Reservoir 13: WINNER OF THE 2017 COSTA NOVEL AWARD

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They gathered at the car park in the hour before dawn and waited to be told what to do. It was cold and there was little conversation. There were questions that weren’t being asked. The missing girl’s name was Rebecca Shaw. When last seen she’d been wearing a white hooded top. A mist hung low across the moor and the ground was frozen hard. They were given instructions and then they moved off, their boots crunching on the stiffened ground and their tracks fading behind them as the heather sprang back into shape. She was five feet tall, with dark-blonde hair. She had been missing for hours. They kept their eyes down and they didn’t speak and they wondered what they might find. The only sounds were footsteps and dogs barking along the road and faintly a helicopter from the reservoirs. The helicopter had been out all night and found nothing, its searchlight skimming across the heather and surging brown streams. Jackson’s sheep had taken the fear and scattered through a broken gate, and he’d been up all hours bringing them back. The mountain-rescue teams and the cave teams and the police had found nothing, and at midnight a search had been called. It hadn’t taken much to raise the volunteers. Half the village was out already, talking about what could have happened. This was no time of year to have gone up on the hill, it was said. Some of the people who come this way don’t know how sharply the weather can turn. How quickly darkness falls. Some of them don’t seem to know there are places a mobile phone won’t work. The girl’s family had come up for the New Year, and were staying in one of the barn conversions at the Hunter place. They’d come running into the village at dusk, shouting. It was a cold night to have been out on the hill. She’s likely just hiding, people said. She’ll be down in a clough. Turned her ankle. She’ll be aiming to give her parents a fright. There was a lot of this. People just wanted to open their mouths and talk, and they didn’t much mind what came out. By first light the mist had cleared. From the top of the moor when people turned they could see the village: the beech wood and the allotments, the church tower and the cricket ground, the river and the quarry and the cement works by the main road into town. There was plenty of ground to cover, and so many places she could be. They moved on. There was an occasional flash of light from the traffic on the motorway, just visible along the horizon. The reservoirs were a flat metallic grey. A thick band of rain was coming in. The ground was softer now, the oily brown water seeping up around their boots. A news helicopter flew low along the line of volunteers. It was a job not to look up and wave. Later the police held a press conference in the Gladstone, but they had nothing to announce beyond what was already known. The missing girl’s name was Rebecca Shaw. She was thirteen years old. When last seen she’d been wearing a white hooded top with a navy-blue body-warmer, black jeans, and canvas shoes. She was five feet tall, with straight, dark-blonde, shoulder-length hair. Members of the public were urged to contact the police if they saw anyone fitting the description. The search would resume when the weather allowed. In the evening over the square there was a glow of television lights and smoke rising from generators and raised voices coming from the yard behind the pub. Doubts were beginning to emerge.

At midnight when the year turned there were fireworks going up from the towns beyond the valley but they were too far off for the sound to carry and no one came out to watch. The dance at the village hall was cancelled, and although the Gladstone was full there was no mood for celebration. Tony closed the bar at half past the hour and everyone made their way home. Only the police stayed out in the streets, gathered around their vans or heading back into the hills. In the morning the rain started up once again. Water coursed from the swollen peat beds quickly through the cloughs and down the stepped paths which fell from the edge of the moor. The river thickened with silt from the hills and plumed across the weirs. On the moor there were flags marking where the parents said they’d walked. The flags furled and snapped in the wind. At the visitor centre television trucks filled the car park and journalists started to gather. In the village hall the trestle tables were laid with green cups and saucers, the urns rising to the boil and the smell of bacon cobs drifting out into the rain. At the Hunter place there were voices coming from the barn conversion where the parents were staying, loud enough that the policeman outside could hear. Jess Hunter came over from the main house with a mug of tea. A helicopter flew in from the reservoirs, banking slowly along the river and passing over the weir and the quarry and the woods. The divers were going through the river again. A group of journalists waited for the shot, standing behind a cordon by the packhorse bridge, cameras aimed at the empty stretch of water, the breath clouding over their heads. In the lower field two of Jackson’s boys were kneeling beside a fallen ewe. There was a racket of camera shutters as the first diver appeared, the wetsuited head sleek and slow through the water. A second diver came round the bend, and a third. They took turns ducking through the arch in the bridge and then they were out of sight. The camera crews jerked their cameras from the tripods and began folding everything away. One of the Jackson boys bucked a quad bike across the field and told the journalists to move. The river ran empty and quick. The cement works was shut down to allow for a search. In a week the first snowdrops emerged along the verges past the cricket ground, while it seemed winter yet had a way to go. At the school in the staffroom the teachers kept their coats on and waited. Everything that might be said seemed like the wrong thing to say. The heating pipes made a rattling noise that most of them were used to and the mood in the room unstiffened. Miss Dale asked Ms French if her mother was any better, and Ms French outlined the ways in which she was not. There was a silence again in the room and the tapping of the radiator. Mrs Simpson came in and thanked them for the early start. They all said of course it wasn’t a problem. Under the circumstances. Mrs Simpson said the plan was to follow their lessons as normal but be ready to talk about the situation if the children asked. Which it seemed likely they would. There was a knock at the door and Jones the caretaker stepped in to say the heating would be working soon. Mrs Simpson asked him to make sure the yard was gritted. He gave her a look which suggested there’d been no need to ask. When the children were brought to school Mrs Simpson stood at the gate to welcome them. The parents lingered once the children had gone inside, watching the doors being locked. Some of them looked as though they could stand there all day. At the bus stop the older children waited for the bus to the secondary school in town. They were teenagers now. It was the first day back but they weren’t saying much. It was cold and they had hoods pulled tightly over their heads. All day they would be asked about the missing girl, as if they knew anything more than they’d heard on the news. Lynsey Smith said it was a safe bet Ms Bowman would ask if they needed to chat. She did finger-quotes around the word chat. Deepak said at least it would be a way of getting out of French. Sophie looked away, and saw Andrew waiting at the other bus stop with Irene, his mother. He was the same age as they were but he went to a special school. Their bus pulled up and James warned Liam not to make up any bullshit about Becky Shaw. It snowed and the snow settled thickly. There was a service at the church. The vicar asked the police to keep the media away. Anyone was welcome to attend, she said, but she wanted no photography or recording, no waving of notebooks. She wanted no spectacle made of a community caught in the agony of prayer. The wardens put out extra chairs, but people were still left standing along the aisles. The men who weren’t used to being in church stood with their hats bent into their hands, leaning against the ends of the pews. Some folded their arms, expectantly. The regulars offered them service books opened to the correct page. The vicar, Jane Hughes, said she hoped no one had come looking for answers. She said she hoped no one was asking for comfort. There is no comfort in the situation we find ourselves in today, she said. There is no comfort for the girl’s parents, or for the family members who have travelled to the village to support them. No comfort for the police officers who have been involved in the search. We can only trust that we might meet God among us in these times of trouble. Only ask that we not allow ourselves to be overcome by a grief which is not ours to indulge but instead be uplifted by faith and enabled to help that suffering family in whatever way we are called to do. She paused, and closed her eyes. She held out her hands in a gesture she hoped might resemble prayer. The men who had their arms folded kept them folded. The warden rang the bell three times and the sound carried out through the brightening morning and along the valley as far as the old quarry. At the end of the month the sun came out and the fields softened. The still air shook to the thump of melting rooftop snow. There were rumours and only rumours of where the parents might be now. They were beside themselves, it was said.

In February the police arranged a reconstruction, bringing actors over from Manchester. There had been no leads and they wanted to make a fresh appeal. The press were allowed up to the Hunter place and given instructions on what to film. The day was clear and edged with frost. The press officer asked for quiet. The door of the barn conversion opened and a couple in their early forties appeared, followed by a thirteen-year-old girl. The woman was slim, with blonde hair cropped neatly around her ears. She was wearing a dark-blue raincoat, and tight black jeans tucked into calf-length boots. The man was tall and angular, with wiry dark hair and a pair of black-framed glasses. He was wearing a charcoal-grey anorak, walking trousers, and black shoes. The girl looked tall for thirteen, with dark-blonde hair to her shoulders and a well-acted look of irritation. She was wearing black jeans, a white hooded top, a navy body-warmer, and canvas shoes. The three of them got into a silver car which was parked outside the barn conversion, and drove slowly down to the road. The photographers ran alongside. At the visitor centre the actors waited for the photographers to get into place before climbing out of the car and setting off towards the moor. The girl lagged behind and three times the actors playing her parents turned and called for her to hurry up and join them, and three times the girl responded by kicking at the ground and slowing a little more. The two adult actors held hands and walked ahead, and the girl quickened her pace. This sequence of events had been drawn from police interviews, it was later confirmed. The two adults kept walking until they’d gone over the first rise and dropped out of sight, and a few moments later the girl dropped out of sight as well. The cameras photographed the empty air. The press officer thanked everyone for coming. The three actors came back down the hill. Work started up at the cement works again and the roads were silvered with dust. The freight trains came shunting through the hill and around the long bend between the trees. A pale light moved slowly across the moor, catching in the flooded cloughs and ditches and sharpening until the clouds closed overhead. On the riverbank towards the weir at dusk a heron stood and watched the water. A slow fog came down from the hills overnight. At four in the morning Les Thompson was up and bringing the cows across the yard for milking. Later in the day the vicar was seen driving to the Hunter place. She was inside for an hour with the missing girl’s parents, and she didn’t speak to anyone when she left.

The investigation continued. By the end of March the weather had warmed and the parents were still at the Hunter place. There was no news. Jane Hughes went up to see them again one morning, and on her way past the Jackson place she saw Jackson and the boys out front of the lambing shed. They wore the looks of men who’ve been working hard but see no need to admit it. They had mugs of tea and cigarettes. The smell of breakfast being cooked came from inside the house. It was only when they saw the first children on their way to school that Will Jackson remembered he was due at his son’s mother’s house, to fetch the boy for school. The van wouldn’t start so he took the quad bike, and he knew before he got there that the boy’s mother wouldn’t be happy about this; that it would be one more thing for her to hold against him. When they got back to the school the gates were locked and Will had to call Jones out of the boilerhouse to let them in. He took the boy down to his class. Miss Carter accepted his apologies, and settled the boy down, and asked Will if he might think about the class coming to visit at lambing time. He told her they’d started lambing already and she looked surprised. She asked if there weren’t more to come and he said if she wanted to arrange a school trip she’d have to put something to his father in writing. It was the most she’d heard him say in weeks. When he got back to the yard his brothers were all inside the shed. They’d lost a ewe while he’d been gone. There was a meeting of the parish council. Brian Fletcher had trouble keeping people to the agenda, and eventually had to concede that it was difficult to pay mind to parking issues at a time like this. The meeting was adjourned. The police held a press conference in the function room at the Gladstone, and announced that they wanted to trace the driver of a red LDV Pilot van. The journalists asked if the driver was considered a suspect, and the detective in charge said they were keeping an open mind. The girl’s parents sat beside the detective and said nothing. In the afternoon the wind was high and the clouds blew quickly east. A blackbird dipped across Mr Wilson’s garden with a beakful of dead grass for a nest. There were springtails under the beech trees behind the Close, feeding on fragments of fallen leaves. At night from the hill the lights could be seen along the motorway, the red and the white flowing past one another and the clouds blowing through overhead. The missing girl had been looked for. She had been looked for all over. She had been looked for in the nettles growing up around the dead oak tree in Thompson’s yard. Paving slabs and sheets of ply had been lifted before people moved away through the gates. She had been looked for at the Hunter place, around the back of the barn conversions and in the carports and woodsheds and workshops, in the woodland and in the greenhouses and the walled gardens. She had been looked for at the cement works, the huge buildings moved through with unease, people nosing vaguely behind pallets and forklifts and through the staffroom and canteen, their hands and faces slick with white dust when they ghosted on down the road. At night there were dreams about where she might have gone. Dreams about her walking down from the moor, her clothes soaked and her skin almost blue. Dreams about being the first to reach her with a blanket and bring her safely home.

