I continued eating my lunch, trying to remember his face. He was plain-featured: a dark-haired, middle-aged man wearing a navy-blue jacket and trousers. He had no outstanding attributes and I had no doubt that if I were to bump into him again in another location, I wouldn’t recognise him. I couldn’t even remember if he had been sitting with the group who fell silent and watched me closely as I stood at the bar. He was completely forgettable. And out of order. Who the hell did he think he was, disturbing my lunch with his thinly disguised threats and pathetic words of wisdom, designed solely to unnerve me? It would take more than some faceless, forgettable individual to scare me and spoil my day. I’d dealt with far worse than him in the past and was more than prepared to stand up to the likes of him again should I need to.

  It didn’t take me long to finish eating, by which time I had decided I would sit in the bar and have another pint. I wasn’t about to shrink away from the gawping faces and prying eyes. If they were trying to intimidate me, they had chosen the wrong man. Whether they liked it or not, I was here to stay. This village was now my home as much as it was theirs. Making friends wasn’t high on my agenda but neither was making a whole load of new enemies either. Thinking I would do my utmost to be courteous and genteel, I stood up, scooped up my empty glass and marched back inside.

  3

  The group had all but parted by the time I got back in there. A couple of stragglers were seated apart from each other, reading newspapers or staring out of the window, their drinks almost gone, their faces set into expressions of deep gloom. I was tempted to go over and introduce myself but thought better of it as one of the younger men caught my eye and gave me a steely glare. He then turned his gaze back to the barmaid who shuffled her way past me and into the courtyard, where she collected my empty dishes. I cursed myself for forgetting to bring them in. As well as being the new kid in town, I now also looked like a lazy, selfish bastard. Not a good start.

  The silence was oppressive as I waited for her to come back. I could almost taste the suspicion and anger bubbling up behind me. The air was thick with it. The burn of their eyes into my back heated up my entire body. I didn’t take kindly to being scrutinised and made to feel like an exhibit at some sort of Victorian freak show. I wondered if this was how they treated all visitors and newcomers. They lacked manners and social graces if that was the case.

  ‘Sorry,’ I murmured as the young barmaid danced her way back through, her hands holding my soup bowl and plate tightly. ‘I should have brought them back in with me.’

  ‘No need to apologise,’ she said brightly. ‘It’s nice to get out into the sunshine away from the dim light in here.’

  Her words and wide grin seemed genuine and I found myself wondering how she could stand working in such a stifling and unappealing environment where banter from punters seemed to be thin on the ground and smiles non-existent. And she was absolutely right about the lack of natural light. The place was in dire need of a new lighting system. Either that or it needed more windows. I guessed the pub was a listed building and had been built in the early 1800s. The roof was low with overhead beams and the windows poky, covered with yellowing net curtains and surrounded by an array of paraphernalia. On the sill of one of the tiny windows sat a porcelain dog, so ugly it was breathtaking. It had its teeth bared in anger and was painted a dull black colour, serving only to enhance its look of pure menace.

  ‘Horrible, isn’t it?’ the barmaid said, her voice catching me by surprise, her eyes following mine to the deeply unattractive ornament that appeared so angry-looking and lifelike, it gave the impression it could pounce at any given moment.

  ‘The worst,’ I replied and smiled, thinking how much she reminded me of my sister. She had a permanent smile and an air of wisdom about her beyond her years, this young-looking barmaid. Bumps of regret rose on my skin at the thought of Cassandra. I wished I could see her again. Just one last time so she could say, ‘Good for you’ as she squeezed my hand and smiled at me. Her eyes would twinkle and glisten as she watched me intently from under her dark lashes. She would be glad I’d moved here. She’d be delirious at my decision to leave Samantha far behind. She knew me and understood me better than I knew myself.

  ‘Another pint?’ the barmaid said, nodding at the empty glass in my hand that I suddenly realised I was clutching with so much force, my knuckles had turned paper white.

