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<h2>20</h2>
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<p>There was no sign of Ginny Marsden on Christmas Eve. Both David
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and Helen had visited her parents again and he was struck by the
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resemblance in posture, in expression, between Winnie Marsden and
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old Catriona McDougall. At least Winnie knew her daughter was still
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alive.</p>
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<p>“But why is she doing this?” she wanted to know.
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Ginny’s boyfriend Tony hung about at the back of the room,
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looking uncomfortable and out of place. The western division which
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covered Levenford had assigned two patrols to make inquiries and
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both David and Helen had spent a cold day collating the information
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they had. It wasn’t until late on the night before Christmas
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that word came back that she might have boarded a train again,
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heading for the city. That would complicate the search.</p>
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<p>David took Helen to her mother’s house and found the place
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filled with sisters and brothers in law and a confusing array of
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children. Almost everybody, it seemed, was wrapping presents,
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hanging Christmas cards, or crowding into the kitchen to cook, or
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to eat. It was a benign bedlam. David was introduced all round and
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promptly forgot most of the names. Helen told her mother they had
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to go back to the office just to sort out some paper work. Mrs
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Lamont, whose hair was still dark and thick and whose smile showed
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how well Helen would weather the years, expressed harassed sympathy
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and told David not to keep her daughter out too late at this time
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of the year. He promised, not sure of whether he had any control at
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all.</p>
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<p>Outside he asked: “What paperwork?”</p>
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<p>“It’s a madhouse in there. I need some quiet.
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Let’s go back to yours. My own place will be just the same.
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Families, at Christmas? Who’d have them?” David had to
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stop at a corner store for another bottle of Jack Daniels and added
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a bottle of gin to the list. He bought two six-packs, selecting
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cold ones from the fridge, threw in crisps of all flavours and a
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variety of peanuts</p>
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<p>He hung her heavy jacket on the hook beside his dragonfly
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picture which had escaped June’s wrath. He hadn’t had
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much time to reflect seriously on her dramatic exit, because
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he’d been busy since the morning, but he’d been
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surprised when he’d woken that the swelling in his nose had
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gone down without leaving a tell-tale bruise which would have
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caused comment at the station. There was hardly a twinge of
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pain.</p>
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<p>He poured a drink for each of them and, without ceremony, Helen
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pushed some cushions off the sofa, bundled them into a little nest
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and made herself comfortable on the carpet in front of the fire.
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Outside, the sky still clear and the forecast promised a sharp
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frost. The moon was still haloed in crystals of ice. Helen sipped
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her drink while he talked about the difficulty of finding anybody
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in the city, especially someone who did not want to be found until
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finally she stopped him and asked him about the previous
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night’s phone call.</p>
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<p>“Oh, that was just the drink talking,” he said, not
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meeting her eye. He’d been hoping to avoid this and during
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the day, because she hadn’t mentioned it, he thought she
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might have forgotten. In the heat of the night, the thought had
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been so positive, so clear. In the cold of the morning, however, it
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was such a colossal concept that he had to get some distance on it.
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It had been a mistake, he knew, to dump it on her. “I’d
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had a blow to the head.”</p>
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<p>“Don’t bullshit David.” The words came out
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sharply, not angrily. “There’s something happening here
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that I don’t understand. You were trying to tell me
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something.”</p>
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<p>“Look, I was just trying to rationalise all of
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this,” he admitted. “I told you I spoke to the old
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woman, Greta Simon. Her story is just a reprise of the Heather
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McDougall story. Simon said she lost a baby. It happened on the
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same day McDougall went missing back in the sixties. We have
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incontrovertible proof that Ginny Marsden took the baby from the
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mall, and it was the same one McDougall had wheeled in a few
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minutes earlier before she threw a thrombo on the floor.”</p>
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<p>“Nice turn of phrase,” Helen said. “Very
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sympathetic.” David ignored her and went on.</p>
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<p>“So I’m just tying to establish connections. We
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already have links I suppose, but nothing that makes sense. Nothing
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I’m ready to put in any report to the boss or to Scott
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Cruden.”</p>
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<p>“But you said something about babies stealing
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mothers.”</p>
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<p>“It’s true. I did. I’m sorry, but my
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imagination was running away from me and I apologise for waking
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you.”</p>
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<p>“No, it’s more than that,” Helen said.
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“I can tell. You’re backtracking right now. I wondered
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why you never mentioned anything about this today. I kept waiting
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for you to bring it up. And that’s the real reason I dragged
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you out of my mother’s. Well, part of it. Anyway,
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you’ll be pleased to know I lay awake all night after you
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called because I realise there’s something not quite right
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here. You know more than you’re telling. Don’t ask me
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how I know that, for I don’t know myself. But call me a liar
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if you dare.”</p>
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<p>“No,” David conceded. “I know as much, or as
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little as you. But as old Sherlock said, whatever that’s
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left, however improbable, is the truth. Has to be. So I have to
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think on even improbable things. There’s a similarity all
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down the line, and I mean going back to the forties when old Greta
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said she had found a baby. Mike Fitzgibbon says she’s
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incapable of lying, so I have to take that as the truth. She had a
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baby in her care in the forties and then again in the sixties.
