Tom Lynn

*

Oh you maidens all, that wear gold in your hair,

Do not go by Carterhaugh, for young Tamlyn is there.

Those that do must leave him a pledge,

either their mantle green, or else their maidenhead.

Janet tied her kirtle green, a bit above her knee

and she's gone to Carterhaugh, as fast as go can she...

Old Scottish Ballad

*

Chapter One

The moment they begin the descent – she thinks of it as such, though really it is the opposite – the world falls into a blur. Blood sings in her ears. Then, for a second, nothing: the lightness of space, being free from the earth. Wind blows past her face. She closes her eyes. Under her eyelids, sunlight. Sometimes, a small sound comes out of her mouth.

But this time, she feels the tilt sideways that should not happen, the moment of disunity. She opens her eyes. The stony ground rushes hard towards her. She pulls up her feet, and rolls, ahead of the blow. Stones bang into her. She turns over and over, between the grass and the sky.

For a moment she lies on the damp ground, head spinning. Then she gets up, limping. Silence falls. There is no-one here. Up here, only gorse and heather and the moor and the endless, pointless, ditches and walls. The sun is strong on her face. She takes a step forward, stops, flinches.

The horse backs off, reins trailing, large eyes blinking mistrustfully.

“Come here, beautiful, aren’t you my lovely? Beautiful, beautiful, aren’t you mine?” she calls to him. He relents, and lets her catch the bridle. She strokes his neck, trying to calm him.

The horse breathes warm breath over her, as if to console her.

“Aren’t you mine? Aren’t you mine?” she cries, as if he could be.

The horse, with his large, beautiful eyes, looks at her sadly, as if he would be hers, he would be, but he knows he is not.

“Janet,” says Edith, when she shows her the bruises. “You are absolutely fuckin’ mad. You’ll get the sack.”

They are in the tack room, where the smell of hay and polish from leather comes over everything.

“I won’t,” says Janet, stubbornly. “She won’t even know.”

“You’re not supposed to bloody jump him at all. You’re not supposed to be up on the moors. You’re supposed to be exercising him, not putting him at ditches. They’re dangerous.” Edith’s eyebrows knit together like her chapel-preaching grandfather who gave her that old name. “Do have any idea how much that horse is worth? For fuck’s sake. You’re just a groom.”

“You won’t tell, will you?” Janet appeals to her friend. “I only told you.”

“You know I won’t,” concedes Edith, eventually. “It’s just that you shouldn’t. That horse is someone else’s. It’s like using someone’s else’s property. It’s practically stealing. If you get sacked, what’ll you do? There’s nothing else up here.” Edith leans closer to scrutinise Janet’s bruises, a rough patchwork of green and purple all over her right thigh. “Look at your legs! You got freckles all over?”

“Yes.”

“What, even your arse?”

“Yes, pretty much so.”

Edith sighs, as if it’s some kind of disability. “Goes with the red hair, I expect,” she says, sadly.

Janet pulls up her jodhpurs. “I’m not giving up,” she says. “I can’t. I never fall. I never fall. Only today.”

“Something’ll happen,” says Edith, biblically.

“Nothing ever happens round here.”

Edith takes a bridle from a hook on the wall, and goes out into the stableyard. In the dusk of the tack room, Janet closes her eyes, and feels again the moment when she leaves the earth. The wind, the sunlight under her eyes. That one short moment of silence.

“I never fall,” she says out loud, to the saddles and the bridles, and the motes of straw that hang in the air. “I never fall. Only today.”

At 3pm she leaves the riding stables, goes down the lane, back towards home. Past the pub, past the farmhouse on the other side of the road. She walks this way every day, twice, except at weekends. She could walk it blind – in fact, has pretty much done, more than once, drinking all night in the pub, then falling out to stumble home, like she knows she shouldn’t, but she never came to any harm. Who’d find her – here, up here?

There’s no pavement, so she walks in the road. It is summer, the hedgerows full of flowers. The land drops into woodland. She comes round the corner, passes the gates of Carter Hall. She looks up, just to see it. She always does.

Carter Hall is silent, its windows boarded up. Its tall chimneys lift above the trees, its ornamental gardens run wild with weeds.

