Rob buckled up the straps of our bags. I was in my walking skirt and heavy plaid wool jacket and cap. We looked at each other. *Ready?'

Last night he had curled sideways to suck my nipple. His first suck had sent sensation in a thin bright line down through my breast to my stomach and between my legs. I jerked, then lay still, watching the dark top of his head. I could see just where the hairs sprung and parted. We'd learned to manage in the narrow bed so that we got the best of it. I'd put my hand down and touched his hair, then stroked it. It was like being on a boat at anchor far out on a summer's day, lying with the heat of the sun soaking into the length of our bodies, feeling the knock and ripple of water under the hull. If we'd been other people, not Cathy and Rob, brother and sister, it would have been so easy to say *I love you'. But of course we did. We were brother and sister, weren't we?

There was a fine pale mist as we set out, but the sun was growing stronger. It was a perfectly still morning, full of the sound of rooks.

*Where will we go?'

*Somewhere high. I know. Isley Beacon.'

Ten.

They used to light fires on Isley Beacon. When Boney was going to invade there were tinder-dry heaps of brushwood ready to flare up from hill to hill. Or so they said. There were no marks of fire on the close-bitten turf. The soil was thin and poor, no more than a skin over white bone. But the pasture was beautiful with flowers when you looked close: tiny speedwell, rock rose, kidney vetch and wild thyme set in the turf nibbled by sheep which left their tarry droppings all over the hill.

We flung ourselves face down. The early frost had melted and the hilltop was drenched in sun. We were hot from the climb, sweating. I took off my coat and lay on it, staring up into the sky, which was a fine, glazed blue. It might have been summer but there were no larks singing. The sheep ran away from us, their horny hoofs hammering the turf so that it echoed dully when I put my ear to the ground. But in spite of the sun a deep chill struck up through the ground, and I left Rob lying there and walked along a smaller flinty track to the edge of the hill. The ground fell away steeply there. Our track wound up, following the ribs of the hill, a pale ribbon of exposed chalk. Below me the land stretched out for miles, half in the shadow of the hill, half bathed in sun. I could see our woods and fields, and the bulk of the house, almost hidden by trees. Behind the trees Grandfather would be overseeing a couple of men hired for the day from the village while they cut turnips out of the clumps and chopped them for fodder. Then they were going to repair a length of fencing which had gone in the October gales. If I'd had a telescope I could have seen the tiny figures bending and stretching over their tinier burdens. The air was absolutely still and clear. Everything looked so ordered from up here. I couldn't see the mud in the lanes, the choked hedges, the gates sagging on their hinges. Everything was asking for money, the kind of money Mr Bullivant had.

I glanced behind me. Rob lay flat on his back, eyes shut. He had chosen the highest point, the flat slab where the fires were lit. Or so they said. There was a bronze-age fort here once, when the land below was a sea of forest lapping the flanks of the hill, full of bears and wolves. They made fences of stakes around their huts and watched for their enemies. I saw their enemies mounting the hill like shadows, moving from hiding-place to hiding-place so that their movement was like the rippling of the wind. No sound, no hint of their presence until they were on you.

I walked across the turf to Rob. My feet made no sound but he sensed me coming and looked up.

*I surrender,' he said.

We opened our bags of food and ate greedily. The pickled walnuts puckered my mouth but I ate them one after another, staining my fingers. Rob brought a white paper bag out of his pocket. Sugared almonds. He laid a trail of them between us. Comfits for weddings, or christenings. I bit through the hard crust to the nuts, eating my way towards Rob.

He spread out his coat and we lay together, not really touching, our faces to the sun. Red worms of sunlight wriggled behind my eyelids. His hands were dry and warm. From the side his lips looked as if they were smiling, though I knew that they were not. The sheep bleated as they came close again, gaining courage from our stillness.

*What if there's a shepherd with them? Whose are they?'

*These are from down below a look at the marks. He wouldn't come close if he saw us. He'd think it was some lad with his best girl.'

*He might recognize us,' I said.

*Not he.'

