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  From the Kidbury Echo, page 8:

  ROYAL DISASTER: FLORIST SPEAKS OUT

  A Castle Kidbury man has defended himself against claims that he caused the collapse of the Duchess of Tewkesbury during a ceremony to unveil the town’s refurbished market cross. Denis Heap (pictured left), 48, of The Buttonhole Florist on Fore Street, supplied the bouquet presented to Her Grace by local tot Beyonce Clark, 7.

  Shortly afterwards, the Duchess fainted, and was taken to Richleigh General Hospital where she made a full recovery.

  The bouquet was later found to be sprayed with a banned pesticide. Mr Heap told our reporter that he bought the roses and dahlias ‘in good faith’, adding that he ‘can’t be held responsible for whatever s**t they spray on them at the wholesalers’.

  PROLOGUE

  I AM FROM SLOVAKIA

  Sunday 1 November

  Monika Markova chewed gum as Henry led her across the pock-marked carpet of the Jolly Cook. Monika always chewed. She chewed at work. She chewed at the cinema. She probably chewed in her sleep.

  Henry wheezed; the vacuum cleaner had seen much but this floor was particularly grotty.

  ‘You moaning, Mister Henry? I should moan!’ She squeezed her earphones in. ‘English children so messy.’

  For months Ms Markova and Henry the vacuum cleaner had braved the dark British mornings together. They were warriors, their battleground the Yonder Street branch of a chain of nondescript diners.

  Halloween ephemera told a tale of the day before. Tissue-paper skeletons slumped over the counter. Garish in the striplighting, orange balloons shrivelled. The contrast between the dark huddled shapes of the trees beyond the wide windows and the leering pumpkin faces in the bright interior might have spooked a lesser soul.

  Monika was not easily spooked. Henry continued to grumble as Monika lost herself in the language lesson hissing though her earphones.

  ‘Good morning. I wish to book a rail ticket,’ she repeated mechanically. ‘Is this the train for London?’

  A balloon was unceremoniously popped with a shellac nail, and Henry devoured party string along with squashed chips and stray peas.

  ‘I'm fine, thank you. I’m not fine. Send help,’ she said.

  Henry took her to the party section. This was where the war zone began in earnest. She could pass off a less than perfectly cleaned carpet to her boss with a shrugged, “carpet old, already dirty”. But a tiled floor . . . that needed hoovering and mopping. No fooling around.

  ‘I am here for business. No, I do not require a wake-up call.’

  Swirls of dried gravy encrusted the tiles. It was greyish stuff. Monika wrinkled her nose. ‘Watch out, Henry. Funny smell here.’

  She toggled a switch. Another fluorescent tube flickered on.

  The PVC tablecloths were easy to wipe down. The menus were laminated. ‘I have an aunt but no uncle,’ said Monika as she wiped everything she could reach with a jaded cloth.

  Henry sucked up onion rings like a connoisseur.

  ‘I would like soup of the day and a glass of white wine.’ She made a start on the rear seating area, favoured by scowling teenagers. Black tinsel lay like snakes across the tables, glittering and sinister. ‘Is this dish gluten-free?’

  Henry coughed.

  ‘What's wrong, Henry?’ Monika checked the end of her companion’s hose. ‘Aw no. Gravy messed you up good.’

  Monika wiped the nozzle free of sticky goo. This was the source of the odour. It reminded her of kidney. And liver.

  ‘Be careful,’ warned the young woman, as Henry quested on.

  They made their way to the fire exit. ‘This is where bad kids smoke, Henry.’ Monika knelt to pick up the cigarette ends scattered by the glass door. With a gurn of distaste, she dropped them in a bin liner and slapped her palms. English phrases droned on in her ear.

  ‘Which way is the nearest ATM?’ Monika was proud of her linguistic skills. She spoke Hungarian, Ukrainian and a little Polish. Good English would be a bonus when she returned home to complete her nurse’s training.

  A crunch underfoot. Glass? Halloween at the Jolly Cook had really got out of hand. She turned to fetch her dustpan.

  He was staring right at her.

  His hands were palm down on the plastic tabletop. His ripped shirt was drenched in the same dark gravy Henry had choked on. Wisps of flesh dangled from a gaping hole, a nonsensical void in his middle. A thick dark sludge radiated from his chair.