Carter Hall is an Elizabethan mansion house, and it has been empty for ten years. It was owned by some businessman who went bust. Then it was sold, and sold again, but no-one ever lived there. A ‘For Sale’ sign hangs permanently on its gates. She feels sorry for Carter Hall. It’s beautiful, but no-one wants it. It is out of fashion, unmodernised, crumbling back to dust. Its mullioned windows crumple a little every year, under the edge of the wind, and the rain, and the frost.

She passes Carter Hall, rounds a bend in the lane. She hears a vehicle, and scrambles into the verge. A large van slows down, edges past, draws to a halt. Its side is emblazoned with a swimming pool, Mediterranean blue, and a girl in a bikini. A window is wound down.

“Alright, Love?” says the driver. “Need a lift?”

“No - you’re alright – thanks.”

The van man with his bikini girl drives off. Who has a swimming pool, up here? Janet climbs back into the lane. Belatedly, something occurs to her. But then she thinks she imagined it, so she turns back, and comes again to the rusted iron gates that lead to Carter Hall.

Today, the sign on the gate says Sold.

Who’d buy Carter Hall? The thought upsets her – someone loud, someone who’ll turn it into a hotel, someone who’ll ruin it. But who’d want it – all the way out here, away from the restaurants and shops? It’s what she wonders all the way back to the village. All the way past the woods – they are part of the grounds, and hidden by a long stone wall, past the sheep fields, and down into the village.

Janet’s house is the first one, the end of a terrace of pebble-dashed council houses. From the front garden you can see the village: the houses, the Co-op store, the post office, the petrol station, the A-road near the bottom of the valley, where the lorries thunder past. She goes in, hangs up her riding jacket. The overpowering smell of cigarettes reaches her.

“Dad,” she calls, “I’m home.”

She can hear the TV. It’s too loud: sometimes the neighbours complain. He is sat where he always is, head tipped back on the sofa. Noise blares from the set, and the picture wobbles slightly. An ashtray full of cigarette ends sits next to him. On the arm of the sofa sits the cat, who eyes her like his dinner is late.

“Alright, alright,” she says. She goes into the back, to the kitchen, and opens a tin of catfood. In the back garden, the neighbour’s children are playing. She opens the door to get rid of the smell of tobacco. Seeing her, the children crowd up to the fence.

“Ey, Janet,” says the girl, about eight years old. “Have you been riding a horse?”

“I have,” she replies. They always ask this, like it’s something amazing and strange.

“’Ent you scared?”

“No,” she says, and puts down the catfood. The children go back to their climbing frame, satisfied.

Janet looks in the freezer, gets out chips, tips them into a tray, puts them in the oven. She should change. Back here, she can smell horse on her clothing. She should get in the bath.

“Janet, is that you?” calls a voice.

“It's me, Dad,” she says. She goes back into the sitting room, turns down the sound. A vague look of alarm filters through his face.

“Where have you been?”

“Work.”

Her father blinks, like he’s trying to remember something. Then he turns up the sound again. “There was a woman from Plymouth on earlier,” he says, vaguely. “I think she won a car.”

“That’s nice, Dad,” she says, and puts a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, Dad. Somebody bought Carter Hall.”

Janet picks up her jacket. “Dad,” she says, “I’m going out for a bit.”

“Are you going to see Mark?”

“He’s not here, Dad. He’s working.”

Her father says nothing. He just watches the TV.

Janet goes down the road, past the school and the post-office, where bright tinselly things and little flags festoon the windows. She turns left, passing above the main road, where the petrol station glows in the dusk, and knocks at the door of a house. A woman in an apron answers, drying her hands.

“Janet, it’s you,” she says. She seems pleased. “Have you spoken to Mark?”

“No - I was wondering if I could check if there’s an email?”

“Sure, sure, come in. I spoke to him Tuesday – he’s not home this weekend, is he?” she says, like Janet will know better than she does.

“No, next, I think, Mrs L.”

“How’s your Dad?”

“Same as.”

“You don’t need an excuse to come round here, you know. You come any time.”

She kisses Mark’s mother on the cheek. She likes Mark’s mother, always has done. Their house is different to hers: bright, and clean, and people make noise, and bang into each other, bickering without rancour.

“Where’s Mr L?”

“On overtime. Lorry went off the road. Still trying to clear it up. No blood, apparently. You limping?”

Her father would never notice this. It’s like Mark’s mother, knowing no-one else will notice, making it her business.

“A bit.”

