Page 18 of Secret Paths

For a moment, Mrs Higgins stares at her empty hand.

“Well,” she says. “That worked.”

Mandy laughs.

It comes out before she can make it small, and she catches my forearm as she bends her head. She leaves her hand there for a second, then lets go.

Bernard pauses halfway up the slope, turns to inspect the group behind him and lets out a fart loud enough to make Hunter stop.

The smell reaches us a moment later.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Hunter says.

Nancy takes three quick steps sideways. Luke pulls his collar over his mouth. Mrs Higgins fans the air with the route map, looking scandalised in the way only a woman who has fed a beagle sausage roll can.

“Bernard,” she says. “Honestly.”

Bernard wags his tail.

Mandy is laughing again, wiping at the corner of one eye with her glove.

“That,” she says, “is the least medically concerning thing I have dealt with all week.”

“High praise.”

“Do not tell him.”

“He will be devastated.”

She looks at the hill, then at me.

“Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“Up there.” She starts walking. “You can be angry at the bank while we walk.”

“That is generous.”

“I know.”

I follow her up the slope.

Chapter 2

Mandy

By the time we reach the top of the hill, Bernard has recovered from both the climb and his assault on the group’s air quality.

He trots ahead of Mrs Higgins with his tail held high, as though he has personally led us up the slope rather than stopped twice to inspect a stone and once to sit down in protest. Mrs Higgins follows behind him, still muttering about the sausage roll he stole from her hand.

“Do not look so pleased with yourself,” she tells him.

Bernard looks back at her.

Then carries on walking.

The path levels out along the ridge, opening the view across the fields and hills. St Claire sits below, roofs clustered around the church tower, smoke lifting from a few chimneys into the pale sky. The rain has stopped, leaving everything damp and bright beneath the thin sunlight.