“This isn’t so bad,” Heather said as they were ensconced on the sofa, sipping from glasses of wine. Nikki had her legs tucked under her, one of the local newspapers spread on her lap. “I could easily put up with four days of this.” She slipped her phone out of her pocket. No messages from Ben Parker, but then, there was no phone signal either. She resolved to text him the next time she saw some stable bars on the screen, just to see how he was—it might not make any difference to how he felt about her, but it could ease some of her own guilt.

“What’s your plan?”

“Hmm? Oh, eat a lot of crap, sleep a lot.”

“How is that different from usual?”

“Ha ha ha.” Heather swirled the wine in her glass. “So. This is the place my mum ran to when she was a teenager. Maybe I’ll never understand what she did, but perhaps I can get a bit closer to understanding her.” It was also the place where she met a man who she maintained a bond with for the rest of her life, despite what and who he turned out to be. She remembered what Pamela Whittaker had said about the land soaking up memories, keeping them to itself. She remembered Anna’s face, how it had crumpled in on itself when she thought of her missing baby. There was something bad here, and the land remembered, deep in its bones. She had to find out what it was. What did she have to lose, at this point? “I’ll have a look around tomorrow.”

Nikki lifted the paper from her lap and turned it to show Heather the front page. There was a photograph there, blown up slightly too big so that the edges of the woman’s smiling face were blurred, and across the top the headline screamed “LATEST VICTIM OF THE RED WOLF?”

“Whatever you say, we’re in his territory now, Hev. Be careful with your snooping, yeah?”

Heather raised her glass. “I’ll drink to that.”

CHAPTER

34

BEFORE

COLLEEN’S CAMPERVAN WAS set back from the main crowd of tents and vans, and as Michael drove toward it, he noted that the windows were all filled with brittle yellow light—she wasn’t alone tonight. Getting out of his van, he quickly looked himself over in the wing mirror, pushing his hair out of his face impatiently. The shower at the B&B had been cramped and tiny, and he had worn the soap down to a nub. He was more careful than he’d ever been these days, but it never hurt to check again—flecks of blood had a habit of finding the places that you missed with the flannel.

Satisfied, he went up to the campervan, opening the door onto their small, patchouli smelling living space. Three women looked up at him, clearly startled; there was Colleen, wearing a long, slightly threadbare maxi dress and a pink flower in her hair—a dog rose, he thought—and there was another woman he only vaguely knew, sprawled in the corner seat he liked to take for himself. She was heavily pregnant, her vastly swollen belly pushing against a yellow t-shirt that was much too small for her, and she peered up at him through a haze of tobacco smoke. The third woman was one of the Bickerstaff sisters; Michael wasn’t sure which one. In comparison to the pregnant woman, she looked too alert, and she raised her eyebrows at him archly.