'Then how did you manage to come down in it?' Hugh enquired in a kind of unwilling triumph.

As Ellen saw the man's lips stiffen she succeeded in parting her own. 'You're right,' she told him, and the reflections that were wadded against the windows mouthed it. 'There was something that ought to be covered up.' When Hugh gave her a defiantly unhappy look she said 'Sit down before you forget where we're going.'

Her cruelty silenced him, though for some seconds he appeared not to know how to resume his place. She couldn't help by touching him, but she was at the very edge of her patience by the time he abandoned his handholds and shuffled to face her before subsiding opposite. The small squat man had already failed to lose himself in his book, which he laid on the seat next to him. Ellen stared at Hugh hard enough to keep him quiet a almost hard enough to distract her from the grotesque reflections squashed against the windows by the dark. She was peripherally aware that the small man alighted at the last of the underground stations, even if she didn't glimpse him as the train moved off. His departure seemed not to have left the carriage as empty as it ought to be, an impression that worked on her nerves until she realised 'He didn't take his book.'

'Shall I get it for you?'

'Just stay there, Hugh.'

He wasn't ready to abandon his compulsion to help. 'About him, you know, I was only trying a'

'And could you stay quiet as well? You've said considerably more than enough for a while.' When he made to speak she added 'Otherwise I'll be telling you where to go and leaving you to it.'

She wondered if he might take this less as a threat than as an opportunity to protect her, but some aspect of it hushed him. He gazed at her as if he didn't know where else to look, which left her feeling trapped inside her flesh, peering out of the blurred ma.s.s of her face. The onslaught of sunlight as the carriage emerged from the tunnel was some distraction, though it aggravated her clamminess a and then she noticed something else. 'It's gone,' she said.

Hugh's gaze seemed focused on reminding her that he was forbidden to speak, and so she lurched past him. 'His book,' she said, not having found it on the seat or on the floor. 'It was there.'

'I wouldn't know. You said I had to sit.'

Ellen felt as if, having intensified her sense of her condition, the man had s.n.a.t.c.hed away the possibility of a Cougar book. The train had halted at a station for n.o.body visible to board before Hugh said 'Maybe he's showing us what he can do.'

'What do you mean?'

'Maybe there wasn't a man at all.'

Was this a desperate attempt at rea.s.surance? It simply left her feeling more unsure of herself. If she concentrated on the horizon, where the edge of the slate of the sea cut into a heavy black sky, she could imagine that the train was scarcely moving. There were very few stations to go, and soon the train swung away from the water, and there were none at all.

A man with a rucksack over his left shoulder stepped back as she dumped herself on the platform, and she almost believed he was only making way for her and Hugh. She stumped past the unstaffed booth and the end of the platform into the little booking hall, where she turned on Hugh. 'Where are you proposing to get your spade?'

'I must have been thinking we could borrow one from the house. There'll be a shop, won't there?' he came close to pleading. 'Let's ask.'

A solitary taxi was at rest outside the station. Once Ellen made for it he succeeded in reaching the driver's window. 'Excuse me, do you know where we can buy a, gardening equipment, sort of thing?'

The large tattooed man inclined his shaven pate in a lazy sidelong nod. 'Should be some in the next road.'

'Can you take us?'

'It's not that far,' the driver protested, then glanced askance at Ellen. 'Are you going on anywhere?'

She felt referred to rather than addressed, and left Hugh to say 'You could wait and take us to Thurstaston.'

'Helping the rangers, are you?'

'I expect so,' Hugh was sufficiently thrown to tell him. 'I'll sit in front, shall I, Ellen? You can have the back.'

At least this let her sit as far from the driver as she could. Nevertheless he lowered his window all the way as he started the engine, and didn't ask whether she minded the breeze that fluttered her old nightdress, peeling it away from her moist flesh only to paste it more uncomfortably still. He turned left off the main road and immediately left again, which brought them in less than a minute to a hardware store next to a wine bar. 'Do we both need to go in?' Hugh said.

'I take it you're asking me to.'

'I'll give you the money if you can.'