By April when the first swallows were seen the walkers were back on the hills. At the car park as they hoisted their packs they could be heard speculating about the girl. Which way she might have headed, how far she might have gone. North and she’d have been over the motorway by nightfall. East and the reservoirs would have been in her way. West and she’d have come to the edges, where the heather and soil frayed out into air and the gritstone rolled away from the hill. The weather she’d have been walking through. And in those shoes. There were so many places to fall. How was it she hadn’t been found, still, as the days got longer and the sun cut further into the valley and under the ash trees the first new ferns unfurled from the cold black soil. In the evenings the same pictures were shown on the news: an aerial shot of the search party strung across the moor; the divers moving through the water; the girl’s parents being driven away; the photograph of the girl. In the photograph she matched the description of what she’d been wearing and her face was half-turned away. It made it look as though she wanted to be somewhere else, people said. The girl’s mother was again visited by detectives. Sometimes there were new questions. At the school before the children arrived Miss Carter filled aluminium jugs from the dinner hall with water and arranged in them cut branches of willow tight with buds. On the allotments the purple broccoli was sprouting, the heads snapping off cleanly and too sweet on the tongue to get a decent harvest home. Surveyors were seen up on the land around the Stone Sisters. There were rumours they worked for a quarrying firm. The annual Spring Dance was almost cancelled, but when Irene suggested holding it in aid of a missing-children’s charity it became difficult for anyone to object. Sally Fletcher offered to help organise it, once Irene had looked pointedly at her for long enough. The divers roped up again, slipping into the reservoir while the herons sloped away overhead. The trees came back into leaf. A soft rain blew in smoky clouds across the fields.

At the butcher’s for May Day weekend there was a queue but nothing like there once would have been. Nothing like the queue Martin and Ruth needed to keep the shop going. Martin had been keeping this to himself, although it was becoming obvious and nobody asked. Irene was at the front of the queue telling everyone what she knew about the situation at the Hunters’. She did the cleaning there, and knew a thing or two. You can imagine what it’s like for the girl’s parents, she said. Having to watch us all down here just getting on with things. Ruth saying but surely the village couldn’t be expected to put life on hold. Austin Cooper came in with copies of the Valley Echo newsletter and laid them on the counter. Ruth wished him congratulations, and he looked confused for a moment before smiling and backing away towards the door. Irene watched him go, and asked if Su Cooper was expecting. Ruth said yes, at last, and from the back of the queue Gordon Jackson asked would there be any chance of getting served before the baby was born. A breakdown truck came slowly down the narrow street, with a red LDV Pilot van hoisted on the back and a police car following. The van was wrapped in clear plastic. Martin wiped his hands on his apron and stepped outside to watch it pass. Gordon came out with him and lit a cigarette. Martin nodded. That changes things, he said. Fucking breakthrough is that, Gordon said. The swallows returned in number, and could be seen flying in and out through the open doors of the lambing shed at the Jacksons’ and the cowsheds over at Thompson’s, and the outbuildings up on the Hunters’ land. The well-dressing committee had a difference of opinion about whether to dress the boards at all this year. Under the circumstances. There’d never been a year without a well dressing that anyone could remember. But there’d never been a year like this. In the end it was agreed to make the dressing but to keep the event low-key. There were sightings of the girl. She was seen by Irene, first, on the footbridge by the tea rooms, walking across to the other side. Quite alone she was, Irene said. Her young face turned half away and she wouldn’t look me in the eye. Gone before I got to her and I couldn’t see which way she went. I knew it was her. The police were told, and they went searching but they found nothing. There were lots of young families in the area that day, a police spokesperson said. But I know it was her, Irene said again. There was rain and the river was high and the hawthorn by the lower meadows came out foaming white. The cow parsley was thick along the footpaths and the shade deepened under the trees. Stock was moved higher up the hills and the tea rooms by the millpond opened for the year. In the shed Thompson’s men were working on the baler, making sure they’d be ready when the time came for the cut. The grass was high but the weather had been low for days. The rain on the roof was loud and steady. The reservoirs filled.

The van had been found behind storage buildings at Reservoir no. 7. The area had been searched in the days after the girl went missing, which meant the van had likely been placed there at a later date. Somebody may have seen that van being moved. Somebody may remember who was driving that van. Police were appealing for any witnesses to come forward, and were trying to trace the owner. The number-plates were false and the chassis number had been filed. The van had been removed from the scene and was subject to a thorough forensic examination. A creeping normality had begun to settle over these press conferences. The chairs were put out, the cameras set up in the usual place. There was a weariness to the proceedings. There was a volume to what was not being said. The room emptied and the chairs were stacked away. The floor was swept and the lights turned off and Tony went back to the bar. The wild fennel came up ferny bright in the shelter of the old quarry, and when Winnie went to pick some she found knotted condoms lying around yet again. It was the knotting that surprised her. A man in a charcoal-grey anorak with the hood up over his head was seen standing on the far side of Reservoir no. 8 for a long time, before turning and walking up into the trees. Martin Fowler went to the incident unit in the square, and told them what he knew about the driver of the red van. This was after a conversation with Tony. Martin had mentioned knowing the man’s name was Woods, and Tony asked why he hadn’t told the police already. Martin said this wasn’t the type of bloke you wanted to be talking to the police about. Tony was persuasive. There were gaps in the story Martin told the police about Woods. The gaps were to do with scrap metal, poaching, and red diesel. Woods was known to be involved in these enterprises, and Martin had been drawn in on occasion. The police didn’t want to know. They wanted to know where Woods was, and why the van had been hidden, and why the van had been seen at the time of the girl’s disappearance. Martin was reluctant but the information was obtained. Later in the pub he spoke tensely to Tony about repercussions. Woods is one of those as values discretion, he said. Man’s connected. Just so you know what you’ve got me into here. Martin, come on now. She were thirteen. Think on. You don’t know Woods though, Martin said. But if I did I’d have gone to the police quicker than you did, Tony told him. They watched each other while Martin drained his glass and walked out. By the evening there was a photo-fit on the news. The police said they were keen to eliminate the man from their enquiries. At the cricket pavilion the teenagers gathered to drink. Sophie Hunter had a bottle of wine she’d sneaked from her parents’ cellar that she said would be years before it was missed. They were a long time trying to open it, and in the end Liam used a screwdriver to force the cork down inside the bottle. They were talking about the girl again. James Broad said he wondered if they should say something after all. The others told him there was no point. They’d discussed it before. It wouldn’t make any difference, Lynsey said. She’s gone. It would only get the rest of us into all sorts of shit. You weren’t the one who was there, James said. It was just a mix-up, Deepak told him. You didn’t do anything wrong. They sat on the pavilion steps and drank the wine, and they asked each other if it was working yet. None of them quite knew how they were supposed to feel. When the wine was finished they’d long stopped talking. Sophie hid the bottle underneath the pavilion steps and they all went home. There was an unexpected warmth in the air and they stumbled against each other more than once. Their voices were louder than they realised.

The girl’s parents were seen near the visitor centre, walking up the hill with a pair of detectives. From a distance their movements looked stiff and slow. They took a wide detour around the area where she’d last been seen. The flags had been taken down and there was nothing to mark the spot. No one would know it, unless they knew. They followed the old bridleway which led past Black Bull Rocks towards the reservoirs. They were gone for most of the afternoon, and by the time they came back there were photographers waiting in the car park. It had been more than six months and still there was nothing. No footprints, no clothing, no persons of interest, no sightings on any CCTV. It was as though the ground had just opened up and swallowed her whole. Journalists used this phrase by way of metaphor or hyperbole; people in the village knew it as a thing that could happen. Questions were asked about how much longer the parents would stay. The Hunters had cancelled all the bookings in the barn conversions, but it wasn’t known how long that could go on. Little was seen of them, and if the Hunters knew anything they weren’t passing it on. It was known that Reverend Hughes was visiting. More flowers and candles were left at the visitor centre, and the question of what to do with them was broached. It was understood that the girl’s father had been seen out, walking. It wasn’t known what he was trying to achieve. Irene said he was taking it badly, and was asked what the hell other way she’d imagined him taking it. Woods was found working security on a building site in Manchester. He was arrested and questioned at length. There was nothing to link him to the missing girl, and he had an alibi for the night in question. It hadn’t been his van that was seen, as it turned out. He was released, and immediately rearrested on a number of other charges relating to theft and handling. In the hay meadow south of the church there were groups of wild pheasants moving through the grass, the mothers steering their young with nips and cries, whole groups scattering at the slightest noise. Cathy Harris walked around the edge of the meadow and crossed the river with Mr Wilson’s dog. As she entered the woods she let the dog off the lead and squeezed between the gapstone stile. People wanted the girl to come back, so she could tell them where she’d been. There were too many ways she could have disappeared, and they were thought about, often. She could have run down from the hill and a man could have stopped to offer her a lift, and taken her away, and buried her body in a dense thicket of trees beside a motorway junction a hundred miles to the north where she would still be lying now in the cold wet ground. There were dreams about her walking home. Walking beside the motorway, walking across the moor, walking up out of one of the reservoirs, rising from the dark grey water with her hair streaming and her clothes draped with long green weeds.

