Chapters (49)
- Cover
- Table of Contents
- Also by Graham Hurley
- LIMELIGHT
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- AFTERWARDS
The rest of the day becomes increasingly surreal. Evelyn and I mount a brief expedition to the Co-op to lay in supplies for what we hope will be a post-event party, but I’m totally unprepared for the number of people, most of them strangers, who stop me in the street, pump my hand, or even give me a hug.
Mitch, and Malo, and a small army of volunteers have been busy all morning. Mitch has had two hundred posters printed overnight, and now they’re everywhere, in shop windows, taped to trees outside the public hall, mounted on oblongs of hardboard and propped against the traffic lights, a rogue’s gallery of local faces snatched from their beds and driven away. Support the Budleigh Six. East Devon’s call to arms.
One woman, who has to be eighty at least, peers up at me from her wheelchair. She says she remembers the war as a child. She gives me a gummy smile and waves one bent finger at some nameless enemy. ‘We beat them then,’ she says. ‘And we’ll beat them again. We’re a free people. They should damn well remember that.’
They? In exchange after exchange, the pronoun comes up again and again. They meddle where they shouldn’t. They should leave people to die in peace. They should be chasing foul-mouthed kids and internet scammers. They don’t have a clue what people like us are really like. By the time we emerge from the Co-op, having bought a dozen bottles of wine for home delivery, I’m beginning to suspect that the entire town has slipped its moorings and drifted away into deepest space. Just like Christianne.
Evelyn agrees. This, she says, is the first time she’s been able to put her finger on the pulse of the town and its heartbeat turns out to be agreeably strong. That, I tell her, is a nice place to be, and as we walk back up the hill towards Evelyn’s cul-de-sac, we pass yet more posters. One of them has been taped to a pillar box and I pause beside it for a moment’s reflection. I’ve been a working thesp for most of my life, but I’ve never had a starring role like this before, and the current production is all the scarier because, for once, the denouement is still wildly uncertain. A prison sentence, I wonder, or the A303 and the blessed anonymity of Holland Park? The jury, I know, is still out. And that’s another thought that scares me witless.