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‘Denny wasn’t shouting at me because he was angry with us. He was pushing me away for some other reason, and itwas bigger than just his grandad getting annoyed. He didn’t want me at the farm and he was panicking because I was there, that’s why he swore at me. He wanted to make me cross enough to flounce off, I knew his game. And that’s why I kept my cool. And someone was watching through the window.’ She remembered the single-width glass. ‘They’ll have heard every word.’
Jonah reached over the table, took her hand. His enveloped hers, it was so much larger than Bruce’s.
‘I don’t want to play devil’s advocate, Shay, but what will you do if you don’t get what you want from them?’ he asked.
Shay thought for a few moments. It was more than likely she wouldn’t.
‘Then at least I can go home knowing that you believed me. I’ve felt very alone in the truth, as if I was the only one swimming in it.’
‘I never doubted you,’ said Jonah.
‘My mum did. But who can blame her? I was sixteen and it was my word against two adults. My dad said he believed me, but even he must have had some reservations.’
Jonah lifted his hand from hers and picked up his coffee. ‘Will you stay in Sheffield after your divorce?’
She hadn’t even thought that far ahead and said frankly that she hadn’t a clue. The question hung around in her head though, long after he’d left. Where would she live? The dream villa in the sun was now long gone – if it had ever been anything other than a pipe dream anyway. The family home was now devoid of family and would be far too big for her to rattle around in alone, plus Bruce would want his half of the equity. She’d have to sell up but still remain fairly local because she needed to be near her dad’s care home, until she didn’t any more. And she couldn’t goanywhere until she’d got rid of a lot of furniture in her own house and also the stuff in her mum’s. She’d have to hire a skip. The irony wasn’t lost on her that this would end where it all began.
Chapter 36
The following afternoon Shay took the car up to Starling Farm because heavy rain was threatening. The air had been almost too thick to breathe in the night and she’d been woken up by the rumble of thunder and flashes of lightning cleaving the sky. She hadn’t slept well; she knew she couldn’t put off any longer what she had come here to do and it was time to ramp up the pressure. She had been stuck in this limbo for too long and it had to end.
She parked on the road next to the entrance to the farm and felt a boulder of unease in her stomach at the thought of being here again in this depressing place. In the cold light of day, it didn’t feel right, torturing an old woman; but she’d do what she had to. She marched down the path with intent, she knocked hard on the door, she squinted through the windows, trying to see beyond the nets. She knew there was someone there because she saw the shift of shadows. She spoke through the glass.
‘Open the door, Ella. Talk to me and then I’ll go away and you’ll never see me again.’
She imagined the two women huddled together in a darkcorner, terrified. Then she remembered being sixteen and terrified because the horrible policeman had said she might as well have put that rope around her so-called friend’s neck herself. She had been scared of everything for a long time afterwards; scared of staying awake and the thoughts and pictures that were seared on her brain, scared of sleeping and the nightmares about her forcing Denny’s neck into the noose and pushing him off the fold-up chair he’d taken to stand on.
There was a disapproving grumble from the sky, then the rain started, large warm drops that laughed at shower-proof coats. It took a mere couple of minutes for her clothes to be plastered to her skin, but Shay stood her ground, banging on the door, watching it shudder in the jamb, her hair rain-clogged and straggly, water dripping in her eyes.
There was no answer, so she pressed her soaked face close to the glass window and said, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow. Or maybe I’ll come back tonight.’ It was a cheap shot, it wasn’t her scaring people in their own homes. Or maybe it was; she wasn’t quite sure who ‘her’ was any more.
She’d been back at Candlemas for an hour, fully dried out and taking her mind off things by processing some of Colin’s expenses, when there was a knock on the door. She saw the black car outside the window as she got up from the table and tried to suppress the grin that the sight of it brought to her lips.
‘Hi. Again.’ Jonah stood there on the doorstep. ‘Just a thought – want to come and see my Creamery? Which is not a variation on a theme of “want to see my etchings?”’
She laughed. ‘Oh. I’d love to. When?’
‘Now? Or later if you aren’t free.’
‘I’m free,’ she said, a bit too keenly.
‘Great.’ He clapped his hands together.
She put her phone in her bag and followed him out into the sunshine. The weather had totally flipped again.
‘I thought you might be at a loose end,’ Jonah said in the car. ‘I didn’t expect you to drop everything if you were busy.’
‘No, I’ve had a pretty steady day. And I can pick my own hours to suit,’ she replied.
‘What have you been up to today?’
‘Expense sheets,’ she said. ‘Riveting.’After haunting an old woman through her front window, she added to herself. He didn’t need to know that.
‘Great having your own business, isn’t it?’ Jonah smiled. ‘Mine ticks over pretty well unless there’s an emergency, like there was on the day when I saw you at Terri’s. One of the machines decided to play up and I had to get my engineering head on. You have to know how to do it all in this game. I was lucky though, Mr Watson was a great teacher.’
When they pulled fully into the creamery car park, Shay couldn’t believe how big the site was. It didn’t look a quarter of that size from the road.
‘Ever been to Wensleydale or Birtwell?’ Jonah asked.