The last days of August were heavy with heat and anything that had to move moved slow. At the allotments the beds were bursting with beans and courgettes, the plants sprawling over the pathways. The bees stumbled fatly between the flowers and the slugs gorged. The first lambs were ready to sell and Jackson’s boys were busy making selections and loading them into the trailer. At the cricket ground the annual game against Cardwell was lost. The girl’s mother came to the church from time to time. She arrived just before the service began, escorted by the vicar to a seat in the side aisle which was kept free for her, and left during the closing hymn. There was an arrangement. Jess Hunter sometimes waited for her in the car outside. People understood they were to leave her be. When it came to sharing the peace she shook hands briefly, with a smile that some said seemed defensive and others took as grateful. Late in the summer the teenagers held their own search party. It was James’s idea. They could walk up over the moors, go as far as Reservoir no. 13, check all the places they knew about that the police wouldn’t have thought of. If they found anything they’d be on the news. Liam said they could take some cans, make it a party. A search party. Lynsey said it was messed up making a joke about it. They headed out early, Liam and James and Deepak, Sophie and Lynsey, each telling their parents something different, meeting at the car park by the allotments and cutting up through the beech wood while the morning air was still cool. They had ideas about what had happened to Becky, based on what they knew about her, and what they thought themselves capable of in the same situation, and on what they knew of the landscape. They’d seen her the previous summer, when the family had stayed at the Hunter place for a fortnight, and they’d spent more time with her than people seemed to know. It made them feel involved. By midday their pace had faltered in the heat and they stopped at a fork in the tracks. At the bottom of the hill there was a ruined barn where Jackson stored feed and equipment. They were thirsty and they shared the only two cans of lager they’d managed to get hold of. There were crickets in the heather and a beetle moving on Lynsey’s hand. The sheep pushed in and out of the barn, looking for shade. Did they search that place? Deepak asked. Obviously, Liam said. I searched it myself. I borrowed one of those thermal-imaging cameras; nothing. Deepak gave him the standard slap for bullshitting. They searched everywhere, said James; so what are we doing? No one answered. Lynsey and Sophie had their eyes closed already, and in the midday sun Sophie’s skin was starting to burn. There were butterflies feeding on the heather. An aeroplane went overhead. What time is it? asked Liam. About twelve, James said, his eyes closed, guessing. The heather sprang firmly beneath him. They were all lying closer to each other than they were used to. Someone’s stomach gurgled and no one acknowledged. There was a distant sound of traffic, and farm machinery. They slept. At some point James saw a man walking up the path towards them, poking at the heather with a stick, and as he came past he didn’t seem to see the five of them lying there. He was wearing a charcoal-grey anorak. James stood up and the two of them nodded, and James meant to say he was sorry about the man’s daughter but all that came out was sorry. The man nodded again and kept walking. Later James wondered if this had happened at all. It would have been too hot to wear an anorak. In the afternoon the five of them made it to the top of the hill overlooking Reservoir no. 8, and it turned out that Liam had brought vodka. They found a mine entrance they hadn’t seen before and went in with torches, scratching a line in the mud behind them and putting the wind up each other. When she was very scared Lynsey grabbed on to Deepak’s arm. By the time they came out again it was dark, and in their confusion they went down the wrong side of the hill. When they finally got home they were in more trouble than they thought possible. Their parents were furious and held them close, and there were police officers waiting to have words.

Su Cooper redecorated the small bedroom in their flat above the converted stables, ready for the twins. Austin had offered to help, but she’d told him he had too much on with the Echo and she wanted to just get it done. He’d asked if there was something she meant by this. She hung animal-print curtains at the windows, and assembled the second cot more easily than the first, and fixed hooks in the ceiling to hang mobiles from. She folded the tiny white clothes into the drawers, and stacked nappies on top of the wardrobe, and arranged toys along a shelf. It was a small room, but everything the babies would need seemed to fit. It was a small flat. The space had once been sleeping quarters for the stable lads. It had never been meant for a family to live in. But Su and Austin had loved it since they’d first moved in, and they were determined to make it work. She’d bought storage baskets which slid neatly beneath both cots. She knew there was a danger in preparing the room so thoroughly, so soon. There were people who had superstitions about this kind of thing. She knew her mother wouldn’t approve. But she wanted it done. She wanted to be ready. She didn’t yet know people well enough to assume they would help. She didn’t know how Austin would rise to the challenge. She suspected he might not. She suspected he was the kind of man who would gaze lovingly at his infant without realising it needed a nappy change, or another feed. He would provide for them, she knew. She had waited until she was sure of that. But he would have no idea what to do. This she was prepared for. He was a sentimental man, and, when it came to anything besides the business of writing and editing and printing, completely unpractical. She wound the babies’ mobiles, and listened to the whirring tunes, watching the snails and frogs turning circles in the sunlight. She’d closed the door behind her before the music had stopped. The badgers in the beech wood fed quickly, laying down fat for the winter ahead. They moved through the leaf litter in a snuffling, bumping pack, turning up earthworms and fallen berries. Their coats were thickening. The river turned over beneath the packhorse bridge and ran on towards the millpond weir.

The clocks went back and the nights overtook the short days. The teenagers walked home from the bus stop in the dark. A man fitting the missing girl’s father’s description was seen walking further and further away from the village; at the far side of Ashbrook Forest, past the last of the thirteen reservoirs. There were reports of a man in a charcoal-grey anorak walking on the hard shoulder of the motorway. The bracken was rusting in swathes across the hill. There were dreams about the missing girl being found face-down in pools of water, and dreams about her being driven safely away. Mischief Night passed and it wasn’t what it had been in recent years. No one quite had the spirit, besides whoever filled the telephone box with balloons. Jackson’s boys brought the flock down to the bye field and spent the day clipping around the tails, getting ready for tupping. At the school the lights were seen on early, and there was black smoke rising from the boilerhouse. In the staffroom Miss Carter was running through the week’s lesson plans with Mrs Simpson. When they were done Mrs Simpson asked Miss Carter how she was settling in. Miss Carter nodded quickly and said it was fine, it was only that she was finding it hard to get to know people. Mrs Simpson laughed and said she knew what Miss Carter meant, and had she tried marking up the register with little portraits to jog her memory? Miss Carter said she hadn’t meant the children. I thought you meant settling into the area, she said. Mrs Simpson apologised and said that to avoid confusion Miss Carter should know she’d never ask anything about a teacher’s private life. We’re only worried about what happens within these gates, she said. At the reservoirs the dams were inspected again, and areas of concern were noted. In the dusk the woodpigeons gathered to roost.

In November Austin Cooper and his wife came home with twins, and carried them up the steps to their flat above the converted stables. When he turned to close the door he stood on the threshold for a moment, looking down at the street, as if expecting or perhaps even hearing applause. It would have been deserved, was his feeling. He’d never imagined finding the kind of deep friendship he’d found with Su, and ten years later the twins’ arrival was the kind of extra he’d long trained himself not to expect. At some point, in some life, he must have done something right. Irene saw him closing the door, saw the deep glowing light from their windows, and remembered bringing her own Andrew home some fourteen years before. But when she got to the Gladstone and told people there, all anyone could say was sweet buggering hell, those steps; how’s she going to get a twin buggy up and down those steps? Austin didn’t sleep that first night. He made hot drinks for Su while she phoned her parents and friends and told them the news all over again, and later he walked in and out of the bedroom to look at the rest of his family sleeping, and finally he lay down beside Su and listened to the different sounds of breathing in the room: Su’s long and measured; the twins’ fast and shallow, as though they’d only just come up for air. In the night there was crying and waking and feeding and changing, but amongst it all there were moments when the breathing was the only sound in the room and Austin felt he had only to stay awake to keep them safe. That this was the only thing required of him now. In the evening when Su had been on the phone to her parents he’d tried to pick out some of what she said. He knew the words for mother and father and children, but beyond that he was lost. He thought he knew the word for happy, but Su spoke so quickly to her parents that he could never be quite sure. He assumed she was happy. Mostly she just seemed tired. It was so long they’d been hoping for this; she’d been trying so hard and now all the strain in her body had nowhere useful to go. It looked a comfortable sort of tiredness, a relief. He could tell already, from the way she held the twins and the way she moved around them, or leant across and made small adjustments while he was holding them, that she knew exactly what she needed to do. And that she knew without even being surprised. It was one of the things that kept delighting him about Su, this equanimity. As though she’d known all along that life would be like this. The very first night they’d spent together, the look on her face in the morning had seemed to say well, now, of course this has happened. What else did you expect? Early in the morning the lights were seen on downstairs, where Austin had converted the stables to an office for the Valley Echo. The white office lighting was stark against the dawn and the dome of his head was just visible through the window as he worked on the last few pages of the next issue, adding something to the announcements column while being careful not to exploit his position. And when the issue appeared through letterboxes and on shop counters a week later there was only this for the few who didn’t already know: Su Lin Cooper and Austin Cooper announce the safe arrival of their twin sons, Han Lee Lin and Lu Sam Lin, and thank everyone for their kind wishes.

At the school the lights were seen on early in the hall. Preparations were being made for the Christmas assembly. Jones had cut holly and fir from the woods, and Mrs Simpson was on her knees arranging it around the nativity scene. Miss Carter asked Jones to hold the bottom of the ladder while she took some tinsel up. Ms French couldn’t help noticing, glancing across from her half-finished wall display of shepherds and cotton-wool sheep, that Miss Carter was wearing a skirt. Also that Jones was not keeping his eyes down. She didn’t like to interfere but she thought it best to ask Jones to put the chairs out instead. When Miss Carter looked down to see no one holding the ladder she stood very still, and looked at the wall in front of her, and tried not to think about how recently Jones had polished the floor. She found herself thinking about Tom Jackson’s father, Will, and about him not seeming the type to wander away from a ladder like that. She held on tight. There were carols in the church with candles and the smell of cut yew and holly. Olivia Hunter sang a solo verse of ‘Silent Night’. She was eight years old and blithely confident. Her voice trembled a little on all is calm, all is bright, and at the end of the verse she beamed as she waited for the congregation to join in. At the village hall the production of Jack and the Beanstalk was finally staged. The costumes and scenery had all been kept from the year before, and most people had been happy to keep the same parts. The hall was full on the night of the show. Lynsey Smith had shot up over the year, and was looking less boyish than when she’d been cast. But she climbed up the beanstalk with just the right recklessness, and when she disappeared into the curtained rafters Cathy Harris, playing Jack’s mother, did a good job of looking bereft. Afterwards the chairs were cleared and the bar opened and trays of mince pies brought out. Richard Clark was seen in the audience for the first time in years. He’d been staying with his mother for a few days. He hadn’t got there until his sisters had been and gone, which his mother was used to now, and he was out of the country before the year was through. He was a busy man. Some years she was glad to see him at all. He lived out of a suitcase, it seemed, and this was no way to live for as long as he had done. They didn’t really sit down and have a conversation the whole time he was there, and when he left for the airport she didn’t even know where he was headed. He was a consultant, was as much as she knew. There seemed to be a new lady friend but he hadn’t mentioned a name. When he was gone she changed the sheets on the bed and opened a window to air the room and the sound of church bells came into the house. They were holding another service to mark the year since the girl’s disappearance. There were no extra chairs this time, and no one left standing at the back of the church. Jane Hughes said many of the same things she had said the year before. And still we have no answers, and all we can do is wait. She closed her eyes and held out her hands and let the silence settle. The missing girl’s name was Rebecca, or Becky, or Bex. She had been thirteen at the time of her disappearance. She’d been wearing a white hooded top with a navy-blue body-warmer, black jeans, and canvas shoes. She would be taller than five feet now, and her hair may have altered in both style and colour. The investigation remained active, a police spokesperson confirmed. The girl’s mother was seen on the side of the moor, walking the same paths and tracks she’d always walked. There was more rain on the way, or worse. A cold wind blew shadows across the reservoirs and on the higher ground a flurry of thin snow whirled against the tops of the trees. The goldcrests fed busily deep in the branches of the churchyard yew.