“Horse kick you?”

“No, it was my fault.”

Mark’s mother pulls in air through her teeth. They go into the living room. Mark’s younger brother is sitting on the sofa.

“Ey,” he says. “You want to watch a DVD, Janet?”

“I got to check my emails.”

He looks disappointed.

“You want a cup of tea?” says Mark’s mother. Always like this, trying to compensate for things.

“Alright.”

“Go on, go upstairs.”

Janet goes up the stairs and into the small room they use as a study, turns on the computer. Out of the window, the hills behind the village sink into darkness. Tangles of dark flowers nod in the hedgerow.

She opens her emails.

Hi babes wot knickers u wearing today? i been working like bastard all weak knocking off like 9 and stupid so didn’t ring thought u maybe in sleeping wot with starting early and all hows horses? i bin thinking of u all week. i put £300 extra in bank this week soon we have loads ££ to get place when we all by ourself can’t wait babe think about it all the time. So wots up? I got tell u something funny right.

This place i bin working right one bloke had this porn mag they was all looking and all - hes bit of a pratt u know im not like that right babes – and he said to me look at this right and i said i don’t care my girlfriend is better than that and they all said i was lying an i got loads of stick so i took in that photo i got - u know the one like i took in spain - and they were all like fair play mate she is really fit so then the bloke with the mag was pissy with me but i was like tough shit mate I am the one wot is going out with her ha ha. So all the blokes here wanna know when u r coming up to go out clubbing with us. i seen all their girlfreinds but u r fitter even tho u r ginger ha ha u r fittest ginger bird I know serious babe i miss yr tits

Big snog

Mark

She feels annoyed and pleased in equal measure by this message. Sometimes the things Mark says annoy her. She knows, though, that when she sees him, the annoyance she means to keep will fade away. When she sees his face she will forget to be cross. The things that come out of his mouth irritate her, but the things on his face keep her hanging around. The way his eyes look at her pleadingly, desperately, like a dog wanting to please.

She thinks about replying but can’t find the energy, and closes the computer down, goes downstairs, back into the light and the noise.

“You looking at porn?” demands Mark’s brother. He is thirteen and obsessed with such things.

“No.”

“Simon!” shouts his mother. Janet sits on the sofa and turns over the DVD case. On TV, medieval warriors swarm across a plain.

“I’ve seen this,” she says.

“I got to go into town on Saturday. Supermarket and stuff. Why don’t you come? We could go out for a coffee,” says Mark’s mother.

“Alright, thanks.”

“Why don’t you stay for a bit?”

“Thanks, I’ll get off.”

She goes out of the house. Mark’s father is parking his car in the lane, carrying his uniform jacket and hat in his hand.

“Alright, Janet?” he says.

“Yeah.”

“Not wearing your jodhpurs today?”

Janet sighs, and he laughs. She goes back towards home.

Instead of going straight back in, she stands in the road for a while. It’s not quite totally dark. The lights in the village blink out into bright spots. All around her, the hills, and the tors, and the moors behind fade into black humps. She stands with a hand on the gatepost, just listening to the insects and the night. Then, as she stands there, a car turns off the main road, and roars towards her, blinding her with the headlights. She steps into the garden to get out of the way, and it rips past, a sleek, low convertible going far too fast for the lane and the dark.

Chapter Two

When she gets to work next morning, Edith is standing in the drive. Janet opens her mouth to tell her about Carter Hall, but Edith shouts:

“Have you heard? Have you heard?”

“Heard what?”

“Guess who bought Carter Hall?”

“Do you know?” says Janet, surprised.

“Don’t you want to know who it is?”

“Yes – yes, I do.”

Edith leans forward, eyes widening. “Tom Lynn,” she says.

Janet bursts out laughing. “Edith! Somebody made it up in the pub.”

Edith pouts. “You just don’t want to believe me because I heard it first.”

“But it’s so unlikely! Why would he come here? He must live in London. I mean, in… Hollywood, whatever. In America, right?”

They stop, because Mrs McConnaughy, the owner of the stables, is descending on them.

“Girls, girls, wasting my time!” she shrieks, jovially. Mrs McConnaughy: about forty-five, wears sweaters and pearls and jodhpurs, trailed everywhere by a golden retriever. She talks too loudly and is relentlessly capable. Janet likes her; she finds her funny.