  ‘Please,’ I said, holding it out to her, watching as she refilled it to the brim with her expert touch. ‘I’m Ray.’ My voice was croaky. I rubbed at my eyes. The tiredness was getting to me. I let out a trembling sigh and straightened my posture. I had to get a grip. This wasn’t the sort of environment where I could relax and let my guard down. Not with the many faces behind me, observing me and scrutinising me. One wrong word or move and I had the distinct feeling they would tear me to shreds.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Ray. I’m Lily. New to the village, are you?’ She continued to busy herself behind the bar, sorting glasses into neat rows and straightening up the bottles despite the place being almost empty. ‘Or just passing through?’

  ‘New,’ I replied. ‘Just moved in today,’ I added, although I suspected she’d already known the answer to that question before she even asked. Something in her manner told me she was the eyes and ears of the village. She had a quiet, knowing look that belied her youth. She was also privy to every bit of scandal and gossip – a confidante of the tongues that wagged in this place. It was that sort of pub and already my presence had been noted and was possibly being discussed as I stood and sipped at my pint.

  ‘So, how about you then, Lily? Do you live locally or should I just shut up and stop acting like a nosy parker?’ I asked quietly, hoping she picked up on the subtle humour in my words. It was like walking on eggshells in this place. I was doing my best to be affable and polite but the mass of serious faces behind me was making me nervous, making me question everything I said and did.

  She rubbed at a glass with a soft, small cloth and spoke to me, her voice honeyed and carrying no trace of distrust or annoyance at my question. ‘I’m home from university for the summer, which is why I’m working here. I live just down the road.’

  She didn’t make it clear what part of the village she lived in and I wasn’t about to ask. Lily was a good fifteen years younger than me, perhaps even more. The last thing I wanted was to come across as a lecherous old man, so instead I nodded knowingly and waited silently, watching her surreptitiously as I drank my pint of beer, the bitter froth coating my top lip. I licked it away and drank some more. It was hot in here and I savoured the cool liquid as it hit my stomach with an icy punch.

  I felt a sudden rush of air and turned to see a burly-looking gentleman standing next to me at the bar. I smiled and nodded at him and was more than a little surprised when he returned the gesture. I watched as Lily served him and made small talk about the weather and other such banal trivialities. He then took his glass of red wine and sat at a table in the middle of the pub where he stared up at the TV screen.

  ‘Nice to see a friendly face,’ I said and raised my eyebrows haughtily.

  ‘Ah, don’t worry so much about the people around here,’ Lily said with a meaningful smile. ‘They’re all just a bit uptight after everything that’s gone on. They size everybody up before making friends with them. It’s just how it is now, I’m afraid.’ Lily dragged an old, chequered cloth across an already gleaming surface before stuffing it in a bucket under the counter and wiping her hands down the front of her starched cotton apron.

  I held my hands up in mock surrender and widened my eyes dramatically. ‘Okay, I’ve fallen into the trap. What went on to make them all so suspicious and shifty looking?’ I knew I could be wading into unfamiliar and possibly dangerous territory here but she was the one who had paved the way for my question. I knew that I still had to be careful, add a degree of caution to whatever I said. For all I knew, these people could be her close friends and family. In a place as small as Whitchurch, the chances of that were pretty high, but I was intrigued by what she had to say. They hadn’t been rude to me as such, but they hadn’t gone out on a limb to be friendly either. I wanted to hear what she had to say about whatever it was that had made them all so distant and on edge, so stupidly suspicious of any new faces.

  ‘Surprised you didn’t see it on the local news,’ she said and turned away. I wasn’t sure whether or not I detected a note of wariness in her tone so decided to step in before she clammed up and moved away from me to the other end of the bar without telling me anything else.

  ‘I’m not from Durham,’ I said as casually as I could. ‘I’m not even from the North East so I wouldn’t have seen it. I’ve just moved here from Birmingham. It was a long drive and your soup made it worth my while, I can tell you. Hit the spot perfectly.’

