'Has Sean done that?' he asked Jo, who had followed him outside.

'Of course not. Since when did Sean do anything to help in the garden? It was me.'

'You?'

'Me.'

Marcus approached the newly arrived message on his lawn with caution, as if he thought it might conceal a basking adder or two. 'What's it for?'

'It's a modern sculpture. A positive, life-affirming message.'

Marcus circled the stones, perhaps thinking that all would become clearer if he viewed them the right way up. 'Is this something out of a self-help book?'

'No. You know I don't read self-help books and there's no need to be sarcastic.'

'I wasn't. Just exactly what are you saying yes to?'

'To life ... the universe. Everything. I'm being positive, looking forward, as you have consistently told me I should.'

'Don't you think people will find it a little bit strange? I mean, did you have to put it right here, facing the lane? Couldn't you have it round at the back where you can still see it, but every pa.s.sing car can't?'

'It wouldn't work there.'

'Why not?'

She had not antic.i.p.ated this line of questioning. Sensing her hesitation, Marcus repeated the question, but Jo could only mumble that the sculpture had to be just where it was, facing into the lane.

'Are you planning any other sculptures on the lawn, because I really think we ought to discuss it first. You wouldn't be too pleased if I popped down to the garden centre, came back with a concrete Venus de Milo and stuck it right in front of the house, now would you?'

'There won't be anything else. This was just spontaneous positive. I thought you'd approve.'

'Well I don't. I don't like the idea of people goggling over the wall into our garden. Next thing you know, some joker will join in with a message of their own and you'll wake up to find graffiti sprayed on to a tree, or some tacky home-made banner tied on the gates.'

'That's ridiculous,' Jo said, although she knew that it probably wasn't because there were some people who looked on the Lakes as a great big holiday camp, where stag and hen parties could wander around in fancy dress doing all kinds of stupid things although that sort of crowd seldom found their way out as far as places like Easter Bridge.

'Can I suggest you move it, darling? I'm totally on board with the spirit of the thing; being positive, embracing all life has to offer and that sort of stuff, but I'm sure you can express it in other ways and if it has to be a sculpture, then please let's put it somewhere a little less prominent.'

'No. I can't move it. It took me all day.'

'Perhaps I could help you.' Marcus was employing his painfully patient voice. 'If we moved the letters one at a time, I'm sure it would be far '

'No! It has to be here. It won't work otherwise. There's no point having it round the back.'

'Jo what is going on? This isn't a sculpture, is it? This is a message.' When she would not meet his eye he continued: 'Is this anything to do with that woman at The Old Forge? You've had a thing about her ever since she moved in.'

'No, it's not her.' She hesitated. If she couldn't trust Marcus, who could she trust? Reluctantly she said, 'Wait here and I'll show you something.'

Marcus waited for her in the garden, standing well away from the disputed word. He took another sip of coffee and noticed that it was getting cold. When he saw her returning with a postcard in her hand, his heart sank.

'You see,' she said, thrusting it at him. 'It's a new message. I have to answer it.'

'How can you possibly do that? You don't know who is sending these things, or where they come from.'

'The person who sent this is the same person who left the sh.e.l.ls in the garden. It's someone who knows exactly where we are someone who comes to look at the house.'

In spite of himself, Marcus had to suppress a shudder at the thought of someone watching them. He took the postcard and read it, before turning it over several times, scrutinizing it front and back.

'How long have you had this? Why didn't you take it to the police?'

'What's the point? They always say there isn't anything they can do.'

'There's no postmark.'

'So? It must have missed the franking machine.'

'How did it get here?'

'The postman delivered it. He handed it to me with the other letters. I was out here when he came.'

'OK.' Marcus was silent, remembering the voice of that rather noxious young policeman. Has it ever occurred to you that your wife might be sending the cards to herself? Aloud he said, 'Why didn't you tell me about the card?'

'I was going to.'

'No, you weren't. You only told me when I threatened to remove your so-called sculpture.'