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McDougall had one in the sixties and another one this week. Where
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did the babies come from? Why were both of these women lactating?
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Old Hardingwell told me our Jane Doe was carrying something in her
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blood, major league molecules, long peptide chains, something that
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was very like the structure of a virus, so Hardingwell says, and
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I’m thinking maybe that’s another connection. Greta had
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something in her blood that they couldn’t identify, not
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then. It was probably the same thing. Maybe this baby’s some
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kind of carrier. Maybe it’s got a virus or some kind of bug
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that alters hormones for instance.”</p>
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<p>“You think they’re sick?” Helen asked and when
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she did she felt a tremor again. <em>Someone’s walked over my
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grave again.</em> She remembered the odd moment on the stairs when
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both she and Nina Galt were adjusting the pressure of their
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brassieres. She’d smelt the bitter stench in the room and her
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nipples had stood out, tender and throbbing, pushing against her
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sweater. She tried to think back, picturing the big woman jostling
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her substantial breasts, trying to recall whether she too was in
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the same turgid state. The memory wouldn’t come. She’d
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been too concerned about covering her own fear and her own
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embarrassment.</p>
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<p>“I don’t know,” David answered her question.
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“There’s just a strange chain of events. It could be
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something like rabies.”</p>
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<p>The shiver ran through Helen again. Had she herself picked up
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some contamination? “What do you mean?”</p>
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<p>“Rabies is a very smart virus. It programmes its hosts.
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First it infects the bloodstream then gets to the saliva glands.
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After that it spreads to the central nervous system, drives the
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host mad, and then makes it bite others. The saliva in the bite
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carries the virus on again, right down the line. Smart
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virus.”</p>
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<p>“And you think that’s what we’re dealing with?
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Something that could infect us?”</p>
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<p>“No. I don’t think there’s any danger.
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I’m just thinking aloud. Maybe there’s a virus that
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alters a woman’s drive. Maybe. I don’t know. But Ginny
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Marsden stole a baby. So did Heather McDougall, at least so we have
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to surmise, because she never gave birth and nobody has reported
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the kid missing. As far as I know she stole one from Greta Simon,
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way back when I was in shorts. Greta herself says somebody took it,
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and Phil Cutcheon now believes the baby never died.”</p>
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<p>“So what happened to the babies?”</p>
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<p>“That’s the million dollar question. We know, or
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have to assume, that the Marsden girl still has this one, but we
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don’t know where it came from. Nor do we know what happened
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to the one I believe Heather McDougall might have picked up at
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Duncryne Bridge. Did it die? Did she give it away to somebody else?
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And where did that one come from, because old Greta never gave
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birth, and as far as I know, nobody ever reported that baby
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missing. As you say, it gets pretty weird.”</p>
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<p>“So there could be some disease that makes women steal
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babies?”</p>
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<p>David laughed. “There would have to be one that made
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mothers fail to report the loss too.”</p>
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<p>“So far we’re talking of at least five, because
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McDougall has been seen with kids for the past five years, off and
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on.”</p>
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<p>“Unless it’s the same baby,” Helen said,
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trying to make it sound light, but the shiver stole through her
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again.</p>
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<p>“It would have to be a pretty old baby,” David said,
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but he gave Helen an odd, almost surprised glance. “Old
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Greta, she had a baby back in the forties, during the war. That
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would make it close to sixty by now.”</p>
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<p>“Older than my mother,” Helen said, wishing the
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strange feeling of uneasy prescience would leave her.</p>
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<p>“Anyway, that was just one of the things I was considering
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last night, and I shouldn’t have mentioned it. I’d been
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looking at some of my natural history tapes and I started seeing
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similarities. Now it sounds a bit crazy. I’ll have to think
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on it some more.” Even as he said it, he knew he was not
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telling the entire truth. What had started out as a simple sudden
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death in plain sight had turned into something completely
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different. David was experiencing the same thrill of forewarning
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that was making Helen’s skin stick out in goosebumps.
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<em>Unless it’s the same baby</em>, she had said. That had
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brought out his gooseflesh.</p>
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<p>Just as he mentioned his tapes, he recalled the dream again, the
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dream he’d remembered as soon as he’d woken up and
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instantly he felt his ears redden in the way that they did when he
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was angry, but this time the flush was embarrassment. In a flash of
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recollection he smelled the scent of her body and felt the shudder
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and gasp as she forced against him. He felt her eyes on him and
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tried to look away casually.</p>
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<p>“It might sound just as crazy, but I think there is
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something wrong in this whole thing. I don’t like it.”
