afraid for him. He was like the rain – a warning pain in her bones. Something was coming. It had been coming for days, pushing at the caravan while they slept and woke and ate together, pretending to be a family.

As soon as Ruth was gone, Christie was at the door in his hoodie and rucksack. He didn’t speak to Agnes or wait to see if she’d follow, just left, shutting the door behind him. She pulled on her jacket and boots as quickly as she could. No time to make Dad a sandwich. She had to stay close to Christie, the mood he was in and with Iris out there.

Outside the caravan, there was no sign of her brother.

Errol was drinking a cup of coffee on Bette’s steps. ‘He went that way.’ Pointing to the duckboards. ‘Not looking much like a morning person . . . I said hi but he ignored me.’

‘He’s pissed off with me.’ Agnes zipped her jacket against a squall of wind.

‘Coffee?’ Errol offered up his cup, nodding at the thermos flask at his bare feet. He was wearing his peacock-patterned robe.

‘I’d love to.’ The coffee smelt good. ‘But I’d better get after him.’

‘Where’s he going?’

‘The only place he ever goes.’

‘Then you know where to find him. And you look like you need a coffee.’ He took the steel lid from the thermos, filling it with a measure from the flask. ‘Before you set off.’

Christie was smart; if he saw Iris, he’d duck out of sight. Agnes sat with Errol, sharing his flask of coffee, their silence comfortable. Wind tugged at the caravan park, running into crawl spaces, fluttering at flags: a cheerful sound like beach windmills from her childhood. Bette had hung a basket of blush-pink begonias above the door, their spicy scent mixing with the roasted beans.

‘This is really good coffee.’

‘You will miss it when you leave Casablanca.’ Errol did that elegant thing with his wrist. He was quoting a line from a film. ‘Not that Indigo Park is much like Morocco . . .’

‘But you love it here.’ She watched him. ‘Don’t you?’

He put his hand over his heart. ‘There’s no place like home.’ He repeated it a couple of times, tapping the heels of his feet together.

‘Would you come with me?’ she suggested. ‘When I go looking for Christie?’

‘Now, you mean?’ Errol eyed the duckboards, flicking his thumbnail against the lip of his cup.

When had he last left Indigo Park? Not since the evacuation, she suspected.

‘It’s a nice walk, along the cliff path. There’s a shortcut through a hedge – you’ll want to dress down.’ She paused, aware of how tense he’d become. ‘I could use the company.’

He swirled the dregs in his cup and drank them, climbing to his feet. ‘Give me five minutes.’

She waited with her face tipped to the sky until he re-emerged in his ripped black jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt – purple with the word ‘Lucky’ printed in blue below his left shoulder – a black cotton bandana tied under his dreadlocks, Doc Martens in one hand. He sat next to her while he put them on, lacing the boots up his ankles and calves. The clothes were close-fitting, showcasing his thinness. But when he climbed upright, he was tall and looked adventurous as a pirate. He held out his hand and, for a second, she nearly took it. Then she realized he was asking for the lid to the thermos. She handed it up before getting to her feet. ‘Does Bette want us to take Odie?’

Errol shook his head. ‘She’s walking him herself.’

‘You’re both feeling better. That’s good.’

‘How’s your dad?’ Errol pushed his hands into his jean pockets, shrugging up his shoulders as they negotiated the greasy gangplank of duckboards out of Indigo Park.

‘He’s sad. He sleeps most of the time. I wish he’d get out but he’s not ready to do that.’

Errol nodded as if he understood. He did, of course. They walked until the sky was free of trees and pylons, a big bowl of sky over their heads. It felt good to be out in the open. Errol was quiet, keeping step at her side. If she listened hard, she could hear the stress in his breathing, a tight sound from the top of his chest. He wasn’t used to leaving the caravan park any more than Dad was. But he surprised her: ‘Bette said she saw your dad yesterday. Going out. While you and I were at the shed.’

