The horse’s hooves sink into the mud. Water swirls about the rider’s boots and the boy floats. The rider tugs on the rope and his hair blows across his face and the metal cross shines, dazzling his eyes as he waits for the geese to pass, for the mist to draw breath. For the spire to sink from sight and the sun to rise unseen and the breeze and the birds to settle.
There’s a voice in my head. ‘It shouldn’t have been like this,’ it says. ‘If only the boy had accepted his fate and stayed upon the island. They wouldn’t have had to do this.’
The rain has turned to snow, the snow has turned to hail and stones of ice pitch down against the water. The rider spurs his horse again and again, and she plunges forwards into the lake, deeper. As their bodies begin to disappear, the rider’s face turns back towards the shore. His lips move and I hear his voice, even though he does not speak.
‘Hasn’t it always been like this, Claire? Especially with the young ones.’
Our eyes meet.
‘They just don’t want to die.’
I let out a soft moan and my head rolls to one side. The mattress heaves beneath my body and beads of damp trickle down my skin. The air in the room sweeps cool across my face and I slowly open my eyes, blinking once.
Then I remember.
Joe, my son, has gone.
I’ve met the agent, Hardcastle, at a gate marked Private. He’s standing by his car, waiting for me. A man in his later years, short and round, he wears a loud pin-striped suit and he looks like he doesn’t quite belong, here, in rural Derbyshire.
I press the button to lower the window. He leans down to speak to me.
‘Mrs Henderson. Delighted to meet you.’ His voice has the strangled tones of an independent education. ‘Oh, you don’t need to worry about that,’ he adds.
He dismisses the weatherworn sign with one hand. Rust obscures the top half of each letter and it swings in the wind, back and forth, with the inevitable regularity of a metronome.
I follow Hardcastle’s Mercedes in my functional estate. We could have afforded better, but I like my car; I don’t have to worry about every scratch, unlike Duncan, obsessing about his smart Lexus SUV. He has the more reliable vehicle, since he has to go in and out in all weathers to get to work. Hardcastle and I drive one behind the other, bumping along the road parallel to the edge of the reservoir until we turn up into the old village.
I know the village well. I know the whole valley. I’ve lived in the area for so many years. On my right is the dilapidated farmhouse skirted by a straggle of barns. On my left, a sequence of run-down cottages. Some of them face each other like partners in a dance, each house wearing its abandonment with an air of genteel humility – lichen-dusted walls, plants peeping from the gutters, window frames faded and stripped by the sun. The windows all have the same delicate white leaded inserts and the doors, the same peeling blue paint. Even the brickwork is all a matching shade of Georgian herringbone red, warm and welcoming but for its neglect. Gorgeous in the crisp morning sunlight.
It should have lifted my spirits, all this. The evident decay of the village simply adds to its charm. And yet there is no sign of life. Never has been. No washing on the line, no pot plants in the windows. Not even a bowl of water for a cat or a dog. Most houses in the country at least have a cat to keep down the rodents.
I see a ramshackle pair of iron gates with a drive leading into the shadows. There are no cars, not one by a single house, except for us, of course. I’m not sure I like it. The whole village is resolutely derelict. I’ve avoided it before. I hadn’t realised the property would be so close to here. It’s on the far side of the reservoir away from the Barn.
We pass the last house and turn off again, climbing the hill. Hardcastle takes a left, off the lane onto a dead-end track where the tarmac has melted in the heat of last year’s summer. I follow and the grass verge is so overgrown you can’t see past each bend. The trees and hedges grow so tall and dense that the fields above are hidden. Daylight has morphed into dark shadows, bathing the track with the shifting patterns of moving branches, and I jam on the brakes as a squirrel bounds across the lane right in front of me. I have one of those unsettling moments of déjà vu, like I’ve done this before. But I don’t think I’ve been up this way, why would I? That’s good then, I think.
Then we’re there, at last. The cottage.
I feel my heart skip a beat. It’s a wreck. I expected it to be, but I still love it.
To be fair, they did warn me of the state of it: In need of some development. Landlord happy for tenant to make the place their own. Translate that as damp and cold from years of neglect and in need of total renovation. If not tearing down and starting all over again. Not that that’s an option.
It must have been standing empty for several years.
The building sits sideways from the track, with red bricks and white painted windows like all the other houses in the valley. It wears its slouch like a tired old man. I cast my eyes down the slope. You can see the reservoir in the distance, exactly like they’d said. My heart gives another leap. Not too close, but close enough.
I’d promised myself it had to be something located near the Barn, ish, painful though that is. I don’t want Joe to have any excuse to refuse to come with me. He won’t give up his metal detecting and I won’t take him too far from his father, despite all the conflict. I want to reassure him about that. They still need to see each other and I won’t have the money for expensive train and bus fares. Besides, there are so many secluded corners in this valley, old farm buildings and shepherd huts slowly degrading beneath the weight of their own walls, I think it might just work hiding from Duncan in plain sight. I have faith in Joe, he won’t let on if I ask him not to. If I need to. I suck my bottom lip between my teeth.
I park my car beside the estate agent’s and get out. As I follow him up the short, overgrown path, he reminds me of the rent. I lift my head and he smiles at me with the wide-eyed confidence of a salesman who knows he’s already got the deal. We come to a stop and he looks away, restless, like now we’re here, he’s already thinking of the next appointment.
‘Why are they renting and not selling?’ I ask.
Not that I can afford to buy until the divorce comes through. This is only temporary, I tell myself.
‘It’s part of an old estate. The family aren’t prepared to sell. They don’t want to break up the estate.’
I nod. I know about the family. Everybody does. There are a few stories about them, none of them particularly salutary, mostly around unreasonable rules and wilful neglect.
The agent gestures to the view beyond the cottage, over the fields and down the hill. He launches into his spiel.
‘Lovely, isn’t it? The whole valley is subject to a ninety-year-long restrictive covenant, so nothing’s been built, not even a shed, since the Second World War. People pay over a million for those few houses further up the hills …’
His voice trails away. He knows I must be aware of this. He’ll have seen my name and address on the contact form. Wife of, mother of, Mrs Henderson – is that all I am to other people? Even in this day and age, defined by my relationship to men. That’s what you get if you choose to be a full-time mother. Certainly, in this part of the county. Though choose isn’t quite how I’d put it.
Hardcastle steps ahead of me and unlocks the back door, shoving it hard to get