She gathered up her pencils, and as she crossed the hall, the sea glass balanced precariously on her sketch pad, the front door rattled again, like a warning. Nell stopped, waited, but all she could hear was the thudding of her heart, the glass on the paper in front of her trembling. She took a breath and carried on into the kitchen, and as she was organising her pieces all over again on the dining table, she heard a dull thump far above her in the house. A window left open, she told herself. Nothing to worry about.

She took a seat, picked up a pencil, tried to concentrate, but the kitchen wasn’t any better, the smell seemed to have faded, but it hadn’t entirely vanished, and she found herself wondering about the house, and if anyone else felt so – unsettled here.

In the end she took everything outside onto the patio, spreading out their old picnic blanket and contriving a seat out of a pile of fresh towels – she didn’t care to risk any of the cushions from the sofa. She had her pad with her, and a few pencils; she fetched the washing-up bowl out too – it held a couple of tepid inches of water – and she took a few moments to drop each piece of glass back into it, ignoring the suspicion that she’d allowed the house to force her out.

She told herself she was cleaning the glass, but really, she liked the way the water added depth and shine, the way the droplets created the illusion of facets as she picked out single pieces and held them up to the light. She sat cross-legged, arranging and rearranging the glass on sheets of damp paper, letting her mind run free. She shifted her position, until she had her back to Elder House, and after a while she picked up a pencil and began to work.

Chapter 9

9

Kym took her usual route home, out of the yard, past Nell Galilee – who didn’t look up from whatever it was she was doing near the drying ground – down the street then up the bankside, following the paved footpath the council had finally created after generations of locals had worn the route into the side of the cliff. The path was steep, but there were benches placed along it at intervals, and Kym sat on the last one, right at the top. She liked the view from here, you could see how the town had developed. The oldest houses were crammed into the streets nearest the river, and tucked close under the cliff. Then as the years had passed, and the railway brought visitors to the town, bigger houses had appeared, inland and up on the West Cliff, grander houses, organised and ambitious, set in wide streets. And finally there were the newer builds, modern housing estates, springing up on the outskirts of town; it always reminded her of the rings in a tree trunk.