Agnes stopped, turning to look at him.

Errol folded his arms around his torso. ‘She wasn’t keeping watch or anything.’ He sounded awkward. ‘She doesn’t do that. I only mentioned it because you said he never went out.’

‘Did she speak to him?’ She tried to picture her father and Bette, Odie running back and forth between them. ‘Where did he go?’

‘She was baking, elbow-deep in flour, she said. She saw him through the window but didn’t get the chance to say hello.’ Errol shivered. ‘I didn’t mean to freak you out. She didn’t think it was odd, just nice to see him getting some fresh air. She worries about him – about all of you. But she’s not nosey. She wouldn’t say anything—’

‘Where was he going?’ Agnes cut him off, needing information, not apologies. ‘Did she say?’

‘This way.’ He nodded ahead of them. ‘Out of the park.’

‘This was when we were at the shed?’

She and Errol had talked for a long time, sitting in the rotting cane chairs. It was mid-afternoon by the time she returned to Dad sleeping on the sofa. Just as she’d left him, she’d thought.

Errol rubbed at his wrists. ‘Look—’

‘What was he wearing?’

His work shirt and jersey pyjama bottoms, that’s what he’d worn at supper last night. Was he wearing the same clothes when he left the caravan?

‘She didn’t say.’ Errol sounded sick. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.’

Agnes made herself stop and look at him. He was so changed, out here. She’d thought him invincibly flamboyant, loud and colourful. On the cliff path, he looked boyish and lost, his face thinned by cold. She felt a rush of protectiveness towards him, different from her feelings for her brother but no less intense. ‘Do you want to go back?’

He shook his head. ‘We’re getting Christie, aren’t we?’

They walked on in silence. Agnes tried to keep her mind from jumping through the hoops of what he’d told her. Dad outside the caravan, walking in this direction. Her chest tightened against the pictures in her head.

When they reached the hedge, she shouldered her way through, Errol following, pausing on the other side to pick leaves from his T-shirt. They stood for a beat in the back garden of Maythorn before Agnes led the way up the side of the house to the street.

Errol was alert, his eyes everywhere, fresh tension in his face and body. It was how she and Christie should’ve been, every time they came here. Not just revisiting their old home or trespassing in condemned buildings – walking through a graveyard, ransacking rooms where people had died. Remorse flooded her, a wave of heat that moved so fast it left her breathless.

‘Where’ll we find him, do you know?’ Errol worked his hands into his pockets.

‘In one of the houses . . .’

She scanned the estate, roll-calling the homes Christie had already been inside, like one of the looters Bette warned her grandson about. What would Errol say if he knew Agnes was no better? But he did know; she’d given him the silk scarf from the filing cabinet. The red coin purse was in her pocket. She was afraid she’d seen it before, in Emma’s hand as Luke’s wife counted out coins to pay for the shopping Ruth had done.

The wind wrapped around their shoulders, sending a scurry of cloud and sun across all the empty windows. Errol ducked his head, a flash of fear in his face.

‘It’s just shadows.’

‘It looks like people.’ His voice was hollow, drum-tight. ‘In the houses.’

‘I know. But there’s no one. There hasn’t been in weeks.’

‘I don’t know how you can stand coming back.’ He grimaced at the sound of his boots on the tarmac. ‘It’s like a funfair without the fun. Just ghost trains and mad mirrors.’

‘And no candyfloss.’

‘You like candyfloss?’ He shot her a look of gratitude for the small talk. ‘I love candyfloss.’

‘I like toffee apples better but my teeth hate them. Have you ever had a toffee strawberry? They’re better than apples, much easier to eat.’

Before Errol could answer, Christie came into view, running from the far end of the estate, his rucksack bumping on his back. Agnes raised a hand but didn’t call his name, afraid of hearing it echoed back at her. She fizzed with fright; the way he was running . . .

Something wasn’t right.