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Helen said. “To tell you the truth, it gives me the creeps. I
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can’t say why, but I’m getting a bad feeling out of
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this.” She was turned towards him, looking up, her face
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raised, almost aggressively. As she moved, his memory superimposed
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the dream Helen who had turned and trailed soft fingers on the
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length of his thigh. Another flush of embarrassment, and of
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something entirely different, crept up from his open collar and he
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rubbed his fingers on his jawline, as if to check his day’s
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growth.</p>
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<p>She said something again, which he missed.</p>
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<p>“Are you listening?” She was looking right at him
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and the gleam of the side-light was in her eyes, the way the sun
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had been.</p>
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<p>“I was thinking back,” he said truthfully, wondering
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if she could see the flush of colour. To cover it, he poured her
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another drink, while she held the glass up to him, her arm
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outstretched. The glass trembled slightly, breaking up the light
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from the fire into diamond sparkles. She raised herself up and sat
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beside him.</p>
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<p>“What do you really think?” she demanded. “And
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no bullshit this time.”</p>
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<p>“As long as this is between the two of us?”</p>
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<p>She nodded, staring earnestly into his eyes.</p>
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<p>“Of course it is. I’m one of the good guys
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too.” She smiled, but there was something else in the smile.
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He couldn’t identify it.</p>
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<p>“You know anything about the natural world?”</p>
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<p>“I know a brachiosaur from a brontosaurus,” she
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said. “Which is more than you do. Yes. I grew up in the
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country. My uncle’s a gamekeeper. His brother’s the
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best poacher you ever saw, and they still drink together. I know
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where the dipper nests and where the big trout lie in a stream.
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It’s not all dolls and prams with us girls, you
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know.”</p>
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<p>“I was thinking about cuckoos last night.”</p>
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<p>“Brood parasites.”</p>
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<p>“Exactly. I was putting two and two together and coming up
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with a lot more than four.”</p>
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<p>She pulled back and looked him straight again. “You think
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we’re dealing with some kind of parasite? Like a
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vampire?”</p>
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<p>“I don’t know. Maybe. Possibly. There’s a
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connection running all through this that’s just not right. As
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I said, when everything else is exhausted....anyway I think
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I’d like a day off, and get my head clear of all of this.
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There’s more permutations in all of this than you get on a
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football coupon. Too many names and too many babies. Maybe I need a
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week off.”</p>
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<p>“That’s a good idea,” Helen said. “I
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wish I hadn’t brought the subject up. I think we should
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declare an amnesty from work, at least for the now.”</p>
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<p>“Suits me,” he said, wondering how crazy she thought
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he was. He leaned back. This time she took his glass, poured
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another measure and handed it back to him. She drew her feet up,
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tucked them underneath her, took a sip of wine.</p>
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<p>“So what are we going to do?” she asked.</p>
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<p>“Christ alone knows.” He looked at her and she
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looked back at him, dark eyes still catching the light. That
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expression was back again and it looked like hunger.</p>
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<p>“I don’t mean what will we do about work,” she
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said. “That can wait. It’s Christmas, isn’t
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it?”</p>
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<p>He turned to her askance and without any hesitation she leaned
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forward and kissed him. He was too taken aback that he did nothing
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for all of five seconds. She pulled back eyes scanning his, left to
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right and back again, her own eyes wounded and moist.</p>
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<p>“Do I need some mistletoe?” She asked, soft, now
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uncertain. “Or have I grown two heads?” He tried to
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shake his head, opened his mouth just a little. She tried again and
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this time, more prepared, he responded to the press of her mouth
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and the heat of her skin. Her tongue slid out, very slowly and
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licked the inside of his own lips, a slide of sensuous contact. He
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met it with his own. She made a very small noise that could have
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been a whimper or a sigh. There were two simultaneous, almost
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identical sounds as they reached blindly to put their glasses down
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on the table and then slowly leaned against the back of the
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sofa.</p>
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<p>Some time later, he took her into his bedroom.</p>
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<p>The moonlight sliced its slash on the wall, catching the bright
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and beady red eye of a fighting black grouse cock framed on the
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wall, though neither of them saw that.</p>
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<p>Some time later, deeper in the night, he’d lain there,
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listening to her breathing in the dark, watching the moonlight on
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the curve of her neck, feeling guilt about June and uncertainty
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about getting involved with somebody he liked and somebody he
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worked with and wondered how he’d got himself into this mess.
