LITMIR.BIZ

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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 color. 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

      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, which brought flooding down the river. Debris piled up against the footbridge by the tearooms 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, which 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 lawyers, 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 conducted by visiting preachers and no one seemed to know where the vicar had gone. The church warden 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 canceled 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 that 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 organized 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 parlor 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-gray, 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-gray 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

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