‘Is he—’ Errol stopped.

He’d seen Christie’s face. A pale disc, unmistakably afraid.

Agnes said, ‘Come on,’ breaking into a run of her own.

Christie nearly swerved when he saw them, alarm fracturing his face into wide eyes and a flatlined mouth. He hadn’t recognized Errol. When Agnes put her arms out, he skidded to a halt ten feet from them. Agnes stopped, Errol close behind.

‘What is it, what’s happened?’

Freckles stood out on his white face. His hands were trembling at his sides.

‘Christie? What’s happened?’

‘Bricks . . .’ His voice was high, scrambled with terror. He jerked his head in the direction he’d been running from – the building site at the bottom of Blackthorn Ashes.

Agnes closed the gap between them, holding out a hand for his.

‘Tell me.’

He shied from her hand, his eyes wild on Errol. ‘What’s he doing here?’

‘Hello to you, too.’ Errol sounded shaken rather than offended.

‘We came looking for you.’ She was two feet from her brother, close enough to see his blown pupils. ‘Has something happened on the building site? Is someone there?’

Iris. Trevor.

‘Christie?’

Her brother’s chest was hitching. He kept switching his stare between Agnes and Errol as if he couldn’t talk to her while a stranger was here. She half turned towards Errol.

‘Give us a minute?’

He nodded and walked away from them.

‘Tell me,’ she said again.

‘Why’d you have to bring him?’ Christie put his hands on the backpack’s straps, pulling it tight to his body. ‘This’s our place.’

‘And he’s our friend. Who’re you running from?’

‘He’s not my friend.’

His voice was returning to normal and his face, just a bit tattered at the corners of his mouth where he was trying to summon a scowl that wouldn’t come.

Agnes knew that trapped look. It was the same wildness she’d seen in Ruth’s eyes last night. She stared across his shoulder to the building site, remembering the day she’d hidden behind a half-built wall while Dad argued with Trevor about the Dearmans. ‘Tell me. Or I’ll go and see for myself. But Errol’s coming with me.’

‘Go on then.’

He’d flattened the fear into anger, looking at her with the same hate she’d seen in his face all those weeks while she was trying to convince her family this place wasn’t paradise but something else entirely.

‘Stay here,’ she instructed Christie.

She walked to where Errol was scuffing a foot at the tarmac.

‘Come with me? I don’t want to do this alone.’

He glanced across at Christie. ‘Did he say what freaked him out?’

Agnes shook her head. Errol’s eyes went to the unfinished end of the estate.

‘So we don’t know what’s down there?’

‘He won’t say. He’s pretending it didn’t frighten him. Maybe it’s nothing.’ She owed it to Errol to forewarn him. ‘It could be Trevor.’

‘The cowboy?’

‘He might’ve given Christie a scare, to get him to stay away. He doesn’t like us being here.’

‘He has a point.’ Errol bit the inside of his cheek.

‘Are you coming? It’s probably nothing but I’d like to be sure.’

‘Or we could call the police.’

‘We’re trespassing. Look, if it was looters, we’d have heard them by now. Or seen them. If it’s Trevor, I can deal with him. But I wouldn’t mind some back-up. He can be a bit of a creep.’

Errol’s stare grew sharp then softened abruptly, as if he’d guessed all her secrets in a single swoop. That idea unnerved her more than anything lurking in the houses.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘But he’d better come with us. Unless you want to lose him again.’

Agnes walked back to where her brother was scowling at his phone screen.

‘Last chance to tell us what you saw down there before we go and investigate.’

She kept her voice light, giving him a toehold out of his anger.

‘I don’t know what it is, all right?’ His thumbs punched at the phone, his head angled away from her and Errol. ‘Thought I heard someone but it was probably just a seagull. It freaked me out so I legged it. You’re the one making a big deal of it.’

‘Come with us, then.’ She waited until he looked up at her. ‘If it’s no big deal.’