When Jo said nothing, he balanced his half-empty cup on the arm of the garden bench, before placing his hands one on each of her shoulders. 'We'll leave the stones where they are, for now but only on condition that you get some help. I want you to have some counselling, at the very least.'

'No.' She ducked away, stepping back to be out of his reach. 'I don't need that sort of help. I'm not mad, Marcus. I'm not my mother.'

'I never said you were, but-'

'No, no, no!' She put her hands over her ears and turned away. 'I'm not going down that road, and you can't make me.'

He tried to approach her again, arms outstretched, expression conciliatory, but she ran into the house, collapsing into the chair nearest the sitting-room door. To her relief, he did not follow her. For one awful moment she thought he might have set about dismantling her stones there and then, but when she slipped across to look out of the window she saw that he was sitting on the garden bench with his back to the house. It had been a mistake, she thought, to show him the postcard. What had an old boss of hers been fond of asking people? 'Are you part of the problem, or part of the solution?' Where he had once bolstered her confidence, Marcus now undermined her: he had deprived her of meaningful activity and left her stranded. You can be lost so easily, once you don't know who you are, or where you are going. 'And what about you?' asked the devil who rode on her shoulder. 'Are you part of the solution?' 'I can be ... I won't sink under it all ... I will survive.'

She went out to find Marcus in the garden.

'I was thinking perhaps we could all go out somewhere,' she said. 'The three of us. Take advantage of the day. Have a walk round Tarn Hows, then maybe have lunch at The Outgate. We haven't done anything like that for ages.' She did not particularly relish the prospect of a day spent playing Happy Families with Sean, but if this was what it took to get Marcus's mind away from moving the stones, then she was prepared to muster a smile and feign enthusiasm.

Marcus agreed with surprising alacrity. He went straight upstairs to rouse Sean, and although it was evident from the s.n.a.t.c.hes of conversation which filtered down the stairs that Sean, who thought walking anywhere 'a waste of time', was not greatly enamoured of the plan, by eleven o'clock the three of them were climbing into the car in readiness for their outing. As they drove past The Old Forge, Gilda Iceton was also getting into her car. Marcus raised a hand in acknowledgement, but Gilda gave no indication that she had observed the gesture, and a moment later they had rounded the bend and were out of sight.

Jo was driving, and before long she began to catch sight of Gilda's car, travelling at a discreet distance behind them. The hairs began to rise on the back of her neck. Was Gilda following them on purpose, or did she just coincidentally happen to be going the same way? Each time they turned off towards Hawkshead, then Coniston, when the road straightened out Gilda's car duly appeared in the mirror. As soon as they got out of the car at Tarn Hows, she saw Gilda's blue Volvo nosing around the car park, looking for a s.p.a.ce to park among the trees.

'Don't look now,' she hissed at Marcus, 'but Gilda the woman from The Old Forge has followed us.'

A shadow of anxiety swept over Marcus's expression. 'It's probably just someone with a similar car,' he said. 'It's dry underfoot and there's a made path all the way round, so it won't be muddy. I'm not going to bother with boots. What about you, Sean?'

'Whatever.' Sean lolled against the rear pa.s.senger door for all the world as if standing upright was too much effort, let alone walking round the tarn.

'It is her,' Jo said in a low, urgent voice. 'Look, she's just getting out of her car.'

'For heaven's sake, so what? It's a beautiful day. The woman's decided to go for a walk.'

'I think she's following us.'

'I think you're being silly. You see? She's getting a pair of walking boots out of the car. If she had been following us, how could she have antic.i.p.ated where we were going and known to bring her boots?'

'Maybe she leaves them in the car, the same as we often do.'

'Really, Jo, this is like having a conversation with an eight-year-old. Let's go, shall we?'

Jo was already fervently wishing that she had chosen somewhere other than Tarn Hows, which happened to be the first place that had come into her head. During the season its tranquillity was marred by a rash of picnics, metal folding chairs, giant cool boxes and the inevitable family who cannot see an expanse of gra.s.s without feeling the need to hoof a football across it all of which she knew Marcus would hate. The place was at its best in the winter, when the trees were reflected in the water as faithfully as a photograph and everywhere was silent and still. On days like that you might glimpse a red squirrel in the trees, or hear the mew of a buzzard: today it would be noisy families with double buggies all the way round.