She wondered if the driver thought this sounded like a bribe; it felt absurdly like one. 'Don't go digging in your pocket,' she said. 'We're both out of work.'

As she struggled out of the taxi she was confronted by spades, four of them hovering in the gloom beyond the shop window. They were hanging from hooks on the wall, and the shop was darkened by an advancing ma.s.s of cloud. There was a spade for her and for each of her cousins, but what was that supposed to mean? She ought to bury her imagination for a while, and did her best to fancy that the bell above the door was indicating she could.

The comfortably plump woman in trousers and an overall behind the small counter might have been dressed for gardening. 'Brought the dark with you,' she said and sniffed. 'Needing help?'

Ellen gathered that the woman was eager to see the last of her, and why. 'Just a spade,' she said and was nervous enough to add 'For the garden.'

At once she was intensely aware why she was buying the item. Perhaps the ba.n.a.lity of the transaction made its purpose real for her. A smell of earth that no amount of perfume could disguise clogged her nostrils, challenging her to breathe. If she fled the shop she would be letting her cousins down, and Hugh would feel compelled to find his way in. She plodded to the wall, shaking the resonant floorboards, to clutch at the biggest spade a the one, she couldn't help thinking, that might be most use as a weapon. She almost wrenched the hook loose in her haste to lift the spade off. She laid a twenty-pound note on the counter when the woman failed to take it, and that was where the woman placed her change. 'Would you like a bag?' she said.

As Ellen wondered if it might be advisable to hide the implement until she and Hugh were on the beach, the woman produced a plastic bag that would barely cover its head. 'Never mind,' Ellen said and bore the spade out of the shop.

The bell drew attention to it, and so did the taxi driver. 'Here's the digger,' he said. Hugh glanced so unsteadily at her that she thought he too might be fully aware at last of their undertaking. 'May as well keep it with you,' the driver said as she headed for the boot.

When the car swung away from the kerb the thin object lurched towards Ellen, tapping her on the shoulder with its handle. She grasped it by the shaft to keep it off, though this entailed too much awareness of the deformed hand at the end of her misshapen arm. Meanwhile the taxi found a different route to the main road and then set about climbing a hill. Soon the last houses were left behind, and the car was dwarfed by sandstone banks whose colour antic.i.p.ated the thick brown of the cliff. Although the taxi was speeding uphill it was so enclosed that Ellen felt as if it were plunging into the earth.

It gained the summit of the road at last and swerved right at a crossroads towards the underside of the sky. 'Is this the way?' Hugh blurted.

For a moment this made Ellen as nervously distrustful as he sounded. 'This is it all right,' she said, hoping this rea.s.sured him more than it managed for her.

The road did indeed end on the brink of the cliff. To the left a solitary triangular kite was drooping its tail against the charred sky above the common beyond a centre for visitors to the nature trail; to the right a path led down to the beach. Hugh fumbled out money and paid the driver while Ellen supported her weight on the spade, having clambered forth. As the taxi performed an impatient three-point turn and sped inland, Hugh said 'Who's that? What's he want?'

The spade sc.r.a.ped across the tarmac as Ellen twisted around to see a figure turning its back in a gap in the hedge where a path led to the visitor centre. She'd failed to notice him when she left the taxi. He wore a grey anorak with the hood up and greenish rubber boots over equally muddy trousers, and was carrying a spade. 'Up here if you're helping with the path,' he said.

His voice was so m.u.f.fled by the hood that Ellen had to strain to be anything like certain she was hearing him. The anorak was fatter than the humid afternoon warranted, and a good deal bulkier than him, to judge by the bony outlines of his legs. 'That's all right. We'll follow,' she called to send him on his way.

'No we won't,' Hugh whispered, and even lower 'Don't speak to him.'

Ellen peered after the figure as it shuffled along the path. The anorak was stained so variously grey that patches reminded her of lichen, not least by their texture. 'Why not?' she murmured.

'He's a' Hugh relinquished whispering and said at the top of his voice 'He's not there.'

