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Chapters (59)
  1. Bad Friends
  2. Copyright
  3. Dedication
  4. Epigraph
  5. AFTER: DECEMBER
  6. BEFORE: JUNE
  7. Chapter One
  8. Chapter Two
  9. Chapter Three
  10. Chapter Four
  11. Chapter Five
  12. Chapter Six
  13. Chapter Seven
  14. Chapter Eight
  15. Chapter Nine
  16. Chapter Ten
  17. Chapter Eleven
  18. Chapter Twelve
  19. Chapter Thirteen
  20. Chapter Fourteen
  21. Chapter Fifteen
  22. Chapter Sixteen
  23. Chapter Seventeen
  24. Chapter Eighteen
  25. Chapter Nineteen
  26. Chapter Twenty
  27. Chapter Twenty-One
  28. Chapter Twenty-Two
  29. Chapter Twenty-Three
  30. Chapter Twenty-Four
  31. Chapter Twenty-Five
  32. Chapter Twenty-Six
  33. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  34. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  35. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  36. Chapter Thirty
  37. Chapter Thirty-One
  38. Chapter Thirty-Two
  39. Chapter Thirty-Three
  40. Chapter Thirty-Four
  41. Chapter Thirty-Five
  42. Chapter Thirty-Six
  43. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  44. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  45. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  46. Chapter Forty
  47. Chapter Forty-One
  48. Chapter Forty-Two
  49. Chapter Forty-Three
  50. Chapter Forty-Four
  51. Chapter Forty-Five
  52. Chapter Forty-Six
  53. Chapter Forty-Seven
  54. Chapter Forty-Eight
  55. A CONVERSATION WITH CLAIRE SEEBER
  56. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  57. About the Author
  58. By the same author:
  59. About the Publisher

‘Come back! Oh, stupid dog,’ I swore softly. I’d call him again when I reached the car: now I could see the door-handle glinting in the torch-light –it was only about twenty feet away – and then, behind it, I suddenly made out another vehicle, parked over by the barn. Alex’s old Land Rover.

There was no time to think any more, I just needed to escape before he returned.

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Two

I heard Digby bark and I hesitated. No doubt he’d disappeared into the undergrowth beside the stream to sniff out the mice and pointy-snouted voles who lived there still. Wherever the dog was, though, he was oblivious to my increasingly anxious shouts. Clambering down the bank, I could hear him now – and then through the hedge I saw a police car come down the drive. Thank God! I began to scramble up again but my cardigan got caught on the barbed wire that edged the stream. I was actually trapped in the ditch.

The police car was already at the house. ‘Hey,’ I yelled fruitlessly, my voice snatched up by the wind that was beginning to bluster busily through the garden. I struggled frantically, holding the torch under my chin as the wire clawed into my arm.

‘I’m here!’ I couldn’t see the car any more but I heard it stop and a door open and slam. ‘Hey, I’m down here!’ I was shrieking now, finally pulling my arm free, leaving half a skein of wool behind me on the wire as the torch went spinning out of my grasp into the water. I scrambled up the bank as the policeman got back in his vehicle and the car pulled straight off: straight out of the bottom gate.

‘Come back!’ I started to run down the lawn but it was too late: they were truly gone. ‘For fuck’s sake,’ I swore now, panting and sweaty and furious, and then I heard Digby’s happy bark as a new set of headlights swept round the corner of the road, past the front gates, before the night fell like soot again, leaving only blackness behind.

And then I heard that car stop suddenly on the other side of the huge hedge and begin to reverse. I hurried toward the road.

Digby suddenly appeared now, bounding up towards the gate to check out this visitor, to greet them in his guileless way, and I heard his bark – and then he too disappeared from sight.

I started to sprint toward the car, hidden from view still by the hedge, the car that suddenly seemed like my salvation – when a shape swooped down through the night. I almost threw myself prostrate on the lawn. It flapped on up into the sky and I laughed shakily when I saw it was only the barn owl diving for his dinner.