‘You are lovely.’ I put a hand to his cheek. ‘Thank you.’
‘That was thoughtful.’ Peggy tried to smile at Zac but managed only a stiff movement of the upper corners of her mouth. She beamed warmth democratically on everyone – waiters, people behind supermarket tills, neighbours. Zac was the one person for whom she could muster nothing more than cold politeness.
Zac guided me to the Cross of Sacrifice, and I knelt to place the small cross at its base, among the others, before I rose and stepped backwards.
‘What was his rank?’ Zac asked.
‘Squadron Leader. He was a commissioned officer, but he wasn’t born into it. He grew up on my grandparents’ dairy farm. He was young when he died. Thirty-three. They both were. Did I tell you he flew search and rescue helicopters?’
‘You did. You should be very proud.’
As I honoured my military father and civilian mother, I thought of my grandmother, and what she constantly said about my parents’ deaths. She, of course, had a conspiracy theory, and believed that the car accident that killed them wasn’t an accident at all but made to look like one because my father knew something he shouldn’t. Whenever she dropped her dark hints I tried to quiz her, only for her to clam up. Sometimes, I thought my obsession with joining the Security Service was driven by my wish to get access to whatever hidden information there might be about this. I remembered Maxine’s seemingly innocuous questions about their deaths during that awful interview.
Zac put an arm around me, and we slowly walked the few metres to join Peggy and James. Peggy said, ‘So you’re living above the plague pit, Zac?’
He looked bewildered, which was not a look Zac often wore.
‘Didn’t Holly tell you?’ Peggy said.
‘No.’ He managed a joke. ‘I ought to ask for a discount on the rent.’ He turned to me, as if for help. ‘Holly?’
‘It’s just a story,’ I said.
‘You know it isn’t,’ Peggy said.
‘Are you going to tell me?’ Zac’s eyes were glittering at mine.
‘Hmm. I’m thinking I have to say yes to that.’ So I began. ‘In the mid-fifteenth century, five hundred people from the town were lost to the plague. The burial records for that period don’t survive, and the plague victims aren’t in the graveyard.’ A paper poppy petal, torn away from the body of the flower, floated above us, lifted by the wind. ‘So here is the question. Where were the poor souls put?’
‘Souls?’ Zac raised an eyebrow.
‘The thinking is that the bodies were loaded onto carts and taken along the coffin path. Then they were dumped into a pit. This was three kilometres along the coast, but slightly inland.’
‘Where you are.’ Peggy was fingering the cross that dangled from a silvery chain around her neck. ‘To rid the town of contagion.’ She glanced up at the smoky-blue sky, as if for heavenly support. ‘The pit is on the land behind your farmhouse. Your back garden, as a matter of fact. Nobody wants to live there. It’s supposed to be unlucky.’
‘Sounds like a load of superstitious …’ Zac paused to find a more polite term than whatever he’d been about to say. ‘It’s as likely as mermaids.’
Peggy’s eyes narrowed. Her nostrils flared. To Peggy, an accusation of superstition was as bad as one of devil worship.
‘You know that mermaids are real.’ I was trying to tease the tension away. ‘I told you. You can’t live in St Ives and not believe in mermaids.’
‘True.’ He pulled my head against his chest. We were both thinking of the rough-hewn and time-scarred Mermaid Bench, the two of us holding hands as we knelt by the Mermaid in a kind of pledge to each other and to her.
‘Holly’s our little Ariel,’ Peggy said.
Zac gave me some serious side-eye at this Disneyfication. I squeezed his hand, trying to communicate silent understanding as well as a plea for him not to start on a critique of the ‘sugary sentimentalism’ that he detested.
I smiled at Peggy. I knew that she was picturing me and Milly, still tiny girls in pink nightdresses, snuggled against her during one of our countless sleepovers, the three of us eating popcorn and watching the Disney video.
There was room in the world for all kinds of mermaids.
Milly was gesturing for me to join her near the open church door, where she was standing by Gaston, whose hair was slicked into a ponytail. He broke up with her a few months ago, but Milly couldn’t get over it. She continued to sleep with him, and whenever they had sex it gave her false hope that he’d changed his mind.
As I looked at Gaston, I was again struck by how strongly he resembled the character from the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast, which was another of the films that Milly and I watched with Peggy when we were children. That one was our favourite, because Belle was a passionate reader, like me and Milly.
Again Milly was beckoning me, this time even more frantically, but I shook my head no, not wanting to leave Zac when he was so palpably uncomfortable.
‘Milly needs you, sweetheart.’ Peggy was tugging at my arm. I looked helplessly at Zac as Peggy prised my hand out of his, deliberately ignoring the don’t-you-dare-leave-me-with-them look he was shooting at me. She gave me a push towards Milly that practically sent me flying.
Milly was in tight jeans and sheepskin boots, a cream beanie hat covering her bright hair, seeming to know everyone, kissing old and young alike but making sure all the time that she kept within a metre of Gaston.
I took a lock of her hair between my fingers, to peel off the purple acrylic gloop that had dried on it. ‘You’ve found some time to paint this morning?’
She was glowing when she nodded yes. ‘At last. I got up early.’ She was so beautiful and cleverly funny that almost every man I ever met would want to go out with her. But she didn’t seem to know this.
‘I’m glad.’ I noticed Zac, pushing through the crowd to get to me.
‘Hi, Holly Dolly.’ Gaston’s voice was so booming that Zac sent a look his way that would vaporise other mortal beings.
‘Hello, Gaston.’ At least nobody could say I only used the name behind his back. Milly had given up on trying to stop me. I’d known since we were four that he would hurt her. Now that he actually had, I wanted to punch him in his rock-hard gut.
‘You know I consider that name a compliment, don’t you?’ He insisted on kissing me on the cheek, nearly choking me with his aftershave. ‘Don’t pretend you don’t love me.’
‘I really don’t.’
Zac had reached me at last, and curled an arm tightly around my waist, pulling me close to his side. The gulls were wheeling above our heads.
‘The parade’s about to start, Holly.’ He aimed us in the direction of the War Memorial, but the crowd had grown so thick we couldn’t get close to Peggy and James. ‘I came here to support you, and you repay me by sneaking off to Milly and her boyfriend.’
‘Ex-boyfriend, now.’
‘I don’t care who he is.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t sneak, I don’t need to pay you, I didn’t mean to upset you, and I can promise you that talking to Gaston is not fun.’
‘Gaston? I hate those Disney names. You’re too intelligent for that.’
The increasing decibel level as the marching band approached saved me from the need to say more, because the outdoor part of the ceremony was finally underway, and the buglers were sounding.