  As if enchanted, Monika stood very still. Then she began to inch towards the figure, staring at his hands so neatly nailed to the table. The fingers, spread apart, were caked in blood, yet the Formica beneath them was spotless. A cleaned plate had been pushed away, the knife and fork neatly crossed.

  Monika prodded the man.

  It was the movement that made her finally back away, stumbling over her own feet. The man wobbled, then sat still again.

  His head slumped forward. His eyes were fixed on his last meal. His mouth was slack as if letting out a belated scream.

  Between his bloodied hands lay a cherry red lollipop.

  CHAPTER 1

  FOREVER IS A LIE

  Still Sunday 1 November

  It had once been a rose garden. Now it was a vegetable patch. Nothing lasts, even beauty.

  Especially beauty, thought Jess, standing amongst the November crop of kale and potatoes.

  Around the sundial, last vestige of the ex-rose garden’s elegance, stood nine people. Ten if you counted the dog, and Jess always counted the dog. This memorial had been Jess’s idea; now that it was happening, she wasn’t so sure about it. For one thing, she had misjudged the weather. She should have worn a thicker jacket. She was all in black, but not out of respect for the deceased; Jess always wore black.

  Moose ambled to her side. Sat. Like the good boy he was. He had no idea what was going on, wasn’t listening to His Honour Judge James Castle QC’s speech, because the Judge wasn’t saying ‘dinner’ or ‘walkies’.

  The Judge was talking about his late wife. Harriet was, according to his typed notes, an assemblage of feminine virtues. Until eighteen months ago she had cooked, she had soothed, she had made a comfortable home for her family. He namechecked them, diligently.

  ‘Jess, our daughter, and our son Stephen. Harriet welcomed into the fold Stephen’s wife, Susannah, and in time the twins, Ann and Baydrian.’

  The children looked up at the mention of their names. Baydrian even removed his finger from his nostril.

  Say you miss her, Dad, thought Jess.

  Fidgeting among the brassicas, she knew he wouldn’t. The Castles of Castle Kidbury were not touchy-feely.

  ‘Harriet,’ said the Judge, as if toasting her.

  ‘Harriet.’ The others echoed him sombrely.

  Sombre didn’t suit Mary, but sometimes the Irish in her took charge, and nudged her into Mass mode, despite her aversion to churches. She was in khaki. As usual.

  Rupert, next to her, was in an impeccable suit and the kind of coat they sell in Mayfair. As usual. Both stared at the ground. They had known Jess’s mother, but they knew her daughter better. They were here for Jess. The best friend and the, well, whatever Rupert was.

  Jess, unlike the rest of the congregation, was looking up, searching for something in a moody November sky packed with glowering clouds.

  A memory assaile
d her. Took her whole, as it always did whenever it landed.

  She was tiny, a dot, maybe three years old.

  I’m near the ground, a child’s-eye view.

  Beneath her bottom, a rug. Stylised blue flowers on a lush golden background. It was still around, that carpet. Still in her father’s study.

  Jess gave herself over to the bodily sensations. The little Jess leaned back against the Judge’s legs as he sat in his chair. He took no notice of her. They didn’t talk. No need. She was understood and accepted. Safe.

  ‘Jess!’ Her name, hissed, jolted her back to the ex-rose garden. ‘Music, you eejit!’ Mary was amused. As usual.

  ‘Shit. Sorry.’

  As Jess leaned down to the Dansette record player salvaged from her childhood, she knew that her use of the S-word at Harriet’s memorial was another black mark in the ledger her father kept so fastidiously. Things had changed between them since she had leaned back trustingly on him as a child.

  The record played slightly slowly. But then, when Harriet had sung it to Jess at bedtime, she had sung it slightly off-key.

  ‘Wooden Heart’ leaked into the frigid air.

  Elvis. Cabbages. Moose licking her hand. Jess tried to give up some part of herself to the ritual. The part that grieved hard for her mother.

  The others haven’t noticed the date.

  All Hallows Day. The day after Halloween. Tomorrow, she would lecture her students on Halloween’s pagan significance.