“Isn’t it true, Mrs McConnaughy?” appeals Edith. “Somebody bought Carter Hall.”

“Yes! Oh yes!” she shrieks, seizing both of them by the arm. Mrs McConnaughy is no respecter of anyone’s space.

“I’m not arguing that someone bought it,” says Janet. “I saw the sign. I just think it’s unlikely to be anyone famous. I mean – they’d live in London, wouldn’t they? Or somewhere where there’s stuff… to do.”

“Must be Americans, I expect,” says Mrs McConnaughy. She shudders. “As long as they don’t turn it into a hotel. Good Lord!”

“I heard it was Tom Lynn,” says Edith, sullenly.

Mrs McConnaughy bursts out laughing, and bats her eyelids. “Ooh! Ooh!” she yells. “I’ll have to lock all you girls up! I heard it was a woman, actually,” she says, unexpectedly. “Loaded, must be. Loaded. That house costs millions. Over priced, I heard – cost another million, or more, to do up.”

Loaded, by Mrs McConnaughy’s standards, must mean loaded indeed, as she is not short of a penny herself.

“How does a woman get that rich?” asks Edith, resentfully.

“Edith!” shrieks Mrs McConnaughy, as if this comment is scandalous. “Well! Janet, I need to talk to you.”

Edith departs, sulking.

“Tom Lynn!” says Mrs McConnaughy, shaking her head.

“That’s what I thought,” says Janet, laughing. “Actually yesterday I saw a van – swimming pool maintenance. They must have started doing it up already.”

“Swimming pools! Good Lord! They won’t move in for a year, who ever it is, I expect. Place must be a state!” She tugs at her pearls. “Janet, I have some gentlemen over from Dublin this afternoon. Want to buy stakes in Bronze Orchid. Will you put her through her paces? The ground is good, I had a look.”

“Of course, Mrs McConnaughy.”

“Look your best, won’t you? I know you’ll do me proud. Eleven, they’ll be here.”

“Thanks, Mrs McConnaughy.”

Janet begins to groom Bronze Orchid. Bronze Orchid is a roan mare of uninteresting temperament but a good turn of speed. Janet prefers Restless, who is in his stall, and still limping. She looks at him, and raises a finger to her lips, conspiratorially.

“Shhh,” she says. He nuzzles at her shoulder, leaving a thin line of slobber. “Aren’t you my favourite?” she whispers. “Aren’t you the best?”

The horse’s ears flicker. Janet goes back to Bronze Orchid, and starts to plait her tail. Kathy bounces into the stable, carrying a bag of horse feed.

“Have you heard! Have you heard! About Carter Hall?”

“Yeah,” says Janet.

“Well, aren’t you excited?”

“Why?”

“Ooh,” says Kathy. “Tom Lynn. I like him. He’s got nice eyes. And a lovely arse. Have you seen his arse? In that film where he’s the astronaut. You could only see it for a second and - ”

Janet rolls her eyes.

“What, you don’t fancy him?”

“Nah – not specially. And anyway, I reckon it’s rubbish. Somebody made it up in the pub. You know what it’s like round here. Nothing ever happens. People...” She raises a finger and twists it round her head “...fantasise.”

“And you don’t, I suppose,” says Kathy, pouting.

“Well - not about film stars, anyway.”

Kathy sighs. “Ooh. You’re so like Mrs Married Woman these days.”

“It’s not that. It’s just - ”

“So you don’t fancy him at all? You think he’s ugly?”

“I didn’t say that. It’s his job to be good-looking. It’s just like – he’s more like a bloke for a young girl to fancy, isn’t he? He’s too pretty, I mean. I’d rather have a real bloke, you know.”

“Ooh, I like him. He’s so fit. Ooh-ooh-ooh!” She bounces off.

Janet looks at the horse.

“Tom Lynn, Tom Lynn,” she says. The horse looks singularly unimpressed.

The men turn up at 11.30. They seem to have been drinking already. Their shirts are expensive and their voices loud. Stockbrokers, she guesses. Mrs McConnaughy is all over them. Janet walks the horse round the track, while they snort and haw-haw. Then they are finally ready. The stockbrokers wink and nudge and smirk at her.

Adrenalin begins to run round her body. She feels like a battery charging. The air seems to get thinner. She begins to feel everything, every bit of her body, her back, her fingers, the way it all stretches, the air and the sunlight, the tugging of her clothes.

