‘What do you mean?’ Keep him talking, I think. You have to keep him talking.
‘Samantha. You couldn’t resist it, could you? A boo-hoo story about a missing girl and you’re getting ready to climb down an old well and wind up with a broken neck and you know what you’d have found? Nothing. Not a damn thing.’
He falls silent as we turn into the strip of wasteland at the edge of the graveyard. William pulls up alongside the crumbling wall spilling with ivy. To our right is Peter Liverly’s bungalow; to our left a small, empty two-storey office block with a To Let sign attached. The road is quiet, and from here I can only see the backs of the terraced houses, silent and cast in shade. I don’t want to get out of this car. There is no one else around.
‘William?’
‘Huh?’
‘Where is Edie Hudson?’
‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Out.’
We walk away from the car towards the bungalow. He’s got the hammer in his hand, hanging loose by his side as if he’s forgotten it’s there. Every time I notice it my chest floods with a gush of hot blood and I’m thrown back into my dream, the way my breath catches in my mouth, the way my feet are sucked into the ground, slowing me down as the man swinging the hammer stands over me, his eyes pitiless black holes. The broken wooden gate to the bungalow hangs askew on its single rusted hinge, but William still stands aside and indicates for me to go ahead as if he is ushering me into a high-class restaurant. Ever the gentleman, I think, and then my eye is drawn to that claw-head hammer again and my guts squeeze horribly.
‘I slept with Edie Hudson a handful of times,’ William says suddenly as we round the corner of the bungalow, heading towards the back of the house over the crumpled litter and overgrown grass. ‘One of those times was here.’ He points towards the brick wall, the one that runs along the back of the Liverly property, separating it from the churchyard. ‘I don’t remember much about it. She was my first proper girlfriend, although I don’t think our fumbling around in the dark deserves such an eloquent description, you know?’ He snorts laughter, but he isn’t smiling. He has that faraway look again, staring at the wall. ‘When she told me she was pregnant I was sick. I mean actually, physically sick. Right into my lap. That’s what losing control does to me. It infects me. Come on, I’ll help you through.’
‘Through where?’
He walks to the wall and stands in front of it for a moment, walking back and forth a little, staring. Then he lifts his hand and runs it along the brickwork, beneath the clutch of dark green ivy that spills over the top of the wall.
Finally he turns to me with a miserable, ghoulish smile. ‘Here.’
I walk over and peer through the parting he has created in the foliage with his hands. There is a gap in the wall, no more than thirty inches at its widest point. He nods towards it.
I stare at him. ‘I won’t fit!’
‘You will if you turn to the side. “Squeezeguts”, we used to call it. Charlie Roper, one of the Rattlesnakes, found some loose bricks on the churchyard side once, and we all got to working on it. We discovered we could make a hole big enough that we could fit through. Took us all the best part of an evening.’
‘What was it for?’
‘To get in and out the churchyard after the gates were locked, mostly. The old man didn’t like it. Liverly, he was called. Weird old thing he was, like a goblin. He used to take pictures of us out here from his bedroom window. Moya said he was a pervert. Edie wanted to burn his house down but Nancy and Alex talked her out of it. Said she’d end up in juvenile prison. One night someone smashed all these back windows and they never found out who did it, but we all knew it was Edie. She hated him. Used to chase him out the graveyard with firecrackers when he was doing his rounds.’
‘Jesus, that poor man.’
‘Uh-huh. We must have made his life hell. I was sorry about what happened to him. He was unfairly vilified. Sometimes people are such easy targets. Come on.’
I edge through Squeezeguts with my breath held deep in my lungs. It leads out into the back of the churchyard where the old trees grow thickest; giant yews and spreading oaks, tall wavering pines. Here and there old graves spring up out of the ground, old stones smoothed away. It’s dark beneath the trees and the air is hot and still and swimming with gnats. William indicates for me to move forward with a flick of his hand.
‘William, you don’t have to do this. We could turn around and go back home and it’ll be fine, it’ll all be okay.’
‘Will it?’ he says in that same, measured tone, looking at me sidelong as we walk through the trees over the bumpy ground.
I nod enthusiastically. Oh God, please listen to me. ‘Yes! We’ll go back to Swindon if you want and you can play golf again and see your friends and I’ll – I’ll go back to work and we’ll eat at the Thai place at the end of the road every Friday just like before. Everything just how it was.’
‘I thought you were bored of that life?’
‘No!’ I exclaim, although of course I mean yes. ‘You’ve made me see it now. All of it. We had a good life. We had fun. We loved each other. Please don’t waste it. Please.’
He looks at me then, considering. It’s the first time I’ve seen William look like himself since I climbed in the car with him. His face, so sunken and shadowed all the way here, eyes like blank bullets. He draws a breath and it’s him, it’s William, my William – I almost want to put my arms around him.
‘We can go back to before,’ I tell him softly, stepping close enough that he can feel how fast I’m breathing, how much I’m trembling. ‘All you have to do is say yes.’
The silence is so delicate I daren’t breathe for fear of breaking it. I touch his arm and he looks down at my hand in wonder, as if he has never seen it before. He opens his mouth just as his phone rings in his pocket, and my heart jerks at the sound of it. I stare as he removes it and looks at the screen briefly before taking the call. It only lasts forty seconds or so, and at the end of it he speaks only three words: ‘Love you, Mum.’
‘William, please, just look at me. Here.’ I stop and he turns to face me and I try not to let my eye be drawn to that red striped hammer in his hand but I can’t help it, it’s there, and for a moment I see the head of it the way it looks in my dream, furred with hair and blood and flakes of white bone. Acid rises in my throat. ‘You’re frightening me. Whatever this is about—’
‘It’s about Edie Hudson. You made it about Edie Hudson.’
‘—we can sort it out. Please put the hammer down. Please take me home.’
‘I can’t do that. Not now. It’s too late. Plan B. I’m so sorry, Frances.’
‘What did your mum want, William? What did sh—’
‘Frances—’
‘Just tell me what this is ab—’
His hand swings out of nowhere. I never even see him lift his arm. He strikes me on the jaw, snapping my head back so fast spit flies from my mouth. I can hear the clack of my teeth coming together, the way my mouth fills with blood. It tastes metallic, like sucking pennies. There is a glittering pain along the shelf of my jaw and up towards my left ear. I don’t fall down but I need to grab hold of the nearest tree for balance because the whole world is spinning.