Weyward(91)

But Graham was – or would soon become – a man. A good man, but a man all the same. It wouldn’t be right, she knew.

‘How did you know to use the – what was it?’

‘Tansy.’ She paused. ‘Just something I read somewhere,’ she said.

Graham stayed with her for a week. He helped her mend the latch on the window of her bedroom, so that she could breathe clean air every night. Together they scrubbed her blood from the floor of the kitchen, until the wood glowed rich and brown. The cottage looked good as new.

There was a carrot plant in the garden, tangled up with the helleborine – though the carrots were misshapen and pale, unlike any she had seen before. There was rhubarb, too: she pulled the stems delicately from the soil, careful not to disturb the worms that lived nearby.

They ate the carrots with the eggs Father had brought. They no longer turned her stomach, now that the spore was gone.

Graham found a rusted axe in the attic. He chopped the branches that had been felled by the storm into firewood.

‘To keep you warm in winter,’ he said. They both knew she would never return to Orton Hall. Not after everything that had happened.

Graham used some of the wood to fashion a small cross and drove it into the soil where he had buried the spore, down by the beck. Violet thought about asking him to take it down, but she didn’t.

Father came back, with Doctor Radcliffe.

‘She seems to have recovered well,’ Doctor Radcliffe said to Father. ‘You can have her brought home, if you wish.’

Doctor Radcliffe left, and it was just Father, Graham and Violet in the cottage. They were silent as they listened to the sputter of Doctor Radcliffe’s car engine.

‘I am sure you understand’, Father began, looking past Violet at the wall, ‘that I cannot allow you back into my house after what you have done. I have arranged for you to be taken to a finishing school in Scotland. You will stay there for two years, and after that I will decide what is to be done with you.’

Violet heard Graham clear his throat.

‘No,’ she said, before her brother could open his mouth to speak. ‘That won’t be acceptable, I’m afraid, Father.’

His jowls slackened with shock. He looked as if she had slapped him.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I won’t be going to Scotland. In fact, I won’t be going anywhere. I’m staying right here.’ As she spoke, Violet became aware of a strange simmering sensation, as though electricity was humming beneath her skin. Images flashed in her mind – a crow cutting through the air, wings glittering with snow; the spokes of a wheel spinning. Briefly, she closed her eyes, focusing on the feeling until she could almost see it, glinting gold inside her.

‘That is not for you to decide,’ said Father. The window was open, and a bee flitted about the room, wings a silver blur. It flew near Father’s cheek and he jerked away from it.

‘It’s been decided.’ She stood up straight, her dark eyes boring into Father’s watery ones. He blinked. The bee hovered about his face, dancing away from his hands, and she saw sweat break out on his nose. Soon it was joined by another, and then another and another, until it seemed like Father – shouting and swearing – had been engulfed in a cloud of tawny, glistening bodies.

‘I think it would be best if you left now, Father,’ said Violet softly. ‘After all, as you said, I’m my mother’s daughter.’

‘Graham?’ Violet smiled at the note of panic in Father’s voice.

‘I’m staying, too,’ said Graham, folding his arms across his chest.

Violet heard Father’s shallow, rasping breaths. Several of the bees were dangerously close to his mouth now.

‘The front door key, please, Father,’ she said. It landed on the wooden floor with a dull clank.

‘Thank you,’ she called, as Father, pursued by the bees, slammed the door behind him.

Violet held out her hand, and a lone bee came to rest on her palm.

‘You’re not afraid, are you?’ she asked, turning to Graham. ‘They won’t hurt you this time.’

‘I know,’ said Graham.

He put his arm around her. They stood still for a moment, listening to the car rumble away.





50


KATE


In the corridor, Kate can hear what sounds like hailstones hitting the windows. But they are not hailstones, she sees, looking through the doorway at her bedroom window; they are beaks.

Outside, illuminated by the moon, are hundreds of birds. She sees the gunmetal sheen of a crow’s feathers, the yellow glare of an owl. A robin’s red breast. Their bodies writhe and flutter against the glass. Snow falls around them, drifting to the ground. Their cries echo in her ears. They are here, she knows, because of her.

The door to the sitting room is slightly ajar. Simon is yelling frantically. He can’t hear her as she approaches, cloaked by the sound of the birds.

She pushes open the door. Simon is standing in the centre of the room, facing the window. The poker quivers in one white-knuckled hand. She is still for a moment, watching the muscles of his back tense beneath the fine wool of his sweater. The skin on the nape of his neck is goose-pimpled with fear.

Birds clamour at the window. Kate can see cracks begin to form in the glass, glinting silver like the thread of a spider’s web. There’s a scratching sound coming from the chimney.