There was no room for being tired. Hilary ran down the stairs into the cellar, grabbed the torch from the top of the dryer. No need for the main light. At the back of the cellar she ran a hand over the makeshift top they’d put on the old kitchen units, units that David thought only concealed half used tins of paint and a tub of random nails. She pulled the long screwdriver from the cupboard and set to pulling the kickboard off from under the cupboards. David had never even noticed it appear. Why should he? One last wrench and it came off. So easy. How simple it would have been for anyone to do it.

She dragged the bag from under the cupboard, strangely surprised to see that it looked the same as the day she had shoved it under there. The top was dusty, and she hesitated, looked back up the stairs to the cellar door, and then pulled the zip. It was all still there. £38,539 in cash, one handgun and Victor’s finger, vacuum sealed in a jar.

From their spot on the hillside they had a perfect view of the city walls. There was one gate to the north and another to the east. The south and west were on the coast, impenetrable aside from the small port, which was, of course, fiercely guarded.

“How are we going to get in?” Jen asked.

Evelyn hunkered down, ran her tongue around her teeth. “I don’t know yet. How did you get out?”

“I hid in a group of field women.”

“Do you know which gate you took?”

“The north, I think.”

“And they go back the same way?”

Jen looked across at Evelyn. “Yes. Every night. Surely…You’re too tall. And your coat, they’ll recognise the coat.”

“Not if it’s in a bag, stuffed with straw.”

“We haven’t got a bag. Or any straw.”

Evelyn stood up. “I do not know why the Gwithon thinks you and your brother are worth all this trouble, Jen, but heavens help me, if you do not try to keep your mouth shut at least some of the time you will never make it to her table. We will make or find a bag. We will find straw, or corn, or lavender. We will find a muddy field and we will make our hands and faces dirty, as if we toiled all day. We will find a group of field women heading home for the night and we will join them, making conversation as we walk, and we will pass through the gate. Do you have any other objections?” Evelyn began to walk down the hill, her long coat flapping. “Come on Jen. Every tick tock of the clock…”

“Your bow! Our things!” Jen called out after her.

Evelyn waved a hand in the air and kept walking. “Belton will take care of them.”

Jen looked at the dog. “I don’t know how you put up with her.”

Dearest Pip,

I’ve been trapped in this nightmare for almost three days and I can’t think why you haven’t sent the cavalry in to rescue me. Honestly, why I said I’d stay the whole weekend is beyond me – it should be a written rule that when one’s old school chums get married and procreate that visits are kept to a maximum of four hours and never never never extended overnight. The real shocker is how staid G has become. You know how he always used to go on about how crumbling the old pile was, and how dreadful it would be to have to keep it up, and how he was sure to sell it just as soon as the old dears both up and left him? All of that’s forgotten. His dear ma sits in the bath chair in the corner of the room, and he stands by the fireplace and solemnly promises to restore the place to its former glory. She wells up and cries about his dear old pa, and how he would have been so proud to see G returned to the family home and then they all fall about weeping. Frankly I remember old C as a complete b——— who would have sooner kicked G from one end of the tennis court to the other than he would have given him the key to the front door.

The other trouble is some wisp of a girl called Agnes they’ve unearthed from under a rock, who obviously has been wheeled in to try and tempt me out of bachelorhood. They will have to find better bait if they want to succeed. She’s mousey brown inside and out, no spark at all. Her mother is here too, keeps making pointed remarks about the girl’s hair and complexion since they arrived, as if the country air can correct the shade of the girl’s character. Last night at dinner they made me sit next to her (the girl not the mother) and I could barely squeeze two words out of her – it was like eating next to a tortoise. Unfortunately I had to extend an invitation to the wisp, after I mentioned the artist’s party to G&S, since she only animated herself once to exclaim how exciting it would be to finally be in town. Perhaps we can sit her next to that Branch fellow your Uncle has brought along. They would charm each other equally.

There’s the bell for tea, so I’ll wrap up and get this to Jeffers. I’m driving back tomorrow and will be coming straight round, so do make sure you’ve got the gin out.