His eyes flickered but he shrugged. ‘Fine.’ He jammed his phone away, sliding his stare past Errol. ‘Jesus . . .’

He sounded like Trevor and he looked like him, the way he swivelled on his feet, fixing his eyes dead ahead, cocking his hips as if he wore a builder’s belt full of tools, or guns.

They walked together to the building site, the rain joining them halfway. By the time they reached the first of the unfinished houses, it was running down the plastic sheeting with a sizzling sound that died abruptly as it landed in the sand.

More rain hit the roof, hissing against the tiles as they approached. Agnes glanced at Christie. His jaw was jutting. He’d made fists of his hands but he dropped them when he saw her looking. The rain made everything smell of iron.

Errol murmured, ‘Tell me when we turn and run . . .’ He could’ve been speaking to Christie or Agnes, or to himself. She saw the site through his eyes and it was worse. Haunted.

‘Which house?’ she asked her brother. ‘Where you heard the seagull – can you tell?’

He shrugged. ‘Maybe that one.’ Pointing away from the first of the unfinished houses to another standing some distance from the others. But his eyes crept back to the first house.

Agnes walked towards the first house, feeling the tug of her brother’s resistance at her back. Errol kept step with her, his face fiercely focused, different again from the flamboyant young man at the caravan park and the thin-faced boy on the cliff path.

This place changes everyone, she thought. She was still thinking it when Trevor stepped out of the half-built house, dressed the same as always but unrecognizable, his face pulled sideways.

Errol came to a standstill, the back of his hand touching her wrist.

Christie was two steps behind. When she checked across her shoulder, she saw his mouth open in surprise; he hadn’t expected Trevor. Christie saw her looking and shut his mouth with a snap, his teeth grinding together.

Trevor said, ‘What the fuck are you doing here – and who the fuck are you?’ to Errol. His voice was thick, as if he’d swallowed wet sand.

He stood in the doorway to the house, directly under the lintel. The front of his shirt was dark with rain. Behind him, the aborted living space was solid with shadow, unseeable. Rain seethed softly. It had found a way through the roof into the house.

‘What’s happened?’ Agnes asked him.

Trevor stared at them in turn, his expression switching as it tried for the right expressions: avuncular concern for Christie, narrow suspicion for Errol. He couldn’t quite manage it, though, his face unable to hold on to anything.

‘Christie thought he heard something. We came to check no one was hurt.’

‘You came too late.’ Trevor wiped a hand across his mouth. ‘You’re not the only trespassers.’ His voice skidded, braking hard: ‘I warned you this place was a death trap.’

Agnes moved closer. ‘Let me see.’

He shook his head but stepped aside as if afraid of being touched by her.

Errol was close behind. He seemed to scare Trevor too.

Rain was puddling on the concrete floor of the house. That iron smell again, a brackish taste in her mouth. A heap of bricks had collapsed against the wall with a smaller heap lying huddled at its base: snakeskin tangled with a long chestnut coil of rope.

No, hair.

Chestnut hair. Legs twisted under her, arms outstretched, face turned away. Rain fell on her jacket, soaking its pockets. It ran over her smooth, tanned calves, whispering against her wrists.

Iris Edison. Dead.

Agnes had never seen a dead body before but it was obvious from the way the wind lifted the flaps on her pockets, and the way the rain ran over her. She was dead. Not dying but dead.

Errol said, ‘Have you called an ambulance or the police?’ His voice was altered, angry. He was addressing Trevor. ‘Have you?’

‘Literally just found her, mate.’ Trevor snapped the answer. ‘So, no.’

Errol pulled out a phone and walked away, out into the rain.

Christie was standing out there. He hadn’t tried to enter the house with the others. His face was pale, hair plastered to his head.

Agnes stayed where she was, looking down at Iris.

There was no blood that she could see and no bruises, just a few frail curls, golden-brown against her cheek. A sweet, ripe smell came from her body.