2. (#uc7f1c705-477d-5051-bb13-cdc16a96a34f)

At midnight when the year turned there were fireworks going up from the towns beyond the valley but they were too far off for the sound to carry to the few who’d come out to watch. The dance at the village hall went ahead, and was enjoyed by those who attended. A year was long enough, they thought. The streets were quiet and there were no police now but in the sharp night air it still felt recent. Will Jackson was seen with the teacher from his son’s class at school. The snow came down thickly overnight and for a time it seemed the road might be closed. By noon the sun was out and the drains were gulping meltwater from the road. A blackbird inched under the hedge in Mrs Clark’s garden, poking around in the wet leaf litter for something to eat. In the eaves of the church the bats were folded deeply into hibernation and the air around them was still. There were heavy rains for a week that brought flooding down the river. Debris piled up against the footbridge by the tea rooms until the weight of it swept the footbridge away. After the storm the river keeper dragged out what was left and fenced the bridge off at either end. The river keeper worked for the Culshaw Estate, who owned the fishing rights, but there was always disagreement over who was responsible for the bridges and paths. The family who lived in Culshaw Hall were no longer Culshaws, and were generally felt to be out of their depth. It was a struggle to keep the building in one piece, never mind manage all the land. Most of their money went on the keepers, since shooting and fishing was all that brought in an income. The rest of it went on solicitors, to prove they had no obligation to pay for things the Culshaws once would have done. The sound of the reservoirs overtopping the dams for the first time in years was torrential and constant and swept through the valley. All month the church services were taken by visiting preachers and no one seemed to know where the vicar had gone. The churchwarden said she was on holiday, but this was understood not to mean that she’d gone away. The word stress was used, and when she came back no more was said. At the Hunter place there was a feeling of life being on hold. The bookings in the barn conversions had been cancelled for another year, and the place was quiet. Jess Hunter hadn’t become friends with the girl’s mother in the way she’d thought she might. It had become clear she wanted to stay around for the long term, even now her husband was mostly back in London, and Jess had tried to include her in family life. But perhaps having Sophie and Olivia around was difficult for her. They’d shared meals and sometimes a drink, but the woman was very closed. It was unclear how to respond. Jess prided herself on being a woman who knew how to get people to open up. Her daughters told her everything, which was more than could be said for her husband. He was away again this month, and Jess had only half an idea what for. Some high-level policy forum. Something about land management. The man was impossibly vague. She stood in the kitchen looking out across the courtyard towards the barn conversions. The girl’s mother was on her doorstep, smoking a cigarette. Jess wondered if she could see into the kitchen from there. In the village questions were being asked about how long she would stay. People wanted the girl found so this could all be over. She might have got into one of the caves that burrowed deep under the hill. She might have curled up in a corner and still be down there now.

On Shrove Tuesday Miss Carter organised a pancake race in the school playground, once Jones had swept the snow and put down grit. There was a disagreement about how often the runners were supposed to flip their pancakes, and some of the children became distressed. Lucy Williamson had to be taken home with a bruised foot. Jackson’s boys came down the road past the school and Simon asked Will if he wasn’t going to drop in there with a Valentine’s card. Will said he’d no idea what they were talking about and then told them they’d best keep quiet because there was nothing to it. It was nothing serious. If people start talking it’ll only complicate things with the boy’s mother, he said. It wasn’t clear when he’d started calling her the boy’s mother instead of the girlfriend, or Claire. Probably about the time she went back to her mum’s house. Which was meant to have been temporary but these things have a way of settling. His brothers were still laughing about his denials when they got down to the lower field and started hauling feed off the trailer. Will told them if they didn’t knock it off he’d tell Jackson about the red diesel. They told him he wouldn’t but they quietened down. The ewes gathered about as they tipped out the feed, knocking heavily into their legs. The brothers worked their way around, inspecting the fleeces and feet and arses and ears, and an easy concentration came suddenly over them as though there’d been no joking at all. They handled the animals firmly, quickly, muttering commentary to each other, and if their mother had happened to pass in the lane she would have seen much of their father in the way they held themselves and the way their young bodies moved under the heavy sky. In the afternoon the slush froze glassily again and was covered with another layer of late-falling snow. The night was cold. In the morning on the far side of the river Les Thompson led his herd across the yard to the milking parlour while the sky was still thick above the trees. The air was soon steaming with the press of bodies, Les moving among them while they got themselves into line. He was a big man, and the cows shifted easily to let him through. Dawn was a way off yet and wet when it arrived. Jackson had a stroke and was taken to hospital and for weeks it was assumed he wouldn’t be coming home.

In the beech wood the foxes gave birth, earthed down in the dark and wet with pain, the blind cubs pressing against their mothers for warmth. The dog foxes went out fetching food. The primroses yellowed up in the woods and along the road. The reservoirs were a gleaming silver-grey, scuffed by the wind and lapping against the breakwater shores. In the evening a single runner came silently down the moor, steady and white against the darkening hill. Gordon Jackson drove back from a stock sale and saw a man by the side of the road, his arm held out as though asking for help. He wasn’t wearing the charcoal-grey coat but it looked like the missing girl’s father. He stopped and asked if the man needed a lift. The man looked at Gordon and didn’t speak. At the parish council there were more apologies recorded than there were people in the room, and Brian Fletcher was minded to adjourn. But a decision needed reaching on the proposed public conveniences so they went ahead. There were hard winds in the evenings and the streetlights shook in the square. Late in the month Miss Carter brought her class to the Jacksons’ farm for the lambing. They crossed the road in pairs and pressed up against the line of hurdles in the open doorway of the lambing shed. Will had said he’d do the talking, and was waiting for them with the worst of the blood wiped from his overalls. His brothers weren’t interested, and had all found something to do at the far end of the shed. Miss Carter thanked him again for letting them visit, and then Will found he didn’t really know what to say. Most of the children had grown up in the area and knew more about lambing than Miss Carter. He asked her where she wanted him to start, and she asked whether any lambs had been born overnight. Just three, he said. We don’t do much. We let the ewes get on with it as best we can. Check them over once the mother’s finished cleaning them up, put a tag on, make sure they’ve started feeding okay. She asked if they could see any of the newborn lambs, and before he could answer he heard Gordon saying no from the far end of the shed. Will told her it was important not to move them away from their mothers in the first few days. She looked disappointed. She asked him to explain what would happen over the next weeks and months, and he talked about how soon they’d be out on the grass, which ewes had stayed out to lamb, the movement of the flock to ensure they had the best grass, the selection of the first lambs for processing towards the end of the summer. Processing? she asked. He didn’t understand the question. One of the girls pulled at Miss Carter’s sleeve and explained what processing was. Some of the boys were already picking up sheep pellets and flicking them at each other. Miss Carter handed out clipboards and asked them all to draw pictures and while they were busy she asked Will if he was planning to go to the Spring Dance at the village hall. The other teachers are talking about going, she said. Will said he hadn’t really thought about it. He’d have to see what work was on. But those things are okay usually. Could be a good crack, he said. If you were thinking of asking I might give it some thought, she said. There was a look on her face that gave him something to think about. They heard the noise of a ewe in distress, and Gordon telling Will to scrub up if he was done. Will said he’d better get on. He said she might want to take the children back now. She told him she might see him at the dance. Right you are, he said.

In his studio Geoff Simmons washed his hands at the deep stone sink, the clear water dissolving the clay and running in a milky stream down the plughole and into the trap beneath. The wet pots on the tray were drying off and the kiln was just beginning to warm. In the hedge outside Mr Wilson’s window a blackbird waited on its grassy bowl of blue-green eggs as the chicks chipped away at the shells. On the television there were pictures of floods across northern Europe: men in waterproofs pulling dinghies through the streets, collapsed bridges, drowned livestock. When the tea rooms opened for the season the footbridge hadn’t yet been rebuilt. The parish council wrote to the Culshaw Hall Estate as a matter of urgency, and the estate said it was the job of the National Park. The National Park disagreed. The river keeper said he could only do what he was asked. The first small tortoiseshells began mating, flying after each other above the nettle beds until the females settled somewhere out of sight and waited for the males to follow. The National Park ranger from the visitor centre spent an enjoyable hour watching them, and making a record, and when he got back to the office he filed it carefully away. At Reservoir no. 11, the maintenance team went along the crest of the dam, looking for cracks in the surface or sinkholes. There were molehills on the grass bank to deal with. Along the river at dusk there were bats moving in number, coming down from their roosts to take the insects rising from the water. They moved in deft quietness and were gone by the time they were seen. The Spring Dance ended early when a fight between Liam Hooper and one of the boys from Cardwell spilled back in through the fire doors. It was soon broken up but by then there’d been damage and the Cardwell boys were asked to leave. Outside in the car park Will Jackson was again seen with Miss Carter from the school.

Martin Fowler was working behind the counter in the butcher’s shop when the man from the bank came in and said it was time. You’re talking about what now? Martin asked. He gave the man the kind of level stare that had once been enough to sort things. The man from the bank had some files under his arm and he told Martin he would need the keys. There were two more men waiting at the door. Larger, these two. That’s not going to happen, Martin said. There was a chain-metal rattle behind him and Ruth came through from the back, asking what was going on. The man from the bank repeated himself. But we’ve had no correspondence on this, Ruth said; nothing. She felt Martin go slack beside her, and the man from the bank looked sympathetic. All due process has been followed, he said. The documents were sent by recorded delivery, and signed for. It was the sympathy on his face riled her the most. There was no call for sympathy. She scooped the money from the till while his back was turned, and ushered Martin out with what little dignity she could find in him. The man from the bank had a new lock fitted by lunchtime, and notices put in the window. And that was that. They went home and they sat and she couldn’t even find the energy to ask Martin for some kind of a bloody explanation. The sound of Sean Hooper dressing stone came from across the river, a steady clipped chime moving a beat behind the fall of his arm. The swallows were busy in and out of the barns. The well-dressing boards were brought out of storage and taken down to the river to be soaked. The girl’s mother was still at the Hunter place and it was known that Jane Hughes visited sometimes. She was never there long, and no one thought to ask how the visits went. She’d have said nothing, of course. Sometimes she thought she’d like to be asked, even if only by her husband or by one of her colleagues in the wider church. But this was the job. She parked the car and went inside and a short time later she came out. The girl had been looked for. She’d been looked for at each of the reservoirs, around the breakwater rocks on the shore and up through the treeline and in all the boarded-up buildings and sheds. She could have fallen into the water and drowned. She could have been trapped in some kind of culvert or sluice deep under there. The divers had found nothing. People wanted to know. People felt involved.