She goes around once, cantering, then she speeds up, and heads for the jumps. She hears nothing except her own breath, the sound of hooves. Up they go, up up up, beautiful and smooth. She knows it is only a second, but the time in the air lasts hours, and they come back down so well, so cleanly, it is like liquid being poured. That is what it is like: she is like liquid being poured. They rise and fall, and rise and fall, and rise and fall again.

A perfect round.

She pulls up, trotting in circles, cooling down in front of them. Sweat drenches her shirt. Mrs McConnaughy is clapping.

“I’ll buy both of them,” says one of the stockbrokers, and they haw-haw again.

“That’s Janet,” says Mrs McConnaughy, rather proudly. “She’s my best rider. Been with me since she was fifteen. Started as a Saturday girl. Not for hire, I’m afraid.”

One of the stockbrokers puts a hand on Mrs McConnaughy’s waist.

“Janet, take a break, dear,” she says, taking the bridle. “Kathy will clean up the horse.”

Janet can see Kathy hovering in the background. They don’t like it, the others, when Mrs McConnaughy shows her off like this. She dismounts, walks off into the buildings, goes to change her shirt. In the toilets, she looks in the mirror. Her eyes look strange: they look wild, like some kind of animal. She wonders if that’s why Mrs McConnaughy sent her away, whether she could see it, whether they could all see it, the wildness in her eyes.

She closes her eyes, presses her hands against the wall. She should not feel like this, so charged, like a cable humming with power. It is not right. It is not possible to live that way. If she lets it free, she will go crazy. It will grow like trailing ivy, until it strangles her from inside.

The gates of Carter Hall are opened. Boards come off windows. Scaffolding goes up. There are men on the roof. A week passes. The scaffolding comes down, the men disappear. What else changes? Nothing.

On Thursday, she passes by Carter Hall. The weather is hot. A builders’ van is parked in front of the house. She stops, and looks up the drive. The new people – whoever they are – have not yet done anything yet to the garden. The lawns run wild like meadows. Butterflies, and grasshoppers, and a million buzzing insects rise there.

If it was hers, she would do nothing to it. She would leave the long grass and the crumbling windows. She would let it as it is, and walk through its corridors, barefoot. She would go alone into the woods behind the house and say, all this, all this is mine. She would open her arms and feel around her, space.

There is a noise behind her, and she jumps, steps back, startled. Stopped right behind her, as if to avoid running her down, is a car. The car is open-top, low and sleek, and coloured a kind of bronzish brown. A woman is driving. She looks at Janet with a kind of wry, amused expression, and shuts off the engine.

“Do you like my house?” she says. Her voice low, sing-song, American.

“I…” says Janet, and then, unexpectedly, loses the capacity for speech.

The woman opens the car door, steps elegantly out, closes it with a small click. She is taller than Janet, in high-heeled boots. In those boots she must be – six foot two? She has white, white skin, clear like water, or like glass. Her hair is black, a bit below her shoulders, flicked expensively. Her eyes made up dark, slightly slanted. How old is she? Janet thinks forty-six, revises this downwards to thirty-nine, then back up again to fifty.

“Nice, isn’t it?” says the woman, standing next to Janet, looking up the drive. She smiles, a little mocking, but not without warmth. “What do you think I should do with it?”

“Nothing,” says Janet, finding herself able to speak again.

“Nothing? Nothing! What a good answer!” The American laughs, a nice laugh, low and mellow. Then she produces from her bag a metal cigarette case, the kind that women have in old movies. “Cigarette?”

“No thanks.”

“I love smoking,” says the woman, wrinkling up her nose, an effect which shows that she has small, slightly sharp teeth. She lights the cigarette and takes a drag. “It’s so bad for you. Besides, I own part of the company.” She laughs again.

Janet suddenly finds that she likes this woman. This expensive woman with her brown car and bad attitude and good haircut. What would it be to be like that? How would your life be? She can’t even imagine it.

“I like your necklace,” says Janet, though like isn’t really the word. It’s just that she has to say something, because she can’t help staring. Around the woman’s neck, on a thick round wire, is something Janet would never have dreamed of. A slab of glass, rough as if it just came solid, and trapped in the glass, a butterfly. Whole. Its wings glisten and gleam; it glints when she moves.