In fact, Marcus had been happy enough to accept the choice of venue, but now they were here he found that all his efforts to lighten the mood fell on stony ground. Attempts at conversation foundered because Sean who had not really wanted to accompany them at all was particularly monosyllabic, while Jo became increasingly distracted, continually looking over her shoulder to keep an eye on the woman from across the road. Inwardly Marcus cursed his neighbour for choosing this particular place and time, because while she clearly wasn't following them, and indeed showed not the slightest awareness of them, Jo in her present state was capable of imagining anything. ('Why would she want to follow us?' Marcus asked at one point. 'To make me feel uncomfortable, of course,' his wife retorted, as if it should have been obvious.) Unfortunately the woman appeared to walk at the same pace as they did, so she neither overtook them nor ever dropped too far behind. Lunch at The Outgate was not a success either. By then Marcus had run out of pleasantries with which he hoped to start a conversation, so they awaited their food in silence. At least there was no question of anyone following them there, but he could tell that Jo would not be dissuaded from the reality of the morning's pursuit.

Unbeknown to his wife, he too had recently been to see Dr Hillier, but it was a complicated situation. Patient confidentiality precluded them from having any real discussion about Jo, who until officially declared otherwise was deemed competent to make her own decisions. Thus, Dr Hillier had explained, it was entirely her choice whether or not she consulted a doctor. The best he could advise was that Marcus continue in his attempts to persuade her to make another appointment. 'If she is happy for you to come along with her, so much the better. And of course, if she is exhibiting signs which give you real cause for concern, you can always call the out-of-hours service.'

'What sort of signs?'

'Well, I think it would be fairly obvious. If she claims to hear voices, for example, or starts talking to people you cannot see, or behaving violently towards other people or self-harming.'

'It's not like that,' Marcus said. 'She doesn't I mean, she isn't crazy, but she does need help.'

'Crazy isn't a word we really use.'

'No of course not.'

Their conversation had ended soon afterwards, leaving Marcus feeling, if anything, more perturbed than before.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

The 'barbecue summer' was short-lived. Within a fortnight the rain had returned and Jo reverted back to jeans and long sleeves again. Lucky you, she typed, in response to Nerys's latest message saying how wonderful the weather was (she had now reached California), it has rained here every single day this week. She told Nerys about the film she and Marcus had been to see at the cinema, and their overnight trip to Alton Towers with Sean, where she had won brownie points by accompanying him on the scarier rides eschewed by Marcus. She made the whole thing sound so upbeat that Nerys wrote in reply: I said you would win him over in the end.

In the meantime, Jo watched and waited anxiously for a response to her message on the lawn. Her hopes were raised one morning at the sight of a small hooded figure in waterproofs, hurrying up the drive with an envelope in its hand, but it was only Maisie Perry coming to drop off an invitation for her garden party, an event to be held the following Sat.u.r.day in aid of Marie Curie Nurses, complete with strawberries-and-cream teas, the obligatory raffle and plants for sale. The missive ended on the rather down-to-earth note: 'to be held indoors if wet'.

Jo did not want to attend Maisie's fund-raiser, whether it was inside or out. All the permanent residents were sure to have been invited, which obviously included Brian, to whom she had made such a fool of herself, and Sh.e.l.ley, whose Pre-Raphaelite reference books she had yet to return, having steered clear of the gallery since her overly emphatic rejection of Brian's art cla.s.ses. Then there was Gilda, with whom she had had no direct contact since the episode in the lane. She had seen Gilda a few times from a distance, once narrowly avoiding her by taking evasive action, when Gilda happened to be walking up from the bridge. Jo had ducked into the house and waited for the other woman to pa.s.s, covertly observing Gilda as she went by, singing to herself and carrying what appeared to be a bunch of weeds, which Jo presumed to be of artistic or botanical interest.

