‘Bullshit. He couldn’t be arsed dealing with a ton of questions about traffic-calming measures and library detaining now that he thinks the deal is done,’ Kellie snapped as a passing couple looked at her nervously. ‘Nice of him to acknowledge everything you’ve done – he hasn’t even taken you out for lunch. Un-bloody-believable. Right, shall we head?’ Kellie shuddered, wrapping her thick woollen coat around her narrow frame. Kellie had looked quite fragile when they first met, like a porcelain doll, with her red wavy hair and pale skin, but it turned out she was quite the opposite; fearless, with a sharp tongue and boundless energy.

  Charlie looked at Willow and then over at his parents, who were standing patiently by their Volvo on the other side of the car park. ‘We can follow you to the office and give you a hand taking the model in,’ he offered. ‘My parents were wondering if you wanted to get some lunch in town. Obviously you’d be more than welcome too, Kellie,’ he added.

  ‘I’m not eating lunch at the moment,’ Kellie said, pulling out her phone and walking round to the driver’s seat.

  Willow looked at Charlie, then at Kellie, now tapping furiously at her phone. ‘That’s really kind of them, but I need to do some work, I’m afraid.’ Her guts twisted at the memory of her conversation with Dorothy about the graveyard. The planning meeting was the following day; if they’d missed something as significant as a graveyard, they were in serious trouble – the developers would run a mile. She needed to speak to Mike, and fast.

  ‘Okay,’ said Charlie. ‘No problem. Shall I say goodbye from you?’

  ‘No. I’ll come over,’ she said, leaning into the car to tell Kellie she’d be one minute and trying to ignore the heat of her boyfriend’s obvious disappointment.

  She and Charlie never rowed; he hated arguments, as did she, but for very different reasons. He had announced proudly on their first date, at a pizza restaurant in Brighton, that his parents had never argued in twenty-nine years of marriage – something that was completely alien to her. Her own parents, who had finally divorced after twenty tumultuous years, had only ever communicated with raised voices, throwing things and putting Willow out on the balcony of their flat in all weathers so they could yell at one another.

  Charlie was not the sort of man she’d imagined herself ending up with. Whenever she’d pictured her future, it was alone or with someone unreliable, who disappeared at regular intervals, much like her father had for most of her childhood. In contrast, Charlie was dependable, funny and supportive, with a rather apologetic way of speaking. He had reminded her of Clark Kent when they first met in the union bar at Sussex University: good-looking and tall, with smiling brown eyes behind black-rimmed glasses, and a gentle, slightly nerdy manner. They had been rubbing along fine for nearly three years, until this Valentine’s Day, when he’d got down on one knee at the top of the Sagrada Família in Barcelona in front of a lot of giggling German schoolchildren. Everything inside her had screamed no, but instead she had managed to mumble something along the lines of ‘thank you but I’m not ready’. After which they had walked back down the five hundred and four steps in complete silence.

  He had seemed to accept her refusal with grace, but ever since they had been irritating one another. An atmosphere between them that hadn’t been there before hung in the air; a huge conversation she didn’t want to have. She loved Charlie in a way that made her scared to lose him, but for ever was a long, long time.

  ‘Blimey, Kellie’s a force of nature,’ he said, pushing his glasses up his nose as they walked across the car park.

  ‘She’s great; she doesn’t care what anyone thinks. Most of the partners at the practice are scared of her because she tells it as it is, but she’s been there so long they can’t afford her redundancy payout.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ said Charlie as they reached his parents. ‘Willow can’t join us, unfortunately, as she needs to get some work done before the planning meeting tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a shame. You’ve worked so hard on this, you should let us take you out for lunch,’ said John, smiling at her warmly.

  ‘I would love that, as soon as this application goes in. It’s really kind of you, though, and thank you for coming. I appreciate all your support.’ Willow felt her anxiety return as the words left her mouth. She had a feeling of dread that all was not as it seemed. Charlie’s parents had been fundamental in getting the support of the local community in Kingston. Did they know about this graveyard? Did everyone know except her? How could Leo not have mentioned it?

  ‘Dorothy said she enjoyed chatting to you,’ said Lydia. ‘Everyone thinks you’ve done a wonderful job of representing the community.’

