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By the end of the day, she had managed to discover that the perso
When she got back from the Leeds council estate, even though it was early evening, she phoned Ramstein, where she discovered that all air force perso
After a little more shunting around and a few abrupt requests to “please hold,” she was put through to a woman called Mattie, who just “adored” her accent. They chatted about the differences in weather – it was raining hard in St. Louis – and about other things for a short while, then A
Expecting some sort of military smoke screen, she was pleasantly surprised when Mattie told her that there was no problem; the records were generally available to the public, and she would see what she could do. When A
But it didn’t last.
Sometimes when she felt irritable and restless like this, she would go for a drive, and that was exactly what she did. Without making a conscious decision, she took the road west out of Harkside, and when she reached the turnoff for Thornfield Reservoir, she turned right.
By then she had realized that Banks wasn’t the problem; she was. She was pissed off at herself for letting him get to her. She was behaving like some sort of silly love-struck schoolgirl. Vulnerable. Hurt. Let’s face it, A
She had been hiding from life in a remote corner of Yorkshire, protecting her emotions from the harsh world she had experienced “out there.” Sometimes when you open yourself up to that life again, it can be confusing and painful, like when you open your eyes to bright light. Your emotions are tender and raw, more than usually sensitive to all its nuances, its little hurts and humiliations. So that was what was happening. Well, at least she knew that much. So much for cool, A
A misshapen harvest moon hung low in the western sky, bloated and flattened into a red sausage shape by the gathering haze. Otherwise the road was unlit, surrounded on both sides by tall dark trees. Her headlights caught dozens of rabbits.
She pulled into the car park and turned off the engine. Silence. As she got out and stood in the warm night air, she started to feel at peace. Her problems seemed to slip away; one way or another, she knew they would sort themselves out.
A
She took the narrow footpath toward Hobb’s End, walking carefully because of the gnarled tree roots that crossed it in places and the stones that thrust up out of the dirt. Hardly any moonlight penetrated the tree cover, but here and there she caught a slat or two of reddish-silver light between branches. She could smell the loamy, earthy smell of trees and shrubs. The slightest breeze butterfly-kissed the upper leaves.
When A
A
As she went, A
She looked at the ruins to her right and saw where once was a detached cottage with a little garden, once a row of terrace houses opening directly onto the pavement. This was where the gi
So real did it all seem as she walked toward the flax mill that she began to fancy she could even hear long-silent voices whispering secrets. She passed the street that led to the old church and stood at the western end of the village, on that stretch of empty ground where the houses ended and the land rose toward the mill.
As she stood and breathed in the air deeply, she realized how much she wanted to know what had happened here, every bit as much as Banks did. Without her wishing for it, or asking for it, Hobb’s End and its history had imposed themselves on her, thrust themselves into her consciousness and become part of her life. It had happened at the same time that Banks had become part of her life, too. She knew that, whatever became of them, the two events would be united in her mind forever.
When she had challenged him on his obsession with it the other night, she hadn’t even attempted to explain hers. It wasn’t because of the war, but because she identified with Gloria. This was a woman who had struggled and dared to be a little different in a time that didn’t tolerate such behavior. She had lost her parents, then had either abandoned or been cast out by the father of her child, had come to a remote place, taken on a hard job and fallen in love. Then she had lost her husband in the war, or so she must have believed. If Gloria had been still alive when Matthew came back, then she would have had to face a stranger, most likely. Whatever else happened, someone strangled her, stabbed her nearly twenty times and buried her under an outbuilding. And nobody had tried to find out what happened to her.
Suddenly, A