  She would write its older, sacred name on the whiteboard. Samhain. After a brief aside on its pronunciation – ‘Sow-en, with the ow like cow’ – she’d talk about the dead. About how, during Samhain, the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest. A night to honour the departed. And to take your leave of them.

  Goodbyes are hard, and Jess was especially bad at them.

  When Elvis stopped singing, Jess turned to say something – anything; she needed to hear her own voice – but she was alone. Another look at the sky told Jess it was keen to let go of its rain. It didn’t feel like the same sky she’d lain under with Rupert just four months ago. That sky had boasted twinkling constellations; it was lush with promise.

  That June evening, moonbathing in the centre of Kidbury Henge, things had seemed quite different. Rupert had seemed different.

  I told him I was staying here, and he was pleased.

  That was then and this was very much now.

  The knot of people straggled back across the soggy lawn, awkward in the way of mourners. Half smiling. Saying mundane things about Harriet.

  The Judge was at the fore. Upright, spare, with a hawkish nose. Retired now, but perhaps you can’t retire from being a judge, not really. Behind him zigzagged his grandchildren, and his housekeeper, Bogna, who overtook him and leapt up the steps to the terrace.

  Made of solid stuff, Bogna had the peasant energy that laughs in the face of war, famine, or a direct order from her employer. She disappeared into the old orangery that spanned the back of Harebell House.

  Even in grim weather, the house was splendid. A tourist’s wet dream of pale stone and orderly windows, it had the simplicity of a child’s drawing and the strict elegance of its Georgian architects. Such buildings abound in the West Country; unflappable, perfect.

  Jess tailed the others, managing to feel alone despite being surrounded by the dramatis personae of her life. The memorial was for her benefit. An attempt to absolve her for the sin of staying away from the actual funeral. She had only come home to Castle Kidbury when she’d had no other option. When she had screwed up her plum lecturing position and detonated her emotional bridges.

  The day was dying on its feet, the woods inching nearer as they became more and more indistinct, but the kitchen was bright. The mourners fell on the food laid out on a clean white cloth. It wasn’t what Harriet would have supplied, but it was wholesome and devilishly tasty.

  ‘Wonderful spread, Bogna,’ said the Judge.

  He had never complimented Harriet’s cooking. But then, Harriet hadn’t had the fearsome lady-balls of Bogna. Her reign as housekeeper had begun during Jess’s absence. Her word was law. Her cooking was Polish. Her outlook was Soviet.

  ‘Where’s Rupert?’ Jess cast about for the familiar dark quiffy fringe, always head and shoulders above the fray. She liked to anchor herself by knowing where he was in a room. Even thumbscrews would not drag this admission out of her, but it was true.

  ‘He's gone,’ said Mary.

  ‘Gone where?’ Jess felt vaguely hurt. ‘He didn’t say goodbye.’

  ‘Train to catch.’ Mary, dressed like a mercenary, ate with quiet efficiency; she was a big fan of buffets, yet her spry figure never changed. Taekwondo kept her metabolism tickety boo. All the sex helped.

  ‘A train? Where?’ Jess was put out. As if Rupert couldn’t travel on a train without a signed note from her.

  ‘Edinburgh, of course.’ Mary beat Bogna to the last slice of quiche.

  ‘Why of course?’ Rupert never left Castle Kidbury; it seemed positively eccentric for him to suddenly travel four hundred miles. ‘Oh, hang on, yeah.’ Jess recalled, dimly, a conversation she had half listened to. ‘Some work thing, a meeting.’

  Mary gave Jess a curious look. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘it’s a bit more than that.’

  ‘Oh, so now you look for Rupert, isn’t it.’ Bogna waggled her head, her accent redolent of her homeland. ‘You treat that man like phone.’ To illustrate, Bogna waggled her own, much mocked, elderly Nokia. ‘Pick him up. Push buttons. Cut him off.’

  ‘The scary lady has a point,’ said Mary.

  Ann and Baydrian were underfoot. Jess stepped over them. Her niece and nephew seemed to have been six years old for a long time; possibly the twins would stay three feet high and evil forever. They had somehow emerged from the loins of Susannah, who was equal parts sweetness, light and anxiety. She bore down on Jess now, full of concern.

  ‘It brought it all back. Poor Harriet. How are you doing?’