The man was out of sight beyond the hedge now. His spade rose above it at some distance, long enough to beckon, scattering lumps of earth. 'Don't be silly, Hugh,' Ellen said, but when his eyes began to dodge from side to side she tramped to the gap in the hedge. The common was deserted under the blackening sky; even the kite had vanished. Were there traces of footprints on the path until the hedge around the visitor centre concealed it? They didn't look shod; indeed, they struck her as somehow even barer. 'Just come on,' she told Hugh and made for the path to the beach. She oughtn't to have spoken so sharply, but her nerves were to blame. She was beginning to wonder what else might intervene to prevent her and Hugh from reaching their goal.

TWENTY-NINE.

When Hugh dug the spade into the base of the cliff, a handful of clay trickled down at him. Ellen glanced nervously upwards, but n.o.body was visible against the sky, although it was almost black enough to hide a watcher. 'Go on,' she urged, sounding m.u.f.fled by the gloom. He planted one foot on the metal blade and leaned all his weight on it, heaving out a lump of earth as big as a man's head, which came so readily that someone might have been pushing it. Hugh stumbled backwards and, having flung away the spadeful, thrust the blade into the gaping cavity. Before he could exert his weight the ma.s.s of earth above him quivered as if it or its tenant were shaking off slumber. The next moment a bulk taller and broader than a house collapsed towards him.

'Watch out,' Ellen wasted time in crying as she made to drag him back. The sound of her approach only distracted him. He swung around to shove her out of danger a swung around the wrong way. His gaze and his frantic movements failed to coincide in search of her as the wall of earth slid towards them so lethargically it might have been relishing its deliberateness. Charlotte couldn't cry out, she could only dash to grab him and Ellen, to haul them clear if there was time. She had nothing to say that would help, and in any case she needed to devote her breath to sprinting faster. But her mouth was open, and it filled with mud as she and her cousins were buried deep in earth.

It blinded her and stuffed her nostrils as soon as she was desperate enough to try to draw a breath. It pinioned her, arms helplessly outstretched, and she was as incapable of movement as a statue. Nevertheless a hand found hers, and she wondered which of her cousins had somehow managed to reach out until she realised that the fingers consisted of very little more than bones. As she struggled to fend off their clasp she grew aware of another unwelcome companion a a large insect that was attempting to crawl over her breast, buzzing silently with the effort. This was one outrage too many, and Charlotte attempted to project her distress into a cry that barely penetrated her clogged ears, if indeed she wasn't imagining she had uttered it. She put her entire self into the next suffocated protest. Enfeebled though it was, it succeeded in emerging from the dark, because it brought a response. 'Are you all right, dear?'

This made no difference to the insect, which continued to nuzzle her breast. She opened her eyes to find she was still holding a hand. The fingers weren't so bony, and surely not as limp as death. They were Rory's, and the breath on her neck was an earthy draught from the open window. As she rea.s.sured herself that his hand was too warm to be other than living, Annie spoke from her post by the opposite bed. 'I was letting you have your nap. You have to take them when you can in here.'

The silenced mobile finished vibrating as Charlotte took it out of her pocket. 'Was that what was disturbing you?' Annie said. 'I should think they're a nuisance, those things. I wouldn't want anyone being able to get me wherever I am.'

Charlotte's eyes were muddy with sleep, and she had to blink hard before she could make out the displayed number. It was Hugh's. 'Could you keep an eye again?' she said. 'I just need to step outside for a few minutes.'

'Everyone's deserting us,' Annie informed or at least said to her husband, and reminded Charlotte 'You never did say where your family ran off to.'

'That's what I'm going to be hearing about, I hope.'

'All right, you can tell me all about it when you come back.'

Was she establishing this as her reward for watching over Rory? Charlotte left her a faintly promissory smile and hurried down the ward. The corridor seemed narrower than ever, except where side pa.s.sages made room for shadows, more of those than she had time to identify. She dashed to the lifts and sent herself forwards as soon as one parted its doors. She was tempted to return Hugh's call at once, because she found the ponderous descent even more suffocating than the lack of windows. She managed to resist until she was out of the lift and past the reception desk, only for a ma.s.s of cigarette smoke that was loitering outside the main door to catch her breath. She hadn't finished coughing by the time she walked a few yards while raising Hugh's number. It rang several times, and then there was silence that she tried not to fill with a cough. As she spluttered instead Hugh demanded 'What is it?'

