From her hiding place in the kitchen pantry, just weeks ago, Viola observed Deborah Kendrick march that young man, the doctor’s messenger, out of their kitchen, the spikes of a pitchfork trained at his chest, and Viola knows that if last night the headmaster and the doctor came calling, she will have done something equally brave and disobedient.

As is the mother, so is her daughter.

Though sometimes the daughter gets there first.

Viola grasped it early on: fears grow tall and prosper when you run and hide from them, and no matter where you go, they find you. Instead she has walked towards the things that scare her on Lark, talked to them, seduced them, sung to them, stolen from them, loved them, deceived them. She is still frightened, still capable of being harmed, but how much lighter she feels this morning, despite the violence of the night, how full of positivity she is, knowing that in the face of her fears, she has been daring.

The same horse that delivered death to town carries on its back a new hope.

Viola lifts Dot’s bright red lead from the hook by the kitchen door and snaps it onto the dog’s collar. She pulls on the maroon coat and drops the radio into her pocket.

When the incident happened, she was told to sit down to receive the awful news – her father and brother were dead. Viola did not allow death to creep up on her this time, tap her on the shoulder and make her jump; it did not find her hiding in the obvious place. Viola commanded death; she bent it to her will. She and the Eldest Girls harnessed their power within the protection of the Sisters’ Stones, and they brought about their own terrible and necessary fury.

Maybe someone does watch over us, after all, Viola thinks, as she steps out of the front door, closing it quietly behind her, ready to be the dog walker, the first voice in the story. Maybe everything we think and do is seen and judged. Maybe someone is keeping accurate scores. Perhaps the umpire is wise and fair.

The idea buoys her into the day and down the splintered wooden steps of the veranda, Dot gambolling at her heels, and for the first time in a long time, Viola feels that almost forgotten weightlessness of just being a child.

Friday the 13th – April 2018

FRIDAY THE 13TH – APRIL 2018

She is too late to save the hair on their heads.

Viola runs, and behind her Hannah runs too, pushing the Earl, still in his dressing gown, jaw juddering as the wheelchair does battle with the cobbles.

The harbourside is chaos.

Teachers seesaw left and right, arms outstretched, desperately corralling their runaway pupils, battling the mothers who want possession of them too. Boatmen drop their nets and cluster – edgy, on guard – while the Provisions Store women gather at the shopfront, aproned and afraid.

Except for Britta Sayers’ mother.