But I'd never really thought before of how careful we would always have to be. No twining together in warm summer lanes. No dancing close to the tolerant smiles of the middle-aged ladies sitting at the sides of the ballroom. No public love, ever. No weddings, no christenings. There was a time when secrecy was exciting, when it was like a warm fire burning inside me. We are the only ones who know. I held my breath as my bedroom door creaked open and Rob slipped in. No one else knew. But there was always that unspoken *yet' to terrify me. What was happening between me and Rob might be growing towards its own discovery, We could see everything from up here and no one could see us, but we couldn't spend our lives on Isley Beacon.

The thought passed. We watched the shadows of cloud-shreds move over the fields. It was not quite so clear now. The days were short. Already an evening blueness stained the more distant fields and woods. But the sun was still on us.

*We'd better be going,' said Rob.

*Oh no, not yet. Let's stay a bit longer.'

*Aren't you cold?'

*No. Not in this sun.'

I was always the cold one, but not today. Rob sat up.

*I'm going to run to get warm,' he said.

He ran from a standing start. He ran from where I was as if he were being spooled away along an invisible thread. His head was thrown back, his arms high at his sides. He set a pounding pace that always crumbled after a few hundred yards. But he could sprint. His shadow fled away behind him on the grass, growing huge. His boots drummed the ground and it echoed hollowly, like a memory of the beat of horses' hoofs.

It was late. I felt the cold now, standing up. He was still running, away from me, small in the distance against the rim of the hill. He looked as if he were going to run off the edge of the world.

*Rob!' I called after him, but he still ran. *Rob!'

There was a darker patch of turf under my feet, as if the chalk below had been burnt. I'd found it at last, the place where they lit the beacon. When I'd looked straight at it I'd missed it, but out of the corner of my eye it showed up like the shadow of a scar. The brushwood must have crackled as the buried flints split their way out of the chalk. That long flare of red tonguing out into the night.

Rob had dwindled to a pinpoint on the long spine of the hill. I shouted again, louder and louder, frightened, seeing myself left alone in a darkening world.

Eleven.

Her bicycle was by the front steps. Upright, ugly and insistent. Usually she'd wheel it round to the stable yard, out of the way.

*Give me your bag,' said Rob. *I'm going in through the kitchen.'

*I'll come too.'

*No. She'll be waiting for you. She's your person. You deal with her.'

There was mud on my boots and I would need to brush the braid round my skirt. My hair had slipped out of its knot in the long lolloping run down the track from Isley Beacon. All I wanted was a bath and then dinner and a drowse by the fire, my mind blank from the day in the air, my body slack. Even the black spokes of her bicycle looked accusing. She had been sick and I hadn't visited her.

She was waiting in the hall, wearing her new yellowish dustcoat and her felt hat. The coat flopped around her, long and lean as a washed-out banana. Why did she persist in wearing the thing all the time, when she never drove anywhere? Her shoulders were hunched as she strained forward, devouring the fire. She always made me feel that the blaze was too high and the flames too luxuriant, though all we burned was wood brought in from the estate. She heard me and turned.

*So you're back,' she said, *and where's Robert?'

There were two heated spots, one in each cheek. They did not burn clear; they were a dull hectic red. Her glance slithered over me and away.

*He's gone round to the stables,' I said.

*You've been out the whole day, Kate tells me.'

It was like being a child again. For years now she hadn't dared assume her rights over me so openly. But first we'd had the scene in the conservatory, and now this. She was pushing for lost territory. She could always sense when I had something to hide.

*It was good to get out of the house,' I said. *We don't often get a day like this in the middle of January. It was beautiful, we walked right up on the top of Isley Beacon,' I went on, offering up our day to her and hoping it would satisfy her. She would pounce on it and smear it.

*It was cold enough. But I dare say you kept warm, the pair of you.' The malice in her voice frightened me. The pair of you. How she'd always hated us being a pair. She'd never acknowledge it. The most she'd yield to our relationship was a cold, grudging *your brother'. She could say the name Robert as if it were a punishment.

I dare say you kept warm. I looked at her and she looked back at me, her face full of narrow triumph. Her lips were parted over her long teeth. She was excited, and there was something sly and childish in her excitement. We stared at each other too long, until I felt my stare become an admission. When I spoke my voice was over-friendly, and I knew even as I asked, *Have you had tea? Shall I ask Kate to bring some?' that I had lost ground.