  She seemed to soften, if indeed she had become guarded at all. Perhaps my imagination was playing tricks on me but regardless, she gave me one of her toothy grins and reached up to drag a pint glass down from above her head before continuing, her voice tinged with an air of sadness. ‘There was a body found here at the end of last year. A young woman in her late twenties. They never caught anybody and people are still a bit twitchy about it, really nervous and wary of anybody new. Shortly after the body was found, a few of the local girls said that they had been followed home from the youth club. They heard footsteps and saw somebody running off over the field when they turned to see who it was. And then just a few weeks ago, old Mrs Batton’s cat was found dead. Somebody poisoned it. Poor woman was devastated. According to Sarah over there, who lives next door to her, its tongue was so swollen and distended, it probably choked to death before the poison did its thing.’ She nodded over to the woman sitting with the group in the corner, who looked like they wished me gone.

  I wasn’t sure how to respond and sat for a short while shaking my head sadly and trying to work out how best to reply, but before I could say anything, Lily spoke again, her voice thin and scratchy in the thick pungent air between us. ‘There’s been other things too. Scary things that didn’t used to go on here. This village was once a great place to live but now everybody’s on edge, waiting for the next terrible thing to happen.’

  ‘Awful,’ I said in no more than a whisper. ‘Just awful. What were the other things? If you don’t mind me asking, that is?’

  ‘I don’t mind you asking but some of the locals might.’ She pursed her lips and surreptitiously pointed behind me to the now dwindling group of drinkers who were watching us intently.

  I smiled and nodded sagely, even though I didn’t understand their thought processes one iota. It wouldn’t do to upset people before I had had time to settle in properly, so I didn’t say anything else.

  Lily decided to fill in the blanks for me. ‘Apparently, some of the parents reported an unknown vehicle hanging around outside the school gates. One of them tried to walk over to speak to the driver but they drove off.’ She let out a deep sigh and I watched as her bottom lip trembled slightly. ‘And then one of the kids in the village went missing.’

  I found myself holding my breath as I waited for her to continue. I wasn’t about to harangue her into telling me more. I had a feeling she would open up when she was ready.

  All colour seemed to leach out of her skin as she ran her hand over her face wearily before readjusting her expression, the one she wore every single day for customers in The Pot and Glass. Not that they noticed or seemed to care. They were a strange lot for sure. But then, who was I to judge? I didn’t know their story, just as they didn’t know mine.

  ‘They found him wandering out of the woods a few hours later, dazed and frightened. To this day, he still has no idea what happened. No amount of questioning has worked. The police drew a complete blank.’ Lily dipped her eyes and moved away from me.

  I didn’t speak immediately. What was there to say? My words wouldn’t solve what had taken place and I ran the risk of saying something that could be misinterpreted, something that could be twisted and deemed offensive, so I chose silence instead. Lily seemed happy with this and started to hum as she went about rearranging beermats and menus that sat idly at the other end of the bar. I suddenly didn’t feel like drinking any more and made the decision to leave once I’d finished my pint. I had plenty to keep me occupied back at the house anyway: suitcases to unpack, beds to make, cupboards to fill.

  Draining the remainder of my beer, I slipped off the barstool and bid my goodbyes to Lily, who flashed me one of her warm, genuine smiles. ‘I guess we’ll see a lot more of you in here now you’re living in the village?’

  ‘I guess you will,’ I said in return and for a brief moment, considered sitting back down and ordering another pint. The sensible voice in my head told me to get up and go and for once, I took notice of it.

  ‘Just remember to take things slowly around here and you’ll be fine.’ Her hips swayed slightly as she adjusted her apron and tugged at her sleeves, an act that for some incomprehensible reason irritated me. Perhaps it was what she had said that rankled me. Here I was, being sociable, trying to fit in with the local community, and here she was, telling me how to behave; a young woman barely out her teens, giving me lessons on etiquette and social graces.

  ‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ I said through slightly gritted teeth. Now wasn’t the time to get angry or irritated. I took a deep breath and placed my hands on the bar. I was being ridiculous. I’d had a long drive here and whether I liked it or not, Samantha continued to drift into my thoughts. Lily seemed like a lovely girl and I should at least listen to what it was she had to say. She knew these people better than I did.

