Woodwild curled up and died. A few people moved to Carter’s Crossing or Runagate—a thing like that can pin you to a place, whether you want to stick around or not. Maybe Billy Pinnicke’s still in the dark bar of the Stockman’s Arms. Peg Hale left to live with one of her daughters. She had a lot. The mayor took to drink, left his cockatoo behind and went away.

As the town emptied, the trees clustered around it, the quiet ringing with cricket-voices and the silence of the Woodwild school bell. And in the heart of Woodwild, I daresay, that beetle stands triumphant on its bronze plinth, in the only place in the country where lantern-bush still grows wild.

Sometimes, people still find bones in the scrub. Here and there. Mostly you wouldn’t think to ask if they were human. They’re weathered and old, and some of them are small, and marked by thousands of tiny scratches, as might be left by age. Or teeth.

Chapter 6: The Old Farm

CHAPTER SIX

THE OLD FARM

“It was a fire,” Gary said at last, as we drove out of Gwenda Sage’s scornful grief into the strong white light of late afternoon. “Everyone knows that. If it had been a—a piper, Mr Scott of all people … That’s who she meant, isn’t it?”

“Who are you trying to convince?” said Trish, absently irritable, as if the story hadn’t been the one she’d wanted to hear. “It’s hardly the only disappearance he’s linked with.”

“Not as a suspect,” replied Gary.

“What does your grandmother say happened?” said Trish.

“We Damsons keep up fences, walk boundaries,” said Gary. “We don’t get involved.” His face was twisted. I didn’t think he believed his own words. “Lantern-bush is just a weed. Besides, even if … how do you undo that?”

I wanted to say, “It will be all right.” But Trish glared sideways at me. I doubted my careful words would be welcomed. And his family had never liked mine.

As for my family—Gwenda Sage hadn’t talked to the men we were looking for since she first bought the land from Gary’s mum, when she’d sold them the rubbish Sylvie Spicer left behind. She hadn’t liked them, and they knew they weren’t welcome, she said (I thought unbidden of the bird skull in the gate), but she’d seen them drive past now and then. She said to look for them up the back roads, toward Woodwild.

I tried to picture the abandoned town; no image formed. An imagination is a frivolous thing to cultivate, isn’t it, Bettina, so instead, I’d read books about keeping poultry, and efficient homemaking, and manners.