“The house doesn’t matter,” Mary said. “It never mattered. It’s the land. Those children, they’re like the trees all around and the grass in the fields. Those men planted the children there, like seeds. They’re in the ground and they’ll always be there. They’ve always been there. Like me. Always.”

23: Esther

23: Esther

Esther’s shoulder ached from dragging the girl behind her, but still she giggled like it was a game of chase, like they weren’t running for their lives, like Tam wasn’t coming for them. The sun hung low over the fields on the other side of the river, burning the water with orange fire. She glimpsed it through the gaps in the hedgerow, a steep bank running down to the shallow edge. Warm on her skin as she ran, her ill-fitting boots hammering on the lane’s rough surface, Mary skipping along, her soles barely touching the ground.

“Run,” Esther said between snatches of air. “Run.”

She knew the main road lay in this direction, perhaps half a mile, maybe more. If they could reach that, they might be safe. They might flag down a car, find another house. Glancing back, she saw they had made it not quite a hundred yards from the driveway. Up ahead, there was a bend in the lane. She focused on that, as if getting out of sight of the house could save them.

An engine barked into life somewhere back there. Esther looked back once more and saw the police car swing out of the driveway, accelerate towards them.

“No,” she said.

The river, she thought. Tam can’t drive through the river.

Up ahead, the hedgerow thinned. She pulled Mary towards the edge of the lane, hearing the car’s engine roar behind them. Branches and thorns pulled at her clothes as she dived through, scratched at her face and hands. Mary cried out as Esther dragged her through behind her. The car’s brakes shrieked as its tyres grabbed at the lane’s coarse surface.

Esther’s feet seemed to disappear from beneath her, and for a moment, she was free of the earth, flying. Then the ground rose up to slam into her chest, knocking the breath from her lungs, and her legs were up above her head, and the sky beyond them, and then her hip hit the bank. She landed on the muddy shore of the river, her shoulder jarred against the stones and wet earth.

Somewhere above, Mary called her name, and Esther struggled to her knees, then her feet. She reached up and took hold of Mary’s hand, pulled her down over the grass and weeds and stones and to the river’s edge. The sound of a car door opening up above.

“Come on,” she said, her feet splashing into the shallows.

Mary resisted, pulling back, her eyes wide and staring at the moving water.