When Jackson came home he was taken in a carry-chair from the ambulance to the motorised bed which had been installed in the front room. There’d been plenty of preparations to get to this point, but when the ambulance crew left Maisie felt a wave of panic at everything that had to be done. Gordon and Alex had been busy getting the room ready, but it was hard to tell whether Jackson was pleased. The weakness in his face had improved enough that he was now just about able to speak, but his fixed expression made emotions impossible to read. The bed had been turned to the window so he could see out down the street towards the church. There was a table to one side set with bedpans and medications, and a radio placed near the bed. There would be care-workers coming in, and nurses, and a physiotherapist, but there was still a long list of jobs they would need to do for him themselves. There was a row on the first evening when he made a fuss about being fed. There’d been no objection when it was nurses at the hospital but from his own wife it was too much. He managed to spill a bowl of soup with just a swift angry turn of his head, and when Maisie was done clearing up she asked Gordon to have a word. He didn’t take long. If you’ll not let us feed you you’ll be dead in a week so think on, he said. In the morning Jackson took a bowl of scrambled eggs. Through the window he could just see Les Thompson walking his fields across the river, checking on the ripening grass. The heads would be forming and the leaves falling back. The cut was due. They would need a dry period soon if they were to get it in. There was talk about the survey stakes which had been found near the Stone Sisters. Cooper made enquiries at the planning office and ran a story in the Echo about plans for another quarry. The fieldfares were away in Scandinavia, building nests and laying eggs. A group of travellers moved into the old quarry down by the main road. Tony asked Martin if he’d ever heard anything more from Woods, and Martin said not. Tony asked if he’d not been a bit paranoid about the whole thing, and since it was almost a year now Martin admitted that might be the case. It was water under the bridge, he said.

On the last day of term James and Liam and Deepak skipped school and took their bikes up the track above Reservoir no. 3. They had to push them most of the way up the hill. There was loose shale and deep ruts and the going was slow. At the top they took drinks and crisps from their backpacks. My dad’s been offered a job in Newcastle, Deepak said. Newcastle, said James; how come? Newcastle’s not bad, said Liam. I’ve been there. My uncle runs a sports shop there. I was helping in the shop once and Alan Shearer came in looking for football boots. He’s been looking for a job for a while, Deepak said. It’s my mum’s idea. He was well fussy about the boots, said Liam. Your mum wants to move to Newcastle? Not really. She just wants to move somewhere else. Doesn’t she like it here? She’s been a bit weird about living here, ever since Becky, Deepak said. Funny thing about Alan Shearer, right, is he’s got really tiny feet? Liam, shut up. Your uncle lives in Cardwell. No, that’s my other uncle. You are so full of shit. Your mum’s full of shit. James leant across and smacked the bag of crisps from Liam’s hand. Liam scrambled on to his bike and set off down the hill. They watched him bump and skid down the track, the dust rising behind him. Wasn’t it your mum’s idea to move out here in the first place? Yeah. But she says it’s changed now. You know. She says she wants to be somewhere closer to family. You got family in Newcastle? James asked. No, but. Is he going to take the job? I don’t know. I don’t think he wants to. But Mum’s really unhappy. She keeps going on about it. Newcastle, fucking hell, James said. Yeah. They finished their crisps. James put on his backpack and picked up his bike. Are we doing this? Liam was almost at the bottom of the hill. He hadn’t fallen yet. Deepak got on his bike, and looked at James. That summer. Did you actually get off with her, with Becky? James looked at him. I mean, no, not really, he said. Fuck it, Deepak; did you? No, Deepak said. I wanted to though. Are we riding down this hill or just talking about it or what? James said. Shut up about it. Let’s go. They rattled down the track, their heads full of the noise of their bikes skidding in the ruts. At the bottom of the hill they came past Will Jackson, who was late collecting his boy from school. It was the last day of term and when he got to the classroom the other children had gone. He thought it might be a good moment to have a word with Miss Carter. Tom was full of questions about what they would do when they got home, and Miss Carter was busy clearing up, and so as he walked with Tom down the corridor it was now getting on for three months that nothing had been said. Probably there was nothing to say. She had texted him but he’d asked her not to. He hadn’t wanted any complications. He wondered if complication had been the wrong word to use. Could be she would have taken offence. It wasn’t always easy to know. He wondered what she’d done with his underwear; if she was saving it or if she would have thrown it away. It would have been no trouble to drop it in the post, but she hadn’t. She’d asked him for the loan in the morning, pulling on the pair of blue-and-white-striped jockey shorts that looked a lot better on her than they’d ever looked on him. Snug, would be a word. Not something he’d heard discussed, how good a woman could look in a man’s underwear. But there she’d been, standing at the foot of his bed, those blue and white stripes bending every which way, a mug of tea in each hand and a look on her face enough to blow anyone’s fusebox. And later when she’d slipped out of the house, going the back way through the garden and into the woods so as not to be seen, he’d thought for a moment it could have been the start of something or other. The taste of her as he sat with a fresh mug of tea and didn’t drink it. Will Jackson and Miss Carter from the school: it had a good sound but people would talk. And the boy’s mother would turn it against him. There was no need for that. He could go elsewhere. But there was the give of the mattress beneath him as she’d clambered back into the bed. The force of her. He’d had to keep from bursting out the back door and chasing her down in the woods. And after those texts there’d been nothing. An awkward silence. A getting on with things. But she still had his underwear, and he thought perhaps that meant there was something to come. He should talk to her.

The National Park ranger, Graham Thorpe, organised a Butterfly Safari, and despite plenty of interest Sally Fletcher was the only one to attend. He muttered something about her probably having something better to do with her Sunday, but she told him she was keen. They walked along the river and through the quarries and up the hill behind Reservoir no. 8, and he showed her where to look for skippers, various fritillaries, coppers, tortoiseshells, and blues. They found half a dozen species but he seemed to be talking about two dozen more, describing their lifecycles, migrations, feeding habits, mating styles. He’d become very talkative, and Sally was enthralled. She’d had no idea there was so much to it. The two hours were over far too soon, and when she had dinner with Brian that evening she realised she didn’t want to tell him anything about it. This would just be her thing now. At the edge of the beech wood and in the walls along the road the foxgloves were tall, and the bees crept in and out of the bright thimbled flowers. On a fence-post by the road a buzzard waited. The cricket team went over to Cardwell and although rain took out most of the day there were enough overs left for Cardwell to win. The bilberries came out on the heath beyond the Stone Sisters, and on the second Sunday in August a group went up from the village to pick them. The fruits grew sparsely and there was a need to keep moving and stooping across the ground. It felt less like a harvest than a search. The grouse shooting started. In the pens at the edge of the Culshaw Estate the pheasants could be seen ducking and scattering at the slightest noise. The days were long and still. There was a guilt in just walking the hills with the sun blazing down and some people worked harder than others to not let that guilt keep them away. It helped to avoid the path past the Hunter place, was a feeling. The girl’s mother was still there. She was rarely seen but her presence was felt. The path climbing up round the back of the barn conversions had thickened with grasses, with so few feet trampling it down. The occasional photographer still crept up there in the early dew but they were soon spotted and brought down, their trousers wet with seed-heads and burrs. Always men, these ones. Nothing to arrest them for. It was usually Stuart Hunter who found them. He wasn’t a man for confrontation but on this he would give no ground. They were never told twice. Jess Hunter wondered where he found this strength of purpose when it was often otherwise lacking. She wondered if he felt something towards the girl’s mother beyond the responsibilities of a host. It seemed unlikely. He wasn’t a man for something like that. Once he’d sent them away he would come back into the house pacing and breathless, and she sometimes had to hold him to calm him down. It reminded her of the adrenalised state he would get into after rowing events, at university. Sometimes the energy of it would carry them into the bedroom; but more often it would send him charging into his work, hammering through a day of spreadsheets and phone calls and heated conversations with staff. And still beyond the Hunter place there were reminders of the girl’s disappearance all over the hill: the flowers at the visitor centre, the new fencing around the mineshafts, the barking of dogs along the road. Most people stayed away altogether, and took their walking to the reservoirs or the edge of the quarry or further to the deep limestone dales in the south where the butterflies rose like ash on the breeze and the ice-cream vans still appeared.

The summer had been low with cloud but in September the skies cleared and the days were berry-bright and the mud hardened into ridges in the lanes. At the allotments the main crop of potatoes was lifted, the black earth turned over and the fat yellow tubers tumbling into the light. It was Irene’s turn to put together the Harvest Festival display at the church, so she and Winnie spent a week making sheaves of wheat at Irene’s dining-room table. They’d been friends since Irene had first come to the village, but had only really spent time together like this since Ted’s death seven years previously. Winnie still had the better eye for this type of thing. She was a few years older than Irene, was part of it. And she’d grown up here, whereas Irene had always kept a touch of the town about her. There was concentration in Winnie as well, which Irene was still trying to learn. Sometimes when she was with Winnie she felt like she might be talking too much. But there was so often just one more thing to say. When they were done they carried the arrangements down to the church, where they served as centrepieces to draw the eye away from the clutter of tins and packets the schoolchildren brought in, and people said it was one of the finest displays seen in years. The river slipped beneath the packhorse bridge and turned slow eddies along the shore. There were carers coming in to see Jackson once a day, washing and turning him and encouraging him out of bed. He could feed himself now, and his speech was better, but it still took the two of them just to hold him upright while he stood on his pale hairless legs. They were a help while they were there, but the rest of the time it was Maisie who had to fetch and empty his bedpans, and bring his food, and help him change into fresh pyjamas. She’d been told that if his mobility was going to improve it would mostly happen during these first months, and that he needed to be ready for physiotherapy as soon as it became available. Watching the way he worked the bed controls, the motors softly whining as it tilted up and down, she wasn’t convinced he would have the fight. The boys were building a sun room at the back of the house, so that he’d have somewhere comfortable to spend the days and wouldn’t just waste away in bed. It was taking some building. There were teenagers walking through the field behind the house, heading out to the beech wood for drinking no doubt. Will Jackson recognised the voice of the Broad boy, and the stonemason’s son, Liam Hooper. Girls as well. In the beech wood Deepak and the others settled into the den they’d built three years before. His family were moving out the next day. They’d brought blankets and Liam was lighting a fire. The cider was almost gone. The conversation had faltered. Lynsey and Sophie were sitting on a log with a blanket around their shoulders and James could see something in their eyes. They looked as though they had something to say and no intention of saying it out loud. They seemed pleased with themselves, and uncertain. James watched them and they were looking at Deepak. Liam was crouched by the fire, blowing into the kindling. The girls stood up and told Deepak they had a leaving present for him. Deepak looked pleased and confused. What is it? It’s over here, Sophie said. Follow us. They strode away into the trees and Deepak looked back at James, shrugging. Liam sat up from the fire. Probably making him a virgin, Liam said. James laughed at him. You’ve got it back to front, he said. Liam blew into the fire again. Whatever, he said. Your mum gets it back to front. Lynsey came back first and she wouldn’t look either of them in the eye. She pushed Liam out of the way and got the fire going properly. She kept touching her lips. Sophie was gone for longer and when she came back the two girls walked away quickly, holding hands. Deepak came through the trees and crouched by the fire and in the wavering light his eyes were dazed. The other two were looking at him. He grinned. You’re not getting any off me so think on, he said, laughing as they both rolled him over on the ground. In the morning the embers were still smoking when the removal lorry arrived.

