The Beacon (14 page)

‘I never understood,’ she said. ‘I still don’t understand.’

‘No,’ he said.

‘Did you do it on purpose, to hurt?’

He was silent. Because he asked himself the question every day and could never properly answer. All he knew was that he had always hated this house and felt a misfit among them, and when he had found a way of paying them back and getting a kind of revenge, he had done so. The money was irrelevant, though he had enjoyed some of the fame. He had always intended to leave a mark deeper and more lasting than the near-invisible writing made by the others.

‘Did it make you happy?’

He did not know. But it had given him satisfaction. He had changed the way things were seen and the way they would be remembered. He had changed the way other people thought of them.

The autumn slipped down into one of the harshest winters for years so that they had no time or energy left for argument and scarcely any for conversation. They got through the days as best they could, cut off from the rest of the world by the snow and blizzards, the ice and gales, and later the floods as the thaw came, and it was as though they each lived surrounded by an invisible, impenetrable bubble, almost entirely unaware of one another.

But once or twice, May came upon him standing in the hall and staring at the door of the cupboard under the stairs, and remembered the horrors that had long ago pursued her and did not like to catch his eye.

ALSO AVAILABLE BY SUSAN HILL IN VINTAGE PAPERBACK ARE
THE SIMON SERRAILLER CRIME NOVELS

The Various Haunts of Men

A woman vanishes in the fog up on ‘the Hill’. Initially, the police are not alarmed but when a young girl, an old man and even a dog disappear, no one can deny that something untoward is happening in this quiet cathedral town.

The Pure in Heart

It is spring in the quiet cathedral town of Lafferton and a little boy has been abducted at the gate of his home. Meanwhile, a severely handicapped young woman hovers between life and death, and an excon finds it impossible to go straight . . .

The Risk of Darkness

Children have been disappearing; there are no leads – just a kidnapper at large. The police have failed, the families are distraught. Then Detective Chief Inspector Simon Serrailler receives a call: a child has been snatched in Yorkshire. Has the abductor struck again?

The Vows of Silence

A gunman is terrorising young women. What – if anything – links the attacks? Is the marksman with a rifle the same person as the killer with a handgun, or do the police have two snipers on their hands? Two forthcoming events, a local fair and the high-profile wedding of the Lord Lietuenat’s daughter, only add to the pressure on Simon Serrailler.