'I see the Wheatons are back at The Hollies,' Maisie went on. 'It's their second home,' she explained for Gilda's benefit. 'They have a boy and a girl, which might be nice for your daughter, when she's at home. Gilda has a daughter at boarding school.' She tossed this snippet of information in the direction of Jo and Marcus, barely pausing for breath before adding something about Brian and Sh.e.l.ley often coming to the Ulverston concerts too.

Jo turned swiftly to Maisie. 'I haven't seen anything of Sh.e.l.ley lately, have you?' The words almost ended in a squeak as Marcus surrept.i.tiously grasped her hand and dug his fingernails into her palm, while politely asking Gilda, 'Your daughter will be home for the holidays at the moment, I suppose?'

'No, I was hoping she would be, but she's been invited to stay with a schoolfriend for a few days, and yesterday she rang to say that there's some sort of party at this friend's house on Sat.u.r.day, so can she stay on until after the weekend.' Gilda punctuated her monologue with the exasperated sigh of a parent who can hardly keep up with their offspring's social life. 'Then they are going to drive her up to Helmsley, where she's due to spend the last week of the holidays with my cousin Carole. She always has Becky over in the holidays Carole is our closest relative, and they're very fond of one another, so in the end I've arranged to go across and see Becky there, before she goes back to school.'

'I expect it's fallen in very well, keeping her out of the way while you get straightened up after the move,' Maisie said. 'Moving is such a hectic time, although I expect she's dying to see your new home together.'

Without giving Gilda the opportunity to confirm or deny this, Maisie turned to ask Fred something about the second half of the programme. Jo felt Gilda's eyes on her again. It made her feel as if she were standing under a hot, bright spotlight. Maisie continued chattering to Fred and Marcus about Thomas Tallis. Fred was saying something about a piece which had first been performed in Gloucester Cathedral, but Jo wasn't listening properly. She had to escape from the heat and dazzle. She edged away from the group, excusing herself with something about going to the ladies'.

As she hurried down to the ground floor, she realized it was becoming a theme, running away to hide in the toilets. She would have to grow up in fact, that was the solution she was a grown-up, and the uncomfortable memories which Gilda represented belonged to an another time a time when she had been no more than a child. She had left all that behind now, and Gilda or no Gilda, she wasn't going to resurrect it.

The crowd in the bar was thinning by the time she returned. A lot of people had already made their way back to their seats, and the little group from Easter Bridge appeared to be on the point of dispersing. Gilda was facing the opposite way, which gave Jo the chance to take a long, hard look at her new neighbour. Her hair was as lank as it had always been, although these days it was streaked with grey, and she still wore it sc.r.a.ped back into a plastic hair clip which might have come from Woolworth's. Her trousers were ill fitting and not quite long enough, revealing pale blue ankle socks and flat lace-ups, the ensemble topped off with a strange knitted jacket, possibly courtesy of Oxfam. In twenty-first century Ulverston, where any eccentrically dressed bag lady might just turn out to be a moneyed recycling fanatic, it was impossible to make completely objective judgements based on fashion considerations alone, but in Gilda's case, Jo detected the natural successors to the old-fashioned pleated skirts and hand-knitted cardies which had singled Gilda out as 'different' at school, before the girl even opened her mouth.

Jo reminded herself firmly that nothing which had happened in the past could possibly matter now, although if Gilda was going to live just across the road, she would presumably have to come to some accommodation with her. She decided the safest line to take would be amnesia. She would claim to have pretty much forgotten everything about Gilda after all, a great deal of water had pa.s.sed under the bridge since then.

The playing in the second half was sublime, but Jo struggled to focus on the remainder of the programme. She kept experiencing the irrational sensation that Gilda was watching her from somewhere in the semi-darkened hall, though when the lights came up and she scanned the applauding crowd in the balcony, and then the departing concert-goers on the stairs and in the street outside, there was no sign of their new neighbour. Not that she was allowed to forget her.

'What's the deal with you and the weird woman?' Marcus asked as they headed back to the car, sheltered again by the big umbrella.

Weird that was exactly it, she thought. Gilda had always been a bit weird. 'We were at senior school together, in the same cla.s.s. Her name was Gilda Stafford then.'

'Why did you pretend not to recognize her?'

'It's awkward complicated.'

'Why?'

Jo hesitated. They had reached the big roundabout at the bottom of the hill, and had to pause for a couple of pa.s.sing cars before they could cross the road. The pavements reflected cold and wet in the street lights. It was quiet enough to hear their footfalls when there wasn't any pa.s.sing traffic. 'It's something I'd much rather not talk about. Something I'm rather ashamed of, if you want to know the truth.'

