Page 351 of The Running Grave

‘When they took her out of the pool,’ said Flora haltingly, ‘it was still very dark. Dr Zhou bent over her and said, “She’s all right, she’s breathing.” Papa J told everyone to leave, the younger ones first. As we were filing out, Papa J was pretending to talk to Deirdre, acting as if they were having a conversation, as though her voice was very quiet but he could hear it.

‘But I knew she was dead,’ said Flora. ‘I was close to the stage. I saw her face when they pulled her out of the pool. There was foam on her lips. Her eyes were open. I knew. But you had to believe what Papa J and Mazu said. You had to. Next day, they gathered us together and said Deirdre had been expelled, and everyone just – they just accepted it. I heard people saying “Of course they had to expel her, if she’d displeased the prophet like that.”

‘I remember this boy called Kevin. It should have been his first Manifestation, but he was being punished, so he wasn’t allowed to attend. He asked a lot of questions about what Deirdre had done to be expelled, and I remember Becca – she was a teenager, one of Papa J’s spirit wives – hitting him round the head and telling him to shut up about Deirdre… Becca was the one who made me… who made me…’

‘What did Becca make you do?’ Robin asked.

When Flora shook her head, looking down into her lap, Robin said,

‘Becca made me do things, too. She also tried to get me into terrible trouble, hiding something stolen under my bed. I think she’s nearly as scary as the Waces, personally.’

Flora looked up at Robin for the first time.

‘Me too,’ she whispered.

‘What did she make you do? Something that might make you complicit in an awful situation? They did the same thing to me, sent me to look after a dying boy. I knew that if he died while I was with him, they’d blame me.’

‘That’s worse,’ said Flora faintly, and Robin was touched to see genuine sympathy for her on Flora’s face. ‘That’s worse than mine… they did do it to make me complicit, I’ve often thought that… Becca made me type letters from Deirdre, to her family. I had to make them up myself. I had to write that I’d left the farm but I wanted a new life, away from my husband and children… so obviously Deirdre was dead,’ said Flora in frustration, ‘but Becca looked me in the eye and told me she was alive, and she’d been expelled, even while she was making me write those letters!’

‘I think that’s a big part of what they do,’ said Robin. ‘They force you to agree black’s white and up’s down. It’s part of the way they control you.’

‘But that’s fraud, isn’t it?’ said Flora desperately. ‘They made me part of the cover-up!’

‘You were being coerced,’ said Robin. ‘I’m certain you’d get immunity, Flora.’

‘Is Becca still there?’

‘Yes,’ said Robin and Will together. The latter wore an odd, arrested expression now; he’d followed the story of the fake letters closely.

‘Has Becca ever increased?’ asked Flora.

‘No,’ said Will.

Now, for the first time, he volunteered information rather than demanding it.

‘Papa J doesn’t want to, because he thinks her bloodline’s tainted.’

‘That’s not why he won’t let her have a baby,’ said Flora quietly.

‘Why, then?’

‘He wants to keep her a virgin,’ said Flora. ‘That’s why Mazu doesn’t hate on her, like she does with all the other spirit wives.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ said Will, very surprised.

‘All the spirit wives know,’ said Flora. ‘I was one of them,’ she added.

‘Really?’ said Robin.

‘Yes,’ said Flora. ‘It started as the Loving Cure, and he liked it so much he made me a spirit wife. He likes… he likes it when you don’t like it.’

Robin’s thoughts flew immediately to Deirdre Doherty, the prim woman who’d wished to remain faithful to her husband, and whose last pregnancy, she believed, was the result of Wace’s rape.

‘Mazu sometimes joined in,’ said Flora, in a near whisper. ‘She’d… sometimes, she’d help hold me down, or… sometimes he likes to watch her do stuff to you…’

‘Oh God,’ said Robin. ‘Flora… I’m so sorry.’

Will now looked both scared and disturbed. Twice, he opened his mouth to speak, changed his mind, then blurted out,