  ‘It’s just with all the goings on, everyone is still a bit tetchy. They worry when strangers come into the area. It makes them suspicious.’ She raised her perfectly arched eyebrows at me before looking away and staring out at the crumbling courtyard and wilting wisteria.

  ‘Suspicious? Why would they be suspicious of newcomers? Surely they don’t think that each and every visitor or new villager had something to do with those events?’ I tried to keep my voice low for fear of anybody overhearing me but was feeling marginally angry at her logic.

  ‘It’s not that,’ she said, moving towards me, her eyes half closed as she rubbed at them with her small, clenched fists. ‘It’s just that we’ve had people here who come to gawp and get the inside gossip on events, especially the unsolved murder.’

  Suddenly, I understood. I realised why I had been given such a cold welcome, why my every move had been watched and inspected. Why I had been warned by a perfect stranger while eating my lunch that I should be careful.

  ‘You’ve had people coming in here pretending to be friendly and they turned out to be reporters?’ I said quietly, everything abruptly slotting into place.

  Lily nodded, her demeanour changing, sadness seeming to sweep over her as she watched me intently.

  ‘Well, I can assure you I’m not a reporter. I have no desire to unearth any seedy pieces of gossip and get it into print. Whitchurch is my new home and I would sooner gouge my own eyeballs out than work as a journalist.’

  ‘So, what do you do then?’ she asked, her tone suddenly brighter. ‘As your job, I mean?’

  I smiled at her. I couldn’t blame them for treating me with disdain, for glaring at me with undisguised contempt and wishing me gone. Not now I knew.

  ‘I’ve just been given a position in a nearby village,’ I said with a wry smile. ‘I’m a teacher. Definitely not a reporter or some kind of spy here to question people and then spill the details on the goings on in the village. I’m just an ordinary guy, an everyday run-of-the-mill teacher, making the most of the summer holidays and dreading September.’

  Before Lily had a chance to respond, I slid the empty glass across the bar and gave her a wave, thanking her for her hospitality, then made my way out of the pub and back to my new home.

  4

  I worked like a demon, cleaning and tidying the house, trying to eliminate the musty odour that permeated every available space and clung to the carpets and curtains, filling the place with a sense of loneliness. Samantha would have insisted we put flowers in every room to rid the house of the stale smell. She would have taken over the entire process, barking out orders and ignoring any of my input, insisting I was wrong and shrieking at me that I was lazy and useless. But then that was Samantha all over: thoughtless and insular. Completely unaware of the damage her words caused and utterly oblivious to anybody’s needs but her own. Still, at least now I could please myself. I could do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, which included not having bunches of fucking geraniums and carnations and vintage roses in every room in the house. I closed my eyes, shut her out of my thoughts and ploughed on with my tasks until eventually darkness fell, causing shadows to lean in through the windows at peculiar angles, like elongated spectres desperate to enter and shroud every room with their sinister grey forms.

  By the time darkness had completed its slow and sluggish descent, I had unpacked and felt surprisingly at ease in my new environment. I placed the portable radio on the kitchen table and switched it on to fill the silence that had begun to grate on me. The lilt of the music and easy crooning voices stilled my pulsing veins after all the effort of cleaning. I turned it up so high, the vibrations bounced through the wooden table, causing it to shudder. I then walked from room to room, acquainting myself with my new home, taking a mental snapshot, getting to know its nooks and crannies and trying to adjust to its uniqueness and hidden charm. The television wouldn’t be connected to the cable services for the next day or so and the small radio was the only medium I had to keep me company. I couldn’t help but smile. This whole environment was so starkly different from the one I had left behind, it surprised even me. But then sometimes, isn’t that what we need to get over a cataclysmic change that may have occurred in our lives? I pictured the glossy, hi-tech apartment I had left behind and felt not a shred of regret. I should have done it years ago. This was now the new me, the real me.