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He also recalled the shiver and sigh that he’d seen in the
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dream and then felt against him in their deep contact, and
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marvelled at her responses. Sometime in the night she woke up and
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heard him snoring softly and cuddled into him, grateful for his
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presence on a cold night, delighting in the press of his tough
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body. She knew, she told herself, that she hadn’t exactly
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planned this, but she was glad it had happened. Some things really
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were simply unpreventable.</p>
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<p>There were some drives that had a control all of their own. In
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the dark, she remembered his touch and the sudden ripple that had
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started deep within her and become a shudder and she remembered
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crying out, almost laughing with the force of it. She remembered
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the urgent demand that overwhelmed her and the spark of warm tears
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as it began to ebb. She remembered shaking her head when he had
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looked at her to see if there was anything wrong.</p>
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<p>Some time, even later, she roused him with more kisses and told
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him she had to go home before midnight. When he sleepily asked why,
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his face a picture of confusion and then drowsy comprehension, she
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told him.</p>
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<p>“It’s Christmas. They’ll expect me. It’s
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a family thing and I can’t break the tradition.”</p>
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<p>Ten minutes later, wrapped in his dressing gown and looking even
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more slender than slight and defenceless, she dried the
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short-cropped hair that gave her a pixielike, innocent look that
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belied her toughness and strength of her slim body. She came out of
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the bathroom and gave him a smile that dimmed the light.</p>
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<p>“I found the birthmark,” she said, laughing and he
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went along with it, trying to squash down the feelings of guilt and
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uneasy elation. June’s angry, pained face floated in his
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memory, scolding and accusing. He turned away from her, made her
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image fade away and he knew that he had turned a corner. Exactly
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where he was going, he had no idea.</p>
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<p>Helen changed back onto her jeans and flying jacket while he got
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his winter jerkin out. She turned to him, easing his collar up to
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protect his neck, while he did exactly the same thing to her.</p>
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<p>“Listen,” she said. “If you go all guilty on
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me, I’ll feel we did something wrong. But I know we
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didn’t. No pressure at all, but I’d like to do it
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again. You’re one of the good guys. I’ve known that for
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a while, even since before you saved me form getting my ribs stove
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in, and there’s hellish few of you around.”</p>
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<p>He pulled her close and kissed her again, savouring the taste
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and the texture and suddenly he did not want her to leave. June
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still tried to intrude, but he mentally straight-armed her away
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with a determined thrust. When he and Helen broke apart, almost
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fighting for breath, he reluctantly walked her down to his car,
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enjoying the close clutch she had on his arm, then drove through
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the bitter cold night and waited outside her house until she went
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inside. It was just more than an hour short of midnight and the
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moon was riding high.</p>
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<p>In the morning, when he awoke, for a confused few moments, he
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thought it all might have been a dream.</p>
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<p>_______</p>
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<p>On the day before Christmas Mrs Cosgrove woke early and prepared
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breakfast for the woman and her child. They had gone to bed early,
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the thin woman moving slowly as if she’d walked a thousand
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miles and had more to go before she reached her destination. The
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old woman remembered thinking it was a darned shame that anybody,
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any woman and child, should be away from home at this time of the
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year, staying in bed and breakfast with strangers.</p>
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<p>She looked at the line of cards along her wall, pictures of
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angels and glittery Santa Clause figures. At the far end there was
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a big one from her youngest son in Canada. It was a picture of the