Marcus said nothing, leaving a long silence during which he clearly expected her to elucidate further, but she said nothing as they crossed the car park and climbed into the car. After starting the engine, he said, 'If this woman is going to live just across the road and there's something or was something between the two of you, don't you think it might be better if you told me?'

'It's nothing really. It's all in the past. You know just schoolgirl stuff.'

'No, I don't know.' He reached across to increase the heat on the windscreen, which was starting to mist up. 'I think you'd better tell me about it. If it's something trivial, then you're right, it doesn't matter. If it is something important, then I ought to know.'

Jo hesitated. It was obvious that his curiosity was aroused and he wasn't going to drop it. 'OK. When I started at St Catherine's, everyone else had been there for a couple of years and already made their friends. I was a very lonely, very scared new girl. I fell in with the first people who offered to be friends with me and I became part of their ... crowd. All I wanted was to fit in and be accepted. You can understand that, can't you?'

'Of course,' said Marcus, but his tone was cautious rather than warm.

'We they were quite a tough crowd. You know, the sort of girls who are always a bit cheeky to the teachers, always on the edge of any trouble. We used to dare one another to do stupid things. We even did a bit of shoplifting, not because we wanted or needed the things we took, but just to prove we could get away with it. I knew it was wrong and I was petrified that I'd get caught, but I did it because the others did it, and if you didn't keep up, you'd be out ...'

'Of the gang,' Marcus finished for her. He sounded like a vicar who has just found a f.a.g end in the collection plate.

'And no one else wanted to be my friend. I'd had such a hard time at my other schools, always being pointed out, always being made to feel different. People calling things out, or just whispering behind your back.' She paused, but Marcus continued to focus on the road ahead, giving her no sign.

'So instead of being a victim, you joined the bullies,' he said quietly.

'Gilda Stafford brought trouble on herself!' Jo exclaimed. 'She used to bring this rag doll thing to school and talk to it. One time she pretended to do voodoo, you know sticking pins into a plasticine figure. It was supposed to put a curse on Colleen Hudd she was sort of the leader of our group. As you said yourself, Gilda's weird.'

'I didn't mean weird in that sense. She's got a slightly odd appearance, that's all.'

'She's always had what you call an "odd appearance", and it wasn't just the way she looked. While the rest of us were listening to Duran Duran and watching The Outsiders, she was talking to a b.l.o.o.d.y rag doll. Is it any wonder the other kids took a rise out of her? If it hadn't been us, it would have been someone else.'

'But it was you.'

'For crying out loud, Marcus, don't sound so judgemental. I don't suppose anyone's led an absolutely blameless youth, not even you.'

'I never bullied anyone.'

'I never really did anything to her. I wasn't one of the ringleaders, I just tagged along and let things happen because I was too much of a coward to go against people like Colleen. It's easy to look back now and say that I should have spoken out. Believe me, I'm not proud of it.'

'What did you do to her, exactly?'

'Really Marcus, this is ridiculous. I honestly don't remember anything specific. It was something which happened at school it went on for a couple of years, then Gilda left.'

'Because you bullied her?'

'Not me! I told you, I was just a bystander. I don't suppose Gilda differentiated between us, but in my case it was just a question of hanging around with the wrong people. And I'm sure there were other reasons for her leaving, too.'

'Really? Such as?'

'Oh, I don't know. You're making it all sound important, and it really wasn't. I don't know exactly why she left I don't know everything there is to know about Gilda Stafford, or whatever her name is now.'

Jo huddled back against the seat. They had long since left the main road; dripping hedges and dry-stone walls appeared for a few seconds in the headlights, approaching fast before dropping away into the blackness again as soon as the car was past. The steady hush-hush of the wipers, the faint glow of the lights on the dashboard and the hum of the air-con, all contrived to give the impression of security, but Jo knew it was an illusion. Sooner or later you always had to go out and confront the dark again. She considered pointing out to Marcus that Gilda had survived; she had evidently married and produced a child, and what was more, she still had her child but she decided against it. Better to say nothing more. To live in the moment of the car journey, where everything appeared superficially safe and warm.

Next morning, keen to avoid any possibility of making an apology to Sean with Marcus looking on, Jo feigned sleep until Marcus was almost ready to leave for another round of castles and abbeys. When she finally drifted downstairs in her dressing gown, safe in the knowledge that there had been no sound from Sean's room to suggest his imminent appearance, she was relieved to find Marcus in a much more equitable mood.

'It looks like a nice day.' His greeting was cheerful, and he kissed her on top of the head.