*Kate has other fish to fry, I dare say,' she answered. I dare say. It came across with ugly boldness. She was admitting things too: how Kate had never liked her, how she wasn't really welcome in this house, how the love she'd tried to pour out on me had been thrown away like waste water.

*All the same, let's have some. We'll go and sit down.'

But she wouldn't leave the hall. She must have been thinking it over beforehand, imagining the scene, painting it in the colours she wanted. She was like a child colouring neatly between the lines and hoping for masterpieces.

*No, thank you, Catherine. I'm not staying.'

But she wasn't going either, and I was stuck there with her in my dirty boots and muddy skirt, wiping loose hair out of my eyes. She looked me up and down. How she always exaggerated everything. Her life was theatre, bad theatre. Her trusty steed, her scarab pin, her love of secrets behind closed doors, her little way of pursing her lips over words that had almost slipped out. What a liar she was. I had had enough.

I wanted to tell her to shut up, let us alone, get out. She knew nothing. Nobody had ever touched her or wanted to. I'd had enough of her sliming her trail over our lives. She stood there rocking slightly from heel to toe like a huge, useless doll, and I wanted to push her, see her keel over and knock her head on the hard stone hearth, singe her hair in the flames. I wouldn't help her, not if she had her head in the red heart of the fire. I knelt down and pushed the poker between the logs, dislodging a shower of sparks and the smell of apple wood. The last load of wood had come from two James Grieves we had lost in the gales. I breathed in the smell of the smoke. Of course she didn't know anything. How could she? On Isley Beacon we'd been higher than anything but a hawk. It was just her old jealousy. She was sick and yellow with it. I jabbed the poker in hard and levered two logs apart until they sent up new bright flames. I thought of how she'd held my hand and led me through The Sanctuary to where my father was, and I shivered with revulsion. She'd enjoyed that too. I remembered her fingers rearranging my petticoats, tucking in, scrabbling at the lace. Thank God I was out of that long tunnel of my childhood. She had had her time.

I glanced up over my shoulder and caught her looking at me. She was drinking me in, and she went on boldly even when she saw me looking back. She'd got me at last, she thought, and I belonged to her now. Everything had changed and I was where she'd wanted me all those years. She put out a long hand and touched my hair.

*Catherine ...'

I shrank away from her. I would have knocked her hand off but I didn't dare. Yes, she knew. Somehow she'd spied and watched and she'd got what she'd always wanted. She could hold me where she wanted now. You are dirty, her eyes said, and I shall make you pure. The most frightening thing about her had always been the lies she told herself.

*It's not right for a young man to be hanging around at home. Your grandfather ought to send him away to work for his living,' she said. *He needs knocking into shape. He ought to go to sea,' she added wildly. Visions of the future she could visit on Rob rose like goblins in her eyes. Storms at sea, a ship rounding the Cape of Good Hope, Rob clinging to the railings a a wave breaking over the decks, a sickening lurch, a cry no one heard, the ship sailing on while a tiny figure tosses in its wake, growing weaker and weaker ... She could do it now, she believed. Through me she could get rid of Rob, the way she had always wanted.

*Why on earth would he want to go to sea? None of us ever has.'

*Oh no,' she said, with heavy satire, *of course not. It's good enough for the finest men in the land, good enough for my second cousin the Admiral, but not good enough for you. You'd rather go elsewhere, like your precious father.'

She had always been sentimental about men in uniform. Her nonsense was making my head ache.

*Your father,' she said, *he went somewhere, didn't he? Did you know they wanted to send him to Bedlam?'

*I don't know anything about it,' I said, *and I don't want to.'

*Oh yes, they did. But your grandfather stopped it.' Her words dropped on me like little balls of spittle. She spoke quietly and conversationally, and no one passing through the hall would have guessed what we were talking about. I didn't feel like laughing at her now.

*Your father was a moral lunatic,' said Miss Gallagher. *Do you know what that means, Catherine?'

*God knows!'

She paused, torn between her automatic desire to defend the Redeemer's name (*She treats God like a pawnbroker,' Rob said) and her hunger to move on to better meat.

