The Flood

‘You didn’t go back upstairs?’

‘No. Didn’t want to track too much mud into the house.’ Daniela forced a smile. ‘What would Dad have said, eh?’

Stephanie didn’t answer.

Daniela took out her cigarettes. She didn’t want another yet, but she needed something to do with her hands. Talking with police officers made her uncomfortable. Talking with her sister, doubly so. Daniela focused on the packet and tried not to think about the hidey-hole in the bedroom.

‘You said Auryn had left,’ Daniela said. ‘She left a few days ago, you said. So, why was she here?’

Stephanie didn’t answer that either.

‘Hello?’ someone called. ‘Stephanie?’

Daniela looked up. A man had appeared at the top of the road. He was wrapped in a grey duffel coat and shapeless woollen hat, plus obligatory wellies. His young face was stamped with grief. Daniela froze.

‘I got here as fast as I could,’ the man said as he approached the gate. ‘My bloody car got stuck. I figured since it’s a four-by-four it should’ve been fine, but apparently not. Tilly’s going to drag it out with her tractor.’

His words spilled out in a rush, as if he had to keep his lips moving or his voice would seize. He went to Stephanie and touched her arm. With anyone else he might’ve gone in for a hug, but he knew Stephanie better than that.

‘Is it true?’ he asked. ‘What happened?’

Stephanie pulled away. ‘You’d better come inside,’ she said.

The man rubbed his face with both hands. He had to take a stabilising breath before he could focus on Daniela. When he did so, his eyes widened. ‘Daniela?’

‘Hi, Leo,’ Daniela said. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were still in Stonecrop.’

Leo McKearney tore his gaze away. ‘Why is she here?’ he asked Stephanie in a fierce whisper. ‘Did she—?’ He broke off as if afraid to say more while Daniela was in earshot.

‘I just got here,’ Daniela said. ‘I went into the house and found Auryn.’

Leo bit his lip. Then he straightened up and, despite the redness of his eyes, assumed a professional air. ‘I’d better see her,’ he said.

As he waded up the path, Daniela turned to Stephanie. ‘D’you think that’s a good idea?’ she asked quietly. ‘Him and Auryn …’

‘We need a doctor to certify death,’ Stephanie said. ‘He’s the only one in town.’

‘He’s a doctor?’

‘Junior doctor at Dewar’s Hospital in Hackett.’ Stephanie fixed Daniela with a look. ‘Don’t move. I’ll be right back.’

‘Sure,’ Daniela said, staring at the water again. The nub of the cigarette she’d dropped had sunk below the surface and hung suspended, turning gently in the currents Leo McKearney made as he waded past.

This was the closest Daniela had been to home in seven years, yet she’d never felt further away.

6 (#ulink_ba324c4b-f4b7-5432-8215-d629708d851a)

June 2010

‘I need money.’

Daniela’s father didn’t look up from whatever the hell he was reading. An old newspaper, folded and refolded, the printed columns of stocks and shares marked with fingerprints and pencil scribbles. Whenever Daniela came up to the study, her dad was poring over financial papers. It was all he seemed to care about these days.

Absently, her father reached for his wallet. Daniela watched his hands as he thumbed through the notes. The hands and wallet looked like they were made of the same leather. The wallet always contained money. Once a week, her dad went into Hackett and withdrew his pension from the post office, plus anything additional he needed from his savings. Daniela didn’t know how much was in the savings, but it had to be substantial, left over from when her dad had co-owned the antiques shop in Stonecrop.

Her father counted off twenty pounds and laid it on the desk. It was far more than Daniela needed but she wasn’t complaining. She scooped up the notes.

‘Thanks,’ she muttered.

Her dad turned over the newspaper and didn’t look up.

In the past twelve months, there’d been a scattering, as if a sudden wind had driven everyone from the old house, although in truth it’d started years earlier, when their mum left. When she’d walked out it was like she left the front door open, and let the cold wind in.

Over time, the atmosphere became fragile, friable. Dad refused to let them speak of their mother, until she was nothing but a ghost in their memories.

Franklyn, twenty-six years old and the eldest of the four sisters, was next to move out permanently, but her absence was less jarring, because over the years she’d become an erratic presence. Likewise, it was no surprise when Stephanie started to talk about moving out. She’d completed her probationary period with the constabulary, and was anxious to live closer to the station in Hackett. Plus, Stephanie and their father were too similar. They’d always butted heads.

