‘She’ll be getting soaked out there,’ Rhona said, opening the car door. ‘I’m going to get her.’

Dark clouds had now obliterated the earlier sunlight, although Rhona could still make out Emma’s bright blue coat, which suggested the hooded girl was seated near the grave.

Pulling up her own hood, Rhona began the trudge over the heather against the driving rain. Letting Emma do this once before, in not dissimilar circumstances, had proved fruitful. At this moment in time, it seemed not only ludicrous, but also dangerous. To take an imaginative girl like Emma, on the cusp of womanhood, or maybe already there, and put her back in an environment where she might relive all her own trauma had been a mistake.

As Rhona neared the figure, Emma stood up, but didn’t indicate that she’d noted Rhona’s approach.

‘Emma,’ Rhona called, her voice whipped away by the wind. Reaching out, she took the girl by the arm. ‘Emma, let’s get you back to the car.’

The buffeting wind was catching the slender figure, almost lifting her off her feet.

She turned suddenly, as though just waking up to the fact that Rhona was there, and without saying anything, moved to make her own way back along the path.

Magnus met them en route and, placing his arm about Emma, sought to shield her from the worst of the wind.

Once inside the car, Rhona started up the engine. Their breath had steamed up the windows, obscuring what lay beyond their metal cocoon.

‘There’s something wrong,’ Emma said.

‘Wrong how?’ Rhona asked, fully expecting Emma, like before, to suggest the grave they’d uncovered wasn’t the only one on the moor.

‘Two people were in that grave. Not one.’

27

Karen had lain awake most of the night and what snatches of sleep she’d grabbed had been fuelled by nightmarish images of a blood-splattered Mary in her white dress. Moments of elucidation during these dreams convinced her, however fleetingly, that she knew what had happened to her friend, but each time she forced herself awake to write it down, the memory had deserted her.

Had she had any alcohol in the house, she would have drunk it. All of it. Regardless of the consequences.

Eventually Karen had risen, gone downstairs and put the kettle on, Jack’s answer to every problem being, Let’s have a cup of tea.

From the kitchen window, Karen had a clear view of the castle. The image of the rock formation with its hilltop fortress had become so familiar that she no longer paid it much attention. Today was different. Today, she thought of her own memory as being as inaccessible as the castle itself, with no hope of ever penetrating its defences to discover what lay within.

As for the delivery last night when she was out walking the length of Castle Hill . . .

The piece of paper contained what? An accusation? A threat?

And from whom?

The note still lay on the kitchen table where she’d tossed it in her horror. It was crumpled because, after the first reading, she had screwed it up into a ball and thrown it in the bin, only to fish it out again for a second and third reading.