Violet is glaring into the depths of the lake. She fancies that she can taste it somehow: all iron and dirt and vinegar on her tongue. If she concentrates hard, she can see what’s below the great silver mirror of the surface. She can see down through the cold, still bleakness and make sense of the perfect dark. She can see the dead people. San see their cold, bloated skin: white, like the belly of a fish. Can see dead eyes, staring upwards, into nothing. Can feel what they feel, the loneliness and rage. Mr Sixpence is the only person she has confided in about her visions. Mr Sixpence tells her she has a gift. He wants her to learn how to harness it. To channel it. He has warned her not to listen to those who tell her she is ill. It is a blessing, he says. A gift.
Violet feels the pull of the water. If she concentrated hard enough, she thinks she could swap places with one of the dead. She could swap consciousness with one of the bodies, bound in plastic and pitched into the inky black depths by any one of the succession of murderers who have chosen this place to conceal evidence of their deeds.
She moves closer to Catherine. Screws up her eyes until the feeling passes. Turns to her friend and punches her in the arm.
“Don’t!” hisses Catherine, wrapping her left hand around her skinny bicep. She looks hurt. “I’ve asked you to stop doing that.”
“You’re building up your tolerance,” says Violet, trying to sound matter-of-fact. In truth, she doesn’t know why she keeps giving her best friend dead-arms. She doesn’t know why Daddy used to do it to her. He seemed to enjoy it more than Violet does when she inflicts them on Catherine or the other girls at the boarding house. She supposes she just likes the feel of it. Likes the way soft skin responds to her own hard knuckles.
“I’ve got bruises,” says Catherine, sticking out her lip.
“Do it to me, then,” shrugs Violet. “Hit me back.”
“I don’t want to hit you. You’re my friend.”
Violet rolls her eyes, all scorn. “You’re my friend, you’re my friend. God, Catherine, you’re pathetic. A pathetic little girl.”
“I’m older than you, Violet.”
“I’m older than you, Violet…,”
“Stop copying me!”
“Stop copying me …,”
They catch one another’s eye and start to laugh. They’ve been best friends for a year now. They sit together as often as they are allowed. Violet spends more time at the vicarage with Catherine and her parents than she does in the boarding house. She’s going to spend the summer with them too. There had been talk of going home, but mum has been suffering with her nerves of late and Daddy has too much on to be dealing with ‘a houseful’ so she is going to stay with the Marlish family instead. She likes it there. They’re a little bit feeble sometimes and she finds the prayers before dinner a little embarrassing, but she likes them both well enough. They always want to know her opinions on things. They want her to be happy. They ask questions about what she wants to be when she grows up, and about how her parents met, and whether or not she feels as though she’s living a better ‘inner life’ than she had been before Silver Birch accepted her. Violet always finds it hard to answer. She doesn’t think much about the future. Her parents never told her how they met. And yes, her inner life seems a little more peaceful than it had been when she was starting endless fights at her old school, but that’s more to do with the fact that none of the wimps at Silver Birch are willing to say or do anything to piss her off. Sometimes the place seems so peaceful she wants to burn it down.
“Do you want to say goodbye to him?” asks Catherine, pushing her bushy hair out of her face.
“Who?”
“Whom, you mean…,”
“Piss off. Do you mean Sixpence? I doubt he’ll be there.”
“We can try.”
Violet looks at her friend. She’s got a sheen of perspiration on her forehead. It’s always there. She’s the clammiest person Violet has ever met. Cold hands, but always a little veneer of sweat on her brow and her top lip. Her mum always insists she dress for winter, even when the sun is bright. They are allowed to wear their own clothes at Silver Birch, but Catherine always looks as though she’s dressed for Sunday school, with her sensible shoes, knee-socks and long, neatly-ironed skirts. Violet, by contrast, is pushing the dress policy as far as she can. Mr Tunstall and Mr Rideal both champion the notion of dressing independently and creatively, but Violet’s ever-diminishing hemlines are becoming a cause for concern.
“You might not see him for the whole summer,” says Catherine, quietly.
Violet gives her a hard look, searching for a hidden meaning. Catherine knows that Violet is fond of the peculiar man who lives in the woods and who sometimes come to give talks to the school. He’s quiet. There’s a gentleness about him. Violet said he reminded her of something from a Disney movie. She could imagine baby birds nesting in his beard and hedgehogs dozing contentedly in the pockets of his big camouflage coat. His battered old campervan is parked up a little way from the water’s edge, tucked in a small clearing in the woods behind the school. To command the pupils to steer clear would be to go against the ethos of the school but the teachers have encouraged the girls to respect his privacy. Most do. Violet cannot allow herself to obey even this most gentle of suggestions. She regularly stomps her way through the woods to chat with Mr Sixpence. There is something about him that both soothes and energises her. She always feels better after time in his company, even if they have talked about nothing but the weather or the volume of moss on the trees. She feels cleverer for time in spent in his company.
“I don’t fancy him or anything,” says Violet, harshly. She puts her face in Catherine’s. “He’s an old man. He’s a weirdo. A weirdo like you.”
Catherine looks down at her feet. “You don’t have to be like that,” she says. “Why would I think you fancy him?”
“Cause I said he was interesting.”
“So. That just means he’s interesting.”
“Fine, then. Fine, if it matters that much to you. Let’s go see him. Say goodbye.”
Violet turns and trudges off towards the trees. Catherine waits a moment, hands on her hips, gathering herself. She doesn’t like to cry in front of Violet. It makes violet feel guilty, and when she feels guilty, she’s twice as mean.
Then Catherine follows her friend into the woods.
She would rather die than be left behind.
5
Rowan is standing by the front door again, huffing out soft plumes of grey air. The ragged breaths gather about his face like unwrapped bandages before drifting away to muddle with the great white smears of mist and fog that colour the dips; the rises, at the foot of the fell. He has a sudden image of a battlefield: of pain and mud and jagged coils of wire; of trenches and bomb craters filled with toxic mustard gas - smoke trapped inside a glass.