  ‘Do you know her?’ asked Willow, trying to ignore her butterflies.

  ‘Of course, she’s lived in Kingston all her life, in the row of cottages at the end of the Hiltons’ driveway.’ Charlie’s father said, cutting in on his wife, as he had a habit of doing. Willow had never really had a chance to get to know Lydia, as John was a larger-than-life character who tended to dominate conversations. But from the way he spoke to her – not unkindly, but with a slightly dismissive tone – and the way she accepted it, Willow suspected that Lydia was someone who had sublimated herself to her husband her whole life.

  ‘She said that she and her husband had both worked for the Hiltons. Do you know what she did?’ Willow asked.

  ‘I believe Dorothy was the children’s nanny – before Alice went missing obviously.’ Lydia suddenly looked crestfallen. ‘No one talks about Alice any more. I believe Leo’s been a tower of strength for his mother. Poor Vanessa, it must be a living hell not knowing what happened to her.’

  ‘Yes, all right, Lydia, no need to be morbid. Willow didn’t ask about that.’ John shook his head gently, seemingly embarrassed.

  ‘You’re right, Lydia, it must be terrible,’ said Willow, smiling at her encouragingly. Lydia flushed red and looked at her hands. She was an attractive woman, and bubbly when her husband was out of the room and she was allowed to chat freely. For some reason Willow had never thought of her as a source of information about the Hilton family, but it stood to reason that she would know about them. Helen’s obvious upset was playing on her mind, and she wanted to probe Lydia a little more, but she was conscious that Kellie was waiting.

  ‘I noticed that Helen, Leo’s wife, left rather suddenly?’ Willow said, trying to sound casual.

  Lydia glanced at her husband, then back at Willow. ‘I suppose it was quite awkward for her and Dorothy. I don’t think they’ve seen one another in a while. It’s all very sad, but poor Leo seems to cope with it well. He must have rather a lot on his plate dealing with the farm and the development and his mother’s heartache as well as Helen’s.’ She sighed. ‘Such a charming man.’

  Willow frowned. ‘So Helen being upset was something to do with Dorothy?’

  ‘Yes, Helen is Dorothy’s adopted daughter, but they’re estranged, I believe. It’s all rather complicated.’

  Willow’s heart skipped a beat at this piece of information, which she tried not to react to. ‘As families tend to be,’ she added, nodding as Charlie and his parents exchanged glances. She could imagine Lydia and John talking about her, trying to figure out her background, worried about their son falling in love with someone whose family they had never met, a girl they knew so little about.

  Kellie suddenly tooted impatiently on the car horn, and Willow turned to her and waved apologetically.

  ‘I’d better go. Thank you again for coming.’ She leaned in to kiss Charlie. ‘I’ll call you later. Have a lovely lunch.’

  Willow turned and ran back to Kellie’s hatchback, launching herself into the passenger seat as Kellie revved the engine. ‘Sorry to hold you up,’ she said, clicking her seat belt into place as they screeched out of the car park, narrowly avoiding an elderly couple leaving the meeting.

  ‘Everything all right?’ said Kellie as she took the country lanes of Kingston a little faster than Willow would have liked. She heard something topple over in the boot and winced.

  ‘I think my boyfriend’s parents were a bit disappointed that I couldn’t go out to lunch with them,’ she said.

  ‘How long have you guys been together now?’ Kellie asked.

  ‘About three years. He actually proposed when we went to Barcelona,’ Willow said matter-of-factly.

  ‘What?! Why didn’t you say anything?’ Kellie looked at her wide-eyed.

  ‘Because I said no.’ Willow shrugged.

  ‘Very wise!’ Kellie winked at her. ‘Actually, marriage is the easy bit, it’s when kids come along you get pushed to the limit. And even if you’re married to the nicest guy in the world, all the pressure is on the mother and it’s totally taken for granted.’

  Willow nodded, using her hand to wipe the steamed-up window so she could see out. As they reached the A27, Kellie put her foot down and pulled out into the fast lane, the hatchback’s engine roaring with the strain.