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virgin Mary and her child, in a wooden stable. Another young woman,
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thought old Mrs Cosgrove, a long way from home with her baby. She
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put the kettle on and decided to give the woman two eggs and
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another rasher of bacon.</p>
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<p>As it happened, the stranger only ate the yolks and never
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touched the tea. She went out early and came back a while later
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with money which she handed over without a word. There was enough
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for a week’s lodgings, and that meant the poor dear meant to
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stay here right over the new year. Mrs Cosgrove wondered if maybe
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the girl was running away from something, if she was maybe in
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trouble with the police. She leaned back, taking the weight on her
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good leg and had a good look at her paying guest. The girl’s
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bones were pressed out against her cheeks, making the hollows under
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the ridges as dark as caves.</p>
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<p>As she told David Harper some days later: “I thought then
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that she was really sick. You know, that new thing, the Aids
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plague. There wasn’t a pick of meat on her. Just a rickle of
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bones. She should never have been out with that baby. I took a peek
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|
inside his pram and he looked healthy enough to me. It had big blue
|
|
eyes and a smile that would break your heart. I could have picked
|
|
him up and cuddled him. But the mother, she looked as if her days
|
|
were numbered, poor soul. You know what she looked like? She was
|
|
like one of them Jews in Germany in the war. The ones in the
|
|
camps.”</p>
|
|
<p>This was some time after what happened in Barloan Harbour came
|
|
to light.</p>
|
|
<hr />
|
|
<p><em>The mother was finished.</em></p>
|
|
<p>She would not last much longer and already he felt the panic of
|
|
imminent vulnerability rise up like bile inside him. The old dry
|
|
woman, who had a familiar scent, one he remembered from days long
|
|
past, hovered around, desiccated and done, while the mother’s
|
|
milk turned sour and thin. He was hungry now and there was little
|
|
sustenance left.</p>
|
|
<p>He had to move, had to find another one quickly. His senses told
|
|
him that he would be found here if he did not move on. The others,
|
|
the man and the woman - the very thought of her made the new hunger
|
|
swell under the old one - would follow and the mother was not quick
|
|
enough, not strong enough to carry him much further.</p>
|
|
<p>It was time. He lifted this head up from the mother’s teat
|
|
and forced his thought into her. She sagged back, twisting away
|
|
from the hurt of it. Her eyes screwed themselves into slits. There
|
|
was a dirty smell of old blood on her breath, partially from the
|
|
pound of raw minced beef she’d got from the corner shop and
|
|
also from the three gaping molar sockets where, during the night,
|
|
the teeth had loosened and come out. He touched inside and she
|
|
slowly sat forward and began to wrap him up.</p>
|
|
<p>She was almost finished. He had to act.</p>
|
|
<hr />
|
|
<p>Ginny Marsden had no strength to resist when it made her
|
|
rouse.</p>
|
|
<p>It made her take it out into the cold again when all she wanted
|
|
to do was close her eyes and let it all drift away.</p>
|
|
<p>“<em>Hail Mary full of grace please mother take this thing
|
|
away from me.”</em> The thoughts linked together in a
|
|
profound litany. “<em>Holy Mother please</em>.” She had
|
|
never been a religious person, not since the piety of early
|
|
childhood and bedtime prayers, but the words all came back to her
|
|
now in her extremity. Sometime that day she had turned to a mirror
|
|
and the part of her own mind that was still hers had perceived the
|
|
witch in the reflection and she had known it was herself. She had
|
|
been to exhausted, too drained, to be shocked, or frightened. She
|
|
sensed the imminence of the end rushing towards her. The witch in
|
|
the mirror looked like death itself, (death warmed up, as her
|
|
mother used to say a million years ago, and a tear sprung into the
|
|
eyes of the decrepit, desiccated woman who used to be Ginny Marsden
|
|
the girl) The glistening tear tumbled over the dark, blood-purple
|
|
bags under her eye and trailed down the cavernous hollow of her
|
|
cheek, getting lost in the fissure cracks around her lips.</p>
|
|
<p>The approaching end was not rushing fast enough.</p>
|
|
<p>Her joints ground like sand in gearwheels, and the rasp of
|
|
dreadful friction vibrated the deadly abrasion through her
|
|
faltering frame. Her mouth hurt and her eyes hurt. She began to
|
|
button her coat over her breasts, noting vaguely that they were not
|
|
as swollen, not as turgid as they had been. The nipples were red
|
|
and raw, and beside them, the scadded skin where it had sucked
|
|
blood through the capillaries and the pores, was beginning to map
|
|
itself in islands of scabs.</p>
|
|
<p>It made her move and everything inside her hurt and burned. If
|
|
she had been able, she would have got on her knees and prayed,
|
|
though the pain of that would have made her scream out or pass out,
|
|
she was sure, before the thing woke her up to urge her on. It
|
|
stared into her eyes and she stared back, unable to pull away while
|
|
inside of her head, her mind was shrieking uncontrollably at the
|
|
hurt and the fear and the knowledge that she was damned.</p>
|
|
<p><em>Devil. It’s possessed me.</em></p>
|
|
<p>And when she thought that, the corner of her mind that had a
|
|
kind of rational capacity, suddenly recalled what she’d
|
|
learned a learned time ago, of Christ in his passion in the Garden
|
|
of Gethsemane, when he was so raddled by the fear of the manner of
|
|
his death that the blood had come bursting through the pores of his
|
|
body and he had appealed to his father to take this chalice
|
|
away.</p>
|
|
<p>Ginny Marsden might have prayed, but the monster reached out its
|
|
thought and turned her around with brutal force, and made her stand
|
|
up. Her joints squealed, both in pain and in actuality, rusted door
|
|
hinges protesting. She shuffled to the door. Somewhere at the front
|
|
of the house the television was on and old Mrs Cosgrove was talking
|
|
to someone, possibly on the telephone. It didn’t matter.
