Page 41

As she said ‘you’ her gaze swept all of them.

Hester, still to one side, half-visible, unblinking, said nothing.

‘Come along now,’ said Andrew. ‘I’ll take you back.’

‘We wouldn’t want to be a trouble.’

‘It’s no trouble.’

When the’d gone, Simon sat back in his chair and looked up at Rose.

‘What do you think they heard?’ she said.

‘Never mind that, what on earth were you and Rob doing last night?’

‘Playing music. That’s all. It was new stuff, not traditional.

Rob composed it. People loved it. They loved the older stuff too.

It wasn’t a competition, the different styles of music complemented each other.

Things were going fine and then the power went down.

I can’t even begin to explain what it was like.

The panic. The night was full of totally irrational, primeval fear. ’

‘I’d have thought it would have been a bit of a laugh, dancing in the dark.’

‘It was weird,’ said Rose. ‘I wish we hadn’t moved here.’

‘Really? Just because of a few witches?’

‘Witches?’

‘You know what I mean. Busybodies, interferes, nosey-parkers.’

‘Yes but…’

‘If we hadn’t moved here, I wouldn’t have known Sky was was alive, wouldn’t have at least got the chance to maybe meet her again. You wouldn’t have…’

‘I wouldn’t have what?’ said Rose.

‘Started up the music stuff again. Would you have done that if we’d stayed at home? And you wouldn’t have met Rob.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Simon smirked, then sobering, rubbed his hands through his hair and flexed his knuckles.

‘Getting back to something that matters…’ started Rose.

‘How did Sky seem?’

It was a fair question, but it was still evading the issue. How was Sky?

‘I recorded her talking for you. She was a bit more fluent than last time, she told me about her family, her history, how the shifting works. She watched some of your film and recognised the man in the background. The one who turned into the wolf.’

‘I’m not sure he did.’

‘What do you mean? You saw him.’

‘No. There was a man. Then there was a werewolf. They were different in stature, health. If what Andrew says is true, and given what they said about the body they found afterwards, I’m not sure it was the same person.

I think we’ve just put two and two together and made five.

’ Simon waved his arms as if directing a scene.

‘There’s a bit of film with one from one angle and a bit of film a little later with the other from another angle.

Either way the wolves are agitated, but it’s a subtly different agitation. ’

‘Well you’re the expert.’

Simon got up and started pacing. ‘Do you suppose Andrew’s coming back?’

‘I’m sure he’s got more to tell us. He spent a long time explaining things to Sky.

You know she can be obtuse on the one hand and wise on the other.

He said she sort of instinctively understood DNA - “the skin that is just your skin, the hair that is just your hair” - or something like that.

Fur probably. After a while, she’d agreed to give blood samples on the grounds that perhaps it might help her as well as you. She told him she had to know.’

‘Had to know what?’

‘Presumably, whether you can be cured. But when I got back it was in the middle of the power-cut and she was in a complete tizzy,’ Rose paused.

‘So was I to be honest. Then she said she had to change and she left. Andrew and I had a talk, then he sent me off to get some sleep and the rest you know. Simon, what are we going to do?’

‘We?’

‘Of course we, you’re not on your own.’

‘Don’t start being slushy.’

Rose looked up at her brother. He was staring up into the woods, his strong frame firm jawed, his hands clenched in his pockets.

She could feel his suppressed fury emanate.

What was there to say? What had Sky said?

‘ Your brother is like yourself, only annoying. You belong to each other and when something divides you; it is like a severed limb which can never grow back. ’

Poor Sky, her brother must have died a long time ago in wolf terms. Perhaps she had seen him die.

Rose hadn’t thought to ask about it. A cold panic made her shake.

If there isn’t a cure, if Andrew can’t find a solution, Simon will die within a few years.

He’ll slowly die and he’ll have to be caged.

His body will have to be caged before his mind is.

It would be worse than their father’s dead bruised face on the crisp linen or her mother fading away in a series of bleeps and jumping lines.

Their parents had died, near enough themselves. Simon would die mutated.

‘We abhor mutation or deviance,’ Emmeline had said.

What was it Iseult had referred to in her talk?

The burning of witches, shapeshifters in Jacobean times?

How could Emmeline simultaneously be a witch and want to destroy those who were different?

On the other hand, if she was a witch, at least she wasn’t a shapeshifter.

‘I won’t let you die,’ Rose said, shaking all the negativity from her head.

‘You’re not going to get away with ruining my life like that.

You owe me at least ￡1000, years of washing up, all the English homework I did for you, the fact that you were Mum’s favourite and what feels like twenty years of having your decorative, incomprehensible girlfriends cry on my shoulder because you’re a self-absorbed git. ’

Simon snorted. ‘Yeah, well I’m not going to die until you’ve finished editing that book for me.

And I don’t know why you and Andrew are being so tragic when I’ve never been ill with anything worse than a cold till now.

I’m more scared of catching your misery than failing to conquer this virus.

Talking of something more interesting, I’m going back to the studio tomorrow.

Can I tell Sue you’re happy to go ahead with the broadcast within certain parameters?

Or better still, come with me and tell her yourself.

’ His scowl dropped to be replaced by a grin.

‘Or would you rather stay here moping until Rob comes back?’