Nula was shaking her head. ‘Nothing, nothing,’ she muttered. She was going insane. Completely crazy. The baby wasn’t crying. The baby was dead.

62

‘You know what? I think she’s going off her fucking head, my girl,’ said Charlie. He was in the gatehouse kitchen, talking to Terry.

‘What d’you mean?’ asked Terry. He’d had his own thoughts about Nula’s grip on sanity too, but he’d never voiced them. He stood there, leaning against the sink, arms folded, staring at the top of Charlie’s head. Charlie was losing his hair. He was getting older. Well, they all were. Older and sadder, it seemed.

Belle would be home from her secondary school soon, with Jill. Since Jill had told the authorities about those shipments and spoken to Terry about it, he’d been on pins whenever Charlie came down here. What if Charlie found out? What if Jill acted odd around him, somehow gave herself away?

‘D’you know what she keeps saying to me? You know that time she fell down the stairs? She said Harlan left that skateboard on the stairs deliberately, that he wanted her to fall.’

‘That’s crap,’ said Terry after a beat.

Actually, though? It wouldn’t have surprised him. He didn’t like Harlan. Harlan was quiet – the exact reverse of Charlie. But you always felt he was scheming. Harlan was getting tall now, and handsome. But . . . sort of wrong, somehow. For quite a while Terry’d disliked the boy’s attitude around Belle, and then to find her in a state of panic after Harlan had clearly been groping her in the garage, intimidating her . . . well, he’d flipped. Given the boy a slap. Warned him, Stay away.

Terry didn’t like Nipper, either, that local thug Harlan hung around with. He’d heard that the pair of them had been up to all sorts down in the village but got off with a warning from the local police. Stupid things. Robbing washing lines. Pushing dog shit through letterboxes. Leaving a dead fox on a hunt protester’s doorstep. Nasty things.

‘I know it’s crap.’ Charlie frowned and let out a huff of breath. ‘Of course it is. Come on. Let’s go and get busy. Bloody women, they’re all crazy when it comes right down to it.’

1980s

63

Time was passing and it was healing the pain, just a little. Nula started to live for when Harlan was out of the house. Charlie was still away most of the time. Milly, who was now a teenager and seemed embarrassed by her own mother, spent all her time at Belle’s. Leaving her all by herself, with only the cleaner, or the gardener for company. And the men on the door – these days there were always men on the door.