“Oh that,” says the American. She runs a hand across the butterfly, then holds out a hand. “I have a bracelet too. Different, aren’t they?”

Janet steps back, she doesn’t know why. From the woman’s wrist hang, like a charm bracelet, smaller slabs of glass. Inside them: a flower, a leaf, a dandelion seed, a beetle, black, and several more insects. They glitter, blue and green, trapped perfectly. Janet feels a little sick.

“Are they real?”

“Of course.” The woman looks Janet up and down. “You ride?” Janet is suddenly conscious of her crumpled shirt, her work clothes: the woman’s dress, her soft suede boots. The way her fingers go up, and work their way through her expensive hair. “Me too. You have wonderful skin.” The American startles her by suddenly reaching out and putting a hand on her cheek. From the hand on her face she feels softness, a strange calmness that spreads over her, even when the hand is gone.

“Thank you,” says Janet. She feels a bit dizzy.

“What’s your name?”

“Janet.”

“I’m Morgan. Pleased to meet you.” The American holds out a hand. When she takes it Janet feels sleepy, like the grass and the sunshine are overwhelming her, and slightly helpless, like she has been drugged.

“I work in the stables. Next door.”

“Ah.”

The woman smiles, like right now, all her attention is in one place, like she is used to charming people.

“I’m so pleased with the house. When I saw it on the agent’s books I couldn’t believe it. Paid too much, but who cares. What a gem! Don’t worry! I won’t ruin it. I like it just like that – just like you do.”

How did she read her mind? Was it that obvious? Janet feels stupid: her brain thick, dulled. She can smell the grass and the green stuff all around them, the dust from the drive.

“I’ll see you again, Janet.”

“Yes,” says Janet, a bit dazedly, and walks off up the lane.

Janet looks in the fridge, gets out salad and cheese flan, puts them on plates. Then she opens a tin of cat food, puts it down by the back door. She strokes the cat’s orange back. She picks up the cat, tries to make it dance, but the cat protests, so she puts it down. She takes the plates and goes and sits on the sofa, next to her father.

“Are there some potatoes?” he asks.

“No. Dad, that’s healthy food.”

He puts the plate to one side.

“Dad! You’ve got to eat.”

“Tomorrow.”

“Dad, you can’t eat tomorrow. Eat it today!”

“Maybe I’ll have a cup of tea.”

She sighs, gets up to make it. She brings it over, puts it in his hands.

“Dad,” she says. “Guess who I met on the road?”

He looks from her to the television.

“I met a woman with real insects in her jewellery. It was a bit creepy. She had a cigarette case and a fast car that made no noise at all and I think it was a Dolce and Gabbana handbag not like the fake kind but real and a dress that showed her boobs. She bought Carter Hall.”

“Janet,” says her father.

“Yes?”

“When you get married, you won’t go far away, will you?”

“No Dad. You know I won’t. Dad, please don’t smoke while I’m eating.”

“Sorry, Janet.”

She finishes her food, cleans up the catdish, does the washing up, hangs the washing on the line. Then she kisses her father on the head and says:

“Dad, going to the pub.”

He just nods.

In the pub she buys a pint. Edith and her boyfriend are sitting in a corner. They wave and call her over.

“What’s up?” says Edith’s boyfriend, Jem. His father is a farmer: he works about ten miles away, in a place that fixes Landrovers. Edith says he can fix anything. He was three years above them in school; he is already assistant manager.

“Not much.”

“When’s Mark home?”

“Next weekend.”

“Go out for a few pints, then?”

“Yeah, we should.”

“I don’t know what you do with him all that way away,” says Edith. She hugs Jem’s arm.

“He’s a wanker,” says Jem, cheerfully. “She’s glad to get rid of him.”

Edith looks shocked, but Janet laughs.

“Hey guess what?”

“What?”

“Mrs McConnaughy was right. It was a woman that bought Carter Hall. I spoke to her.”

Edith looks annoyed.

“Somebody bought Carter Hall?” asks Jem.

“Yeah.”

“What was she like?”

“Dunno,” says Janet, thoughtfully. “Different.”

“She bought Carter Hall,” says Edith, scornfully, “And she spoke to you?”

Janet sees the flicker of embarrassment that goes across Jem’s face.

“She offered me a cigarette. She said she owns the company.” Jem chokes on his beer. “Part of the company,” Janet corrects herself.

