The Burning (7 page)

“Where’s your room?” Adam asked. “Is it exactly the same as your room at home? Mine is, and Rachel’s. And there’s this amazing kitchen where you can get anything you want. This Chinese guy made me a BLT that was the best I’ve ever had. We could go there now. He’ll make you a steak, or do
you sushi, or whatever. Shall we go get something to eat? Are you hungry?”

Rachel wished that her brother would stop jabbering. There were other things she wanted to say to her mother; other questions she needed to ask.

Have they told you about us? About where we come from?

“I think your mum’s tired,” Laura said, moving towards them. “Maybe she should get some sleep. You can catch up properly later.”

“Yes … tired,” Kate Newman said. She spoke slowly, and her voice was a little slurred, as if she were having difficulty getting her mouth round even these simple words. “Later.”

Rachel broke the embrace and stepped back. She tried and failed to look her mother in the eye. “Mom…?” She turned to look at Adam and caught a glimpse of Van der Zee putting down the phone and trying to communicate something to Laura Sullivan.

“What is it?” Rachel asked.

Kate sat down heavily on the sofa and Rachel looked from Laura to Van der Zee. There was an awkward pause, and fear fluttered in her stomach. Van der Zee coughed and broke the silence.

“I’m afraid I’ve got some rather bad news.”

T
he coffin appeared to be in soft focus as it was lowered into the wet, black earth.

Looking up, Rachel realized that everything else seemed softened and blurred by the chilly blanket of mist that hung in the air. It shrouded the surrounding gravestones and dampened the sparse collection of mourners around her grandmother’s grave. Rachel looked down again at the wet fans of fern leaves that brushed at her feet like skeletal fingers beckoning the living to join them underground.

The undertakers lowered the small coffin into the hole and tears sprang unexpectedly to Rachel’s eyes. When Van der Zee had told her and Adam that Granny Root had died, both twins had felt curiously little reaction. Kate had shown no emotion beyond the fragile state she was already in. Rachel knew that her mother had not been close to Celia Root, and had left both her and England behind at the earliest opportunity. Perhaps because of this, neither Rachel nor Adam had felt that they had ever really connected with
their grandmother. But now she was about to be put in the ground, Rachel felt a sudden pang of regret that she would never have the chance to really get to know her grandmother. For the first time in her life, someone she had known was never coming back.

An important link to her past had been severed.

Earlier, inside the church, with the Triskellion on the stained glass window glowing behind his head, the vicar had said a few kind words. He was a chubby, fresh-faced young man who had been seconded from a nearby parish following the unfortunate death of Reverend Stone. Although he hadn’t really known Celia Root, he had clearly been well briefed. He had described her as a unique woman. A very private woman, but brave, loyal and stoic: one of a dying breed. He had talked about her career as a pilot both at home and in the United States, delivering aircraft from one air-force base to another. He had told them all how brave she had been after a terrible accident and how she had put up with constant pain for many years. He’d said she had been the backbone of the village.

Rachel had glanced at her brother. As far as they knew, their grandmother had been terrified of flying, incapable of boarding a plane to the US, let alone being able to fly one. Neither Granny Root nor their mother had ever mentioned it.

One of many things that had not been mentioned.

On the coffin, a black and white photograph in a silver frame had been propped up in front of a bunch of white
lilies. It was an image Rachel was familiar with. A smart young woman with wavy hair and distinctive lipstick leaning against an old car, a cigarette between her fingers. She had once been so alive, so brave, so good-looking.

Rachel had felt her chest tighten and a sob rise in her throat. Standing in the front row of the church and feeling the eyes of the rest of the village burning into the back of her neck, she had reached out tentatively for her mother’s hand. Her mother had taken it and squeezed, but the gesture had felt half-hearted. Automatic.

They had spoken little on the drive down, which had taken most of the night. The big silver people-carrier had left the Hope Project sometime in the small hours of the morning, and Rachel had tried, in vain, to see where on earth they were in the darkness. Once or twice, through the tinted windows, she’d seen a road sign caught in the headlights and had committed it to memory, just in case…

Rachel and Adam had spent most of the time sleeping, reading or listening to music. Any occasional bursts of conversation had quickly faltered and they had fallen into silence again. The twins had felt understandably nervous about returning to the village and had been inhibited talking to their mother with Laura in the car with them. Even when the others had been asleep, or Laura had been plugged into her laptop with headphones on, they’d still felt that somehow they would be overheard. Besides, their mother had also slept for much of the journey, and when she had been
awake, the twins had been reluctant to press her. Ever since they had been reunited two days before, she had seemed distant: responding to most questions with a small, down-turned smile.

Rachel couldn’t remember the last time her mother had seemed “normal”. Not for months, certainly, but Rachel guessed – hoped – that depression, divorce and the death of her own mother had been largely responsible.

Rachel had returned her mother’s feeble squeeze as the pall-bearers had stepped forward and lifted the coffin. Watched, unblinking, as they’d begun the slow march down the aisle, past the “Crusader’s” tomb and out into the grey morning.

Now, as the modest assembly began to disperse from the graveside, Rachel and Adam could see who had come to pay their respects. One or two stepped forward to throw a handful of earth in after the coffin or to lay flowers: Hatcham, the landlord of The Star; the woman from the post office; a doctor who Rachel vaguely recognized. Of all the villagers present, the only one to make eye contact was Jacob Honeyman, the beekeeper. He shuffled forward, cap in hand, to sprinkle earth into the hole and lay a small handful of sweet peas, wrapped in kitchen roll, at the graveside.

Honeyman looked across at Rachel and Adam. He smiled grimly, winking and nodding as though desperate to communicate in the way he knew the twins could but lacking the facility himself.