'Yes. I thought I might go out and do some drawing later on. Any idea if Sean has plans?'

'He didn't mention anything specific, but I expect he'll be hanging out with Harry. The two of them have been pretty inseparable these past few days.'

'I'm going to do some more work on the Artists in the Lakes idea, while you're away.'

'We'll need to come up with a better handle than that. Artists in the Lakes is too vague. It doesn't say enough.'

'I know, but the t.i.tle is often the last thing we come up with. I'm sure I'll think of something better, when I've got the format clearer in my mind.'

'We should ask Melissa she's always full of good ideas.'

Jo turned away, so that he would not see her face.

'You know,' he said, 'you shouldn't let that business with the woman at The Old Forge worry you. Kids say and do all sorts of daft things sticks and stones and all that she probably doesn't remember anything about it. She was chatting in a perfectly ordinary, pleasant way last night. And if she does remember, she's hardly going to make a thing of it she's probably as embarra.s.sed by it all as you are.'

In the office, Jo found an email had come in from the other side of the world, bringing her up to date on Nerys's latest adventures and asking, among other things, how it was going with Sean. Putting a mental picture of the damaged cupboard firmly to the back of her mind, Jo typed: Sean-wise, things are about the same. It's very hard to build a relationship with someone who makes me feel as if I am wearing my wicked stepmother badge and riding my broomstick the whole time. Marcus falls over backwards to be fair to Sean, and sometimes he gets caught between the two of us, but I know we'll manage to work things out eventually.

Sean had still not emerged by the time she had showered, dressed and sent her email, so she left him a note on the table in the hall to say she would be back in time to do his lunch. As she turned to close the front door, she noticed that the seash.e.l.l she had last seen on the gatepost a few days before had been moved to the front step, where it now sat alongside the old-fashioned boot sc.r.a.per. Presumably Sean or Marcus had put it there, although she could not imagine why.

When she reached the end of the drive, she was half inclined to turn right and head down towards the bridge, where some daffodils growing near the beck might provide an easy subject. Whichever way she chose, she could not go very far because she did not want to leave Sean alone for too long. Besides which, there was a backlog of jobs in the house which required her attention. It occurred to her that she had never drawn the cl.u.s.ter of buildings at High Gilpin, and since the house was currently without a tenant, now was as good an opportunity as any. She told herself that any interest in High Gilpin had nothing at all to do with seeing Brian go up there a few days before.

The track leading to High Gilpin initially ran through an open field, crossing first a cattle grid and then a concrete culvert which carried a tributary of the main beck down towards the bridge. After this it proceeded steadily uphill, heading for a gap in the wall, where once upon a time there might have been a field gate. From this point it was possible to see a couple of chimney pots above the trees, providing you knew just where to look for them, but the rest of the house and buildings remained hidden behind the shelter belt until you were almost on top of them.

The farmhouse itself was painted white, but the cl.u.s.ter of buildings which had once housed livestock and farm machinery were the original unfaced local stone. By the time Jo reached the point where the rough track became a concrete drive, the sun had gone behind a cloud, rendering the buildings dark and uninviting. She followed the drive along the side of the house to where the outbuildings formed a kind of courtyard at the rear of the property, stopping short at the back corner of the house, when the yard came into full view and she recognized Sh.e.l.ley and Brian's estate car standing with its boot open alongside the barn which now served as a garage. The barn doors were shut, but the door to an adjoining outbuilding stood ajar, its padlock dangling from the hasp with a key still in it.

Jo swallowed so hard that she almost choked. Although she had seen Brian heading this way a few days before, the last thing she had expected was to find him here, doing something in the sheds at High Gilpin. Of course, it could be something perfectly legitimate he had obtained a key from somewhere after all but on balance, it would surely be better if she slipped away without Brian seeing her. Then another idea arrived hard on the heels of the first: that if Brian had access to the sheds at High Gilpin, maybe she ought to find out what he was up to. No, no. That was silly, melodramatic. Much better to get out of it, before Brian came out into the yard and saw her hanging about, but her heart seemed to have jumped up into her throat and her legs refused to obey her. And suppose she started to walk back and Brian overtook her on the track? There was nowhere but the house she could have been. He might think she had seen something. Stupid, stupid. There was nothing to see.

At that moment Brian appeared in the doorway, both arms occupied with a lump of something swathed in black plastic. He took it round to the back of the car and placed it inside, seemingly oblivious to her presence. Jo continued to stand rooted to the spot, watching as Brian returned to the outbuilding. Faint sounds came from within, suggestive of large boards or planks of wood being moved around, before Brian emerged again after a moment or two, loaded down with another object, longer and narrower than the first, but similarly shrouded in plastic. Had he really failed to notice her, or was he for some reason pretending she wasn't there? This time he slammed the rear hatch closed and went back to lock the outhouse door.