“Free fags! Free fags!” yells Jem. “Shame I don’t smoke.”

They all laugh.

“Was she old?” he asks.

“No.”

“Young?”

“Neither,” says Janet, thoughtfully. “It was hard to tell.”

“Was she fit? Oww!” Edith elbows him in the ribs.

“Yeah. Yeah – she was beautiful. She was – erm, a bit frightening, I think.”

“Yeah, but would you?” he says, leaning forward, wiggling his eyebrows.

“Yeah – I guess you would. If you had the guts, anyway.”

“I never seen a woman that frightening,” says Jem, flexing his shoulders.

“You don’t know Mrs McConnaughy,” says Edith, darkly.

“Mrs McConnaughy is nothing compared to that,” says Janet.

“Yeah, but – so what was she like?” asks Edith.

“I don’t know,” says Janet, perplexed.

What was she like? She was like – you wouldn’t forget her, that’s for sure. She was funny and stylish and not a snob and not only would you like her, you’d be drawn to her, like a moth to a light, and you’d want her to like you, you’d hope, you’d think – maybe she’d speak to you. Maybe she’d come close to you again, and that dizziness and calmness and the sweet smell would overwhelm you. But at the same time, you’d feel eaten, you’d feel possessed, like somehow she’d read you, she’d picked you over like a bone of meat.

She was…

Janet stands in the lane, looking at the hedgerows. She sees the woman’s hand, her long fingers, clear and pale.

“Are they real?”

“Of course…”

The beetles, the insects, the crawling things, all trapped in the glass.

Chapter Three

Today she saddles up Strawberry Moss. Mrs McConnaughy bought Strawberry Moss last year. He is too young to compete yet.

“Mrs McConnaughy,” she says. “I’ll take him out round the paths.”

“Ooh, Janet. I heard you met our new neighbour!”

“American, like you said.”

“Loud?”

“No. The other kind of American. Posh. Said she owned a cigarette company.”

“Good Lord! Well, Edith, there’s your answer.”

“To what?”

“How a woman gets that rich. Tobacco.”

“Poisoning people,” says Edith. She has already taken against the woman, whoever she is.

“Did she tell you her name?”

“Margaret – no, Morgan, I think.”

“Good Lord!” Mrs McConnaughy blanches visibly. “Tobacco, you said?”

“Do you know who she is, Mrs M?” says Janet, curious.

“No idea! Good Lord!” Mrs McConnaughy tugs at her pearls, and vanishes, post haste, into the house.

“She knows,” says Edith, conspiratorially.

Janet rides up the hill. Sometimes she wonders if Mrs McConnaughy knows she comes here, knows and ignores it. Surely she can’t be that dense? It’s strange - while the stables are in sight she always worries. Then, when the stables disappear behind the curve of the moor, she forgets to worry about anything.

Up here the land is empty, the air drained. Birds flit and dip between trees, broken stones, pools. Empty, empty, an empty place. Someone was up here once, though. They built walls and dug ditches, and then they abandoned them. Why? It makes no sense.

She stops for a while under the shade of a cluster of trees, hitches the horse to a branch, stretches her legs. Idly, she picks dandelions, punching holes with her thumbnails in the thick stalks. She makes a chain, turns it into a circle, and hangs it across the horse’s head, drooping over his ears. This makes her laugh.

It is hot, and she feels lazy. She chooses a longer way, slower route back, towards the woods. She can see the stone wall that borders Carter Hall, the trees behind; may and elder and hazel, spilling out on the moor, the rocks, the...

A white horse.

For one moment she thinks it’s wild. But it stands quite still, looking at her. It wears saddle and bridle.

Janet looks around. For a moment she feels strange, blurred, her head spins. No-one. No-one ever comes here, apart from her. Then she shakes herself, wonders if the horse has bolted, if someone has had an accident.

The horse shifts, quietly enough, as she approaches. At first, she doesn’t see the man - he lies on the ground, in the shade of a tree. Shadows have hidden him. For one second, panic fills her: she thinks he is dead. Then she sees the careful way the reins are knotted on a branch, and looks more closely. He is just asleep. He is sleeping, one hand flung out on the grass.

He looks immediately familiar. At first she cannot place him. She cannot even see his face clearly, half-hidden in the strong shade. She searches through her memory for possibilities. Someone she knew at school? No. Someone she saw in the pub? Someone who came to the stables?