  ‘I'm fine.’ Jess wouldn’t admit otherwise to Susannah, but it was nice to be asked. ‘And you?’

  ‘Well, you know . . .’

  Jess didn’t know but suspected she should; that old habit of not listening. ‘Yeah, well,’ she said, noting that Susannah was looking at her husband, Stephen, as she spoke. ‘Men!’ she said, hoping that would fit the bill. Back in the summer, Susannah had got her knickers in a twist about Stephen’s ‘suspicious’ behaviour. As Jess’s brother was the straightest, dullest man Jess had ever known, Jess didn’t take it too seriously.

  ‘He was out late last night again.’ Susannah was scandalised. ‘Said he was working.’

  ‘He does work hard, Suze.’

  ‘Talking of men, where’d your boyfriend get to?’

  ‘Rupert’s not my boyfriend, Susannah,’ said Jess.

  ‘Not your official boyfriend.’ Susannah was very free with her air quotes.

  ‘No, just not my boyfriend.’

  ‘Daddy-in-law!’ After ten years, Susannah had yet to notice that the Judge hated being called that. ‘Naughty naughty. Look, Bogna, he’s on his third slice of pie!’

  ‘Jimmy is big boy now,’ said Bogna. ‘If he wants to kill self with carbs is his business.’

  ‘How’s Urich?’ asked Jess. She had a love/hate relationship with Bogna’s goat. ‘I heard him bleat during Dad’s speech.’

  ‘Urich is my best friend,’ said Bogna.

  ‘Jaysus, Bogna, you’re weird,’ said Mary. Fondly. Irish, mixed race, with a corkscrew bob fizzing around a wry face, she was a counterpoint to Bogna, who had the pearly skin and the straw-coloured hair of a Valkyrie.

  ‘Are there any other animals hiding in the garden?’ Jess had heard grunts, a burp or two that she couldn’t explain. ‘Confess, Bogna. Have you bought Urich some friends?’

  Overhearing, the Judge leaned in. ‘New animals? Nothing too large, please Bogna.’

  Jess fixed her with a stare. The ruination of her mum’s rose gar
den still rankled, and she fought twinges of resentment at Bogna’s easy annexation of Harriet’s territory. ‘Specifically no llamas.’ Bogna’s love for llamas was well known. ‘You aren’t planning a llama, are you?’

  No answer was forthcoming. Bogna was a brick wall when she wanted to be. She eyed Mary. ‘I see young sexy lad shivering on gravel this morning. You sticking to rules, yes?’

  ‘I am a woman of my word.’ Mary attempted a beatific expression.

  The deal was simple. While Mary converted the neglected old barn behind Harebell House into living quarters for herself and Jess, she could sleep in the main house, and use the facilities but, as Jess had put it, ‘All your bonking has to be done in the barn, thank you very much.’

  ‘Jess, have you even looked at the new floorplans?’ Mary tutted when Jess looked blank. ‘My ideas for the kitchen area?’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ Jess knew Mary knew she was lying. ‘Well, no. I’m sure they’re great.’

  The second curious look of the morning. ‘It’s going to be your home, too. Some input’d be nice.’

  Susannah butted in. ‘Make it shabby chic,’ she said. ‘Or maybe industrial luxe.’

  ‘Indoostrial what?’ Bogna’s excellent English sometimes faltered on the buzz words Susannah gleaned from MailOnline. ‘Just make sure the rain don’t get in on your stupid heads, isn’t it.’

  ‘Mary, why on earth,’ said Susannah, ‘does a townie like you want to put down roots in our quiet little backwater?’

  ‘Nothing happens here,’ agreed Jess. It was a complaint she’d made loudly throughout her teenage years as a novice smoker behind the Minimart. ‘Except for, well . . .’ She laughed at how absurd she was about to sound. ‘Except for those three crucifixions back in the summer.’ The family had dispersed. The Judge was back in his study, drawbridge firmly up. Just him and Vivaldi.

  Bogna sang while she gutted a chicken she had reared.

  Upstairs, the thirty-something Jess sat heavily on her teenage bed and tried to clamber back to the sense of warmth and protection she briefly experienced whenever she remembered sitting on the flowery rug with her father. The memory was like a dream; impossible to recapture, it came and went as it pleased.