|
|
Ginny was made to walk towards the back door, down the narrow
|
|
little lobby that separated her bedroom from the kitchen. The door
|
|
opened easily, though the motion of turning the handle sent needles
|
|
of pain up to her elbow. She went out, almost tripping over the lip
|
|
of the door edge and down the broad path where the skeletons of the
|
|
summer’s sweet peas and nasturtiums waited to be cleared away
|
|
in spring. The air was cold and rasped at the tenderness of her
|
|
throat and froze her lungs, but she moved on, turning at the gate,
|
|
not even looking back.</p>
|
|
<p>The thing in her arms pulled at her, making her move, right,
|
|
left, pain, hurt, right, left,</p>
|
|
<p><em>please God take this chalice.</em></p>
|
|
<p>Agony. She staggered not down the hill as she had before, to get
|
|
to the little branch bank and the corner shop in this winter-silent
|
|
village. It forced her onwards, upwards, along the road, a pause
|
|
while it let her gather failing strength.</p>
|
|
<p><em>Oh please make it stop.</em></p>
|
|
<p>It made her go on. Here the hedges were frosted in the cold,
|
|
rimed with ice that blew in from the estuary on the misty
|
|
sea-<em>haar</em>. Down in the distance a monster howled and she
|
|
did not even realise it was a foghorn blaring from a blinded tanker
|
|
slowly feeling its way upriver.</p>
|
|
<p>Behind her came a hollow clatter and she half turned, regretting
|
|
the motion instantly as the shock-waves ran up the length of hr
|
|
spine and seemed to explode in her head. For an instant the whole
|
|
world went black and she felt herself stumble towards the ditch.
|
|
The light came back on instantly and she managed to keep her feet.
|
|
Two women on horseback passed by, eyed her curiously. The horses
|
|
whickered and whinnied nervously.</p>
|
|
<p>“Watch out for the ice, Kate,” one of them said,
|
|
“the ditch has overflowed close to the hedge. They’re
|
|
worried they’ll slip.”</p>
|
|
<p>The one who spoke passed by. Ginny Marsden looked up and the
|
|
woman at the rear, auburn haired, darker than Ginny had been and
|
|
robustly healthy, looked down. Her eyes widened, not in shock, but
|
|
in surprise, the way whole people do when they see the deformed and
|
|
the grotesque. Ginny had no will, no strength to react to it. All
|
|
she felt was the pain and the rasp of bone on bone. The horse
|
|
skittered nervously, snorting through dilated nostrils and shaking
|
|
its head, stamping hard on the road surface as it passed her and
|
|
the woman had to pull tight on the reins. It got over the patch of
|
|
ice, hooves sounding like mallets, danced on beyond, still nervous
|
|
and spooked. The woman up ahead called back and the second woman
|
|
caught up on her. The horse settled down again, slowing to a walk
|
|
and moved on with its companion, both sashaying like proud women,
|
|
backsides swaying from side to side. They quickly passed by,
|
|
carried on along the road to where it turned uphill. At the turn,
|
|
the one who had looked, turned back to look again.</p>
|
|
<p>“Come on Kate, I have to go fetch Jeremy from the
|
|
airport,” her companion said. The horses moved away and the
|
|
sound of their hooves faded. The cold was beginning to sink into
|
|
Ginny’s bones and for a little while, she was grateful for
|
|
the numbness that spread into her throbbing fingers. She kept
|
|
moving, slow and faltering, forced onwards while the thing at her
|
|
breast kept its eyes closed tight against the weak winter sunlight
|
|
that came through the gap between the buttons of her coat and
|
|
waited for dark.</p>
|
|
<p>It took her more than an hour to make it to the barn. In that
|
|
time a four wheel jeep almost knocked her into the ditch, just
|
|
pulling up at the last moment as the woman, the one who had been on
|
|
the leading horse, realised there was someone walking on the narrow
|
|
farm road. The headlights, on full despite the hour, blared and
|
|
seared her eyes, causing her to wince away from a fresh input of
|
|
hurt. Her breath was coming hard and sore, like an asthmatic in the
|
|
midst of a final, catastrophic attack. The pain in her feet had
|
|
gone now, gone completely as if the nerves had been eaten away. She
|
|
heard her shoes slap down on the hard road metal as she approached
|
|
the gate. In the near distance, horses whinnied, their hollow
|
|
voices magnified by the slope of the stable roof. Overhead, a
|
|
chevron flight of honking geese passed across the now deepening sky
|
|
and off in the distance, a magpie machine gunned its aggressive
|
|
call from a stand of trees.</p>
|
|
<p>It impelled her to climb the gate. The metal rang and clanked as
|
|
she hauled herself over it, not knowing where she was or where it
|
|
was forcing her towards. In her head, her own befuddled mind was
|
|
chanting the prayer over and over again, <em>Holy Mary, Mother of
|
|
God, pray for us sinners, pray for me. Let this chalice pass.</em>
|
|
The prayers went unanswered. She got down on the other side of the
|
|
gate, slipped on the slick ice and felt her thigh bone pull right
|
|
out of the socket. A momentary shriek of anguish ripped in there,
|
|
but still she was goaded onwards, the mad puppeteer that had
|
|
control of her volition dragging and tugging on the strings. The
|
|
next twenty yards, despite the rending hurt in her thigh, were
|
|
easier, because the bone was now outside its own socket. A
|
|