Marcus had accused her of being obsessed with Gilda, but that was a gross exaggeration. Had she really mentioned Gilda to Marcus all that often? Surely not. It was true that there was still a small part of her which wondered whether Gilda could be behind the sh.e.l.ls and the postcards: she had even ruminated on the possibility that Gilda's daughter was Lauren, but a more realistic, sensible voice told her that was fantastical. Apart from anything else, the girl was too old to be Lauren. Thirteen or fourteen, Maisie Perry said, and you could count on Maisie to have all the gen. Gilda's outside light had been on, the night of the third sh.e.l.l's appearance, but outside lights got left on all the time, and surely a guilty person would have made sure that it was off, rather than drawing attention to themselves. Even her certainty that Gilda had been following them round Tarn Hows that day now seemed ridiculous. Marcus had insisted all along that it was no more than a coincidence. She stopped short of speculating that Gilda's regular forays into the wood might be undertaken in order to spy on the occupants of The Hideaway. Plenty of people used the footpath to explore the woods, and there was no reason why Gilda should not go there to watch birds, gather wild gra.s.ses, or whatever else it was that took her fancy.

If only Gilda had given her a chance to explain about what had happened in the lane that morning. Not that explanations were particularly easy. Would a third party be able to understand how, after Lauren's disappearance, she had constructed something akin to a steel shutter in her mind brought down a barrier to avoid confronting her darkest imaginings those ideas which were just too much to bear? Or, that although the barrier worked well inasmuch that she could never be sure what her thoughts were getting up to behind it, at the same time it seemed to be mounted on a freewheeling roller mechanism which did not have a brake, so that unless she was vigilant it was liable to slide up an inch or two when she wasn't looking which was when the dangerous ideas slipped out and the trouble began?

Jo considered making an excuse for non-attendance at the garden party, but a convincing invention which would have sufficed for just about anyone else simply would not do when it came to Maisie. The actual subterfuge of absenting one's self from Easter Bridge for the afternoon would probably be required, which was a lot of effort when all she really needed to do was avoid being there at the same time as Brian, Sh.e.l.ley or Gilda. She reasoned that if she simply managed to be there at a different time, it would appear as if she had accidentally missed them, rather than deliberately avoided them and if an event was running from 2.30 p.m. until 5 p.m., wouldn't most people opt for the middle ground and not come until at least 3 p.m., so that if she turned up at 2.30 p.m. on the dot and made an excuse about not being able to stay long, she ought to be able to make her getaway before the others got there?

Jo was surprised when she arrived outside the Perrys' bungalow at 2.30 p.m. and found two cars already parked on the drive and Fred directing a third, windmilling his arms in the fashion beloved of elderly men who imagine that women need a dumb show from an experienced male driver in order to park a car.

The weather had necessitated holding the gathering indoors, but in spite of this, two hardy souls were padding round the garden exclaiming over the Perrys' roses, while tilting a golf umbrella against the periodic drifts of rain. For her own part, Jo willingly accepted Fred's exhortation to 'go straight in' without making any pretence of interest in horticulture.

The Perrys had pushed their furniture back and placed as many chairs as they could fit around the sides of the room. There were only three people seated inside: a couple who had positioned themselves near the fireplace, and Gilda Iceton, who was sitting alone at the opposite end of the room. Gilda's appearance was very much that of the woman one does not readily sit next to. Her hair was drawn back into an elastic band, and she was wearing a shapeless pale blue sweatshirt which had the shadow of an old stain on the front. Her brown trousers appeared to have been designed for someone shorter and exposed wide expanses of pale unshaven leg, which vanished none too soon into ankle socks and bus-conductress shoes.

As Jo stood hesitating in the doorway Maisie breezed in from the kitchen, bearing a tray of tea. 'Jo, lovely to see you. Why don't you sit here, next to Gilda, as you already know each other?'

With no obvious means of escape, Jo took the chair Maisie had indicated. It was one of a quartet of dining chairs which had been pushed so close together that only her denim jeans and Gilda's polyester trousers separated their flesh. When Jo shifted to one side, Gilda's thighs merely seemed to overflow further on to her chair.