‘What happened?’ she asked Trevor again.

‘D’you not hear what I just told your little friend? I just got here.’ His voice shook until he closed his teeth around it. ‘I’ve no fucking clue how it happened.’

His boots made a grinding sound as he paced, tracking rain and sand across the floor. Agnes watched him for a moment before she asked, ‘How do you think it happened?’

‘How do I think—?’ As if she were quizzing him on astrophysics. ‘How the fuck would I know?’ He gestured savagely at the half-built walls. ‘Maybe she went climbing up those bricks and fell. Or she tripped and bashed her head. This place’s a fucking death trap. It was all over the news. Why the hell anyone would come poking around here is a fucking mystery to me.’

‘But you come. And Christie comes. Looters, too. Did you know her, who she was?’

She watched closely for his reaction.

Trevor shook his head but his rage had a different flavour, off-key. His eyes twitched away from Agnes, up to the roof where the rain was getting through.

‘This fucking place . . .’

‘An ambulance is coming.’ Errol ducked back inside. ‘Police, too.’

‘Well done, Shaft.’ Trevor curled his lip.

Errol arched an eyebrow, unmoved. ‘They said we’re to stay here.’ He nodded at Trevor’s clenched face and fists. ‘You might want to dial down the rampage.’

‘Little prick . . .’ Trevor pushed past him, out of the house.

Errol came to stand at Agnes’s side. ‘Are you okay?’

Was she? She should have been more upset, she knew that. Shaking or weeping. What did a normal person do when they found the corpse of someone they’d spoken with just the day before? A delayed response to sensory stimuli – could that explain the numbness she was feeling? Her fingers and toes were icy from the rain but there was a dark fizzing in the centre of her chest like the sensation before a storm breaks, a build-up of electricity.

Sand sounded under Errol’s feet as he stepped closer, taking her hand in his. He couldn’t see the pictures Agnes was seeing, each a bright burst against the blackness in her skull . . .

Laura’s kitchen floor littered with smashed plates, sharp shards everywhere like the sand and broken bricks in here, and Agnes with her fingers throbbing, the shape of the shove still hot in her palms. Plates, bowls, cups – all of it knocked from the table to the floor in the frantic second when the scream in her throat wouldn’t come out and she’d thought her skull might burst from it. The next second she was on her knees, poleaxed with shame and remorse, picking the shards from the floor, saying, ‘I’m sorry, sorry,’ over and over again.

Errol let go of her hand and she shivered.

‘Where’s Christie?’ she asked.

‘With Trevor. He’s okay, I think. I mean . . . He must’ve seen her, that’s why he ran.’

‘He didn’t do this,’ Agnes said automatically.

‘What? No. Of course not. God . . .’

Errol’s feet scraped at the floor.

‘Why would she come here?’ Agnes stared down at grey puddles, sand silted over cement. ‘It was the other houses she was interested in, the ones where people lived. Silverthorn . . .’

‘Silverthorn?’ Errol echoed.

‘Where they lived. Emma and Luke.’

Agnes turned away from Iris. She was tired suddenly, so tired she could hardly see.

‘Not here. There wasn’t anything here . . .’

‘It’s a death trap,’ Errol said tautly. ‘Trevor got that much right. Look at the state of the roof. And there’re loose bricks everywhere . . .’

‘She was strong.’ Agnes shut her eyes for a second. ‘She had a mountain bike. She wasn’t—’

Going to stop. Iris wasn’t going to stop. The hunter’s fire in her yellow eyes, that stark single-mindedness. ‘If she was murdered, that matters. It should matter to you, too.’ She was going to track down the truth of what happened in Blackthorn Ashes, no matter the cost to anyone.

Rain plinked from the cuff of her jacket.

Light fell through the half-finished roof to make the floor shift and dazzle – and to send a shadow leaping from Iris’s fingers to touch Agnes’s own cold feet.