The real sign of the end was when Auryn announced she was leaving. She was the easy-going one, who rarely reacted to the shouted voices in the house. If the atmosphere became too toxic, she would hide away with her books in the spare room that was now hers. She was due to leave for university at the end of the summer. They’d planned a party and everything. So, it took everyone by surprise when she said – in her quiet, non-confrontational way – that she’d be leaving early, at the end of June, now her exams were finished.

‘We wanna get moved in and acclimatise to Newcastle before term starts,’ was her excuse.

Stephanie said it was presumptuous, going there before the exam results were in. ‘What’s your back-up plan if you don’t get the grades you need?’ she’d asked.

Auryn had shrugged. ‘We’re still leaving.’

It was understandable. Moving into her own place with her boyfriend had to be better than remaining at home. But the real reason for leaving early was obvious: if the sisters stayed under the same roof much longer, they’d go crazy. There was too much bad feeling in the house.

Now Daniela faced the probability that by autumn she’d be alone with their father.

She was aware of a change; aware of the increased tension when her father was home, conscious of her sisters spending as much time as possible away from the house, but she had her own problems. For years she’d been desperate to leave Stonecrop. The perfect time to do so would’ve been after her A levels last year. She’d got a conditional offer for Sheffield university, so long as her results were good enough. It turned out they weren’t. Then laziness or apathy had stopped her going through clearing. She’d told herself that taking a year out was a smart move. She could work, save up some money, then apply to university the following summer.

And yet, somehow she hadn’t got around to that either. Summer was almost there, she’d wasted a year scratching around doing odd jobs, and she still didn’t know what she wanted from her life. She only knew she didn’t want to live it in Stonecrop.

It was far past time to get out. All her friends had already gone. Auryn would be the last of them. Auryn and Leo, of course.

Those were the thoughts that bounced through Daniela’s brain as she trudged along the footpath away from the old house. She was sick of having no plan. Today her father had been fine, albeit uncommunicative, but Daniela’s right shoulder still tingled from the slap she hadn’t quite avoided the day before. It’d been aimed at her face, the culmination of some petty argument that’d escalated out of proportion, but she was faster than her old man now, and it’d caught her a glancing blow on the tip of the shoulder instead. It shouldn’t have hurt, but still she felt it, like a phantom echo.

Even on a summer day, Stonecrop was grey and sheltered, the clouds close enough to touch. The few shadows below the trees were broad and fuzzy-edged. Headache weather; like a storm that refused to break. It’d been like that for weeks. Daniela walked quickly with hands in pockets. Her leather jacket – a hand-me-down from Franklyn, which was too wide in the shoulders and always smelled like smoke – kept out the intermittent breeze.

She knew every inch of the woodlands. Whenever the atmosphere in the house became too oppressive, she’d take to the outdoors, walking for hours, crossing and recrossing her path, trying to lose herself. Sometimes she’d bring her MP3 player with her; other times she let the white noise of nature fill her head instead.

The woods enfolded the village like protective arms. To the south there was nothing but trees as far as Briarsfield, while to the north, the forest petered out into farmland, bisected by the Clynebade, which diverged around Stonecrop as if around an inconvenient stone. A break in the trees allowed a partial view to the north over low-lying fields and hedgerows. If Daniela had been minded to climb a tree, she could’ve seen Winterbridge Farm in the distance.

Some people found the trees eerie, especially when the light was poor, and Daniela sort of understood that. The woods were rife with half heard noises and flickering movements. But the trees were the one part of Stonecrop Daniela liked, because, if she put her head down, she could pretend her world wasn’t limited to this tiny village, hemmed in by rivers. She could imagine walking in any direction for miles and seeing nothing but trees.

The path led her in a sweeping loop to the banks of the Bade. Flowering garlic perfumed the air. At this time of the year, the woods and the riverbanks were carpeted with wild garlic and fading bluebells, unfurling ferns and bramble tangles. The well-worn paths were trampled streaks of brown through the green.

In a muddy hollow beside the river stood a ruined building. It’d once been the home of a wealthy businessman, back in the early twentieth century, but was now little more than a brick shell, the rotted timbers of its first floor having collapsed, the slates of the roof missing, likely adorning the roof of some other property by now. Above the door a carved stone lintel read, Kirk Cottage.