In October the missing girl’s mother was seen up at the Hunter place, loading a van with boxes and bags, including two large sacks of what Jess Hunter later told people were all the sympathy cards she’d been sent. The understanding was that she might not be seen again. There was embracing on the driveway with Jess and Stuart Hunter, and with Jane Hughes who had come along to see her off. The man who was with her started the engine of the small white van and they bumped their way down the track. The gate opened automatically as they approached, and they were out of sight before it jerked slowly closed and clanged against the frame. Jane Hughes talked to the Hunters for a few minutes more before driving down the track herself. On her way through the village she called in to see Jackson. Maisie had told her neither of them held much truck with praying. Jane had said she quite understood but she’d like to pop round all the same, and now she was in the kitchen, asking Maisie to call her Jane instead of Vicar, while they waited for the kettle to boil. She didn’t say much, and instead let Maisie talk on about the running of the farm and the work her sons were doing and the plans they had for extending one of the buildings. Jane had the impression she was nervous about something. In a pause she asked how Jackson was doing. He won’t see you, Maisie said. He doesn’t want to see you. Jane told her that was fine, she quite understood. He’s angry about things I think, Maisie said. He’s angry but he’s got no one to blame. Jane said she could understand that. And how are you doing? she asked Maisie. We’re getting by, Maisie said. We’ll manage. We’re getting some help. The boys were putting the ram out with the ewes for tupping. The ram wore a raddle and the ewes soon had swathes of colour across their backs. There was a racket in the field as the business went on. The mornings got darker again and in their flat above the converted stables Su Cooper was often up before dawn with the twins, lying them screaming on their playmats while she held the kettle under a tap and shoved the heel of her hand into her mouth to keep from screaming herself. She knew she should be stronger than this but some mornings she felt completely alone. Her parents were too far away. Her friends were too far away. She had no one in this village, no one she could count on. At night there were badgers fighting in the beech wood. The travellers moved out of the old quarry down by the main road, and although they took most of their rubbish with them they left a couple of broken-down cars behind. They were both burnt out within the week. Mischief Night came around and was busier than the year before, although nothing compared to what it once was. Irene stood in the square and watched the youngsters spraying each other with shaving-foam and asked Martin if she’d ever told him that as a lad her late husband had once managed to hide an entire dairy herd on Mischief Night. Animals were considered out of line after that, she said, proudly. Martin said he wasn’t sure but he thought the story sounded familiar. The clocks went back and the nights overtook the short days.

In November the Cooper twins had their first birthday. The flat above the stables was too small for more than half a dozen people, so the party was held in the function room at the Gladstone. It was the first event held there since the police had stopped using it for press conferences, but Tony put up so many balloons and streamers that it was easy to forget those scenes: the rows of chairs, the police officers, the huge mounted photographs of the missing girl. The twins weren’t walking yet, but were full of noise and thrived on the attention. They sat up on decorated high chairs at the head of a long table, and welcomed the food that kept coming their way. Su’s parents were there, and some cousins from Manchester, and a dozen people from the village who Cooper had particularly wanted to ask for the sake of all the support they’d shown. It had been a long year. They were both exhausted. He didn’t think it should be possible to survive on such little sleep, but they had. And the boys were so beautiful. He couldn’t quite absorb the fact of their being his sons. Even when they threw their drinks on the floor, or cried when the birthday cakes were brought out, he was desperately proud of them. Of their appetite for life, and for change; of the way their brains and their personalities seemed to expand by the minute. And this wasn’t supposed to have happened to him. He’d accepted that it wouldn’t. He’d reached fifty with only two failed and distant relationships to show for it, and he’d trained himself to tolerate another way of life: friendships and acquaintances and independence. He’d taught himself to value the freedom to travel, to move around, to go out or stay in as the fancy took him. He hadn’t travelled, in fact. Had always put it off, had never even owned a passport. But the opportunity was there. Being alone didn’t need to mean being lonely. He’d managed to convince himself of this. And then Su. He didn’t understand how it had happened. After a week she’d said they should have children, and when he’d laughed she’d told him no one was getting any younger. After a month she’d said they should marry, and taken him to Manchester to meet her parents. And he’d just kept saying yes. It had been such a simple pleasure, to keep saying yes. And for all those years when it seemed like they might not have children after all, he’d kept saying yes: yes, let’s try this; yes, let’s spend those savings; yes, this is worth another try. It had been difficult but they’d come through it together. The hard work of raising the boys was almost a reward. Su was going back to work soon, but the BBC had said she could start part-time and do some of that from home, so it felt as though they would manage. She was desperate to get back to work, some kind of work, he knew. He watched as she lifted Han Lee out of his high chair for the photos, and called him over to lift out Lu Sam. They stood close together, holding their boys, her family crowded around them while the photos were taken and everyone told them to smile.

Jones the caretaker lived with his sister at the end of the unmade lane by the allotments, next to the old Tucker place. His age was uncertain but he’d worked at the school for thirty years. His sister was younger, and was never seen. She was understood to be troubled in some way. Most of the parents in the village had known him when they were at school. He had his own way of doing things, which pre-dated the other staff. There were locks in the school for which he had the only keys. The other staff were senior to him but he wouldn’t be told and he worked to his own timetable. He had clear boundaries and some of these were known. The boilerhouse doubled as his staffroom and no one else went in. Through the doorway occasionally an armchair was seen; a radio, a kettle, a stack of fishing magazines. But the door was almost always closed. The boiler itself was often breaking down. In the middle of December it broke down again and Mrs Simpson went looking for Jones. She found him on the steep wooded bank behind the school, climbing up through the elder and hazel with a rubbish sack. He was reeling in a faded line of police cordon tape which was snagged through the trees. It took him some time and she watched. Two years already and it seemed like no time at all. He saw her and he climbed up the bank. Must have blown in from the lane, he said. Folk are careless. She peered at the coiled tape, and nodded. Boiler? he asked. I’m afraid so, she said. There’s been no heat at all this morning. He headed over towards the bins and she walked with him. Inlets are probably clogged again, he said. Everything else all right? Yes, yes. Fine. He took out a pouch of tobacco and rolled a cigarette. She looked as though she had more to say. He nodded up at a bank of clouds over the moor, thickening. Weather, he said, and walked on. Mr Jones, she called after him. Will you let me get someone in? He stopped. It’s a decent boiler, he said. I’ll sort it. A goldcrest moved through the tall firs at the far end of the playground, picking quickly at the insects feeding between the needles. From the hills behind the allotments a thick band of rain was moving in. The reservoirs were a flat metallic grey. There was carol singing in the church with candles and children from the school playing their recorders and opening their mouths wide to sing. Be near me, Lord Jesus. The church was full. I ask thee to stay.

Richard Clark came home between Christmas and New Year, after his sisters had left, and on New Year’s Eve he was seen going for a walk with Cathy Harris. They’d known each other at school, but had barely been in touch for years. They’d been as good as engaged, in fact, until he went to university and she didn’t. By the time he graduated she’d married Patrick, who had grown up alongside them and been their closest friend. Things would have been different if she’d come away to university with him. He’d barely spoken to either of them again. Patrick had been dead five years now. Richard had been out of the country at the time. The mist hung low over the moor and the ground was frozen hard. It had rained long into the night and the air was cold and damp. It was no kind of a day to be walking up on the hills but they’d made an agreement. Richard pulled his scarf over his mouth and walked behind Cathy, watching where he put his feet. The climb to the first ridge was steeper than he remembered. He was sweating already. He stopped to undo his jacket. Cathy turned back, waiting for him. She didn’t seem out of breath. She’d never left the village, and had kept the hill-fitness he’d lost. The mist was beginning to clear. They walked on. She asked how long he was home this time and he said he was flying out in the morning; that he was due for a meeting at lunchtime, local time. He asked how her two boys were and she said they were well. The oldest one was starting his A levels next year. Ben. Nathan was just starting secondary school. They had coped okay, in the end. He told her how sorry he was that he hadn’t made it to Patrick’s funeral. She shook her head and said she hadn’t expected him to. It would have been a long way to come. She knew it was difficult. She changed the subject. She told him what it had been like coming up here with the search party, walking steadily across the ground, wanting to find something but dreading what it was they might find. Richard said he didn’t think he’d walked up here since they’d been teenagers. She told him he was talking about ancient history, and laughed. They walked on. They were thinking different things. The missing girl’s name was Rebecca, or Becky, or Bex. In the video which had recently been released the mother was using Bex. In the video the girl was laughing but it was difficult to hear what was said. It was strange to actually hear her voice. Some people said the video didn’t look much like her. Her hair was longer than in the photograph, pulled back from her face in a thick plait which swung around her head as she sang and span towards the camera and pointed at whoever was doing the filming. The police were still treating the case as a missing-person inquiry.

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At midnight when the year turned there were fireworks going up from all across the village. The dance at the hall was crowded and hot and there was steam in the light of the doorway. In the morning there were spent rockets lying in the street and sparklers jammed into the planters in the square. There was rain for most of the day and snow on the higher ground. The tips of the new-growth heather could just be reached through the snow. Woodpigeons came into the gardens where feed was put out and were often chased away. A contractor came out to the Jackson place with the ultrasound tackle and Gordon Jackson took her out to the ewes. They spent most of the morning doing the scans and the two of them had to work closely. The proportion of twins was decent and there were fewer barrens than in most years. Gordon felt good about the way the morning had gone. The woman’s name was Deborah and she knew how to handle the sheep. She had strong arms and a firm grip. He asked what she was doing at the weekend and she said she had family to see. There was an ambiguity in her use of the word family but he let it go. When he dropped her back at her van she left him with a smile that some would have taken for a dismissal. She stayed on his mind for some days. The parish council moved their meetings to the function room of the Gladstone, and there was an immediate improvement in attendance which Brian later told Sally reflected poorly on all concerned. Martin and Ruth Fowler separated, which was more of a surprise to him than it was to some others. He was heading for an interview at the job centre when Ruth stopped him by the door and said she was leaving. There was a winded feeling in his stomach but he didn’t let on. Christ, Ruth, you couldn’t have picked more of a moment? She held up her hands as though she was sorry and she told him there was never a good time, there was never the time to talk. He stood in the doorway and rubbed his face. There were words he wanted to say but they were muddled. If he started he would get there too late. He told her he’d got some good prospects for work, that things were on the mend. He stopped because there was no point. When Ruth made a decision. She touched the side of his face and he slapped her hand away. There were words but he couldn’t get started. He was going to be late. He wanted things to be different but they weren’t going to be different. Do what you feel like doing, he said. She stood in the doorway and watched him go. They had been married since they were twenty-two, a year after meeting each other at a Young Farmers’ dance. Neither of them had been young farmers, but it was known as a place for meeting. He’d bought her a drink, and there was a bluntness in the way he spoke that she knew was a cover for being shy. He couldn’t dance, but there was otherwise a grace in his gestures and especially in his hands which intrigued her. When they met for the second time he took her to see the butcher’s shop he was taking over from his father. He gave her a tour, and as they stood behind the counter he kissed her and she leant back against the chopping block. For her this was when it was settled. The wood of the chopping block was bowled and smooth beneath her hands. When they married she moved into his house, and a few years after that, while she was pregnant with Bruce, his parents moved out to a sheltered housing complex in town. They were happy for a long time, or comfortable, and when that changed Ruth had been hard-pressed to explain why.

