There was something else she’d been forced to consider. Over the years, Maeve had dealt with the occasional nightmare. They were always the same. She stood alone in a vast room, staring up at the Abbey’s rose window. The stained glass wasn’t its usual pattern. Instead, it showed a person. A saint, one arm raised with fingers curled inwards, the other hovering close to their chest. Their eyes were screwed up with pain. Mouth gaping open. Every piece of stained glass in the window, from the saint to the ornate frame surrounding them, was made of bright, arterial red.
In the nightmare, the glass shattered inwards with a deafening explosion. Shards covered the ground around her like a halo, like the rays of a sun. And always, just before she woke, she looked down at her hands to find blood dripping from her wrists to the tips of her fingers.
Her blood, or the saint’s?
Maeve had scoured that nightmare last night, running over it again and again, searching for meaning. By the time the sun hadrisen, she felt like she’d hardly slept at all. And the answer still evaded her.
Jude didn’t look much better. Wordlessly, he handed over her coat and a red scarf. She drew the soft wool to her nose. ‘Isn’t this yours?’
‘It’s more of a house scarf,’ he said as he opened the front door. A gust of cold wind swept in, chasing away the last fuzzy vestiges of sleep and replacing them with a sharp tinge of trepidation.
Maeve stepped outside, tucking windswept strands of hair behind her ears. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Oakmoor. There’s someone I want you to meet. She’s usually at the pub, but sometimes she wanders.’
‘She? Isshea friend? Something… more?’
Jude barked a rusty laugh as he opened the gate and gestured for her to go through first. ‘Yes. I love eighty-year-old women. How did you know?’
She buried her face in her scarf to hide her blush, catching his eye as he smiled. He’d slid a deep green knitted hat over his closely shorn hair, his hazel eyes vivid against the thick fringe of his lashes. She looked away first, but not before she noticed the faintest hint of pink dusting the tops of his cheekbones.
It didn’t take long to trace their way through the moors to the small village tucked between the hills like a cupped palm. Immediately, the village made her uneasy. Curtains twitched as they passed, the wood-slatted and plaster buildings shabby and timeworn. High above their heads, gossamer clouds raced across the watercolour sky; a sharp contrast to the muted greys and browns of the village.
Watched– that was what the feeling was. Whether it was pure community nosiness or something more malevolent that drew villagers’ eyes to her, she wasn’t yet sure.
Jude stopped in front of a building aptly labelledPUBand pushed inside. Maeve followed him, loosening the scarf from herneck as she looked around, surprised to see it so busy in the early hour. The warm scent of peat and malty pints lingered pleasantly in her nose.
‘She’s in the corner,’ Jude said, bending to bring his mouth close to her ear.
Maeve scanned the room for the elusiveshe. Most patrons were men, tucked around tables with mugs of milky tea between them. To her surprise, the barman, a tall man with a mop of untidy dark curls and light brown skin, pushed out from a door near the back, holding three plates of cooked breakfasts – sausages, eggs, toast, and beans. Her stomach growled.
A woman sat alone at a table in the corner, her back to the rest of the room. For a moment, Maeve could only make out a pile of intricately knitted scarves layered over an even more masterfully woven cloak. It flowed from the woman’s narrow shoulders in a fall of bright yellow wool and fine gold thread, the colours as vivid as a field before harvest.
Jude reached her table first, bending over to say something before pulling a chair out for Maeve. She lingered, still on her feet as the woman slipped off her knitted hat and let out a low, grating laugh. ‘Oh! My, my, my. Sit here next to the old girl.’ She rattled the chair Jude had pulled out. ‘Sit.’
Maeve sat.
Was Jude behind her?
The ground seemed to sway beneath her feet as she met the woman’s gaze. Her eyes were still a bright, vivid blue, shadowed by sagging lids and a scraggly cap of white hair. Pressure started suddenly in Maeve’s chest. The name was there, right there on her tongue. She wanted to say it; shecouldn’t—
‘Oh, dear, dear, dear,’ the woman said, swiping a hand over her nose. Her knobby fingers came back red with blood.
‘Siobhan,’ Jude said, reaching forward. ‘Let me clean that for you.’ He gently wiped her fingers with a handkerchief. Siobhan watched with an unsettling blankness behind her eyes.
Maeve’s gaze fell to the pooled contours of her cloak. The bright yellow yarn, the shade so familiar—
Cadmium yellow.
‘Siobhan,’ Maeve echoed softly. She knew that name. How did she know it?
‘Siobhan,’ the woman trilled, tilting her head back and forth. ‘A lovely name for a lovely old girl. She liked it once when the sea was ripe and the sky a pearl.’
Maeve cautiously turned to Jude, finding him already watching her. ‘Is she okay?’
‘No,’ Jude said, ‘but you should still talk to her.’
‘Talk to who? Talk to me?’ Siobhan asked. She sat up straight and tipped an imaginary hat. ‘Many people used to talk to the old girl. Many, many people. So many years. So many tears.’ She giggled, the sound bright and girlish. ‘Leers and jeers and cheers. The old girl got it all, oh yes.’