If he had not seen her already, he certainly couldn't avoid doing so once he got into the vehicle and drove it through the gap in which she was currently standing. She forced her legs into action, darting back along the side of the house. She would never make it into the trees before the car overtook her, but the small patch of garden at the front offered few possibilities for concealment. In desperation, she crouched down beside a large plastic water b.u.t.t, which stood halfway between the corner of the house and the parlour window. It would at least shield her as Brian drove by she would be fine as long as he didn't bother to look in his driving mirror and surely he would keep his eyes fixed on the track ahead, because there was no reason to check the rear-view mirror up here. The blood was pounding in her ears, and she stayed with her back pressed hard against the farmhouse wall until long after she had seen the car disappear behind the trees, and could no longer hear its engine in the distance.

Her mother had sometimes hidden from people. When Jo had been very little she had treated it like a game of hide and seek, but later on she understood that it was not a game. She stood up and made her way back along the track, any desire to draw the buildings forgotten. She forced herself to walk so hard that her breath came in gasps, once or twice almost breaking into a run in her desire to put as much distance between herself and High Gilpin as possible.

On the doorstep of The Hideaway she stooped to pick up the sh.e.l.l. Now that she looked at it properly, she wasn't sure whether it was the same sh.e.l.l that had been on the gatepost or not. She took it into the kitchen and put it on the shelf where they kept the recipe books, intending to ask Sean or Marcus where it had come from. The whole episode at High Gilpin had already taken on a kind of unreality. She decided that on the whole it would be better not to mention anything about it to Marcus.

CHAPTER NINE.

Although his mother liked to read P. D. James and his father watched detective shows on TV, Harry had never been much interested in murder mysteries before. This was different, of course, not least because it was not a game. During the first week of the holidays he pored over Sean's acc.u.mulated files of information. Together they interrogated the internet afresh, discovering a number of crime forums and blogspots which freely discussed the case. Yeah, she did it, ran one posting. The whole story is just too many coincidences.

Harry suggested that if they tried hard enough, they might come up with the one conclusive piece of evidence everyone else had missed, but Sean was less than convinced by the idea. If hard evidence had been available, he said, the police would have arrested his stepmother years ago. She was too clever for them even if she often looked and acted so dumb. His own strategy was more concerned with observing their suspect for signs that she was about to kill again. As he pointed out to Harry, she had recently been behaving more oddly than usual. The other day she had asked him, a propos of nothing at all, whether he had put a seash.e.l.l on the front doorstep. The way she held the sh.e.l.l out to him on the palm of her hand reminded him of the way a mad bloke on the bus in Manchester had once offered him a gla.s.s marble, claiming it was a sweet.

In the face of his newly acquired knowledge, Harry was taking no chances either. He carried a heavy torch with him when walking between The Hideaway and The Hollies, even though he didn't really need it now that the nights were lighter. In the privacy of his bedroom, he had practised swinging it towards the head of an imaginary a.s.sailant; an overarm movement for someone in front of him, a reverse underarm swing if anyone came at him from behind. The law allowed you to use 'reasonable force' to defend yourself. Sean had looked into the question on the net.

Although Harry had been happy to play Watson to Sean's Master Detective, their investigation quickly began to run out of steam. Soon their searches merely came up against sites they had visited before. Even hits which appeared to be fresh were only repet.i.tions of things they had read elsewhere, and after a few days the case began to lose some of its fascination.

On the second Tuesday of the holidays, Harry's mother developed a violent toothache, which meant making an appointment with an Ulverston dentist. John and Suzanne Wheaton had never left their children alone at the cottage before, but after some discussion it was agreed that while John drove Suzanne to the dentist, Harry and Charlotte would remain at The Hollies, with Sean to keep them company. In the run-up to their departure, Mrs Wheaton issued numerous strictures and appeared less than rea.s.sured by Harry's irritable protest: 'We're not going to burn the house down, you know. It's not like we're going to say "Ooh, Mum and Dad are out, let's all play with matches!"'

However, even she had to admit that when they left the cottage there did not appear to be anything to worry about. Harry, Charlotte and Sean were all reclining in various att.i.tudes on the sofas in the sitting room, watching a DVD of an old Superman movie. (After years of resistance, television and DVDs had been allowed to infiltrate the Wheatons' 'simple holiday home' not least because Mrs Wheaton was fed up with missing Desperate Housewives.) Little did she realize that as soon as the car was safely out of sight, the Man of Steel had been spewed out of the player in favour of a horror movie, in which a crazed serial killer stalked a party of teenagers who were holed up in an isolated country house. It was not a particularly plausible plot, and the two boys mocked it ceaselessly until Sean eventually said, 'I've got a better one than this, at home. Have you seen The Terror at French Creek?'

