Just Before I Died: The gripping new psychological thriller from the bestselling author of The Ice Twins

Grey Wethers is as beautiful, to me, as a palace or a castle. The only reason I don’t come here more often is that it requires a long and boring walk, first through regimented conifers, then hopping over quaggy ground, boots sinking into unsuspected pools of stagnant, cressy water, shins cracked on hidden moorland boulders.

‘What do you think?’ I say. ‘It’s kind of lovely, isn’t it?’

I scrutinize her passive face for clues. Who did she see at Huckerby? If it is someone I know, that makes it even more bewildering. I barely have any friends – let alone male friends – who live nearby; my old university friends are mainly in London, or scattered around the world.

So she must mean a relative of mine. And I have so few contenders. My brother is down at Salcombe, in my mother’s house. We like the distance between us; it prevents us squabbling. As for my father, he is long dead.

It keeps coming back to someone who looks like Adam, as Lyla said. The man on the moor. Or could it be Adam himself?

No, absurd.

In silence, we approach the nearest of the circles. The dogs are running ahead; for once Lyla is not interested in their romps and explorations.

Instead she frowns gently, puzzled, gazing first at the stones, then at the horizon, alert to something. Finally my daughter walks to the centre of the nearest stone circle. And sits down.

‘Are you all right?’

She nods. I sit down beside her, cross-legged. The cold wind has dropped and a feeble hint of January sun pierces the cloud cover. The turf beneath us is quite dry. Apparently it hasn’t rained here for weeks. Dartmoor weather is so strange. Adam says that on July days he can leave tourists sunbathing by a moorland river, then walk ten minutes up a tor – and be hit by driving snow; yet when he walks back, the kids in the valley are still swimming in the sunshine.

‘Shall we have a sandwich?’

Lyla says a quiet please. I unbuckle my rucksack and take out the picnic box and for several minutes we eat our peanut butter sandwiches in companionable silence, listening to the whirr of the gentle wind in the sedge, and the trill of a cold moorland stream in the distance. I can also hear the dogs, barking happily over the next shallow hillside, hunting out rabbits, or hares. Or digging up old human bones from Stone Age cairns. Kistvaens. Those chests containing ancient skeletons, where the bodies were cruelly bent to fit them in: knees pressed to chin, as if the burial was a torture in itself. Perhaps they buried some alive. No one is quite sure.

Setting down her sandwich, Lyla says, ‘I’m sorry for what I said about the man. I don’t think I saw anyone. Sorry, Mummy. I get scared?’

‘Ah … OK.’

Confusion settles upon confusion. I begin to fear that one day I may wake up, trapped, snowbound by all this strangeness. But Lyla is still traumatized by her mother nearly dying; confusion would be understandable. Expected.

Taking another bite of bread and peanut butter, she chews diligently, and says, ‘I like it here. I like the silence and the forests over there, so far away. I always like the stone circles.’

‘That’s good.’

‘I like Scorhill and Totterton and Sourton and Buttern Hill and Mardon, all of them, but they’re not the best ones. Do you know my favourite?’

‘No …’ I am wrapping the sandwich foil into a ball, putting it back in the box. ‘But tell me.’

‘Merrivale!’ she says, smiling brightly.

I smile in return. We’ve been to Merrivale several times: it’s definitely one of her cherished places on the moor. Merrivale, with its stone rows and burial cairns, arrayed along a bald and windswept crest of moorland.

‘Why do you like Merrivale?’

‘Because they called it Plague Market! I read that was its name. Do you know why it was given that name? I had to look it up.’

‘No.’

Her eyes turn to meet mine, unblinking. ‘During the Black Death, the moorland people would leave food in the stone circle. And later the coastal people, all the people who had the plague already, they would come and take the food, and leave gold and silver as a payment, in a trough full of vinegar, then they would go away. And that’s how they tried to stop it, stop the Black Death spreading.’ She blinks, once, and goes on. ‘Isn’t that amazing? A special plague market, on the moor, between the stones, where no one had to meet, so no one saw anyone else, like they were all ghosts. And all that gold and silver in the vinegar.’ Lyla frowns, toying with a blade of grass, ‘But … but it didn’t work, that’s what I read. The Black Death spread anyway, right across the moor. So all the people died. Even when you leave gold in vinegar, Mummy, it doesn’t work. Everyone dies.’

The anxious, fluttering wind carries the scent of newly chopped pine from the forest. I’m not sure whether to be disturbed by my daughter’s monologue, one of Lyla’s Aspergery lectures, or happy that she is, at least, communicating.

‘Have you finished with your drink?’

Lyla says yes and hands me her finished carton of apple juice.

‘Thanks for bringing me here.’

‘Hey. It’s nice for me too, Lyla. I love these circles, like you.’

She nods, but she also shakes her head.

‘What is it?’ I ask.

‘You’re wrong though, Mummy. Wrong.’

‘Why? Wrong in what way?’

‘You said I’d never been here before. But I have been here before. Here to Grey Wethers. I remember it.’ As she speaks, she repeatedly brushes non-existent sandwich crumbs from her jeans. Brush brush brush. ‘I’ve been here before, with you and Daddy.’

I reply, very gently, ‘No, darling, you haven’t been here, not with me, perhaps you came here with Daddy, or Uncle Dan, but not me.’

Lyla shakes her head. Stops brushing. ‘I have been here. You’ve forgotten.’

‘No, darling, I—’

And now I remember. I murmur, out loud: ‘Oh, yes, my God.’She’s right. Lyla has been here before. In fact she was here the very first time I came here. Adam brought me to see the Grey Wethers and I was carrying Lyla on my back, in a harness, because she was nine months old.

For a moment I am speechless.

I know that my daughter, like quite a few people on her part of the spectrum, has this ability to recollect way back beyond normal human memory, but it always surprises me. And delights me. My daughter has issues; but she also has gifts. And this is one of these gifts, however unsettling.

Lyla gets to her feet. Picnic time is over. We begin the walk back to the car.

‘So you had a nice time?’

‘Yes, Mummy, yes, thanks. Look, here’s Felix and Randal, can we give them the last of the peanut butter sandwiches?’

The dogs are galloping over the windswept brown turf. Lyla takes the picnic box from my rucksack, unwraps the foil, and hands out the crusts. The dogs eat as if they haven’t been fed since they were pups. I’m sure they’d prefer fresh meat, but they would probably eat dust and pebbles from Lyla’s hand: their adoration of her is total.

Our long, chilly walk back to the car is quiet, the journey to Huckerby is quiet, everything is quiet, until we are a mile from home and Lyla asks if we can go to Hobajob’s Wood. It’s another one of her favourite places: she finds rare flowers there – eyebright, fritillary – and the iridescent shells of nameless blue beetles. Flowers and insects and little weathered claws.

I glance at the wintry sky, ‘It’s getting really dark, sweetheart. We need to get home.’

‘Oh please, Mummy. We’re so close.’

‘Hmm.’

The day has been good. One of our best since my accident. I experience a surge of maternal happiness. Why not indulge her? ‘All right, but only for a few minutes. It’ll be night in half an hour.’ Parking the car in the lay-by, we begin the cold walk along the cold valley to the cold and dense little wood with its twisted, moss-hung oak trees, clawing at the blank winter sky. Hobajob’s Wood is like a smaller version of famous Wistman’s Wood. Not quite as atmospheric, but not as touristy, either. Hidden away.