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The young woman continued to stare at him very strangely. ‘Kev!’ she called out, suddenly, with slight panic in her voice. ‘Kev!’
A harried-looking man in his late twenties, in a grey T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, came out into the hall. ‘What is it, Mel?’
She pointed at Ollie. ‘Kev, this man doesn’t believe me that we’ve been here for months.’
He frowned, tilted his head at her then stared directly at Ollie, frowning again, and asked her, ‘What man?’
56
Monday, 21 September
The woman with the baby turned and went back into the house. As she did so, Ollie heard her say, ‘There was a man standing there, Kev, I promise! I saw him! He told me his name – Oliver Harcourt. He said he lived up the lane in that big house, Cold Hill House.’
‘Mel, there was no one there,’ her husband replied.
‘I didn’t imagine it!’
‘Your postnatal depression. Maybe it’s playing tricks on your mind?’
The door closed behind her.
Ollie stood still for some moments. What the hell was going on? Was he trapped in the middle of some elaborate conspiracy to drive him insane? A
Impossible.
‘I think she’s buried in the village churchyard.’
He climbed back on his bike. The sirens had all stopped. There was complete almost ethereal silence, just the last twitters of birds as darkness fell. His head spi
When had that happened? It must have been in the past few days, because he’d not seen that earlier in the week.
Moments later, as he pedalled on, something struck him as different about the front of the pub. It had been spruced up, painted a lighter colour that was hard to make out in this light – white or cream – and ‘The Crown’ pub sign had gone. In its place was a larger sign, in elegant script.
BISTROT TARQUIN
He braked hard, locking up the back wheel, and stared, blinking in confusion. Several smart cars were in the car park; the place looked expensive and rather precious.
He rode on, pedalling urgently to increase his speed, as if trying to ride back into sanity. As he saw the lychgate of the church ahead of him he dismounted and propped the bike up against the flint wall.
Moments later, as went in through the gate, a short, very serious-looking man in a tweed jacket and dog collar came out of the church and headed down the path towards him. As they crossed, Ollie asked him, ‘Excuse me, do you know by chance where I can find the grave of a lady called A
The clergyman walked straight past him without any hint of acknowledgement, as if he had not seen him.
Ollie turned. ‘Excuse me!’ he called out. ‘Excuse me!’
The man went out through the lychgate and turned left towards the vicarage.
Rude bastard, Ollie thought.
The more recent graves were towards the rear, behind the church, he recalled. That was where he had found the O’Hare family, and there had been quite a bit of open ground beyond them, no doubt to accommodate more graves in the future. He hurried up the path, anxiously, and although it was steep, he was pleased that neither the exertion of the cycling, nor of this fast walking, was giving him the breathlessness and tightness in his chest he’d been experiencing just recently.
He reached the grand marble headstone of the O’Hare family, then saw a further row of headstones beyond it that he didn’t recall from his previous visit here.
He shone his phone torch along the newer headstones and then stopped, in disbelief, as he read the inscription.
2016? Ollie thought. This was not – not possible. Somehow, whatever was going on inside his messed-up brain, he was seeing into the future, or at least imagining he was. But suddenly, it no longer seemed to matter. It didn’t bother him, he was just mildly curious – as if he had become aware in a dream that he was dreaming. He would wake up in a few moments and everything would be fine. Back to normal.
Out of curiosity he moved along to the next headstone. It was a similar size to A
Then, as he read the carved inscriptions, he felt the ground suddenly dropping beneath his feet, as if he was in a plunging elevator.
He stared, rooted to the spot. The twenty-first of September was today.
57
Monday, 21 September
Ollie turned on his heel and sprinted through the churchyard, out through the lychgate, grabbed his bike and, without wasting time to switch on the lights, rode as fast as he could back up through the village.
Then, as he approached the pub, he saw it was back to how it had been before. Slightly gloomy and shabby-looking, the sign, ‘The Crown’, in need of some maintenance. The smithy was still there, too, as it had been before. And the ‘Bed & Breakfast’ sign was back.
Normality again.
But he was shaking. He was scared rigid. He wanted to get back to Caro and Jade. Had to stop them from leaving the house. They must stay there, be calm, wait, get through the night and into tomorrow. To 22 September. To make sure what he had seen was just a dream, part of the weird stuff that was going on in his head, and not a time-slip into the future.
He was finding the exertion of pedalling hard. A short distance up the hill, he stopped and dismounted, panting hard and sweating profusely. Then as he stood, slowly getting his breath back, a figure loomed out of the darkness, striding down the hill towards him, with a pipe in his mouth. Moments later he could make out the white hair and the goatee beard of Harry Walters.
‘Harry!’ Ollie said.
Walters strode straight on past him as if, like the clergyman in the graveyard just now, he had not seen him. Then he stopped a short distance along the road and turned his head. ‘You should have listened to me. I told you to leave while you could. You stupid bugger.’ Then he marched on.
Ollie dropped the bike and sprinted after him. ‘Harry! Harry!’ Then he stopped. Right in front of his eyes, Harry Walters had vanished into thin air.
An icy slick of fear wormed through him.
He turned and walked back up to his bike. As he stooped to pick it up, he heard the roar of a powerful car coming up the hill, fast. Then he saw its headlights. He stepped to the side of the road to let it past, although with the road closed ahead for the accident, it wasn’t going to get very far, he thought.
As it drew alongside, still travelling at speed, too fast for this narrow lane, he saw it was a massive, left-hand-drive 1960s Cadillac Eldorado convertible. The driver’s window was partially down and Ollie could hear music blasting out. The Kinks, ‘Su
Then, as he watched its huge tail lights disappear round a bend, he smelled a rich waft of cigar smoke in the air.
He remounted and pedalled on, wary of meeting the Cadillac coming back down. It would not get through the police roadblock. Then, after only a couple more minutes riding, as he drew level with Garden Cottage, he had to stop again for a rest. What the hell was wrong with him, he wondered? Why was he so short of breath?