“Tea would be great, thank you.”

Pamela vanished through a narrow doorway, then reappeared almost instantly with two mugs of steaming tea—she must, Heather reasoned, have had the pot brewing already. Pamela seated herself on a chair opposite, sitting forward with her mug clutched between her hands.

“I saw your work online, Ms. Whittaker, and I thought it was great. Very compelling, atmospheric. I’m putting together a story about Fiddler’s Mill, and I thought it would be really interesting to get an artist’s point of view.”

A variety of emotions passed over Pamela’s face, and Heather watched closely, trying to match them up. Pleasure at the praise of her work. Uncertainty, maybe even fear, at the mention of Fiddler’s Mill. And pride at being called an artist. Pamela leaned forward, staring down into her tea.

“Yes well, thank you. I, well, I am entirely self-taught, you see. Parents couldn’t afford to send me to art college, so I did it on the side. It’s been, it’s been my life’s work. Capturing, capturing the true face of nature, you see. The rawness of it.”

Heather nodded seriously, as though she had any idea what she meant by this. She had interviewed a few people when she’d been working at the paper, and the key was heavily loading the front end with flattery—people always liked to talk about themselves. It was the subject they knew best, after all.

“That’s so interesting. You continue to work, I’m glad to see. Do you still largely work with the pastoral landscape? Was Fiddler’s Mill the beginning of that for you?”

Pamela curled her fingers around her mug. “Yes, yes, I suppose it was. You are very perceptive.” She flashed Heather a brief, shy smile. “I was there in my early thirties. I’d been travelling for a while, across Europe, surviving on beans and waitressing jobs, but there was so much to see, you see. And I ended up back in England, and a lot of my friends were talking about this place in Lancashire that was supposed to be about getting back to earth, to the soil, and it seemed to feed directly,” Pamela nodded, as if confirming something to herself, “seemed to feed directly into my work.”

“The pieces you produced from that period are so atmospheric,” said Heather. She sipped her tea. “Did it inspire you?”

Pamela’s face seemed to close up again, and she looked away toward the window, although it faced out onto the walkway and there was little to see there. While Heather waited for Pamela to fill the silence, she found herself looking at the clutter of the living room instead; there were lots of little framed drawings and prints, some clearly of her own work and others by artists Heather didn’t recognize. One, which Heather found particularly unnerving, showed a naked male figure scrawled in thick strokes of black and red, his head replaced with that of a snarling wolf.

“You could say that,” said Pamela eventually. She reached up and nervously fiddled with the Alice band. “It’s a place of great energy. You really have to go there to feel it …” But all the previous enthusiasm had drained from her voice, and instead she went back to staring at her tea.