Stone Gods (29 page)

Ahead of me, light is breaking through the canopy of the trees, and it is sunlight and daylight, and I push towards it, higher now, as the bank falls away, and the stream far below gains in strength, ready to fall over the clough.

I feel strong and easy. The climb is nothing. I can, feel energy like sap in my body. There is nothing to fear.

At the bend in the track, I see what I know I will see: the compact seventeenth-century house, built on the sheer fall of the drop to the stream. There's a water-barrel by the front door, and a tin cup hung on a chain, and an apple tree at the beginning of the garden, where it meets the track.

The stone slates are mossy and green. The fire is burning inside.

I have to open the gate between the house and the track, and as I look back I can see where I have come and how the light pulls away and then disappears.

I have my hand on the gate, but I hesitate for a minute because when I go through I can't come back.

There's a noise — the door of the house opens. It's you, coming out of the house, coming towards me, smiling, pleased. It's you, and it's me, and I knew it would end like this, and that you would be there, had always been there; it was just a matter of time.

Across the gate, your face. You can't come any further. I have to go through. The latch is light. Yes, open it. It was not difficult.

Everything is imprinted for ever with what it once was.

Thanks to Philippa Brewster, Lysander Ashton, Dr Teresa Anderson at Jodreli Bank, Diana Souharni, Simon Prosser and his team at Penguin Books, and my agent, Caroline Michel.