monstrous lump swelled on her hip, at the top end of the thigh,
|
|
where the flesh was all bunched up, but the ends of the bone were
|
|
now separated. Somehow, she was able to walk, in an odd, staggering
|
|
and crablike motion, but the immense pain screamed only in the
|
|
right thigh where the joints still grated and abraded. She had no
|
|
willpower to be thankful for this tiniest of mercies as she
|
|
stumbled on, only enough of herself to repeat the mantra over and
|
|
over, though it did not help, except to focus what was left of her
|
|
away from everything else.</p>
|
|
<p>She stumbled onwards. Out beyond the whitewashed walls, a dog
|
|
barked, high and agitated. Closer in, from the roof of an ancient
|
|
dovecote, a throng of pigeons clapped their panicked way into the
|
|
air. The sky was getting darker now, noticeably so as the shadows
|
|
lengthened. There was a light at the side of the farm’s small
|
|
and horse-shit fouled courtyard which sent the shadows of the
|
|
hawthorn hedge reaching towards her. The light hurt her eyes, but
|
|
she still shambled towards it. The whinnying was closer now, though
|
|
the barking had stopped. Out of sight a galvanised bucket was
|
|
kicked over by a careless foot and she stopped, still muttering
|
|
madly to herself. Her feet, now completely numb, were bleeding
|
|
where the bones had pushed into decaying flesh, and it was hard for
|
|
her to keep her balance. In at her breast, the thing nuzzled,
|
|
sucking hard at her skin.</p>
|
|
<p>The barn door yawned and she went inside. It was musty here,
|
|
musty and dusty, with harsh motes of hay dancing on the air in the
|
|
light that speared through the holes in the wall in solid beams.
|
|
The bales were piled high, great oblongs of fodder, stacked one
|
|
upon the other. It made her climb up the giant steps of hay, higher
|
|
and higher, her heart now pounding with the enormity of the effort,
|
|
her feet unable to feel where they were stepping, her dislocated
|
|
hip making it almost impossible for her to bend her leg properly,
|
|
but still it drove her, onward and upward, now far above the
|
|
village of Barloan Harbour. Finally she could go no further. Up at
|
|
the back where the hay bales formed a natural hollow which had
|
|
actually been carved out by a teenage boy from down in the basin
|
|
who had found the ideal place out of the cold and away from prying
|
|
eyes, to copulate at every opportunity with the red-haired and
|
|
heavyset girl who occasionally helped out in the tackroom. The
|
|
place, this close to Christmas, was empty except for the faint
|
|
squeak of the colony of rats which burrowed far under the hay.</p>
|
|
<p>Ginny Marsden hated rats. She would have run a mile, under
|
|
normal circumstances, had she realised what was making the sound,
|
|
had she even heard what was making the feral twittering sounds
|
|
under the bales. These were far from normal circumstances.</p>
|
|
<p>Ginny Marsden was dying.</p>
|
|
<p>She slumped down in the shadows, gasping for breath, lungs
|
|
rasping air and hay dust, her sides heaving like an exhausted
|
|
animal.</p>
|
|
<p><em>Holy Mary mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the
|
|
hour of our death.</em></p>
|
|
<p>The dark crowded in on her and in the depth of it, despite the
|
|
hurt and the catastrophic wasting of her body, she saw her
|
|
mother’s face floating just in front of her, wavering as if
|
|
seen through a film of liquid. Her mother was calling out to her,
|
|
anguished at her loss and Ginny tried, desperately to call out to
|
|
the woman who had gone through the pain of childbirth and had
|
|
suckled her at her breast. The illusion wavered and danced,
|
|
rippling in the forefront of her mind, and in that moment, Ginny
|
|
knew that her mother was crying for her. She did not even know that
|
|
this was Christmas Eve and that all of her presents were wrapped
|
|
and neatly stacked under the tree.</p>
|
|
<p>The thing on her breast snuffled and gobbled. Its mind was
|
|
loosening its grip on her,. She was suddenly aware of that, that it
|
|
was withdrawing. Tears welled up in her eyes as, suddenly, she was
|
|
able to think of her warm house and her mother’s hugs and the
|
|
safety she had once, so long ago, taken for granted.</p>
|
|
<p>Way in the distance, down in Barloan Harbour, a choir from St
|
|
Fillan’s church sang carols through a public address system
|
|
and the faint melody floated up hill, even as far as the farm, even
|
|
as far as the barn, even as far as Ginny Marsden’s dissolving
|
|
mind. The tears rolled down the hollows of her cheeks while the
|
|
thing snuffled and sucked, almost desperately. Inside, she could
|
|
feel the rot, the sense of dereliction, the breakdown of her organs
|
|
and her body. It had made her come here, overcoming the defeat in
|
|
her own body, showing the power of one kind of mind over her kind
|
|
of matter, making her achieve what would have been impossible by
|
|
the force of its desperation and its unnatural drive.</p>
|
|
<p><em>Monster.</em></p>
|
|
<p>In the distance the choir sang about three kings and a babe in a
|
|
manger, huddled in a barn. Here, the thing that sometimes looked
|
|
like a baby and sometimes looked like a beast from a black
|
|
nightmare, lifted its flat head. In the dark, its great eyes
|
|
flicked open. Ginny Marsden saw them, big as saucers and emitting a
|
|
strange, feral light of their own, but they were not fixed on her.