  ‘I mean, we do the school run, the washing, the shopping, the cooking, the cleaning, organise the parties, nurture friendships, pick them up and dust them down after every upset. But if dads do any of those things, it gets commented on. Isn’t he good? He helps a lot, doesn’t he? Aren’t you lucky?’ Kellie tooted her horn at the driver cutting in front of her, then turned to Willow. ‘No, actually, I’m not lucky, it’s what he should be doing, they’re his bloody kids too!’

  Willow smiled and pulled some gum from her bag, offering the packet to Kellie. ‘I don’t really know what my problem is,’ she said. ‘Marriage and kids just completely terrifies me. I can’t even think about it. The idea of someone relying on me too much makes me want to run away, which is something I definitely get from my dad,’ she added, thinking out loud.

  ‘You’ve never mentioned your dad to me before. Is he an architect too?’ Kellie lit a cigarette and wound down the window to let the smoke out.

  Willow smiled and shook her head. ‘No, he’s never really had much of a career. He’s got a criminal record, so it’s difficult for him to find work. We didn’t have much when I was a kid; I remember my mum worrying about money a lot when my dad wasn’t around, which is why I’m so independent now, I guess.’ Willow looked out of the window, surprised at herself for opening up.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. It must have been tough,’ said Kellie sympathetically.

  Willow sighed. ‘Hard on my mum mostly. I think it sent her to an early grave.’

  ‘What did he do to get a criminal record? If you don’t mind me asking,’ said Kellie, turning off the A27 and heading into central Brighton.

  Willow paused and fixed her eyes on a cyclist they were overtaking. He was bent forward, pedalling hard, with puffs of breath escaping as he tried to keep going through the bitter cold. Fighting against the wind, pushing forward, an uphill battle: it was how she felt most of the time. She turned to Kellie, and smiled nervously; she rarely talked about her dad to anyone, not even Charlie, but she felt a kindred spirit in her, someone life had also dealt a complicated hand.

  Charlie, on the other hand, was a black and white person: his family didn’t fight, everything was ordered, talked through and logical. If he knew what she’d been through as a child – stealing food when she was so hungry she couldn’t sleep, taking night buses at the age of ten to try and find her father in the pub, lying to the police about his whereabouts when they came to the door because she knew he was drunk and would hit one of them – he would hate Bobby, and she didn’t want that.

  ‘He was the last person to see a little girl who went missing a long time ago, when he was a teenager,’ she said. ‘They thought he had something to do with it. The police were under a lot of pressure to find her. They couldn’t prove anything, but my dad was known to the police so they sent him to a really nasty youth detention centre and it screwed him up. He’s been in and out of prison ever since.’

  She had never spoken to Charlie about her father’s past, or Alice Hilton’s disappearance. Although Charlie and her dad had met a couple of times, something always stopped her sharing the reality of a father who she loved but repeatedly broke her heart.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, hon, it must have been incredibly hard. A friend of mine at college used to talk to me about her dad who was violent, about how she had to watch him beat her mum up, but on other days he would sing to her or teach her to ride a bike or spend hours doing a puzzle with her. You still love them, despite the monster inside; you can’t help it.’

  ‘She’s right,’ said Willow. ‘Most of the time you blame yourself when they’re failing you.’

  ‘Well, I hope he knows what a star you are. You’re the talk of the office, hon. You’ve done a great job getting this planning application through. Not one, but two listed buildings; it’s pretty impressive.’

  ‘You sound like Mike. It’s not done yet.’ Willow bit her lip. ‘I’ve sold my soul to the devil to get this done. I really hope I haven’t walked into a trap.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ They pulled up in front of the office and Kellie turned off the engine.

  ‘I’m not sure, really. This morning Mike just made me feel a bit used. And one of the villagers mentioned something that made me nervous.’ Willow bit her lip as Kellie looked at her expectantly. ‘Apparently there’s a graveyard next to one of the buildings we’re pulling down.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Kellie, frowning. ‘Did you do an archaeological dig?’

  ‘No, Mike told me I didn’t need to, and it’s pretty unusual to do one, unless there’s good reason as they’re very expensive. They usually wait to see what comes up when they start digging the foundations.’ She had asked Mike about it twice, and both times he had been quite dismissive, saying it wasn’t necessary.