'Nothing as long as you're both all right.' When this earned no response she had to ask 'Are you?'

'Same as you saw. How about you? You sound as if you can't breathe.'

'Of course I can,' Charlotte more or less declared until a cough completed her last word. As she retreated from the smokers and the fumes of a tarrying taxi she said 'Why did you call?'

'Just wondered if you'd anything to tell us.'

'I don't think so.' While she felt ashamed of having fallen asleep on watch, surely Annie would have alerted her to any change. 'He's as you left him,' she said.

'No, I mean did your editor call, that's to say Ellen's.'

'Not a sound.' This resembled a warning more than Charlotte liked, and made her wonder 'Where are you?'

'Pretty well there.'

'You're really going to do whatever you're planning to do, then.'

'Unless you've got any better ideas.'

'I think you've left me behind this time. If you're going through with it,' she felt forced to add, 'go all the way.'

'That's a promise.'

It seemed more like a threat if not worse. She heard Ellen ask a question, which prompted her to say 'Does Ellen want to speak to me?'

'Do you want a word?'

'Just tell her to look after Rory.'

'She says a'

'I heard,' Charlotte said, though she barely had. Ellen sounded too remote, no doubt because she and the phone were in the open, together with a harsh uneven breath of wind. Her request could easily seem ominous, and Charlotte felt the need to add 'We'll all a'

'That's right. Anyway, time we got on. We'll have plenty of chance to talk later.'

'Go on,' she said, 'good luck,' by which time Hugh had gone, leaving her the impression of calling into a hole. She took a breath that was a kind of suffocation, since she held it while she hurried past a queue of cars and a sampling of three generations of smokers. She expelled it at last and was taking another, which felt parched by the hospital and pinched small by a tinge of disinfectant as well as constricted by the lobby and the visitors who were close to filling it, when the phone twitched in her hand.

She swung around and dodged through the crowd, which couldn't really be arranging itself to block her escape. 'Nowt to be afraid of, love,' a woman told her or a granddaughter.

'Plenty of room,' said a man on two sticks, perhaps to justify not moving aside. Charlotte found a gap not too far from him and ran into the open air, or at least what pa.s.sed for it beyond the exit. She let out a gasp to make way for a less stale breath and used some of that to say 'Yes, Glen.'

'Hi. It's me sure enough,' he said as if he thought her overly abrupt. 'How's the invalid?'

'They say he's comfortable. It's the kind of thing they say. I suppose he is if the word's even relevant. I don't know and I don't know if he does.'

'I'm sure you're doing a'

'All I can. Don't say it, Glen. It won't make me feel any better, and certainly not him.'

She was as thrown by her outburst as she imagined Glen must be. As she glanced around to see that n.o.body had eavesdropped he said 'Anyway, you wanted me.'

'We did. Me and Ellen,' Charlotte said and felt bound to add 'And Hugh.'

'You aren't going to tell me he's helping her write as well.'

'He just likes to be involved when he can be,' said Charlotte, wishing she had given herself time to think. 'We're all one family.'

'So there's how many listening?'

'Just me,' Charlotte said and at once felt overheard.

'Gee, what's happened to your family?'

'They a' She couldn't explain to him or invent a story either. 'I'm outside,' she said.

'What brought you out? You weren't waiting for me?'

She feared being trapped into lie after lie, but her answer stayed all too close to the truth. 'I wanted some air.'

'Can't ever get enough of that. So what else did you need?'

Rea.s.surance would have been welcome, but she couldn't ask for that without betraying far too much. 'We wondered if you'd been going to tell us anything else.'

'When I ended up talking to myself, you mean? I thought you'd had enough of me.'

'We'd gone underground,' she said, and hastily 'So what did you say that we didn't hear?'

'Remind me where I'd got to.'

'You were saying a' This brought the tunnel all the more to mind, but she had to go on. 'You'd just told us what he was afraid of.'

'Your cousin's guy. Well, he was.'