'I'm not hungry,' Jane said tonelessly.

Well, fair enough. Merrily could remember a whole day of hugging the pillow, between Paracetamols.

But it wasn't like that, was it? The kid was lying on her bed quite relaxed, almost serene in her white nightdress. Which she must have changed into this morning, because she'd gone to bed in that old Pulp T-shirt.

'Cup of tea?' Merrily offered desperately.

'No, thanks. I might get myself one later.'

'Jane ...' She sat down again on a corner of the bed. 'I'm sorry to labour the point, but you're sure there were no men ... no boys ... with you?'

'I told you, we got rid of them.'

'They didn't follow you? They weren't around when you ... lost consciousness?'

'Oh, Mother ...' Jane closed her eyes. 'Your generation thinks everything has to do with sex. I had too much to drink, I went to sleep-'

'You passed out!'

'Yeah, all right. But when I woke up I felt ... well, good, actually. Yeah, good. But nobody touched me. They couldn't ... get near.'

Jane looked faintly puzzled, then it passed.

'I'm fine,' she said. 'I'm sorry about this, but I'm really OK.'

Merrily breathed in, counted slowly, lips tight. One ... two ... three ... four ... five.

'I have to go out again,' she said.

Jane stood at the window, watching bloody Mum cross the bloody square, heading towards the bloody church, where bloody else, the pious cow?

She walked experimentally around the room. She didn't fall down. Legs felt like her own legs again. She felt good. She hadn't been bluffing, hadn't been taking the piss. She'd had a good night's sleep.

She shrugged.

She had a swift shower, towelled her hair and got dressed.

She still felt fine.

She padded down the oak staircase and out into the square without, thank God, meeting anyone who might accuse her of having a drink problem. The only problem was she couldn't recall very much of what had happened. The last she remembered with any clarity was being on the right track for losing her virginity to bloody Dean Wall or one of his spotty mates in the church porch.

Colette had got them out of that, although she couldn't quite remember how.

Good old Colette.

Jane slipped into the cobbled alley. Cassidy's Country Kitchen was closed after the Sunday lunch crowd. There was no sign of Colette. Jane wandered down to Ledwardine Lore, which was also closed. She stood at the window, looking in at all the apple curios. It seemed like months since she'd gone in there and the very odd but quite nice Lol Robinson had asked her to mind the store because of the guy he wanted to avoid. Weird. And then there was the story of Wil Williams who'd hanged himself and was buried in the orchard.

The orchard! Jane pressed her forehead into the cool glass, Colette's voice drawling in her head.

Old Edgar Powell, the headless farmer. All aglow and hovering about nine inches off the ground.

Oh God, yes. She remembered running away from the Wall gang and then she was lying in some grass under branches and ... gappy old grin. Eyes like grey holes ... these very branches ... Look up, Janey ....

Colette was taunting her, just like she'd taunted the boys. Colette's voice harsh and sly. Sassy, superior Colette.

Look up.

And had she? Had she looked up, with Colette and then Dean Wall and Danny Gittoes and somebody called Mark coming out of the bushes to stand around and laugh themselves sick?

Good old Colette? Bollocks.

Feeling really hot and embarrassed now, she glared resentfully at the shuttered facade of Cassidy's Country Kitchen, seriously bloody glad now that Colette wasn't there. In fact, she never, never, never wanted to see that bitch again.

She turned and ran out of the alley and into the square and stood there panting, confusion giving way to a sense of being horribly stupid and, worst of all, really, really young.

Luckily it was Sunday. Soporific Sunday afternoon, and nobody to laugh at her humiliation. Even the Black Swan closed its bars on Sunday afternoons, and there were only a couple of cars parked on the square. Jane stood in the middle of the road, at the top of Church Street, staring at her shadow on the cobbles.

Wondering how she could ever have felt at home here.

The yellow Toyota sports car came out of nowhere well, in fact, out of Great Barn Street, which linked Church Street to the B-road to Hereford and had to swerve to avoid splattering Jane all over the market cross.

Brakes went on, a window glided down. 'Tired of life, are we, darlin'?'

Jane sniffed, put on a smile. 'Sorry.'

'Ah ...' She saw a beard enclosing a very white smile. 'It's you again.'

It was the man from the shop. The man who was not dealing drugs, who accidentally crushed fairies and frightened Lol. Yellow Toyota of course.

He said, 'So you don't know anyone called Lol Robinson, huh?'

'Oh,' Jane said. 'Well, I do now. I just didn't know his name at the time. I'm quite new around here. I know who he is now.'

'I described him to you, sweetheart, and it still meant nothing. How do you ...? Oh, never mind. Would I be chancing my arm if I were to ask you where Blackberry Lane is?'

'It's up there. See that funny little building in the square? Just go up the side, to the left, and it's this really narrow little lane. You'll have to go a lot slower than you did when you came round that corner or you'll wind up under a tractor or something.'

'Thanks.'

The window went up; Jane watched the car move off. She hadn't really wanted to help him, but he would have found out anyway. She supposed Lol lived up there, and now he'd get a nasty surprise.

He had a breakdown. Actually, he used to be a sort of pop star, way back. Well, very minor. I mean, like, tiny.

She'd forgotten that. And Colette saying Lol was megasad. And ... and ...

And she'd seen him again. She'd been in his arms. Carried in his arms. Oh God, he'd brought her home last night!

And now she'd shopped him to this bastard.

The Reverend Mum was right, as usual. She'd got pissed and left a trail of disaster. She had a lot of apologizing to do.

12.

Sympathetic Magic.