Laurie

Blackberries. They remind me of him more than anything. His birthday was in the autumn, and he always said that in preference to a cake he’d prefer a crumble. If we were visiting the country we could go picking ourselves, stuffing carrier bags into our pockets and tramping down the worn paths to collect our free food. He taught me how to look for the little worms and grubs that burrow their way into the fruit, taught me how to love the feeling of stickiness on my fingers that intensified through the afternoon, eating half as many as we bagged. At home we could cook them with a little apple if they were too tart, or just fling handfuls of sugar onto the top of them. He had big hands. It was his job to make the crumble topping too, getting the flour and butter and sugar to meld between his fingers, letting it fall back into the bowl before lifting it up again. Sometimes he could be persuaded to add oats, but that was rare. Last autumn he refused.

“I want a pure crumble. Nothing added. Just blackberries, sugar, crumble. Like I had when I was a kid.”

We weren’t in the country that year, so it was a trip to the supermarket, loading up the basket with punnets, tutting about the cost. In the kitchen at home, I watched him make his own celebratory pudding.

(A wee break with the family last week, & a wee bit slow to start today.)

“Eat.” Always a command with my father.

“I’m not hungry, papa.”

“You think you’re not hungry.”

“No, I’m really not hungry.”

I was sitting at the dinner table anyway. It’s just where we all ended up. You come in, pull off your shoes by the rack in the hall, try to balance your coat on top of everyone else’s and then you come and sit down in the kitchen. It’s where papa will be.

“I made stew. Good beef at the butcher today. And I saw Angie Benson in the queue. You know her son, Jimmy, don’t you? She says he’s dropped out of university to become a mechanic.”

Papa had put a plate of stew in front of me, and now he was moving around me like a gentle whirlwind, putting down cutlery and condiments a a glass of water. When he stopped moving he leant on the edge of the sink with one hand, a tee towel over his shoulder, and picked up his evening beer.

“A mechanic?” I said.

“Can you believe it? He could speak french when he was seven, that boy. All As, all the way.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being a mechanic, papa.”

“No, maybe not. But maybe there is something wrong with not using all the brainpower you’re gifted with. Why are you not eating?”

I looked at my plate, and yes, it looked delicious as usual. I sighed. “I’m not so hungry today.”

Papa’s answer was always to pile more food in front of you, and he dropped some crusty bread onto the side of the plate. “Mop some gravy at least. It’s cold outside.”

But it’s cold inside too, I wanted to say, here, inside my heart. I don’t think even papa’s gravy can warm that up.

The clock out in the hall chimed the quarter hour. The window rattled with the wind. There was a draft coming through it. Annabelle ran her finger backwards and forwards over the embroidered cushion. She used to pile the cushions up as a child and hide behind them, a barrier against the shouting in the next room.

“You can’t really be serious,” she said finally.

Her mother nodded. She lifted a finger to smooth a stray hair back into its set. “I know it’s a shock to you.”

“It’s impossible.”

“But we really have a lot of common ground. We’re older. The tensions are gone.”

Annabelle stood and went to the window. The yellowed leaves were beginning to drop from the trees. “He hurt you. He hurt me. He hurt everyone.”

“Annabelle.”

“He’ll do it again.”

“He’s my first love. We really were very much in love.”

“But that was before. How can you just forget everything that happened afterwards?” She turned to look at her mother. There were pearls in her ears, and on a string round her neck. She sat upright in a way women of Annabelle’s generation don’t know how to. “The women, mother.”

Her mother glanced down at her skirt and smoothed a wrinkle. “And the drinking. Yes, it’s very tawdry. And so cliched. It was a different time. We weren’t free.”

“And marrying him again won’t make you free now. You’ll be chained again. All the things you’ve built…” Suddenly Annabelle moved to sit beside her mother and take her papery hands. “You have a life. And it’s a good life.”

They had exactly the same eyes, Annabelle and her mother. They rarely looked each other in the eye, as if like magnets they would repel each other. Her mother lifted her chin and put one hand on Annabelle’s cheek.

“It’s a lonely life too, Annabelle.”

(From The 4am Breakthrough: #1 Parataxis)