At the Ash Wednesday service Jane Hughes daubed the congregation’s foreheads with a thumbprint of ash in a way that hadn’t been done for years. There were only the very regulars there, and the service was short. But there was a hushed intimacy to it that made the ashy touch of Jane’s thumb seem quite in keeping with the moment, and when they came out into the cold sunshine they were each caught by the same moment of self-consciousness, reaching towards their foreheads. In the churchyard a pair of blackbirds courted, fanning their tails and fluffing their rumps and watching each other bright-eyed. There’d been a break in the frost so Mr Wilson went up to the allotments and put some new rhubarb crowns in the ground. The place was busy as it hadn’t been since autumn. Clive was potting up broad beans. Miriam Pearson was raking over a bed and sowing rows of early carrots. Jones was still digging. There was a short period in the afternoon when the heat of the work and the steady fall of the sun had people shrugging off coats and hats, hanging them on earthed shovels while they stretched their backs, but the chill soon returned to the day and the light faded and the ground began to steel. There was a new moon, thin and cold and high. In his studio Geoff Simmons wedged up balls of clay for the wheel, weighing them out and cutting each one with a wire. His studio was at the top of the lane behind the Jackson place, in a converted feed store he’d bought with an inheritance ten years before. The planning permission was for a workshop only but it was known he spent nights on a sofa in there. He had the front area set up as a shop but there weren’t many who had yet beaten a path to his door. He sat at the wheel and soaked his hands in a bowl of water. The whippet lay curled on a rug beside the oil-heater. In the evening the teenagers were seen down by the weir, drinking. At the school there’d been talk that either James Broad or Liam, or both, had once slept with Becky Shaw. The talk seemed malicious and unlikely. Sophie and Lynsey wanted to know where the talk had come from and James told them he didn’t want to fucking think about it. Sophie tried to give him a hug but he shook her off. Liam threw stones into the water. The girl had been looked for; in the beech wood, in the river, in the hollows at Black Bull Rocks. She had been looked for at the abandoned quarry, the storage containers broken open and the rotting freight wagons broken open and the doors left hanging as people moved on down the road. They had wanted to find her. They had wanted to know she was safe. They had felt involved, although they barely knew her.

The sound of the water over the weir came up to the village in staticky bursts, shifting and faltering on the wind as though the volume was being flicked up and down. Thompson’s men led the first of the herd into the milking parlour, each cow finding her place and dropping her head to the feed-tray while the men worked along the line and cleaned the teats. By the river the keeper cut back a willow, and as he took off another branch he watched the trail of sawdust drift downstream. The curl into a back eddy. The drop and sweep across a shallow fall. There were footsteps on the path and he set to the next branch. There was always plenty of work. At school the police came and spoke to Liam and James and Lynsey about any involvement they’d had with the missing girl. New information had been provided regarding the family’s stay at the Hunter place the summer before she’d disappeared. The interviews were handled sensitively, with the parents present at all times, but they led to trouble for the three of them at school. No further action was taken. They all three acknowledged spending some time with the girl that summer, but denied even knowing she was around over the Christmas period. They had no useful information to share. The police thanked them for their time and apologised for any distress which may have been caused. The clocks went forward and the evenings opened out. The buds on the branches were brightening. There were mattresses dumped in the old quarry and sometimes this was seen as a service by the couples who went there at night. Ruth Fowler moved away to Harefield. Neither she nor Martin had ever lived alone before. She found the adjustment easier than Martin. There was talk she was planning on opening a shop of her own. Organics. They went for that type of thing in Harefield. It was noticed that Martin was often away from the house. He was in the Gladstone or he was walking through the village, down the lane past Fletcher’s orchard to the packhorse bridge. When he was home there were lights on through most of the night. In the mornings his car was sometimes seen idling outside the butcher’s shop. Their daughter, Amy, was away at university when they separated. Ruth had offered to talk to her, and at first Martin was grateful but when Amy came and took her things over to Ruth’s new place he realised what had happened. He knew she had to choose but he still felt snubbed. Bruce, their eldest, was in Manchester, the last anyone had heard. He could do what he wanted, was Martin’s feeling. Martin didn’t want to know.

At the school on the last day of term Miss Carter sat on her low chair in the reading corner with the whole class silent and looking up at her. Even Ryan Turner was quiet, for the first time since Miss Carter had known him. She was reading Hansel and Gretel, and when she came to the part where they found their breadcrumb trail had been eaten and they were lost in the forest she heard the children’s attention deepen. She lowered her voice to a whisper. They seemed to lean in more closely, and were quieter. She could see herself in their faces now, when she was their age, and had gazed up at Mrs Bradshaw and dreamed of one day being that smooth-legged woman perching on the edge of a soft chair, reading aloud. The moment lasted only until Ryan Turner pulled a scab from his knee and started crying. In the long grass around the cricket field, the skipper larvae span their tiny tents of leaves together. There were cowslips under the hedges and beside the road, offering handfuls of yellow flowers to the longer days. The Spring Dance was held in aid of the newly re-formed playgroup, which Jane Hughes had been working on for some time. She was hoping to raise enough money for some outdoor play equipment to use in fine weather. The week after Easter her car broke down and Stuart Hunter drove her round for the Sunday services. She was doing three services before noon, with a five- or ten-mile drive between each. There were no more than a dozen people at any of the services, and Jane conceded Stuart’s unspoken point about the inefficiency of the whole set-up. Two or more gathered in my name though, she said. Two or more. You won’t tell anyone I used the same sermon, will you? My lips are sealed, Vicar, he said. He dropped her off at the vicarage in town and said that he wouldn’t come in. And things are okay at your place? she asked. It’s settling down, he said. We’ve not re-let that barn conversion yet. It doesn’t feel right. Maybe you should come and exorcise it. He said this with a laugh, as though he wanted her to think he was joking, and as she got out of the car she told him to know that he and his family were remembered in her prayers. He had no way of laughing that off. There was rain in the evening of the sort it was pleasant to be in for a while, taking the dust from the air and leaving an exaggerated smell of early summer. In the beech wood the fox cubs were moved away from their dens.

Will Jackson called in to see his mother, and ended up helping the physiotherapist bring Jackson through from his bed and into the new sun room, one grudging step at a time. The effort of it exhausted Jackson, even with the two of them holding him up, and once they’d got him on to his special chair he was asleep before the television came on. Beside the chair there was a table of puzzles and toys so he could work on his motor skills. There were printouts of the exercises he was meant to be doing tacked up on the wall. The corners of the pages were curling in the sun. The physio said that people’s rates of progress varied enormously, and that it was important to encourage him to be mobile as often as possible. When he left Maisie asked Will if he had time for a cup of tea, and he said yes if she wasn’t going to talk about Claire again. She said she didn’t want to interfere, she just wanted him to be happy. I’m doing fine, he told her. Things are settled. It was never my doing in the first place, but things are settled now. He looked at her impatiently. I’ve noticed the odd thing, she said, that’s all. Mum, he said. I’m putting the kettle on and we’re not talking about it. Fine, she said. They stood at opposite ends of the small, cluttered kitchen, listening to the wet sound of Jackson’s breathing being drowned out by the gathering row of the kettle. There was rain and the river was high. The cow parsley was thick along the footpaths and the shade deepened under the trees. Stock was moved higher up the hills. The tea rooms by the millpond opened for the season, although business was slower than usual because the footbridge still hadn’t been rebuilt and no one from the campsite could get across. The reservoirs filled. James Broad finally admitted to his parents how much time he’d spent with Becky Shaw. He’d met her that previous summer, he said, when she’d been down at the tea rooms with her parents one afternoon while he was mucking about on the bridge with Deepak and Lynsey. She’d come over and talked to them, and later in the week when she’d seen them swimming she’d asked if she could join them. The four of you swam together in the river? his mother asked. And you told the police none of this? We were scared, James said. It didn’t seem important. We didn’t want them asking more questions. So you all decided not to say anything, his father said. James nodded. It was, like, a pretty intense time, he said. There was all that talk. Of course there was talk, his father said. Why didn’t you tell us everything? What were you thinking? He was raising his voice, and James was pulling back. His mother looked at him carefully. Is there something else? she asked. James? Christmas, he said. I saw her at Christmas as well. We met up a couple of times. On your own? He nodded. Just the two of you? He nodded again, and his parents looked at each other. James. Was there something going on between you? We were only thirteen, Mum. Come on. What would have been going on? James, his mother said. This is important. Did you see her the day she disappeared? He shook his head. He shook his head and he wouldn’t say anything else. James’s father had his hands over his face. Oh, Jesus Christ, give me strength, he said. James tried to ask if he was going to be in trouble but the words were whispered and cracked. His mother sat beside him. At fifteen his shoulders were as broad as an adult’s. His whole body shook. James’s father left the room. He heard James asking his mother whether the whole thing could really have been his fault.