A WISPY BREEZE plucking at her poncho, Miss Devenish climbed, without much effort, to the top of the knoll. With her back to the sun, the big hat pulled down, she loomed over Merrily like some ancient warrior chieftain.

'You're never alone in the countryside, Mrs Watkins. It's the most intimate place. The poet Traherne knew that. When he walked out here, Traherne knew he was inside the mind of God.'

Below them, nearly a mile away down the long, wooded valley, the village of Ledwardine lay like an antique sundial in an old and luxuriant garden.

'The core of the apple,' Miss Devenish said. 'The orb. Traherne was always talking about orbs and spheres. Understanding that he was at the very centre of creation.'

'Suppose he'd lived in some filthy city.' Merrily looked down on the lushness of it all. 'Or a desert somewhere.'

'Wouldn't have mattered. The man was a natural visionary. He instinctively picked up the pattern, the design. Before Wordsworth, before Blake, he stood here and he saw.'

Merrily sat down on the edge of the green knoll, her legs dangling over a mini-cliff of rich, red soil. 'How do you know he stood precisely here?'

'I don't.' Miss Devenish smiled enigmatically. 'And yet I do. He would've walked here with his friend Williams, to see the best view of the village.'

Because of the hedges, freshly greened, you couldn't see the roads; you couldn't see the cars and vans and tractors, only hear their buzzing.

'So much country,' Merrily mused. 'Even inside the village.'

'Still, thank God, an organic community. In spite of the best efforts of those who'd turn it into a museum full of horse-brasses and warming pans. And supposedly authentic ceremonies' darkness entered Miss Devenish's voice 'which belong elsewhere.'

Merrily looked towards the church. The sandstone steeple stood proud, like the gnomon of the sundial, but the graves were all hidden by trees and bushes. The churchyard, more egg-shaped than circular, was partly enclosed by the orchard which, from here, had a deceptive density. Had the church once been entirely surrounded by apple trees?

'Indeed. The heart, Mrs Watkins. And the blood it pumped was cider.'

Along the hidden road, a heavy lorry rumbled, the landscape seemed to tremble and her mind replayed the deepened voice of Dermot Child. Auld ciderrrrrrrrrrr ...

'Yes.' Merrily pulled herself together. 'And talking of cider ...'

'I can't tell you what happened to the child.' The old girl scrambled gracelessly down from the top of the knoll and came to sit beside Merrily. 'And if I tell you what I think might have happened, I'm afraid our embryonic relationship might well be aborted.'

'Don't like the sound of that.'

'Laurence phoned me,' Miss Devenish said. 'The Cassidy girl had arrived at his door.'

'That's ... Lol?'

'I do so hate slovenly abbreviations. Gaz. Chuck. Appalling. Laurence Robinson helps me in the shop. His is the nearest cottage to that end of the orchard. The Cassidy girl was somewhat distressed well, as close to distress as that madam's capable of getting. Told Laurence your daughter had drunk too much and passed out in the orchard. The two of them brought her back to the cottage. Which was where I first saw her.'

'She was conscious by then?'

'I wonder,' said Miss Devenish, 'if she had ever been, in the strictest sense, unconscious.'

'Meaning?'

'She'd apparently been sick. Before she apparently passed out. My distant memories of such things tell me it's usually the other way about.'

'Was she coherent?'

'Perhaps.'

Merrily took a deep breath. 'Miss Devenish, she's fifteen years old. She has no father, she's had to change schools rather a lot, and ... well, she's very intelligent, but rather less sophisticated than she thinks she is. Last night she was with a girl who seems to me to have been ...'

'Been around. Yes.'

'They seem to have been ... pursued ... by some boys. What I'm trying to get at is, when you found them, did you see any suggestion of ... of ...?'

'Hanky-panky? No, Mrs Watkins. I don't think you need worry on that score.'

'Thank you. Next question. I don't know how much cider she drank, but it was enough to knock her over. The first time I got drunk not that much older than Jane I spent most of the following day wanting to die. Jane slept like a baby and woke up with absolutely no trace of a hangover. So I wondered ... I mean, the word is, Miss Devenish, that you know a thing or two about herbal medicines. And things. I just wanted-'

'My assessment of the situation tells me,' said Miss Devenish, 'that you wanted her to suffer.'

'Well ...' Merrily averted her eyes. 'Let's say I wanted her to regret it.'

'Well, of course,' said Miss Devenish, 'you're a Christian, and Christians are reluctant to believe that any significant lesson can be learned without suffering.'

'And what are you, Miss Devenish?'

'Labels!' The old girl glared at her. 'Why should one always have to be a something? Traherne was a Christian, but with the perceptions ... the antennae ... of a pagan. But I'll not be drawn into that sort of argument. I'd prefer us to remain on speaking terms. You want to know how your daughter could get horribly inebriated on copious draughts of rough cider and come out of it without a king-size hangover, and I'm trying to give you a possible explanation without offending your religious sensibilities.'

'I'm sorry.' Merrily lay back against the knoll. 'I'm not some fundamentalist bigot, honestly. Go on.'

'What we used to call sympathetic magic. You'll probably think this whimsical.'

'I'll try not to.'

'All right. Like cures like. If you're drunk on cider, what better place to sleep it off than an apple orchard? Crawl into the centre of the orb and curl up. Let nature do the rest.'

'You're right. That is whimsical.'

'Wouldn't work for everyone. The orchard's a risky place, an entity in itself, a sphere. And this is a very old orchard. So it tells you or rather it tells me something about your daughter.'

'I'm sorry, but what does it tell you about my daughter?'

'I really don't want us to fall out,' Miss Devenish said. 'But you would do well to trust the child.'