CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 1

Eight days ago:

The butcher shop’s door had an old fashioned bell, which rang every time a customer entered. The butcher looked up as Sally came in, and greeted her with a warm smile that had a worrying proprietary edge. Sally avoided his light brown eyes, but couldn’t help noticing the freckles on his nose and his thick wet lips.

“And what can I be doing for you?” he asked, modifying his brogue, because Sally was an off-comer.

“I’d like some steak,” Sally said. “The best you have.”

The butcher’s smile broadened.

“Romance is in the air tonight,” he said. “It’s the big man’s lucky night, is it?” Sally demurred and looked down at the black and white tiles of the floor. “As it happens you’re in luck,” he said. “I have a nice piece of dry hung tenderloin for you. How thick would you like it cut?”

“An inch or so, I guess.”

“An inch and a half is best, keeps it nice and tender on the inside, just like me,” he said with a wink.

“Okay.”

“And how many will you be wanting?”

“Eight.”

The butcher raised his eyebrows. “Eight?”

“No, ten.”

“Are you having company? Visitors to the town perhaps? We don’t get many of those.”

Sally ignored the question. The smile fell from the Butcher’s face, and he went to cut the meat.

The smile was back as he laid the cuts on the counter.

“Just look at that marbling,” he said, pointing out the thick veins of fat. “Best to grill these, make sure the pan’s nice and hot mind. Couple of minutes each side and cover them with butter before you do, clarified is best. Don’t forget the salt and pepper either, rub it in beforehand, use those soft little fingers of yours.” He smiled again, but it teetered on the brink of becoming a leer.

Sally chose not to respond.

The butcher wrapped the steaks carefully and popped them in a large plastic bag. His fingers stroked Sally’s as he handed the bag over. “This’ll put lead in his pencil, I can promise you that.”

Sally flushed in spite of herself, hating the way her cheeks burned as she paid for the meat. How dare he touch her like that? She turned and left the shop without saying another word.

The meat was a cold, heavy lump in her bag as she strode up the tiny high street. She ground her teeth and breathed heavily through her nose, burning with anger at the butcher’s presumption and insinuations.

Sally got to the corner of the high street and looked up for the first time as she crossed the cobblestone road. She passed three middle aged housewives who’d gathered on the opposite corner, trying not to catch their eyes. They stopped their conversation mid-sentence and turned to watch her.

They smiled at Sally as she went by and on each of their faces she saw the same proprietorial look the butcher had. She turned away from them with her chin in the air. She wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction.

She knew they were aware of what was happening to her and David, and she knew they approved, the whole town did. It was there behind their eyes and their expectant smiles, every time she met them. They needed her to go through what she was going through, for reasons they would never divulge.

She’d mentioned this to David when they first moved to Dunballan. She’d tried to make light of it, turn it into a shared joke, but David had closed down on her as he so often did. When she tried to push him, he told her she just wasn’t used to living in a small town. Most of the town’s families had lived there for centuries, and they didn’t get many off-comers.

David’s ancestors, the McCavendish clan, had once been Lairds of the manor. Their estates had been sold off long ago, but they were still seen as the town’s first family, and David was the sole surviving heir.

His arrival had been greeted as a big occasion by the townsfolk. Sally had thought it quaint, at first, when the older folk doffed their caps to David. After a while, it simply added to the claustrophobia she felt. She and David were under constant scrutiny. The townsfolk radiated a perpetual sense of expectation, and Sally felt herself slowly crushed by its weight.

As she got to the outskirts of town, Sally’s mood calmed, her anger subsided and her sense of purpose returned. She reached the shortcut that she always used on her way home, a cut between two terraced houses, with an arched stone entrance that gave out onto a steep set of steps.

The stone steps were cut into the hillside, bordered on either side by hedgerows, a single wooden railing running alongside them. As she was about halfway up the steps, a sudden wind shook the hedges, dry leaves skittered on the ground and the branches rustled in the hedgerow. Sally stopped and tilted her head, listening for any signs of a presence in the undergrowth, or an inkling of a voice.

Footsteps clattered on the steps below. “Sally!” a voice called out. Sally took a deep breath. She thought she’d gotten away. She didn’t bother to hide her irritation as she turned and saw Jane, the town librarian, huffing up the steps.

“Sally, I . . . oh goodness . . . just let me get my breath a moment,” Jane said, resting a hand on the frail wooden railing. She was a tall woman, with brown, bobbed hair that framed her pinched face like a pair of old theatre curtains. She was probably in her late thirties, but she was dressed like an old maid, in a tweed skirt and a hand knitted cardigan.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I saw you coming up the steps and I ran after you.” Jane paused for a moment, waiting for Sally to say something, but she didn’t. Jane ran a hand through her hair and took a deep breath. “Did you err . . . did you read the pamphlet I gave you?”

“Yes.”

“Well that’s what I . . . what I wanted to talk to you about.” There was another pause. Sally didn’t know what Jane expected her to say. Probably something about the pamphlet, a thick volume on local folklore.

“I thought you had a right to know,” Jane said. “That’s why I gave it to you. But I wouldn’t want you . . . that is, I don’t think you should do anything rash.” Jane took a breath, weighing her words. “The people of this town, they’re not . . . we’re not bad people. I thought you should know there’s a reason for everything that’s happening, that’s all. That’s why I gave you the pamphlet. I . . . well, I don’t want to be presumptuous, but I thought it might help. I . . . I thought you should know.”

She looked up at Sally from the lower step and her face was lit with a timid hope. She still wanted to connect with Sally. She knew what Sally was going through, just like the rest of the town, yet she still had the temerity to think they could be friends. She’d given Sally the pamphlet, practically rubbing her face in it and now she wanted Sally to be all understanding. Sally could have slapped her stupid face.

Sally couldn’t go back to the library, not after what she’d learned, no matter how much she loved to read. Books weren’t just an escape from her daily life in Dunballan, they were about the only contact she had with the outside world.

There was no phone coverage anywhere in the town, and the remote cottage where she lived with David didn’t even have a landline. You had to drive five miles up the road before you got any signal, and there was no broadband either. Sally hadn’t believed it when they first moved in, but after several hours of shouting at company reps from a pay-phone, she found that not only did no one want it, they’d campaigned against laying any cables.

The town’s only newsagent carried nothing but the local paper, the Sunday Post and ageing copies of The People’s Friend. Dunballan clung doggedly to its remoteness and refused to join the twenty-first century. The only light in this tunnel of seclusion had been the town library which was surprisingly well-stocked with a good selection of modern books.

Jane had remarkably similar taste to Sally and had begun recommending books and authors to her. Jane’s recommendations were excellent, but her attempts to engage Sally in conversation were stilted and self-conscious, often leaving Sally feeling awkward and embarrassed. There are some people with whom, in spite of the best intentions, you just never click. Jane was one of them.

Sally knew Jane was reaching out to her. She knew Jane wanted to be friends, and heaven knows she needed one, but not Jane. The longer they failed to connect, the more strained their relations became.

Finally Jane had given her the little pamphlet on folklore, it was her last attempt to forge a friendship. It hadn’t worked. The pamphlet had just infuriated Sally. It had shown her how complicit everyone in the town was in her suffering, and she could never forgive them, least of all Jane.

Now she stood staring earnestly up at Sally like some expectant suitor, and Sally could have throttled her, picked up a brick and bashed her earnest face in.

The flies from the hedgerow had begun to notice the meat in Sally’s bag. She waved them away and pulled the top of the bag shut.

“Okay,” was all Sally said, even that was hard to get out. She turned her back and continued up the steps.