Richard Clark’s mother had her upstairs rooms redecorated. It was one of the first things she’d thought of after her husband’s death, but it had taken almost a decade to get around to it. She’d wanted to redecorate before, but he’d always said it was squandering money. The rooms felt bigger when it was done, even after the Jackson boys had come over and put all the furniture back. When they’d finished, and she’d slipped them some pub money by way of thanks, she sat on the end of the bed and looked around at the changed room. The window was wide open to help shift the paint fumes, and she could hear people walking up to the square, the faint background whisper of the weir, the sound of Thompson’s herd unsettled about something. The room felt brand new. She’d never felt so at home. The curtains blew in and out with the breeze. The river was high and roiled with rainfall and the new flies were hatching thickly in the afternoon. Ian Dowsett stood on the packhorse bridge and watched trout as thick as his forearm leaping clear of the water for the take. It was two days more until the season opened. His whole body rocked as he thought through the motions of whirling a line out across the water. On the television there were pictures of forests burning in Malaysia, whole hillsides stripped bare and the topsoil washing off into the rivers. Early mornings in Thompson’s cowshed the swallows were laying eggs, the males flying back and forth with food for their brooding mates. There was a hush up there in the roof after the shriek and dash of mating time. Jackson’s boys, with Martin and Tony and a few of the older teenagers, went down to the packhorse bridge to lift the well-dressing boards out of the river. They were much heavier after a fortnight’s soaking, and there was some grunting as they lifted them on to the back of a trailer, the cold water streaming down their arms. They rode on the trailer to the top of the hill and then carried the boards into the village hall. When they’d finished they had to put a chain on the trailer. Scrap metal had been going missing in the area for a while, and now they were taking the stuff that wasn’t even scrap. Gates lifted off hinges, drainage gratings taken out of the roads. The thing was getting out of hand. There were blackbirds going in and out of the hedge in Jones’s garden, yanking up earthworms and beetles and fetching them back. Jones’s sister sat at the window a whole morning and watched them. She was waiting for Jones to come home and he was late. He was always gone longer than she liked. She hated it when they called him her carer. She could take care of herself but it was true she did need the company. The days were very long sometimes. She had ways of making the time pass but they weren’t always enough.

In July the heat hung over the moor and the heather hummed with insect life. Sally Fletcher went with Graham, the National Park ranger, to do the official butterfly count. She’d learnt her identifications quickly, and Graham was able to rely on her sightings. They’d become quite the team, and Brian had asked if they were having some kind of affair. Laughing at the very idea. The reservoirs shone white beneath the high summer sun. There was a parish council meeting which was almost entirely taken up with the issue of the proposed public conveniences, and by the time they came to Any Other Business Tony wanted to close the bar. So there was a general shifting in seats when Frank Parker stood up and said he wished to raise the issue of verge maintenance. Brian asked Judith to check whether this had been raised before. Judith looked through the record and confirmed that it had. I think in that case, and in light of the time, we’ll ask you to submit a written report to a future meeting, Brian said. Frank Parker experienced the brief turmoil of being offended and grateful at the same time. In the beech wood the fox cubs were doing their own foraging and the parents were spending longer away. In the night there were calls back and forth. The edges of the territory were understood. Around the deep pond at the far end of Thompson’s land a ring of willow trees were in full leaf, shielding the pond as though something shameful had once happened there which needed keeping from view. There was a parents’ evening at the school, and Will Jackson went down to see how Tom was getting on. Miss Carter showed him some of Tom’s workbooks and told him that he seemed a contented little boy. She said she’d be starting at a new school in September and he said that was a shame. He said Tom would miss her. But Tom wouldn’t be in my class in September, she pointed out. He looked embarrassed. But I just mean generally, about the place, he said. You’ll be missed. She held his gaze for a moment. Generally about the place? He nodded. A look of realisation came into her eyes. Oh, Christ, Will, she said. You idiot. He stood up, holding Tom’s report sheet, watching her watch him to the door. Afterwards he wondered whether she’d meant he should have asked. Later in the week there was a leaving assembly and when Mrs Simpson gave Miss Carter flowers the parents stood up and applauded so loudly that she didn’t know what to say. At the river a heron stood and watched the water, its body angled and poised while the evening grew dark.

Claire had been seen spending time at the Jackson house, and Will Jackson was uneasy about why. After almost three years of living with her mother, keeping Tom half the week and barely saying a word when they met, she appeared to be softening. She’d been taking Tom to the Jackson house while Will was out working, spending time with Maisie and staying for tea when she was asked. Maisie seemed to brighten in Claire’s company, as though they’d only just met and she was looking to make an impression. And Tom was happy to have both parents in the same room, looking from one to the other while he chattered about school, reassuring himself that they were both there. After one of these teas, Claire asked Maisie whether she wouldn’t mind having Tom for the evening while she and Will went for a drink in town. Which was the first Will had heard of such a plan. Maisie said that would be fine. Tom jumped up and asked if he could read a bedtime story to Grandad. Will could feel the weather shift around him. He asked Claire what was going on as they walked out to the car, and she told him they were just going for a drink. He didn’t think there was ever a just when Claire was involved. At the pub he bought the drinks without needing to ask what she was having. They sat opposite each other and talked about his father, his brothers, the farm. She talked about her work. He was watching her, waiting for something to happen. She seemed distracted. She couldn’t keep still. It was like she had some kind of secret, and holding it back was more fun than telling it would be. He wondered if she had a new boyfriend. She asked if it was true he was going to be in that year’s pantomime. He said he’d been asked. Well, you can’t really turn it down, she said. She bought a second round of drinks. He had a half, on account of the driving. He’d expected they would run out of things to say, but they didn’t. He’d forgotten how easy it was to talk to her, when they weren’t arguing or keeping each other at bay. He’d known her as long as he’d known anyone – from playgroup, from school, from paddling in the river and running around the farm and long summer evenings swimming in the quarry – so it should never have been a surprise. Their falling into a relationship had been as obvious and easy as his working with his brothers on the farm. It was having the baby had been the problem. They were too young. Eighteen, and old enough for a council flat on the Close but nowhere near old enough for the responsibility of it. It had made serious people of them, and that had never been the plan. They’d had help to begin with, from both mothers and from people in the village, but it had all fallen away after a while. And then it had just been chores. Chores on the farm, chores at home, and nowhere to go for any time off. She’d got fed up with his long hours of working. After a while it had seemed like they only knew how to argue. And a while after that, she’d left. He’d taught himself how to live without her, and as nice as it was to sit with her now, he had no regrets about the way things had turned out. They finished their drinks and he offered another round and she said they should get on. They drove back in silence, the light thinning as they came through the head of the valley and round past the old quarry entrance where she asked him to stop and was kissing him before he’d even put the handbrake on. He pushed her carefully away. He asked what she was doing. We’ve had a nice evening, haven’t we? she asked. And I know you’d like to. But I thought things were settled, he said. Her hands were moving up his thighs. I thought I’d unsettle them a bit, she said. He closed his eyes and rubbed his face. So you reckon you can just rock up and click your fingers, and that’ll be that? Whistle and I’ll come running? She sat back in her seat, looking at him. Yeah, she said. Pretty much. She got out of the car and walked into the quarry. She didn’t even need to look back. He muttered to himself and shook his head and followed her into the quarry, quickening his step to catch up.

In September a soft rain no more than mist hung in the trees along the valley floor. The river turned over beneath the packhorse bridge and carried scraps of light to the weir. The missing girl was seen walking around the shore of the reservoir, hopping from one breakwater rock to another with seemingly not a care in the world. This was Irene’s description. A public meeting was held in the village hall about the quarry company’s plans to open a site close to the Stone Sisters, and there was a general air of opposition. There were crab apples and wild apples beside the freight line curving into the cement works, and on a Sunday morning when there were no trains Winnie walked carefully down there and filled four carrier bags, taking them home to cook up into a clear golden jam, flavoured with rosemary stems. There was a commotion at the Jones house, and an ambulance came to take his sister away. This had happened before. Nobody thought it appropriate to ask questions, and he didn’t volunteer. He was seen in the week working at the school without interruption, and wherever she’d gone he didn’t seem to be visiting. Evenings he was down at the millpond with his fishing tackle. The boatmen and skaters slid across the still surface and his mind was clear. He could feel the tension lift away as the fish began to rise. People had no idea. He watched the teenagers on the other side of the river following the footpath down to the weir. They carried bottles of white cider that Lynsey had bought in town, and sat on the benches outside the tea rooms to drink them. Sophie asked whether it was true that James’s parents were going to split up. James said how was he supposed to know. It was none of his business. They hardly talked to him anyway. Not since. He stopped and lit a cigarette and tried to do a plank on the edge of the picnic bench. Liam asked not since what. James didn’t answer. Liam asked was he fucking crying or what, and Sophie told him to leave it. Lynsey told Liam to walk with her, and when they looked back Sophie was sitting next to James, her arms curled around him and the side of his head pressed against her chest. His dad had taken him to the police, it turned out. He’d made him tell them about the time he’d spent with Becky Shaw. The detective they’d spoken to had been sharp with them both and said it was too late for the information to be of any use. He asked Sophie not to tell anyone this. The pigeons fought in the trees. The bats came out at dusk to feed low over the water, fattening up for the winter. There were wild pheasants in the pens at the edge of the Culshaw Estate, drawn in by the fresh water and feeders. After a fortnight Jones’s sister came home and he put the fishing gear away.

In October the winds were high and in the mornings there were trees blocking the road. The sound of gunshots cracked down from the woods in pairs. There were more sightings of the missing girl’s father, although some of them turned out to be false. It was known that he no longer wore the charcoal-grey anorak, and there was anyway no shortage of preoccupied men striding solitary through the hills. But there were enough sightings to give the impression of a man who couldn’t keep away. There was talk that he and the girl’s mother had divorced, and around that time the sightings increased. On the shore of the reservoir; around the edge of the quarry; down at the river by the packhorse bridge. Almost always seen from a distance, moving away. At the allotment the pumpkins fattened slowly, lifted from the damp soil on squares of glass, striped in the low autumn light. Jane Hughes walked back from the Hunter place and happened upon Jones beside the millpond. He was standing patiently with his hands behind his back, his shoulders hunched and his neck angled forward. She didn’t want to interrupt, but as she walked past there was a softening in his posture which she understood as acknowledgement. She’d grown used to these cues. She stepped up beside him and looked at the water for a moment. Mr Jones, she said. Vicar, he replied. You’ve been keeping well? she asked. He nodded. And your sister? He didn’t answer, but pointed in at the water, at some tiny change in the light she could barely see. Scared them all off now, he said. Really? I’m stood in the shadow of the tree, he explained; so I’m right. But you’ve come looming, so. She stepped away from the edge of the water apologetically. She looked at him. Are you fishing today? No, he said. But if I was. I’ll remember that then. Sorry. There was the clatter of woodpigeons’ wings in the trees overhead, and the sound of the water moving over the stones. Jones still had his hands behind his back. She’s home again, he said. I gathered, yes. There’s plenty of trout in there, he told her, if you don’t bother them. We don’t see her around much, Jane said, leaning out over the water as though watching for trout, giving him a chance to speak without being looked at. She doesn’t go out, he said. She waited, but there was no more. That must be difficult for you, she said. Not really. She’s no bother. Do you get any help? She felt him stiffen beside her, and his hands came round from behind his back, rearranging his jacket buttons, his cap. He turned away from the water. Weather, he said, nodding towards the hills. It looks like it’s coming in, she agreed. Be seeing you then, he said, lighting a cigarette and setting off along the footpath towards the packhorse bridge. On the stubbled fields of Thompson’s land a buzzard wandered, picking for worms.