*I had hoped, Catherine, never to have to speak to you on the subject, but I know my duty now. I should never have kept the truth from you all the time,' she continued, with an involuntary smile of pleasure. She would have got her phrases out of one of the novels she loved, tales of virtue rewarded and the flowering of beauty in plain, poor women. I saw her rolling the words over on her tongue in her narrow bedroom, rejoicing because at last she'd made her chance to use them.

*I knew about that, anyway,' I said.

*Did you, Catherine? I wonder,' she said, looking at me with amused pity. She would have rehearsed that too. Then she poked her neck forward with a jerk, ugly but effective, like a blackbird stabbing at the head of a worm as it emerged from the wet soil. Her eyes pinned me. *Have you ever thought what happens to a servant who gets herself into trouble?'

*She gets married, I suppose.'

*Oh, you innocent!' she trilled, letting it hang between us that innocent was certainly the last thing I was. *Not always, Catherine. The asylums are full of such girls. They are moral idiots, not fit to live among decent people. They need to be taught the difference between right and wrong. I visit one such place quite regularly, you know. Of course I have never talked to you about it.'

But now you can, I thought.

*Not many people know about them,' she went on, *but charitable people contribute funds. The inmates wear a uniform. I helped to design one.'

*What's it like?'

*Really, Catherine, I should hardly have thought that was significant. As long as their bodies are covered. Though I flatter myself that I know something about clothes.'

I looked at her long swathes of dustcoat. You are a monster, I thought. How she would love insinuating herself into any institution, sipping tea with the matron and gently recommending further punishments. How she would love walking up and down among girls who might have been pretty once and were now on their hands and knees scrubbing flags with big chapped hands.

*The matron of St Agatha's is a particular friend of mine,' said Miss Gallagher. *Moral idiots,' she repeated, with light, particular emphasis.

*That doesn't mean anything to me,' I said.

*Oh, doesn't it? I thought it might. Your grandfather would know what it meant at once, after his terrible experience with your father.'

Chill was licking at my heels. No matter how much wood we piled on, all we ever achieved in the hall was a blaze on our faces and a desert of cold behind. She knew and she was going to tell our grandfather.

*You don't look well.'

*I'm tired. It was a long walk. And I haven't changed.'

*Oh yes, Catherine, I think you have,' she said, looking at me with her head on one side. Then she became practical again, the friend of the family. *You must have perspired and it has given you a chill.' She looked at me as if she could see the pores of my skin and smell my sweat. *Shall I ask Kate to fetch hot water for your bath?'

*No, not yet.'

*I could stay while you have it.'

*I'm sorry, Miss Gallagher,' I said, and I smiled appeasingly, *I'm not Feeling awfully well.'

*Eunice. How many times have I got to tell you? After all, you are grown-up now. We're both women. Eunice. Perhaps it is one of those times? Have you got your visitor?'

I felt as if she were running her hands over my body.

*Oh you silly girl! You don't need to be shy with me.'

She had creaked into horrible playfulness. We were girls together, talking about female intimacies.

*If Rob does go away,' she said, lingering over the idea deliciously, *I could come and keep you company. I'm sure your grandfather would not object, if you asked him. And you need someone to help you with your clothes, if you're going to have all these parties and gaieties. Won't it be fun?'

We were in the future tense already, not the conditional. I knew all about how language was put together from hearing Rob's Latin as he struggled to learn his tenses and declensions. I could feel my way to the right answers swiftly, as if a path lay between them and me. She was so sure of herself now. Stupidly sure. She really thought it had been that easy and it was all over. I would give in and Rob would go like a lamb. Oh, she'd juggle us all. Yes, she'd frightened me, but now her big face was silly with the prospect of happiness.

*I must go upstairs. I've got a pain,' I said. She looked at me with maternal satisfaction, like a mother who loves her child the more when it is sick and scabby, hidden away from other eyes. Then she reached out the back of her hand and stroked it down my cheek. I jerked sharply away and rubbed my flesh where she had touched it. Her hand fell down to her side and she looked at me with tiny hating eyes.

*Touch pitch, and you shall be defiled,' she said. *You're filth, Catherine. You are walking in the darkness. It is the evil spirit in you that makes you turn from me. But I shall rescue you in spite of yourself, Catherine. I know my duty.'