|
|
It moved on her, lizard like, spider like, clambered off her
|
|
prostrate and almost paralysed body. It rustled in the hay. Down in
|
|
the depths, a small thing squeaked and then went silent. She heard
|
|
a snuffling sound, a kind of breathless snort and the monster moved
|
|
away.</p>
|
|
<p>She tried to move but could not. The pain in her fingers was
|
|
draining away, mercifully. The hurt in her spine was still a
|
|
throbbing shudder, but she knew that too would fade in the end.</p>
|
|
<p>About the time David Harper and Helen Lamont found their way
|
|
into his bed and into each other, something burst inside Ginny
|
|
Marsden with an actual sound of tearing. She twisted, contorted to
|
|
the side by the force of the rupture. Her bowels pulsed and her
|
|
whole lower intestine began to protrude from her anus, while her
|
|
womb, that part of her that had been destined to carry children of
|
|
her own, turned itself inside out and prolapsed grotesquely down
|
|
through her vagina into the cold air.</p>
|
|
<p>She rolled to the side, unable to prevent herself and she
|
|
coughed hard. A gout of wet came unravelling up her windpipe and
|
|
through her throat to burst in her mouth and then drip down to the
|
|
hay. Liquid bubbled inside of her. The dark took on a strange
|
|
lightness and a succession of faces paraded in front of her, Celia
|
|
Barker smiling as she waved goodbye and told her to look after the
|
|
cat and the fish, Mork and Mindy; her mother came again, an
|
|
elegant, oddly young face leaning over a tiny Ginny with a soft
|
|
sponge in her hand and a smile on her face; the dark-haired woman
|
|
who had come stumbling into Celia’s kitchen; Old Maggie and
|
|
Maisie in the bus-stop cafe; Mrs Cosgrove and her big breakfast;
|
|
the woman on the horse. And glaring past them all, the red and
|
|
ferocious eyes of the monster that had snared her and drained her
|
|
of everything that she was.</p>
|
|
<p><em>Holy Mother of God, pray. Holy. Pray</em></p>
|
|
<p><em>prey</em></p>
|
|
<p>Something else burst inside of Ginny Marsden. Just before
|
|
everything began to fade, she thought of her father and his big
|
|
manly hands and his gentle eyes and then she thought of Tony and
|
|
how she had never let him touch her, saving herself for a special
|
|
day, saving herself for the first time. Saving herself for
|
|
motherhood.</p>
|
|
<p>She coughed again while down in the hay, the thing snuffled,
|
|
moving towards the door of the barn. The choirboys sang and in the
|
|
distance the beast in the fog moaned again far down the firth.</p>
|
|
<p>In the Lamont household, there was laughter as sisters and
|
|
cousins kissed and hugged Christmas in. David Harper kissed his
|
|
mother and poured a good shot of whisky for himself and his father,
|
|
thinking about Helen Lamont and wondering what to do with the
|
|
present he’d already bought for June.</p>
|
|
<p>In the Marsden house, a man and women cried in each
|
|
other’s arms and prayed to God for the safe return of their
|
|
daughter.</p>
|
|
<p>On the other side of the country, in the tiny house where
|
|
Heather McDougall had been brought up until the day the monster had
|
|
snared her, Catriona McDougall wished her husband a happy Christmas
|
|
and pecked him on the cheek, though he should have been in bed a
|
|
long time ago. Something had made her stay up and she treated
|
|
herself to a small, thick sherry. She watched her man stare
|
|
drooling at the fire and then she lay back and inside her head, a
|
|
small vessel burst and she died without even knowing it. Old
|
|
Callum, too far gone to realise that his wife was never going to
|
|
wake up, died in mid morning when the heat of the fire drained away
|
|
and the house slowly froze.</p>
|
|
<p>Ginny Marsden coughed violently and some other bloodied part of
|
|
herself gouted out. The darkness expanded in a blare of white light
|
|
which quickly fizzled down to a point of intense luminescence. All
|
|
pain fled from her and she let out a rattling sigh which went
|
|
strangely silent as very quickly the pinpoint of light expanded
|
|
again and she was swept through it on a wonderful wave of
|
|
warmth.</p>
|
|
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|
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