So comprehensively has she written off the possibility that it takes her a full minute before her brain fixes on it: the last place she saw this man he was wearing a ludicrous suit of armour. He was carrying a sword and covered in fake blood. He strode towards her, ten foot high, across the screen of the Multiplex, and it was about that point that Mark copped a feel of one of her tits, and she had to slap him.

“The Battle is ours, my lord,” he’d said, and dropped to one knee. What a cheesy line! She’d crack up if she had to say that.

She moves a little closer, peers at him. Unmistakable.

And yet, he does not look like she thought he would. He is smaller for a start (of course he’s smaller – idiot!). He has blonde hair, curled a bit at the ends. At the roots an inch of darker brown grows out. He is dressed not unreasonably for riding: boots, tracksuit trousers, a T-shirt. There is a gold earring in his ear. Otherwise, he is plain and simple.

Plainly and simply asleep. Still… he is beautiful. She had not expected that. When she said she thought nothing of him, she'd meant it. And yet, in person, there is something…

She moves a little closer. Perhaps it’s something to do with the way he is so confidently asleep, here, out here in the open. The way he has thrown his body down, one arm under his head, one flung out on the grass, ankles crossed, head turned slightly to one side. The way his brown lashes hover on his cheek. He is not even perfect: around his eyes are tiny lines, a scar on the back of his wrist.

She becomes aware that she is staring at him, her mouth hanging open. Tom Lynn sleeps on. How can he sleep so heavily? She is sure that if she was asleep, that someone approached, and stood there, staring at her, she would wake up. She would feel the weight – the weight of their gaze. But perhaps Tom Lynn is used to being stared at. Perhaps he does not feel it any more.

As she watches, a butterfly comes down, flickers across him, brushes briefly on his skin, and then is gone.

‘Are they real?’

‘Of course…’

She remembers then, she dredges up from somewhere what she knows about him. She is not the kind of girl who reads gossip magazines. But somehow, she heard…

Tom Lynn is a scandal. He is scandalous. What is so shocking about him? He lives with a woman. A woman older than him. A woman nearly twice his age. The woman at the gate, the woman she spoke to, is Tom Lynn’s scandalous lover! Tom Lynn and his scandalous lover have bought Carter Hall. What on earth are they doing?

Trying to get away from people staring at them, maybe…

She feels bad, then. Like she saw something she shouldn’t. She tries to tear her eyes away from him, but it is unexpectedly difficult. There is something about him, something that means she could just watch him sleeping, and nothing else. What would it be like to wake and see that face on the pillow next to you? The cage of his ribs, rising and falling, the thump of his heart, inside. She wonders what colour his eyes are. She tries and tries, but cannot remember.

She looks at the white horse, as if it will tell her what to do. The white horse just blinks, placidly. Such a nice horse, so pretty, so patient! Then, without thinking much of it, Janet picks the flowers off her own horse’s head and deposits the chain of dandelions across the white horse’s ears. She raises a finger to her lips.

“Shhh!” she tells it.

The horse’s ears flicker, and it blows breath from its nostrils. She takes up the reins of her own horse and turns away, going softly, gently, as to not make a noise.

She heads back towards the road, skirting the walls of Carter Hall. How will she tell the others? Guess what I – no, you’ll never believe, no… Oops. She’s better say sorry to Edith. It was true after all. God, Edith is like a terrier. She won’t let that one drop for weeks. Months, years, even, maybe. It’ll be awful. She’ll have to…

Halfway back she realises that she won’t tell anyone. She can’t tell Mrs McConnaughy because she shouldn’t have been on the moors. She won’t tell Edith because she doesn’t want to grovel. She doesn’t want to apologise. She doesn’t want endless questions – what did you do, are you sure, how did you know, what did he look like, what was he wearing, why did you, why didn’t you…

She looks back over her shoulder. She doesn’t want to say: it was beautiful. He was beautiful, and I stood there, and I stared, I looked at the lines of his hand thrown open on the green grass, I watched him breathing, I listened to the silence, I watched him sleeping, then I turned around and I left again.

No, this is something else. It is her secret. It is worthless, anyway. What would it mean to anyone else? Nothing. It would be spoilt.

Tom Lynn, Tom Lynn, asleep on the grass.