Chapter Forty-Two

1989

Mapledon Churchyard

Sunday 25th June – 24 days before

Billy knelt beside the mound of earth. It was still raised, hadn’t had time to sink; to settle like the other grave plots. He hadn’t had time to settle either. It was hard raising a child alone. Hard to be the dad he knew Eliza needed, the dad Rosie would’ve wanted him to be.

‘There’s too much to think about, Rosie. And I miss you so, so much.’ Tears choked him. He regularly visited Rosie’s grave in the dead of night – usually between midnight and two in the morning. It was the best time: quiet, calm. Deserted by all bar the dead – and he wasn’t afraid of them. No one bothered him there. He’d left Eliza tucked up in bed; he always made sure she was asleep before he locked her in.

Billy let out a wail, swiping at the head of the roses he’d placed there a few days ago. He was too young for this to be his life – for it to be over before it had properly begun. He was pissed off that he’d been dealt these shitty cards. Eliza had been an accident – a moment of uncontrollable lust between two teenagers. Then, later, he’d done what he thought was right – married Rosie. From that moment on he’d had to work like a dog to get the money to support them all. He’d been lucky, if he could call it that, that his father had died not long after they’d got hitched at Gretna Green. The money he’d left Billy in his will was substantial. He could’ve started his own business with that money, but instead he bought the bungalow in Mapledon and settled for getting the odd carpentry job here and there.

Biggest mistake of his life. He’d never had the chance to attain any of his goals, never had the opportunity to be someone. Apart from the ‘Village Weirdo’. He’d managed that all right. He let his head loll back, his gaze travelling over the glittering night sky, wondering if Rosie were one of the brightest stars. Then the stars seemed to fade, and blackness replaced them. He felt the weight of the dark pressing against his skin, then lowering further and entering him. As it often did.

‘Eliza is all I’ve got, Rosie,’ he said, placing both hands on the ground that was mere feet above his dead wife. ‘But she’s not all I need. I have needs too – who sees to those now you’re gone, eh?’ He’d tried to suppress his desires, drank them into oblivion – but he couldn’t simply put them aside. They kept resurfacing whether he wanted them to or not. He required an outlet, a way of expressing his thoughts, feelings of hurt, anger, frustration and sexual desire.

He realised now he was never going to have that in this village.

Mapledon was not only small in area, it was small-minded too. And they’d made their minds up about Billy Cawley. He wouldn’t change them now. But he had no means of leaving. He could sell the bungalow – but he’d also be getting rid of the memories, of what lay beneath. He wasn’t ready to do that. There had to be another way.