A Finer End

daylight. She felt a rush of panic — was she late? Had she missed Duncan?
    Looking at the clock above the stove, she breathed a sigh of relief. It was not yet five o’clock. She was all right. She would go down the hill and she would try to make sense of what she had read. But just now all she wanted to do was get out of the house, so empty without Garnet’s presence, and back to warmth and light.
    Her hand was on the kitchen lamp when the sound came again, this time unmistakable — a footstep, the groan of weight on the bottom step. Had Duncan discovered her missing from the café and come looking for her?
    But surely she’d have heard the swish of the car on the wet tarmac, and the squeak of the gate. There was another creak, and a shadow against the curtained window.
    The fear that gripped her was deeper than thought. She looked round wildly for a place to hide, but it was too late. The door swung open and the last voice she had expected to hear said, ‘Hullo, Faith.’
     
    Gemma had slept fitfully, waking several times to check on Toby, tossing and turning in between. When the dull light that presaged dawn began to filter through her blinds, she gave up trying to sleep.
    She sat at the half-moon table in the quiet flat, looking out at the garden, as the sky grew brighter. As she watched the familiar lines of tree and shrub take shape, she thought again about her conversation with Erika Rosenthal.
    Dr Rosenthal was a rational woman, a scholar, and yet she had spoken of Old Gods and elemental powers without reservation. If she were right, Gemma’s perceptions had been more than an overactive imagination, and Faith had indeed been in danger. Yet Faith had been drawn to the Tor before Garnet even knew of her existence; had the danger been not Garnet herself, but something else that had not yet run its course?
    That thought made Gemma so uncomfortable that she stood and began to get ready for her day, but she worried at it restlessly throughout the morning. No matter how much she tried to rationalize it, she couldn’t shake the instinct that Faith was still at terrible risk.
    At noon, she called in her sergeant and informed him that she would be out for the rest of the day. Her superior was away on a training course — she’d have to explain herself to him when she came back. And Hazel! She would have to ask Hazel to keep Toby for the night.
    But first, she rang Kincaid at Jack’s.
     
    ‘Andrew! What are you doing here?’ Faith stared at the apparition in the doorway. His thin anorak glistened with rain, and his hair was plastered to his forehead. He looked different somehow, younger, and she realized he’d taken off his glasses.
    ‘I’ve come to see you.’ He stepped into the kitchen and shut the door. ‘You’re looking well.’
    ‘Well?’ She looked down at her distended abdomen, then back at him. ‘Is that all you can say?’
    ‘What should I say? That you’re blooming? Or one of those other euphemisms people use to get round the fact that pregnant women resemble beached whales?’ His cruelty was shocking. Nor was there any trace of tenderness in his voice. What had she seen in him, all those months ago?
    He had been impressed with her performance in his history classes, and with her knowledge of music. And she had been so flattered by his interest, intrigued by his boyish good looks and his air of vulnerability. When he’d begun asking her to stop by his office, she’d felt singled out, special. And then had come the casual touch, the hand on her shoulder, the stroking of her hair — so different from the fumbling of boys her own age.
    The thrill of it had made her giddy with excitement, and when he’d said, oh, so nonchalantly, ‘If ever you’re walking up Wirral Hill, stop by my house for a cup of tea,’ she had gone.
    There had been a few charmed weeks of regular visits, of feeling so grown up, sleek with her secret and her superiority to the other girls in her class.
    Then reality had struck — a missed period, the worry, the sickness, the inevitable acknowledgment of the truth. When she’d told him she was pregnant, he had wept in her arms like a terrified child, and she’d sworn to him she would never tell anyone the truth. And she’d believed that, once the baby was born and she was on her own, perhaps they could be together again.
    Now she saw that she had been mad to think she had meant anything to him — or that she had ever been more than a dreadful mistake in his