Rachel and Adam nodded back.

We’re fine
, they said in their minds. In the cold morning away from the Hope building, they could clearly hear each other again. That they were fine was far from the truth and they said it mainly for their own benefit, knowing that Honeyman couldn’t hear them. He nodded again, pulled his woolly hat on, waved, turned and walked away.

Standing away from the rest of the mourners, still and grey as if carved from the same stone as the graves, stood Commodore Wing. He had sat alone in the church, in the front row across the aisle from Rachel, Adam and Kate Newman, and had acknowledged neither his daughter nor his grandchildren. He had stared impassively ahead as the vicar had spoken, and later he had gazed blankly into the middle distance, barely noting the deference paid to him by the villagers as they had passed him on the way out.

“Why doesn’t he talk to us?” Adam half whispered to his sister.

Rachel shrugged. “He’s lost his son and … well, I guess the woman he loved, more or less at the same time,” she said.

“And somehow that’s our fault?” Adam asked.

Rachel looked around the pretty graveyard and saw two other freshly filled-in graves, each covered in flowers and awaiting tombstones.

Hilary Wing’s, perhaps? Reverend Stone’s?

Rachel knew that she and Adam had not been directly responsible for either death, but she couldn’t help
wondering if Stone, Hilary or even their grandmother might still be alive if they had never arrived in Triskellion. Then again, perhaps what had happened had been unavoidable. The village had been brewing up to this for centuries and maybe their arrival had merely been the catalyst that had been needed to make it happen.

The mist turned to drizzle, and Rachel saw her mother begin to shiver, her teeth chattering audibly. The twins hugged her close, and saw Laura step forward from where she had been standing discreetly under a tree, next to the driver in dark glasses.

“We should think about getting back,” Laura said, putting a black shawl round Kate’s shoulders and opening an umbrella.

Adam looked around the near-empty graveyard and across towards the moor: two places where he had been more frightened than at any other time in his life. “Yeah, we should go,” he said. “I’m looking forward to getting back.”

Rachel looked at her brother, realizing for the first time that, despite the initial strangeness, she also felt oddly secure at the Hope Project. Not happy, not yet, but happier. Life had been chaotic and frightening until they had been taken from the village, but within a few days they had settled into a safe routine. Tucked away, insulated from the outside world.

Then the noise started.

At first Rachel thought it was a bee, circling somewhere
in the autumn chill. But then she realized that the buzzing was inside her head, louder now and more urgent, like a signal tuning into her frequency.

She looked into her brother’s eyes. He wasn’t getting it.

Then the voice came, a faint whisper, just audible through the buzz. Calling her name…

“Right, let’s go,” Laura Sullivan said, touching Rachel on the arm, and breaking the moment, before walking on.

Rachel felt giddy, as if she were about to fall over or throw up. She closed her eyes and rolled her neck, attempting to clear her head. Then the voice came through loud and clear, shouting out for her as though the speaker was lost: searching.

Rachel…

And when she opened her eyes, she saw him. Or at least she could have sworn she had. A strange, dark-haired boy, standing on the other side of the graveyard, shadowed and half hidden by a large memorial surmounted by a carved stone angel.

Rachel blinked, and he was gone again.

“You OK, Rach?” Adam asked.

Rachel said nothing. She stared across at the stone angel, to the spot where the boy had been standing.

“You look as though you’ve seen a ghost,” Adam said.

Laura took Rachel’s arm and began to lead her back towards the car. “Well, you’re in the right place for it,” she said.

*  *  *

There was a hot meal waiting for them when they got back to the Hope Project. They ate in silence in Mr Cheung’s kitchen before being escorted back to their rooms.

Just before bedtime, Laura Sullivan knocked on Rachel’s door. “Just wanted to see how you were doing,” she said.

Rachel was exhausted. She couldn’t think of much to say. “Thanks.”

“You’ve had quite a day.”

“I can’t remember the last …
ordinary
day.” Laura nodded, like she understood.

Rachel sat, then lay down on the bed. She knew that, tough as the funeral had been for her and Adam, it would have been harder for their mother. She and Granny Root had not seen much of each other for many years, but Rachel knew how she and Adam felt about
their
mom; knew how strong the bond was. “How’s Mom holding up?” she asked.

Laura took a few seconds. “That’s actually what I came to tell you.”

Rachel sat up quickly. “She OK?”

“She’s fine.” Laura couldn’t quite meet Rachel’s eye. “But she needs some time on her own. She’s heading back to New York. She’s—”

Rachel was off the bed and reaching for her dressing gown. “I want to talk to her,” she said.

“You can’t,” Laura said. “She’s already on her way to the airport.”

Rachel felt her fingers curling into fists. She marched past Laura Sullivan and yanked the door open. “Well I want to talk to Adam then.”

She marched along the corridor and barged into her brother’s room, slamming the door behind her. He was sitting, hunched over, on the bed and when he looked up, it was clear that he had already been told. He looked like he was trying hard to keep it together. It was an expression Rachel had seen a lot since they’d arrived in England. Since the nightmare had begun.

“She’s going to call us tomorrow,” Adam said, sniffing. “When she gets home.”

Rachel’s mind was racing. Why hadn’t she said goodbye? Wouldn’t she have preferred to stay with them? Why had Laura seemed so … shifty about it?

“Rach—?”

“I saw Gabriel,” she said, under her breath.

“When?”

“Today, in the churchyard. At least I
think
I did.”

“Did he say anything?”

“Just my name.” Rachel stared out of the window at the fake New York skyline: the lights in the skyscrapers, the blur of neon against a manufactured night sky. She thought about her mother on the way back to the real thing. “It was like he was waiting… He had this look on his face.”