The trio of ladies whose car had been the subject of Fred's needless arm-waving bobbed in out of the rain, so Maisie made some introductions the three ladies were friends from the WI, while the couple by the fireplace were fellow members of the Lakeland Horticultural Society. 'And this is Gilda,' Maisie was saying, 'our newest resident in Easter Bridge, who has very kindly said we can use her yard for overflow car-parking if we need it. Excuse me while I go and get some tea.'

Jo said hopefully, 'Can I come and help you carry things through, Maisie?'

'No, no. There's only room for one at a time in my little kitchen. You stay here and get to know our new neighbour a bit better.'

Jo reddened. She had been caught off guard by the presence of Gilda, and could not bring herself to look at the woman, let alone initiate a conversation with her. After Maisie had futtered out there was an awkward silence, while everyone else waited for Jo to say something. It was eventually broken by one of the WI ladies, who addressed Gilda: 'So, you're a newcomer to the Easter Bridge. Where were you living before you moved here?'

'I spent the past few years in Ess.e.x, but I've moved about a lot.'

'And what brought you to c.u.mbria?' Another of the ladies helped the interrogation along.

'I wanted to move nearer to my daughter's school. She's a boarder at St Aelfric's.'

'How old is your daughter?' asked the first WI lady.

'She was twelve in April.'

Jo swivelled round to stare at the woman beside her. Maisie had told her that Gilda's daughter was thirteen or fourteen.

'The same age as your daughter would have been.' Gilda turned to look her full in the face. 'There was only a couple of months difference between them.'

Jo winced as if she had been slapped. Maisie chose that moment to reappear, evidently having only half heard what had been said. 'Oh, no Jo hasn't got a daughter,' she put in, clearly thinking to correct a newcomer's minor gaffe. 'Just a stepson, Sean.'

'I'm sorry, I thought everyone would have known ...' Gilda left the words hanging in the air, pregnant with the implication that there was more to be said.

Jo stood up so suddenly that she almost upset a nearby pot plant. 'I'm sorry, Maisie, but I have to go. Here ' she fumbled in her purse and withdrew a five pound note ' please put this in the kitty.'

'Jo, dear ...' Maisie was caught on the hop, enc.u.mbered with another laden tray.

As Jo all but ran down the hall she could hear Gilda saying, 'I'm so sorry, I a.s.sumed that everyone knew.' Outside, she ignored the curious glances of the people in the garden and Fred's attempt to speak to her, not pausing until she had crashed in through her own front door. She knew she had made a dreadful fool of herself in taking flight. Gilda would have told them by now. Maisie Perry would know that she was the Joanne Ashton whose child had disappeared and whose husband had jumped off a cliff and Maisie knowing was as good as taking out a full-page advertis.e.m.e.nt in the Evening News. You might as well hire a megaphone and tour the district.

She saw the car keys lying on the hall table and grabbed them, glimpsing Sean's surprised face coming downstairs just as she headed back out of the door. 'I won't be long,' she shouted, although she had no idea whether he heard her or not. Worse and worse, she thought as she climbed into the car, Gilda knew about her mother. Everyone from her schooldays knew about it, but by the time of Lauren's disappearance she had been living in a different part of the country and had acquired a new name: it had been almost a decade since the death of her father briefly made the headlines, so no one had made the connection. She had been extremely lucky in that although a lot of people from her past must have recognized her in the papers and on TV, none of them had gone to the press. What happened in 1998 had been bad enough the thinly veiled suggestions that she had made away with Lauren herself. If the wider public had known about her mother ...

A car came at her as she rounded the bend below the bridge, forcing her to swerve into the side of the road, only narrowly avoiding a collision. Thank goodness there happened to be a verge just here, rather than a solid stone wall. The near miss shook her, because although the other driver had been travelling too fast, she knew that she had not been concentrating. As she steered the car back on to the road, she had to grip the wheel harder to stop her hands from shaking.

Gilda would tell them everything she would take a malicious pleasure in it. Oh, I'm sorry ... I thought everyone knew.

Well, they did now.