  ‘But if there was a graveyard there, it would show up in the desktop survey and you’d have to do one,’ said Kellie.

  ‘Well, Mike did a desktop survey and I saw it, there was definitely no sign of a graveyard.’

  ‘Maybe it wasn’t an official graveyard. A while back on one of our projects they found a dozen or so human remains, and apparently paupers who couldn’t afford a proper burial or headstone were often buried near churches, but not in the actual graveyard.’

  Willow felt panic rising inside her. Mike had been so cocky at the planning meeting this morning, like it was a done deal. ‘Shit, Mike is not going to be happy about this.’

  ‘Hmm, he might already know.’ Kellie turned to face her. ‘Did Mike invite anyone from the planning department at Lewes council to your community meetings in the village hall?’ she asked casually.

  ‘No, I don’t think so, why?’ Willow felt her heart rate quicken again.

  ‘Because it may be that Leo and Mike know about this graveyard, but Mike’s trying to hide the fact it’s there until the deal goes through.’

  ‘Presumably a graveyard would put the developers off completely?’ Willow asked nervously.

  ‘Just a bit. It’s ten grand and about a month’s work to move a human skeleton, so to excavate a graveyard can take years. Developers run a mile from them. Incidentally, does Mike have the password to your planning application file?’

  ‘Of course, why?’ Willow asked.

  ‘You should check there’s nothing in there you don’t know about before the meeting tomorrow.’ Kellie climbed out and opened the boot of her car, piling up the various pieces of the Yew Tree model to ferry inside.

  ‘Why would Mike put something in there that I don’t know about? Surely he realises I’ll check it?’ Willow asked as they walked along the path to the office door.

  ‘Not necessarily. He kind of relies on people not going back over stuff they’ve already submitted. He’s been known to add things to the planning application at the last minute on a big project – like a few extra flats that the locals wouldn’t be keen on. So that when you talk to people, you aren’t having to lie to them.’

  ‘But that file is affiliated to my name,’ said Willow, staring at Kellie in shock. ‘Are you serious?’ She felt tears sting her eyes. ‘Why would he do that to me?’

  ‘Because this deal is worth a lot of money and he wants to shift it as quickly as possible, which isn’t going to happen if there’s a graveyard on the site. He probably thinks you’ll move on soon anyway. There are no women in this practice for a reason, they treat them like shit because in their mind we have a short shelf life. We have babies, cost them a fortune in maternity leave, then, when we do finally go back to work, never work the ridiculously long hours we did before.’

  ‘But what about Leo Hilton? He must know – why hasn’t he said anything to me? We’ve been working together for a year.’ Willow flushed red, feeling like a gullible schoolgirl.

  ‘He might not know what a deal breaker the graveyard is. Or Mike may have told him to keep quiet about it.’

  Willow felt tears sting her eyes. ‘But this could seriously affect my career. Blakers Homes are one of the biggest developers in the country; they could sue me, couldn’t they?’

  ‘Look, I’m just guessing. I might be wrong. But I’ve worked here a long time and it wouldn’t be the first time Mike’s screwed a member of his own staff to get planning approved.’

  As they reached the front door, Kellie pushed her key into the lock and they entered the two-storey Georgian office building. Willow followed her in and, as they walked up the stairs to the first floor, they could see a light on in Mike’s room at the back of the open-plan office.

  Kellie walked over to her desk which was strewn with pieces of paper, sweet wrappers, and framed photographs of her children, and placed the boxes she was carrying on the floor. ‘Right, I’ll sort that lot later. I’ve got a shit-load of invoices to deal with.’

  ‘Thanks, Kellie,’ said Willow, still reeling from their conversation. ‘I really appreciate your help, and I’m sorry I’ve messed up your day.’

  ‘No problem, I’m used to it.’ Kellie winked at her. ‘I’d find out what you’re dealing with and get some proof before you talk to Mike about it, otherwise he might hide the paper trail. Don’t beat yourself up. It’s a steep learning curve, your first big project. It’s easy to get swept up in it. In the beginning, you don’t realise how it works, but over the years, you learn where the bullshit is hidden.’