Ten-year-old Charlotte piped up: 'Mum won't like us watching that.'

'Shut up, short-stack,' said Harry. 'You wait here while we go up to Sean's for some better merchandise.'

'You're not supposed to leave me on my own,' Charlotte protested.

'So? Who's going to tell Mum and Dad?'

'Not me,' said his sister, quickly.

They left her sitting in front of the television, from which the latest victim's screams were ringing out in stereo. With her brother gone, Charlotte considered the fact that although Harry had threatened her with serious penalties if she muted, paused, turned off or otherwise interfered with the DVD, he had not said anything about staying in the room with it. She knew that it was a stupid film really, but now the cast had been whittled down to one girl, left all alone in the house with the killer somewhere close to hand, the tension was almost unbearable. Charlotte could not decide which was worse: to stay in the room with the film, or to wait in another room, from which she would undoubtedly still be able to hear the sound effects and that awful music, which always told you when something horrible was about to happen. Maybe she could lock herself in the loo until the boys came back. Then she thought about the faulty bolt, which Dad was always going to screw in more firmly, but never actually got round to fixing. He said it didn't really matter, because it was only family, and you could always call out and say it was occupied. Much good that would do you, when a maniac with a chain-saw came barging in.

The two boys slouched into The Hideaway just as Jo appeared from the kitchen with a shopping bag on her arm. 'h.e.l.lo,' she said. 'Where's Charlotte? I thought you weren't supposed to leave her on her own.'

'We've just come to fetch something,' Sean said, not making eye contact.

'Charlie's OK on her own for a few minutes,' said Harry. 'She's not a baby.'

'No, of course not,' said Jo, half wondering if she ought to interfere, teetering as usual on the tightrope between responsible adult and heavy-handed step-parent. 'You haven't forgotten I'm going to Booths for some shopping?'

'No,' Sean shouted impatiently from halfway up the stairs. 'You already told me at least three times. I've got my key.'

Up in the bedroom, Sean could not immediately locate the promised DVD. While he hunted through his collection, Harry fidgeted with some Warhammer figures which stood on the bookshelves.

Somewhere below them, the doorbell rang.

'Ignore it,' Sean said. 'It won't be for me and she's gone out.'

Harry instinctively glanced towards the window, but Sean's room faced into the trees at the back of the house. Sean had just finished leafing through his wallets of DVDs when the bell rang again someone was keeping their finger on it far longer than was normal or polite. The sound cut off abruptly when the pressure was removed.

'It'll be a delivery man.' Sean's tone registered weary resignation. 'That film's not here, anyway. I must have lent it to someone or swapped it. Let's go down.'

They ambled downstairs in no great hurry, but there was no We tried to deliver card on the mat, nor any shadow on the half-glazed front door to indicate that someone was still waiting.

'I didn't hear anyone drive off, did you?'

'b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l. It's like in the film, where there's no one at the door, and then one of them goes outside and gets grabbed.'

'b.o.l.l.o.c.ks,' said Sean, but he opened the front door with elaborate caution. There was no one in sight, and nothing to indicate that anyone had called. The two boys stood in the hall, half serious, half laughing.

'Do you think she's really gone?' Harry asked.

'Who?'

'Your stepmother.'

'I don't know. You can't always hear the car from my room because of the double glazing. But why would she want to lure us outside? She's got her own key she can come in and get us any time.'

'That might not fit in with her plan.'

Sean let the front door close. 'We can check the garage, just to make sure her car's not in there.'

They approached the door at the other end of the hall as if expecting something to spring out at them, but nothing did. The key was on their side of the lock, but when Sean reached for it Harry whispered, 'Suppose she's waiting on the other side?'

'I'll get a weapon.' Sean tiptoed to the cupboard under the stairs and returned with a length of rigid grey plastic tube, which normally formed part of the vacuum cleaner. It was only a lark, after all.

'What are you going to do?' asked Harry. 'Suck her to death?'

Sean worked the key silently in the lock before flinging open the door, but the garage stood silent and empty.

'Delivery guy, after all,' Sean said.

As he swung round from the garage door, he misjudged the length of plastic tube in his hand and it caught against Jo's sketch book, which had been left on the hall table. The pad somersaulted on to the floor, landing face down and open.